Orson Welles once observed, "If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story." In the case of Orange, N.J.-born Robert DeShaun Peace, a movie made on him would have a happy conclusion if it ended with his 4.0 graduation from high school or his 2002 degree with honors from Yale. He also briefly helped get his father released from prison and had a successful teaching career.

Nonetheless, there is reason Jeff Hobbs, Peace's biographer and Yale roommate titled his book "The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace." Peace supplemented his income by selling and processing marijuana and was murdered in 2011. His killers were probably involved in the drug trade and were never brought to justice.

Peace had studied cancer and infectious diseases and was only 30 when he died.

The new movie about his life "Rob Peace" is in theatres now and captures the challenges and contradictions in his life. It marks the screenwriting directorial debut of Chiwetel Ejiofor, who received an Oscar nomination for "12 Years a Slave." He also plays Peace's father.

Over Zoom, Hobbs says his roommate led a life that was worthy of preservation. "I had a personal friendship with Rob. We lived together for four years in college and went through that particular silly package in life together and on that level, I just had so many stories and remembrances that I felt were meaningful.

"I would say he accomplished a lot. I know there was more he wanted to accomplish. He graduated from college and had this pretty high caliber science background and made the decision to go back home to Newark, N.J., and teach at his high school alma mater for a few years. I think most people would call that noble."

Jay Will plays the title character. The Juilliard-trained actor has handled a remarkable variety of roles in his short career, but one that sticks out is the similarly doomed Scottish king in Shakespeare's "Macbeth." While both characters dominate the stories, viewers end up missing Rob but not the backstabbing monarch.

"With MacB, I think there were a lot of supernatural influences that were definitely edging him into the invisible world. There were some of the same negatives with Rob Peace in the visible world that were more so the threat. I guess the parallels are just the quest for something bigger, where it was greed in the Scottish where here it was a deeper desire just for a holistic approach. The reason he went to Yale in the beginning was the connection to his father and that humanitarianism," Will says.

Some thought the classroom wasn't the best use of Peace's skills, Hobbs says. "There was some other stuff involving the marijuana. I think when he was teaching, there was some negativity in his life because some people around him started questioning what he was doing. As noble as that is, people started bothering him about that."

In order to be convincing as a biology expert, Will had to master the jargon. "I spent weeks working on just how to say some of the most intricate words," he recalls. The actor also had to master water polo. "I had to unlearn a lot of my habits. I'm realizing it's 13 feet down, and I gotta keep myself up the whole time."

Hobbs' book became a New York Times bestseller and received solid reviews. Even though he is white, he has been able to get close to his subjects. In "Children of the State" and "Seeking Shelter" he has explored the juvenile justice system and homelessness despite growing up in a privileged white background.

"I don't really have a concrete term for it. Some people call it the journalism of hanging out. What I like to do is just be in spaces, particularly educational spaces. It's just very fulfilling for me to just be with people who aren't famous people or anything like that and just watch how they carry on through challenging lives."

Ejiofor may have had to make similar adjustments. He's British, although Will is quick to add, "The Black experience is a universal thing. I knew that for him to even write those things at a level like he did he had to relate to that lifestyle."

In addition, Will originally hails from Greenville, S.C. "Definitely from deep in the Carolinas I felt related to East Orange. It wasn't hard for me to step into that personal life."

Upcoming Events

Home

Short and tragic not all to life of Peace