Daniel Kaluuya, Jodie Turner-Smith continue movie making on chilly Cleveland set of “Queen and Slim”
By James Ewinger, The Plain Dealer
(AP Photo/Joel Ryan)
CLEVELAND, Ohio – Stars and film crew continue to mine movie gold on St. Clair Avenue, despite bitter cold.
The movie being made here now is called “Queen and Slim,” staring Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith. Filming, much of it at night, began this week and is expected to wrap here Friday.
After filming early Wednesday morning, Turner-Smith said in a Tweet it was “slightly chilly” in Cleveland with a screen shot of her weather app displaying a reading of minus-17 degrees, which likely was the wind-chill. Temperatures at that time were around zero.
By midday Wednesday, there was no evidence of a film on St. Clair Avenue, except for a lone City of Cleveland van. Filming was to resume at 5 p.m. as temperatures dipped below minus-5 with a wind chill in the minus-30s. St. Claire from East 61st to East 71st was to be closed for the second straight night.
Melina Matsoukas is directing the movie, with a script by Lena Waithe and author James Frey. The Hollywood Reporter and other film-focused outlets have called in a “Bonnie and Clyde” story.
“To me, this is protest art,” Waithe told Variety in July. “It’s about being black and trying to fall in love in a world that’s burning down around you.”
Variety called that “Queen & Slim” an “exploration of America’s social and political climate through the lens of a genre-defying love story. The film centers on a black man and black woman who go on a first date that goes awry after the two are pulled over by a police officer at a traffic stop. They kill the police officer in self-defense and rather than turn themselves in, they go on the run.”