Episode 1634 - Ryan Coogler

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Lock the gates!

All right, let's do this.

How are you, what the fuckers?

What the fuck, buddies?

What the fuck, Nicks?

What's happening?

I'm Mark Maron.

This is my podcast.

Welcome to it.

What is happening?

How's it going?

How's it

feeling?

I just want to check in.

Tough times, tough times in the world.

Tough times if you think a certain way.

Tough times in your head if they're already tough already.

Already tough already.

Yeah, I just said that sentence.

Look, I'm sitting in a hotel room in Traverse City, Michigan.

I did two shows here last night, and they went really nice.

They went well it was a nice little theater it's a comedy festival up here i've i've never been up to traverse city on some level in my immediate world right now i'm in a i'm in a room i'm looking out on what i imagine is lake michigan correct

and uh it's it's pretty it's a little overcast it's quiet because this is a summertown so it's got that summertown off-season vibe i guess it's uh similar to like uh an island, like island people.

I mean there are definitely locals who spend the summer accommodating

tourists who are there to have a good time.

And then here we are in the sort of

off-season time where you know the locals kind of can relax and sort of fortify their spirits in preparation to hide the resentment for the demanding tourists of the summer season.

So it's kind of got a nice vibe.

So look, folks, today on the show I talked to Ryan Koogler.

He's the writer and director of Fruitville Station, Creed, and the two Black Panther movies.

His new film is called Sinners, which he made with his frequent collaborator Michael B.

Jordan.

And it's a pretty trippy movie.

I didn't know what to expect.

A lot of times I get guests and I get screeners, but this movie is definitely a horror movie.

I think it's,

Jordan Peel does his thing, but there seems to be sort of

a world of black-centric horror that's coming out that's

pretty intense and pretty engaging.

And I had no idea what this movie was about, but it's sort of focused in the story of the blues, and it's very grounded in music and mysticism and vampires.

So there's a lot to be liked about this movie, and it was very interesting to talk to Ryan because I also watched Fruitville Station, which I hadn't seen, which is a devastating movie about

a police officer killing a black young man, and it's based on a true story.

And, you know, all this stuff

still happens and continues to happen and

continues to get worse.

But it was good to talk about

where Ryan came from and what, you know, what his vision for films are.

I'm in Los Angeles at Dynasty Typewriter starting this Monday, April 14th, then on Saturday, April 26th, and again on Tuesday, April 29th.

Those are all 7.30 p.m.

shows.

I'm at Largo,

8 p.m.

show on Tuesday, April 22nd.

Toronto, I'm at the Winter Garden on Saturday, May 3rd for two shows.

Burlington, Vermont, I'm at the Vermont Comedy Club for two shows on Monday, May 5th, and one show on Tuesday, May 6th.

Portsmouth, New Hampshire, I'll be at the Music Hall on Wednesday, May 7th.

Then I'm in Brooklyn for my HBO special taping at the Bam Harvey Theater on May 10th.

Two shows there.

Go to WTFpod.com slash tour for all my dates and links to tickets.

Yeah, so I've been away a lot, and I'm a bit untethered out here.

But again, out here in the world, a lot of good people, a lot of nice people, a lot of people that come out and enjoy the relief.

It's a very strange thing, though, after a show that I know that I'm doing a show and I know that my audience mostly,

they are grateful for the show and they get some laughs, but then you leave and you walk out into the world of what's happening politically and what's happening in your own mind and your concerns about your own life.

Had some federal workers, you know, come up to me after the show who are on the edge of losing their jobs or have already lost their jobs.

And there's just not, there's not a lot of places to go in the mind

in terms of, and in reality, in terms of hope

or knowing what to do next with one's life and one's purpose.

And it's just, it's fucking brutal, but it's happening.

And I am

appreciative or relieved that some people in the broader...

cultural media universe are starting to acknowledge what's happening and acknowledge that you know what we're seeing here is a very aggressive authoritarian

coup of sorts.

And I know that the sort of response to that on the other side and a sort of limited information side is that, well,

it was elected, democratically elected, yeah, by a small margin.

But, you know, that is one of the blind sides of democracy: you may elect a monster.

And I don't know.

I honestly don't know

in my mind, in terms of what people are really like, you know, how people still see strength or or or uh hope or a benefit to the country in the future with what's going on but it is happening

it is

happening

it is

happening and at some point you got to stand up and be counted somehow you know probably you know through some database that some

techno overlord is you know pilfering, but maybe from your own place and from your own point of view.

I don't mean to be heavy, but Jesus Christ, you know, I'm out here doing nothing but thinking and wandering around.

And look, I can appreciate where I'm at, but still the mind is churning.

The information on the phone is churning.

And it's hard not to personalize it and crumble.

But try not to crumble, people.

Try.

Oh, man.

This is.

I'm sorry.

Hey, I can tell you about Grand Rapids.

I was surprised about Grand Rapids, Michigan.

What a pleasant city.

What a pleasant city.

And I can talk about why.

That'll be nice.

And again, very nice people, meeting a lot of nice people.

And they're still out there.

And they're not,

you know, people aren't hiding yet.

One thing that always moves me, which

I don't quite know why, but I'm always fascinated.

And there's great examples of this

in Grand Rapids, is when you have these older buildings, you know, either built at the turn of the century, you know, these old kind of buildings that were once businesses, you know, some cities that do some kind of renovation or urban renewal of whatever kind kind of treat these museums with a certain amount of respect.

Sometimes they leave the ghost of the old signs of the business that once occupied the building on the building, and they usually kind of clean up the bricks and put new windows in.

And it becomes sort of

a kind of a museum piece with respect for some other time that has gone by or at least a structure.

And Grand Rapids is full of these buildings in certain sections right near downtown.

And I just, I love looking at them.

I love looking at brick and I love looking at you know old buildings from the early 1900s that have been renovated with new windows, cleaned up bricks.

And for some reason, I get a real sort of poetic and moving vibe from from them i i i just love seeing when they're when they're treated nicely and and and taken care of and there's a lot of that in in grand rapids and there's also some of the best coffee i ever had in my life in grand rapids michigan and that's weird and sometimes i don't know what that means since i've god knows how much coffee i've drank in my life but sometimes you go to a place and you're like oh my god this coffee is amazing i'm sure i've had that experience many times in my life uh at different points and in different places but this lantern coffee in Grand Rapids was just fucking amazing.

Outside of that, the show was great.

There's a venue there that is kind of astounding.

And

I noticed sound.

I'm very sort of

sensitive to sound.

And this venue, GLC Live at 20 Monroe in Grand Rapids, is not an old theater.

It's a newly built structure for live music and live events.

And sometimes if they're designed well, you don't know where they're going to happen or how they happen or who designed it.

But this is primarily a rock venue.

But in terms of sight lines and in terms of the stage, it's just fucking perfect.

And because of the way the structure was designed, the room is dead, which I'm a big fan of.

You know, when you do audio recording, a dead room means that you'll...

You won't get any noise.

You won't hear cars in the background.

You won't hear bounce.

But to be in a venue where the entire place is like that,

it was just,

it was so, it was kind of like a privilege to work in a place where the sound is so honest.

And that venue is amazing.

So I don't know if you live in Grand Rapids or you live close to Grand Rapids, but I imagine if you have an opportunity to go see a show at that place, GLC Live at 20 Monroe, I would do that.

I would do that.

Again, I'm sorry about the heaviness at the beginning.

I'm just trying to manage.

You know, I can only take so much of the world before I refocus on my cats at home.

And apparently, even though I've been trying to medicate Charlie and trying to get that thing under control, that little monster, I'm not sure it's working from the reports I'm getting from the woman babysitting my cats.

And

I don't know.

So Charlie's medicated.

I'm medicated.

And this Busporin, though I was optimistic and excited at the beginning, I'm not sure that it's doing what I want it to do, hence the opening of this particular podcast.

But again, that's reasonable.

But how much time during the day do I need to obsess and panic about it?

I mean, right now, nothing's happening out my window.

Lake Michigan is calm.

There's a nice overcast.

There seems to be some hills in the distance.

That's what's happening right now.

in my real-time life.

What's happening in my mind, that's layers.

All I'm thinking about is, you know, Charlie beating up on the other cats, authoritarianism happening in my country, you know, the future, what's going to happen, you know, when I go to New York, when I go to Toronto, when I go here or there, I'm happy I'll be home for a few hours, for a few weeks.

before all these shows to kind of tighten up the hour.

Yeah, my health, my mind, my physical fitness, like it just is

ongoing at all times.

And the only way to counter that is like maybe I can lock into my phone and just completely have

singleness of focus on bullshit that I can hold in my hand or I can just panic.

And I thought that the medicine would kind of temper that, but it doesn't seem to be doing it.

And clearly Charlie is shitting outside the box and beating the fuck out of the other cats.

So I guess Charlie and I together are going to have to move through this medication trial, you know, and figure out what's happening for both of us.

Well, I'll get home and we'll reconnect on that and see what we can do.

I don't fucking know, man.

Man,

first couple of days of this trip, sometimes that three-hour time difference, I was just fucked up and beside myself, a little loopy.

But again,

the shows have been good.

Focusing on the work has been helpful.

You know, trying to get exercise and eat right has been helpful.

Talking to like-minded people and talking to close friends about what I'm going through and what they're going through has been helpful.

Kind of figuring out a path to sort of take action in ways that I can, speak my mind in ways that I can is helpful and important.

Stressful time.

And there's some two levels of

concern or care.

You do have to take care of yourself and your vessel and your mind, but but you also have to stay engaged and take action in any way you can to push back on what is happening.

Okay?

Okay, look.

So, Ryan Kugler, very interesting guy, interesting story, great filmmaker.

The movie Sinners opens in theaters this Friday, April 18th.

It's showing in IMAX, which is the format Ryan encourages you to see it in.

It is a horror movie.

It is

a vampire-centric horror movie, but in a very unique way, it's framed around music and around the blues and around the black experience from the Delta to Chicago back to the Delta.

And

the different sort of ways he approaches music in the movie are interesting.

And

look, I'll let it speak for itself.

This is me talking to Ryan Koogler.

My wife was a sign language interpreter before I convinced her to make movies with me.

Really?

Yeah.

So you can do it?

I can finger spell.

Yeah, yeah.

I can't.

I can't.

Do the word.

I'm not like her, bro.

Yeah, she's...

Did she use it to

where did she do it for?

She did it.

Her first job, she got hired by a non-profit called Dakara.

Yeah.

So she would basically help deaf people find work and get them acclimated on their job.

Oh, wow.

And then when I did Creed one,

she decided that she wanted to come.

Cause she was always there for me whenever I made movies, even when I was in film school.

She was always basically producing.

Right.

Though it wasn't like an official thing, because I was in film school where everybody on the crew had to kind of be part of the school.

Sure.

You know what I'm saying?

And I'm at Fruville.

She was working

her nine to five, but she would come.

Cause she's working eight hour days.

Yeah.

We working 12s.

Yeah.

And she would get off work, come straight to SET.

Yeah.

When I got Creed going, she decided that she wanted to come with me to Philadelphia to be there for me.

She got a leave of absence from her job.

Right.

But then she

basically became an independent contractor, like an independent sign language interpreter.

Yeah.

And got hired.

you know, by an agency in Philadelphia while we were there.

So she was working there.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

But, you know,

help a student at school this day and help somebody on job training another day.

And then she would come to SEC.

So she was part of, like, she got got part of like a job placement, temporary job placement place that needed interpreters for whatever.

Exactly.

So she did just to stay busy and do service.

Yep.

And they did the same thing in L.A.

when I was in Post.

And then when I did Panther, she did the same thing, you know, like was working in L.A.

And then I convinced her after that movie to start making films, you know, full-time.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that's well, because that's an interesting

thing in that,

I mean, she didn't have to work, right?

I I mean she could back then we did she did yeah

back then bro yeah I wasn't making no money even on Creed though

I mean she must she must I mean I was I was 200 grand in in debt from film school so maybe she had a so yeah it was it was it was it was bad like like you know we wasn't married yet neither like like um we was we was engaged yeah but um but she had like like she was you know you know we don't come from no money bro yeah like so like it was you know we didn't get to the place where you know you could argue she didn't have to work until like after well I just wondered if she had

part of a feeling of

service to do the work.

100%, bro.

Yeah.

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah.

100%.

But she also came from like, you know, salt to the earth people.

Like her pop is, her pop is 93 right now.

93.

And her mom is from the Philippines,

moved to the Bay Area when she was like 20, 21.

Yeah.

So she first generation on our

mom's side.

And then she's silent generation

on her dad's side, you know what I mean?

Yeah, and you know, and came up without a lot, you know.

So, so, so she always was, she always was a worker, you know, she was always gonna, she was always gonna get hers, you know what I'm saying?

But it's a, it's, I, I, it's rare that I think you find people, and they're very important, that that do work that helps people 100%, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, no, yeah, like real work, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, like

that builds people up, yeah, yeah, no, 100%.

And most people are out for themselves, yeah, no, not, not her, yeah, and

how'd you you grew up in that as well, right?

Yeah,

my mom

worked for a nonprofit

founded by a Jesuit priest

in Oakland, and they did community organization.

Right.

So

the nonprofit itself would employ and train community organizers that would then go out and train communities.

It was an international organization.

My mom was an executive, though.

She started off as the founder's secretary.

And then eventually worked our way up to being like the CFO of the organization before she left it.

Like in those situations, though, like, what is the job of a community organizer?

To be honest with you, bro,

I don't know.

My mom's job was what I knew.

And she worked in an office

in Oakland, not far from my school.

She did a lot of paperwork.

Like, she had like a copy machine, a computer.

You knew that.

And upstairs and the downstairs.

And upstairs was where our boss was.

He ran the organization, right?

Um, and he had a lot of, like, I was a kid, bro.

He had a lot of papers, and sure, people would come in and meet.

Yeah, yeah, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, and um, well, I just, I mean, it's weird because I asked, because you know, I've had, I've had a lot of Oakland around me lately because I had Delroy in here a couple days ago.

Yeah, Delroy, Delroy lives because he's from somewhere else, but he lives, he lives in Auckland.

He's living in Auckland for like, I don't know, what, 40 years?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then, and then, like, last week I was with Kamal.

You know, Kamal?

I know Kamal Will.

Yeah, yeah.

And then, uh, and then I ran, just last night, I ran into Boots.

Boots is from Auckland.

Yeah.

Yeah, Boots is from Auckland.

I just went to a restaurant and I saw that hat.

That hat, the red hat, yeah.

You know what's funny?

Last time I saw Boots, I was in a restaurant and saw the red hat.

It was like a year and a half ago.

It was actually...

Actually, just a year some change ago.

It was before we both met our movies.

Oh, yeah.

Because he's finishing his right now, too.

Right, right.

Well, this must be his second or third movie, right?

It's his second movie.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because he did that TV show yeah and he did the the the weird movie um that crazy movie yeah it's incredible it's uh sorry to bother you yeah yeah yeah with the horse-headed guys yeah

i loved it man i love boost yeah yeah he's a whenever i whenever i talk to him i almost brought my notebook in here because i feel the same way about about about when i listen to your podcast yeah you're gonna say something you're gonna it's a strong chance you're gonna say something i should write down you know i doubt it like booze booze is like that yeah whenever sometimes i'll bring my notebook when he's talking to me because

he'll talk to me about like um history.

Yeah, yeah.

And he got such a unique perspective.

You know what I'm saying?

Like being a musician and a filmmaker.

So like I had a good conversation with Delroy.

He's an amazing guy, amazing actor.

But when I went to see the movie, I went to see Sinners

and

I didn't really know anything about it.

Right?

So I go over there and I had no idea it was a music movie.

You know, and I'm kind of like a blues person.

I see all the guitars.

Yeah, and I got Alan Wolf up up here on the wall.

Wow, yeah.

That's Chuck Berry, and then there's a picture of.

Oh, that's a map.

Look at the Wolf.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Amazing.

That's a good one, right?

It's beautiful.

Doing the thing.

Yeah, I see Chuck.

No, yup, yup, yup.

And that's Mick, huh?

That's Mick, yeah.

Yeah.

But so, like, I get in there right out of the gate.

I'm like, oh, shit, it's a blues movie.

That's awesome.

And I'm like, all right.

I had no idea where we were starting, but we started

right at the at the Delta,

What was it probably the 30s, 20s?

32, 70.

32, yeah.

So it's after

the old, old guys.

Yeah,

just after.

Right.

You're getting into the guys that knew them, but are the next ones, and then they

sound moving up to Chicago.

But

in terms of like this movie was...

You know, after Creed, after the Creeds, after, you know, Black Panther, like, what makes you want to, you know, kind of get into this story?

Man, that's such a good question, bro.

So I tend to make movies, like I'm drawn to stories about identity.

And in my identity as

an American,

as an African-American, a black man,

what some folks would call like a foundational black American, like meaning, meaning...

Meaning my ancestors have been here a very long time.

You know what I'm saying?

Have you traced it?

It's an interesting name.

Yeah, we have.

I've never heard your last name before.

Oh, yeah, it's a German name.

It's German.

It's a German name.

So it means somebody German-owned one of my ancestors.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

And, you know, it's something that I'm always,

it affects, you know, everything, you know,

my identity, like culturally, my identity personally.

Yeah.

And the older I get.

The more I'm interested in the question.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, I was interested in this question when I was a kid, and now I have kids.

You know what I'm saying?

And I'm even more interested in it.

You know, and

getting to the root of, you know, why I am who I am now, but also like why the world is the way it is.

And what's my place in that?

Yeah.

So

with Fruville, I was telling a story about

a place that I know.

So it's like Down the Street.

Down the Street, exactly.

It's

a devastating film.

You know, the way you shoot it,

it's kind of intimate and menacing.

Yeah.

And the decision to include the real footage at the beginning,

because you know what's going to happen.

Yeah.

And then it's the process of humanization.

Yes.

Yes, sir.

Yes, sir.

Yeah.

Which is which is what

the camera is capable of doing.

You know,

we know this in the age.

Everybody's got to hide that.

Sure.

camera in their pocket.

Yeah.

In the world

has been changed by that, but also reinforced in some ways.

But for me,

each film, I like to start with a question.

And for Fruville, the question was,

initially it was like, how could this happen here?

Because I had a view of the Bay Area.

And I think everybody did, had their own personal view of the Bay Area.

And the question of

how a man could be...

you know, essentially executed.

You know, this is where the Panthers were founded.

Yes.

Where we're from.

And they were founded for this very reason because these things were happening.

You know what I mean?

So in studying studying that film you know i got to i got to dig in but also like discover things about myself you know what i mean on that movie i realized i wanted children yeah you know like i didn't i didn't think i wanted kids before before i made that movie but but through the process of making it of many things it was also a story about a father you know a young father you know and and i was like oh man i want to i want to see what that's like to have you know and for creed i got the idea for that because

my father had gotten sick you know in a way i didn't understand and um is he still around yeah he's good oh good he's good but you know it was touch and go for a while while i you know while i came up with that idea um yeah now when you like to go back to fruitville for for a minute yeah like

so you heard that story and something about that story and it's it's a sadly common story

is that you know there was no way for you not to identify with the possibility and the reality of that.

Yes.

And so when you start to decide to create a story around that guy,

do you talk to his wife or his girlfriend?

Yeah, I talk to everybody.

You talk to all of them?

Yeah, I talk to everybody.

Because, you know, because what unfolds there is interesting is that, you know,

to honor that guy's

memory,

you know, the honesty that you took to that story, which is like he's a flawed guy.

He's got problems.

Yeah, totally.

And, you know, but he's not different than anybody else.

He's just trying to get by.

Yeah.

And then, you know, this horrendous horrendous thing happens to him, specifically because of

racism, really.

And that, and then, you know, it's weird every time you see a movie like that or you hear a story like that, you're like, well, did that fucker have to pay that cop?

Yeah.

And it's never enough.

No.

But so you learned about yourself, even approaching the guy as a father,

that by telling that story, you, you know, you're able to create a full picture of

not just the tragedy, but bringing the real

humanism to it.

This is a guy just trying to get by.

Yeah, totally, totally.

And a guy from a community, a guy who had people who he loved, a guy who had people who was counting on him.

Was he from Oakland?

He's from Hayward, actually.

Oh, okay.

It's a couple cities over.

And what did you, when you finish that, you know, being with that story for so long, like,

the fear doesn't go away, right?

No.

No.

Nah.

Hell nah, man.

Like, I mean, what usually follows me finishing a movie and putting it out is depression.

You know what I'm saying?

That must have been depression on a few levels.

On a lot of levels.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because when we released it, that was when George Zimmerman verdict came down.

Oh, yeah.

You know, like, like, so he, so he walked basically, like, while we were in

theaters.

Yeah.

You know, a part of me.

was very naive, you know, when I was in my mid-20s making that movie.

Yeah.

You know, thinking that, hey man this should maybe make a difference maybe this should maybe this will you know and and it was very clear that

uh to me at the time that was like yeah maybe yeah probably not you know

well i mean the powerlessness of it

is it it almost seems uh yeah and now like with this government you know anybody who thinks differently yeah who who has uh you know uh that who believes in tolerance and and empathy you know has all of a sudden been othered as well.

So there's a sort of a trauma vibration happening now.

But the black community has known forever since they've been here.

Oh, yeah.

So, but the powerlessness, it seems to me that what you land on, you know, even with sinners to some degree, is that the only power you have is community.

Yes, sir.

Right?

Yes, sir.

And what you have is in that is you have, you know, extended family and people who understand the the struggle, but also just want to live their fucking lives.

Yep.

Yep.

And, you know,

and the beauty and the epic beauty in that.

Yeah.

Yeah, the epic beauty in

seeing each other, having people who see you understand

your position in society or the superhuman pressures that's on you.

Yeah.

But also simultaneously understand that you're just a person.

Like that wants to have a good time for a night or wants to dream or wants to spend time with you, wants to make a home to your kid.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah.

All of those things, I thought, you know, it was,

you know,

that was what I realized that I wanted to make movies about.

And did you, when you get, when you started making movies, was that on your mind?

I mean, that idea, I think, like, was imprinted on me just circumstantially, like, like how my family gets down and how my neighborhood got down, like, like, you know, like what it was like to be from Auckland at the time.

What did your old man do?

Yeah, my dad worked as a youth guidance counselor in Juvenile Hall.

So, like, essentially

Man, he hasn't had that job for a long time now, but but it was essentially like a cross between a child care provider in a group home

and a prison guard.

You know what I'm saying?

Like it was where kids who got incarcerated would go.

And this job of a youth guidance counselor was, you know, you kind of had to be the adult there that, you know, make sure the kid was good and kind of helped guide the kid into adulthood

in the time that they're there.

But you also have to, you know what I'm saying?

Like make sure that they're not leaving this place, you're escaping.

Have to make sure they're not harming themselves

or the other young people that frustrated with them.

That was his job.

Did he see the movie?

Did he see all the movies?

My dad, yeah.

He watched all my movies.

Yeah.

And when he, like, there must be something after watching Fruitville that,

again, that powerlessness, that, you know, no matter what he does or how good he does it.

Yeah.

And no matter how good these, you know, these kids are when they leave or what they try to do, it's not safe.

Yeah, in reality, you know, because I had a chance to work with with my dad

for like,

I want to say,

for like maybe five years,

I would work with my dad part-time.

And I would see people at the job who, you know, because the job, you were like a blend of these two things.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah.

I would see people that lean more towards, like, treat the job like they were a prison guard.

Disciplinary.

Yeah, like, like, I mean, this, this is like, you know, this is like law enforcement adjacent.

You know what I mean?

You know what I'm saying?

And they would kind of bleed over into, you know, like, damn there being cops.

Yeah.

And then you had people who had the same job who was way more on the child care provider side.

Social worker.

Yeah, like, like, you know, you know, I really like trying to raise the kids.

My pop was maybe too far that way.

You know what I mean?

Never really got promoted.

Right.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, I kind of cared too much.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

And, you know, like,

I tried to be like my dad while I was there.

It was a really tough job to have, bro.

Like, like, like,

and my dad lost a lot of kids, man.

Like, like, so many of the kids my dad was close with would get released and get murdered, you know what I'm saying?

Or get released and go to

prison for a long time.

And

even before I knew what my dad did, we would walk around in the Bay Area in the 90s, and it would be

grown men who would run up to my father and hug him, sometimes break down crying.

You know what I'm saying?

And I would realize later that, yeah, these were guys that my dad had.

you know what i mean at a place where you know not everybody looked after him you know what i'm sure it could have gone either way yeah and they are they're all right.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

And grateful.

For sure.

Yeah, my pop, his career maybe wasn't the greatest at that place though, right?

You know what I'm saying?

For all those reasons, but he looked out for the kids.

But that's the impact.

You can't change someone's life.

Yeah.

So how did you get into the movie making?

So you were doing that when you were, was that your first job with your old man?

Nah, no, hell no.

No, no.

I didn't work there until I was 21.

I've been working probably since I was like 13.

Maybe younger, bro.

Like my first job was,

my first job was I did gardening with my uncle.

He had a landscaping company.

So I was working with him when I was

like eighth grade, ninth grade.

That's your dad's brother?

No, he's my dad's cousin.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

He's technically my cousin.

Yeah, yeah.

He's older, so we call him my uncle.

So you go running around with the mowers and stuff?

Running around with the mowers, bro.

Yeah, it was crazy.

It was crazy.

My uncle, my uncle is like, my uncle is like, you ever watch Breaking Bad?

Yeah.

My uncle is like Gus Fring.

Oh, yeah.

Breaking Bad.

Like, looks like Gian Carlos, yes, you know, like, like the whole,

the whole get down.

And

he also owned a couple KFCs.

Oh, really?

Yeah, like, like, like him and his wife owned KFCs.

So

they owned a KFC in Emeryville.

So then, as soon as I turned 16, I could work there.

You're out of the mowers?

Yeah, I was out of the Mowers.

And like, yeah, exactly.

And

working for Harman's, Harmon's Corporation.

And then

I worked in a couple group homes

as a child care provider.

You know, and then

when I hit 21,

I worked with my pop for a little bit.

So the group home was like, now that experience, is that

how much did that inform your perspective in terms of

empathy?

Big time, bro.

Yeah.

Big time.

I mean, like, incredibly, man.

Like, like,

you know,

you see how much as human beings, we kind of products of a coin flip.

Yeah.

You know, like, you'll have kids in there

that had no saying in how they life went.

You know what I mean?

Minors, you know what I'm saying?

Like maybe their parent made a decision or

both parents made a decision or

an adult neglected them or harmed them.

You know what I'm saying?

And now

the struggle of their life for the rest of their life from that point is to figure out

if that action somebody else took against them is going to define them.

You know what I'm saying?

You know what I'm saying?

And how to fight back from within themselves against taking the wrong path, getting stuck in the wrong situation.

Yeah, or harming themselves.

You know what I mean?

Like,

you know,

like believing that they're not, that they, that they deserve punishment.

You know what I'm saying?

You know what I'm saying?

Like, complicated.

Yeah, no, 100%, bro.

Yeah.

Well, there's a coin flip in Fruitville, too.

Like, you know, I don't know

his poor mother, you know, that moment at the end where she's like, I told him to take the train.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean,

did you get a sense from talking to her that she told me that?

She told me that.

Yeah.

Like what, you know, the movie was like what I, I mean, that movie came together in a real interesting way.

Like,

um, I was at USC Film School, right?

So after you work at KFC, how do you get to UFC?

USC?

I mean, it's the whole time I'm playing football.

Yeah.

So I'm a football player.

Yeah.

Um,

and I'm taking school series.

So my whole goal is to get a football scholarship.

My parents was, you know, it was middle class.

Yeah.

Like, um and you wanted to be what

i wanted to be a professional football player yeah but but but i i figured you know i knew i was the older i got the more i understood the odds of that happening sure um that's good and i always was you know i always took care of school so i figured i'd be a i'd be a doctor you know what i'm saying if i couldn't do that that's a long haul yeah

yeah yeah but but but um you know my parents put me in um put me in good schools man you know private schools in oakland um

uh in oakland and Berkeley and and you know they would always like

it would make it they'll let it be known to me that it was a it was a sacrifice for them to you know pay for pay for school and yeah so I had to take the work

exactly I had to take the work serious yeah

but I was but my whole goal was to was to make it so that they didn't have to pay for me to go to college you know what I'm saying so I went to get a football scholarship right so I got a football scholarship to a school called St.

Mary's College that's in Morocco you know they know for their basketball program yeah But they had a football program back then too.

And I went, I was majoring in chemistry, and I was getting my ass kicked

with the labs, like the labs and football practice wasn't working out.

I could never get chemistry, man.

I just could never get the elements.

It's like math.

I couldn't do it.

Man, you're a comic, bro.

You could do it.

Yeah, like that shit.

You can't, but

you can't charm your way through chemistry.

You're not charming your way through

a comedic career neither.

Bro, that shit is scientific.

The job is charming.

You got to have the charm to deliver that.

You can't get up there on stage and just be charming, bro.

You watch a few comics.

There's definitely a lot of that going around.

Oh, damn.

Oh, man.

But yeah.

So, okay, so you're doing the chemistry, you're doing the football, and then all of a sudden what?

So I'm playing, bro.

Like, I'm playing.

I'm 17 years old.

I'm playing my freshman year, true freshman year.

We're getting killed, though.

I think we go one in 11 or something.

Yeah.

And then out of nowhere, they drop the football program.

Like, the school makes a business decision.

We're not going to do this no more.

But does that mean you can't go there anymore?

Well, what it meant was,

if I stayed there, they would have honored my scholarship.

Yeah.

But there's no team.

So I wouldn't be, I'll be going to school for free with not playing football.

You know, that's all right.

We're not there for me at 17.

I'm trying to go to the NFL.

You know what I'm saying?

So I'm,

or at least I want the option to try.

You know,

in my whole, like, once again, identity, my whole identity was wrapped up in being a football player.

Right.

So I was like, well, I'm going to walk around on campus and do what?

You know what I'm saying?

So, like.

That guy used to play football.

Yeah, yeah.

So, so, so I got a scholarship offer

from a couple schools, one of them being Sacramento State.

Yeah.

Took that because I wanted to stay close to home.

And I had to switch my majors.

Like, it was clear to me that the chemistry wasn't going to work out.

Yeah.

You know, so i so i went to finance oh yeah um and and uh while i was at st.

Mary's college it's a liberal arts school they make you take English classes sure I took a creative writing course

my spring semester the semester that they dropped the program yeah I'm going through all of that and I was in a class with a teacher named Rosemary Graham and she read something that I wrote and was and told me I should write screen plays Yeah, so that's how it happened.

Like she sat me down and said, I think you should go to Hollywood and write screenplays.

So I had that in the back of my head.

Started thinking about it.

Started writing on my own a little bit.

And then I told my girlfriend at the time, who's my wife now?

Yeah.

And then she bought me a screenwriting software.

The final page.

The final draft.

Final draft.

And that was when I kind of like,

that was when that became like my.

Did you love it?

Loved it, bro.

Yeah.

Like,

I found something that,

you know, outside of football

that I really loved.

The immediacy of creating the moving story is beautiful, but

still to this day, man.

Like,

I don't open that app up

until I'm ready to go.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, because I got that much reverence for it.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

So you don't just fuck around with it.

You're just when you get the story in your head, you go.

Yeah, I got to get an outline and all type of shit before you get to the film.

So then you apply to film at USC?

Yeah, I started.

What happened was I went to Sacramento State.

Yeah.

New team, new environment.

Yeah.

And I immediately got there.

And I think Rosemary might have helped me find the people who were showing me how to make movies at that school.

It was a big school, kind of like a commuter school at the time.

And they got different departments.

She really believed in you.

Yeah, she did, man.

Yeah.

That's great.

Because

it's not like you should write a short story.

I mean, you must have written it in a very specific way where it was so visceral to her.

She's like, this guy, he got a sense of it.

Yeah, maybe.

Of telling a story with those bursts of description.

Yeah, maybe.

Yeah.

So she set you up with the film guys over there?

Yeah, she

helped me figure it out.

And I went there and they had a great professor named Dr.

Roberto Pomo,

Argentinian-American cat.

I think he just retired.

He was like...

film theory and critical studies.

And then I took production classes with a dude named Stephen Bush who went to USC Film School.

Right.

He kind of ran the production department at Sac State

like the one that he learned from.

Oh, okay.

So you got a sense of all sides of it.

Now, are you watching movies?

Man, what?

Yes.

I mean,

that was learned cultural behavior.

Sure.

But when you get to college,

like when you take the theory class.

Big time, bro.

And you're breaking them down.

Breaking them down.

Which movie was like, okay, I get it.

Probably a movie called Within Our Gates.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, that one was really cool.

Which film was that?

It's Oscar Michaud.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

We had to watch.

We had to watch Birth of a Nation.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Which was like a fucked up watch as a black person.

You know what I'm saying?

Griffith.

Yeah.

Yeah, D.W.

Griffith.

Yeah.

And then we watched Within Our Gates the next day.

Yeah.

I don't know that film.

So yeah,

Oscar Michaud

was our first major notable filmmaker out of the African American community.

He doesn't have like a counterpart,

I can't name a white cultural counterpart to him.

Because before Oscar Michaud,

we didn't have it.

I think I might have learned something about him at some point, but I never saw the movie.

Yeah, he was a beautiful filmmaker.

Yeah.

And kind of like the first filmmaker, the crowdfund.

You You know, like when he would go around to folks in the African-American community that had money and kind of piece together his budget.

Yeah.

You know, and kind of recognize the value of

having

telling your own stories, especially in a time.

Like, I think it was made in that, and it was made immediately after

Birth of a Nation as well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A lot of his movies have been lost.

And he had a whole era of contemporaries.

Man, it's a beautiful

nonfiction series called Hollywood in Black that Justin Simeon did.

It talks about Oscar Michon and some of his contemporaries.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, and folks that came after him.

But shit, our experience was major.

We also watched a film called Lone Star.

We watched The John Salesman.

Yeah, we watched Zoot.

We watched Zoot Suit.

Yeah.

I remember them experiences being like the back of my hand.

Well, those are, you know, and also independent, like, you know, sales independent, you know, making his own movies.

But it sounds like Oscar was

you saw the possibility, even historically, to move, you know, within the community and from the community.

yes sir yeah yes sir and then like you know in terms of your chops as a director like when you start doing shorts and stuff yeah who you know who who are your influences because you got you know it is a rare thing where people got a vibe with a camera you know you can either be you can you can be efficient yeah but to have you know the control that allows you to also express yourself you know with the camera as opposed to just with the story that's something different yeah yeah you work with the same dp no no i've worked with several like like um i think i've worked with three professionally but my last two movies have been with with autumn arkopa uh-huh um but like it seems like with root veil you were like you know you knew the effect you wanted was going to come from how you move that camera yeah no for sure i mean it comes from everything yeah but the camera is the is the main is the main vehicle you know yeah you know what i mean like like um

you know it's essentially like the canvas yeah yeah you know you know um to the painter what i liked about filmmaking, the itch that it scratches, like what I liked about writing was that it was different from football.

Right.

In that it was just me.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Football isn't a, is it, it's like almost like, it almost moves beyond being a team sport.

It's almost like paramilitary.

You know what I'm saying?

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

And I play wide receiver.

For me to even have a chance to catch a pass,

So many things have to go right.

Yeah.

You know, you know, that

are completely outside of my control.

Yeah.

That got to do with my teammates and their individual battles and and and the play call that's coming from the coaches and not getting hit and not getting hit yeah so so you know you know so so many things have to go right for me to even have the opportunity to to touch the ball and you know and you got to be so in it that you can't second guess it 100 i got and i got to be right once it gets to me you know you know what i'm saying and it can be a couple hundred snaps in a game yeah you know and if a wide receiver has 15 catches That's like a career.

That's a career day.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, you know, a good day is like five or six touches.

You know what I'm saying?

And that's a lot of football for five or six touches.

You know what I'm saying?

And,

you know, your number got to get called like 10 times.

Yeah.

You know, you know, and don't let the guy guarding you be good.

You know, you know what I'm saying?

Like, you know, too many obstacles.

Exactly.

But with the, with, you know, when I had that final drive, it was just like, oh, shit, it's just me.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, I got a choice.

I got to show up.

But also, also, if this shit sucks, it's on me.

You know what I mean?

You know what I'm saying?

But then, you know, I am a community guy.

I do like the team aspect.

You know what what I mean?

I do like the once you get on set.

Yeah, because it's nice on a day where like maybe you injured.

Yeah.

But

you can go out there and help a little bit and your team still wins and you contributed.

You know what I mean?

You know what I'm saying?

It's not on you every day.

Or if you have a great teammate.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, and

you get to be there and watch somebody great be great.

Yeah.

And you roll along with them.

You know what I'm saying?

It's fully a collaborative effort.

Yeah, or those moments where everybody is on the same page.

Like everything goes right.

You didn't even think about it.

I'm saying?

Everybody's in rhythm.

You know what I mean?

The guy walks in the end zone without even being in touch.

You know what I'm saying?

It's like, oh, shit, you know, like that feeling.

So that being on set

with a production team scratched that itch.

Yeah, yeah.

So it was like, it was like, it was like I got the itch scratched that I didn't even know I had.

Yeah.

And then I got the itch scratch that I knew.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, right.

So it was a big thing for me to learn like.

what everybody's job was,

how everybody's job worked so I could respect them and communicate with them.

And that camera, you know, the job of the cinematographer, you know,

it's a very important job.

And it's also a thing like when you learn, if you say, hey, I want to make movies, you usually end up picking up a camera soon and learning like really quickly that you better know what you're doing with that thing.

Your movies are going to suck.

You know what I'm saying?

And that for me was super important.

I learned that in film school.

At USC.

Yeah.

So you're shooting on your own so you could at least know what you want from the DP.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And that's an ongoing conversation, right?

You know, with a DP on set.

Oh, yeah.

I was on the phone with her today.

I was on the phone all of them today.

I had to ask her something for press.

Because I was trying to, because we shot film and we shot two very unique formats.

And centers?

It's film.

We shot on film, yeah.

Oh, my God.

We shot on 70 millimeter.

Well, you might, how'd you get, how'd you get two of,

you know,

he's two characters.

Yeah, Mike, Yeah.

I mean,

how do you get,

what'd you think of it, bro?

Like, like, did you enjoy it?

Well, it's funny, because I was driving back with my girlfriend, and I was talking about what a great actor that guy is, what a movie star is.

And she was like, yeah, he's so handsome.

I'm like, yeah, and you got two of them.

Oh, man.

Man, it's funny, bro.

I was just looking at these standees

that they made

for like in the in theater and there's two of them and people can go in and take a picture yeah I'm like oh man I wonder what kind of pictures finna come out of come out of this kind of laughing to myself

but you shoot that on film but you still had to use the technology to make that seamless right yeah yeah I had a great visual effects team

I had I had a

guy named Michael Roller who's my visual effects supervisor he's um he's born in Germany grew up out there he lives here now and another guy named James Alexander yeah who's my visual effects producer You know, we did

a lot of research and planning and we're able to achieve some

great effect.

Yeah.

Before we get to that though,

you kind of put Michael Jordan on the map, right?

Well, Mike B.

Yeah.

I mean,

I knew who Mike was like when I was coming out of film school.

I was looking for...

somebody to play Oscar Grant, you know, and I knew him from his work, you know,

from his television career and his film career.

Like, he did a film called Chronicle and a film called Red Tails.

They both kind of came out in theaters at the same time.

He was not the lead of all his movies.

Right.

But

he popped enough.

You know what I mean?

And before that, he was in a lot of really great television shows.

He was in The Wire as a kid.

That's right, yeah.

And he was in a couple of Jason Katam shows.

He was in Parenthood and Friday Night Lights.

You know, so people, people knew him.

Like,

he was bubbling.

You know what I'm saying?

What I did do was

come to him with what ended up being his first chance to lead a movie.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

To be the leading man.

You know what I mean?

Leading personal shit.

Sure.

And where we started with this before we move on.

So

you talked to Oscar's mother, and we were talking about that coin flip and about the weight of that.

Did you find that

that was something she couldn't let go of?

I mean, she mentioned it to me.

Yeah.

You know, like, like, so it's clear.

And being a parent now,

you know, like, like, I've been in situations where my kids, like, bumped their heads or twisted their ankle, and

my mind is, like,

racking it, racking my brain.

Like, hey, what could you have done better?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Why'd you let him know?

What would you, you should have been better?

You know what I mean?

You know what I mean?

So brutal.

And, and, and, you know, so for that situation,

like, I know, like, you know, she brought that up.

She told me for a reason.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, like, like, um.

It's a powerful moment in the movie.

Yeah.

because you know you've already seen the arc of what happened and she's you know she's got to live with that and it and it came from from her yeah thinking you know telling him to do what she thought would be safer yeah right of course yeah because her fear was him getting arrested yeah yeah

he was on paperwork so like you get in the car one of your homies got a gun on him and one of your homies drinking you know you go to you go to you're going to big jail you're going to prison you know you know so they gonna violate your parole so for her it was like man go you know let's alleviate that yeah yeah yeah you know type public transportation you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, it's so heavy.

Yeah.

So I didn't realize that Creed was

your idea entirely in terms of

that you found that story within the Rocky franchise.

Yeah.

And you had a little juice from the from Fruitvale.

I mean, what's crazy is I pitched I pitched Sly before I made Fruitvale.

Yeah.

I pitched him while we were while we were while we were a couple weeks out from production.

We might have been like one week out.

Yeah.

And I flew down to LA and pitched him and and Kevin King

and his agent at the time, dude named Adam Vinnett.

I was pitching them

while I was getting ready to make Fruitville.

And Stallone, rightfully so,

he was like, man,

he heard me out and

signed a couple autographs for me and sent me on my way.

Yeah, yeah.

But, you know,

after we met Fruville, it was great that

Vinnett kept pushing and

Stallone came around and met with me again

and was open to working with me.

And Erwin Winkler?

Erwin Winkler, yep.

I had to go see Irwin in New York.

I talked to that guy.

Yeah,

you did?

How'd you find him?

Well, you know, it's quite a career.

Yeah.

I mean, it seems like those guys...

He's made some good movies, but when it comes to business,

he holds the line.

I knew there was some tension for a while with some people.

But he was good to work with.

Arwen was cool with me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like both of them were cool with me.

You know what I'm saying?

And when you told Jordan that you wanted him to do that, was he like, hell yeah?

Yeah, he was.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it's tough, man, because like, because like with, I mean, the reality is, like, I'm stepping in, when it comes to Erwin

and Schly, like, I'm stepping into a, you know, like a 40-year-old relationship.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

And

it was my job to be...

to be respectful to everybody and stand up

and to perform for them.

You know what I'm saying?

I didn't want to let anybody down.

I want to make a fight.

They made a bad decision betting on me.

You know what I'm saying?

Big movie.

Yeah, big movie.

And then like Black Panther, I mean, that movie changed the world.

I don't know about that.

But, I mean, certainly a lot of people went to go see it.

And yeah, I'm incredibly proud of that movie.

You know, I'm proud of all of them, bro.

Thankfully.

Well, like, as you said, when you go into each film, you have something in your mind about it.

What was it with Creed?

And with Creed,

the question was,

it was very much wrapped up in my relationship with my father.

Yeah.

Because

his illness was the first time that I saw him truly vulnerable.

Right.

And I had to reckon with the idea that the strongest man that I know

could possibly die.

You know what I'm saying?

And I was watching him lose his physical strength.

the struggles he was having with that.

You know, and that concept of,

it's aligned in the movie, but that concept of time taking everybody out.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

They're being defeated.

Like, like whatever you,

you know, time will make the strongest person weak.

You know what I'm saying?

And like, is that person, what is their value when they're in that kind of state?

Oh, it's rough.

You know, you know,

but Rocky was my dad's like movie hero.

You know what I'm saying?

So

that idea for me

was to, I mean, let me make a movie where Rocky's got to overcome something to like, you know, like, I think my dad would enjoy that right now.

You know what I'm saying?

That's how I started.

You know what I mean?

You know, I want my dad to watch this movie so he feels better.

Exactly.

Exactly.

It was usually that simple for me, bro.

You know, you know what I'm saying?

But then it gets complex.

Sure.

But that was the emotional heart of it.

Yes, sir.

And what about Black Panther?

How'd that come to you?

Yeah, for that one, man.

So that was a different ballgame.

You know, that was an open assignment, essentially.

And

MCU had been going

you know for a little while yeah i think that was like the 18th movie they made yeah

um

and

did you have to pitch it

i didn't have to pitch it so much as like i mean kind of like like

the thing the thing was was like um

everybody in town knew they were making it and they were talking to one of my friends about about doing it you know um uh as a writer As a director.

Her name is Ava Dubernight.

Yeah.

Incredible filmmaker.

Yeah.

Incredible friend we met and she like it like instantly kind of like became like a big sister for me in the industry yeah kind of like look like would look out for me and

you know advise me in situations and yeah and you know you know um and she and she let me know she was she was being considered for this job you know what I'm saying and and um you know they mutually uh you know came to a decision that they weren't gonna do it together um but but but then she was like hey why don't you do it you know like she asked me and I was like oh I was like you know on the spot I was like I don't know if I could do that ever you know what I mean?

Like I was finishing up Creed.

I didn't think they would ever call me.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, but it's also like a big responsibility.

I guess they all are, but Jesus,

Marvel, Marvel.

It's a lot of expensive.

You know what I'm saying?

A big, expensive movie.

And

you don't want to fuck it up.

You don't want to do it wrong.

And it was also a lot of anxiety around

making a movie at a place that was that powerful.

You know what I'm saying?

What do you mean?

I mean,

they got a way of doing things.

Yeah, okay.

There's a system.

They're churning out the system.

From the outside looking in,

they had a,

you know,

it seemed like a narrative could be built that, you know,

that directors might be disposable.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

Oh, yeah, yeah, I get you.

And, you know, I had a chance to meet with them

and I found like they were, you know, it didn't fit the narrative that was outside.

You know what I mean?

They felt like

they would be people who I could work with.

But also, you know, you had to bring a narrative that hadn't been done.

I mean, it's interesting.

Like, like, because, because, um,

I mean, it's yes and no, right?

Like, like, like, the other thing that made, that made Marvel so successful was that they were working with,

they had at their disposal, you know, just like decades of intellectual property.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

And like, and like decades of a built audience and awareness of who these characters are.

Right.

Maybe not in the cinematic space, but in the narrative space.

You know what I mean?

Like, like people...

With the comics.

Yeah, people know who Iron Man is and what happens to him and what his story is and who he fights.

You know what I'm saying?

And that's such a...

I mean, we've come to learn in the last, you know, last

10, 15 years

since 2008.

Yeah.

I would say, which is

like the big...

I would say the big kind of watershed year of

comic book movies.

And it's kind of like

the realization that these things were going to be a force you know they have a gold mind at their disposal yeah of stories and

creative contributions from really smart people yeah you know you know what i'm saying so yeah so so and you could draw from all that you can draw from all of that that that was that was the thing i was that was that was so interesting about like like you know when i when i when i agreed to start you know to to to start considering making a movie with them, I said, hey, let me get every Black Panther comic book that was ever written.

And it was like, yeah, we'll be right with you.

And then, boom, you know what I mean?

Like, it's just, it's just like mountains of, you know,

like they literally, they literally was like, yeah, no problem.

You know what I'm saying?

How many was that?

Oh, man, it was a big, because I, because I don't like reading things digitally.

Yeah.

Because at first, you're going to send it to me as a PDF.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

And I'll end up checking my email or some shit like

on a tablet or whatever.

So I'm like, oh, give me the physical thing so I can feel the weight of it.

So I can read it.

Like I would have read a comic book when I was a kid.

No problem.

Boom, big ass binder.

Marked, like, you know, know, you know, like from 1960s.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

To

yesterday.

Okay.

You know what I mean?

And

seeing who was writing what and how they drew the pictures and what appearance he was and who he interacted with.

So you're not, it wasn't sinners.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

Where I'm starting from, where I'm starting from the complete blank page, man, who are these people?

What are their names?

You know what I mean?

None of that.

It was like, do you want this character?

Yeah, this was an established mythology.

100%.

Whereas Sinners is

kind of a real mythology it's a folk mythology yeah exactly yeah

exactly exactly yeah 100 bro like like so and with that built-in knowledge and fan base comes expectations sure you know what i'm saying and then what's crazy is

in the success of that company you know what i'm saying yeah now you got expectations of the comics and now you got expectations of the movies you know what i'm saying so it's like it's like exponential Sure expect expectations.

But

you knew you're making a different movie.

Yeah.

Because like, all those expectations are there, but you're making a black movie.

Yeah, 100%.

So

there's goodwill in an audience that hasn't even been tapped for that other shit.

That's correct.

Yeah.

And that's kind of what happened, I think.

Yeah.

You know, like,

which was good on them, bro.

Like,

for being open to it.

Yeah.

And

honestly, same thing with Erwin

and Schlaw.

You know what I'm saying?

Being open to a take that might open it up to like, to like, to like, to like untapped folks.

like you know what i mean and and and that's international yes sir and then it becomes sort of again there's a community incentive yes sir yeah yeah yeah absolutely absolutely you're not wrong bro like you know what i'm saying that's also what happened like you know and that's stuff that we can't i can't take responsibility for as a as a as a filmmaker when people say hey man we're gonna sight unseen on a movie hey we gonna buy a theater for a bunch of kids to come see this yeah you know what i'm saying like you seen a trailer maybe you know

but but what's interesting is because you know it is a mythical space.

This is a superhero.

But because of the nature of

that, it is essentially a black film, that no matter what the experience of black people globally in terms of their history,

this is something for them.

100%.

And I would imagine that

that was probably at least 80%.

a new audience.

I mean, I don't know the numbers, man.

Yeah, but I'm just saying, but shit, like, I

but it's it's just so interesting bro because i just i just left like i say bro i just left left lunch with with director bong yeah we were talking and like the odyssey yeah

um howling wolf yeah you know smokestack lightning yeah who's that for yeah

who's that for

it's a good question with the blues you know what i'm saying like like but but the thing is

it's like 70 to 80 year old white guys yeah well but but i mean like the the the the thing is is like it's for who it's for sure but it's also for everybody that's you know

like like and that that for me was like that for me was what I realized like look my daddy will watch Rocky 2

and root for Rocky.

Yeah, my daddy like a black man from from Auckland California sure right yeah something was happening in the magic of this movie.

Yeah that that he's rooting.

He's rooting for the Italian dude.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

Like like boxing movie.

Yeah, exactly.

But but but but I don't know the history of Rocky.

Yeah.

And I'm a kid.

Yeah.

And And I'm like, Pop, why are you rooting for him?

This guy looks like you.

You know what I mean?

He's like, oh, man, Apollo is the villain.

You know what I'm saying?

He's a heel.

And I'm like, is he?

What is he doing?

And I watched the movie, you know what I'm saying?

And I'm realizing, okay, yeah,

the camera is with Rocky.

Right.

You know what I'm saying?

Your dad grew up in a history of movies.

100%.

He understood the language.

Sure.

sure, yeah, you understand, yeah, he understood the language, like when Apollo Creed is calling Rocky out and saying all these mean things about him, right?

It's like you're not even thinking about who, white, and who's black.

You know what I'm saying?

It's like, man, you gotta go get this dude.

You know, you know what I'm saying?

Well, yeah, but when you open it up and you do Black Panther with a mythological universe, that you know, the good guys and the bad guys, everybody's black.

Yeah.

100%.

Yeah, 100%.

So

in that sense,

it makes sense on a community level.

100%, 100%, Raw.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, totally, man.

Totally.

Totally, because

that's also what I grew up with.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

That's also what I grew up with.

Yeah, and the movie's for everybody, obviously.

But

the sort of

world of it was completely unique to a lot of people.

I think both, you know, all kinds of audiences.

For the black community, they're like, we've never seen this shit before.

And then the same thing with the white kids.

They're like, we've never seen this shit before.

It's a perfect storm.

Oh, man.

No one had ever seen that shit before.

Oh, shit.

Were you scared?

Terrified.

Yeah.

Yeah, bro.

Yeah, I had a nervous breakdown making that movie, man.

Maybe Shavu.

Yeah, yeah.

Did you keep it to yourself?

My wife knew.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Coming home, I'm broken.

What the fuck am I doing?

My little brother, who's my little brother, was my assistant.

He knew.

Yeah, like,

so yeah, they knew they held me, they held me up, though.

Just those crisis of confidence.

Every day, bro.

Yeah.

I had one of those.

I had one of those every day.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

I had some really intense ones, man.

Like,

it was brutal, bro.

Yeah.

It was brutal.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so in the new film,

getting back to what we started with, this world

of, you know, blues music and

black culture at that time.

I thought, like, because like, you know,

it's a story that, you know, if you have a certain type of

mind, you kind of know the story a little bit of some kind.

Like, you know that, you know, if you're a blues fan, you're going to know the crossroads story.

Yes, sorry.

And, you know, but you took it a little further up in the history.

So now we're, you know, maybe a decade and a half away from Robert Johnson, Charlie Patton.

Yeah.

And, you know, that hasn't really been explored, but the people in this movie knew that story.

Yes, sir.

Where Charlie Patton's guitar becomes an important thing.

Yes, sir.

And

then, you know, the sort of mystery of these twins coming back from Chicago and whatever the fuck they did up there to get this money.

And then, like, so, like, you know, structuring that story, if it came all out of your head, right?

You know, to make it compelling to not reveal why they were there or how what they did in Chicago.

But then the big decision is like,

who's the devil going to be?

How are we going to do the devil part?

And it was kind of interesting because it wasn't really a devil movie.

And it's not really necessarily a vampire movie.

You know, it's a movie about the power of

the magical power of music.

and how that can transcend or

interpret or give a voice to pain.

Yes, sorry.

But then the human component is

the good and evil of it all

becomes sort of

the through line of it.

This guy's got to preach your dad.

And then he's going to ultimately

choose.

I don't want to spoil it for anybody.

But

that was some serious shit he had to go through to still make the choice he made.

Yeah, 100%.

100%, bro.

100%.

Like

we found that structure too, man.

Bro, I loved making this movie, man.

It was a period piece.

I love this movie, bro.

Clothes, everything.

Dancing.

100%.

And

I felt like I had to earn it.

You know what I mean?

I felt like I had to go through what I went through with my other movies to be able to have the ability to do this.

Well, it's interesting now because there is a world of black horror

that

it gives a lot of freedom to to however you want to do it 100 bro you know like jordan you know he does his thing yeah and and then beautiful movies oh yeah yeah yeah and and and weird oh yeah you know 100 you know he's like an abstract thinker and he's willing to take risks so you know you've got that you know there's an audience for it yes sir yeah yes sir so what you know what were you saying about loving it about the what were the challenges because it did give you an opportunity to explore, you know, not necessarily, you know, characters that we've known a bit before.

And so, like, I guess on some level, when you're, you said you were piecing together the story,

that that the idea of music had to go all the way through it.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, like, like, so, so

back to family, man, I had an uncle

who was from Mississippi.

Yeah.

Um, and he was like the oldest

man in my family that I was around consistently.

Yeah.

His name was Uncle James, James Edmonds.

Blues music was all he would listen to.

That was his get down.

You know what I mean?

And

he would come home from work, he put a Giants game on.

San Francisco Giants baseball game on TV or on the radio and have a blues record going.

Which ones?

How old?

All of them.

All of them.

I mean, his guy was Albert King.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

But he listened to all of them, man.

And I associated these songs with

him.

You know what I'm saying?

Blues wasn't my cup of tea.

And that word has a connotation that

kind of became

associated with old things.

Sure.

And also,

it didn't feel like it was mine.

You know what I mean?

It also got, I didn't think there was a period there where it, you know,

in some ways became white,

you know, in terms of, you know, once I think the

black community moved away from it for whatever, because it represented something old,

then, you know, all the white guys took it.

Well, well, well, yeah, like, like, I mean, this movie, bro, like, we could talk for hours.

Like, I didn't realize how deep you are into it.

But,

you know, like, like,

in my research, I discovered that,

you know, and people talk about this all the time.

It's not like my discovery.

You know what I'm saying?

You know what I'm saying?

People will speak to this often.

But you could make the argument that

genre

is an invention of racism.

You know what I'm saying?

You could make

the categorization of different types of music

is essentially like a form of segregation.

Oh, interesting.

At the time, music was commodified.

You know what I'm saying?

It was a time

where it was built on segregation.

You know, so, so how do I tell people that this is, that this music

is made by black people?

Well, I call it a race record.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

Like, you know, you know, and like that, and like that, that, that, that kind of like, you know, race records became, you know,

blues or soul or rhythm in blues, you know what I'm saying?

And, you know, in these categorizations.

And then they were eventually appropriated by the white culture.

Appropriated

and reappropriated.

Well, that's interesting because

the main vampire, the devil vampire,

he's appropriating the souls of black people.

In a way.

Yeah, in a way, but also

they also appropriating him.

Once they become,

sure, the eternal life racket.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Exactly.

But, you know, it's like no spoilers, but it's also a scene where they singing his music.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

You know what I mean?

Well, half of it comes from there.

Exactly.

And that was the whole,

like for me, when I realized

even the narrative,

which is true in part, like, you know what I'm saying?

That blues came from the continent of Africa.

Sure.

You know what I'm saying?

Totally accurate.

But what we recognize as

Delta Blues and American Blues,

also it was contributions from the Choctaw community and contributions from the Irish community.

Contributions from,

like, it had all of these contributions.

The rhythms changed.

Yes.

And all these people had a thing in common.

Yeah.

That they had been stepped on.

Right.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

made to feel less than and come off you know you know what i'm saying like so that that that idea for me when i delve into the research of this music that my uncle loved you know what I'm saying?

Like, I was like, oh, shit, like, like, like, this is, this is so profound.

And also,

like, everything that I ever loved that came out of popular culture came from this directly.

Like,

I could draw a straight line back to, you know, there was a reason I heard Nirvana and liked it.

Yeah.

Immediately.

You know what I'm saying?

You know what I'm saying?

Like,

it's because it's what my uncle would play for me.

Yeah.

Well, you know what I'm saying?

It's the same by white people.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

It all comes to

the same source point.

Yeah.

Yeah, I had Taj Mahal in here once.

And,

you know, like, because I, you know, there is,

you know, there's a through line.

He's a, you know, he's a historian, you know, really.

And I had this old guitar that it was just an old Sears guitar that I used to have just as, you know, something to look at.

It was strung up.

It played, right?

And we were talking about

Skip James.

Oh, you're talking about a hard time killing Fluid.

Yeah, well, I'm talking about like the, I don't remember what song it was, but Skip James.

You know, he had like some sort of, there was a certain guys

that had a direct sort of, you know,

rhythmic and tonal.

From the continent.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, maybe Senegal or somewhere.

Yeah, yeah, it's all of that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, like, I'm talking to, I'm talking to Taj about that.

They call it Senegambia.

Yeah.

It's very specific.

Yes, sir.

But they made it all the way through.

100%.

Yeah, I mean, I mean,

it was not,

you know,

in the curve of human history, bro, that shit was yesterday.

That's right.

You know what I'm saying?

But so, but Taj just picks up, he picks up that old guitar.

Yeah.

Three seconds, right away.

He's like, go all the way back.

All the way back to the continent.

100%.

And I was like, oh, my God.

100%.

It's the magic, man.

Yeah, 100%.

So you were aware of all that.

I was not.

No, but I mean, you became aware.

I dug into your name.

And so that was all informing how you were going to handle this.

But why twins, though?

Why'd you?

Oh, that's such a great question.

So, oh, man, bro.

All right, all right.

So, so

it's somewhat of an inside joke with people who know me.

Yeah.

Because I have,

my only phobia is doppelgangers.

Yeah.

It's the only phobia I have.

It's a weird one.

It's a super weird one, bro.

Like someone that looks like you?

It's the concept of the doppelganger, like

the double that is a harboringer of doom.

Okay.

You know what I'm saying?

You know what I'm saying?

And what's extra crazy about this is

my family has a ton of twins.

You know, like my mom's has identical twin older sisters.

You know, one of them is my godmother.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, they live right next door to each other to this day.

And you know, and like, like,

I got cousins.

My uncle James,

his granddaughters are fraternal twins.

You know what I mean?

And one of them just gave birth to fraternal twins this year.

Wow.

So

it's a constant in my family.

But yeah, I wanted to deal with the archetypes with this movie.

You know what I mean?

I wanted it to feel like a blues song,

like something that you heard before, even though you heard it for the first time.

So I pulled a lot of archetypes in, and I was kind of obsessed with this idea of

the gangster identical twins, because that's like a thing.

You know what I'm saying?

Like that exists in a lot of different cultures.

In a mythology.

But also in life.

Yeah, I think there was Irish gangsters in Chicago.

What What is it?

Moran's?

They were brothers, man.

It's a thing, bro.

Sometimes they're just siblings.

You know what I'm saying?

Or the Cray brothers.

They were twins.

You got Big Meach and Southwest T and BMF out of Detroit.

Or in Long Beach, they had some guys called the Twins.

That came up with Snoop and Warren G.

You would hear about them in songs.

It's a line

in this DJ, a Warren G song.

And that's G-Funk, right?

It's like G-Funk is super bluesy, West Coast hip-hop, right?

His song ends

where he says, I still know how to make them ends.

And if you don't believe me, go ask the twins.

Like, that's how it ends.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, where he's basically saying, like, I'm still in the streets.

And if you don't believe me, go ask the twins.

Like, they even more gangster than me.

They'll check my story out.

You know what I mean?

And, like, I got to know people from other neighborhoods.

And if you bring up the twins, every neighborhood has them.

You know what I'm saying?

Where it's like, oh, yeah, the twins that did,

you know, like, it's like literally

a thing in black cultures, thing a white culture.

You know what I'm saying?

Like,

it's a thing.

Like, if you're in a neighborhood and somebody is lucky enough to be born with a with a with a sibling that looks just like them, yeah, they're gonna automatically have like an advantage, yeah, become local celebrities, you know what I'm saying?

Like, and they're gonna run tricks on people and get over it, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, so, so, um, so then you decided to balance the morality out, like exactly, yeah, like, and

for that part, I did a lot of research in the identical twins and the psychology of it.

And I have two filmmaker friends that are from Northern California.

These white dudes that came up in the North Bay.

You know,

Noah and Logan Miller.

Okay.

And they filmmakers came up as baseball players first, you know, hard scrabble guys.

You know what I'm saying?

Like broke their way into Hollywood with no nepotism, no none of that, just all grind.

You know what I mean?

And they kind of like, you know, I would talk to them and eventually I was like, I got to bring y'all on board officially with this.

And, you know, they became our twin consultants.

Oh, interesting.

And they worked with me and Mike specifically on, you know, what these guys would be like.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

You know what I mean?

I look at the time that they came up, you know, like their backstory and just the concept of like, you know,

how Nolan and Logan describe it is to them, everybody's weird.

Yeah.

Because, because, like, they look at everybody, everybody's selfish.

You know what I'm saying?

Everybody's kind of like out to get them.

You know what I You know what I mean?

He was saying like when you have an identical twin relationship, it automatically makes you like hyper conspiratorial.

You know what I mean?

Like you're used to people staring at you, strangers coming up to you, talking to you,

people asking you weird questions.

And it was also, it was a funny time when

I was talking to them.

And I realized whenever I'm with them and in their presence, they always sit right next to each other or they stand side by side.

And I asked them one day, I said, hey, man, do you guys always do that with people?

And they say, Yeah.

And I said, Is that for you guys or is that for us?

They said, It's for you.

You know, they said, As soon as I got a problem with you, we'll split up.

You know what I mean?

So you could be and get in a position where you can only look at one of us.

You know what I'm saying?

So I thought that was so interesting.

Yeah, yeah, you know what I'm saying?

They know the effect.

That they know the effect.

If they're not, if they're not next to each other, it freaks people out.

You know what I'm saying?

Where's the other guy?

Exactly.

Which one am I talking to?

Isn't that interesting?

Yeah.

But the concept of growing up like that.

Yeah.

You know, and what that does to the

psychologist.

It's funny because

it was pretty seamless because I didn't.

Very quickly, I wasn't registering to Michael Jordans.

Yeah.

It worked, you know?

It's just performance, man.

It's the subtleties, you know, because it's not, you could go overboard quick.

Yeah.

You know what?

Right.

And

that's the thing about identical twins.

If you know them, nine times out of ten, they have completely different personalities, but the differences between them are very subtle.

You know what I mean?

Like they're around each other all the fucking time.

Yeah, so like, it's like they basically are the same person, right?

But like subtly off.

Right.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But if you ever were to get them alone, different.

Well, yeah, then the differences really, then the differences really come out.

Yeah, and you did that through women.

Yeah, and just through structure.

Like,

like I knew.

But in terms of the action.

Let me.

Oh, yeah, 100%.

Yeah.

Like knowing who they

like who they fell in love with.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Really differentiates like the type of person that you are.

And also

a lot of pussy eating talk.

i didn't i didn't realize that would be a through line

yeah it is in a movie yeah i mean it was we were having fun man like like like it's a lot of it's a lot of um

um it's sexy man yeah a lot a lot of talk about all of that stuff but but but that idea of

because what i was trying to figure out is like why are vampires so sexy you know what i'm saying like why are they like why are they synonymous with sexuality yeah why are they the sexy monsters why are they the sexy monsters you know you know saying like like you know um

You don't got to say a sexy vampire.

Well, there's an intimacy to it.

Exactly.

And there's also, it's like a marriage.

Yes, sir.

Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's what's so great about it.

And the thing is, is like,

you know,

the vampire is synonymous with choice for some reason.

You know, like you have to have to be invited in.

You know,

where do they bite?

They bite the neck.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, it's a sexual

situation.

You know what I mean?

You got to get close to somebody to do that.

Just a weird question.

Now, the pussy eating thing,

did you lean on that because

is it culturally stigmatized?

Nah, man.

Honestly, bro, where that came from

is

I had big cousins.

I was like the twins.

You know what I'm saying?

And

that's the type of

twins that we talk about.

And the whole thing was like,

out.

His dad's a preacher.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

He's the oldest.

He got a bunch of little sisters.

So what are his cousins?

What are his other, what's the kind of shit his other cousins are going to tell him about life?

Sure.

You know what I'm saying?

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And

smoke, the whole idea behind him and his performance was that he's like a grandpa.

You know what I'm saying?

You know what I'm saying?

Like he's the caretaking twin.

The other twin is a pimp.

He's like hypersexualized.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And if you ever meet those guys, like what makes what makes those guys those guys

is

they kind of like have a hyper understanding of what the world is like from a female perspective.

You know what I mean?

Like that's how they are able to convince women to do crazy shit for you.

You know what I'm saying?

So the whole idea was he would give him.

like very usable accurate advice you know saying like you know for that for that type for that type of situation that's where the

idea came from I think the whole thing works really, really well.

And I thought that the vampires were sufficiently creepy.

That's good.

And I don't want to spoil

the beat at the end,

even during the credits.

But okay, so you...

Well,

because people who like the blues are going to be excited by it.

But

did he play that last bit?

He did.

That's him on the guitar?

That's him.

On that last song?

The very end.

Yeah.

That's him.

Holy shit.

because you know i've seen him a few times i've had him in here i was just playing with his fucking pick yesterday right there yeah that's him yeah that's him acoustic yeah and oh my god

who's on the electric lead

um on the electric credits on the electric okay so so that so that that is that is uh uh uh uh eric gills

yeah and and and also kingfish oh yeah i just i just had met kingfish kingfish in the movie you got some you got that scene but but that's eric gills you listening to there yeah oh wow but that that last scene, that's who you're asking it about.

That's it.

Yeah, yeah, oh, good.

No adjustments.

That's him.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, he's great.

It's weird seeing him play that, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, they all started there.

100%.

You know, but like he, you know, as he's gotten older,

he's become more of a showman.

His licks are different.

You know what I mean?

He'll just pop a couple off and then he'll just...

Smile.

Yeah, that's it.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Well, it's great talking to you, man.

It's a good talk.

And likewise, bro, thank you, bro.

I hope it does well for you.

I appreciate that, man.

There you go, folks.

Again, Sinners opens in theaters this Friday.

Hang out for a minute.

All right, people.

We've got another Ask Mark Anything episode for Fulmarin subscribers dropping tomorrow.

These are bonus episodes where I answer the questions sent in by you, like this one.

As you prepare to direct your film, what personal challenges do you anticipate facing?

How do you plan to tackle them?

Anxiety and impatience.

I think the biggest challenge is going to be to afford myself the confidence and space to know when a take is done, to know when a set is set up, to know what I'm looking for, and not to be freaked out all the time.

Just to realize that I've put a good team together and hopefully I will to afford me the space necessary to just focus on directing the film.

Get the new Ask Mark Anything episode tomorrow.

Sign up for the full Marin.

Go to the link in the episode episode description or go to wtfpod.com and click on WTF Plus.

And a reminder before we go, this podcast is hosted by ACAST.

Here's some classic Mark Marin guitar noodling.

Boomer lives and monkey, Lavonda, cat angels everywhere, and that was fucking take two, man.