If you’re anything you like us, you’re getting a little tired of being ordered around by Oprah all the time. Read this book! Lose weight! Vote for this guy! Rub my feet!
Now along comes “Precious,” opening Friday, with it’s momentous endorsement from the daytime talk queen. In fact, Oprah loved the finished movie so much that she signed on as a producer after the fact and has been singing its praises to anyone who’ll listen.
Question is, should you obey one more time, or will Oprah fatigue send you running the other way? There are a few things you should know while you mull over your decision.
First, “Precious,” a heartbreaking drama about a morbidly obese, pregnant, abused teenager trying to make her way out of 1980s Harlem, won multiple awards at Sundance when it premiered. Second, the film —full title: “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” — is earning major Oscar buzz for Best Picture, as well as for newcomer Gabourey Sidibe, who plays the title character, Clareece “Precious” Jones. Comedian Mo’Nique, who is anything but a laugh riot as Clareece’s evil mother, has been getting a huge whisper campaign for Best Supporting Actress.
But one of the film’s greatest feats is perhaps to rehabilitate (create?) the acting career of Mariah Carey — a miracle of parting-the-Red-Sea proportions after the late-night-monologue fodder that was “Glitter.” Carey plays a patient social worker, and goes wholly un-glam for the role, complete with prominent mustache.
Lenny Kravitz, also nearly unrecognizable, has a small role as a nurse.
Director Lee Daniels, who produced 2001’s “Monster’s Ball,” says all the unusual casting was less about choice than necessity.
“[My first film] ‘Shadowboxer’ wasn’t critically well-reviewed, so I think actors were afraid of me,” he says. “So I had to go to friends, real friends who I knew had my back. Mariah Carey had my back, Mo’Nique had my back, Lenny Kravitz had my back. They were going to do nothing but protect me, because they know I’d protect them.”
When it came to casting Precious herself, the filmmaker had a bigger challenge. Daniels’ casting director looked at more than 400 candidates before finally stumbling upon Sidibe. She was ultimately awarded the role in the same week she first read for it.
“What separated Gabby from the others,” Daniels says, “was she starts talking like this, ‘Oh, my God! I love your films so much. Oh, my God!’ She talks like a white girl from the Valley.”
The director says he was initially looking for someone who resembled the character in real life — poor, downtrodden and overweight — but seeing Sidibe made him realize casting a real-life Precious would border on exploitation. Finding the lead was especially fortuitous because Sidibe wasn’t an actress. She was a Harlem-raised student going to school for psychology.
“I went to the audition on a whim,” she says. “I had to cut school to do it, so it made more sense to go to class than some audition. I’m not even an actress.”
She practiced the film’s pivotal monologue on her mother, and she must have been doing something right.
“My mom cried. I knew it evoked something,” Sidibe says.
Much of the low-budget production (it cost about $10 million) was shot in New York. And much of that footage was shot illegally without permits, Daniels says.
“Here’s the thing. If [your budget is] $1 million or less, the world in New York is yours,” he says. “If you go up a little past a million but right under the big-budget movies, everybody’s watching you so you can’t disappear.”
They even shot one scene guerrilla-style aboard a subway train.
“I got scared, and I was like, ‘I’m out!’” Daniels says, laughing. “I ditched Gabby. I just knew the cops were coming for me. They shot that scene without me. That’s why it’s so short.”
Legal or not, Daniels hopes this film will connect with an audience that he hasn’t catered to before: African-Americans.
“The other movies I [produced], ‘Monster’s Ball’ and ‘The Woodsman,’ don’t speak to my mother and my aunts and the people I grew up with,” he says. “My mother was like, ‘Why can’t you make films like Tyler Perry? Miss Mabel says something must have happened to you because you’re making movies about a pedophile.’ So I made this movie for them.”
To his surprise, the movie has connected with a wider audience.
“We’ve been around the world, and everyone in Germany and France really understands that this is a universal story,” he says. “That’s the shock to me.”
Equally shocking are all the awards talk, especially the big O — and we don’t mean Oprah.
“The award for me was that this didn’t go straight to DVD,” Daniels says. “The thing about that Oscar stuff is that if you buy into it and it doesn’t happen, you get your feelings hurt. So you protect yourself by worrying about your next job.”
“As far as the Oscar, this being my first film, I’m having the best ride of my life,” Sidibe says. “I don’t know what makes an Oscar-winning actress. I don’t feel like Halle Berry or Meryl Streep. I just feel like Gabby.”
reed.tucker@nypost.com