“Chevalier” Screenwriter & Executive Producer Stefani Robinson on Hitting the Right Narrative Notes
The story behind French Creole composer and virtuoso violinist Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, has been largely neglected in music history until recently. His life sounds too incredible to be true. He was born in 1745 in Guadeloupe, the son of an enslaved Senegalese woman Nanon and her captor Georges de Bologne Saint-Georges, and sent to France as a young child to be educated in the best schools. Though he struggled with the bigotry of being a man of color and was limited by racist laws that controlled his life,
Harpo Films Director of Development & Production Lauren Tuck Wants Her Creators to Flourish
Harpo Films and OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network has been leading the pack in Hollywood in terms of diversity and inclusion for years. From the very beginning of OWN’s drama series Queen Sugar, creator Ava DuVernay envisioned using all female directors for the series, and both OWN and Harpo Films were 100% behind that. DuVernay’s show proved a hit, and her commitment to hiring diverse female directors resulted in greater success for the 42 helmers that took part.
“Fight the Power” Producer Helen Bart on Exploring Hip Hop’s Explosive Power With Chuck D
Nearly fifty years ago in the Bronx, on August 11, 1973, Jamaican American DJ Kool Herc used two turntables to spin funky drum breaks at his sister’s back-to-school party. The event turned out to be hip hop’s big bang moment. In the decades that followed, the music became a politically charged platform empowering Black America to share its culture through rhymes brimming with wit, ferocity and pathos. Fight the Power: How Hip Hop Changed the World,
“Descendant” Co-Writer & Producer Dr. Kern Jackson on Uncovering Living History in Mobile, Alabama
The documentary Descendant is about many things, but mostly it’s about storytelling — how oral histories, passed down from generation to generation, inform identity and community and connect the living to their ancestors. History can’t be erased or denied as long as stories are still being told.
Descendant, which won the US Documentary Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and is now on Netflix,
“Everything Everywhere All at Once” Producer Jonathan Wang on Making an Oscar Juggernaut
It might seem as if Everything Everywhere All at Once came out of nowhere to dominate this year’s Oscar voting with 11 nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and two Best Supporting Actress nods for Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, and Jamie Lee Curtis respectively. But in fact, producer Jonathan Wang has been working with writer-directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert since 2011.
Sundance 2023: Filmmaker Razelle Benally on Her Showtime Doc Series “Murder in Big Horn”
The Sundance staff and execs have always believed it essential to honor Indigenous people as part of their film festival and institute, as exampled by their Native Lab and Indigenous Program. This year, there is an even greater focus on Native cultures, both inside and outside the cinemas, with 11 Indigenous films as part of the program. 2023 also marked the inaugural year for The Indigenous House, which provided a gathering space for community members and allies,
Best of 2022: “House of the Dragon” Co-Creator & Co-Showrunner Ryan Condal on Season One & Beyond
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list.
The first season of House of the Dragon has come to a close as an unqualified success. The premiere saw the largest single-day viewership for a series debut in HBO’s history and continued to land consistently in the top five titles streamed across all platforms through its last episode.
“George & Tammy” Creator Abe Sylvia on Crafting a Complicated Love Story
It’s a story that’s been on Abe Sylvia’s mind for a while. The screenwriter of The Eyes of Tammy Faye and writer/producer of such television series as Dead to Me and Nurse Jackie has always had a soft spot for country music. Blame it on his Oklahoma upbringing. And that’s why Sylvia found the story of George Jones and Tammy Wynette too good to resist.
“Bones And All” Writer/Producer David Kajganich on Creating a Consuming Cannibal Love Story
When screenwriter David Kajganich decided to adapt the YA novel Bones And All by Camille DeAngelis, he approached his friend and longtime collaborator, director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name), about taking on the project — the two had worked together on Suspiria and A Bigger Splash. Though professional commitments initially prevented Guadagnino from doing so, eventually,
Filmmaker & TV Creator Mann Robinson on Getting it Done in Georgia
Mann Robinson gets it done. The former rapped-turned-filmmaker and television creator can do it all—write, direct, produce, edit—with a tirelessness that would seem inhuman if he wasn’t so even-keeled about how he approaches his work.
“What’s allowing me to have so many things coming up?” he says when we spoke toward the end of summer, as he took a rare break to chat about his career. “First thing I do in the morning is write whatever project I may be on at the time,
“House of the Dragon” Co-Creator & Co-Showrunner Ryan Condal on Season One & Beyond
The first season of House of the Dragon has come to a close as an unqualified success. The premiere saw the largest single-day viewership for a series debut in HBO’s history and continued to land consistently in the top five titles streamed across all platforms through its last episode. The show was renewed before the second episode of the series even aired.
House of the Dragon is a prequel to Game of Thrones—created by George R.R.
“Super/Natural” Producer Tom Hugh-Jones on How His New Nature Doc Will Blow Your Mind
They call him Sarcastic Fringehead, and the gargoyle-like fish with its glow-in-the-dark inflatable mouth must be seen to be believed. A resident of the Pacific Ocean, Sarcastic Fringehead is just one of 40 or so naturally gifted characters filmed in their native habitats for National Geographic’s Super/Natural show. Executive produced by James Cameron with voice-over narration from Benedict Cumberbatch, the eight-episode series (which debuted on Wednesday, Sept. 21) features creatures great (elephants) and small (Mexican fireflies) as they engage in stranger-than-fiction survival skills.
How the Ebo Sisters Find Comedy in Megachurch Scandal Feature “Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul.”
Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul. came seemingly out of nowhere in January to become a breakout hit at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, where Jordan Peele‘s Monkeypaw production company, Focus Features, and Peacock picked up the dark comedy. But in fact, the movie was a long time coming. Writer/director Adamma Ebo and her twin sister, producer Adanne, spent six years developing their 2015 short film of the same name.
“The Sea Beast” Writer/Director/Producer Chris Williams on His High Seas Animated Adventure
Chris Williams began working on The Sea Beast around four years ago, but telling an action-adventure story in animation is something he has wanted to do for a very long time. “It’s almost no exaggeration to say most of my life,” says the Academy Award-winning filmmaker (Moana, Big Hero 6, Bolt) about his latest movie, now streaming on Netflix.
Directed, co-produced, and co-written by Williams — he collaborated on the screenplay with Nell Benjamin,
Breaking Down the Astonishing Technology Behind Ava DuVernay’s “One Perfect Shot”
The cathedral wedding in John M. Chu’s Crazy Rich Asians. Diana Prince boldly crossing a World War I battlefield in Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman. Lisa stuck on a zip-line suspended above a raucous crowd in downtown New Orleans, in Malcolm D. Lee’s Girls’ Trip. Cathartic, lovely, or almost distressingly hilarious, these scenes are indelible. What did their directors do to make them tick?
In One Perfect Shot,
Producer Autumn Bailey-Ford on Making Movies & Shows She Loves in Georgia
Autumn Bailey-Ford has been an independent film and TV producer working out of Georgia for the past 13 years. Originally from York, Pennsylvania, Bailey-Ford has worked her way up from production assistant—that invaluable, multifaceted job that has been the starting point to many successful film careers—to running her own studio…and co-running a second.
“I love film and TV,” Bailey-Ford says, reflecting on a career that began with her daydreaming as a little girl watching Bob Hope and Bing Cosby movies on Turner Movie Classics.
Nicole Kassell on Producing & Directing HBO’s Devilish New Comedy/Horror “The Baby”
Shooting a television series under any circumstance is arduous at best. But when your title character is too young to even walk, it certainly increases the degree of difficulty. Producer/director Nicole Kassell discovered this fact quickly on her latest project, The Baby, a sly horror/comedy created by Siân Robins-Grace and Lucy Gaymer.
“Even with everything I’ve already done before, I think this might have been the hardest shoot I’ve ever done,” says Kassell during a recent Zoom interview.
“Winning Time” Co-Creator Jim Hecht on His Love Letter to the Lakers
Jim Hecht‘s road to co-creating Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers began in 2014. Hecht was, by his own admission, at a low point, and he was looking for a project that really spoke to him. During his daily meditation, which he admitted with the qualifier “this sounds very LA,” he had a thought: “You gotta stop writing sh*t that you think other people would want to see and start writing the show that you would want to watch.”
Behind-the-Scenes With Five Female Singaporean Creators
“The last three years were an eye-opener because of the pandemic,” said Michelle Chang, managing partner at Singapore-based Mochai Chai Laboratories. “We are the post-production house at the tail end. If the producers stop producing, we are dead. The good thing was my business partner Chai Yee Wei has the foresight of not putting all our eggs in one basket. He has built a digital restoration lab. As luck would have it, a lot of distributors came to us because streaming platforms were buying catalog content and they need to up-convert into a compatible format for the streamers.
“NITRAM” Director/Producer Justin Kurzel Casts a Lens on a Shocking Tragedy
In 1996, Australia was rocked by a mass shooting in the small, peaceful community of Port Arthur, Tasmania. The horrific incident took the lives of 35 innocent people and injured 23, and remains among the country’s greatest national tragedies.
Director-producer Justin Kurzel (True History of the Kelly Gang, The Snowtown Murders) reunites with screenwriter Shaun Grant to explore the events that led to the mass shooting in the IFC Films release,
