By Dimitri Ehrlich
Rarely will you see prison life depicted in a way as devoid of cliche as in Sing Sing, a new movie by A24 that began a quiet release earlier this summer, and is already generating Oscar chatter. Sing Sing tells the story of how an arts program for inmates engenders a transformation from brutal toxic masculinity to a revolutionary kind of vulnerability. But it’s not just the way the movie depicts male relationships—the presence of the actors, most of whom are former inmates who served time together, gives the film its authenticity.
While the cast of Sing Sing does include some real actors—Academy Award nominees Colman Domingo and Paul Raci among them—the man who seems to effortlessly steal every scene is Clarence Maclin.
Born in Tennessee, Maclin was raised by his single mother, who moved him to Mount Vernon, New York, in 1972, at the age of 5. The city, about 15 miles north of the Big Apple, was home to Heavy D, Mary J. Blige and Diddy. Maclin found himself breaking the law, and in a youth shelter as a teenager before serving prison time as an adult. “I always liked to draw,” he says. “How I got introduced to the street was really through graffiti, writing on trains and shit like that. That led to me fighting.”
Among its many layers, Sing Sing offers a critique of identity, reminding us of how so often we all become what society expects us to be. “My name started getting recognized as a hothead and the wrong crowd started taking an interest in me,” Maclin says. “That’s not what I wanted to do, but it seemed like that’s what I was cut out for, at least in my peers’ eyes.”
Based on Maclin’s real-life experience, the movie centers on a group of prisoners who find their lives transformed by a program called Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), which brings theater and the arts to the incarcerated population.
Inmates must be infraction-free for a year in order to participate, and for Maclin, that wasn’t easy. He was serving a 20-year prison term (for a crime he didn’t commit—though he had certainly been guilty of others) when he discovered RTA. It was a watershed moment, changing the course of his life. “The amazing thing that happens is when you realize vulnerability is a strength—it never was a weakness,” he says.
Now 58 years old, he is working on a book about his life and considering other acting roles. “I really want to do a Western,” Maclin says. “I think art allows us to create something that can heal both sides of the equation. I don’t really know what it would look like, but I would like to be part of those healing factors.”
Despite being buzzed about for Best Supporting Actor, celebrated on the Today show, and profiled in The New Yorker, the peak moment of Maclin’s post-prison life has nothing to do with the acclaim the movie has generated. “The high point was going back to Sing Sing, after they watched the movie, talking to some brothers trying to tell them they are a lot more than a label. And letting them hear it from someone who ate in the mess hall where you ate, went back to the cell you’re going back to—that was a real high point for me.”
Sing Sing screens at the Hamptons International Film Festival in a special screening on Sunday, October 13, at 7:45PM at Regal UA East Hampton.