“The\u00a0eyewitness accounts were extremely vital to the writer, myself, but as well (as) to\u00a0the cast,”\u00a0Bigelow told the Free Press. “They were kind of the cornerstone of understanding this event.”<\/p>\n<\/article>\n
Delaney (who’s identified in the movie as Julie Hysell, her maiden\u00a0name) was 18 when she\u00a0traveled from her home in Ohio to Detroit\u00a0“to follow a band, basically, an R&B group we had met in Columbus.”<\/p>\n
She recalls that she and the\u00a0friend who accompanied her, Karen Malloy, had about $12 for the trip, but “$2 worth of gas would take you 500 miles back then,” says Delaney. They were staying\u00a0at the Algiers Motel because it didn’t cost much. With a curfew in place, they couldn’t go out in the evening.<\/p>\n
“The house where the murders took place had kitchens, you know, like an extended-stay (motel), so to speak,” she says, describing the annex where the tragedy unfolded. “We went back … to the pool, and some of the guys were there. They said, ‘Well, Carl’s got food. We’ll go up there.’ “<\/p>\n
Reports of sniper fire prompted members of the Detroit Police Department, the State Police, the National Guard and a private security guard to raid the motel annex. By the time the confrontation\u00a0was over,\u00a0Carl Cooper, 17;\u00a0Aubrey Pollard, 19,\u00a0and Fred Temple, 18, had been shot at close range and killed.<\/p>\n
The other men, Delaney and Malloy made it out alive, but not before being forced to line up against a hallway wall by the police and hit\u00a0and terrorized with slurs and threats.The film unblinkingly dramatizes the extent\u00a0of the cruelty, including an interrogation tactic that involved taking the men, one at a time, inside a room and firing a weapon near them in order to pretend they had been shot and killed for refusing to talk.<\/p>\n
\u00a0As Delaney\u00a0told the\u00a0Los Angeles Times in one of several interviews she has done with the media,\u00a0\u201cPeople were begging for their lives. I just kept thinking, \u2018They killed three people, and there\u2019s one person they haven\u2019t taken, then I\u2019m next.\u2019 I remember the voices of the cops yelling, again and again and again.\u201d<\/p>\n
The emotional toll of that\u00a0night is something she still ponders. “I’ve thought about that a lot and talked to a lot of people, because I probably was suffering from PTSD.\u00a0But I don’t know that I ever really dealt with it. It\u00a0was always in the back of my head, but I just kind of plugged along and forged along with my life, basically.”<\/p>\n Delaney found a career niche working as a hairstylist for films like 2005’s acclaimed indie “Junebug” and multiple TV shows, from the CW’s “One Tree Hill” to CBS’s “Under the Dome.” She\u00a0says she was on a\u00a0path toward finally telling her Algiers Motel story before the Bigelow project. A few years ago, she\u00a0talked to her son, a writer and producer\u00a0in Los Angeles, about the possibility of doing a project, maybe a movie of the week,\u00a0timed for the Detroit riot’s 50th\u00a0anniversary in 2017.<\/p>\n “I felt it was (a) really important story to tell, more, I think, for the families of the boys that died,” she says.<\/p>\n<\/article>\n Then, in April 2015, a high school classmate contacted her. “She said, ‘There’s a reporter looking for you, and it’s about Detroit.’ ” It was David Zeman, senior editor for Bridge magazine and a former Free Press reporter and editor, who was doing research for Boal’s production company.<\/p>\n Recalls Delaney, “I sat on it for six weeks, called my son, we discussed it. ”\u00a0After her son talked to Zeman, she spoke to Boal and continued to talk to him regularly for his research.<\/p>\n In spring\u00a02016, Delaney, who lives in the\u00a0South, came to Detroit to meet with Bigelow for several days. During the filming in Massachusetts (and, briefly, in Michigan),\u00a0she was\u00a0a fixture on the set.<\/p>\n Bigelow\u00a0encouraged her to interact with the young cast, including\u00a0Hannah Murray of HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” who\u00a0plays her\u00a0in the movie.<\/p>\n “A lot of directors don’t want you to talk to the talent. But right from the get-go, (Bigelow)\u00a0said, ‘Nope, you get in there. These kids have questions.’ They picked my brain.”<\/p>\n At the world premiere of “Detroit,” Murray praised Delaney for her help. “She was on set with us every day. She was incredibly generous and available with her time. For me, I just wanted to spend as much time with her as I could and feel as connected to her as I could. … She’s an amazing human being, and it was just an honor to get to know her.”<\/p>\n Delaney says the memories flooded back as she observed the filming. “Right back. Right back,” she admits. “(Production designer)\u00a0Jeremy (Hindle) did such a great job with the sets. The sets were so accurate, it\u00a0was frightening.”<\/p>\n She was able to keep her emotions in check most of the time. What\u00a0really affected\u00a0her was the courtroom scene, a condensation of various real-life trials. Seeing the scene that reveals there would be no convictions for the\u00a0deaths of the three innocent young men was the toughest part for Delaney.<\/p>\n “The thing that hit me was when they read the not-guilty verdict,” she says. “I lost it. I had to leave the courthouse. I had a producer\u00a0coming out (asking) ‘Are you alright?’ That was the really difficult one.”<\/p>\n While Delaney is speaking publicly about “Detroit,” she also is trying to maintain some privacy for her four children and five grandchildren.\u00a0She proudly calls her\u00a0family “a study in cultural diversity.” Several of her grandkids\u00a0are either biracial or have a blended ethnicity.<\/p>\n When she hears about contemporary cases of African-American men being mistreated or killed by the police, she understands how their families feel.\u00a0She says she worries about her 21-year-old grandson, a biracial former all-American football player, being pulled over by a bad cop.<\/p>\n “I cringe when he goes out,” says Delaney. “I am scared to death that\u00a0he’ll get stopped.”<\/p>\n Becoming involved in the making of “Detroit” hasn’t been an\u00a0ending chapter to\u00a0Delaney’s story as an Algiers Motel survivor. Rather, it has\u00a0opened possibilities\u00a0of what she can do to promote less hatred\u00a0in the world.<\/p>\n “It’s given me more to think about, maybe, to see where I can, in my golden years, lend a hand to try to make things better or change things.”<\/p>\n And, says Delaney, much work remains to address\u00a0racial injustice.\u00a0“It’s amazingly sad that things haven’t changed. I thought things would change in 50 years. I really did. I guess that’s my looking through rose-colored glasses.”<\/p>\n