Interview: Don Cheadle and Paul Rusesabagina. IGN talks to the star of Hotel Rwanda and the real hero behind the story. US, December 20, 2004 - It would be nice if you could say that events like the genocide that went on in Rwanda in 1994 were behind us. The sad truth is that atrocities like this are still being committed in locations around the globe, much of which we aren't even aware of. The story of Paul Rusesabagina and his incredible and brave struggle to save as many as he could from the massacres in Rwanda is one that many are unfamiliar with. Hotel Rwanda is a film that sets out to spread the story of what went on in Rwanda in 1994 in the hopes that future events of this type can be prevented. Hotel Rwanda is directed by acclaimed director Terry George (In the Name of the Father, The Boxer). It picks up at the start of the bitter battle in the mid-Nineties between the Tutsi and Hutu. Paul Rusesabagina was a diplomat and the former proprietor of the Milles Collines in Rwanda. He came back to the hotel to put some things in order when hell broke out all around him. Rusesabagina quickly gathered his family and brought them to live in the hotel, where things were at least temporarily a little more controlled. Many of the hotel workers took up rooms at the hotel and refugees from throughout Rwanda were soon begging Rusesabagina to take them in at the hotel. He did as much as he could, taking in orphans and as many families as he could fit. As massacres took place all around the hotel, Rusesabagina used his personal charm, his political connections and bribes to help as many people as he could to survive the ordeal. The casting choice of Don Cheadle to portray Rusesabagina on screen is about as perfect a match as one could imagine. In some respects, it's also a refreshing one. While critics have known Cheadle's name for years, he is far from a household name. His work in Hotel Rwanda is exceptional and he is well deserved of all the acclaim he is getting for it. Hopefully this part will give him the boost his career needs so that he can continue to hone his talent in demanding films like this one. At a recent press day in Los Angeles, IGN FilmForce had the unique and enlightening opportunity to speak with both Cheadle and the very man he portrays in Hotel Rwanda, Paul Rusesabagina. Interest in Rusesabagina's story has been brewing almost since the actual events occurred. He wanted to make sure that the story was told properly and done justice before agreeing on a film. "I have been approached by many different moviemakers since 1996. The story of the Milles Collines Hotel interested many different people, especially book writers and filmmakers. They approached me, but we couldn't agree on terms. Some of them wanted to make a movie on the TV, for the cables… Until I met Terry, and then we came to our agreement. I followed the movie right from the beginning. From the time I come to Long Island, I met Terry George and Keir Pearson, we sat together for a couple of days. I told them my story, they wrote a script. We sat down and talked about it, and some things we changed. Until they started filming, I was there, but I never got used [to it], even now. You know, whenever I see the movie, it just reopens the wounds of the genocide."

Cheadle as Rusesabagina with Sophie Okonedo as Tatiana. While Cheadle was not necessarily the first choice to play this part, he was the best one. It was just a matter of convincing certain others that that was the case. Cheadle discussed landing the part. "Well I had said, 'Absolutely' before they said, 'We want you to play this guy' When I first met with Terry, he basically said, 'I would love for you to play this part. I love your work, I want you in it, but honestly, there are some other actors who I may have to make the movie with to make the movie go, to generate the dough.' He had been trying to make it for three to five years, something like that. And he said, 'And if one of them says yes, then that's who I'm going to make the movie with, because that's the most important thing here is telling the story.' I was in agreement. I said, 'I hope that it comes to me… I will support you in any way to get this movie made, even if it means me not doing it, because it's an amazing story that too few people knew about…' That's what I like about Terry. He's just a straight shooter. His passion for the piece was clear…" Before shooting the film, Cheadle spent time with Rusesabagina to prepare to play him. Rusesabagina explained, "When Terry agreed with Don Cheadle, Don sent me an email to know who I was, what I like, movies, art, museums, to know in order to know who I was. Before the shooting of the movie, he came to South Africa, to Johannesburg… We sat together for quite some time, we drank together, sharing a glass of wine in the evening and meals. We stayed together for almost a week, and then I went back. So he does what he used to me, to my manners, my behavior, my way of dressing, to know who I was really. And then also, for the shooting time, I was there. I went back to Johannesburg and I stayed for two weeks. And later on, I also went back, so we became closer. His performance is perfect. He did it properly, sometimes in the Hollywood way, but just perfect." "Whenever I take a part, I'm kind of insecure about the work," Cheadle says. "I never just think, 'I'm going to knock this one out of the park.' I'm always concerned that I'm doing the right thing and that the story's being told properly and I'm doing the right thing. There were a lot of challenges with this one. It was a short schedule compared to what we were trying to do. We had a lot of logistical things to deal with given the size of our budget and the size of our cast and the size of the extras and the scope of the story. 17.5 is not a lot of money to make what really is an epic story…" Cheadle wanted to be careful not to get hung up on minute details, but more so to capture the essence of Rusesabagina. "There were things, some specific, but mostly it was just getting a sense of the nature of him and a sense of his spirit and a sense of how he approached the world. Being with him in social settings, being with him one on one, being at a restaurant with him getting drunk… (Laughs) It was just kind of getting a whole picture of

who he was, not just the 110 pages of the script or interviews that I'd seen, but really just sitting with him and joking with him and telling stories and him meeting my kids and me meeting his kids, those things, little details would come off of those things…" Since Rusesabagina served as an advisor on the film, that meant that many of the days in which Cheadle was performing his scenes, the real man that he was playing was watching from only a few feet away. "It's not comfortable. At times it was really daunting and I would say, 'Do you have to sit behind the monitor today? Can I come see you in the trailer afterwards?' But, for the most part, knowing that I wasn't trying to do some kind of direct characterization of him. There are definite things about him that I did incorporate, but they were larger things about his comportment and how he dealt with people and how he dealt with his family and what he thought of himself and his place and that situation…" History-based tales from Hollywood are often notorious for taking the reality out of the story, glamorizing and fictionalizing events until they are almost unrecognizable when compared to what actually happened. Hotel Rwanda achieves the rare feet of not only sticking to the basic story, but also in creating an almost exact replication of what went on in Rusesabagina's life during this period. "Well, you can say that 90 percent of the movie is the reality of what took place at the Milles Collines hotel in 1994. Let's say 10 percent is just in hints of the film… There are places, for instance, romantic times when you see Paul and his wife on the roof, enjoying wine. That good time, I didn't have it. I could go and see my wife and children late in the night, around two, around one, around four in the night, but that good time I didn't have it." Cheadle says that Paul's wife also pointed out another amusing, if not greatly important, inaccuracy. "I remember one day on the set, he and Tatiana were there and we were shooting one of the bedroom scenes, and Tatiana said something to Odette in French, and they all laughed. I said, 'What was so funny?' And she said, 'This scene is not right because Paul sleeps in the nude.' Well, this scene probably just won't be right then, because I'm not dropping trou in this one." (Laughs) I never sat him down and tried to grill him on the specifics of what happened to him. I much more just wanted to hear what he wanted to tell me. I took it on faith that him saying, 'This is the script that I am saying that I agree with and this is the version of the story that I'm fine with you telling,' that we could just relax and focus on telling that story… That we were up to the task that he had put before us as far as telling his story…"

Cheadle and his wife watch as the horror mounts.

When the events of the Rwanda massacres first unfold on film, Paul's character has trouble regaining control of his staff, so much so that he needed the help of a superior to settle things down. I asked Paul about this scenario and how close the way it plays out in the film is to the reality. "Actually, that Grogoire [character] illustrates most of the hotel staff who misbehaved that way. When I arrived at the Milles Collines, the hotel staff had taken the bedrooms of the hotel. I didn't want to remove them from the rooms because I didn't want to create any problem. I had left the Milles Collines two years before, the 19th of November 1994. That is when I left the Milles Collines for diplomat. I came back to the Milles Collines almost for that specific occasion almost four years later… You can imagine the personnel; they didn't immediately recognize me, as you can see in the movie, until I phoned my manager of the hotels, to ask him to send me a letter appointing me as the acting general manager of the Milles Collines, that was true. Those guys, they didn't respect me, but in order, I will be fair with the refugees with myself and my family, I let them take the rooms. They even had the keys themselves and everything… Can you imagine someone, some members of the personnel, their managers had given them the keys to everything, and you come to take over from them, you are not welcome? But I was the only general manager of the hotels who was remaining in Rwanda. Later, they go and appoint me as the acting general manager for all the Sevena interests in Rwanda, for both hotels and the Sevena office and everything. Then they understood that they couldn't do anything else than accepting to respect me." Rusesabagina says that he has still not shown the film to his entire family. Although he has had time to come to terms with the events that went on, revisiting them is forever a painful experience. "No. I have seen it with my wife many times. Even for her to [prepare to watch], it is always a little bit heavy for her. I think, I believe, that from here, from this trip, I won't have any choice. I will have to show it to them. I've been always trying to show it, the copy I have, but sometimes when I feel like showing it, it takes me time. Two hours, three hours, and I change my mind. It is not easy to show the children. Their parents died in such an atrocity." The film itself had to fight a battle of its own to ensure a PG-13 rating so that the its important message could be presented beyond the adult audience. "We had to go in, [Terry and I] had to go in and really lobby for it to get the rating that it got," Cheadle says. "I hope that it will be a broader audience and I don't think it's anything that a 15 or 16 year old can't handle. I think, you know, when I was in junior high school, I saw a documentary on the Holocaust, I think it's called Night and Fog, that had a very positive effect on me in that it shaped my sort of humanistic view point and opened my eyes to events around the world that I had no knowledge about… It was harrowing and hard to watch, much more disturbing that Hotel Rwanda in its graphic detail, but it sensitized me and I would hope that people would not be afraid of this film for thinking that it's going to be some sort of a gore fest which Terry was very careful not to make… And look, I think it's an entertaining film. It's a hard word to use maybe, with this subject-matter, but I think it's a movie that's very uplifting and hopeful that good can triumph over evil…"

Rusesabagina carries his son from the carnage. In the years since the atrocities in Rwanda ten years ago, apologies have been made by some of the countries who at first turned a blind eye towards intervention. We asked Mr. Rusesabagina how he felt about these apologies. "Well, what took place, had happened. We can't change anything. In forgiving, if someone comes to you and they [apologize], you can always go ahead and forgive him. We will never forget, but we forgive. Now, there is a very good reason for me, even to forgive, because there is a message. This movie we have done is a message to the world. It is a message to each and every one of us, to remember whenever we see a similar situation; we care because we know that what happened Rwanda might be repeated in some other part of the world. As it is happening right now in Sudan. It is happening in Congo not far from Rwanda." Rusesabagina has been back to Rwanda only briefly with director Terry George during the making of Hotel Rwanda. He says that he hopes to return soon to his homeland and show them the film. "I think this film should not only be shown to my friends, but to most all Rwandese. They have to know what they did and what they didn't do, where they succeeded and where they failed. All of us, we have to see it and at least learn a lesson. This movie is a message of hope. It is a message of hope for those people who might think that was the end of evil. That was not the end of evil. We can always try to do something good whenever there's a will." Hotel Rwanda opens on December 22nd in New York and Los Angeles.