Cleveland pulled off the RNC with glowing reviews and is no longer the butt of sports jokes thanks to the Cleveland Cavaliers championship, but none of that changes the fact that this city is suffering. There are communities riddled with shootings, drugs, poverty, abuse. That darker part of the city is the one Steven Caple, Jr. grew up in and portrays in his directorial debut filmed here, The Land.
The movie showcases the hardships of youths coming up in the gritty East Side, who bounce from the innocent skateboarding world to getting caught up in the dark drug trade after finding MDMA capsules. The friends start dealing to raise money to enter a skateboarding competition but soon became deeply entrenched in that world.
Although not an entirely new concept, The Land holds strong throughout with its artistic cinematography and emotionally resonating soundtrack, which features artists such as Erykah Badu and Nas, who acted in and produced the film, respectively. Notably, it opened at Sundance Film Festival to mostly positive reviews and was co-produced by local rapper Machine Gun Kelly, who also acts in the film as a wisecracking gas station clerk who provides much needed comedic relief in the grim tale of urban decay.
With the film debuting in Los Angeles and New York City, Caple, Kelly and English actor Rafi Gavron, who plays a troubled youth, and Robert Hunter, a Cleveland actor who plays a villain, gathered at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum Aug. 3 for a exclusive premiere of the film before it opens at Cedar Lee Theatre Aug. 5. We caught up with the stars on the red carpet to chat about their experience in the world of The Land.
Rafi Gavron
Q: When filming here, what perception of the city did you walk away with?
A: I think that people from Cleveland have an extraordinary passion for their hustle, and I mean that in a good way, and I mean the hustle as in hard work and just staying afloat. As an actor who has struggled to get jobs before, I felt that hustle so hard and I related to it. Cleveland played into the movie the way New York plays into a movie, as a character itself in the film. There’s something about this city and an energy that it has. Thank God it was filmed here, because I don’t think it could have been filmed anywhere else.
Machine Gun Kelly
Q: What about this movie spoke to you as being true to Cleveland?
A: The fact that it was just real kids in average situations taking a really negative turn, which is something that if you grow up in a city like this and it’s kind of melancholy and gray and there isn’t much to do but there’s these big dreams. There’s always a ceiling put on our dreams or we’re made to feel bad about trying to figure everything out, and so this movie kind of shows these young kids trying to figure everything out. And the end all is it’s OK to f--k up and bump your head on this journey before you figure out how to walk and where to walk.
Steven Caple Jr.
Q: How did you get such big names including Kanye West, French Montana and Jeremih, on the soundtrack?
A: The message. Obviously, just respecting their craft and their time and when they jumped on board it was just like, ‘Here goes the message.’ This is why I wanted to make the film. I couldn’t afford anybody else on the project, so it was just like, ‘We’re going to donate time, donate love or invest in you or invest in the project because of what we wanted to be done or what we wanted in the community.’