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| Oscar Nuñez as Governor Anthony 'The Ram' Ramiro in The School Duel Photo: Fantasia International Film Festival |
Todd Wiseman’s latest film, The School Duel, is set in a bleak future where the Free State of Florida, as it is repeatedly referred to, has removed any and all forms of gun control and tried to stem the tide of school shootings by redirecting teenagers’ attention into a new event. The high profile, multi-participant, televised School Duel will see one boy proclaimed king for the year, and given a shiny crown, after shooting dead all the other contenders. It’s an event presided over by the state governor himself, who is played by Oscar Nuñez.
Taking on the role didn’t require much thought, the actor says, when we meet at Fantasia.
“Well, the script came this way, and I read it, and I thought it was interesting and topical and something that could theoretically happen here in the ‘States with the way things are going. So I thought it would be a nice little independent movie film to do. And, yeah, so we did it.”
it has only come to feel more topical over time, he says. “It's bananas over here. It is madness. So this is what we're dealing with and yeah, it's a thing. We'll see how this ends, but here we are.”
He wasn’t familiar with Todd Wiseman's work before coming to the project.
“I think maybe we watched a short film that he did. My wife's like, ‘Oh, he's really good.’ And she showed me a short film, and I think she read the script before me and said ‘Here, you should read it.’ Yeah, I was very excited. My sister lives in Florida, and so, yeah, we went. I read it, and before we knew it, I was down there in Tampa shooting it.
“There's not much research. It's just a cynical politician. Either you believe it and you're in the cult, or you're cynical and you're just spouting these things even though you don't believe them, but you're doing it because it's your job. And I think he is. That's what he's. That's what he does.”
The governor is plainly uninterested in the fate of the duellists, as we see from his interactions with his assistant.
“It doesn't matter. What's next? What's next? What are we doing next?
“ These men are not that interesting. They are Cynical. Whatever they have, they keep compartmentalised, whether it's moral or the country or whatever, and they're putting their own careers first before anything else, no matter what.”
That’s what comes across from the governor’s speech, we agree.
“He'll sell it to them. And I mean, literally. It keeps coming back to the President and what we're going through, but, you know, there's video and audio tape of Donald Trump saying ‘If I ever run for president, it'll be as a Republican. They're stupid, they're dumb, and you can sell them a bill of goods. You lie to them and you lie often and loudly, and you never stop.’ And it becomes a fact, whatever that lie may be.
“Here we have patriotism being wrapped up with religion being wrapped up with nationalism, and we must arm ourselves against this perceived enemy, and it turns out that even criticising it can make you an enemy. Stephen Colbert just got cancelled. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and it's on a big station here. CBS is one of the big three stations. Well, they have bent the knee to the administration and he's out of the job because he critiques the President.
“What choice do you have? Either you fall in line or you don't. You have two choices. There's not much...” He hesitates for a moment. “If you're quiet, you're being complicit, I feel.”
We talk about that fact that his character is, in a sense, an actor himself.
“The Republican Party is full of them,” he says. “Full of people who will say, ‘Oh, this is a bad bill,’ or ‘I'm not sure about this,’ but they still vote that way. They'll criticise it, and then they'll vote that way anyway, so I don't even know what that means.”
Does he think that Florida is particularly bad like that?
“Not just Florida. It's all over. Yeah, Florida is – it ='s a little crazy down there. But the thing is, the good people, too many of them are just quiet and don't want to cause any waves. That's the problem. They think it'll just go away or if they agree and appease him and the right, that they'll go easy on them. And that is not the case.
“The sense of urgency is just too low right now and people need to get to the streets. But people are so complacent here. And face it, the people that ICE is rounding up now, they're all brown, they're all Latino. They're not white people. And when Black Lives Matter, the Black people marching out here, not enough white people were joining them. Some were, but not enough. And again, the same thing's happening. Not enough, not enough, not enough. And I don't know what it's going to take, but as soon as the white people get up and start doing something about it – because right now it's scapegoating the others. And that's what's working for them.
“They're building holding centers where they're putting these mostly Mexicans and Latinos, and the congress people and their lawyers are not allowed access to go see what's going on in there. So this is crazy. But not enough white people are joining the fight. And like I said, they can tish about it and not agree, but if they're quiet, that's not helping.
I reference the fact that some of the people who've been taken away haven't even been charged.
“No, they haven't been charged like criminals. It is insane. Absolutely insane. It's happening quickly. He's accomplished more in 100 days that Hitler had at this point. In 100 days, he's going full speed ahead. It's crazy.”
The scenario in Wiseman’s film, he suggests, is believable – just not yet.
“If we're talking in the real world where this would happen, something like this, it would be a couple of years away. For something this drastic of having children fight children. But I could see it being part of their wheelhouse, of their philosophy, that before we ban assault rifles, we will try this. This is what we'll do. We'll have school duels before we take men's rifles away from them. Assault rifles, yeah, sure. That's a whole other thing. These are military grade weapons that men, lots of men, mostly white men here in this country, feel they need to have strapped to their chests as they parade around doing, I don't know what, intimidating people, defending themselves, whatever they think they're doing.”
The weapons they're supposed to have in case there's a tyrannical government that they need to overthrow, I suggest.
“Yeah. They're under the government. And they have no irony. They don't get it. Doesn't matter.”
I note that a lot of the tragedy of the film for me is that the kid himself believes in that so strongly, and believes that he needs to behave like that in order to count as a human being. For the first generation of people encountering ideas like that, they seem strange, but once it gets to the kids, it's just what they've grown up with, it's all they've known.
“That's all they've known. Yeah. In North Korea, they hail and they love their great leader while he's starving them. And there has to be part of that that's like ‘This is wrong,’ but they can't seem to click. They have no choice. And this is how that starts. And it's crazy.
“It's ironic that it's the United States. My parents came here seeking political asylum from Cuba because there was a man with the same exact personality as Trump, Fidel Castro, who took over, who said ‘I'm just here to clean up the government.’ And after a while he was in. Then he goes ‘You know what? Let's postpone the elections. We're not going to have elections. Let's kick them down the road.’ And he was there 60 years and he took over the press. He threw all the gays and intellectuals in jail. And to criticise him was to criticise the government and that's it. Martial law constantly, all the time.”
Is that what he fears is going to happen in the US?
“I think that he is not going to allow any more elections. I think this is what his plan is, to make things so bad that people act up. And then he says ‘Martial law,’ and then he says ‘We can't have elections, we're going to have them later,’ and we'll never have them. We'll see what happens, but that's what I think. Meanwhile, people are saying, ‘Who's going to be the Democratic [nominee]? Who is it?’ And I'm like, ‘There's not going to be an election. Why do you think there's going to be an election?’
He has been thinking about leaving the country, he says. He doesn’t understand how people can stay quiet about what’s happening. I observe that that’s what a lot of celebrities of the time did when the Nazis came to power.
“Yeah,” he sighs. “It's bananas. And people here – there's many politicians and Democrats who are still treating this whole situation under Donald Trump like Chamberlain did when he visited Hitler and he came back with a paper. He signed a peace agreement. Meanwhile, before his plane even landed, they were making fun and laughing at him in Berlin, saying ‘What a fool.’ You know, Churchill's like, ‘How could you trust this man?’ And this man has proven from 2016 he is a documented pathological liar. So what does it matter what he says about anything? It doesn't matter... Whatever he feels in the morning when he wakes up, that's our domestic policy and our foreign policy now, and they won't say it out loud. There is no policy. It's whatever mood he's in. And he's got Congress and the Senate, so it's insane.”
He’s aware that he could be putting himself at risk by speaking out like this, he says, but he doesn’t know what else to do. “I have to say what I'm seeing right in front of me. It's as plain as day.”
