Best of 2023: “Barbie” Casting Directors Allison Jones And Lucy Bevan on Populating Barbie Land

Posted on by babrams

*It’s our annual “Best of the Year” look back at some of our favorite interviews from the year. 

Since its release last month, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie has been hailed as a marvel of a balancing act between sincerity and hilarity. On top of the nuanced script, Barbieland is populated by a Barbie and Ken of every stripe, for every type, despite dozens of characters who share a mere two first names (plus the singular Allan). Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) and her dependent Ken (Ryan Gosling) were early commitments to the Warner Bros. project, but for co-casting directors Allison Jones (Curb Your Enthusiasm, Lady Bird) and Lucy Bevan (The Batman, Belfast), casting the wild melange of supporting doll roles meant combing through audition tapes of a who’s-who roster of actors thrilled at the chance to be immortalized as two of pop culture’s most iconic plastic figures.

aption: (L-r) MARGOT ROBBIE as Barbie, ALEXANDRA SHIPP as Barbie, MICHAEL CERA as Allan, ARIANA GREENBLATT as Sasha and AMERICA FERRERA as Gloria in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “BARBIE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

The actors needed to be funny, of course. But what set apart the audition tapes (more on that anachronism in a moment) was a pure and well-rounded earnestness. “The thing that Greta did always stress was that none of these people were sarcastic or winking at the camera. They were really Kens and Barbies,” Jones explained. In addition to being able to land a comedy beat, the actors needed to be sincere, truthful, and guileless. “There were certain scenes we used to audition, and the fine line between the comedy and sincerity of those characters is a difficult balance,” Bevan said.

 

Because casting took place during Covid, Jones and Bevan reverted back to the use of taped auditions. “Huge actors went on tape with only seeing a few pages of dialogue,” Jones said, and since “everybody was Barbie in the script,” the pair wound up working in reverse, sending the tapes they liked on to Gerwig, who then identified particular talent for different Barbies and Kens. “She really made the characters for who she liked best in different auditions,” Jones said, designating Issa Rae as President Barbie, for example, and looking for Ken’s arch-rival Ken by seeking out the actor who would be best to “beach off” with Gosling’s character.

Caption: (L-r) EMMA MACKEY as Barbie, NCUTI GATWA as Ken, SIMU LIU as Ken, MARGOT ROBBIE as Barbie, RYAN GOSLING as Ken and KINGSLEY BEN-ADIR as Ken in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “BARBIE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Caption: ISSA RAE as Barbie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “BARBIE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

Before it became a go-to quote in the Barbie fandom lexicon, rival Ken’s challenge — “I’ll beach you off any day, Ken” —  was one of the film’s audition lines. “Those scenes were fun to audition,” said Bevan. “Some of the Kens would take off their t-shirts, and we were like, no, no, you don’t need to take off your t-shirt. But Simu [Liu] just nailed that [line] in the film.” Allan required some demystifying. Jones used pictures of different Allan dolls owned by a Barbie collector friend, sending them out to agents to shed light on this previously unknown resident of Barbieland, now immortalized by Michael Cera. “I’m so happy that in perpetuity now he’s like an icon for being Allan,” Jones joked.

Caption: (L-r) ISSA RAE as Barbie, SCOTT EVANS as Ken, SIMU LIU as Ken, EMMA MACKEY as Barbie and NCUTI GATWA as Ken in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “BARBIE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

Since the film’s release, the internet has teemed with anecdotes of beloved comedic actors who wanted to be in Barbie but aren’t. It’s not because they aren’t funny enough. “It’s rather a boring reason, actually,” Bevan said. “On a movie like this, it was a hugely ambitious shoot and a complicated schedule, and you can have brilliant ideas, and people’s availability either does or doesn’t work.” Thanks to strict Covid rules in the UK, where most of the film was shot, and the scale of the project, even smaller roles required a three-month commitment. So, no gossip there.

Caption: (L-r) RYAN GOSLING, MARGOT ROBBIE and Director/Writer GRETA GERWIG on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ “BARBIE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Jaap Buitendijk

Even auditioning was a commitment, given Barbie‘s closely-guarded script. Bevan and Jones got to read it in its entirety, of course, but were limited to sending the actors’ sides (short script excerpts). “And now you have to send things through websites where you have to go through layers of passwords to get to the sides,” said Jones, of the effort actors went through to tape themselves. “So it was very secretive. I don’t think anybody knew quite how good it was,” she added. But just as Gerwig has become a name who can draw in movie-goers no matter the project, so too is the director for the actors themselves.“We weren’t allowed to send the script to anybody. So people did a lot of it on faith,” Jones said. “Everybody wanted to work with Greta, for good reason.”

 

For more on Barbie, check out these stories:

Historic Success of “Barbie” has Made Greta Gerwig Highest-Grossing Female Director Ever Domestically

“Barbie” and Greta Gerwig Make History Again

“Barbie” Hair & Makeup Artist Ivana Primorac Conjures Personality From Plastic

Pretty in Pink With “Barbie” Production Designer Sarah Greenwood & Set Decorator Katie Spencer

Featured image: Caption: (L-r) ANA CRUZ KAYNE as Barbie, SHARON ROONEY as Barbie, ALEXANDRA SHIPP as Barbie, MARGOT ROBBIE as Barbie, HARI NEF as Barbie and EMMA MACKEY as Barbie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “BARBIE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

Best of 2023: How the “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” Visual Team Created a Mesmerizing Multiverse

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*It’s our annual “Best of the Year” look back at some of our favorite interviews from the year. 

When Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was released five years ago, its web of 2D and 3D animation became a box office hit and went on to win the Oscar for best animated feature. Incredibly, the return of Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore) in Across the Spider-Verse has lived up to the hype, earning over $270 million worldwide in ticket sales (at the time of publication).

Visually, the sequel continues to marry artistic styles to make it feel as if a comic book has come to life, but this time around, there is more of it. A lot more. The story is bigger, more villainous, and a heck of a lot more Spider-y. Thankfully, the emotional arc doesn’t get lost in the multiverse – it’s only Miles who physically gets trapped and tries to sling and swing his way out. The new story brought in a fresh trio of directors (Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson) and behind-the-scenes creatives to reinvigorate the success of the original.

“They wanted something entirely fresh,” says character designer Kris Anka about the approach to the visual language. “The whole thinking was just because the animation of the first film was good doesn’t mean it can’t be better.” Anka was one of several character designers on Across the Spider-Verse and oversaw the creation of Miguel (voiced by Oscar Isaac), a Spider-Man-like superhero responsible for producing the multiverse travel technology that has Miles and Gwen (voiced by Hailee Steinfeld), along with new characters, Spider-Punk Hobie (voiced by Daniel Kaluuya) and Jessica Drew (voiced by Issa Rae) fighting a portal-jumping “villain of the week” named Spot (voiced by Jason Schwartzman).

Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Isaac) and Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) in Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation’s SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE.

Anka spent around 15 months in creating Miguel, adding new layers to the suit design and silhouette of the character. “Depending on how close you are to him, you see different layers of detail. At the macro level, it’s this simple red, black, and blue design, but as you get closer, there’s patterning on everything,” says Anka. The designer added layers of cultural specificity to Miguel’s suit. “I went on a deep dive into Mesoamerican patterns and tried to find ways to add culture to the suit.” In using textiles and familiar patterns, the design language was grounded in something tangible instead of arbitrarily conceived.

Jessica Drew (Issa Rae) and Miguel O’ Hara (Oscar Isaac) in Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animations’ SPIDER-MAN™: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE.

“Another aspect the directors had coming into the film was that Miguel was intentionally giving himself his powers. It wasn’t a bite or an accident, but he was actively doing this,” notes Anka. “Miguel’s entire persona is that he’s willfully doing all this, and he takes things seriously. He puts in the work compared to someone like Peter Parker [voiced by Jack Quaid], who has a naturalistic body and attitude. Miguel had to be the opposite, where everything is designed, and everything Miguel is doing is with intent. It was about trying to find a balance and a look that suggests Miguel takes this way too seriously.”

Miguel O’ Hara (Oscar Isaac) clashes with Vulture (Jorma Taccone) in Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animations’ SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE.

In creating how Miguel moved on screen, head of character animation Alan Hawkins took inspiration from the character Stringer Bell (Idris Elba) from the hit television series The Wire. “He [Stringer] has this really interesting posture,” notes Hawks. “He looks like a tough guy, but there’s a slouch to him. It feels like he’s burdened by the weight of responsibility, but still seems like he’s aggressive. That nature inspired Miguel’s posture for most of the film.”

 

For Hobie, a very English (and cool) punk version of Spider-Man, Hawkins and the team used mixed frame rates in his design to make him feel chaotic and inconsistent. “The jacket he wears is on 4s, but his body is sometimes on 3s, and his guitar is even lower,” says Hawkins. The 4s and 3s Hawkins is referring to are the number of individual drawings for each second of animation based on a 24 frames per second timeline. Animating on 1’s means there are 24 individual drawings for each second of animation – the action is fast and fluid. Animating on 2’s has 12 drawings, 3’s there’s 8, and 4’s has 6 drawings. The lower the number (3, 4…), the slower the animation can look. Having Hobie’s body and jacket on different animations delivered a juxtaposed style that matched his rocker personality.

Hobie Brown/Spider-Punk, voiced by Daniel Kaluuya. Courtesy Sony Pictures.

Miles, now slightly older, saw a refresh to his look (based on models by Omar Smith) that combined new fabrics and reflective patterns to a black suit that has a red stripe down the side and different-sized Spider-Man logos on the front and back to differentiate him while in motion. “We wanted that immediate read for the audience,” notes Anka. In animating Miles, the team referenced the first film to pose his eye and get the angle of his cheeks right. Gwen saw subtle changes in her costume, adding different hints of pink to her suit.

 

However, the biggest hurdle was creating a near-infinite number of Spider-Man found in the so-called Spider Society – the central “lounge” (created by Miguel) for all the Spider-Man traveling through the multiverse. For the climatic sequence that has Miles being chased by every single society member, the animation team aimed to make it as interesting as possible, creating different looks to avoid repetition. The edge-of-your-seat scene is packed with action and well-placed humor that even sees a T-Rex version of Spider-Man chomp on screen. 

 

Though Across the Spider-Verse immerses you with a visual style where any frame could be used as a promotional poster, the guiding light for the creative team was the emotional beats of the story. “Animation is hard, and making a strong acting choice is different from a strong animation choice. Something the movie has always strived for was good acting and not good animation,” says Hawkins. “We ignored animation. It was the tool we were using, but we thought about how a real person acts who is feeling these complex layers of emotions. We wanted to inject that into each one of our characters.”

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is in theaters now.

 

For more on Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, check out these stories:

“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” Composer Daniel Pemberton Reveals a Few Score Secrets

A 14-Year-Old Whiz Kid Animated a Scene in “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”

“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” Producers Tease Live-Action Miles Morales & Animated “Spider-Woman”

“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” Review Round-Up: Web-Slinging Bliss in Truly Epic Sequel

Featured image: A visual development image featuring Pavitr Prabhakar, aka Spider-Man India, Gwen Stacy and Miles Morales fighting The Spot in the city of Mumbattan on Earth-50101 – a kaleidoscopic hybrid of Mumbai and Manhattanfor Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animations’ SPIDER-MAN™: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE.

 

 

Best of 2023: Christopher Nolan on Exploding Myths & Exposing Humanity in “Oppenheimer”

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*It’s our annual “Best of the Year” look back at some of our favorite interviews from the year. 

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.

L to R: Tom Conti is Albert Einstein and Cillian Murphy is J. Robert Oppenheimer in OPPENHEIMER, written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan.

A “singularly dramatic moment in history” — That’s how Nolan describes the motivation behind his desire in telling the story of Robert Oppenheimer. 

“This moment in which Oppenheimer [and] the key scientists in the Manhattan Project realized they could not completely eliminate the possibility of the chain reaction from the first atomic detonation, that first test that would destroy the world,” Nolan says. 

It was that specific moment in history, Oppenheimer’s reckoning with the possible world-ending consequences of his actions, that guided Nolan’s storytelling.

OPPENHEIMER, written and directed by Christopher Nolan

“His story is one of the most dramatic ever encounters, full of all kinds of twists, and suspense, things that you couldn’t possibly deal with in any kind of fictional context,” he explains. “So I really got hooked on the idea of trying to bring the audience into his experience…what he went through, make his decisions with him…try and arrive at a telling of his story that would invite understanding rather than judgment.”

Moral ambiguity is a theme Nolan frequently explores in his films, and Oppenheimer tackles that tenfold. But Nolan says he’s not here to tell us whether or not Robert Oppenheimer was a good person but rather to walk the audience through his decision-making.  

L to R: Robert Downey Jr is Lewis Strauss and Cillian Murphy is J. Robert Oppenheimer in OPPENHEIMER, written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan.

“Humans, individual flaws, and the tension between his aspirations and his brilliant intellect telling him what he should be doing, and his inability to live up to those things, or his blindness to where some of these things might take him,” Nolan explains of his creative process. “That’s what creates interesting tension in the story.”

When stripped raw, Oppenheimer, at its core, is a story with an age-old message: If you play with fire, you’re going to get burned. And it tells us as much in the opening shot: billowing flames, hundreds of feet high, encompass the entirety of the screen, the words of the great story of Prometheus overlaying the fire. 

“We haven’t made a documentary; we’ve made a dramatic interpretation of his life,” Nolan says. “You’re looking at a character who was very careful. But everything he said about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—it was very precise, never apologized. He never acknowledged any guilt as relating to his part and what had happened. And yet, all of his actions from 1945 onwards are the actions of somebody truly suffering under an immense weight of shame and guilt.”

L to R: Florence Pugh is Jean Tatlock and Cillian Murphy is J. Robert Oppenheimer in OPPENHEIMER, written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan.

After Hiroshima and the death of Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), there’s a scene in the film where Oppenheimer is slumped against the trunk of a tree, spiraling into an all-consuming panic. Kitty Oppenheimer (Emily Blunt) shakes her husband and says, “You don’t get to sin and then play the victim.” 

OPPENHEIMER, written and directed by Christopher Nolan

Nolan doesn’t confirm his personal feelings on Oppenheimer’s morality, and when asked if this scene is meant as an interpretation of Kitty’s feelings in that part of her life or an interpretation of the audience’s feelings toward the character, he says it’s all of the above.

“There are times when the writing wants to synchronize with or guide the audience’s particular expectations or interpretations,” he explains. “But I think what’s most successful is when it synchronizes sort of seamlessly with the feelings and emotions of the character in the moment.”

L to R: Emily Blunt (as Kitty Oppenheimer) with writer, director, and producer Christopher Nolan and Cillian Murphy (as J. Robert Oppenheimer) on the set of OPPENHEIMER.

Oppenheimer is immensely detailed — an attribute characteristic of Nolan’s filmmaking style, along with intricately woven storylines. No apple goes unnoticed, no close-up without intent. In Oppenheimer, it’s the hanging of bed sheets on the clothesline to dry that become one of the most profound metaphors in the film and serves as an almost unspoken language between Robert and Kitty. 

L to R: Cillian Murphy is J. Robert Oppenheimer and Emily Blunt is Kitty Oppenheimer in OPPENHEIMER, written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan.

“I came across this fact in the book, this notion that because [Robert] couldn’t talk directly to anybody about the success or failure of the test, they came up with this code relating to change in his life,” Nolan explains. [Oppenheimer was based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.] “The sheets make up a bit. And I wanted to bring it together in a visual sense. For me, Kitty Oppenheimer is one of the most interesting characters in the film—one of the most interesting characters of Oppenheimer’s real-life story—their relationship was complex. So I love the idea of a coded message between them that only they can understand.”

Kitty Oppenheimer was a brilliant scientist in her own right, and Nolan says that during her time at Los Alamos (the creation town of the atomic bomb), she was “given very little to do,” so the sheets also symbolize her domestic experience. 

“It was very frustrating [for her] and caused a lot of problems,” he says. “So, for me, it was the coming together of all of those different things.”

L to R: Emily Blunt is Kitty Oppenheimer and Cillian Murphy is J. Robert Oppenheimer in OPPENHEIMER, written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan.

During his 32-year marriage to Kitty, Robert Oppenheimer had a long history of affairs, a fact not left out of Nolan’s retelling. One of Oppenheimer’s most famous lines in history is when he quoted part of the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” after witnessing the first detonation of the atomic bomb. In Nolan’s version, that line comes during a sex scene with Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh). 

“I wanted to destabilize the context in which that quote normally appears,” he says. “Oppenheimer was very controlling of his image in his public statements. He was extremely self-conscious, very, very aware of the theatricality of his persona, and used that to further a lot of causes he espoused, the things he was worried about. And I wanted to present this in a new way that would cut through that.”

Like many of Nolan’s films, Oppenheimer shuffles between past and present — between the creation of the atomic bomb and the two security hearings beginning in 1954 about Oppenheimer’s affiliation with the Communist party. Beyond the use of black-and-white scenes to depict the timeline of the hearing, Nolan says the color shifts serve another purpose.

“You’re looking for a subtle way, a clearer way of shifting between the intensely subjective storytelling in the cover sequences,” Nolan explains. “And then the more objective view very often provided by Robert Downey Jr., as his character, Lewis Strauss.”

L to R: Robert Downey Jr is Lewis Strauss and Cillian Murphy is J. Robert Oppenheimer in OPPENHEIMER, written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan.

Oppenheimer is in theaters now.

For more on Oppenheimer, check out these stories:

The Barbenheimer Phenomenon Was Real, and Historic

“Oppenheimer” Review Round-Up: One of the Best Biopics Ever Made

Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” Called “Best and Most Important Film This Century” By Another Film Legend

Featured image: L to R: Cillian Murphy (as J. Robert Oppenheimer) and writer, director, and producer Christopher Nolan on the set of OPPENHEIMER.

Best of 2023: How “The Color Purple” DP Dan Laustsen Made Visual Music

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*It’s our annual “Best of the Year” look back at some of our favorite interviews from the year. This interview with “The Color Purple” cinematographer Dan Laustsen more than qualifies, and, with the film opening wide in theaters today, it feels like a fitting Christmas Day post. Happy Holidays!

Danish cinematographer Dan Laustsen has been shooting movies for forty years, earning two Oscar nominations along the way for his contributions to Guillermo del Toro’s films The Shape of Water and Nightmare Alley. Director Blitz Bazawule, on the other hand, had never made a major Hollywood motion picture before helming The Color Purple (opening Dec. 25). But together, director and cinematographer melded their talents to resounding effect to create a sumptuous-looking movie musical based on Alice Walker’s 1971 novel.

“This is Blitz’s first big movie, but that doesn’t matter,” Laustsen says. “He has a very sharp eye, and I’m here to help make the movie the way the director wants. Blitz had the vision, so we tried to bring that to the screen.”

Previously adapted as a movie drama and a Broadway musical, this version of The Color Purple, starring Fantasia Barrino, Taraji P. Henson, and Colman Domingo, offers song, dance, and intensely dramatic sequences to tell the story of a family in Georgia suffering abuse and heartbreak before ultimately emerging triumphant through the redemptive power of love.

Laustsen, speaking from Los Angeles, explains how he used southern sunlight and a shrewd selection of camera gear to differentiate dialogue-driven drama from musical sequences.

 

We talked to you a few years ago about your work on The Shape of Water, which includes a fantasy musical sequence, but The Color Purple marks the first time you’ve shot a full-blown musical, right?

That’s correct. I’ve never done a musical before. I knew the “Color Purple” story, but what is the reality of the story, and what is the music? That was difficult for me to bring into my head. I had long conversations with Blitz where it became more and more about a realistic world splitting into this fantasy world. It should not just be something where our characters are walking down the street, and then they start to sing.

Cinematographer DAN LAUSTSEN on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Ser Baffo

So, how did you achieve these two distinct looks through your cinematography?

The drama world is very much [feeling like] the southern states of America with warm light coming through the windows. We went much more realistic camera-wise, lens-wise, and color-wise.

(L-r) FANTASIA BARRINO as Celie and TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Ser Baffo
(L-r) FANTASIA BARRINO as Celie and TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Ser Baffo

In the singing world, we went more wide angle and moved the camera a little bit more, which I think brought the joy of music onto the screen. Also, the color palette gets a little more rich in the singing world.

Caption: (L-r) TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery, FANTASIA BARRINO as Celie and DANIELLE BROOKS as Sophia in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

What kind of camera rig did you use for The Color Purple?

We used an Alexa LF Mini and shot on Signature Prime lenses with a diffusion filter behind the lenses. I like the Signature Primes because they’re very clean, and very one-to-one. Then, you can put a diffusion [filter] behind the lens. We also used a fair amount of smoke.

(L-r) TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery and FANTASIA BARRINO as Celie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Eli Ade.

The Color Purple opens with an overhead shot of a man on a horse playing a banjo. It’s quite striking. How did you guys decide on this image to introduce the story?

That was Blitz’s idea in the storyboards: he wanted to start with the top shot. It looks easy, but I’m very much into preparation. We rehearsed it so many times at the studio backlot with a guy on a horse that we knew exactly where to put the chassis and the base of the crane so we could keep the camera moving when we got to the location.

(L-r) Director BLITZ BAZAWULE and COLMAN DOMINGO on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Eli Ade.

The warm Georgia sun brightens your unbroken opening shot that leads to the two little girls singing on a tree branch. Natural light also adds a joyous feeling a little later to a beach sequence where young Celie and her sister Nettie sing a duet. How did you capture that?

We filmed that in Savannah, Georgia. When you shoot on a beach, you can not bring a bunch of stuff in because the sand is so soft. We shot some of that on a Technocrane and also used a Steadicam, which gave us more flexibility to chase those girls as they were playing around. It was like a small ballet. We’d spent a lot of time on blocking and the scene those girls were very aware of the camera.

Caption: (L-r) PHYLICIA PEARL MPASI as Young Celie and HALLE BAILEY as Young Nettie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

Midway through the movie, Taraji P. Henson makes a grand entrance as blues singer Shug, the local girl-made-good. How did you treat her return to town in the fancy car?

You’re starting with this close-up and then going to a big wide shot in one take. That’s challenging because the close-up has to be a beauty shot, and then the wide shot has to feel atmospheric. We used 18K Aputure [lighting] and put steel blue lights. I’m a big fan of steel blue instead of blue blue for the night feeling. That’s something we did on Shape of Water and Nightmare Alley with Guillermo del Toro.

TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Lynsey Weatherspoon

In a later night-time sequence, Shug looks every inch the conquering hero when she arrives by boat at this riverside nightclub. You wanted to conjure this romantic, larger than life vibe?

It has to be like that. Shug is like the release, coming to take Celie away from this dark world she’s in, so when we see Shug in the car and then in the boat, she has to look like a fairy tale queen. The costumes were red and the contrast color was steel–blue from behind. I thought it was very beautiful.

TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

What exactly is steel blue versus just plain blue?

Steel blue is blue-green – – there’s more cyan. You see a lot of it right now, but the first time I used steel blue was when we did Mimic 100 years ago [laughing] with Guillermo del Toro. It’s a very beautiful color and works as a nice contrast between the skin tones.

COLMAN DOMINGO as Mister in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Ser Baffo.

You’ve been making movies since the eighties, whereas director Blitz has worked with Beyonce and directed an indie film, but he’s never made a Hollywood motion picture before. How did you find common ground?

The first time Blitz called, he asked me what movies I liked, and I said I Am Cuba.  It’s a black and white movie from 1962 filmed in Cuba by a Russian DP. Everything is shot very wide angle and there’s [a lot of] movement in the camera. Blitz said, “I love that movie too.” It had nothing to do with The Color Purple, but somehow we both felt that was how our movie should feel. It was interesting to start with something so far away and come back to where we are now with The Color Purple.

 

This movie has many characters, 15 songs and several decades worth narrative, yet it feels very cohesive. It sounds like you and Blitz collaborated well together.

Blitz is a very clever, very original director. He wants a movie where the light and the camera are moving to tell the story. It wasn’t like he was thinking yellow and I was thinking blue. We were synching right away, even when he was in Altana and I was in Copenhagen during Covid.

(L-r) FANTASIA BARRINO and TARAJI P. HENSON on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Eli Ade.

In fact, you wound up filming The Color Purple during the Pandemic. That must have been stressful.

It was a super difficult three or four weeks. We had to shoot the Easter dinner scene five times because people were getting Covid all the time. We’d have to shut down, take the lights away, come back again. But when you see the scene, you don’t feel that because Blitz knows how to get the actors and everyone else aligned.

(L-r) Cinematographer DAN LAUSTSEN and Director BLITZ BAZAWULE on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Ser Baffo

For more on Warner Bros., Max, and more, check out these stories:

“Superman: Legacy” Update: James Gunn Teases Superman’s Costume, Miriam Shor Joins Cast

New “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” Trailer Focuses on Black Manta’s Brutal Mission

James Gunn Confirms Nicholas Hoult Will be Lex Luthor in “Superman: Legacy”

Featured image: A scene from Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

Best of 2023: “The Color Purple” Costume Designer Francine Jamison-Tanchuck’s Stunning Creations

Posted on by babrams

*It’s our annual “Best of the Year” look back at some of our favorite interviews from the year. This interview works doubly well as “The Color Purple” is in theaters today. Merry Christmas!

There’s a famous line in Alice Walker’s 1982 novel The Color Purple that goes: “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” It’s a message that even God can become annoyed when people overlook the wonderful things he creates. One such creation is what the character of Celie represents. “She’s a beautiful flower and a beautiful person that’s being trampled on,” costume designer Francine Jamison-Tanchuck tells The Credits. “Alice’s novel is about how none of us should feel unworthy or made to feel that way.”

(L-r) TARAJI P. HENSON and FANTASIA BARRINO with Director BLITZ BAZAWULE on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Eli Ade

Director Blitz Bazawule (Black is King) reimagines the iconic story about self-realization and the unbreakable bond of sisterhood in the rural South that was once a Spielberg film (1985) and a Tony Award-winning musical. For its costumes, Jamison-Tanchuck curated an ensemble of handmade garments, vibrant jazz club attire, and traditional African garb spun from Kente cloth, details of which span multiple decades beginning in the early 1900s. Her previous work includes Coming to America, Glory, The Negotiator, Roman J. Israel, Esq. as well as the original The Color Purple, but this project is the apotheosis of her sensibilities, blending tactile textures, stirring colors, and bespoke silhouettes in illustrious style.

Caption: (L-r) PHYLICIA PEARL MPASI as Young Celie and HALLE BAILEY as Young Nettie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

“Blitz and I were constantly speaking of the color and how we would like to start it for this journey,” she says. The designer began dressing a young Celie (Phylicia Pearl Mpasi) and her sister Nettie (Halle Bailey) in crisp white cotton dresses as a display of innocence. The color reappears when the two make their way back to each other as adults. Separating their lives is a controlling, curmudgeon of a man named Mister (Colman Domingo), who makes Celie (portrayed by Fantasia Barrino as an adult) his wife and pushes Nettie away from her.

COLMAN DOMINGO as Mister in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Ser Baffo.
(L-r) FANTASIA BARRINO as Celie and TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Ser Baffo

Period, tattered clothing in muted colors dot Celie’s marriage with Mister, but the subdued palette becomes more colorful through the eras, making an entrance when Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson), a strong, unafraid singer, visits. It’s then the color red becomes an inspirational motif for Celie, first being introduced in an eye-popping dress Shug wears during her fiery Juke Joint performance.

(L-r) FANTASIA BARRINO and TARAJI P. HENSON on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Eli Ade.

Shug’s complete ensemble has a floor-length red coat with fur accents, red gloves, a feather headdress, and diamond-encrusted heels and is accessorized with a peacock hand fan. The dress itself has a fitted bodice drizzled in a delightful pattern of jewelry and three tiers of beads hanging along the bottom, reflecting a 1920s style. “I call it the cocoon coat because Shug is almost wrapped around in it like the cocoon of a butterfly. It’s another statement before we see the dress,” says Jamison-Tanchuck. “Then she takes it off, exploding with this outfit. To me, it was a special moment. That’s Shug in her glory.”

TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.Photo by Ser Baffo

Researching the Roaring Twenties was key to the dazzling look. “I ended up seeing how entertainers dressed in the early and mid-20s, and some of them wore see-through outfits and were pretty risqué in that era. So it wasn’t a far leap for me to have the slit on Shug’s dress go so high up,” says Jamison-Tanchuck. “She was able to move freely as she was dancing, and the outfit was able to shine in the darkness.”

Celie begins to step out from her shell thanks to Shug, a growing bond that permeates throughout the film. “Shug is the spark of life for Celie,” says Jamison-Tanchuck. “When Shug gives her a dress to wear at the Juke Joint as her guest, that opens up a world of loving feelings and something in Celie that she was worth something to someone and to herself.” The color purple is introduced into her wardrobe when she’s finally had enough of Mister. When Celie becomes a shop owner, red returns as a nod to Shug’s influence during a musical number inside the store.

Caption: (L-r) TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery, FANTASIA BARRINO as Celie and DANIELLE BROOKS as Sophia in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

It’s here we see Mister, a man who took his insecurities out on someone else, turn a page, offering a few kind words, and purchasing a pair of flamboyant pants Celie cannot sell. “When Celie left, Mister realized that she was a really intricate part of his life,” says Jamison-Tanchuck. “When he visits her to be friends or to resume the relationship, he thinks he was doing Celie a good turn by buying the trousers she couldn’t sell. My idea was to make the trousers shorter in length and a little bit flooded. Blitz and I liked this shiny, scaly-looking fabric. It’s very reptilian.”

COLMAN DOMINGO as Mister in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

When Celie reunites with Nettie (portrayed by Ciara as an adult) in the glowing backdrop of a majestic tree surrounded by tables, the actors wore white and cream colors with nods to African culture. “Blitz was an amazing inspiration because he is Ghanaian, and he has a wonderful friend who is also from Ghana who I conferred with and had meetings about how this would work in this particular era,” she continues. “Of course, the Kente cloth has been around for thousands of years, so you cannot go past that. We used that in the wraps and kept it simple and natural and less color so we could show off the beautiful quilt Celie worked on all those decades.” Besides the cultural significance of the costume design, whites were chosen to recall when Celie and Nettie were young women playing on a beach. “It was a moment for Celie to be united again with her beloved sister. They are back, almost with that pure love that they had, and it never ended,” says Jamison-Tanchuck.

A scene from Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

The Color Purple arrives in theaters on December 25. 

For more on Warner Bros., Max, and more, check out these stories:

How “The Color Purple” DP Dan Laustsen Made Visual Music

“Superman: Legacy” Update: James Gunn Teases Superman’s Costume, Miriam Shor Joins Cast

New “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” Trailer Focuses on Black Manta’s Brutal Mission

Featured image: TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

 

“All of Us Strangers” Cinematographer Jamie Ramsay on Lighting a Lonely Life

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Based on Taichi Yamada’s 1987 novel Strangers, writer and director Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers takes place between a barren tower block in London, where Adam (Andrew Scott) leads a solitary existence, and his childhood home in the suburbs, where he frequently visits his parents, who died thirty years earlier. In London, Adam spends his days alone, until his neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal) appears outside his door, proffering whiskey. The closer the two men get, the more preoccupied Adam becomes with his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell), with Harry’s initial appearance seeming to trigger Adam’s first visit back to his old house. Mum and Dad, frozen in both style and attitude from approximately the early 1990s, are thrilled to see their son again and to learn he’s become a writer. Subsequent visits, as they discover that he is gay, admit their own parenting faults, and react in confusion as Adam begs them not to go out on the night of the car crash that took their lives, are much tougher.

Whether these encounters take place in Adam’s mind or represent an earth-spirit crossover realm is open to interpretation.“You know what’s funny?” asked Jamie Ramsay, the film’s cinematographer, “so many people have come up to me and asked me about this. There are so many little conspiracy theories — is Adam also stuck in the middle world? Did Harry ever exist? And that’s the beauty of it.” Having left behind Australia for London, Ramsay leaned into his own experience of loneliness for inspiration — “I thought, what’s a more beautiful way for me to exorcise this grief than to channel it through making this movie?” — and then worked to visually separate Adam’s London present and his suburban past using different technical tools.

Director Andrew Haigh and cinematographer Jamie Ramsay on the set of ALL OF US STRANGERS. Photo by Chris Harris. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

Ramsay lit Adam’s childhood home and the suburbs with incandescent lighting and neon tubing that may not have been intentionally from the late 1980s and early 1990s, but given the film’s shooting schedule during a post-Covid flurry of industry activity, “we really had to struggle to put our package together. To be honest with you, I think our lighting package actually was vintage, but still beautiful,” he said. To set Adam’s contemporary life apart from his journeys back into childhood settings, the cinematographer shot against an LED wall with a digital backdrop and matched the natural shifting of exposure outside Adam’s apartment. The effect is realistic and a bit cold and feels a world away from the light, dreamy aesthetic at home with Mum and Dad.

Andrew Scott in ALL OF US STRANGERS. Photo by Chris Harris. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.
Jamie Bell and Claire Foy in ALL OF US STRANGERS. Photo by Chris Harris. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

“Any sort of decisions that we decided to take were led primarily by our director Andrew’s interest in keeping everything as quiet as possible,” Ramsay said, and so when we return to Adam’s past, he simply arrives, stepping into the halcyon lighting of his parents’ kitchen. “For me, having that ethereal presence of a spirit that washes through the windows and wraps around the characters was just a way to put this home in this idyllic position, which is, I think, how we often position memory and good moments in our lives,” Ramsay said.

Claire Foy and Andrew Scott in ALL OF US STRANGERS. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

Quiet in dialogue as well as in spirit, the cinematographer felt at ease responding to whole scenes devoid of chatter, using linear, more guarded camera movement in Adam’s contemporary life, which becomes more organic and reactive as the walls between his past and present start to break down. “When it’s layered and nuanced like this, it’s much easier for me to develop a sense of honesty with how the camera responds and how the scene feels and looks,” Ramsay said. The cinematographer stays tightly focused on the characters, keeping the audience close to Adam and Harry as their relationship deepens and as Adam reestablishes a family dynamic with his parents, winding up nestled between them in bed.

Jamie Bell, Andrew Scott and Claire Foy in ALL OF US STRANGERS. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

“The obvious thing to do is to frame characters in big wides and leave them really small in the frame. But if I thought about it logically, loneliness is experienced from the inside out,” said Ramsay, who instead conveys the isolated nature of Adam’s life by staying close. The effect keeps the audience in Adam’s bubble, seeing only what he sees. And having seen no one, save for Harry and the ambiguous presence of Mum and Dad, you come away with the sense that for Adam, there isn’t anybody else out there.

Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott in ALL OF US STRANGERS. Photo by Chris Harris. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved.

All Us Strangers is in select theaters now.

Featured image: Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott in ALL OF US STRANGERS. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

 

“Dr. Death” Showrunner, Executive Producer & Stars on Season 2

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In the second season of the celebrated Peacock series Dr Death, the show takes on another doctor featured on the hit Wondery true crime podcast, “Miracle Man,” Paolo Macchiarini. The story is of the world-renowned surgeon (played here by Edgar Ramirez) celebrated for his groundbreaking work in regenerative medicine and organ transplantation, but ultimately disgraced by his misconduct, dangerous practices, and web of deceit.  

His rise and fall are, in part, influenced by the romantic relationship Macchiarini built with reporter Benita Alexander (Mandy Moore), who first covered and brought his story to a wider audience, then broke a cardinal rule in journalism by becoming intimate with her source. The doctor’s duplicity extended beyond his practice and medical research to lies in his relationship with Benita. She eventually connected with whistleblowers inside the medical community to stop Macchiarini and his surgeries, which were leading to fatalities across the world. 

For the second season of Dr. Death, writer and producer Ashley Michel Hoban took over from first season showrunner Patrick Macmanus, who serves as executive producer on season two. The Credits spoke to Hoban and Patrick Mcmanus, as well as three of the series stars, Gustaf Hammarsten, Ashley Madekwe, and Luke Kirby, who play doctors Anders Svensson, Ana Lakshmi, and Nathan Gamelli on the show. Their three characters are an amalgamation of the many doctors who worked with Macchiarini but came to realize his research and medical practice were not only flawed, but dangerous. 

 

Ashley Michel, you listened to the Wondery podcast a number of times to imbue this season with the spirit of the true story. What struck you as being essential to connecting audiences to the story we see?

Ashley Michel Hoban: Yesim’s story, I think, for most people, and certainly for me, hit on a different level. It was Yesim Cetir, the Turkish girl who had tracheal surgery and went through so much. The more I listened to her story, the more I think I got a sense of what the other doctors were going through around her, witnessing her journey, and trying to make sense of how it happened while it was happening. That became incredibly important, particularly to the whistleblower story, particularly to Luke Kirby’s character. In the story, these doctors are an amalgamation of different people because there are so many doctors that helped take down Paolo Macchiarini that we had to combine them into multiple characters, but the way that patient specifically affected him and his character became a real tentpole for the whole season.

Gustaf, what was your experience working with Ashley Michel as showrunner? 

Gustaf Hammarsten: She was fantastic because we could collaborate, work with her, and talk to her at any time during the process. She was always inviting us to offer our take on what we were doing, and asking if we had any input, then would absorb this information and sometimes add an element to the story, which was wonderful.

DR. DEATH — “Like Magic” Episode 201 — Pictured: (l-r) Gustaf Hammarsten as Dr. Svensson, Edgar Ramírez as Dr. Paolo Macchiarini — (Photo by: Scott McDermott/PEACOCK)

Ashley, there’s a powerful chemistry between the three characters that eventually band together as whistleblowers. Was that also the case with your three actors? 

Ashley Madekwe: Yes! I had an instant camaraderie with Gustaf and Luke, but it felt like the scenes were written that way. Also, on one of our first days, we were all waiting while they were shooting a big crowd scene, and we started talking, and we started talking at a deeper level immediately, getting to the meat of the conversation and putting the world to rights.  

DR. DEATH — “Tarantela Telaraña” Episode 204 — Pictured: (l-r) Ashley Madekwe as Dr. Ana Lasbrey, Luke Kirby as Dr. Nathan Gamelli, Edgar Ramírez as Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, Alisha Erözer as Yesim Cetir — (Photo by: Scott McDermott/PEACOCK)

Ashley Michel, this season has some pretty intense surgery scenes. 

Ashley Michel Hoban: We had lots of practice in season one doing surgeries. I do think we get a lot more graphic this season. We have way more blood and way more rats. We did want it to feel very real, so we had an incredible special effects makeup team and a really wonderful visual effects team that helped get us over the finish line for those surgical scenes. We also had this awesome surgical technical advisor who was always on set and has been a part of it since season one. 

Gustaf, Ashley, and Luke, all three of you observed surgeries as part of preparing for your roles. How did that impact your performances? 

Ashley Madekwe: I think they were really important, so when we were doing our surgery scenes, we could be in the moment. There’s an element of being slightly removed from it because when you’re there and the patient is on the table, they are completely draped, so the only thing that’s exposed is the area that’s going to be operated on. It’s almost like you’re not looking at a person. 

Luke Kirby: It was remarkable how innocuous it felt. I had to keep reminding myself that there was a patient there. I know a surgeon in those moments really does have to zone in on the mechanics of the body, not the preciousness and precariousness of life. It really put me in touch with the tightrope that a surgeon has to walk in those rooms. 

Ashley Madekwe: Surgery is a real mix between the aggressive and the delicate. 

Ashley Michel, can you talk about the arc the whistleblowers have in terms of shifting from working with Dr. Macchiarini to calling him to account and the importance of this to the second season?  

Ashley Michel Hoban: One of the themes we were trying to hit this season is the idea of one person’s voice having a ripple effect around the world bigger than they could have imagined. The way Benita and the whistleblowers come together personifies that because without each other, their stories couldn’t have gotten where they needed to go. Without Benita’s article, and without the report the whistleblowers turned in, Paulo would not have been held accountable for his actions. So that was important to show even though these people are standing up against one of the most powerful medical institutions in the world, their individual voices have this huge effect.

Luke Kirby: It feels nice to address regret. I think a lot of people let themselves feel guilty about something for the rest of their lives, but actually, being in the space where you address a regret with someone, I think, is a better practice.  There’s a difference between living with guilt, where you never have to really do anything, and you can just feel guilty for the rest of your life, versus actually identifying it as a regret, then you can learn from it and address it, stand on your own two feet, say you made a mistake, and try to fix it. That’s a good human path, I think.

Ashley Madekwe: All three of these characters have regrets and are guilty of making mistakes and doing the wrong thing. What’s really nice is all three go on this journey and get to the right place, the righteous place eventually, at the cost of their own careers.

Gustaf Hammarsten: And they need each other to do that because each of us, at a certain point, feels guilty and knows it’s wrong, but we motivate and support each other to take action and make a difference, even at the risk of our careers. These characters find strength together for something very hard to do alone. I have so much respect for the whistleblowers who have to do all it alone. 

DR. DEATH — “Compassionate Uses” Episode 207 — Pictured: (l-r) Gustaf Hammarsten as Dr. Svensson, Luke Kirby as Dr. Nathan Gamelli, Ashley Madekwe as Dr. Ana Lasbrey — (Photo by: Barbara Nitke/PEACOCK)

Patrick, Littleton Road Philanthropy, which is an extension of your production company, as well as other resources, are mentioned before the end credits on the show.  Tell us about that and what your hopes are around having a greater impact in the community. 

Patrick Mcmanus: I put all of the credit for Littleton Road Philanthropy at the doorstep of the women who run it, my wife, Ioli Filmeridis, as well as my sister Kelly Mcmanus Funke, who is the president of the company. All I said to them was, “I think we should do more. I don’t think it should just be about telling stories.” My wife has a background in nonprofit development, and she and Kelly ran with it. What we are attempting to do with our social action campaigns is “edutainment.” We recognize the fact that we’re entertaining first. The reason we have these jobs is to bring stories to life, but we genuinely believe there’s a larger reason for doing these. Season one was about patient safety. For season two, the theme is “Safe Two,” and we call it that because this new story talks not just about the necessity of protecting patients but also about the necessity of protecting people who want to speak up against the system. 

 

Dr Death season two is now streaming on Peacock. 

For more on Universal Pictures, Peacock, and Focus Features projects, check out these stories:

“The Holdovers” Screenwriter David Hemingson on His Tetchy Yet Tender Tale of Chosen Family

Ryan Gosling Takes a Beating in First “The Fall Guy” Trailer

Family, Friends, and Fellow Stars Remember Matthew Perry

Featured image: DR. DEATH — “Worth The Risk” Episode 202 — Pictured: Edgar Ramírez as Dr. Paolo Macchiarini — (Photo by: Peacock)

 

 

 

“Maestro” Editor Michelle Tesoro on Orchestrating the Epic Bernstein Love Story

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To tell the story of composer Leonard Bernstein’s (Bradley Cooper) courtship with Costa Rican-American actress Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein (Carey Mulligan), Cooper, who also directed, and his editor, Michelle Tesoro (The Queen’s Gambit, When They See Us) varied the technical aesthetic throughout Maestro. As the couple first gets to know each other at a party, followed by wooing one another on stage at an empty theater, the early days of their unusual love affair are told through a tight aspect ratio and in black and white. Later in Lenny’s life, the film opens up to a cinematic aspect ratio and a more contemporary approach to color.

Maestro. (L to R) Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre and Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein (Director/Writer/Producer) in Maestro. Cr. Jason McDonald/Netflix © 2023.
Maestro. (L to R) Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein (Director/Writer) and Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre
in Maestro. Cr. Jason McDonald/Netflix © 2023.

“Bradley had this idea from the very beginning to compliment the way you might come across real photos and footage of them at different points in their lives,” Tesoro said of the film’s liberal use of different visual techniques. “The same with the aspect ratios: they reflect the time period which they represent.” As the pair’s relationship takes off within the confines of New York parties, theaters, and flirting at the park, Tesoro explained that the 1:33 aspect ratio also worked for Cooper thanks to “the dynamics between the foreground and background,” which best represented the story at that time — Lenny and Felicia weave their lives together within a midcentury New York creative existence.

Maestro. (L to R) Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre and Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein (Director/Writer/Producer) in Maestro. Cr. Jason McDonald/Netflix © 2023.
Maestro. (L to R) Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein (Director/Writer/Producer) and Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre in Maestro. Cr. Jason McDonald/Netflix © 2023.

Even though Bernstein was either gay or bisexual — Maestro avoids labeling him as either while not shying away from depicting his many other love affairs — his early romance with Felicia, as both their careers take off, feels completely charmed. “One of my favorite transitions that Bradley and I created in editing is the one where a young Felicia is receiving applause, and we cut mid-bow to Lenny receiving an even bigger applause at Carnegie Hall,” she said. The editing choice heightens the exhilaration of their love and success while foreshadowing what’s to come — Felicia’s relegation to a role mainly as wife and mother and Bernstein’s distraction from his family by his extraordinary professional accomplishment.

Maestro. (L to R) Soloists Isabel Leonard and Rosa Feola with Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein (Director/Writer/Producer) in Maestro. Cr. Jason McDonald/Netflix © 2023.

Even though the story highlights Bernstein’s artistic evolution over half a century, Maestro is not intended as a biopic. Instead, the composer’s career progress is conveyed by hearing it, through his Broadway tunes and classical conduction and his time at home, working things out on a piano. But the film’s emphasis on music didn’t affect Tesoro’s process any more than it usually would. “Editing itself is a musical aesthetic, telling cinematic stories with rhythm,” she said. “For this film, it went hand-in-hand.” When Bernstein reaches particular musical pinnacles, like conducting a heart-stopping opera in a cathedral, the editor lets us join the audience onscreen and simply watch the conductor in one of his most glorious professional moments. “It’s hard to cut away when the story is happening all in the frame — in the wonderful performances, in the camera work, in the production design and costumes. Why cut to something else when the magic is happening right in front of you?” she asked.

 

For Cooper and Tesoro, what mattered most was the dynamic between the Bernsteins. The couple grows apart, conveyed most acutely at Thanksgiving in Manhattan while the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade floats past their window, an absurd backdrop to their strained argument, and they come back together, most painfully when Felicia is diagnosed with cancer. Bernstein works through it all, but on-screen, that comes second. “There is only one story we wanted to tell, that is the love story of Lenny and Felicia,” Tesoro said.

 

Maestro is playing in select theaters and streaming on Netflix now.

Featured image: Maestro. (L to R) Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein (Director/Writer) and Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre in Maestro. Cr. Jason McDonald/Netflix © 2023.

Searching for That Ferocious “Ferrari” Sound With Supervising Sound Editor Tony Lamberti

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How eager was Tony Lamberti to work on Michael Mann’s latest feature? Let’s just say the director had Lamberti, a Formula 1 enthusiast, at Ferrari.

The Oscar-nominated (Inglourious Basterds), Emmy-winning (John Adams) audio engineer got his first peek at the feature about Enzo Ferrari and his iconic racing legacy back in 2015. Overseeing a mix update on Mann’s crime thriller Blackhat, Lamberti encountered Mann’s dream project during a visit to the director’s office.

“He had all the materials out for Ferrari,” remembers Lamberti during a recent Zoom conversation. “He had tons of research. He showed me some of the build sheets and said, ‘I’m going to have to build these cars from scratch because I need them for the rigors of production. I need to put cameras on them and drive them hard.’”

Photo from the set of FERRARI. Photo Credit: Eros Hoagland

Lamberti knew a key element of Mann’s vision would be the roar of the engines during the racing sequences. And to the expert ear, that meant recreating sounds from over 60 years ago.

Set during the summer of 1957, Ferrari sees the renowned carmaker, played by Adam Driver, at a tumultuous moment in his life. His company is on a crash course with bankruptcy. The death of his son Dino has driven a wedge between Ferrari and his wife Laura (Penélope Cruz), who is also his business partner. Adding to their tension is Enzo’s wartime romance with Lina (Shailene Woodley). They had a son, and Ferrari now divides his time between his two families.

 

Working with Lamberti were some of the best audio experts in the business. Bernard Weiser (Ted Lasso, True Detective) shared sound editorial duties with Lamberti. Oscar-winner Lee Orloff (Terminator 2: Judgment Day) served as sound mixer. Lamberti and Andy Nelson, whose 24 Academy Award nominations include wins for Les Misérables and Saving Private Ryan, handled the re-recording mixes.

“These are all longtime Michael collaborators,” continues Lamberti. “Once he finds people that get his methodology and aesthetics, he likes to stick with them. Andy gave me some great advice leading up to Blackhat , and I’ve carried that through all my work with Michael. Lee has frequently collaborated with Mann. Bernard was also on Blackhat. It just made sense to put this team together, and it worked out fantastic.”

Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari in crowd Photo Credit: Eros Hoagland.

Previous productions had taught Lamberti that Mann would want a rudimentary sound mix as the film was being cut. Weiser and Orloff concentrated on dialogue recording. Lamberti and Nelson assembled the temp dubs. Lamberti estimates four of these mixes were generated during the process.

As valuable as these initial mixes were, they were missing one crucial sound — the actual cars. The Ferraris and Maseratis (Ferrari’s chief competitor) replicated for filming were fitted with 4-cylinder turbo motors. These compact engines were great for withstanding multiple takes and long shoot days but lacked the iconic tones of the originals. 

“It was a rude and crude sound edit,” continues Lamberti. “We made the most of the production sound for screening purposes, knowing that we’d be doing recording sessions with the real cars later.”

Racing through the streets in “Ferrari.” Photo Credit: Eros Hoagland.

Lamberti, together with Mann and stunt coordinator Robert Nagle, mapped out a frame-by-frame strategy for the cars. Every upshift and downshift was noted. No corner acceleration or deceleration was overlooked. With cues in hand, Lamberti set about creating a sound that would not only awe audiences but also wow racing aficionados. Topping the latter was Mann, an experienced racer himself.

“Michael is dedicated to authenticity,” says Lamberti. “That was the edict from a sound perspective. We wanted racing drivers watching these scenes to believe that this actually happened in 1957.”

 

To do so, Lamberti had to hunt down two classic Ferraris and a Maserati that could be raced and recorded. Little did he realize the search would take him around the world and ultimately lead to a member of one of rock’s most famous bands.

Lamberti and Ferrari co-producer Maggie Chieffo started putting out feelers. Locating the cars turned out to be the easy part. Persuading the owners to allow them to be mic’d up and run at high speeds was another matter entirely.

“American collectors and museums were helpful, but these cars can be worth tens of millions of dollars,” explains Lamberti. “There are a lot of considerations. The insurance people get concerned. Nobody wants these pieces of art damaged.”

A period correct, 1957 two-seater V12 Ferrari was located in Los Angeles. Its owner, a successful real estate investor, showed interest, so Mann screened the rough cut for him to seal the deal. It did just the opposite. The investor thought the 4-cylinder engines sounded great and couldn’t understand the need to put his car — worth an estimated $20 million — at risk. 

Adam Driver is Enzo Ferrari. Photo Credit: Lorenzo Sisti.

The quest for a Ferrari 801 also hit a dead end. Rarer than a unicorn, the only one known to be in existence is in the Ferrari Museum in Maranello, Italy. Having just finished a costly renovation on it, the museum wanted it to stay put.

The Revs Institute in Naples, Florida, had a 1955 Ferrari-Lancia D50 in its collection. The predecessor to the Ferrari 801, it plays a feature role in the French Grand Prix scene depicted in the movie. Revs agreed to Lamberti’s recording request but then came the snag. When the museum curator asked more about the car in the film, he realized the car in its collection was two years older. The engine would sound noticeably different. 

Ferrari’s savior turned out to be musician Nick Mason. A founding member of Pink Floyd, Mason had used his success as its drummer to finance his true passion — motor racing. In addition to competing in such races as Le Mans, Mason owns some of the world’s most classic autos. “The guy is legendary in the car collecting world. He has like a stable of 50 cars,” says Lamberti. “Holly Mason, his daughter, runs the collection for him.”

The Masons had actually been one of Lamberti’s first calls. “We knew we had to record the Maserati 250 F1 from Nick Mason’s collection because it’s the actual car in the movie,” says the sound designer.

Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari yellow Photo Credit: Lorenzo Sisti.

The Masons agreed, and it turned out to be the start of a beautiful relationship. After the Revs Institute lead didn’t pan out, its curator suggested Lamberti reach out to prominent English businessman Anthony Bamford. Another classic car collector, he had a D50A in his collection. As luck would have it, Holly was a friend and was able to arrange with Bamford to have it available for a recording session.

Holly then got Lamberti over the finish line when the search for a V12 Ferrari kept hitting speed bumps. A deeper dive into the Mason collection uncovered a 1953 Ferrari 250 Mille Miglia PF V12 Coupe. Turns out, it had raced in the 1953 Mille Miglia, Ferrari’s climatic race. How could Lamberti resist? “Holly Mason was really fantastic.  She ended up being Ferrari’s hero,” he says.

The field recordings were done by sound engineer Chris Jojo at a private track in the UK. “We had a couple of mics in the engine bay, one near the intakes, one near the headers,” explains Lamberti. “We had mics in the cockpit. We had two sets of mics on the tailpipes to record in stereo. That’s where the magic happens.”

And happen it did.

“We’d been listening to these little 4-cylinders for months and months,” remembers Lamberti. “The first time Michael started hearing the real engines in the mix, he was like, ‘Oh my God, it sounds so glorious, it completely changes my perspective.’” 

Patrick Dempsey as Piero Taruffi Photo Credit: Lorenzo Sisti.

 

Ferrari is in theaters on December 25.

Featured image: Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari. Photo Credit Lorenzo Sisti

 

Gael García Bernal on His Showstopping Performance in “Cassandro”

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Gael García Bernal has played a political revolutionary, an eccentric symphony conductor, an animated trickster, and a victim of a beach that makes you age years in hours, but he’s never made as much noise in one film as he does in Cassandro, where Bernal had to rile up crowds of thousands as the eponymous lucha libre star. Cassandro, a Texas native known outside the ring as Saúl Armendáriz, became an unlikely wrestling champion in Mexico by flaunting his flamboyance. As his success in the movie grows, so does the braggadocio that Bernal exhibits. 

Bernal, who has carved out a reputation as one of his generation’s finest actors, tends to take on less showy roles. His work in films like Y Tu Mamá También, Babel, No, and Old can be intense, but most of Bernal’s performances don’t require the same over-the-top razzmatazz. Maybe that explains why the Oscars continually overlook his globetrotting work. 

As awards season unfolds, Cassandro is making a bid for recognition. It has another heavy hitter in director Roger Ross Williams, who previously profiled Armendáriz for The New Yorker Presents and has also directed The Super Models and Life, Animated. The Amazon movie was released during the Screen Actors Guild strike, so Bernal can finally promote his transformative performance. 

 

Roger Ross Williams has said he didn’t want you to spend a ton of time with Saúl before production began. Is that what you would have chosen too?

The nature of this was a free interpretation of the life of Cassandro. You have to amalgamate certain elements and bring in different things that are not really part of the life story of the real Saúl. Saúl came up with the character of Cassandro, so we had to come up with our own Cassandro as well. If I needed to talk to Saúl about what he did, most of the information was out there. He had done documentaries. The other thing is that, unfortunately, before starting to shoot, he had a health situation that took him out for a little while. I talked to him, and then we saw each other on the last days of shooting. That was really beautiful. 

Gael García Bernal in Cassandro. Photo: Courtesy of Prime Video © AMAZON CONTENT SERVICES LLC

In the time you did spend with him, or in any of the research that you did, was there something you picked up from him that helped you understand what it feels like to be in the ring, receiving the energy of the room and having to feed it back to the crowd? 

That detail, in a way, is something that you can experience only by doing it. The wrestling training helped a lot. It was six months of physical conditioning and then two months of wrestling training before starting to shoot. That was incredible because it’s such a difficult sport that also includes the performative aspect. You have to give a good show, no? But one of the many things I learned through Cassandro is that you start from the surface, and then you start to understand a little bit more about the character. You start to walk like the character, start to internalize the character, and start to put the costume and the makeup together. There is also something very interesting that I want to be very faithful to, which is the life of the border culture. On the Mexican border, there is that duality that resembles what happens as a wrestler. You cross a line to become someone else, and that someone else is more of who you want to be. The border culture is incredible because they’re born with a situation that is horrendous on a sociological level. They’re born with a stupid wall right in front of them. They have to overcome it to live there and not acknowledge this human division. The community is so strong there. They’re vanguards in the sense of where humans are at right now. 

 

During those wrestling sequences, were you performing for a full arena? I can’t imagine drumming up that energy in an empty room.

The problem is that it’s very difficult to fill in a full room. The last wrestling match was shot at a stadium that seats 70,000 people. We had like 2,000 people, which is quite a lot, but in that place it feels like there’s no one. But they participated, and it was fantastic. Most of them grew up with lucha libre, and they knew what to do. 

Gael García Bernal and El Hijo del Santo in Cassandro. Photo: Alejandro Lopez Pineda © AMAZON CONTENT SERVICES LLC

Was there a specific moment when you connected to the character after first seeing yourself in one of the wrestling outfits and the full makeup? 

I worked with María Estela Fernández, who’s a fantastic costume designer that I’ve worked with for many, many years, and Itzel Pena, who is an incredible makeup artist. We’re a film family. One year before starting to shoot, we started to try out stuff. It was a little-by-little process, but it was better to start with the complete extreme and tone it down. We also had to play with the practicalities. I cannot wrestle with heavy eyelashes or a wig. It was impossible, so it had to be my hair. Once you put elements together, something incredible happens. Also, the accent and the pluma — the feather. In queer Spanish slang, it’s like, “Let’s train the feather” or “Let’s get the feather.” 

Gael García Bernal in Cassandro. Photo: Courtesy of Prime Video © AMAZON CONTENT SERVICES LLC

Over the years, your interest in making Hollywood movies seems to have waxed and waned. What do you make of the offers you’re getting at this point in your career? 

It’s an interesting time, no? When I started to work, Mexican cinema was at its lowest point. There were only six films done that year when I made Amores Perros. And 50 years before, there were like 200 films made each year. Little by little, it started to get back. Among the many opportunities that allowed me, the most important one was that I’m able to play in Spanish and to perform with bigger dimensions and more complexity. English-speaking studio movies were an option as a nice alternative, but I also worked in Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, France, and Italy. After COVID, the film experience has changed. Who knows where this will lead for me or for anyone. 

Your breakthrough involved a handful of cool, edgy movies that people really responded to: Amores Perros, Y Tu Mamá También, The Motorcycle Diaries, and Bad Education. When you’ve done all those movies in relatively quick succession, is it hard to settle for things that don’t reach the same highs? 

It’s very difficult to replicate that experience, but I had that feeling on No with Pablo Larraín, which was the first time we worked together. It brought me back to that joy. Before, I used to love it, but I was very innocent. This time, there was no innocence. It was a pure, mature joy. That gave me a little bit of inner energy. I don’t know how many dog years a good film gives you. There are great films I’ve done that haven’t had the success or attention they deserve, and on the other hand, I’ve done some other films that haven’t been transcendental in terms of me being part of them. My experience is always different from the outcome. It’s hard for me to look at it from the outside. 

Have you enjoyed the bigger phenomenons, like performing a Coco song at the Oscars or making something as meme-friendly as Old? 

When something comes out, you end up belonging to that film rather than the film belonging to you. I don’t control it anymore, but it’s fantastic. I love how diverse everything can be, like doing Werewolf by Night. The Marvel experience was great because it was touching on an angle and a world that I have never tapped into, this fantasy-horror kind of thing. I had a lot of fun doing it, but at the same time, the complete opposite would be me participating in a small film or directing a film in Mexico. I love being able to experience that range. 

Which directors are still on your wish list?

I would love to work again and again and again with Pablo Larraín. We’ve done three films together now, and it’s such a joy to work with him. I would love to work again with Alfonso Cuarón, who’s like my brother and maybe the most talented filmmaker around. I’m still tapping into a curiosity I’ve always had, which is that sometimes, the further away the film can take me, the better. There is this wonderful director named Stephan Komandarev. He’s from Bulgaria, and he’s got a great film called Blaga’s Lessons that I recommend. It’s really, really amazing. I don’t even know him, but working with him would be fantastic. 

For more on Amazon Prime Video, check out these stories:

“Saltburn” Cinematographer Linus Sandgren on Creating a Fluid Painting for Emerald Fennell

New “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” Extended Version Trailer Arrives Ahead of Streaming Debut

Amazon’s “Spider-Man Noir” Series Taps “The Punisher” Showrunner Steve Lightfoot

Featured image: Gael García Bernal in Cassandro. Photo: Courtesy of Prime Video © AMAZON CONTENT SERVICES LLC

“The Chi” Producer/Directors Deondray Gossfield and Quincy LeNear Gossfield on Shaping Lena Waithe’s Sharp Showtime Series

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The Chi directors/producers Deondray Gossfield and Quincy LeNear Gossfield are living proof of the collaborative spirit. They live and work together (they’re married), and when they directed episode 4 in season 5, “On Me,” in Lena Waithe’s coming-of-age Showtime series, the talented creator recognized she’d found two collaborators who could take on a larger role for season 6. That meant both directing and producing.

“We were already fans of the show before we started working on it, so we didn’t need much hand-holding as far as the characters were concerned,” Deondray says. “It was so exciting to be let in on the story arcs as they were being fleshed out in real-time.” 

The Chi is, naturally, set in Chicago, following residents of the South Side and their interconnected, often extremely challenging lives. Waithe’s series is often compared to David Simon’s era-defining HBO series The Wire, which offered a pointillist snapshot of life in Baltimore, although The Chi is often a more tender portrayal, if no less clear-eyed about the challenges its characters face. The series is led by a deeply talented ensemble cast, including Lynn Whitfield, Jacob Lattimore, Luke James, Jason Weaver, and Jill Marie Jones.

We spoke to the Gossfields about their working relationship, their philosophy for creating great TV, and how their duties, and skills, naturally blur and flow.

Photo Credit: Elizabeth Sisson/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME

What was your research process like coming into The Chi in season 5, with such a rich cast of characters and so many established storylines to carry forward?

Deondray: We were already fans of the show, so we already knew the history of all the characters and where they might be going; however, we did rewatch the entire series to remind ourselves of the evolution of the show. Visually, The Chi has had several aesthetics that were specific to each season, but there were always some signature looks and a directorial style that permeated throughout. We wanted to know what our creative boundaries were, what might be too much or too off the mark, and how performances varied and crescendoed from season to season. We were trying to see what tools were already in our toolbox and which ones we could add while preserving the integrity and energy of the show.

Quincy: We created a spreadsheet for each of the main and supporting characters and tracked their story arcs and relationships with photos. We also created a document with bullet points and synopsis per episode for all four seasons before we met with our showrunners and our former producing director. We may have over-prepared, if there’s such a thing. We really wanted to be able to speak confidently about the series. We were pretty much plugged into the world of The Chi pretty deeply in season five, so coming into season six as producers, we were ready. We did our homework.

 

How would you describe the way you handled episode four of season 5, “On Me,” which included a lot of major plot points and shifts?

Deondray: We used the same methods we used when breaking down scenes and applied them to the entire episode. Every scene is a short story with a beginning, middle, and end. Every character within a scene has a transition in tone with a mini story arc. We separated all the storylines within the script as if they were individual short films and broke down where each character started within those storylines and where they ended up. We directed each storyline as if they were standalone, which helped us keep track of them even as they existed within a whole episode. In addition, we found ways to thematically tie them all together to give the episode a story arc as a whole. When you break something down this deeply, you know it like the back of your hand and can maneuver and pivot with ease.

Quincy: We also like to focus on what’s not being said. What people don’t say is actually what motivates their behavior. People rarely say what they really mean. When we are breaking down the script, we are also looking at the emotional and psychological underpinnings of the story. We even write between the lines what’s not being said, and that really helps us tune into the heart of the script. We love pretty, cool, and slick visuals and things that push the art form, but not every moment requires all that jazz. Yet, every moment requires you to capture the story’s core. The story has to remain the ultimate goal, and then we look for ways to visually represent the story creatively.

 

How did you approach season six? Were there specific aesthetic changes you thought were necessary as the storylines evolved? 

Deondray: There were lots of conversations around pivotal plot points for the season, but mostly, it was about elevating the show in general. Lena really liked what we did with our episode on season five and wanted us to apply those same aesthetics and sensibilities to season six. We took all that information and began to work out what the look and tone would be for the season with our DP, Nathan Salter. All the camera work and directing were so deliberate to create intentional visual and performance arcs for the season based on all the early conversations we had with Lena and the Showrunners in pre-production.

Quincy: What I remember most was, “Don’t screw this up!” Lena was putting a lot of trust in us to take on this position. We directed one of the most talked about and loved episodes of season five, and Lena strongly felt that we had captured the essence of what she wanted for The Chi moving forward. It didn’t hurt that we also left a great impression on the cast and crew. It’s not often that a director(s) directs one episode and comes back the following season as the producing director. It’s a big ask, and Showtime wanted to make sure we could tackle it and were the right fit.

Alex Hibbert as Kevin in THE CHI, ìHouse Partyî. Photo credit: Elizabeth Sisson/SHOWTIME.

What’s your co-directing style like? Do you each tackle different parts of the production, complementing each other’s skill sets?

Deondray: Quincy and I are equally yoked when it comes to skillsets, so we have a very intensive prep process where we audition all of our ideas for each other. We each break down the script separately, mark it up, and then come together to discuss it. About 98% of our individual ideas overlap and require no further discussion. The remaining 2% get auditioned. It can end up being a very obvious win over the two different approaches to a scene, or it can be hours of refining and making strong cases for each idea, sometimes even getting them storyboarded or shooting a mock sequence on our iPhones. The better idea usually wins out in the end, or they’re equally as good, so we pick the easiest one to execute. By the time we arrive to set, we are on the exact same page, so our team and cast are never confused about what we want. We take turns giving directions on set. It really just depends on who has the most energy that day. One of us may be really high energy that morning and start to fade by lunch, so the other will take the lead until we wrap. It’s a tag team.

Quincy: Folks like to say we play good cop/bad cop, or they call us mom and dad on set. I think those roles are interchangeable, but we naturally just flow together like Yin and Yang. We were both professional actors in our early careers, so we understand the language of actors. We also both have degrees in psychology, and understanding people is important, whether it be the desires, needs, and wants of our cast or the motivation of the characters they are playing. Being a student of human behavior really comes in handy as a director. Another thing that we love to do is to audition our ideas visually. I am a visual artist and photographer, and we both have experience as cinematographers. Deondray has edited most of our indie projects, so we use a combination of storyboards, photos, and video to work out some ideas that may seem difficult. We’ll pull out our iPhones, stage a scene, shoot it, and edit together. When we finally talk with our DP, we can communicate our ideas more effectively because they can see what our goal is.

(L-R): Zaria Imani Primer as Lynae, Ahmad Ferguson as Bakari, Michael V. Epps as Jake, Judaeía Brown as Jemma, Shamon Brown Jr as Papa and Kennedy Amaya as Kenya in THE CHI, ìReUpî. Photo credit: Elizabeth Sisson/SHOWTIME.

What’s your process like for working with actors? Do you have rules of thumb you return to time and again, or is it different with every performer?

Deondray: Working with actors is our favorite part. Quincy and I started as actors, so we speak their language. There are some things that are universal: be collaborative, listen, leave room for imagination, and be open, but I would say most of what it takes to be an effective director is being able to hone in on each actor’s specific needs. Some need short-hand notes that allow them to fill in the gaps. Some need to have their motivations broken down so that they can understand them from a personal place. Others need constant, real-time feedback, while some prefer to marinate with the script, make choices, and then confer with you about their choices to see if they are on the mark. I think the best work happens when there is a mutual fluidity between the actors and the director. Each of you may have done the homework and painstakingly come up with motivations and emotional arcs that may not work once you get on set and have to adjust to your surroundings or the way another actor in the scene interprets a line. When a new, incredible layer is discovered in those moments, it’s your job as the director to cultivate and enhance it, and the actor’s job to let this affect them and respond to it.

QUINCY: One of the biggest things you can do as a director is to gain your actor’s trust, not by manipulation, but by really caring about them as people and performers by being empathetic. Being an actor can make one feel very vulnerable. Actors have to tap into many sensitive emotions, anger, sadness, fear, etc. and are often physiologically reproducing those states for the camera. Not to mention, there are physically intimate and sexual situations that may also be required. You cannot treat people like puppets or cattle who are only there to do as told. We want our actors to feel protected and in good hands. They know that we have their backs and share a common goal to make them their best, but never at the expense of their humanity. Not everyone works that way, but maybe things need to change. 

(L-R): Jacob Latimore as Emmett and Birgundi Baker as Kiesha in THE CHI, “One of Them Nights”. Photo credit: Elizabeth Sisson/SHOWTIME.

The Chi season 6 returns to Showtime in 2024. You can watch the first eight episodes of the series on Paramount+.

For more recent interviews, check out these stories:

“The Color Purple” Costume Designer Francine Jamison-Tanchuck’s Stunning Creations

“American Fiction” Writer/Director Cord Jefferson on Cutting to the Heart of the Matter

“Wonka” Production Designer Nathan Crowley on Creating a Chocolatier’s Whimsical World

Featured image: Deondray Gossfield and Quincy LeNear Gossfield. Photo Credit: Elizabeth Sisson/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME

“Wonka” Production Designer Nathan Crowley on Creating a Chocolatier’s Whimsical World

Posted on by babrams

For production designer Nathan Crowley, whose impressive list of credits includes The Dark Knight, The Greatest Showman, and First Man, creating director Paul King’s deliciously appetizing Wonka musical was an exploration of “whimsical, nostalgic, and romantic” visuals inspired by Roald Dahl’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. “I’m used to doing practical films, and with Wonka, we had to find the realism of Roald Dhal and what that looked like. Our realism is his fantasy,” Crowley tells The Credits.

Crowley first considered the fictional town in which Willy Wonka, splendidly portrayed by actor Timothée Chalamet, comes ashore to sell his delicious chocolates. “The city is sort of the best of Europe, and we are trying to take parts of it and mix them together without them being noticed,” says the production designer. “Good design goes semi-unnoticed, and it just plays with the story and the characters live in that space without question.”

A scene from Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures’ “WONKA,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden was home to the 21-week production where dozens of sets spanned multiple soundstages, a backlot, and an airport hangar, along with filming at ten practical locations, including St. Paul’s Cathedral, Sutton Bridge, and Lyme Regis’ harbor. Crowley intertwined architectural styles from France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Czechia, and Switzerland to build the massive town.

Caption: TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Willy Wonka in Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures’ “WONKA,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

At its center is a 900m x 900m (2952ft x 2952ft) square that took eight months to complete. Twelve shops, two restaurants, two outdoor dining areas, a food market, and a florist fill out the square, which features an enchanting fountain. A labyrinth of cobblestone streets leads to the docks, Mrs. Scrubitt’s (Olivia Coleman) laundry warehouse where Willy is forced to work off his debt, the cathedral (inspired by St. Paul’s and Prague churches), and the Galeries Gourmet, home to the famed chocolate shops of Slugworth (Paterson Joseph), Prodnose (Matt Lucas), and Fickelgruber (Mathew Baynton) reside.

The world of “Wonka,” which production designer Nathan Crowley helped create. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

Crowley built the town in sections as a way to influence the lighting and visual effects. “You want to make it the right size cinematically for the camera lens,” he says. “If you have a real town square, it might be too big, and you might not be able to understand all the moments. Fortunately, Warner Bros. was willing to let us build the whole town square and the Galeries Gourmet, so I could really use every piece of stylization and architecture that I wanted in a much more creative way.”

The world of “Wonka,” which production designer Nathan Crowley helped create. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

Blues, yellows, and greens were infused into the chocolatier shops of Slugworth, Prodnose, and Fickelgruber, whose signature colors are also part of their costume design, while other Galeries Gourmet shops had windows filled with delectable treats and drinks. Willy’s chocolate shop was a separate stage built and inspired by his childhood memories. “There’s a backstory that he grew up with his mother on a canal boat on a river with a beautiful weeping willow tree,” notes Crowley. “His mother created this safe, wonderful space, and Willy’s store is a reflection of this childhood memory that he holds dearly.”

Caption: TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Willy Wonka in Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures’ “WONKA,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

Crowley started by designing a curved cherry blossom chocolate tree, which is reached from a delightful pink walkway. Below is a mouthwatering ground made of chocolate and a garden of edible roses, flowers, mushrooms, and lollipops. Creamy blue theatrical waves wrap the tree while a chocolate barge moves along a candy river that features a boat reflecting his childhood. “We couldn’t do the chocolate river yet because it’s his first chocolate shop. We wanted that to be part of the factory,” notes the production designer. Topping it off, the entire tree rotates in a sky of pink cotton candy clouds. “Visual effects got these giant turntables to rotate the tree in this corkscrew motion that gave us some movement for the song number,” adds Crowley.

The young Willy Wonka’s whimsical world was created in large part by production designer Nathan Crowley. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

Looking back on the project, Crowley says, “You can do a film purely with visual effects, but you lose the journey of creativity in building a set and how you can change it like a piece of sculpture. I love building sets because of the process of building them and the way they change. You don’t draw an illustration and build that illustration. You art direct it, and, with the director, it becomes more than the idea. With Wonka, it’s successful at being whimsical and joyous. And I think we can all do with a bit of that right now.”

 

Wonka arrives is in theaters now.

For more on Wonka, check out these stories:

“Wonka” Costume Designer Lindy Hemming on Dressing the Joyous World of a Budding Chocolatier

“Wonka” Early Reactions: Timothée Chalamet is a Charisma Factory in Paul King’s Winning Confection

Featured image: Caption: (L-r) TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Willy Wonka and HUGH GRANT as an Oompa Loompa in Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures’ “WONKA,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

 

“American Fiction” Writer/Director Cord Jefferson on Cutting to the Heart of the Matter

Posted on by babrams

Writer/director Cord Jefferson’s narrative feature debut, American Fiction, has become one of the most talked about films this awards season, and for good reason. Adapted from Percival Everett’s 2001 novel “Erasure,” the satirical drama won the audience award upon its debut at the Toronto Film Festival, with a number of subsequent fests following suit, and was recently named one of the top ten films of 2023 by the AFI. The film follows Monk Ellison (a superb Jeffrey Wright), a Black professor and novelist fed up with the literary establishment’s take on the Black experience. He channels his frustration by writing a novel under a pseudonym that pushes outrageous racial stereotypes, only to have it published and celebrated as a great work of literature. 

Wright brings Monk to life in all his complexities, and his work is a joy to watch, but the film is as much about family, friendship, and acceptance as it is about Blackness in art and culture, and those around him are crucial to his story arc. Monk has complicated relationships with his mother Agnes, played by Leslie Uggams, his newly out gay brother Cliff (Sterling K Brown), and his sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross), an overworked doctor. His interactions with colleagues, too, are contentious. His agent, Arthur (John Ortiz), wants to see him succeed without leaving all the money on the table. Monk silently judges Sintara Golden (Issa Rae) for her wildly successful novel that takes place in the ghetto and is written in African-American Vernacular English. The film benefits from the ensemble cast as much as it does from Wright’s exceptional performance. 

The Credits spoke to Cord Jefferson about American Fiction just after it won the Audience Award at the Middleburg Film Festival. He recalls the challenges of getting it to the screen, making some of the film’s most memorable scenes, and the importance of a diversity of voices in art that becomes part of popular conversation.

 

The film is based on “Erasure,” which was released in 2001, but in some ways, the issues are even more relevant now. How did the book call to you? 

I worked as a journalist for about eight years before I started working in film and television, and towards the end of my career, I started getting a lot of requests to write about Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown being killed or some racist thing that somebody said, as if this was the only thing I had to offer. So when I got into film and television, I was excited because I thought finally I had no restrictions. I could write about space aliens or unicorns and not be bound by the realities of the world. Then, people would come to me asking me to write about this slave or that crack dealer or gang member. I still felt bound to this very specific, limited viewpoint of what life looks like. When I came across this book in December 2020, these were ideas that had been swirling around in my head for decades.  People always talk about feeling seen or having something that speaks directly to them, and when I read this novel, it honestly felt like somebody had sat down and written Cord Jefferson a book, so I immediately leaped at the opportunity to try to adapt the script and direct the film. This was the first thing ever in my career that I wrote just on spec because I felt so passionately about the project. 

Writer/director Cord Jefferson on the set of his film AMERICAN FICTION. An Orion Pictures Release. Photo credit: Claire Folger. © 2023 Orion Releasing LLC. All Rights Reserved.

This film asks lots of big questions, but one that Monk struggles with is “What is art, and who gets to make it?” 

The scene that gets most at what you’re talking about is the scene towards the end where Sintara meets Monk, and they have a conversation about their ideology when it comes to their artistic process. The reason I really love that is because when I was reading the novel, I was very excited for the scene in which Monk was going meet this author he’s reviled for so long, and it never came. That scene is not in the book. When I sat down to adapt the screenplay, I knew that was one of the scenes I really wanted to put in there. What I love about that conversation is that there is no right or wrong answer. I wrote the scene, and I still don’t know who I agree with more. I think human beings have a problem with this, but Americans especially have a problem with this, that the answer to these questions sometimes is there is no answer. There is no right or wrong, and that can be frustrating. People want to see the world as being binary, black and white, right or wrong, or good and bad, but there is no answer to “what is art” or what the best way is to approach art. 

Issa Rae stars as Sintara Golden and Nicole Kempskie as Sintara’s moderator in writer/director Cord Jefferson’s AMERICAN FICTION. An Orion Pictures Release. Photo credit: Courtesy of ORION Pictures Inc. © 2023 Orion Releasing LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Or what’s acceptable or not acceptable to create. 

There’s another question to ask. Artists tend to direct their anger at other artists when they feel like they’re making art they don’t like or that has bad politics, or is doing a disservice to a group of people. Why not direct that ire at the people in control of what is being seen? Why are the people atop these systems in which these people are operating making the decisions? Artists on the ground are just working within institutions and systems created far before they ever got into making art. Why are the people atop these corporations and institutions and systems greenlighting only the things they’re interested in? They’re the ones who have their hands on the purse strings. People creating within that system are just trying to be heard and show another perspective while getting some of that money. Creative life and artistic life is a hard life. With so much distraction, now more than ever, it’s difficult to make your way, get your work out, feed yourself, and have your voice heard as an artist. Far be it for me to criticize another artist for doing what they need to do to have their voice heard. 

 

For artists, art is hard enough to create without bringing the gatekeepers into the equation. 

Right. So the question is, why are the people we are working so hard to impress so specifically interested in a very, very narrow, limited perspective on people’s lives? This movie follows a Black man, but I have Mexican friends who ask why every story coming out of Mexico has to be about drug cartels or somebody fleeing their miserable circumstances in order to reach the promised land that is the United States of America. And why is there always a weird orange-y brown wash on every shot that’s in Mexico? There are a lot of people who just feel let down that the breadth and depth of their life is not being represented in the media they consume.

One of the most beautiful aspects of the film is the arc with brothers Cliff and Monk, and Sterling and Jeffrey are great at bringing that to life.

To me, those two finding their way back together is a beautiful and important love story. I knew that just in the casting, Jeffrey was going to play Monk. He’s very prickly, he’s antagonistic and pugnacious, and he fights with his students, his colleagues, his family, and his romantic partners. Casting Sterling, who is charming, has the most natural effervescence in the world, and is just a bundle of joy as soon as you see him, I knew that it was going to be a perfect foil for Jeffrey. What you want out of that is you want Monk to melt in front of some people. 

Jeffrey Wright stars as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison and Sterling K. Brown as Cliff Ellison in writer/director Cord Jefferson’s AMERICAN FICTION. An Orion Pictures Release. Photo credit: Courtesy of Orion Pictures © 2023 Orion Releasing LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Monk does that with his sister Lisa, too. 

Exactly. That’s why it was important to cast Tracee Ellis Ross, too, who is also just incredibly buoyant. The idea was to cast these people who felt like they could elicit smiles and laughter out of Monk, this character who doesn’t laugh or smile easily.  In fact, he doesn’t want to do those things because, to him, it means he’s dropping the guard he’s built up around himself.  I have two older siblings, and despite the ups and downs in our relationship, they still know me better than practically anybody on earth. So even in the worst of times, they know how to elicit a laugh or smile from me because we have this deep relationship. I think seeing Monk, who is so quick to alienate himself, be around these people who know his weak spots and vulnerabilities because they’ve seen him for decades now was, to me, incredibly important. Having Cliff and Monk as the oil and water, butting heads, who nonetheless find their way back to each other, that was the beautiful love story in American Fiction.

Tracee Ellis Ross stars as Lisa and Leslie Uggams as her mother Agnes in writer/director Cord Jefferson’s AMERICAN FICTION. An Orion Pictures Release. Photo credit: Claire Folger © 2023 Orion Releasing LLC. All Rights Reserved.

 

American Fiction is in theaters now.

For more recent interviews, check out these stories:

How “The Color Purple” DP Dan Laustsen Made Visual Music

“The Color Purple” Costume Designer Francine Jamison-Tanchuck’s Stunning Creations

Featured image: Erika Alexander stars as Coraline and Jeffrey Wright as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison in writer/director Cord Jefferson’s AMERICAN FICTION. An Orion Pictures Release. Photo credit: Claire Folger. © 2023 Orion Releasing LLC. All Rights Reserved.

 

“The Color Purple” Costume Designer Francine Jamison-Tanchuck’s Stunning Creations

Posted on by babrams

There’s a famous line in Alice Walker’s 1982 novel The Color Purple that goes: “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” It’s a message that even God can become annoyed when people overlook the wonderful things he creates. One such creation is what the character of Celie represents. “She’s a beautiful flower and a beautiful person that’s being trampled on,” costume designer Francine Jamison-Tanchuck tells The Credits. “Alice’s novel is about how none of us should feel unworthy or made to feel that way.”

(L-r) TARAJI P. HENSON and FANTASIA BARRINO with Director BLITZ BAZAWULE on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Eli Ade

Director Blitz Bazawule (Black is King) reimagines the iconic story about self-realization and the unbreakable bond of sisterhood in the rural South that was once a Spielberg film (1985) and a Tony Award-winning musical. For its costumes, Jamison-Tanchuck curated an ensemble of handmade garments, vibrant jazz club attire, and traditional African garb spun from Kente cloth, details of which span multiple decades beginning in the early 1900s. Her previous work includes Coming to America, Glory, The Negotiator, Roman J. Israel, Esq. as well as the original The Color Purple, but this project is the apotheosis of her sensibilities, blending tactile textures, stirring colors, and bespoke silhouettes in illustrious style.

Caption: (L-r) PHYLICIA PEARL MPASI as Young Celie and HALLE BAILEY as Young Nettie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

“Blitz and I were constantly speaking of the color and how we would like to start it for this journey,” she says. The designer began dressing a young Celie (Phylicia Pearl Mpasi) and her sister Nettie (Halle Bailey) in crisp white cotton dresses as a display of innocence. The color reappears when the two make their way back to each other as adults. Separating their lives is a controlling, curmudgeon of a man named Mister (Colman Domingo), who makes Celie (portrayed by Fantasia Barrino as an adult) his wife and pushes Nettie away from her.

COLMAN DOMINGO as Mister in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Ser Baffo.
(L-r) FANTASIA BARRINO as Celie and TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Ser Baffo

Period, tattered clothing in muted colors dot Celie’s marriage with Mister, but the subdued palette becomes more colorful through the eras, making an entrance when Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson), a strong, unafraid singer, visits. It’s then the color red becomes an inspirational motif for Celie, first being introduced in an eye-popping dress Shug wears during her fiery Juke Joint performance.

(L-r) FANTASIA BARRINO and TARAJI P. HENSON on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Eli Ade.

Shug’s complete ensemble has a floor-length red coat with fur accents, red gloves, a feather headdress, and diamond-encrusted heels and is accessorized with a peacock hand fan. The dress itself has a fitted bodice drizzled in a delightful pattern of jewelry and three tiers of beads hanging along the bottom, reflecting a 1920s style. “I call it the cocoon coat because Shug is almost wrapped around in it like the cocoon of a butterfly. It’s another statement before we see the dress,” says Jamison-Tanchuck. “Then she takes it off, exploding with this outfit. To me, it was a special moment. That’s Shug in her glory.”

TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.Photo by Ser Baffo

Researching the Roaring Twenties was key to the dazzling look. “I ended up seeing how entertainers dressed in the early and mid-20s, and some of them wore see-through outfits and were pretty risqué in that era. So it wasn’t a far leap for me to have the slit on Shug’s dress go so high up,” says Jamison-Tanchuck. “She was able to move freely as she was dancing, and the outfit was able to shine in the darkness.”

Celie begins to step out from her shell thanks to Shug, a growing bond that permeates throughout the film. “Shug is the spark of life for Celie,” says Jamison-Tanchuck. “When Shug gives her a dress to wear at the Juke Joint as her guest, that opens up a world of loving feelings and something in Celie that she was worth something to someone and to herself.” The color purple is introduced into her wardrobe when she’s finally had enough of Mister. When Celie becomes a shop owner, red returns as a nod to Shug’s influence during a musical number inside the store.

Caption: (L-r) TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery, FANTASIA BARRINO as Celie and DANIELLE BROOKS as Sophia in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

It’s here we see Mister, a man who took his insecurities out on someone else, turn a page, offering a few kind words, and purchasing a pair of flamboyant pants Celie cannot sell. “When Celie left, Mister realized that she was a really intricate part of his life,” says Jamison-Tanchuck. “When he visits her to be friends or to resume the relationship, he thinks he was doing Celie a good turn by buying the trousers she couldn’t sell. My idea was to make the trousers shorter in length and a little bit flooded. Blitz and I liked this shiny, scaly-looking fabric. It’s very reptilian.”

COLMAN DOMINGO as Mister in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

When Celie reunites with Nettie (portrayed by Ciara as an adult) in the glowing backdrop of a majestic tree surrounded by tables, the actors wore white and cream colors with nods to African culture. “Blitz was an amazing inspiration because he is Ghanaian, and he has a wonderful friend who is also from Ghana who I conferred with and had meetings about how this would work in this particular era,” she continues. “Of course, the Kente cloth has been around for thousands of years, so you cannot go past that. We used that in the wraps and kept it simple and natural and less color so we could show off the beautiful quilt Celie worked on all those decades.” Besides the cultural significance of the costume design, whites were chosen to recall when Celie and Nettie were young women playing on a beach. “It was a moment for Celie to be united again with her beloved sister. They are back, almost with that pure love that they had, and it never ended,” says Jamison-Tanchuck.

A scene from Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

The Color Purple arrives in theaters on December 25. 

For more on Warner Bros., Max, and more, check out these stories:

How “The Color Purple” DP Dan Laustsen Made Visual Music

“Superman: Legacy” Update: James Gunn Teases Superman’s Costume, Miriam Shor Joins Cast

New “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” Trailer Focuses on Black Manta’s Brutal Mission

Featured image: TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

 

How “The Color Purple” DP Dan Laustsen Made Visual Music

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Danish cinematographer Dan Laustsen has been shooting movies for forty years, earning two Oscar nominations along the way for his contributions to Guillermo del Toro’s films The Shape of Water and Nightmare Alley. Director Blitz Bazawule, on the other hand, had never made a major Hollywood motion picture before helming The Color Purple (opening Dec. 25). But together, director and cinematographer melded their talents to resounding effect to create a sumptuous-looking movie musical based on Alice Walker’s 1971 novel.

“This is Blitz’s first big movie, but that doesn’t matter,” Laustsen says. “He has a very sharp eye, and I’m here to help make the movie the way the director wants. Blitz had the vision, so we tried to bring that to the screen.”

Previously adapted as a movie drama and a Broadway musical, this version of The Color Purple, starring Fantasia Barrino, Taraji P. Henson, and Colman Domingo, offers song, dance, and intensely dramatic sequences to tell the story of a family in Georgia suffering abuse and heartbreak before ultimately emerging triumphant through the redemptive power of love.

Laustsen, speaking from Los Angeles, explains how he used southern sunlight and a shrewd selection of camera gear to differentiate dialogue-driven drama from musical sequences.

 

We talked to you a few years ago about your work on The Shape of Water, which includes a fantasy musical sequence, but The Color Purple marks the first time you’ve shot a full-blown musical, right?

That’s correct. I’ve never done a musical before. I knew the “Color Purple” story, but what is the reality of the story, and what is the music? That was difficult for me to bring into my head. I had long conversations with Blitz where it became more and more about a realistic world splitting into this fantasy world. It should not just be something where our characters are walking down the street, and then they start to sing.

Cinematographer DAN LAUSTSEN on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Ser Baffo

So, how did you achieve these two distinct looks through your cinematography?

The drama world is very much [feeling like] the southern states of America with warm light coming through the windows. We went much more realistic camera-wise, lens-wise, and color-wise.

(L-r) FANTASIA BARRINO as Celie and TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Ser Baffo
(L-r) FANTASIA BARRINO as Celie and TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Ser Baffo

In the singing world, we went more wide angle and moved the camera a little bit more, which I think brought the joy of music onto the screen. Also, the color palette gets a little more rich in the singing world.

Caption: (L-r) TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery, FANTASIA BARRINO as Celie and DANIELLE BROOKS as Sophia in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

What kind of camera rig did you use for The Color Purple?

We used an Alexa LF Mini and shot on Signature Prime lenses with a diffusion filter behind the lenses. I like the Signature Primes because they’re very clean, and very one-to-one. Then, you can put a diffusion [filter] behind the lens. We also used a fair amount of smoke.

(L-r) TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery and FANTASIA BARRINO as Celie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Eli Ade.

The Color Purple opens with an overhead shot of a man on a horse playing a banjo. It’s quite striking. How did you guys decide on this image to introduce the story?

That was Blitz’s idea in the storyboards: he wanted to start with the top shot. It looks easy, but I’m very much into preparation. We rehearsed it so many times at the studio backlot with a guy on a horse that we knew exactly where to put the chassis and the base of the crane so we could keep the camera moving when we got to the location.

(L-r) Director BLITZ BAZAWULE and COLMAN DOMINGO on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Eli Ade.

The warm Georgia sun brightens your unbroken opening shot that leads to the two little girls singing on a tree branch. Natural light also adds a joyous feeling a little later to a beach sequence where young Celie and her sister Nettie sing a duet. How did you capture that?

We filmed that in Savannah, Georgia. When you shoot on a beach, you can not bring a bunch of stuff in because the sand is so soft. We shot some of that on a Technocrane and also used a Steadicam, which gave us more flexibility to chase those girls as they were playing around. It was like a small ballet. We’d spent a lot of time on blocking and the scene those girls were very aware of the camera.

Caption: (L-r) PHYLICIA PEARL MPASI as Young Celie and HALLE BAILEY as Young Nettie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

Midway through the movie, Taraji P. Henson makes a grand entrance as blues singer Shug, the local girl-made-good. How did you treat her return to town in the fancy car?

You’re starting with this close-up and then going to a big wide shot in one take. That’s challenging because the close-up has to be a beauty shot, and then the wide shot has to feel atmospheric. We used 18K Aputure [lighting] and put steel blue lights. I’m a big fan of steel blue instead of blue blue for the night feeling. That’s something we did on Shape of Water and Nightmare Alley with Guillermo del Toro.

TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Lynsey Weatherspoon

In a later night-time sequence, Shug looks every inch the conquering hero when she arrives by boat at this riverside nightclub. You wanted to conjure this romantic, larger than life vibe?

It has to be like that. Shug is like the release, coming to take Celie away from this dark world she’s in, so when we see Shug in the car and then in the boat, she has to look like a fairy tale queen. The costumes were red and the contrast color was steel–blue from behind. I thought it was very beautiful.

TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

What exactly is steel blue versus just plain blue?

Steel blue is blue-green – – there’s more cyan. You see a lot of it right now, but the first time I used steel blue was when we did Mimic 100 years ago [laughing] with Guillermo del Toro. It’s a very beautiful color and works as a nice contrast between the skin tones.

COLMAN DOMINGO as Mister in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Ser Baffo.

You’ve been making movies since the eighties, whereas director Blitz has worked with Beyonce and directed an indie film, but he’s never made a Hollywood motion picture before. How did you find common ground?

The first time Blitz called, he asked me what movies I liked, and I said I Am Cuba.  It’s a black and white movie from 1962 filmed in Cuba by a Russian DP. Everything is shot very wide angle and there’s [a lot of] movement in the camera. Blitz said, “I love that movie too.” It had nothing to do with The Color Purple, but somehow we both felt that was how our movie should feel. It was interesting to start with something so far away and come back to where we are now with The Color Purple.

 

This movie has many characters, 15 songs and several decades worth narrative, yet it feels very cohesive. It sounds like you and Blitz collaborated well together.

Blitz is a very clever, very original director. He wants a movie where the light and the camera are moving to tell the story. It wasn’t like he was thinking yellow and I was thinking blue. We were synching right away, even when he was in Altana and I was in Copenhagen during Covid.

(L-r) FANTASIA BARRINO and TARAJI P. HENSON on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Eli Ade.

In fact, you wound up filming The Color Purple during the Pandemic. That must have been stressful.

It was a super difficult three or four weeks. We had to shoot the Easter dinner scene five times because people were getting Covid all the time. We’d have to shut down, take the lights away, come back again. But when you see the scene, you don’t feel that because Blitz knows how to get the actors and everyone else aligned.

(L-r) Cinematographer DAN LAUSTSEN and Director BLITZ BAZAWULE on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Ser Baffo

For more on Warner Bros., Max, and more, check out these stories:

“Superman: Legacy” Update: James Gunn Teases Superman’s Costume, Miriam Shor Joins Cast

New “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” Trailer Focuses on Black Manta’s Brutal Mission

James Gunn Confirms Nicholas Hoult Will be Lex Luthor in “Superman: Legacy”

Featured image: A scene from Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

“Superman: Legacy” Update: James Gunn Teases Superman’s Costume, Miriam Shor Joins Cast

Posted on by babrams

With the dual strikes now a not-so-distant memory and Hollywood back into the full swing of production, things are moving very quickly on some of the biggest productions out there. And there are few upcoming films any bigger than James Gunn’s Superman: Legacy, the first feature set to spring forth from his new-look DC Studios, which he’s running alongside co-chief Peter Safran. Last week, we learned that Nicholas Hoult was officially cast as iconic Superman villain Lex Luthor, and now, Gunn has given us a few fresh updates, while a familiar face to the Gunn universe has been cast in the film.

First, on the casting front, Miriam Shor has joined the film, having recently played the henchwoman Recorder Vim in Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Details of who Shor is playing are being kept under wraps, but The Hollywood Reporter confirmed that Shor has joined the large ensemble, which is headlined by David Corenswet as Clark Kent/Superman and Rachel Brosnahan as intrepid reporter Lois Lane. The cast also includes Anthony Carrigan as Metamorpho, Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl, Skyler Gisondo as Jimmy Olsen, Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner, Edi Gathegi as Mister Terrific, Maria Gabriela de Farîa as Angela Spica/The Engineer, and Sara Sampaio as Eve Teschmacher.

Gunn also took to Threads to share updates on his storyboarding, Superman’s costume, and the film’s score.

“Spoiler??!! Well, probably not,” Gunn wrote in the caption. “I’m constantly drawing Superman Legacy shots and storyboards all over everything. Here’s one I just sent to my department heads to understand how tight a shot was going to be we had been discussing.”

Post by @jamesgunn
View on Threads

Gunn also revealed that he’s more or less done with Superman’s costume, although he’s making some final tweaks, and that the film’s score is also in tip-top shape.

“The costume is mostly done but we’re still going back and forth on some elements,” the filmmaker said. “A lot of the score – maybe even most of the major themes – have already been written.”

Although no composer has been named for the movie, Gunn assured a fan who inquired about it that the fine print has never stopped him from working on a project.

“(And yes I know that sounds crazy since so much of the score has been written, but when you’re riding the waves of inspiration, what are you going to do? I wrote most of Peacemaker and all of Creature Commandos before I had a closed deal!)

Superman: Legacy is slated to soar into theaters on July 11, 2025

For more on Superman: Legacy, check out these stories:

James Gunn Confirms Nicholas Hoult Will be Lex Luthor in “Superman: Legacy”

Nicholas Hoult Eyeing Lex Luthor Role in James Gunn’s “Superman: Legacy”

James Gunn’s “Superman: Legacy” Casts Its Villain

Featured image: L-r: Featured image: SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA – APRIL 18: Director James Gunn attends the press conference for “Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.3” at the Conrad Hotel on April 18, 2023 in Seoul, South Korea. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images). A Superman costume from the 2013 Man of Steel film worn by Henry Cavill and designed by Michael Wilkinson and James Acheson is on display at the DC Comics Exhibition: Dawn Of Super Heroes at the O2 Arena on February 22, 2018 in London, England. The exhibition, which opens on February 23rd, features 45 original costumes, models and props used in DC Comics productions including the Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman films. (Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images)

New “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” Trailer Focuses on Black Manta’s Brutal Mission

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“Black Manta is not just driven by hate,” says star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II at the top of this new Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom featurette. “He’s driven by love; his father was killed by Aquaman, who had an opportunity to show mercy but didn’t.” As Abdul-Mateen II lays out his case for his vengeful Black Manta having more on his mind than simple payback, footage from the new film reveals the depths of his rage against Aquaman (Jason Momoa, obviously). “His need for vengeance haunts him, night and day,” Abdul-Mateen II concedes.

The new featurette gives us some fresh details about director James Wan’s upcoming sequel, which involves the discovery of the titular Lost Kingdom of Necrus, also known as the Black City, an underwater empire similar to Atlantis but one that only exists in brief intervals of time. It’s in the Lost Kingdom of Necrus that Manta finds a super-powerful trident that possesses whoever wields it with extreme capabilities, but also a remorseless evil. A new, all-powerful trident, a new super-suit, and a single, unrelenting vision all cohere to make Black Manta an absolute force to be reckoned with and one that’s headed straight for Aquaman, his family, and Atlantis.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom will find a changed Arthur Curry, too, a man who was a self-described “wanderer” before the events in the first film. Arthur had no home, no real responsibilities, and due to his immense abilities inherited from his mother, Atlanna (Nicole Kidman), the man could finish a bottle of whiskey and still jump into a swelling ocean and save some otherwise doomed sailors. Life was…good?

But now, Arthur has responsibilities, including a family and a kingdom to protect, which means he’s got way more to lose, and Black Manta means to take it all away from him. The new film finds Arthur turning to an unexpected source for help—Orm (Patrick Wilson), the villain of the first film who ended up imprisoned after his attempt to claim the throne for himself. 

Joining Momoa, Abdul-Mateen II, and Wilson are Amber Heard as Mera, Nicole Kidman as Atlanna, Temuera Morrison as Tom Curry, Dolph Lundgren as King Nereus, Jani Zhao as Stingray, Vincent Regan as Atlan, and Randall Park as Dr. Stephen Shin. 

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom will be the last film to bow for DC Studios that doesn’t carry the direct imprimatur of new bosses James Gunn and Peter Safran.

“I’m excited to give the audience something cool to see,” Abdul-Mateen II says at the close of the new look. “And I’m rooting for the villain.”

Check out the new featurette below. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom hits theaters on December 22:

 

For more on Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, check out these stories:

First “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” Teaser Reveals Black Manta’s Revenge Plan

“Aquaman 2” Has Officially Wrapped Production

New Image of Yahya Abdul-Mateen II Getting Jacked For “Aquaman 2”

Featured image: Caption: YAHYA ABDUL-MATEEN II as Black Manta in Warner Bros. Pictures’ action adventure “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros Pictures / ™ & © DC Comics

“Wonka” Costume Designer Lindy Hemming on Dressing the Joyous World of a Budding Chocolatier

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Costume designer Lindy Hemming knows her way around both sides of the color coin, having worked on Christopher Nolan’s texturally moody Batman trilogy and the playful palette of Paul King’s Paddington movies. She reunites with King for Wonka, whimsically outfitting the candy maker’s origins in a Gene Wilder prequel that has Dune actor Timothée Chalamet playing the title character to a joyous reaction among reviewers.

Hemming dressed a large principal cast with imaginative period aesthetics, threading bespoke looks with vibrant colors and tiny details that can only be fully appreciated upon a second viewing. A stew of burnt oranges, burgundies, yellows, greens, and blues knit the color scheme for three aristocratic chocolatiers (Paterson Joseph, Matt Lucas, Mathew Baynton ), a wretched innkeeper (Olivia Colman), an entire police force, and the iconic coat and hat of Willy Wonka. “I wanted to create a visible, instant connection to the characters. Costumes are not meant to look like costumes but pieces of wardrobe that come from somewhere,” says the Oscar winner.

The true-to-character costumes were conceptually drawn and then handmade by textile artists, costume makers, and accessory designers to ground the pitch-perfect musical. Below, Hemming shares with The Credits her color inspiration, collaborations, and the importance of dressing the crowd.

How did Paul King envision you using color for your latest collaboration?

The joy of working with Paul is that he loves color. He doesn’t just love it himself; he sees things in a colorful way, which is really quite rare. When I was younger, I didn’t see things like that, but as I’ve gotten older, I love using color. I think it is something to do with the emotions that are generated by the colors, I suppose. Paul gives you license to use colors. There are some colors he loves more than others, but he doesn’t prevent you from using color. As long as you are making a good palette, he’s happy.

How did you infuse your palette with production designer Nathan Crowley, whom you worked with on Christopher Nolan’s Batman films?

With Wonka, we’d spend every week together going through each other’s stuff. He would come to my studio, and I would go to his so I’d know what was coming. It’s much better than not knowing what the designer is up to. We are collaborators, and it was a very collaborative film in every way with the director, cinematographer, Nathan, and also all the actors. We showed the actors everything. Rooms full of reference material.

Did you want to express a thematic motif with your designs?

We really wanted to show the actors even before we started [filming] that we were having fun with the characters instead of being very serious. And I think that feeling translates into the film. The task was to have fun with color but also remain grounded in the characters. So, instead of dressing up in colors because it’s a musical, we tried to make characters who wore colors. Especially in the crowd, we wanted you to accept that it was their character dressing this way instead of a musical lineup kind of way.

A scene from Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures’ “WONKA,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

How did you approach designing the clothes?

Everything on a principle character was made by us. It was all drawn beforehand, and a lot of the costumes were drawn before we knew who the actors were. Then, there was a lot of embroidery that happened. Breaking down, dying, and printing the fabrics that went into costumes like Wonka’s coat. It was either made by tailors, dressmakers, or knitted by knitters. Even the props…the rings and watches they wore were made by us. It was a big exercise in design and having the ability, thanks to the producers, to have a team that could do many different disciplines. So I have to sing praises to the technicians on the film: the knitters, embroiderers, hat makers, dyers, and fabric makers.

Speaking of Wonka, can you share what went into his look?

It started with his backstory. Where he comes from, where he’s been. You see a little bit of him living on the barge. But he also might have found his coat in a magician’s shop, and his hat might have been in the backstage box in some theater. Because he’s traveled since he was little, he kind of picked up all the pieces as he’s gone along. We wanted every bit of his costume to have a story. We worked on every such detail on all the garments.

Hugh Grant as the Oompa-Loompa was a delight. What went into fashioning his trunk of clothes?

We took part in drawing the Oompa-Loompa, and once it was decided what he was like, we had a lady who made all these big doll-sized clothes. She even made hangers and a rail in Oompa-Loompa size for his whole wardrobe to be hung up on. All the fabrics were swatched, shopped, and found. He had clothes for every kind of occasion in his trunk. And they were made to look real. Like grown-up clothes but tiny.

Caption: (L-r) TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Willy Wonka and HUGH GRANT as an Oompa Loompa in Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures’ “WONKA,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

Another standout character is the Chief of Police, played by Keegan-Michael Key, who takes bribes in chocolate, and we see it affect his waistline as the movie progresses. How did you stylize the police force and Keegan’s character?

The costumes for the entire police force were made, and we were referencing an Eastern European costume. And for Keegan, we first drew a character that was short and fat, not tall and thin. Once Keegan came, I knew I had to draw pictures of him getting fatter and fatter for his fat suit. Honestly, it’s much funnier as a tall, thin man becoming this enormous bloke. Keegan was the most fantastic person and a really good actor.

(L to r) MATHEW BAYNTON as Fickelgruber, MATT LUCAS as Prodnose, KEEGAN-MICHAEL KEY as Chief of Police and PATERSON JOSEPH as Slugworth in Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures’ “WONKA,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo credit: Jaap Buittendijk/Warner Bros.

Much of the visual energy of the musical numbers comes from the background dancers and extras. How were you able to maintain such a high level of costume detail?

The most important thing with the crowd is you need to have a wonderful team dressing and maintaining them. It doesn’t happen on many films that we get to make sure that all the people are their most interesting and the right color for scenes. And they are in front of the camera. Our first assistant director, Ben [Howard], and Paul made a rule that if we wanted to move or change someone around, we were allowed to do that. In the technical terms of making the film, it makes an enormous difference to each frame if what you’re looking at, as well as the actors are also beautiful and interesting.

Wonka dances into theaters on December 15.

Featured image: TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Willy Wonka in Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures’ “WONKA,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Courtesy Warner Bros.

Eddie Murphy Returns as Axel Foley in First “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” Trailer

Posted on by babrams

Axel’s back, so every law-abiding citizen of Beverly Hills can breathe a great sigh of relief. The criminals? Not so much.

Netflix has just dropped the trailer for Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, which has Eddie Murphy reprising one of his most beloved roles, that of the Detroit cop Axel Foley, who first followed a case from the mean streets of Motor City to the posh environs of Los Angeles’ most bougie suburb back in 1984. Murphy went on to play Foley in two more sequels, in 1987 and 1994, respectively, so it’ll have been 30 years since we’ve seen him getting himself in and out of trouble in Tinsel Town.

The new film comes from director Mark Molloy and finds Axel returning to Beverly Hills to investigate the death of a long-time confidant and some seriously dangerous vibes surrounding Axel’s daughter, Jane (Taylour Paige). With Axel’s return to Los Angeles comes the reappearance of some of the most beloved members of the Beverly Hills Cop franchise: Judge Reinhold’s Billy Rosewood and John Ashton’s John Taggart, two of Axel’s old police pals from the original. Bronson Pinchot returns as the lovably cuckoo Serge and Paul Reiser reprises his role from the original film as detective Jeffrey Friedman.

The new film also boasts a fantastic cast of fresh faces to Axel’s shenanigans along with Taylour Paige, and they include Kevin Bacon as Captain Grant and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Detective Bobby Abbott.

The trailer is short on plot specifics but long on that classic Beverly Hills Cop theme song and the thrill of seeing Murphy back at it in a role he took on just as his career was going into supernova mode. After all the years, the man’s still got it, and his supporting cast looks up to the challenge, too.

Check out the trailer below. Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F arrives on Netflix in the summer of 2024.

Here’s the synopsis from Netflix:

Detective Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) is back on the beat in Beverly Hills. After his daughter’s life is threatened, she (Taylour Paige) and Foley team up with a new partner (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and old pals Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and John Taggart (John Ashton) to turn up the heat and uncover a conspiracy.

For more on big titles on Netflix, check these out:

“Bridgerton” Season 3 Date Announced in New Teaser

How “Leave the World Behind” Production Designer Anastasia White Built a House for the End of the World

“Nyad” VFX Supervisor Jake Braver on Digitally Dropping Annette Bening Into the Open Ocean

Featured image: Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. (Featured L-R) Bria Murphy as Officer Renee Minnick and Eddie Murphy as Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. Cr. Melinda Sue Gordon/Netflix ©2023.

“American Fiction” Star Jeffrey Wright Authors a New Chapter in a Stellar Career

Posted on by babrams

Jeffrey Wright has found a great role as Monk Ellison in writer/director Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction. The story is based on a 2001 novel called “Erasure” by Percival Everett and centers on a professor and writer fed up with the way the literary world limits how Blackness is portrayed in pop culture. In response, Monk writes a blatantly stereotypical novel full of gangs, thugs, and criminals using a pseudonym. To his shock, it becomes a runaway hit and critical darling, leading him to a windfall of cash and an existential crisis. 

So far, the film has won awards in nearly every film festival in which it was played, and most recently, was named one of the top ten films of 2023 by the AFI and best film of the year by the Washington Area Critics Association. American Fiction benefits from not only Wright’s scintillating performance but the many compelling scenes between him and the stellar ensemble cast, which includes Sterling K. Brown as Monk’s brother Cliff, Issa Rae as successful novelist and Monk provocateur Sintara Golden, and John Ortiz as Monk’s agent, Arthur.

Wright discusses his work with Jefferson and members of the cast, including Issa Rae and Sterling Brown, considers how the film centers the importance of family and acceptance, and more.  

 

What kinds of discussions did you and Cord have about Monk?  

We really didn’t have a lot of discussions. We really knew Monk’s journey, and I just got him as a character. In terms of Cord, on both the creative and professional side as well as the personal side, there was a lot of overlap to his own story. That was true for me as well, certainly on the personal side, in terms of his relationship to family and to his internal dialogue that he has with himself, and maybe a bit of self-isolation. Cord says that when he started reading the book, he heard my voice as Monk in his head, and he felt that Percival Everett had written that book for him personally. In some ways, I guess in terms of novelist, filmmaker, and performer, it’s akin to three musicians who get together and just start playing their instruments, and they’re just on the same page from the start. 

 

How did the novel “Erasure” impact your approach or resonate with you in terms of how you got into the work? 

I actually read the book later, and in reading the novel, I saw that Cord had really reshaped it in his own image. The novel was set in DC, and he completely reworked some of the catalyzing events, but there were certain things from the book that were useful to me. I absolutely loved those meditative moments where Monk drifts off and starts describing fly fishing, or the intricacies of woodworking. That stuff really spoke to me in communicating his inner solitude and the peculiarity or the personal quality of his interests relative to what might be perceived from the outside. 

There’s a scene between Monk and Sintara, Issa Rae’s character, about his book that’s pretty central to the spirit of his conflict. Maybe one way to see that scene is how artists approach societal change from the inside or from the outside. 

I think that Cord’s casting Issa and her agreeing to do this film legitimized that scene in a way that didn’t require much more from me because she was in on the joke, but she also lent credibility to the argument that is needed at that moment to confront Monk. Because at the end of that discussion, I don’t think we know or should know who is right. Maybe both are right, maybe neither is right, or maybe there’s a synthesis somewhere in between. 

Issa Rae stars as Sintara Golden and Nicole Kempskie as Sintara’s moderator in writer/director Cord Jefferson’s AMERICAN FICTION. An Orion Pictures Release. Photo credit: Courtesy of ORION Pictures Inc. © 2023 Orion Releasing LLC. All Rights Reserved.

How did you, Cord, and Issa work to build that scene?

Issa was so helpful to me. At one point, prior to filming, I worked through the language with Cord because I do feel that scene is kind of the thesis of the film. I wanted to make sure Monk’s argument was properly shaped, so we talked through a few things; I added some stuff just to have the thoughts there, and then we trimmed some of the stuff away. When I had all this stuff in, and we were rehearsing, Cord asked Issa, “What’s your impression of him?” and she said, “Well, he’s just ridiculous.” I felt so deflated, but it was helpful because I didn’t want him just to be perceived in her eyes as ridiculous. I wanted him to be seen as having a particular perspective, a well-considered one that wasn’t in line with hers, but I didn’t want him to seem absurd. That became my challenge in that scene. Cord was super smart in inviting intelligent actors into the room because not only are they acting partners, but they become assistant directors, too, in terms of what they offer you. 

The cast you were with on this film is exceptional. How did you develop what the audience sees between you and Sterling onscreen? 

We didn’t have a lot of time. It was 25 days. The only things that we really had to work out, on the day, were just blocking, flowing through the space, and making the shots work. Sterling’s such a powerful and interesting, and in this instance, ironic actor. I think I met Sterling the morning we shot. I had met him in passing before. We showed up that morning, we got together and talked through some stuff, and the vibe was good. Went back to our trailers for a second, let them set up the shot, and then we showed up to do the scene. What was cool was that Sterling had said that he hadn’t planned on working during that period, for whatever reason, and he read the script, and he said he had to be in this film. That was the sense from everyone.

Jeffrey Wright stars as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison and Sterling K. Brown as Cliff Ellison in writer/director Cord Jefferson’s AMERICAN FICTION. An Orion Pictures Release. Photo credit: Courtesy of Orion Pictures © 2023 Orion Releasing LLC. All Rights Reserved.

They’re very compelling characters. 

Exactly. John Ortiz, whom I absolutely adore and have known for over 25 years from the theater in New York but had never worked with, just wanted to be a part of this and play that role, to play the agent. He’d never been asked to play an agent before; he’d always been asked to play characters in relationship to different types of worlds, whether it’s violence or criminality. He’d be the cop, or he’d be on the other side, but he’d never been asked to play a literary agent. We come from a fairly similar theatre background. I remember we were filming a scene, and John had an idea to shoot it in a slightly different way, but Cord is smart. He got a brilliant group of actors in the room. 

 

Referencing this film, you are quoted as saying, “Without family, there is no revolution.”  American Fiction is ultimately telling a story of family and belonging and transformation, and that’s what stays with viewers after the credits roll.

If there is something revolutionary about this film, and I use that term playfully, it is in the ordinariness of that family, and I love that. The film is not trying to answer questions, but I do think there is a response to the social commentary woven through it, and that is the madness and dysfunctionality and functionality and the uneasy love that we see inside that family because it’s like most people’s family, except this one isn’t articulated by a group of people that, at least, cinematically, we expect to see in that way. I think that’s really cool. I think it’s also an invitation to people across backgrounds to find themselves within the story, and maybe that’s what we need at this time, just some connection with people who we think are the other and some common ground to walk together. Inside of the couple of hours we’re watching this film, I think we have an opportunity to do that.

Sterling K. Brown stars as Cliff Ellison, Jeffrey Wright as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison and
Erika Alexander as Coraline in writer/director Cord Jefferson’s AMERICAN FICTION
An Orion Pictures Release. Photo credit: Claire Folger. © 2023 Orion Releasing LLC. All Rights Reserved.

 

American Fiction is in select theaters on December 15th and expands nationwide on December 22nd. 

For more interviews with great filmmakers, check these out:

How “Leave the World Behind” Production Designer Anastasia White Built a House for the End of the World

“Poor Things” Production Designers Shona Heath and James Price on Going Gleefully Mad for Director Yorgos Lanthimos

“Saltburn” Cinematographer Linus Sandgren on Creating a Fluid Painting for Emerald Fennell

Featured image: Jeffrey Wright stars as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison in writer/director Cord Jefferson’s AMERICAN FICTION. An Orion Pictures Release. Photo credit: Claire Folger. © 2023 Orion Releasing LLC. All Rights Reserved.