How Elegance Bratton turned his experience as a gay Marine into the harrowing film The Inspection

Here & Queer is an interview series hosted by Peter Knegt that celebrates and amplifies the work of LGBTQ artists though unfiltered conversations.

While filmmakers often choose to draw from the story of their own life for their feature film debuts, few have quite so much to work with as Elegance Bratton.

Kicked out of his mother's New Jersey home at the age of 16 for being gay, Bratton was homeless for nearly a decade before deciding to join the Marines, where he would end up serving as a combat cameraman. The latter experience gave him the initial tools that led to his career in filmmaking — but his time in the military also serves as the premise for The Inspection, Bratton's acclaimed film about a young gay man (Jeremy Pope, who has already been nominated for a Golden Globe and a Spirit Award for his performance) struggling to survive boot camp in the era of "don't ask, don't tell." 

Bratton — who has been nominated for a Spirit Award for best first feature for the film — stopped by the Here & Queer set to talk about his experience making the film, how it serves as a complicated tribute to his late mother, and what it's been like promoting it through awards season.

"The Inspection is about a black gay homeless man, Ellis French, who joins the Marine Corps in order to win back his mother's love," Bratton says of his film. "But after surviving the trials of boot camp, [he] learns how to respect and love himself. It's also my story. I was kicked out of my house and I was 16 for being gay, and I spent the next ten years homeless. And when I joined the Marines, I got there pretty much worthless. I was at my bottom."

Bratton says that at the time, he thought his life had "no value, meaning or purpose." That changed when he encountered a drill instructor who reminded him how important his life is. 

"It was valuable because I had a responsibility to protect the Marine to my left and to my right," he says. "And that's why I made the film."

"You know, we're living in very polarized times, and I just wanted to kind of go back to a moment in my life where I learned how to listen to people who are very different from me, in hopes that it might help the world learn how to listen to each other. "

Bratton says it was quite challenging to direct a movie that's full of moments from his own life that were so traumatic — particularly when it comes to his mother, who is played in The Inspection with astounding brutality by Gabrielle Union. 

"This movie is 100% autobiographical when it comes to the hopes, fears, motivations of Ellis French, our lead character, even if it's not a situation that I've personally been through. But when it comes to the stuff between him and his mother, that was really, really overwhelming because it's all out of my life."

"This is why I'm so grateful to Gabrielle Union. My mom was killed a few days after the movie was greenlit. And I'm really grateful for Gabrielle because she helped to bring my mother back to life so that I can have that sense of closure."

Bratton refers to his mother as both "the first person to ever love him completely" and the "first person to ever reject him wholly."

"You know, she was an orphan from the age she was ten," he says. "She had me at 16. So, yes, she's a super complicated woman. But at the end of the day, what I've learned is you can't give something to someone that you haven't been given. And what I needed from her, nobody had ever given it to her."

"Hopefully people will watch this movie and anybody who sees themselves [in her] will be warned to do better."

The Inspection is currently playing in theatres.