“This is not your grandma’s civil rights movie.” Elegance Bratton is telling me about his latest film, By Any Means, and he’s a passionate hype man for his work. “This is a propulsive, muscular thriller that is bringing us inside this dynamic relationship and that is ultimately a commentary on all of us watching it.”

Directed by Bratton, from a script by Sascha Penn, the film stirs up ghosts of Mississippi in the ’60s-set tale of a Black FBI agent who hits a wall trying to investigate a deadly attack on a civil rights leader and his family. So he’s teamed with a mob enforcer from New York who comes down to Klan country to crack a few skulls if he has to, to shake loose the truth.

Starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as idealistic Special Agent Strider, and Mark Wahlberg as real-life mafia capo and FBI informant Gregory Scarpa, the film is inspired by true events, including the horrific murder of Black voting rights advocate Vernon Dahmer, portrayed here by Giancarlo Esposito.

Bratton also produced, alongside his producing partner and husband, Chester Algernal Gordon, through their company Freedom Principle. The couple have, in a relatively brief period, built an impressive body of work, from the queer ballroom-focused documentary Pier Kids, to the award-winning indie drama The Inspection, inspired by Bratton’s service as a U.S. Marine during the era of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

By Any Means marks the pair’s first major studio release, with Paramount Pictures opening the film in theaters nationwide on September 4. A gripping journey to a dark past, shot with a modern edge, the project also represents somewhat of a departure for Bratton, whose films, so far, have tended towards telling the stories of LGBTQ people, though he might not totally agree.

“I don’t think By Any Means is a departure for me at all,” he says. “The scale and genre may be different, but I’m still interested in the same thing: people trying to hold onto their humanity inside systems that are failing them. This isn’t a documentary, and I wasn’t interested in making a history lesson. I wanted to make a thriller about men navigating institutions that have already compromised them.”

Also, as he’s quick to point out, “I am a queer filmmaker, period, all the time, even when I’m not telling stories about gay people. You know what I mean? I explore the human experience. That’s what it’s about for me.”

And, it seems, he’s still driven by that keen indie spirit that brought him from being thrown out of his mother’s Trenton apartment as a teenager for being gay, and bouncing around shelters before finding his chosen family, to landing in the Marines, then college, and, ultimately, the director’s chair.

In addition to prepping the nationwide release of By Any Means, Bratton and Gordon are diligently working to bring their other finished film, the documentary Move Ya Body: The Birth of House, to audiences. This film actually is a history lesson, and utterly engaging as it explores the origins of the once-underground sound in ’70s-’80s Chicago.

The movie is told from the point of view of dance music innovator Vince Lawrence, an eyewitness to the notorious Disco Demolition of 1979, who went on to write and produce some of the first-ever tracks considered “house music.”

While Move Ya Body has screened at festivals across the country — including DC/DOX 2025, where I hosted a Q&A with Bratton and Gordon — the filmmakers are still seeking a distributor, and considering all their options.

In the film, Vince Lawrence is posited, like the heroes of Bratton’s other features, as a man navigating an institution that has compromised him — in this case, the treacherous music industry. Bratton appears every bit as determined that Lawrence’s story sees the light of day, as he is to hype up his big new studio movie.

Of course, on that day, By Any Means is the leading priority. As we end our chat, Bratton is off to go promote the film in true indie style. “We’re going to D.C. to flyer today,” he says cheerfully. “Paramount gave me a whole stack of flyers for By Any Means. And I just walk around. I go to the hood. I’m about to go to a section in Baltimore, and just give my flyers to people and let them know what’s coming out. I don’t know, I like to flyer my stuff.”

METRO WEEKLY: It’s been just over a year since I saw you and Chester at DC/DOX when we were doing the Q&A and screening for Move Ya Body. So first question, how is Chester doing?

ELEGANCE BRATTON: Chester’s good. We’re about to release By Any Means on September 4th, and we had a really good summer. We’ve been traveling and yeah, we’re good. We’re in a good place.

MW: So what’s the status of Move Ya Body getting a commercial release?

BRATTON: Well, we are still in the market for a sale. It’s been quite hostile towards revolutionary Black work, as you can imagine, but more than likely we’re headed towards a self-release and we’re kind of putting the particulars together. We’re going to hit up the big cities of America, and take it to the culture for ourselves and take it from there.

MW: Good. Because people, and young people, are still listening to house music. I think people should be interested in where it came from.

BRATTON: Yeah, it’s — how do I say this? I think we are in a time within which the powers that be, this Trump regime, is looking to silence not only criticisms, but history itself, and the very concept of reparations and cultural authenticity at its core. They want to annihilate that.

I don’t really understand the reasoning behind it. There are all these reasons, but at the end of the day, it’s all about power and money. But what I’m most proud of with Move Ya Body is that Vince Lawrence’s story is being told all over the world as we speak, and that truth — his truth — is changing the conversation around house music and its elders and pioneers. So even in the face of wild censorship that we’re experiencing, the film still does the work it’s supposed to do.

MW: We won’t get too deep into it, but something I think that people can wrap their heads around, whether they’ve seen this movie or not, is that the film does a really good segment on the Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park and the whole Disco Sucks movement as being a precursor to house being born, with disco being “killed” by the rockers. Something that’s really interesting to me, it’s funny to me, is that every single white person you interview in the movie about that is like, “I had no idea or no thought at the time that this could have racial or homophobic undertones,” even though it was a rally to destroy Black and queer culture and blow it up literally in our face. What did you learn from digging into that history?

BRATTON: What I learned from digging into the history of Disco Demolition is what we always know as Black people: two steps forward, five steps back. So much of our freedoms, or lack thereof, have been predicated on white comfort and the sense that white folks can have safety, and that safety is defined by the exclusion of people of color, especially Black people. And that is the dance of American culture. That is what makes our country so compelling and also so disappointing, so revelatory, and at the same time, so very basic.

So I think that what I learned from exploring Disco Demolition is just how true that really is and that ideas matter. I mean, Madonna made this really great record, she did her sequel, Confessions II, and she has this line that really resonates with me that people think dance music is superficial, and that it’s not, that the dance floor is a threshold. It’s a place of becoming. It’s a place of possibility.

And Disco Demolition proves that. Because when you look at historically, Disco Demolition in 1979, ten years earlier, Martin Luther King had been assassinated. American cities were on fire in riots. Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated. The threat of integration caused all of this violence and assassination to happen. These people who felt like they were losing everything responded so violently to that. Ten years later when disco comes, and it’s not just people marching for rights, but the charts are ruled by Black, queer, and femme people, it creates this notion that it’s possible in this society for people to be equal, that democracy on the dance floor could be democracy in real life. And the same violence that was met ten years earlier is now externalized through the destruction of Black music and Black joy and Black dancing. And I guess the most important thing I learned is: And we won’t stop. We’re not going to stop. You’re going to be mad. You’re going to do things that are violent and oppressive, and we’re going to continue to be ourselves in your face and make you look stupid.

MW: I love that you do include that one gentleman saying, as a rebuttal to the people who are like, “I never could have thought that Disco Demolition had racial overtones,” it’s like, “Well, I did not see any Black kids going in there with records to burn in the bonfire.” They were not there to destroy that culture.

BRATTON: I think Toni Morrison says that racism is meant to distract us from the wildly uneven distribution of wealth in the world.

MW: From the inequality that everybody has to put up with.

BRATTON: And I think nowhere is that more evident than the story of Disco Demolition and the story of house music and the story of Black music in general. But here we are.

MW: So when we were at DC/DOX last year, apparently you had already shot By Any Means.

BRATTON: Yes.

MW: By that logic, have you already shot your next film?

BRATTON: No, I haven’t. I mean, I’ve written a couple that are in various stages of development, from pre-production to casting, that I can’t talk about. You’ve got to keep a couple of pots on the fire in this business. If you don’t, you’ll go hungry.

But that’s the thing about By Any Means that’s crazy, just in terms of where I am in my career and life. I have two very different experiences of my most recent films. With Move Ya Body, I’m more than likely going to be self-releasing that in some way. And with By Any Means, it’s a Paramount release. It’s this huge release. I mean, Paramount’s got such brilliant people and they’re putting together their campaign. And I’ve been fortunate enough to have a lot of input on that, in their vision. But then with the other film, I’m literally building it brick by brick with Chester and our team. We’re building it ourselves. So that dichotomy of experience right now is kind of mind-blowing because I’m able to take what I’m learning from this huge corporate entity and apply it to my own work independently and vice versa. And it’s been really, really fruitful.

MW: It’s like if Oscar Micheaux had had the opportunity to do both.

BRATTON: I’ll take it. I’ll take it. I’m the new Oscar Micheaux. I’ll take it, please.

MW: Well, I’ll give that to you. So the movie was produced independently and then Paramount picked it up for distribution?

BRATTON: Yeah, yeah.

MW: How did it all come together?

BRATTON: I finished my first film, The Inspection, and that went well. And I had some scripts come my way, and this script came to me, for By Any Means, and it spoke to me. I found the unlikely duo of this mafia guy and this Black FBI agent to be intoxicating. It speaks to my obsession with institutions and the way that they fail individuals. These are two individuals, one in the FBI, a Black man who has less power to enforce the law than a white criminal. And the other, a white man who’s from the working class, who’s been left to defend himself in an unfair society. And that the FBI pairs them to solve a crime, that dilemma just fascinated me, right away.

And then come to find out that this is a true story, and it’s inspired by what happened to Vernon Dahmer, this man who died fighting for the right to vote, defending the Voting Rights Act — the very Voting Rights Act that has been assaulted by this administration and their Supreme Court. Mind you, when I got the project three years ago, I didn’t know any of this was going to happen. So literally every day since I’ve had it, it’s become more and more relevant to the culture. But at its core, this is an action thriller. This isn’t necessarily a documentary about the times, but this is about two men who institutions have failed, who come together to right a wrong.

MW: You hit upon something. People literally died for these rights that are getting walked backward in the other direction. There needs to be more understanding of that in our culture that people died for this. You cannot take it lightly.

BRATTON: Well, I mean, for me, even for myself, I’m like a lot of young Black men, I’ve been ambivalent about the democratic process. I’ve voted, I’ve not voted. But when I heard Vernon’s story and I read this script, I realized I had a chance to do something about that. That it was a problem that I was in and out of voting. This film was a way for me to connect those dots and to give back to what Vernon has done for us. But it’s also a noir film. It’s a thriller. I’m very much inspired by Hong Kong cinema. I’m using the camera in a much more lyrical and active way than I’ve ever used it before, which is exciting. And I’ve got these incredible actors, Giancarlo Esposito and Nicole Beharie, obviously Mark and Yahya. So it’s been a thrill.

MW: It is a fantastic cast. And although I see similarities thematically and otherwise between this and The Inspection, I can see also that people might consider By Any Means a departure for you. Do you consider it a departure for you?

BRATTON: No, I consider it an evolution of what I’ve always been doing. My films have always explored masculinity under trying times. My ethos and what I do with Chester, my husband, and Freedom Principle, our company, our goal is to bring people together who wouldn’t normally have a conversation about the issues of our times. And yeah, I am a queer filmmaker, period, all the time, even when I’m not telling stories about gay people. You know what I mean? I explore the human experience. That’s what it’s about for me. And the idea of operating in thriller, dealing in genre — I want to do all sorts of movies, science fiction movies, thrillers, more LGBTQ movies. Which is crazy to me that LGBTQ, you put a gay person in it, all of a sudden it’s a genre. You know what I mean? It’s kind of crazy to me, but the industry seems to move and think that way. So yeah, I’m stretching my wings, and wait till you see what I do next.

MW: One of the major themes of the movie — it’s in the title — is whether the ends justify the means. And in this case, we’re talking about whether it’s okay to go around the law and bust some heads if that’s the only way that you’re going to get justice. Do you think that in the case of Greg Scarpa and how the FBI used him, that the ends justified the means?

BRATTON: I’m not sure if I’m in a place to comment on that because neither am I an FBI agent nor a mobster. That being said, of course not. Nolan Wells, period. What’s going on there? Many others have been lynched and attacked in Mississippi. Right now it’s happening. As we speak, there is someone who is Black in America who is being attacked because they are Black in the wrong place at the wrong time. And we are in a culture that is not only suffering from this, but is actually threatening to lionize these terrorists who do this to us.

So of course the ends don’t justify the means, but I’m not interested in a prescriptive historical take. My film is not history. My film is using history in a way to comment on the contemporary condition. And again, [do] the ends justify the means? I think we as a civilization, as a people, need to wrap our heads around the fact that progress is not something that happens overnight. And I’ve made a film that I think presents an entertaining proposition of what could be possible if we accept the fact that none of us are perfect, but we can be good when we work together.

MW: Did you shoot in Mississippi?

BRATTON: No, unfortunately not. Although we did shoot in the beautiful state of Georgia. As an anecdote to speaking about how relevant this film about the ’60s is today, in our pre-production, we were looking for locations, and we were an Atlanta production, but really anywhere three hours south of Atlanta, to Atlanta, is where we shot the film.

So we were in these sundown towns, and we were getting denied because the mayors and the sheriffs would tell us, “Listen, we know you’re making a movie, but we don’t think it’s safe for you to burn a cross out here at night,” because it’s like the bat signal. All the Klansmen in the hills would be like, “Oh, is it time for the race war?” And come running down like marauders. Apparently. We were told that multiple times. So yeah, we shot it in 2025, Georgia, Trump country.

MW: I had two questions about specific scenes in the movie, and one of them is how does it feel to stage a Klan rally?

BRATTON: Wow. This is crazy. I didn’t know we were going that deep. How does it feel to stage a Klan rally? Significant. Major. It’s solemn. It’s scary. I’m a Black man in America. I’m from the Northeast. My mother’s from North Carolina. This image of this white hood in the dark with a torch, and a crew of them, is not foreign to me — it’s something I’ve always been raised to be wary of. So it’s intensely triggering to see.

You direct the movie, you’re on your little cart driving from craft services to go to set and come around the corner and it’s like 20 white guys in hoods with burning crosses. And for a second, I’m like, “Oh, no! Oh, shit. They’re going to come get me.” And then I remind myself like, “No, I’m making a movie. They’re not after me. They’re my Klansmen.” [Laughs.]

But it is triggering. It’s also — I just take it very seriously. Black folks haven’t really gotten the same opportunity to speak about this moment in America, period. Their experience in America, period, whether it’s 1966 or 2026. So for me, there are decisions I made in this film visually that are intentional. When we experience the violence of the Klan, I was sure to make sure that I wasn’t creating anything that was pornographic for them. If you like to see this type of violence, if you find yourself empowered by it, I wanted to shoot it in a way that would deny you that satisfaction.

That being said, I’m grateful for the opportunity. I think one thing I am holding very close to me is that if we allow them to erase our history, we will allow them to do this to us again. Those two things are connected and sequential. So it’s important to me that I got the chance to tell this story. I’m grateful. And I’m grateful to the team that brought it to me as well, because a lot of times people look at you and they say, “This is what you are, and this is what you can do.” And I’m grateful to have been surrounded by Chester and the team who looked, and said, “Because of who you are, you can do whatever you want.”

MW: The other scene that I wanted to ask you about is a good fight scene. Two characters fighting in a moving car. And while they’re tussling, they tumble out of the car door together while the car’s still moving, which is a simple thing to describe and to conceive of happening, but I think it’s probably not so easy to shoot. Did Wahlberg and Yahya actually do any of that?

BRATTON: They did all of it.

MW: Oh, wow.

BRATTON: Mark and Yahya, they are troupers, man. Even Giancarlo, too, I don’t want to spill too, too much. I don’t know what I expected because Mark is such a movie star. I expected him to have his double do a lot of it, and that’s not how it was. We definitely employed great doubles, but Mark was gung-ho. He’s like, “Yeah!” And then the fight choreography, we wanted it to look like a real fight. Fights are ugly, they’re not pretty. And this fight is like, it’s a friend fight. Those are even uglier. Those get messy. And so from a choreography standpoint, Mark and Yahya, it was almost like a dance scene in a way that all came together.

They both have such extensive action resumes as well, and they wanted to make sure that the fight didn’t look like what it would be in their other work. We wanted to really nail that down. So they were just very collaborative and instrumental. And our incredible stunt coordinator, Walt Garcia, man, he did his thing, man. It was meticulously rehearsed, but it did not feel that way on set. And shooting that fight scene was really, really fun, too, because it’s like bucket list type shit. Mark Wahlberg’s throwing a punch in my movie. There’s so many legendary Mark punches, and I wanted to make sure that mine stood amongst the best.

MW: So when those two go tumbling out, was there a driver in the car? Was anybody in the car?

BRATTON: No. There was not. I mean, it is a movie, there’s a lot of stuff happening…

MW: Yeah, there’s people around.

BRATTON: There’s a lot of safety involved. But no, there was nobody driving. Besides the actors who were driving. Yeah.

MW: Well, good job on that. Because the thing is, you’ve seen lots of fights and actually the one in Carry-On, that Netflix movie last year, had a really funny scene of people fighting in a movie car. But I don’t think I’ve seen people tumble out the door together before. That was fun.

BRATTON: Thank you. Thank you. Yes, that’s good to hear.

MW: So it’s a really intense movie. Emotionally, the subject matter, just the level of tension and the consistency of that. What did you do to keep it chill on set?

BRATTON: Well, luckily I had Yahya there. Yahya’s a very funny guy. And Yahya listens to really good music as well, so that was cool. And then I guess, I mean, what do I do on set? I don’t know. I just like to be a doll. I like to be a doll. You’ll find me, every once in a while, I’ll get people coffee. “I’m going to Crafty. Do you want anything?” I’m just very much like, I’m domesticated that way. I think that’s why my husband and I, we moved in so quickly because I’m very much that, look after people. “Does everybody have water?” I also create space to talk about what’s happening. I’m acutely aware that the subject matter of the film is intense, and I’m not the only person going through traumatic cultural memory by seeing this stuff.

So I create space for people to talk about those things. And not necessarily, we’re not slowing down production by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m not the person to ignore the elephant in the room. I guess in a nutshell, my whole philosophy on set, I treat everybody like they’re the director of what they do. So the same way that I expect to be treated is the way I go out of my way to treat others on set. And I think that creates a really tight familial bond. So I feel like this crew is my family.

We shot this movie in 25 days, long days, chaotic days, crazy stuff. Just the Murphy’s Law of making a film in such a tight container. And these actors showed up. They were eager to be a part of it. Yahya delivers such an extraordinary performance. I’m so, so proud of him. I’m so, so proud of Mark. And the crew met us there. What could have been a really, really trying and grueling experience turned into summer camp for us. At least in terms of the production itself, I feel like we really gelled.

So it was always light, because we’re family. And also, I just feel like I’m such a character sometimes that people just can do impressions of me. The Marine Corps stuff, I’m very much like a locker room kind of guy. You know what I mean? I don’t mind a joke at my expense. And Mark’s pretty funny, Yahya’s pretty funny. So it was fun. It was a good time.

MW: Yeah, I can see those two, as the English say, taking the piss a lot. Were there moments, though, where the emotion or the subject matter really was triggering to actors or crew on set?

BRATTON: Yeah, sure. People are not unaware of what they’re filming. People are very respectful. For instance, Greg Scarpa Jr. — we filmed a dinner scene between Mark, and we cast his family, Alanna Masterson played his wife, and some of the kids. And Greg, as you’re making this, we had the Scarpas there for their beats of it. We had the Dahmers there as well. So you rehearse the scenes, but then as you’re rehearsing the scenes, it triggers memories in the real people. And then I’m the type of writer where once I hear it and it makes sense, I’m like, “Let’s put it in the script. Let’s change it now. Let’s make it this.”

So Greg had told a story in pre-production about how his father disciplined him after he got into a fight, and that became the scene. So when Greg came to set, he had a pretty emotional response because Mark is in costume, in this prosthetic that resembles his father, and clothes that resemble what he would wear, in a house that is based on what we could expect to be the house. And he was like, “Wow, it’s like seeing my dad again.” Now mind you… this is why I love this film. It makes you realize that even gangsters, that’s somebody’s dad still. You know what I mean? But that really touched me when he said that. I felt like I was doing a good job.

And of course we had the Dahmers there as well, and we re-staged the horrible attack that took place against their family. About a year prior to shooting, Chester and I went to Mississippi to visit with the Dahmers, Ellie Dahmer [his wife], Bettie [their daughter], who were attacked, who Vernon saved. And just to be clear, just to give you the context, Vernon was paying for people’s poll taxes so they could vote the Klan out of power in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. And of course they heard about it. And then they attacked his house, they burned his house down with him and his family in it. Vernon saved his family, and unfortunately succumbed to the respiratory injuries of being in the fire.

So to have them on set, to talk to them ahead of time, a year prior talking to them about this, that buildup to the moment of them being there was so intense for me, because you want to be respectful, you want to be accurate, but at the end of the day, it’s also a movie. So to balance the kind of the action logistics of the scene itself with the emotional impact of what’s happened to this family, I couldn’t have gotten through this film without them. It wouldn’t have worked any other way without them there.

So yeah, people were triggered by what happened in the making of this film, but I think that we all feel fortunate that we were able to convey the emotional truth in a way that invites literally anybody in. This is not your grandma’s civil rights movie. You know what I mean? This is a propulsive, muscular thriller that is bringing us inside this dynamic relationship and that is ultimately a commentary on all of us watching it.

MW: Also the relevance of it. We’re talking about poll taxes. The Save Act is a poll tax in another guise. As you said, two steps forward, five steps back, the fight is still going on.

BRATTON: Well, that’s the thing. People talk about, “Oh, I don’t want to see movies about slavery. I don’t want to see movies about civil rights.” It’s because you don’t want to be reminded of what you’re not doing. Do you know what I’m saying? And again, this film is not that. This film is not teaching you how to vote necessarily. It’s not that. But all that to say, yes, we have to make these films. Yes, these films have to be supported because they’re burning everything else. And if this history doesn’t exist, your grand mama and my grand mama, you know what I’m saying? Then they got bit and burned and hosed for nothing. No. Hell no.

MW: On a lighter note, the film closes with an original theme song by Diane Warren, which I have to say took me by surprise. I was like, “Oh, Diane Warren wrote this.” She has a famously long streak going — she’s earned 17 Oscar nominations for Best Original Song, but never won. Do you think this is the one?

BRATTON: If it is the one, I’m going to take all the credit. I’ll air my own Oscar acceptance speech for her Oscar. I hope it is. I love Diane. I’ve had the privilege on this film of working with some incredible people whose work I’ve admired through the years, and Diane teaches you that there is no such thing as “the one.” She is filled with the passion to create, holistically, in every cell of her being, and every day she’s writing ten of them that could be it.

MW: You had mentioned being domesticated really quickly. I was going to ask, because I’m not sure I ever asked you, how did you and Chester meet?

BRATTON: Oh my God. [Laughs.]

MW: Did your professional partnership start first or was the romantic partnership established first?

BRATTON: It was definitely romance first. We met on a dating app, Jack’d. We’re actually writing a TV show about this. A comedy show. But yeah, we met on this dating app, Jack’d.

MW: Go Jack’d.

BRATTON: Go Jack’d. It’s funny, basically I had a nervous breakdown almost, like a romantic nervous breakdown. You know, New York City gay life.

MW: “I can’t do this anymore!”

BRATTON: “I can’t do this no more. I want a change. I need to be delivered.” But no, I ranted and raved about how I just could not find a relationship on these apps, and I deleted them all except for Jack’d. And within minutes of wigging out, Chester wrote, and I was like, “Ooh, this profile.” I mean, Chester’s beautiful, stunning, but it was the line on the page that did it for me, the writing, the words. Because Jack’d can be very emoji-driven, you know what I’m saying? And you’ll be like, “I understand what you’re interested in, but that’s not what I’m looking for,” kind of thing. But no, his said, “I love movies and I hate imbeciles.” And I was like, “Me, too.” I don’t like stupid people. It’s the only group I’m really prejudiced against, stupid ones.

So I invited him over. I wouldn’t let him in the house because I had invited many strange men into my home and not got in a relationship. So I was like, “On this one, we’re just going to talk.” We listened to music for hours and hours and hours. He played me music, I played him music. And then I got hungry. When I’m hungry, I’m so easy to be manipulated when I’m hungry. And he offered to make me lunch and I was like, “Really?” I had a very bachelor apartment, nothing in the fridge. And he made the best sandwich out of what I had in my fridge, the best sandwich I had ever had. And it was like, I couldn’t believe it tasted that good with what I had in my fridge. And we’ve been together ever since. We basically moved in that day. We’ve been together for twelve years.

MW: Oh, wow. Way to go. So my last question then is not a By Any Means question. It is a Birth of House question.

BRATTON: Okay.

MW: I couldn’t help but notice amongst all the producers and executive producers credited on this movie — including yourself and Chester and Lena Waithe and Oscar-winning documentarian Roger Ross Williams — Hillary and Chelsea Clinton.

BRATTON: Hillary and Chelsea. Yeah.

MW: Hillary’s a house head?? How did that come about?

BRATTON: The dolls. The dolls are in the building. [Laughs.] I have not met the Clintons as of yet personally, but I’ve met many of their incredible collaborators who came onto the project through [their production company] Hidden Light Entertainment. And of course they came through the illustrious Roger Ross Williams and his company, One Story Up. They work together. But anyway, I was getting an award for The Inspection at NewFest and Roger Ross Williams gave me the award. And we were at dinner and he was like, “Did you know that Hillary Clinton is a house head?” And I was like, “No, I did not know that.” And he’s like, “Well, she loves house music, because she’s a Chicago icon in her own right. She loves house music. She was there when house music was invented.” Apparently. I haven’t danced with her, I don’t know, I haven’t been to a party with her. I have no idea if this is… I believe it’s true because she raised a lot of money to help me make a movie. But when I see her, I’m going to put on a song and see if she could jack or not. But apparently she’s a house head. She loves house music. She’s all about it. So Vince had come to her and they brought Roger in, and then Roger brought Chester and I in, and then we made the movie.

MW: Oh my God. That’s not what I thought I was going to learn from that.

BRATTON: What did you think you were going to hear? You thought she was a DJ?

MW: I did not think she was a real house head, but I can believe it.

BRATTON: Apparently. I mean, we’ll see. Apparently she likes hot sauce too.

MW: She keeps some in her bag.

BRATTON: I like hot sauce, I like house. These things, they seem co-related.

MW: Well, as you said, Freedom Principle, bringing together people who you would not think would be in conversation.

BRATTON: But no, I mean, it’s an honor and a privilege. If you told the 16-year-old version of me that I would have films with Hillary Clinton, Roger Ross Williams, Mark Wahlberg, Yahya Abdul-Mateen, and with the love of my life, I would’ve been a very happy 16-year-old me. So I’m grateful.

By Any Means is rated R and opens Sept. 4 in theaters nationwide. Visit fandango.com.