HBO
When did you realize you had to tell this story?

RUBEN SANTIAGO-HUDSON
Well, it's funny, because I'd been carrying this story with me throughout my life. It's basically etched in my heart. [CHUCKLES] You know, I lived around so much love I was always telling people about this rooming house that I lived in. That I was just like a little prince there, and it was hard for people to really grasp what I meant and sometimes I would just bring people home and let them see it. When I was in college, I'd say come visit Lackawanna, and they were just - the mouths would fall open. It was, hey, man, I love this. I want to live here.

And so eventually in telling these stories, going through my educational process. In college and places, professors and writers would say you got to write this thing. You know and then finally I got together with George (C. Wolfe, director). We had a long friendship, and I was telling George and his dramaturg at the time, John Diaz, at the Public Theater, I was sharing these stories with him, and he said, man, you've got to write it. So they gave me a commission. And the rest is history.

HBO
It seems to reflect a time and a place when community was everything, when it was so critical, during segregation. Why do you think that was important.

RUBEN SANTIAGO-HUDSON
Because we didn't have any options. The only choice we had was to form our own communities and protect and nurture our own. We didn't have options to go other places and when we got those options, we did go other places. And all our businesses and things suffered in that respect, so for every door that integration opened, another door seemed to close in the community.

HBO
Interesting. Now, at some point you went off to college and left your community behind...

RUBEN SANTIAGO-HUDSON
Well, I really never left it behind. You know, I went to Binghamton, which was a little less than two hundred miles away. And I was home every other weekend. So I always was a part of the Lackawanna community. I didn't just like go away and then come back. I still go back two, three times a year.

HBO
You were saying that for every door that segregation opened, another closed. Can you talk a little bit about how things have changed from your childhood to now.

RUBEN SANTIAGO-HUDSON
Well, it was more than one element that seemed to help that community kind of dissolve in a lot of ways. The industry dried up - the steel industry - and then the Great Lakes was a highway for all kind of industry and grain meals. Everything was going on in that area in the Great Lakes. When that dried up, opportunities dried up, money dried up, at the same time we started having an opportunity to go across the bridge to the white areas to do our shopping. And to go to the drugstore, and we took that option and hence, the businesses in the first Lackawanna couldn't survive. When you didn't have to go up to Miss Loretta's and get your fresh fish and chicken. You'd go over to Super Duper. You know, because it was a quarter cheaper.

People went to Super Duper and Miss Loretta couldn't afford to keep her supermarket open. All the bars that were in Lackawanna that were thriving when the money dried up, people weren't sitting in there every night. And buying drinks for everybody every night.

So, they suffered. It just was hard to see the community go down like that. And then also in the early and middle sixties came the black power movement and some of the real hot-headed younger people in the community of Lackawanna kind of took the message a little wrong and started burning down some of the stores. They didn't only burn down the few white stores, they burned some of the black stores. And businesses.

HBO
Hmm.

RUBEN SANTIAGO-HUDSON
So all these things happened at once. Like around 1966, you know, somewhere in that time and and we started slowly going down.

HBO
And where are things now?

RUBEN SANTIAGO-HUDSON
They're trying to build back up, but it's going to be a real slow process. You know, you see new life there, but what is lost, which seems to be more difficult than the houses and the businesses to build, is that sense of community. You know, when an old lady would be walking with the groceries, and you would just volunteer to help her, when somebody's driveway was piled high with snow. Young men would go shovel it. And and make sure they can get out. Those days when when people can sit on their porch and see a kid doing wrong, and say I'm gonna tell your mama. And the kid actually had some fear. In their heart, you know.

Those days are gone. Where the whole community raised you. The older people seemed to be scared now, and stay in their houses. The younger people seem to have the attitude of I'm going to get mine. Where it used to be community first. It's a different era, and what I want to do with "Lackawanna Blues" is tap people on the shoulder and remind them hey, we took care of each other at one time. You know.

HBO
The sense that I got so strongly was of trying to replace hate with kindness, and creating a sense of hope out of hopelessness.

RUBEN SANTIAGO-HUDSON
Yeah, we have lost it in a lot of ways, because family when I came up meant those that were around you. The people that you were among, you know, not necessarily your bloodline. Your family was your community. And that extended beyond your household.

Even today, when I run into somebody from Lackawanna, as I was touring my play, and I went all over this country. Somebody would pop up, white or black, it didn't matter, they would say, I'm from Lackawanna. And we would hug, and they would have this sense of pride. And you knew that that was family. You know in some strange way. And even in some distant way. That word, I'm from Lackawanna. That sentence said we're bonded somehow.

We understood something that people all over this country in little communities also understood. People in Akron, Ohio, and people in Gary, Indiana, and people in Marion, Ohio, and those little communities that hard-working people that really stuck together and everybody knew each other's name.

HBO
It reminds me of Pittsburgh with the steel mills closing down and how things changed so dramatically there and how they're trying to turn that around.

RUBEN SANTIAGO-HUDSON
They're exactly like Lackawanna. They're trying to find a new industry. You know, if you really want to see Lackawanna, you look at the smaller places. You know, the city that's right outside of the big city. Which was Buffalo. Lackawanna was right outside of that. You have to look into little towns like that.

HBO
How much of this came from your memory, and how much did you have to invent?

RUBEN SANTIAGO-HUDSON
You know, in the end I had to invent very little. I had to make composites of some people because I didn't want to lose the essence of all my characters, so I knew I couldn't include the hundreds and hundreds of people that I saw walking in Nanny's house in need and Nanny answered their need.

I couldn't include everybody, so what I did was bring the essence of as many people as I could. Each character has a little of someone else in them. But I didn't have to fabricate anything. You know, my life's so rich and it's an experience so rich, you really don't really have to invent a whole lot.

I have another thousand stories in my mind that I was standing there being witness to. You know, because every week someone knocked on that door. And every week Nanny answered them.

HBO
The blues are part of the fabric of this story. It seems as if the music is a character in the film. Why is it so essential for your story?

RUBEN SANTIAGO-HUDSON
Because first of all music permeated through that house every day. [CHUCKLES] It was a jukebox or somebody singing the blues on the guitar or somebody down the street playing blues on his guitar or the radio that Nanny would be listening to gospel if Nanny was humming when she was singing some old spiritual. There was always music.

Music is essential in our communities. In black communities, and even today in hip-hop and rap and all that sort of thing, but even more so in my time because those songs were our history. And even today, this kind of music is our history. I wish it would be more of our history, some of the rappers do rap about deep, deep history, but they seem to get blown out of the way by the violent thing.

But the blues is our story. You would find out who was sick, you would find out when the hurricane came, when there was no work, you'd find out when there was a war, you'd find out when Martin Luther King got shot. If you listen to the blues. Because it's what the white establishment didn't put in the history books, we put into our blues. And we tell our story.

HBO
The characters' nicknames- I was fascinated by all the great, great names. It made me think about how someone gets a nickname. Is there something to a person getting a nickname.

RUBEN SANTIAGO-HUDSON
Yeah, when I was coming up, it was just par for the course. I mean a nickname almost was a sign of affection.

HBO
Mm-hmm.

RUBEN SANTIAGO-HUDSON
If somebody called you something other than your name, you know, words that were built and made to tear you down like "nigger" or words they use today like "dog" that people try to put a nice spin on to make it a term of affection, I just haven't found that affection in these new ways that we greet each other. [CHUCKLES]

In those days, when you greet each other with a nickname it was a sign of affection. Even though it may seem odd if you call somebody "Shaky" because his mannerism was his head shook all the time. He didn't look at that as a put down. He looked at that like it was his little stamp that you gave him. That's Shaky over there. Like me, they called me Doc. That was a sign that I had aspirations of being something bigger than just a little boy growing up in a steel plant. They said, you know, go somewhere. Or when they called somebody Peaches. You know, was like they're round and sweet, you know.

When I was coming up in Nanny's rooming house, she had two juniors, me and another junior. Rich his name, Richard junior. And my name was Ruben junior. So she called him called me little junior, and called him big junior.

HBO
[CHUCKLES]

RUBEN SANTIAGO-HUDSON
And we knew exactly what she was talking about junior, little junior. And it was me. It was a sign of affection. A guy in my neighborhood, when he was young he was a little pudgy, they called him meatball. He ended up growing up being pretty well built. You know, started working out, but that name stuck with him, and he wasn't offended by it at all. But he knew he was meatball. You know, like there were a couple guys in the neighborhood who they called Red, you know. One was Pepper Red one of them was just Red.

Pepper Red was darker than Red. You know, a little bit darker. Pepper Red had redder hair. The other Red had freckles, so it was just Red, Pepper Red. Like Smitty and Sonny, there was so many Sonny's in our neighborhood. There was little Sonny, big Sonny, cripple Sonny. So you knew which Sonny to get.

HBO
It's like the Italians back in the forties and fifties.

RUBEN SANTIAGO-HUDSON
Italians are very similar, very very similar. Very extended family. Very community. Protect each other; take care of each other. You know, you didn't have to worry in my community, just like the Italian community, you didn't have to worry about the police because if you came into that community and did wrong, everybody knew who you were, what you did, and that was not allowed.

If somebody stole something, like when somebody stole something from Nanny one time, and I was looking for it, when I came to Lackawanna, I came I said, who stole Nanny's silver fox fur? They said, well, you know Muff Diamond has it up on Ridge Road. I ride up on Ridge Road and Muff was standing up by the store I said, how much you want for the fur? He said fifteen dollars. I gave him fifteen dollars. I took it. I went back, he said but I didn't steal I bought it from somebody for five dollars.

HBO
Oh, man. There's a great name.

RUBEN SANTIAGO-HUDSON
Yeah.

HBO
Muff Diamond.

RUBEN SANTIAGO-HUDSON
Well, Diamond was the name you put on somebody's nickname if they were a hustler. Like if somebody's name was Red, and Red Diamond. If somebody's name was Kurt, you called him Kurt Diamond, if he was a hustler. Junior Diamond. You know, Larry Diamond. Diamond meant your goals were money. Luster.

HBO
It's just fascinating. These days, the notion of an extended family is just lost.

RUBEN SANTIAGO-HUDSON
Well, I said something once in New York that was kind of provocative. This kid had gotten shot. I'm from New York, I live on 88th street. But a kid got shot in like a drive-by up in Red Hook or something, and I said that wouldn't happen in a tiny community. I said you know everybody's over here marching and screaming and hollering about injustice. You want injustice, we should be marching about that. We should never allow a child to get shot in our community.

And all them young brothers were standing there saying, come on, Ruben, you want to go to this rally with us, you know the white man did this and that, and I said, the white man does certain things to us. A lot of stuff we need to holler about. But right now, what we need to holler about is kids getting shot in our community and that should not be allowed. That would never have happened over in the Bronx. You go over there with that shit and see what happens.

HBO
I bet you did raise a few eyebrows.

RUBEN SANTIAGO-HUDSON
I did, yeah. They looked at me, and I said that's for real. All you bad guys in the community supposed to be tough and gang boys and militants and stuff. That should not be allowed. If you want to march that's where we should start. Right there and then we'll march right after to the white folks to say you all can't mistreat us either. But we got to start in our community.

God knows I'm a witness to injustice. I've just seen so much of it, and I've been a part of so much of it. And I've been abused like hell, but I'm more concerned about straightening out my community first.

HBO
Last question: what is it like having your story done by HBO Films with George C. Wolfe directing and talents like Halle Berry. How are you feeling about all that?

RUBEN SANTIAGO-HUDSON
I don't think it really has hit be totally. But I put it in a very simple perspective, and I always just wake up in the morning and say thank you, Nanny.

And maybe it's corny to a lot of people, I just think that she has her arms around this whole thing, and then it can't fail. Because everything that she put into my life, it seemed to turn out right. You know, even when I when I would try to self-destruct myself, you know. Nanny seemed to be the protector and the guider. And the guiding force of it all. I mean even this morning, prior to calling you, I'm sitting here writing this song about her called "Angel."

HBO
It sounds like a very happy set.

RUBEN SANTIAGO-HUDSON
It is. I mean one of my biggest joys each day is when I hit the set to look over and see the diversity. And people just walk up and say thank you, man. Thank you. You know, I mean the white guys, the teamsters, the black guys, they come up to me and hug me. I mean people bring their families. It's just like Nanny. It's like Nanny.