Precious Hits Close to Home

Some films have really risen to the top out of the Toronto – Up in the Air, An Education and A Serious Man – of course you can add Capitalism: A Love Story and A Serious Man. Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry showed up in Toronto to help back Precious — a film that is unlike any other.¬†¬† They just don’t make movies about these kinds of characters in Hollywood. Or anywhere else for that matter. Oprah said that she sees a bit of herself in there:

“I recognized myself in that character and most of all, I recognized that I have seen the Precious girls of the world and they have been invisible to me,” Winfrey told a festival press conference.

“None of us who see the movie can walk through the world and allow the Preciouses to be invisible again,” she said.

Perry said:

“The character that Mo’Nique (the monstrous matriach) played is my father. I grew up in that situation, listening to those words being hurled by me. When Precious would flash out and be somewhere else in a happier place, it reminded me so much of the things I used to do. Because I could be in that hell and hearing it and not be there. I was somewhere else in a happier space. It was all those things that made me go ‘I’ve got to be involved, I’ve got to be involved.’ I think Precious found me actually.”