VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Mario Van Peebles On Directing His Son In New Film ‘Outlaw Posse’

Writer, director and actor Mario Van Peebles looked back on his experience creating his new film, Outlaw Posse in his new uInterview.

Outlaw Posse follows an outlaw in 1908 who returns from years of hiding in Mexico to claim stolen gold treasure hidden in the hills of Montana.

Van Peebles reflected on his inspiration for the project. “When I wrote Outlaw Posse I was thinking about this Johny Cash song… where all his life the boy has issues with his dad and then he really starts to understand his father at a certain point inadvertently and understand him in a different way,” he told uInterview founder Erik Meers.

Outlaw Posse’s cast boasts notable actors, including Whoopi Goldberg and Edward James Olmos. The film also features Van Peebles’ son, Mandela, who plays his on-screen son.

Van Peebles noted that while writing he thought about the relationships within his family.

“In my own family, we’ve had pretty strong paternal line,” he said. “My grandfather put my dad to work when he was 8 years old in Chicago. My dad saw that one person could make a difference in whatever field they chose to be in, as my grandfather did, and my father went off to college to become a writer and ended up saying, ‘People aren’t reading books, but they’re watching movies, so I’ll be a director.’”

Van Peebles shared the pros of working with family. “When I’m directing my son, he knows that I’m doing it coming from a place of love… and even if we disagree as father and son, we know as filmmaker and filmmaker-actor that I’m really giving you the best thing when I say, ‘Turn a little and catch the light here,’ or ‘Do that angle there,’ or ‘Go a little deeper in that scene here because it’s going to pay off over there.’ He knows that I have the whole picture in mind.”

Van Peebles explained his dedication to an accurate portrayal of the West and all of its all too often overlooked diversity.

“Black men were referred to as ‘boys,’ sort of a derogatory term, no matter what your age was. And given the dirtier jobs—‘take care of the horses, boy,” ‘take care of the cows, boy,’ ‘where’s the cowboys?’” he said. “And so the very name cowboy is based on that, right, and the white guys like being called ‘rough riders.’… When Hollywood started to glorify cowboys, then they started to portray them as white. Even native Americans were played by white actors.”

He continued, “Right now America, it seems to be, in some ways more fractured; we don’t watch the same news, we don’t watch the same facts, but I think that we made…a genre film and if you make it with love for everyone and all of us – build it and they will come. That’s my hope.”

Outlaw Posse will be in a limited theatrical release starting on March 1.