On with Kara Swisher - How Ava DuVernay Made a Hit with ‘Origin,’ and Without Big Studio Backing

Episode Date: February 1, 2024

Today, our guest is acclaimed director and screenwriter Ava DuVernay, known for the Oscar-nominated films “Selma” and “13th.” Her latest film “Origin” is an adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson���s 2020 bestseller “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.” We explore how she adapted the ideas of a nonfiction book into a gripping narrative film and why – instead of major Hollywood studios – DuVernay secured funding for “Origin” from philanthropists, including the Ford Foundation, Melinda Gates, Laurene Powell Jobs and Anne Wojcicki. Questions? Comments? Email us at [e-mail] or find us on social media. We’re on Instagram/Threads as @karaswisher and @nayeemaraza Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Disney's A Wrinkle in Time, or the criminal justice documentary 13th. Her latest film is called Origin, an adaptation of the book Cast, The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson, whom I spoke to on Sway in 2021. Wilkerson's book is about invisible systems that rank humanity into arbitrary hierarchies. She connects the violent racism of the Jim Crow South to anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany and to India's caste system, which cruelly relegates the Dalit people as untouchables. Caste was a number one New York Times bestseller in 2020, though it languished on DuVernay's nightstand until Oprah, yes, that Oprah, finally convinced her just to get into it.

She did, and in September 2023, Origin premiered at the Venice Film Festival. DuVernay was the first African-American woman to have a film premiere in the competition at the festival, and it got a standing ovation that lasted over eight minutes. I thought it was an important and in these fraught times, necessary feat of filmmaking. And Duvernay pulled it off while sidestepping funding from any major Hollywood studio. Obviously, we'll discuss it all. But first, our question of the week comes from journalist Baratunde Thurston. Hey, hey, this is Baratunde Thurston, host of America Outdoors on PBS, the How to Citizen podcast, and a writer at Puck. And my real question is, what's up, Ava? How are you looking so good when the world is looking so bad? I mean, I just don't understand

how you're keeping it together so much as things fall apart. Legitimately, I want to congratulate you on all your work, especially Origin, and thank you for bringing these stories to light and to life. And I want to ask you about your belief and your faith in the human capacity to change. Because so many of the stories you're telling, especially this latest set of stories in origin, are about revealing some deep intransigence in the human condition, commitments to discrimination, to systems of hierarchy and unfairness. And as you wrestle with these and dive into these ideas, where do you stand on our capacity to not just recognize these systems, but to alter them for the better. Thank you.

Good one, Bea. And now on to Ava DuVernay. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night. And honestly, that's not what it is anymore. That's Ian Mitchell, a banker turned fraud fighter.

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So I want to begin with a clip from the film. This is where the main character, Isabel, played impeccably by Ingenue Ellis Taylor, is describing the thesis of the book she's working on with her cousin. They've been talking about slavery, and then Isabel brings up Nazi Germany. Let's hear it. Okay, do you think that Jews are white? Definitely. The majority are. But the same thing happened to Jews in Germany during the Holocaust. The Nazis wanted to create an all-white republic, but they hated, they hated the Jews. So they said, how do we make the Jews not white? So they put them at the bottom of the hierarchy. They said that they were greedy.

They said that they were dishonest. They blamed them for Germany losing the First World War. They blamed them for everything bad that happened in Germany. They were dogs, Kill them, gas them, wipe them out. The Jews and the Nazis were the same color. We have to consider oppression in a way that does not centralize race. We do it here in America, yes, because racism is all we know. But these containers, the Dalits in India, Jewish people in Germany, black folks in America, all these containers have something in common. Race is not one of them. It's caste. You're doing a ton of exposition and explanation there, and it's a great way to do it by her explaining it in simple language, which her cousin asks her to.

I want to talk about the language here, and there's the word container. It immediately joins these ideas in a way that allows a discussion that doesn't immediately devolve. And there's also the word cast, but you didn't call the movie cast. You chose a different word that appears in Wilkerson's subtitle, Origin. Talk about both these words and why you use them this way. Well, yes. I mean, Origin, I couldn't call the film cast because it's not a straight adaptation of the book. It's about the woman writing the book cast. And so it's a nod to the subheader. And as a real focus on what we're trying to say, let's look at the root of this, Origin felt like an apt title.

Um, origin felt like an app title, um, in terms of using the word containers, it's one of the ways in which Isabel Wilkerson actually, um, explained it to me personally. And I remembered hearing the word and thinking, oh, that, that helps me organize it in my mind in a certain way. And I think one of the things that Isabel Wilkerson does so beautifully in her work, whether it's the walk of the mother's sons's sons whether in her in her writing as a journalist or in cast as she is able to explain these large you know complex issues in a thousand different ways and one of them you're gonna get that's what cast is she is explaining it this way she's sharing it with you this way. I mean, 99 different ways to come at the subject. And the hope is that one of them is your aha moment. And so that was an aha moment for me. And that containers conversation really struck a chord with me. So you decided this needed to be a scripted narrative instead of a documentary. You have a lot of experience in that, and you've worked in a lot of genres, biography, historic fiction, documentaries, series. drawn to more complex stories, including so-called unadaptable ones. I was really curious how you're

going to adapt this book, because it's a weighty book. My advice would be to step outside of the boxes and step outside of the three-act structure. Step outside of any preconceived notion about how the art gets made. And I think that is something that I really needed to do. It was a two-year process writing the screenplay. About nine months in, I had to completely reverse course and free myself of the thing that was holding me back, which was, this is not the way to do this, right? This should be done this way. This needs a clear antagonist, a villain. Well, this one doesn't have a clear and tall. It doesn't. It doesn't have a standard three act structure. It is historical. It is contemporary and it is surreal. There are moments that do not live in the real world. It crisscrosses time and space.

We're leapfrogging across continents and going to different, seven different time periods. That's not anything that anyone told me I should, could or would do. And yet my advice to to aspiring artists or screenwriters is to do it anyway. And that's what this this project really taught me. So one of the ways you've done this is weaving into Isabel Wilkerson's own personal journey. When she was writing cast, her husband suddenly died soon after her mother. Talk about the choice to include her as the main character. And

you've said when you first read it, you had just experienced your own personal loss. And you depict Isabel's losses in the film in a heartbreaking scene where she's lying in a bed of autumn leaves. And use a lot of close-ups to do that, which I found really moving.

Talk about why you picked her as the vehicle and the use of imagery in your own experience with grief. Well, I needed a main character, and she's fascinating. She's a superhero. She is a heroic figure in the idea that someone can walk through challenge and obstacle and reach a destination and triumph. She walked through the loss of family members in a six-month period as she was leading up to the writing of the book and was able to finish that book. And just that intellectual journey, that bravery, that ability to stand up in the midst of the void of grief and darkness is something that I find very inspiring. And so she's the perfect kind of lead character for a screenwriter and a director.

In rendering the images, certainly I pulled from, as any creative does, my own well of experience and emotion and memory to create and to paint pictures and to tell the story. And, you know, it feels like, you know, it all coalesced into a project that, you know, said exactly what I wanted to say and looks exactly the way I wanted it to look. So explain the leaves and the close-ups. It was really, it was, and your own experience with grief during when you first read it. Well, you know what I, you know, on any given day, grief hits you in different ways. So today I'm not feeling in a place to kind of delve into my own grief. Okay. I will tell you that I, thank you for respectfully allowing me to answer in that way. I will say that I, um, uh, the, the, the images that

are rendered on screen as it relates to, uh, the characters in grief, uh, are ones that, uh, I've experienced and that I constructed in design in ways that were deeply meaningful to me. And I hope the sharing of them, um, connects people, um, you know, in a, in a certain way to their own, to their own. Yeah. You really do enter the person with the closeups. It's really effective in that way. But there's also a lot of love stories in this movie, I think. What's your, was there a favorite of yours or were you thinking about the idea of a love story in this? Yeah, there are 17 love stories in the movie. I challenge people and invite people to find them as you watch. A love story is an expression of love, affection,

adoration between two people and or more. And there are just beautiful instances. One of the things that I really love to do after Q&As for this movie is ask people to call out the love stories. And I've heard many that I didn't even think about. And that's why my tally gets higher. You know, when I first made it, I said, you know, there are 12 solid love stories in this. But I've added five more because over the course of screenings around the country, you know, I'll hear some and I'll be'll be like wow i never saw that i can't tell you there's really no greater joy than people finding things seeing things making connections at work that i made that i didn't know was there right what's the most surprising love story discovery someone told um i gosh i can't uh i can't uh what one one person that had talked about the love story between the two manual scavengers. So

there's a point where you see two men who are performing the demeaning task of manual scavenging in India. And there's a moment of tenderness between them, of friendship, of genuine care, concern, love. And this person categorized that as one of the love stories in a way that really just made my heart warm. I'm sorry, did you have one? Go ahead, keep going. Sorry. Apologies. It's okay. Yeah. So that was one of the ones that was unexpected. And all of them, I mean, it's my film, so I don't put anything in the script and I don't point my camera at anything that I'm not completely in love with. Every scene, every line has to earn its keep

and be something that fascinates me and that I love. So that's my barometer for making movies. So I can't pick just one. Okay, I picked the boys, the young boys at the pool with each other. Okay, Albright. Yeah, it's a beautiful sequence. All of them together. I have kids.

I just can't imagine the kids having to be more adult than the adults, which is what happens all the time, every day. So why don't we talk about the opening, the movie openings with a black teenager walking down a street. He's wearing a hoodie. He's going to get some food. We know it's Trayvon Martin. Talk about why you start there.

It was the beginning of Isabel's intellectual journey into writing of the book for my conversations with her. It was the verdict around that case that really sparked her imagination as to what do we call this thing that has happened and is race too small a term. And so I decided to begin at the beginning. You did have the character that says, why is a Hispanic man stalking a black man in a white neighborhood? I thought that was one. I actually hadn't thought of it quite that way, which was

interesting. But then you traveled to Germany and India, as she does, to research the book. There's a Nazi book burning scene you filmed on site in Berlin. I had been there at a place that was one of the most famous. It happened almost a century ago. Talk about recreating history on the same ground. And what was that like? Sure. I will just say that the line in the film is, why does a Latino man stalk a Black boy

to protect an all-white community? I think it's really important to always assert that Trayvon Martin was a teenager. He was a child. That's correct. That's correct. I'm sorry. Thank you for that.

So yes, incredible to shoot in the real location. I had the privilege of doing that when i did the bridge cross bridge crossing in selma in lowndes county alabama for that film and there's something uh electric uh to be in the real place it it it is it feels like an act of service it feels like a a uh a deep bow to what has taken place in the place where your feet are placed. And I, along with my producing partner, Paul Garnes, we really pursued being in the actual square known as Bebelplatz now, on top of the monument known as the empty library,

so that we could actually put that bonfire of where the books were burned in this very famous book burning right on top of that. And really recreate, according to historical photos, the entry point of the Nazi shoulders, where the faculty was. Because a lot of this was all, this was a student book burning. And these were teachers and librarians facilitating the removal of the books and so um it was a extraordinary experience to work hand in hand with the city of berlin to pull that off in one night and uh was was one of the moments in the filmmaking that um is impossible to shake just as a director. Well, history doesn't feel quite so distant.

Books are being banned in the U.S. and in 2022, even cast disappeared from a public library in Texas. Was it something you thought and talked about on the set? Yes, of course. That was one of the reasons why it felt so important to render and to actually be in the real place and to make sure that that moment had a very prominent place within the film. And when you, you also worked with non-actors in the film.

In one scene set in India, a Dalit man gets into a sewer filled with excrement to clean it. You cast a Dalit man who had done that job. Talk about doing that. That was particularly disturbing on lots of levels. Not just because it was gross, but it was that someone does this. Uh, well, this is, uh, the, the task that is, uh, required that is a part of the caste system. Um, and in India, there is a caste that specifically, um, uh, is, is relegated to manual scavenging.

It's beyond gross. It's inhumane. It's barbaric. It's horrendous. It's horrific. And it is something that we are not aware of. So I felt like it was important that when we talk about cast, we take it out of the abstract.

We take the performance of that task that one is relegated to for scraps of food and a few pennies in order to just exist. We take that seriously. We bear witness to it. And we understand that this is a contemporary issue, modern happening right now. And that this isn't something in feudal India. And this isn't something that we should turn our heads from. I invite people who look at it and think that it's gross to think, well, what can you do about it? Right. Is there anything? I kept thinking that.

Yeah. I kept thinking that. Talk about using those actors for that scene. Why did you think that was important to cast a Dalit man to do that? Well, they're not actors. They're Dalit men who are actual manual scavengers. And so why was it important every Dalek person in the film every Dalek character portrayed is played by a Dalek person

I personally feel like representation is important and why would you cast an upper caste person to play Dalek when you could actually just find a Dalek person to portray themselves in their own history so So I would say that that's important, not only in the Dalit community, but in all communities. The woman who plays the Jewish German woman is a Jewish actress. That's an element of connection, an element of representation that I think is something that's been missing from Hollywood generationally and institutionally. It's a small thing to be able to do, but it's something that I try to do as often as possible. So I want to talk about two more particular

scenes, the middle passage, which was short and devastating, and the little boy in the pool, which has stayed with me a very long time. It was long and devastating and silent almost. Explain your choices as a writer and director in those scenes. Explain my choices. I don't know if I want to explain the choices. I'm a Black woman director rendering very preliminary introductory images of the middle passage, which is the portion of enslavement of African people. That was the transport from the continent to wherever they were being taken. And the horrors of that journey,

which are often forgotten as we consider slavery and the survival that was required to make it through the most horrendous, horrific circumstances. An explanation of my choices would be a very long spiritual conversation. In Albright, this is a sequence where a young boy is marked and pulled out of a group of boys because of the color of his skin. And I will allow people to watch the film and feel it as you did when you first watched without kind of hearing the blow by blow of how it was designed. But I think generally the sequence is

one that touched people in the book. It's one of the famous kind of very well-known stories in the book and um is is kind of the climax of the film and this way in which it it you know all of the aspects of what um the character has been writing and dealing with and grappling with culminate in the story of just a little boy and that when we think about cast we we think about it writ large. It's this huge anthropological thesis, cultural phenomenon. But ultimately, the film asks you to consider it for the bruise that it leaves on the individual. And that is embodied in the story of Albright. We'll be back in a minute. than your customers think about that often. They see your product, they want to buy it, and then they buy it. That's about as complex as it gets. But under the hood of that process, there are a lot of really complicated things happening that have to go right

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Need to hire? You need Indeed. The book came out in 2020. The movie was released in 2023 um which is fast for hollywood and you've said it's intentional you wanted to get this movie out before the 2024 election and now of course it feels very urgent right now but can you talk about the urgency and why the understanding of the idea of caste is so politically necessary now i think think it's, I don't even know if it's politically necessary. I think it's necessary as human beings to give us a new language to just

relate to one another. I mean, ultimately, there'll be no success politically, you know, as far as organizing, as far as being, having any consensus about where we want to go as a country, if we don't even regard each other as human beings if we don't humanize one another in our own struggles and challenges and triumphs I think you know people are in their own corners and their own sides of the of the room and throwing darts at one another and not listening not trying to even be in a space of engaging with one another there's no need to even one another. There's no need to even talk about agreeing. There's no need in talking about debates when everything's so polarized, but can we talk about civility? I mean, the bar is low at this point. It varies. Be civil to one

another and regard the person across from you as a human being who deserves a baseline space of respect. And that is, if anything, one of the major points that the film offers. Absolutely. No question. I interviewed Isabel days after the January 6th riots at the U.S. Capitol. So here we are three years later. Trump is the leading presidential candidate. What are the state of politics in the current election where democracy always seems to be on the ballot? It never isn't on the ballot.

The post-democracy dies in darkness, to me, has devolved into it dies in a full glare of light, actually. I wonder if you think of, and you may not agree with me, that 2024 is a cast election and how the idea guides us on how to address Trump. You're talking about civility, but it's quite difficult. Even now as we talk, he's in court screaming at the jury, as is his lawyer, in some really unfortunate ways. Talk a little bit about what this election means in that regard or how to address it in this context. Well, I think we all know and all of you listeners know what it means and what's at stake.

I think the question about how to address it is one that means that, you know, is very steeped in the idea of fatigue, apathy, and what we are allowing to have happen. We are allowing bad behavior to go unchallenged and unaddressed and unreported. We're at a place where in the last election year when Trump was on the ballot, that every single outrageous thing he said was reported. Now, if you're not completely tuned in, leaning in and looking for it, you would not hear the violent rhetoric, the very intentional planning, the instruction and guidance that he is giving to his supporters, the strategy that he is laying out, what he says he intends to do. None of that is, I don't see it at the top of the evening news. If you still watch the evening news, I do. I don't see it at the top of the evening news. If you still watch the evening news, I do. I don't see it as the headline on my paper.

I don't see tweets and breaking news alerts about this in the way that we did. We have become numb to it. And that is, there's precedent for that. There's precedent for the madman screams so often and so loudly that you start not to even hear it but it doesn't mean that the threats are not real and so my answer to what do we what do we do demand demand attention on it lean in listen raise our hands amplify use your voice i mean there there is uh defend yourselves yeah and uh and one of the ways to do that is to make sure that that this uh behavior is not being ignored so one of the conversations in fact in the movie is how germans uh deal with their nazi past compared to the way

the u.s addresses the history of slavery obviously it's just been in the news with nikki haley and others talking about it um your characters talk about how the swastika is banned in Germany, but the Confederate flag was incorporated into Mississippi's state flag. It was removed from the flag in 2020. But still, I've had a lot of conversations lately about memory. And is there something broken in the American ability to remember? No, I think for something to be broken, it assumes it ever existed. From my point of view, there has never been a time

when the United States fully embraced the breadth and scope of its injury to people. And so I don't think it's broken. I feel it's functioning exactly the way it was designed to function. And when you say that, what do you mean by designed? How do you imagine it was designed to function? A constant level of forgetfulness? Well, we live within a caste system where it goes beyond forgetfulness. you when I am speaking from the perspective of a group of people who can't even walk down the

street at night with your choice of clothing and feel safe. I do not feel growing up feeling that if there was anything going on that required protection, the thing to do is not call the police. So this goes far beyond a forgetfulness this goes into a systemic dna of our country um that uh is designed truly systems and structures designed to keep a certain kind of person in one place so that another kind of person can prevail, can live in privilege, can triumph, can succeed, can do all of those things that are not predicated on worthiness, anything that's earned, but only because someone else does not have it. And we make it so that this other person does not have it. That is cast.

That is what her book is about. That is what the film is about. And that is what this time in our country, as we consider who will lead us in the future, is truly about. And so the hope is that we talk about it more than we are. Right. So one of the things you did, actually, there's two scenes, the mother and the son-in-law talking about it explicitly when she's saying he should have been quiet. The mother said that, or he should have not. Why did he react like that? And this is Trayvon Martin. But sometimes moralizing and remembering doesn't seem to me enough. I'm sure you're following the recent

protests in Germany against the far-right alternative German party, a party that's discussed transporting migrants en masse out of Germany. They've been compared to the Nazis. So these ideas of caste still break through. This system seems not to be breakable in a lot of ways. It continues to reassert itself. Can you talk about that idea of how it stays in place? Because breaking it seems to be the more difficult part. Yeah, I mean, I think, let me say this.

I am a filmmaker. And there's a very brilliant woman named Isabel Wilkerson who's written a whole book about this. What I'll say is that obviously, you know, having made 13th and Selma and When They See Us and this film Origin that systems of oppression are durable that that that's why they work and that it requires resistance and fortitude and courage and community uh to survive not break I think we come from a different perspective, you know, when we're talking about how to deal with it. It is about, can you make it through to the other side of this? And the groups of marginalized people, oppressed people that I focus on and, and, and feel

alignment with the question is first survival. Can you get home that night with the hood on? You know, can you call the police if something happens and survive that? Can you even do it? Can you make it through this on the other side so then you can dream of resistance and building a new world? Right? So there are different levels of engagement. And I think that people should be invited to interrogate these things from where they are. And the assumption that we're all in the same place about it is one of the things we also have to break. But yes, the durability of these structures and systems

is at the forefront of why they are successful. is at the forefront of why they are successful. And there's no easy answer to come to on this podcast, but hopefully the thought is, let's keep thinking about it and talking about it. Do you worry that right now DEI programs, diversity, equity, inclusion programs are under deep attack? I just spoke to Judy Woodruff about a Pew poll

that reported 72% of Republicans consider Democrats to be immoral and 63% of Democrats, for example, consider Republicans to be immoral. Does that make it... It seems like it's going backwards in that regard in terms of the forces of retrograde. It feels like you're in a...

Like if you had to use a movie metaphor, I guess Star Wars and the Death Star's back, essentially. Yes, I think that's one of the things that we're trying to present in origin, that this is a personal, like girls in the schoolyard when I was young, we would say, it sounds like a personal problem. It is. This is a personal problem. The idea that we resist talking to people who we, like I said before, don't agree with. 60% feels this way, 60% feels that way. Unless that 60% or some fraction of them decides that they will talk to and try to be civil to and try to find some common ground with the other side, there will never be a middle. And the middle does not mean a compromise. The middle simply means we all live in this house.

And we're either going to slam doors and stomp around, ignore each other and be horrible to one another, or we're going to find a way to coexist. And right now that coexistence and the steps towards that does not seem, I don't see it. Immoral stops me cold. That's a different word. But my next question is not from me. It's from someone I think you'll recognize.

I always have someone call in and ask a question. Let's play that. Hey, hey, this is Baratunde Thurston, host of America Outdoors on PBS, the How to Citizen podcast, and a writer at Puck. And my real question is, what's up, Ava? How are you looking so good when the world is looking so bad?

I mean, I just don't understand how you're keeping it together so much as things fall apart. Legitimately, I want to congratulate you on all your work, especially Origin, and thank you for bringing these stories to light and to life. And I want to ask you about your belief and your faith in the human capacity to change, because so many of the stories you're telling, especially this latest set of stories in origin, are about revealing some deep intransigence in the human condition. Commitments to discrimination, to systems of hierarchy and unfairness. And as you wrestle with these and dive into these ideas,

where do you stand on our capacity to not just recognize these systems, but to alter them for the better? Good question. Oh, he's such a good guy. I always enjoy it when our paths cross. Yeah. So, answer. Your interviews are very demanding. Talk about this. Tell me this. I'm sorry. Sorry. What do you want?

Some light Hollywood? I don't want light Hollywood. What are you wearing? No, I don't want light Hollywood, but, uh, sorry.

Here's a tone. Um, let me say, um, yeah, I believe, I believe in change. I believe,

um, uh, Octavia Butler, the great writer and future, uh, talkedavia Butler, the great writer and futurist, uh, talked about all that you touch changes you. And, uh, and so that is a daily process. That is an ongoing, uh, engagement, uh, holding hands with the world. And to think that that change is not possible to think that, uh, you are not changed by what you are not changed by what you encounter, what you say, what you do, what is said and done to you is, I think, a pedestrian way to think about life. So for me, absolutely.

Not only is change possible, it's inevitable and it's happening at every moment. Yeah, you're much more hopeful than I think either Baratunde or I are. But let's talk, speaking about money. You started this project with Netflix, but you pulled out of the deal and in the end got funding from a bunch of foundations, primarily the Ford Foundation. You also, at the end, I hadn't realized this, have three wealthy tech-centric investors, Ann Winogeski, Melinda Gates, and Lorraine Powell Jobs. Jobs, who's been making a series of media investments, told the Washington Post that her foundation will use a dashboard of metrics to evaluate origin success. Can you talk a little

bit about the decision and how it impacted your process? The decision was to fund the picture. And streamers in the studios are not interested in making films about cast. They're not interested in making films about social justice, period, really. And so instead of banging our head against a wall or taking six to seven years to go around to each place three and four times, we pivoted from that and started to think about who would be interested in making a film about these issues. who would be interested in making a film about these issues and where the metrics of success are predicated on social impact and reach as opposed to the usual corporate interest of the standard return. In this, the venture began as we want to put these ideas into the world

in the same way that we would do in funding a documentary or funding a non-profit organization and so let's buy a movie that shares ideas that we feel are important and so that that was the proposition and that was uh that's what we did is that a sustainable way to do this um it does it work for you do you think it's it's something you can do for a while i'm not sure if it's sustainable but we're going to try to find out you know i mean this is a case study this film to to see and understand could the film be made could it even be made that is a triumphant of itself that without a studio um on a film that shot in 37 days on three continents

about the subject matter with the kind of epic scale of some of our sequences and the intimacy of some of our sequences could it actually get in the can and then could it could it work would it make it into the film festivals the top festivals it did would it be embraced by audience and audiences and critics it has been um and you know how is it doing at the box office? Doing quite well, expanding from 120 screens this last weekend to 650 this weekend with very little marketing, almost none. And so the idea that we can incubate this idea and really work on issues of sustainability is where we are now. But it's a worthy endeavor and one that I'm enjoying exploring. sustainability is where we are now, but it's a worthy endeavor and one that I'm enjoying exploring. Has not having a big studio behind you impacted the rollout? I know you, after screenings,

you ask audience questions about their impressions of film, as you noted. How are you feeling the impact of those films in those theaters? Is there a different way to roll out a film rather than a big studio way? Many different ways. Big studios have way more money to put muscle behind advertising to be able to buy your attention in different ways that you may be aware of or may not even be aware of. None of that exists here. So we're in the midst of a very gorgeous grassroots effort.

I was on a call last night with over a thousand Black women leaders around the country who, and when I say leaders, in their communities, in their schools, in their hospitals, who gathered for the third time in as many weeks to talk about group sales, to talk about tickets for students. And so these are things that our studio partners don't have to do, but also should be doing. And so in putting together a model, it's looking at not only these grassroots efforts from a space of lack, but from a space of abundance and what real engagement with the community offers.

And especially within the Black community, it's something that has just brought so much joy. So when you're doing this, I'll be sorry. Yeah, no, it's it's I find. So when you're doing this, I'll be, go ahead, sorry. Yeah, no, it's, I find it fascinating what you're doing here. But we're speaking days after the Oscar nomination was announced. I personally think the Oscars are irrelevant, but it did not receive nods.

Does that matter anymore to you? I'm not sure they matter at all, but there is an element of marketing, I guess. Did you have a reaction? I was sort of shocked on a lot of the choices, but that happens every year, it feels like. And we all sort of have an idea of why. But what was your reaction? Well, they amplify films, you know?

The films that got nominations get a new life at the box office. People raise their heads and say, wait a minute, maybe I should see that now. So having been an Academy Award nominee in the past, I certainly know the beautiful feeling that it invokes and also the light that shines on the performance, the film, the craftsmanship. Those are all welcome things, especially when you are working to release a picture. Are they the end all be be-all of the filmmaking experience uh luckily i have been in a place uh with a film i'll speak to selma where i know the ongoing ripple effect of that film there's no place that i can go around the world where someone doesn't come up to me and talk to me about somema, about 13th.

And these are films that exist outside of that award structure. So, yeah, when you get one, it puts more light on you. When you don't have it, you find other light. And so that's really, you know, we join a bunch of films. I mean, there are so many beautiful films this year. Only if you can get that light from that body. I think the question is, then what do you do? And that's what we've been doing.

And it's been a great ride. Do you have any thoughts why it didn't? I was surprised. Your movie particularly. Barbie, I get it. I get. And I still liked it. But do you have any

thoughts of why it didn't oh i haven't given it much thought okay all right okay not at all um not type of mind not okay all right okay i'll say that um there's a there's a the end of the movie there there's an old trope that history doesn't repeat itself, but it sure rhymes. Your movie is not full of rancor, but solutions. So let me end with this clip, and then I'd like you to talk about this, because one of the things that was moving about it was the leaning into hope, you know, leaning into the idea of hope or not blame, et cetera. So let's play this last clip and then I'd love you to talk about this metaphor. We're all like homeowners who've inherited a house on a piece of land.

It's beautiful on the outside, but the soil is unstable. People say, I had nothing to do with how this all started. I never owned slaves. I didn't mistreat untouchables. I didn't gas Jews. And yes, not one of us was around when this house was built. But here we are. So here we are.

This is the metaphor that Wilkerson uses in a book. And as you say in the film, any more deterioration is on our watch. Can you, is this, I'd love you to explain this as your call to action. And how do we tend this house together? There's a lot of cracks. Well, I would disagree with you on that. The film is not offering solutions. The film is.

No, it is. No, I say it is it is offering solutions uh well not in my point of view as the author okay all right you tell me i'll clarify my answer yes please asking questions and ads asking each person who considers the work and is inside of the story and watches the story to answer for themselves so i can't really sit here and give an answer to such a huge question like that. The film is offered as a question for everyone to answer for themselves. And those answers are going to be the ones that you find based on your own individual memory, your own family legacy,

your own education from schools, the education that you reach for outside of what was taught to you, who you listen to, who you don't listen to, who you allow to be in your personal circle, what friends you have, looking around and seeing who are those people? Are they all like you? I mean, this is too complex for me as a filmmaker to say, this is the answer to all of the issues. I will say that the film was made as a big hunking question. And that is what I got from the book. I got her asking, trying to pose this question in so many different ways, a consideration and an acknowledgement of the fact that caste exists and how does it exist for you? And how will you prevail within a system uh in which caste is inherent in a society where it's everywhere um this won't be solved in our lifetimes but are there steps that we can take to

um to smooth the path for the people who come after us and it's not going to come from ignoring it it's not going to come from you watch fox and i watch msnbc and never we shall never meet in the middle or we shall never have a civil conversation. The goal is to try to get past that to answers that we come up with together. And when I say solutions, I mean, it left me with hope, which I don't get from a lot of movies these days. You know what I mean? Like that there are, maybe a map is more the way I think of it. It's sort of a map of which way to go. And that metaphor is a particularly strong one. I happen to like houses.

I think about houses a lot and where I'm living. You are an incredibly gifted filmmaker and you've done a beautiful job here. And I truly, I really appreciate it. On with Kara Swisher is produced by Naeem Araza, Christian Castro Rossell, Kateri Yoakum, Megan Cunane, and Megan Burney. Special thanks to Mary Mathis, Kate Gallagher, and Andrea Lopez Cruzado. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan.

And our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're not following the show, go wherever you listen to podcasts. Search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back on Monday with more. Thanks to Huntress for their support. Keeping your data safe is important. However, if you're

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