“A Million Miles Away” Co-Writer/Director Alejandra Márquez Abella on Capturing a Dream Come True
Filmmaker Alejandra Márquez Abella learned of José Hernández 15 years ago when his inspirational story made headlines: Hernández, who toiled in the fields as a child alongside his family, is the first migrant farmworker to become a NASA astronaut and go into space — a lifelong dream he realized after nearly a decade of perseverance and pluck and with the unwavering support of his family and friends. When producers Mark Ciardi and Campbell McInnes approached Abella about bringing Hernández’s story to the screen,
Best of Summer 2023: “Brother” Writer/Director Clement Virgo on Returning to Filmmaking With His Quietly Devastating Adaptation
*It’s our annual “Best of Summer” look back at some (not all) of our favorite interviews from the past few months. This non-comprehensive look back includes the Barbenheimer phenomenon and the wonderful interviews that followed those two history-making films, chats with the talented folks behind Mission: Impossible, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, our profile of MPA Creator Award Recipient and filmmaker extraordinaire Gina Prince-Bythewood and more.
When he returned to feature filmmaking,
Best of Summer 2023: Gina Prince-Bythewood, MPA Creator Award Recipient, Tells Her Story
*It’s our annual “Best of Summer” look back at some (not all) of our favorite interviews from the past few months. This non-comprehensive look back includes the Barbenheimer phenomenon and the wonderful interviews that followed those two history-making films, chats with the talented folks behind Mission: Impossible, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, our profile of MPA Creator Award Recipient and filmmaker extraordinaire Gina Prince-Bythewood and more.
An elite force of female soldiers,
Best of Summer 2023: Christopher Nolan on Exploding Myths & Exposing Humanity in “Oppenheimer”
*It’s our annual “Best of Summer” look back at some (not all) of our favorite interviews from the past few months. This non-comprehensive look back includes the Barbenheimer phenomenon and the wonderful interviews that followed those two history-making films, chats with the talented folks behind Mission: Impossible, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, our profile of MPA Creator Award Recipient and filmmaker extraordinaire Gina Prince-Bythewood and more.
Spoilers below; approach with extreme caution if you haven’t seen the film yet.
“Brother” Writer/Director Clement Virgo on Returning to Filmmaking With His Quietly Devastating Adaptation
Writer/director Clement Virgo followed his instincts when he returned to feature filmmaking. Since his last feature, Poor Boy’s Game (2007), Virgo has been directing TV, working more or less nonstop. He’s directed episodes of Empire, Netflix’s Dahmer- Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, and OWN’s megachurch drama Greenleaf. He was thinking about getting back into features when a friend handed him a copy of David Chariandy’s novel “Brother,”
Christopher Nolan on Exploding Myths & Exposing Humanity in “Oppenheimer”
Spoilers below; approach with extreme caution if you haven’t seen the film yet.
Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) stares wide-eyed into the pond spread out in front of him; his last conversation with Albert Einstein (Tom Conti) on the potential catalytic effects of the atomic bomb has rendered him speechless. The music swells as the screen fades to black — the final scene of Christopher Nolan’s highly-anticipated Oppenheimer.
A “singularly dramatic moment in history” — That’s how Nolan describes the motivation behind his desire in telling the story of Robert Oppenheimer.
“Joy Ride” Screenwriters Cherry Chevapravatdumrong & Teresa Hsiao Embrace the Raunch
Adele Lim’s feature directorial debut Joy Ride cruised into theaters this past weekend, boasting critical raves. The laughs come early and often in Lim’s ensemble film, thanks in large part to screenwriters and producers Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao. The talented duo began writing the script for Joy Ride on spec, and that sense of freedom and play is on full display.
The screenwriters both met in the writer’s room in Seth MacFarlane’s joke-a-second animated raunch-fest Family Guy and in Joy Ride,
“Flamin’ Hot” Screenwriter Linda Yvette Chávez Serves Up a Story Straight From the Heart
Linda Yvette Chávez tells the story of Flamin’ Hot with faith, passion, and romance. The co-creator of the Netflix series Gentefied saw herself in the true story of Richard Montañez (Jesse Garcia), the Frito Lay janitor who dreamed of a snack that connected with his Mexican American community. With his great coach and partner in life, his wife Judy (Annie Gonzalez), Richard fulfilled his dream with Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
Chávez doesn’t focus on a single person with a singular vision.
Gina Prince-Bythewood, MPA Creator Award Recipient, Tells Her Story
An elite force of female soldiers, the Agojie, is all that stands between the African Kingdom of Dahomey and the combined forces of the Oyo Empire and Mahi people. The Oyo and Mahi plan to raid Dahomey villages and sell their captives to European slavers. We open on a Mahi village where raiders heat their machetes over a fire at night. Their leader hears something in the tall grass surrounding them and quiets his men,
“What’s Love Got to Do With It?” Creator Jemima Khan on Her Singular Rom-Com
For her foray into romantic comedies, writer/producer Jemima Khan looked, in part, at her own life for inspiration. While living in Pakistan with her ex-husband and his family for many years, she witnessed firsthand the process behind arranged marriage, now termed assisted marriage, and eventually returned to her native U.K. with a unique perspective on this cultural norm (her own union developed organically). Couple this insight with interviews she conducted with people either considering or already in an assisted marriage and an inside track into the dating woes of friends,
“Polite Society” Writer/Director Nida Manzoor on Her Genre-Melding Feature Debut
Writer/director Nida Manzoor grew up on martial arts, action, and Bollywood, so it makes sense that her feature directorial debut Polite Society would be a genre mashup that includes all that and more. An idea she’s been kicking around since her teen years, the film is a celebration of sisterhood, inspired, in part, by her experiences as a kid learning karate with real-life sister Sanya. Though you might know Manzoor for her iconoclastic and very feminist series We Are Lady Parts,
“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,
“Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” Writer Jeff Loveness Spotlights Marvel’s Wackiest Characters
Honey, I Shrunk the Baddest Supervillain in the Multiverse might have been the alternate title for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Evil things come in little packages – but with big punchlines – in the pivotal first entry in Marvel’s Phase 5.
Screenwriter Jeff Loveness was tasked with introducing a new supervillain into the MCU that has to top Thanos, but don’t expect him to do it with a straight face.
“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,
Writer/Director Elegance Bratton on His Breakout Film “The Inspection”
Writer/director Elegance Bratton’s autobiographical The Inspection is one of the year’s breakout films. Bratton stuck with the project for years because it most reflected who he is: a gay Black man who was homeless as a teenager, a Marine Corps veteran, and a Columbia University and NYU-educated filmmaker.
Bratton’s struggles began practically at birth with that unusual, magnificent name. “My mother named me Elegance but had a problem with me being gay,” Bratton said over the phone from his home in Baltimore.
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.
Best of 2022: “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” Writer/Director Rian Johnson Unpeels His Whodunit
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list.
When released in 2019, Rian Johnson’s star-studded, deliciously delightful who-done-it Knives Out was met with universal acclaim and became a smash hit. In it, star Daniel Craig shed all remnants of his Bond persona to play the quirky Southern genius detective Benoit Blanc in a performance so winning and a film so enjoyable even a character’s sweater became a sensation.
Best of 2022: “Winning Time” Writer Rodney Barnes on Scripting HBO’s Fast-Breaking Lakers Series
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list.
It’s pretty much a slam dunk that Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty will appeal to basketball fans. After all, it tells the story of one of the most pivotal moments in NBA history and features some of the game’s most notable figures — Magic Johnson,
Best of 2022: MPA Creator Award Recipient Writer/Director Nikyatu Jusu on her Stunning Debut Feature “Nanny”
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list.
Deploying West African folklore to interrogate the myth of the American dream, writer/director Nikyatu Jusu‘s debut feature Nanny is a remarkably assured genre-melding experience. Nanny also gives viewers something that’s sadly still quite rare—it evocatively places us inside the head, heart, and aching soul of Aisha (Anna Diop),
“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.
