“Cursed” Director/Producer Zetna Fuentes on Remixing Arthurian Legend for Netflix
Cursed, which premieres today on Netflix, reframes the King Arthur legend to center on the mysterious Lady of the Lake and fae, Nimue, played by Katherine Langford. The show is created by Tom Wheeler and Frank Miller, based on their illustrated novel. The Credits spoke to Zetna Fuentes, who executive produced and directed the pilot and second episode of the series. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
A Conversation With Laverne Cox
Laverne Cox serves as the guide of director Sam Feder’s crucial new documentary Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen. The film offers a vivid, frankly startling history of the portrayal of transgender lives on screen, and Cox (also an executive producer) captains a compelling cast of influential trans creators, cultural critics, and thinkers. They include The Matrix creator Lilly Wachowski, Pose star Mj Rodriguez,
Director/Producer Dawn Porter on Capturing a Legend in “John Lewis: Good Trouble”
Director/producer Dawn Porter’s documentary John Lewis: Good Trouble is an inspirational look at the life and career of the legendary Georgia Democratic representative and civil rights activist John Lewis. Congressman Lewis, now 80 years old, has been instrumental in creating foundational change in the United States, from voting rights to equal rights for all Americans. To this day, he continues to be a voice for positive change.
The Credits spoke to Porter about the film,
“Welcome to Chechnya” Producer & Editor on Their Immersion in High-Stakes LGBTQ Reportage
Few westerners took notice in 2016 when the Russian republic of Chechnya began persecuting gay, lesbian, and transgender citizens. But after Oscar-nominated documentarian David France read a New Yorker article detailing how Ramzan Kadyrov’s regime has tortured, imprisoned, and executed LGBTQ residents, he traveled to Moscow. There, France and his crew documented the Russian LGBT Network and Moscow Community Center for LGBTI+ Initiatives as they provide temporary sanctuary for refugees eager to gain asylum in friendly countries.
Arielle Kilker On Assembling a Largely Female Crew to Create Her Netflix Series Cheer
Arielle Kilker brings pretty much everything she’s learned in her career to bear in her Netflix‘s Cheer, the series she co-created, co-directed, edited, and produced. That includes the Emmy-nominated work she put in as editor on Chef’s Table and a supervising editor on the Peabody nominated Last Chance U. She’s also edited and written crime docuseries on projects for MSNBC, A&E, and PBS. For Cheer,
Director & Executive Producer Lesli Linka Glatter on Filming Homeland’s Series Finale
Lesli Linka Glatter has spent the last several years being alarmed by what she’s heard in intelligence briefings. This doesn’t just set her apart from many of the current apparatchiks in Washington, but also from many of her fellow directors. Not because her colleagues lack the capacity to be alarmed, but because her work as a director and an executive producer on Showtime’s Homeland would bring her, on an annual basis, to something that series creators Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa would call “Spy Camp,” in the D.C.
Producer Daniela Taplin Lundberg on Pushing Boundaries With Harriet and Honey Boy
She has produced more than 25 feature films that have moved audiences and in many cases also earned industry accolades. Indeed, Daniela Taplin Lundberg has demonstrated a knack for bringing to the screen soulful stories that deftly explore the human condition — all while keeping budgets in check and quality high.
Armed with filmmaking insights gleaned early on from her parents, producer Jonathan Taplin (Mean Streets) and actress Rosanna DeSoto (Stand and Deliver),
Avengers: Endgame Executive Producer Trinh Tran on Capping Off a Decade’s Worth of Work
Last spring, Avengers: Endgame wrapped up Marvel’s Infinity War saga. The three-hour epic spanning space to Wakanda and back again impressed the critics, exceeded audience expectations, and raked in $2.78 billion in gross global earnings. The movie’s length was only one unusual development within the world of superhero fare, with Endgame representing the culmination of 11 years’ worth of work, bringing about the deaths of Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.),
Super Producer Emma Tillinger Koskoff on Pulling Off The Irishman and Joker
As a producer, Emma Tillinger Koskoff is eminently searchable, or IMDB-able, with her name affixed on projects ranging from The Departed (as an associate producer) to Hugo, to executive producer on HBO’s Vinyl, and upcoming projects like Roosevelt.
A glance reveals a particularly impressive autumn-into-winter, as she has producer credits on two of the season’s most anticipated films: Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman,
Edward Norton on Redefining Heroism in Motherless Brooklyn
Edward Norton brought Motherless Brooklyn, his long-gestating passion project, to the Motion Picture Association’s brand new theater last night for a special screening and Q&A moderated by professor Yanick Lamb, Director of Media Studies at Howard University. Norton’s film, which explores institutional racism built into the very foundations of New York City, was inspired as much by Robert Caro’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of “master builder” Robert Moses, “The Power Broker,”
The Creators of Netflix’s Unbelievable on Their Urgent New Series
Buzz for the new true-crime drama Unbelievable, which is now streaming on Netflix, is getting pretty intense, and for good reason. Inspired by real events covered in a Pulitzer Prize-winning article from The Marshall Project and ProPublica called, “An Unbelievable Story of Rape” and a This American Life episode called “Anatomy of Doubt,” it tells the story of a teen named Marie (Kaitlyn Dever) who reports a sexual assault,
How Yesterday’s Producer Made the Beatles-Themed Film Come Together
The nobody-knows-who-the-Beatles-are high concept driving Yesterday (opening Friday) may not have originated with producer Tim Bevan, but the Working Title co-chairman responsible for five Oscar-nominated movies knew exactly how to take the idea and run with it. American humorist Jack Barth created the fantastical scenario about a busker who wakes up from a bike crash and discovers that he’s the only one in the world who remembers the music created by John,
Mindy Kaling & Nancy Meyers on Writing, Producing & More
With a history just over a decade old, the “Produced By” conference in L.A. is a gathering that promises, if not exactly unfettered access, at least a chance to be in the same room with many accomplished producers, and hyphenates: producer-actors, producer-directors, etcetera.
Run by the Producers Guild, and currently hosted on the Warner Brothers backlot (an “above the line” analog to the Cine Gear show held at Paramount, the week before),
How Smart Instincts Led Booksmart Producer to Actress-Turned Director Olivia Wilde
The original Booksmart script started making the rounds in Hollywood ten years ago after writers Emily Halpern and Sarah Haskins imagined two straight-A high school girls gone wild the night before graduation. By the time producer Jennifer Elbaum came on board four years ago, the story had been acquired by producer Annapurna Pictures boss Megan Ellison with Short Term 12 star Kaitlyn Dever attached to co-star as wry, gay, Columbia University-bound Amy.
Qualified Director Jenna Ricker on Indy’s Pioneer Janet Guthrie
“This is my first documentary,” says producer/director Jenna Ricker, of Qualified, a look at the life of Janet Guthrie, the first woman—in that pre-Danica Patrick/Pippa Mann era—to ever drive a car at the Indianapolis 500.
The doc is part of ESPN’s 30 For 30 series, in celebration of the cable pioneer’s 30th anniversary. But you have to go farther back than that, to 1977, to find Guthrie in the cockpit of a racer at Indianapolis.
The Bespoke Technology That Made Netflix’s Black Mirror: Bandersnatch Possible
Sugar puffs or frosties? Yell at dad or pour tea all over a keyboard? By now, the audience choices and subsequent on-screen fallout possibilities in Netflix’s first interactive film for adults, Bandersnatch, have been well documented across the web. Home-made flow charts painstakingly illustrate the complexity of 19-year-old video game creator Stefan’s journey as he tries to develop an interactive computer game in 1984, navigating relationships with his irritating father,
Taraji P. Henson & the Team Behind The Best of Enemies on Crafting History
The Best of Enemies is based on the true story of an African-American activist named Ann Atwater and a KKK official named C.P. Ellis who were forced to work together in a fight over school desegregation in 1971. In an interview with The Credits, star Taraji P. Henson, who plays Ann, writer/director Robin Bissell, and producer Dominique Telson talked about bringing this potent true story to the screen.
Taraji,
How Dumbo‘s Producer Carves out Creative Space for Tim Burton
Twenty-three years ago, Dumbo producer Derek Frey started working for Tim Burton as a gofer on Mars Attacks. Over the course of Burton’s next 11 movies, Frey rose through the ranks to become a trusted consigliere to the visionary director. Among Frey’s chief tasks: making sure that Burton gets to be Burton. “Tim’s an artist,” Frey says. “He treats every project like a canvas. I always try to – I don’t want to say ‘protect’
Berlin Station‘s Executive Producer on Making TV for Troubled Times
On one of the very few scripted television dramas to reflect the current global political climate, the covert C.I.A. operatives of Epix’s Berlin Station have found themselves mired in complex situations wrought by any number of familiar cranks and villains—internal whistle-blowers, far-right political parties, Russian thugs, mysterious hackers, and the list goes on. In depicting the inner workings of a fictionalized Berlin C.I.A. office, spy novelist Olen Steinhauer’s first television series works hard to examine the moral gray area of international espionage,
Christopher Robin Producer Bringham Taylor on Bringing Adults Back to Pooh
Brigham Taylor was at Disney 15 years ago when he first heard the idea for a movie about a grown-up Christopher Robin reconnecting with his beloved toys. That movie has finally been made, with Taylor as its producer, and it was worth the wait, a lovely, touching, and utterly endearing film for the whole family. In an interview with The Credits, he talked about why soft, cuddly toys still matter even in an age of technology,
