The Big Picture - Top Five Biopics and the Brilliance of ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’

Episode Date: February 12, 2021

After discussing the Oscars shortlists, Sean and Amanda dive deep on biopics, share their top five favorites, and break down how the new HBO Max film ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’ effectively subverts the formula (0:47). Then, Sean is joined by Shaka King, the writer-director behind ‘Judas’ to talk about his telling of Black Panther party leader Fred Hampton’s story (53:19). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Shaka King Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about separating real lives from fake ones. Later in the show, I'll be joined by Shaka King, the writer-director behind Judas and the Black Messiah, the first mainstream Hollywood telling of Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton's story,

and really one of the best movies of this extended Oscar season. It's on HBO Max on Friday. I highly recommend you check it out and my conversation with Shaka. But first, Amanda and I will talk about the Oscar shortlist, what makes a good biopic, and how Judas and the Black Messiah subverts that formula. It's all coming up on The Big Picture. Okay, Amanda, we got the shortlist for nine of the categories at the upcoming Academy Awards. Any surprises? Anything jump out at you? Or did this feel as if it was going to play out exactly

as you expected? I just want to reiterate my number one way to fix the Oscars, which is make shortlists for everything. This is great. Let's do this. I feel like there were not a ton of surprises, but for me personally, a few reminders of like, oh yeah, I really do need to see that documentary or I need to catch, you know, that international film. And, and I do this for a living, but for people who do not do this for a living, which is most of the world, it's a very helpful reference of being like, okay, here is what is going to be in competition in the Oscars. Here's what I got to catch up on. Probably all of the things are released now. So I'm not even like going through with a fine tooth comb and being like, why this,

why that? Because again, really weird year, a lot less to work with in most cases. I just, I endorse short lists. Thank you. I do as well. A handful of movies that we talked about quite a bit on this show, you know, Dick Johnson is dead, Crip Camp, Boys State, and Time all made the documentary shortlist. I think we liked those movies a lot and talked about them quite a bit over the year. And I would say it's not, documentary was not surprising to me at all. International feature was not terribly surprising, though I did want to spotlight a couple of movies that I really loved. I don't think that you and I got a chance to talk about Another Round, Thomas Vinterberg's film starring Mads Mikkelsen, did we?

I have a confession that I still have not seen Another Round, which has been... I know, I know. Wonderful movie. It's been at the top of my list, and then it just gets bumped because we're doing something else for the podcast, and I'm not like you. I can't do like five movies a day. But this was like my, I'm putting it on the list for this weekend. I'm very excited. I think I'm going to talk to Mads and Thomas

at some point in the next couple of weeks because I love that movie. And for whatever reason, we just didn't really get around to it. I think it premiered originally at TIFF. So that was one worth noting. I had mentioned La Llorona, I think on one of the horror movie pods

I did with Chris in the fall as well. That's a Guatemalan film that you can watch on Shudder. That also got recognized. A handful of others, the Romanian Film Collective is also recognized here in international feature. Very similar to, what was the Macedonian beekeeper movie last year? Remember that film? Honeyland? Yeah, Honeyland. Incredible. That also was recognized in international feature and documentary. We're seeing that more and more. Dear Comrades, the Russian film, A Son, the Taiwanese film,

which you can watch on Netflix right now, a handful of other notable movies. And then I just quickly wanted to talk to you about original score and original song. We tend to yell a lot about original song on this pod and elsewhere. I thought there were some pretty amusing selections on the shortlist here. Sure. If you're just doing this for entertainment value and just like to

chuckle, go for it, Sean. I'm glad that you're finding joy. Well, it's not as if they could have chosen a song from, say, the Mad Lib and Freddie Gibbs album. You know, those songs didn't appear in a movie. So even though I loved them more than I loved any other songs from 2020, I was happy to at least see Wuhan Flu from Borat 2. That was kind of funny that they chose that, no? It is funny, but it also is a joke on the entire category. I mean, that's why it was written. And again, this category... Listen, I love music.

Music's really important. Shout out to musicians. Shout out to music. Shout out to... Not the see a film music, the art form music. Yes. You know, to songs, to symphonies, to everything in between. We celebrate music. But very few of these songs, to symphonies, to everything in between we celebrate music,

but very few of these songs are actually in the movies, Sean. They're all just tacked on at the end. And like the, also the, the titling convention now for the end credit song just is really funny. I'm just going to read them without their actual movies attached. Here we go. Never break. Make it work. Fight for you. Show me your soul. Loyal, brave, true. Free. Speak now.

Hear my voice. Like, okay. A lot of people trying to have a really inspirational anthem that wins an Oscar. And I think inspirational anthems are really important. I think Oscars are really important. Just this category is silly. They are the kitty hanging from the ball of yarn

hang in their poster of songs you know all of these songs i don't understand what how did that maybe it was that that john legend common win for selma which had an incredible performance at the oscars you know i don't think those that was the first inspirational song to win in this category but i mean we're not that far removed from three six mafia you know like once upon a time there we could get some weirdness going in the original song category i need us to get more wuhan flu i need us to get more husavik from eurovision song contest in these categories okay the thing about the eurovision song contest song which i don't remember even though i did watch the movie is that at least that is like a song that is involved in the plot of the movie. Okay. All respect to Shallow, right? That was a song in the movie. They had to write it. It was also great. A friend and listener of this podcast texted me the other

week that his son is learning how to play Shallow on the piano. And then explaining the plot of A Star is Born to a seven-year-old was very tricky. Anyway, when it makes sense in the movie, great. I think that we need to reevaluate how we use the credit songs. That's all. Can I confess something to you? Yeah. There are two films that have been recognized here on the short list. See What You've Done is one song.

It's from a film called Belly of the Beast. And then another song called Never Break from a film called giving voice. I have never heard of either of those movies. I just don't, I do not know what those movies are. What is like, what is going on? I know there's a pandemic.

I know there's a limited amount of selection that you can make here, but what is going on? Isn't there an original song on the credits of Judas? There is Judas and the black Messiah is recognized here. Okay. I was going to say like, did they miss anything? Was there an original song that should have been recognized? I don't even know. This is a weird category. I agree with you wholeheartedly.

They should just give this Oscar to Run the Jewels. You know, like Run the Jewels didn't make a song for a movie, I don't think, but they should just give it to them anyway, because they're great. I'm fine with that. That would be great. Anything jump out at you from the original score category yes two nominations for trent resner and atticus ross which is just kind of well deserved in my opinion but it does feel kind of like they're the meryl streep of the score category at this point and that's great you know what a cool time to be living in that that is what's happening but it's pretty funny. For two totally different movies and two totally different kinds of scores, which is neat for Mank and Soul. I'm very excited to see Tennant's Ludwig Ransom here in the mix.

And the other one too, we haven't really spent any time talking about Minari and we will soon, but Emil Mosseri, who also did the score for The Last Black Man in San Francisco, which I thought was one of the best scores the last five years, was recognized here. I hope he gets a big look in this category because that'd be great. He's a really talented guy. Okay. That's the short list. I'm sure when we get our Oscar nominations in a, I don't know, four or five weeks, we'll be excitedly talking about Never Break getting nominated from Giving Voice, which is apparently a song from a film. I'm just not familiar with that at all. I think you should sing it at 7 a.m. On this podcast.

Okay. I'll think about it. I'll get the scales out and see if I can read the music. Let's talk about biopics. Okay. Judas and the black Messiah is technically a biopic. It's technically a biopic of, of Fred Hampton during a period of his life and a handful of real life

figures in the black Panthers and the FBI elsewhere. It doesn't feel like a traditional biopic. And that's frankly, one of the things that I think recommends it. And we'll talk more about that movie very shortly. But what do you think makes for a good biopic? I think things that don't feel like the traditional biopic that you just alluded to that is just sort of it's it's that is not a straw man because there are like 18 biopics of winston churchill who thank you for your service sir but like we don't need another one you know your service as the prime minister of england i don't know i'm just saying good job and i think we've got it and he's not a private in the u.s army what are you talking about but there is like biopic is basically a dirty word at this point because there is this sort of congealed idea of it as this like cradle to grave great man like stodgy story with you know

weepy music and it's and it's like, wow, what accomplishments, um, and also possibly like totally made up and certainly manipulated. But I think that that is unfair to what a biopic can be. And one of the things I love about Judas and the Black Messiah is that it understands, you know, that, that people are interesting and people are both interesting of themselves and also a lens to how we understand the world and how we understand moments and political systems and social, you know, social ideas. And that people see themselves and their history refracted through individuals. And like that, there's nothing else I want to see in a movie but that. So, you know, you have to evolve on the formula, but that's true of all good genres

and like all good films, frankly. And I like justice for the biopic is what I have to say. I tend to think that if the theme of the biopic is basically just the mission of the main character's life, then the movie is a failure. You know, if the idea is, you know, if it's Gandhi, for example,

the Richard Attenborough movie, which Ben Kingsley won a Best Actor Oscar for, the message of that movie is persistence and peace. And that's what Gandhi's life is about. And like, that's not very deep. That's not a bad film. It's just kind of boring. It's the kind of movie that they show in ninth grade when you're meant to learn about Gandhi's life.

And it's, it's, it's kind of a, it's kind of a precursor to Wikipedia in a lot of ways. And that's not, that's not that fun. There's, it's not that,

that's not very creative. It's not very, it's not very curious. I think about the condition. There's nothing necessarily wrong with It's not very curious, I think, about the condition. There's nothing necessarily wrong with learning about Gandhi's life, reading a book about him or understanding what he contributed to the world. But as a film, as cinema, you want more than that. You want something deeper, something slightly more complex or more surprising.

And so I think you and I have always kind of agreed that subverting that great man structure is usually the best way to get to a biopic. I think who is worthy of a biopic is kind of an interesting question because when I was putting together my list of five favorites, and are they the five best ever? Probably not, but they're five that I really dig. They're not all really famous people. In fact, most of them are not very famous people. Does it matter to you if the subject is kind of is wellknown and you want to see their psyche and their story explored? Or do you like one that's from someone you've never really heard of before?

I mean, I like both. I think it has to be well done. Execution matters, which we say over and over again. someone that we know very well, but it's new, a new look at that person, new perspective, like a certain phase of their life, or just, you know, behind the curtain of someone that, you know, one way because of history or the media, or just like the access that we have to a famous person. But the, the film has a different perspective and portrayal and just gives you a different view of the person. I think that's fascinating. I mean, that's, you know, I just want to know more about people all of the time. That's also why I like celebrity gossip. It's also why I like celebrity profiles. I mean, it's a human

instinct in a lot of ways, but I can't pretend to be above that. But I do also think that the films that spotlight someone who hasn't had that kind of exposure or it never occurred to anyone deserved that kind of exposure, but who illuminates some facet of our society or history or just a different way of telling a story. If you can reveal something different about humanity or what it means to be a person, that is also fascinating to me too. We're going through this moment right now where probably the noisiest and most obvious version of biopics are in the music space. If you look at Judy last year, you look at Straight Outta Compton or Rocketman or Bohemian

Rhapsody or going back a few years to movies like Ray, I've still been trying to wrap my head around why this is the go-to. I guess political figures are probably the number two behind musical figures in terms of the subjects of these kinds of movies. I know, you know, obviously part of it is, hey, you get to play the song Rocketman in the movie Rocketman and everybody loves Rocketman. So what could go wrong here? So I understand that that's part of the appeal, but why do you think we keep going back to music all the time for these movies? in a lot of ways pop stars are are like most fully evolved form of celebrity and people have always been fixated in you know who is this song about and what is going on beyond this song

and what is the like the imagery and that that and also frankly that there is just often like a rich off-screen or like as off-record history to a lot of these that we don't get to see. So it makes a lot of sense there. They are cinematic and also usually for pop stars, like visually evolved in a way that like the story is there. But to your point, it's often a pretty limited arc right like it's just kind of they had some struggles and then they made this music that you love and then you hear the song in the last what 15 to 20 minutes and like if you're me you just start crying because whatever even if you've heard somewhere over the rainbow a thousand times and you know you're being completely

manipulated it's just like oh my god somewhere over the rainbow um which again is an unrest underestimated aspect of the biopic it's like yeah they're manipulative but we all do have these connections to these things and so when a movie can land it you respond or at least i respond yeah the worst biopics don't speak to me at all they anger me but the mediocre ones usually still do work on me it's not like i'm above a mediocre biopic I just think that the very best ones are often operating outside of this traditional formula that we're talking about, which is usually originating event, something traumatic that happened to you at a young age, followed shortly by a soft rise to fame, followed by the struggles that come with fame, followed by coming out of the fire

of the struggles to emerge that much stronger. I mean, that's usually where these movies go. Yeah. And let's be real. All forms of storytelling are better when they're not that particular, whether it is a celebrity profile, note to all the aspiring journalists out there, or a history book, or a novel, we do know that sort of that classical formula, but part of the joy is figuring out new ways to tell the story and also new things that you learn about a person or an idea as you play with the structure.

Let's take through a couple of our favorites because I think we both picked five movies that don't really operate under these parameters in really any meaningful way. Maybe one of mine does. Oh, I thought we purposely were picking slightly non-traditional because Malcolm X is not on either our list.

And that's a little bit because we've talked about Malcolm X a lot in the past few weeks. But I think it is one of the great biopics. And also, it does engage with the history of biopics and kind of subvert, in subject matter, among other things, the genre. But it does also hew to that traditional format. So I didn't include it. But it's number one for me. It's kind of an exception that proves the rule to me. It's the rare cradle to grave movie that

shows you many phases of a person's life and all of those kind of rote storytelling style structures, but it's still effective and it's still kind of innovative. So I agree. There are a handful, I think, that we won't talk about that fit that bill, but I, you're right. I did. I prompted and said, let's basically do like Trojan horse biopics. Let's do, because Judas and the black Messiah is a, is a Trojan horse biopic. It's got a very genre, uh, inflected approach to telling the story of a really important person at a really important time. And our picks mostly do that too. I'm going to go first.

I'm just going to say Amadeus by Milos Forman, which I think I talked about recently on this show, which is a really interesting film. And, you know, it was a 1984 film about Mozart and Salieri and the nature of creative rivalry and jealousy and extravagance in the face of creating art. But the thing that I like about it most and that I see that I kind of did with all my

picks is this movie blends fact and fiction pretty aggressively. And it's based on a stage play that also blended fact and fiction. And it doesn't worry necessarily about getting things right, but also doesn't change things to make them seem shinier. Most biopics elide the most complicated parts of the stories because it's not good for the person who has authorized the biopic. Obviously, Mozart was not a consultant on the film Amadeus. He was not available at that time. But the film is really shot through Salieri's point of view and his frustration and the way he's tortured by the way that not just Mozart created, but the way that he lived and what an affront that was to him and his relationship to God because of that affront. Incredibly deep, massively staged film. Such a

cool movie. It really is like one of the great movies of the 20th century. If you have not seen Amadeus, you should check it out. Another really surprising, and to me, especially at a young age when I saw it, like exhilarating thing that it does is because, you know, Mozart, very well established historical figure, but as you mentioned, you know, not alive anymore, not alive at the time of the making of the movie. And, you know, the historical figures that you're presented like in school and in history books and kind of on a page or like in that classical bust can feel very distant. And, you know, I always imagine them as like kind of solemn museum figures and the performance of, and the portrayal, the performance by Tom Holtz and the portrayal of Mozart is just like him as like a little, a maniac and that laugh.

And it's not, it's fun and exuberant and kind of annoying at times. And it's just absolutely not what you think of when you think of like one of the great men of history. And I just, I was really wowed by that as a small kid. Brilliant subversion. Exactly what we were discussing before. What's, what's, what's your pick? So my next pick kind of breaks half the rules that we were discussing, but with style. So that's fine. It's a Julie and Julia, which the Nora Ephron biopic of Julia child.

And it counts because it's non-traditional in structure. It is told through the lens of a woman named Julie who is cooking her way through the Julia Child cookbook. And this was a true story. And there was a blog. And then the blog was optioned. And then this movie was made. And so one half of the movie follows Julie. And the other half of the movie follows Meryl Streep as Julia Child.

Mostly in Paris and the writing of her famous cookbook. And, you know, one other thing that I had wanted to mention is that the true impersonation movies are often really tough. And when you're so familiar with someone and especially someone's screen likeness and it you know and the person is just kind of doing a memory it doesn't really work and Meryl Streep is almost doing that I mean Julia Child obviously had a hugely successful tv show and then like a very famous SNL parody which like you know we still do like bon appetit like in the home as things are going wrong in the kitchen. So this movie is breaking a lot of the rules, but the Meryl Streep performance and really like the gusto that she brings to it.

There's like such an energy and a sense of life that to me takes it beyond impersonation. And I just, I like, I love this movie. One of the great rewatchables in my opinion i in my quieter moments think of this movie as a prequel to mrs doubtfire because i think that meryl streep was inspired by the hello from robin williams um you just made me think of that for

some reason nevertheless this is a very cool movie i think it's a i think it's a perfect example of what we're talking about here it's not it isn't 120 minutes of julia child it's something different it's a different way to kind of appreciate and admire what she did and shine a light onto it so and the way that it's constructed is a little bit about the julie character's relationship to julia child and our relationship to you know celebrities are larger than life figures and imagining what these people you know some of the things that are like a diet of biopics like engenders so it definitely qualifies it just you know not everyone can be Meryl Streep doing Julia Child I hope one day there's a biopic about

me that is um also about the blog hipster runoff and it's about like hipster runoff kind of reflecting on hipsters in Brooklyn in the 2000s but then that's my experience and they're capturing both you think that would be a good film no I don't okay my next pick I wanted to just honor Leonardo DiCaprio who I think is currently the the reigning champion of the modern day biopic he has appeared in of course the Wolf of Wall Street as Jordan Belfort he's appeared in the Aviator as Howard Hughes he has appeared in J. Edgar as J. Edgar Hoover I think his best biopic is actually Catch Me If You Can and also probably his most subversive. Wolf of Wallstreet is pretty subversive, but I don't know about as biopics go. It's fairly standard. It moves chronologically through a period in time of

his life and tells the story of his life. Catch Me If You Can is a con man movie, and it's such a clever design. and it's also a movie about a not famous person and this is the movie i was thinking of when i prompted you with that question because i had never heard of frank abagnale before this movie and he of course is a fascinating figure about um the american spirit you know and what people can accomplish uh when they put their mind to something you know whether that's a benefiting society or snookering everyone around him. And it's also really probably one of the more sensitive psychological portrayals in the

Steven Spielberg canon of a person who's really missing something in the center of his heart and is in search of something and is constantly trying to escape his own feelings by putting on these grand ruses and the idea of father figures moving in and out of his life at any given time. Really interesting movie, great Leo performance. And when I think of like what I want out of a mainstream Hollywood movie, I've thought about this a lot with Judas and the Black Messiah, because it checks a lot of those boxes. Catch Me If You Can is another example of this. Get me famous, charismatic people operating at their best in extraordinary circumstances.

That's what I want out of a movie like this. So Catch Me If You Can, it's a great one. Yeah. Well, so Catch Me If You Can and Wolf of Wall Street are kind of a neat pair in terms of Leo examining the role of empathy in these biopics and how much you should root for these people. Oh yeah, and masculinity too. And how much you're inclined to root for these people.

Even if you shouldn't, in the case of Wolf of Wall Street, um, my next movie, it will surprise. No one is the queen, uh, written by Peter Morgan and directed by Stephen Frears.

And listen, yes, the crown would not exist without the queen. And so we have to honor it for that but if you haven't seen it 2006 movie starring Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth the current queen still knock on wood um I should really old just sending her my best she I think she got a vaccine though but so far you've thanked Winston Churchill for his service and wished the Queen of england your best really generous today

sending your love over the pond trying to trying to bring some positive vibes so again sort of bringing some rules this is a biopic about like a hugely famous person her face is on money all over the world which is a whole other you know series of colonial events that we can discuss another time whole other podcast yeah but just like a very visible person and you know someone that a lot of people in the world are aware of but who also you don't really have any sense of her as a person so So that's one aspect. And then the second is that it's a very smart structure. This movie is about the week after the death of Princess Diana, who died in a car crash in Paris in 1997. And it is about how the Queen and Buckingham Palace responded to kind of the outpouring of grief on Diana's death, after Diana's death. And it is about how

Tony Blair, who had recently been elected prime minister, kind of interacts with the queen in order to like manage the situation. So it's a little bit of a political docudrama. It obviously, you know, is about a major event in the death of Princess Diana. But that is just kind of a lens through which you're learning about these two people and how they think or how Peter Morgan thinks they think. And it's, you know, I think it's pretty fascinating. And it certainly informs the play that Peter Morgan goes on to write about Queen Elizabeth that then turns in to The Crown, which is not a movie and thus is not eligible, but is definitely at this point a 40 episode biopic that I think is amazing. So I recommend it. It's very structurally interesting and how

to get in the mind of someone whose mind you have absolutely no access to. Terrific movie. Terrifically well-written movie. It's a character study. It's a true character study of a person and so much of it is imagined but it's imagined so thoughtfully what her psychology is as a human being. I feel like very obviously before The Crown, it felt almost revolutionary

to see someone applying that level of emotion and thinking about the human behavior of somebody who might be in her position, especially in the aftermath of that event. Really, really great movie. Kind of like lost to time

in a way because of The Crown. You know, I feel like it's been overshadowed even though it's some of the same people working on it. Yes, I think it'll be really interesting

because we're next season is season five of The Crown is the 90s. And I assume we'll end with this same event and it's peter morgan again so i'm very curious to see how he handles it this is also the movie which does she see a moose or a stag yeah but that's a recurring motif peter morgan just loves to have that that also happens in the crown no spoilers you'll never watch it it's fantastic i wouldn't say never but um so i guess saying staying in the zoology category um

my next film is i'll do these next two to pair it together because i think they're an interesting pair of films from the 80s that are not talked about maybe as much as they should be one is the elephant man which is a fairly well-known movie by david lynch that stars john hurt and anthony hopkins that is about jose Merrick. He's referred to as John Merrick in this film, a man who was severely disfigured in many ways, was born with some genetic abnormalities. And it's simply one of the most sensitive films I've ever seen. It's beautifully shot. It's in black and white, and it's very carefully told, and it does not have the trappings of the quote unquote weird that comes with a lot of David Lynch. It feels like a left turn from Eraserhead,

which is the film he had made prior to this. And it also shows a kind of like, there's a little bit of a trapdoor thing here with this movie, where it seems like David Lynch could have gone on to a lot of quote-unquote prestige movies, but I think his struggles with particularly Dune

as like a franchise movie led him down the path of significantly more eccentric uh version of filmmaking but the elephant man is kind of really classically mounted and it looks beautiful and it has these very great classical performances it still has that that curiosity about oddity which is i think kind of defines most of david lynch's work but it's a story of a person that most of us just did not know anything about. An English man who, you know, lived at the turn of the century and, you know, obviously lived a very challenging life, but also a very human, had a very human experience and was not what many people thought he was. And the movie shows over a period of time, his kind of evolution. I think a lot of the movies that we're talking about here are about capturing a person in time

and then watching how they change in a short period of time, whether it's Julie or Julia, whether it's, you know, Frank Abagnale, whether it's Salieri or whether it's Joseph Merrick. If you haven't seen The Elephant Man, there's an extraordinary edition of the Criterion Collection put out a few years ago that is one of the best ones I think they've ever released. So that's The Elephant Man. The second one also has a beautiful Criterion Collection. It's called Mishima, A Life in Four Chapters. It's one of the most critically acclaimed but least seen Paul Schrader movies. It's about Yukio Mishima, the Japanese writer. And it's a movie that does that thing where you have a person in the present day at the

beginning of the movie, and then it cuts back to their life in the present day at the end of the movie. But everything that happens in between is either a flashback or a creation of some kind. Mishima, as an author, Schrader uses his stories to tell the story of his life. So he's adapting novels and short stories of his work over the years to create basically like six different films inside this one film. Extraordinary movie. Truly, there's no, I can't think of another movie that is like it, that looks like it, that feels like it, that has the shape and tone of it. If you can track it down, I recommend Mishima.

Okay. Those are my two somewhat idiosyncratic picks. Where are you next? I have several idiosyncratic picks next. Lay them on us. So the next is Jackie, which is the 2016 Jackie Kennedy biopic directed by Pablo Lorraine starring Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy. And it's that old, we're doing an interview and we're going to do some flashbacks trick. But it focuses on a famous guided White House tour that Jackie Kennedy gave while they were living in the White House and then kind of follows the events after JFK's death.

I will be super honest. I still don't know what I think of this Natalie Portman performance. It was best summed up by an interview that Peter Sarsgaard, who plays Bobby Kennedy in the film, gave to, I believe, New York Magazine about being on set the first day that she debuted the performance. And his response was just, oh, so that's what we're doing. And I think, you know, it is, it's hard again, because obviously a person who was very much in the spotlight and certainly photographed a lot, but doesn't speak as much. So you have very vivid ideas, but you're doing a little bit of impersonation and a

little bit of impression, trying to recreate something familiar, add something to it. You know, who can say? Your mileage may vary. But this movie, to me, is a movie about image making and really about biopics and what we see and how these people that we project so much on participate in their own story. And I am endlessly fascinated by that. And so I think even if everything doesn't land as an idea exercise about this genre, I recommend it. I think that's well put. One of the great scores of the 21st century, the Mika Levy score. I think it's a really good movie.

I think it is a choice by Natalie Portman to do that voice. But the staging and the production design is top shelf that's a really good one what what's your next one all right this one goes out to my father this is for you nox davans my next is 32 short films about glenn gould which is like in the genre is like a very cherished celebrated um from 1993 directed by Francois Girard. And this is a movie that I saw in 1993 when I was nine years old. And yeah, so my dad put me in front of this film because I took piano lessons. I took them for a long time and he thought that this would be a good way for me to understand, you know, a great artist and art. And I'm going to tell you at nine years old, not so much. It was really mad. I just have, I do actually still have,

you know, certain scenes of it and particularly like just being the inside the piano really did stick with me. And I guess it did change my idea of what it meant to be a pianist i also quit um playing the piano at some point so didn't work that much i guess but um the film is as indicated in the title 32 short films and so it has some like recreations of glenn gould by the way was a very celebrated pianist and he's known best for his recording of the gold of box Goldberg variations. And they are played throughout the film and the structure of the film, which is 32 short films. And there are recreations and they're of his life. And there are interviews from people with people who know him. There's animation.

There is the aforementioned. They're like just kind of mechanical investigations of different parts of the piano and music and sound in, you know, kind of loosely following the format of the Goldberg variations, which are variations on a theme. But it's sort of just a patchwork approach to an artist and looking at someone from a bunch of different small angles and, you know, what does that add up to both as a portrait of a person, but also as a portrait of an artist? And it's quite funny and also, you know, sad and affecting at times and certainly challenging. I don't recommend it for nine-year-olds.

It just, but I, you know, I guess it stuck with me. So thank you, dad. add? I was made aware of this movie thanks to an episode of The Simpsons that is called 22 Short Films About Springfield that uses a very similar approach at looking at individual events through a lot of different perspectives and told in slightly different ways. It's one of the greatest episodes of The Simpsons ever. And I was trying to figure, I remember being 14 and trying to figure out why this episode of the show was like this and not like other episodes come to find out 32 short films about glenn gould exists um our last picks are both music biopics which feels like not a coincidence perhaps given what we were describing earlier um and they're very similar in a way uh mine is i'm not there and yours is love and mercy and they're both about icons of 1960s pop songwriting. And they're both about

the completely shattered perspectives that happen when you become an icon of 60s pop songwriting. I thought it was interesting that we both happened to gravitate towards those two. I'm Not There literally breaks Bob Dylan into seven different Bob Dylans, either figures that he wrote about in his songs or ways that we saw him through the media or these kind of like filtered visions of him as an artist that Todd Haynes creates. And it is a movie that grows in my estimation as every day goes by. I think when I first saw it, I was already hook, line, and sinker. I love Todd's movies and I love Bob Dylan. So it was not that hard to get me in the theater,

but I was pretty confounded by it the first time, even knowing what it was going to be. There's a very famous New Yorker story, I think about Todd in the run-up to the release of this movie that outlines it. So I knew what I was getting myself into. And I still was like, I don't know if that worked. And I've watched it a few times.

I've interviewed Todd a few times over the years, really admire his work and kind of like his mission. And I think that this is like what I want out of a biopic in a lot of ways. Show me some things that are true about the person. Show me some things that are mythology, but help me understand what that person was really after. You know, what was it that they were trying to do and explore and what do they mean to you as an artist, as a filmmaker? So that's, I'm not there. Why do you like Love and Mercy? Well, part of it is just that I'm a huge Beach Boys fan, like, you know, every other person on the planet. And this is a slightly more traditional biopic than I'm not there, but it still, it really kind of first coming to terms with his mental

health struggles. And in the 60s, he's played by Paul Dano. And then in the 80s, as he is, Brian Wilson is really working through a lot of his mental health struggles. He's played by John Cusack and, you know, two wonderful actors who look nothing like each other. And so it's not about really a con it's not about continuity. It's about following those two characters at two different intense moments in their lives. Well, one character in two different moments in his life, but, you know, again, exploring the different sides of someone and what is consistent and, you know, what we carry with us over time. And, you know know also like what

makes an artist and i think it's like a very beautiful film ultimately it's done with like a lot of sensitivity um and very heartwarming at the end like all beach boys songs are which is nice you know i don't mind a happy ending in a biopic i'm just gonna say that or at least a possibly happy ending it's important that everyone find love. That's very hokey and in the title and maybe perhaps it's the theme of the movie, but in this case, it actually is a good thing.

We didn't mention a bunch of stuff. There's obviously a ton of movies that we've talked about a lot. Frankly, throughout quarantine, you mentioned The Social Network and Moneyball and Marie Antoinette as some favorites of yours. I didn't identify Yankee Doodle Dandy, A Man for All Seasons, Coal Miner's Daughter, Serpico. There's tons of movies that are like this, that do this kind of work.

I don't know if we're in a golden age of this or not. I was thinking about that, especially as we start to pivot our conversation to Judas and the Black Messiah. Are we at a time now where it's a great time to be telling these stories? Or does it feel a bit wrung out or maybe obviated by television in some ways? I mean, the television thing is just, that's a whole other conversation. But I think part of one of the many things that is exciting about Judas and the Black Messiah, in addition, number one, it's just great.

It's a great film, great performances, like fully realized, fun to watch. But to me, it did feel like reclaiming the genre a little bit, um, in all senses of the world word. I think, um, you spoke with Shaka King and, um, in interviews that he's done, he's talked a lot about trying to get this movie made and that a biopic about Fred Hampton and the Black Panthers is not what Hollywood thinks of when they think of biopic. And that a biopic about Fred Hampton and the Black Panthers is not what Hollywood thinks of when they think of biopic. And that is about Hollywood. And you and I just did a list of biopics

that are primarily about white people. So that is definitely baked into Hollywood and America. But so to be able to make this movie in this way about these people and this subject and these ideas is really exciting. And, you know, it does reinvent it and we can talk a bit more about the structure. I also don't want to spoil it for people who haven't seen it, but I do think it also honors like the things that we like about a biopic. It has a really deft sense of the person. You know, there is a love story in it that is like, is very affecting.

There are larger ideas about this particular moment and what it meant, you know, in the context of Chicago and in the context of the US at that time. And, you know, before and after and ever since because we live in America. But I think that it really understands the genre and then updates and reinvents it. And that is very exciting.

And I hope more people get a chance to do it. It has a high level of sensitivity to not just what happened to Fred Hampton, but what Fred Hampton believed in. And part of that is because he was such a great orator that there are many sequences that just show him talking about what matters to him and where he thinks our society should go. And it's radical in that way because his politics, at least at that time, could be considered radical.

He was a socialist. He was the sort of person who the Black Panthers fed young children and sought to educate and protect young children and that is perceived by the white establishment as a threat for example so in the movie you're you're observing what that the party represented at least in some respects since particularly the chicago chapter which is where he lived and resided um but you're right about what shaka has said i mean he and i talked about a little bit too right about what Shaka has said. I mean, he and I talked about it a little bit too, just about how he got this movie made. I mean, he does make it effectively

a crime thriller, a cat and mouse movie, kind of a con man movie, and also a romance. And you can sense the kind of clever craft and artistry that they're putting into this to make this like a palatable mainstream movie. And frankly, I think that's a good thing. Like, I don't think it would be necessarily as effective

as a movie if it were pure hagiography, you know, I, I, I think using essentially the film and I, we won't spoil it, but it uses really the William O'Neill character who was a real man, who was an FBI informant, um, who infiltrated the Black Panthers. And he is the Judas in the title. He's played by Lakeith Stanfield, terrific performance. And the Black Messiah is Hampton, portrayed by Daniel Kaluuya. And it creates this narrative propulsion in the story that isn't just this happened and then this happened and then this happened. It's a film that creates paranoia. It's a film that has a big shootout sequence. It's a film that has a sense of distrust and of like an unease that is created by using the structure of the William O'Neill character. But it's all also true. And there

are some dramatized aspects of it. So the film was originally conceived by Keith and Kenny Lucas, who people may know as the comedy duo, the Lucas Brothers, which is very strange that they came up with this and yet very inspired. And their pitch for it was the conformist meets the departed, the Bertolucci movie meets the Scorsese movie. And that is basically what the movie is. I mean, they really held true to that, that sense of like impending doom and anxiety about something that the lead character has to do as in the conformist. And also this like antic violent, you know, kind of what's the word I'm looking for? Like scandal ridden, terrible climax. You know, this kind of the awfulness of the way that the departed kind of unfurls.

And this movie is very similar. I thought that that was great. And also, it's not surprising that Ryan Kluger is a producer on this movie because he's another guy who knows how to make really good movies out of good film ideas, if that makes sense. Can we talk about the Kaluuya performance for a minute? Yeah, let's do it. Extraordinary. Unbelievable. I mean, he is a generational talent. And I think you and I have kind of spoken about him here and there before. And he can do all sorts of things. But I was absolutely blown away. You know, Fred Hampton was like an orator and had like a real sense of charisma in addition to all of, you know, the work and his politics. But that is an essential part of his history. And Daniel Kluge just absolutely embodies it.

And you can just kind of, the scenes, especially when he is giving speeches to large groups of people are completely electrifying. One of those moments where I just like, you're watching it and you're just thinking, okay, this has to win an Oscar. It has to win an Oscar. It gives you chills. I don't think it does. I mean, I don't want to win an Oscar. It has to win an Oscar. It gives you chills. I don't think it does.

I mean, I don't want to get too meta at this point, but I actually don't understand why this movie isn't like a front runner because in many ways it embodies what I think Hollywood thinks it is, which is that it is like a, and I hate to say I tweeted this, but I tweeted this.

I thought a lot of the movie Reds and the way that the movie Reds was received and supported the Warren Beatty movie Reds was received and supported the Warren Beatty movie, another biopic about John Reed, who was an American communist and a journalist. And that was a movie

about a socialist revolution funded by Paramount. And this is a movie about a socialist revolution funded by Warner Brothers. And it is the corporate system patting itself on the back, but also empowering somebody like Shaka King, who has a lot to say, who's really smart, who is the kind of filmmaker

who would not have gotten an opportunity like this 20, maybe not even 10 years ago. And as things evolve in Hollywood, ideally, this is what you want to platform. It's like an entertaining mainstream movie with big ideas and extraordinary performances that give you chills when it's really hitting. And Kaluuya, obviously more than anybody, I think stands to benefit. And I think if there's an effective campaign, maybe he can win a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. I don't know. I agree with you completely though, that he is like the most stunning thing in the movie. I don't want to take anything away from Lakeith Stanfield though, because I think he, you could make the case has the harder part um certainly you know he has the exposition

part and a lot of it has to be really internal and kind of communicating how much this person is and torn and and honestly i think lakeith stanfield himself like has to make a lot of those decisions you know i think they're probably making it in collaboration or in the edit room or whatever like but the interpretation of of who this person is and their motivation um is a fascinating part of the film but a very difficult part to play yeah i asked shock about it i thought he spoke really smartly about who william o'neill was in his mind and what he and lakeith kind of agreed on. Because I couldn't think of a more ambivalent protagonist in a movie. A figure who really doesn't seem to have a point of view other than self-interest and how unusual that is in movies, especially American movies. We're so bound by the Joseph Campbell hero myth in most of our films. And we're talking about biopics.

I mean, think of all the movies that we just talked about there, even in the more idiosyncratic ones, most of the time, the title character is the hero. Judas is not a hero. I mean, he's not anything like that in this movie, but he's also not necessarily pure, pure, pure villainy. What he does is awful, but it's also, is he a product of his environment and his circumstances? Is he, what flaws happened to him that triggered some of this terrible decision-making that then awful but it's also is he a product of his environment and his circumstances is he what what flaws happened to him that triggered some of this terrible decision making that then had this extraordinary domino effect that he probably couldn't have anticipated when he was making those decisions and and like you said like he stanfield is so internal and you can feel him churning

inside as he has to make certain decisions really really good performance and so different from kaluuya, who's like a, he's like a steam engine, you know? And the two of them together is such an interesting contrast. The movie does what I thought was clever thing for the William O'Neill character, which is like, they do have a true villain in the movie and it's Jan Groover.

And it's played by Martin Sheen, who is completely unrecognizable. And the character is not particularly fleshed out because you don't need to flesh that kind of racism out um but you know even in the context of biopics and and the history is like you mentioned one of the worst biopics ever made uh j edgar but that is typically the type of person who like in fact did get a you know a great men um biopic what, 10 years ago. And to have that person just firmly on the side as the, as the villain, I think, I mean, it really helps the rest of the characters fall into place and is also, I think, kind of a nice intro genre callback.

Yeah. I think also if you want to do a double feature with this movie, I wouldn't do it with Jay Edgar. I do it with MLK FBI, which is the Sam Pollard documentary that made the short list that we talked about on the show a couple weeks ago. That really reveals a lot more of what J. Edgar's strategies were towards figures like Martin Luther King Jr. And then ultimately figures like Fred Hampton and just what a corrupting force he was in our country. A couple of other really great performances in this movie. Dominique Fishback, you mentioned, who plays Deborah Johnson, who is incredible. And very similarly, I'm like, if this was a normal Oscar year,

wouldn't there also be a campaign for Dominique Fishback? There should be. And it doesn't seem like there is right now, or there's not enough attention being put on her at the moment, but she's really, really great in this. I completely i completely agree i mean it's one of those things where maybe because this movie is just being released and you know just had its debut at sundance maybe the awards campaign hasn't really picked up yet i hope it's not too late that i guess she would run in supporting yeah and and that category does seem to be a little more fluid

than some of the others at this point. So yeah, I think she's absolutely extraordinary. And again, like an internal performance. And especially in the scenes with Kaluuya, who is like, he's the big energy. And she is responding to that, but kind of holding her own ground. It's great stuff.

And then Jesse Plemons, who's now the magic fairy dust that every filmmaker sprinkles on his film. He plays Roy Mitchell, O'Neill's FBI handler, and is by turns extraordinarily sinister and by other turns oddly sympathetic as a figure operating inside of a system that is perhaps more devious than he even realized himself. And he has to go through some interesting phases of, and I think a less skilled actor probably wouldn't create that sense of weird empathy that he has in relation to J. Edgar Hoover. But then when you see him opposite William O'Neill, he's so menacing and so threatening and so representative of the terrible things that the FBI was doing at that time. It's a complex film. You know, it's a really impressive series of character studies in one movie.

Yeah. And the tension more so for the William O'Neill character, but even a little bit, and I think it's because of Jesse Plemons as an actor, is like, how are these characters going to break? Like, will they do the right thing or will they do the thing that, you know, the terrible thing. And even if you know what's going to happen, which I think a large portion of the audience probably will know what's coming and like the, and the pretty difficult third act.

It's I mean, that, that's a tough thing to watch. So just, you know, be prepared, but they managed to keep the tension in it. And that's very difficult. I agree. I think if this movie sounds like it's too heavy for you or too much of a history lesson, let me reassure listeners. This is kind of like a Michael Mann movie.

It's kind of like a Jules Daston 50s movie. It is like a crime movie and it also has a lot of really strong, smart, and important ideas. And it's also a little bit lyrical at times. It has kind of like an elegance in some moments too, especially between Dominique Fishback and Daniel Kaluuya, those

quieter moments that you're referring to. Just a really good movie. I don't want to sound too gobsmacked by something that I wish Hollywood was more of, honestly. But I do wish that there were just more movies like this. Yes. I will just also say one of the best movies I have seen in the last year and certainly at home. And to reinforce this, you know, it has big ideas.

It's about important stuff, but it just moves and you will just be completely enthralled at home. And I think in a theater, it would be absolutely extraordinary. And I am sorry to have missed that experience, but it's great to be able to see it. I'm really excited about where Shaka King is going to go. You know, Adam Naiman mentioned that when we talked about the Sundance movies last week, that if he is an anointed person in the Hollywood system, I think that's a great thing for both of us. So let's go to my conversation with Shaka right now. Delighted to be joined by Shaka King. Shaka, thanks for doing the show, man. My pleasure.

Shaka, big moment for you. This film is really exciting. I'm really excited to talk to you about it. I will say, it seems a bit surprising, given what your work has been before this, that Judas and the Black Messiah is coming from you. So maybe you can help me understand how you got involved in this project. Sure, sure. Well, it first came to me from the Lucas Brothers I directed a pilot presentation of that Mike Calamite show on Netflix yeah so it was initially set at FX a few years back and I shot the pilot presentation for it and I met the Lucas Brothers while making that. We became cool. about a year after that,

I got a call from Jermaine Fowler, who's a friend of ours and who plays Mark Clark in the film. And he said that, he was like, hey, I'm really excited to be working on this Fred Hampton movie with you and the Lucas Brothers. And I was like, I have no idea what you're talking about uh and it turned out that the lucas brothers

wanted me to co-write and direct this movie with them um and so the next time we got together you know they kind of like walked me through the pitch a little bit and the way they described it to me was you know we want to make a movie about fred Fred Hampton and William O'Neill, who I was aware of Fred Hampton did not know anything about William O'Neill. And we kind of envisioned this as the departed inside the world of COINTELPRO. And for those who don't know, you know, COINTELPRO is the FBI counterintelligence program designed to eradicate any group or individual that jay hoover deemed you know a dissonant radical um and so i immediately saw the movie uh or you know i had a vision instantly i was surprised to hear them tell me that you know they've been pitching it around for a year and no one could see it and i was like i see it immediately and so i came on board. And that was around, I think, 2016. And then we didn't

do anything for a year. We did absolutely nothing. You know, we talked on the phone a few times. Then New Year's Eve 2016, I woke up and called them. And I was like, this year, we have to really commit to this because it just was clearly to me to get an idea to just you know abandon particularly out of laziness uh so i i got to work january 1st 2017 and then that's that's all i've been really focused on since what did something happen in your life or was there something in the world that made you feel like because you know you'd been you know directing serious television and you'd made a film already but what what triggered the the urgency i swear to you i do i just woke up like that one day you know i didn't it wasn't at all um a cerebral decision it wasn't an emotional decision it was

just a serious compulsion i woke up that morning and I just was, I was just so compelled. I called them. You know what I mean? Like, I was like, yo, I just, something's like we haven't been doing this and we should be doing this. You know what I mean? Um, I, when they pitched the idea, I thought it was incredibly brilliant, but you know, like stuff happened. We live on opposite ends of the country. You know what I mean? And you know, I was just things, I don. You know what I mean? And, you know, I was just things. I don't even remember what I was doing.

I was probably working. I don't know. I don't know. I wasn't writing anything. But I remember waking up, you know, that morning and just knowing I've got to pursue this. And then just like from that moment on, really focusing a little on it. So help me understand how that happens then. So you guys agree to commit fully.

You start working on this in full. Is it hard to get people to accept you guys making a film like this, given what you may have been known for in the past? Do you have to go raise money once you've got the script in order? Well, so I should give you a little bit more backstory um so the luke's brothers and i start developing a script they had like maybe you know one or two page outline and i'm like you know i beefed it up to like five ten pages and we were about to start writing when i get another call from jermaine fowler and he's like hey you know there's a few fred h scripts, biopic scripts out there.

One of them, my friend wrote, do you want to read it? Like, sure. So I read it and it was by a writer named Wilberson. It was a traditional Fred Hampton biopic. Um, when, when it was barely in it and J. Edgar Hoover was probably the primary antagonist. Uh, and you know roy mitchell was very different than our roy mitchell um and so but but he had fred's parents in a very central role which i really liked and i really liked the job that he'd done with writing uh deborah johnson now known as a cool and it was very clear that he thoroughly, thoroughly, thoroughly researched this subject matter in this world outside myself and the Lucas Brothers so Will and I

got together and just agreed to collaborate on myself and Lucas Brothers' vision of the film and Will and I I rented a spot out in LA for a week and at my kitchen table we just put the movie, you know, first on cards. We took photos of those cards. And Will went and turned those cards into

an outline. He sent it back to me. I rewrote the outline, traded them back and forth. Eventually, we got to a place where, all right, now it's you know write a draft he wrote the first draft sent it back to me i rewrote it and then you know we'd exchange drafts back and forth and eventually you know i just kind of started doing the bulk of the writing and then just giving him scenes and so in the minute and then the midst of that you know somewhere in there one day you know i'm hanging out with rogler, a friend of mine since 2013. We met at Sundance when my film Newlyweeds was there and his film Fruville was there. It's me, Ryan, his wife, and producing partner, Zinzi, and my parents in my backyard hanging out. Ryan's just finished shooting Black Panther.

No, he was about to do reshoots for Black Panther soon. And he asked me what I was working on. And I told him about this, you know, script. We now at this point, I think Will and I, I don't think we had, no, the truth of the matter is we didn't even have a draft of the script. We'd started it. I think Will was still working on his first draft.

And, you know, I tell Ryan about the movie and I see this like look in his eye, you know, and, you know, after we finished eating, he, you know, and Zinzi like, look, if you ever want to do something with this, you know, just if we can help in any way, let us know. Not at all offering to like be producers, just being friends, you know. And eventually Will and I, we get the script to a place where we like. And I called Ryan immediately and I was like, look, do you want to produce this thing? And he said, let me take a look. He read the script, loved the script. Was like, I want to produce this I also want to see if we can bring in Macro as you know a financier and producer as well

because I've been wanting to do something with Charles King and myself Ryan and Charles and Zinzi belonged still belong to an organization called Blackout for Human Rights and you know we I mean I think the first meeting it the human rights organization and, you know,

it's comprised of actors, athletes, artists, many, many grassroots organizers. And really it's led by the grassroots organizers largely, you know, and, and so, you know, we, we, we had a familiarity. I knew that, I knew Charles politics and, you know and and so you know we um we had a familiarity i knew that i knew charles politics and you know obviously macro had been doing great work you know in a relatively short amount of time um so it made sense and so we all kind of teamed up around that time you know i i'd written the script for daniel for lakeith for dominiqueique Fishback, for Jesse Plemons. I'm talking like seeing them while I'm writing the words, you know? So I knew that was who I wanted. And

before we went to the studios, we had Lakeith officially attached, Daniel officially attached, Dominique officially attached. And so I could keep going. I mean, I can keep going because we also, like I could, the story alone of how this came to be could take your whole hour, you know, because at some point we we reached out to Fred Hampton Jr. And just really on a principal level, just wanted to get his blessing, you know, to move forward. And so that was about a year and a half of just forming a relationship, you know, showing him different drafts, speaking with him, hearing his concerns, you know, meeting eventually Akua Njeri, hearing her concerns, them doing their research on who we were.

And eventually, I mean, it wasn't until actually the second week of filming that they were attached as cultural consultants. So it took a while for us to kind of get there. And then from that moment on, Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. was on set 90% of the time. I'm not surprised to hear that there were a lot of Fred Hampton scripts out there. I feel like he is one of those figures who had been slipping through the cracks as cultural history gets told in the last 20 or so years for you personally what was it about wanting to you know tell his story in this like you know this

shakespearean construct of with him and william o'neill well the construct to start with the part of it the construct was really very it was very clear to me that was the only way the movie was going to get made um so well because there isn't even a Louis Armstrong biopic. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. There's a number of reasons. One, you know, you're talking about, when you're talking about period biopics, you're talking about a movie that's going to probably cost anywhere from at the very low budget, 15 million, upwards to getting into close to, you know, 100, right? I think once upon a time in Hollywood, it was probably 90-something.

So, and as you know, doing this podcast, Hollywood doesn't make those kinds of movies anymore. And they really don't make them about Black historical figures of note. So the window's even smaller um and fred hampton even though his name is very very familiar to many many people a lot of people don't know how they know his name um and so there was no way you were going to get a fred hampton biopic made in a traditional Hollywood studio system. And the only way to make it effectively, because you need a certain amount of money to do the

period justice and to give the film, the scope it needs is to make it within the Hollywood framework. And I understood that. So I knew that this was the way that's why it was such a brilliant pitch to me from the Lucas Brothers. In terms of what made me want to make his story out of the other myriad of stories you could make about Black Panther leaders, is that his words, he's one of the greatest orators of all time. And his pen was crazy. His pen was insane. I was all in after reading his speeches, let alone hearing them.

But just the words, I just thought this, I was like, for us to have an opportunity to put forth these ideas in this way, in a major motion picture that travels across the globe is just enough we can't not do this we have that's why i woke up at you know the morning of new year's eve 2016 probably because it was like what do you guys what are y'all doing what have you been doing this year if not trying to make this movie how do you blend that then where you have all of this source text and material then you've got history then you've got this then where you have all of this source text and material then you've got history then you've got this construct where you have to create you know almost like a cat and mouse movie in a lot of ways it's like you know genre movie in some respects and like how much fealty do you have to have to the history how much fealty do you have to have to have fred's

words verbatim and then how much of that affects your ability to make basically like an exciting movie for a general audience. It is an incredible negotiation and juggling act. You couldn't possibly believe. And it's not one that, you know, you could possibly do alone. You have to have the support of other individuals and other ideas to sort of figure out how to,

you know, thread that incredibly, incredibly small needle. You know. And you do it. We did it. I think we did it. We did the best we could, you know. You definitely did it.

Did you look at anything beforehand? Were there any films that you felt like captured some of the strategy or even the time period that you look at anything beforehand? Were there any films that you felt like captured some of the, the strategy or even the time period that you wanted to reflect? We looked at a lot of reference. I mean, there were a ton of references. Um, you know, Malcolm X was one, Heat was one, um, Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Friends of Eddie Coyle.

Uh, you know, it was a, it was a grab that King in New York, even though Sean was like, why are we watching this? But, uh, you know, battle of Algiers was one. Um, yeah,

it was, we had a lot of reference. We were pulling from a lot of different pieces. There wasn't one film that, um, we kind of stuck our claws in. We just kind of pulled from a few. Actually, more than a few.

All those movies you named, I think, have a shootout in them of some kind? You've got a shootout in your film as well. Probably. How did you balance then the competing genres? When we were kings, there was a shootout. That's true.

He killed them off camera He killed them Mobutu did his shooting off camera That's true But what about balancing basically The genre elements with the Historical parts in terms of filming The movie

I mean it's just For me This kind of goes back to the early question You asked which was like, why? Why me after doing comedy? Like, why this? You know, and the truth of the matter is, is that two things. One, like even the comedy I've always done has had like plenty of dramatic elements in it to the point where I've always felt incredibly comfortable directing drama. But my favorite movies to watch have always been crime movies. Specifically, I love all, I really love crime movies from every era,

but I love 70s crime, you know, 70s American crime movies are like, kind of like, you know, it's great. It's just peak, peak stuff. And those things are funny to me because small idiosyncrasies and like just little twitches and things people say and movements they do. Like Gloria is like one of the funniest movies. That movie is hysterical. I love that movie, you know.

And so, you know, I having such a love for those movies and the fondness for them um and and a knowledge of them to some degree you know i felt very comfortable you know making and balancing you know the action the the grittiness um you know all of those things i just felt like i can i can do all that stuff plus like my favorite i'd say probably like like my favorite sort of contemporary directors are, you know, probably Bong Joon-ho and Shenmue Park. And what, you know, the moment I discovered their work when I was in grad school, I was like, oh, this is what I, this is, this is the, this is to me the pinnacle. When you just like, your shit is formless. You know what I mean? When people are like, what kind of movie is that? Is it? And you just like your shit is formless. You know what I mean? When people are like, what kind of movie is that?

And you're like, I don't know. It's just everything, you know? And so I've always, in anything I've ever made since I saw those movies, I've always just like, throw it all in. Just throw it all in just throw it all in you know and i felt comfortable juggling all the tones in this movie because i've been doing that for years now the only thing i had no familiarity with until now was how to shoot action and that you know this is my first time doing it and i think like the things i like that I did and the things that I think I could do better next time.

But I think ultimately the action in the movie, the way that we cover it and the way that we edit it, it serves its purpose and is effective. And I think that there's some places where it's exactly how I want it to be. So there's work to be done there. The highest possible compliment I can pay on at least the action part of it

is, you know, during there's a shootout sequence in your film, during that sequence my wife came out of our bedroom and was like, can you please turn that down? Like it's got a real like heat energy to it where you're like, this is feels visceral, you know, you can't escape you feel, you know, claustrophobic

so that part of it is really incredible. Great. I know Daniel is going to get a lot of plaudits for this obviously and he's amazing in the film and um you know it's just such a powerful performer that people are familiar with but i wanted to talk to you about william o'neill who is really one of the most unlikely and and strangest protagonists i can think of in in movie, if I'm being honest with you. And I was trying to wrap my head around him and how you see him and how you thought about writing him

because he feels like such an enigma. And that's one of the kind of the gifts of the movie is presenting an enigma to an audience. So maybe just help me understand like how you see him and how you thought of him as you started putting the film together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I initially like this kind of started, how you see him and how you thought of him as you started putting the film together. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, you know, I initially like this kind of started, I remember Will and I used to talk about him as a sociopath. And then, you know, we realized that that was kind of like, we were distancing ourselves from him. And in some ways judging him,

you do judge it. You, I think you just are calling someone a sociopath is putting them in a, you know, designation without sort of trying to,

you're making the assumption that they actually don't have inner processes and kind of ways of thinking through things and feeling things that you don't necessarily just understand.

So it's no way to really write a character. And so, you know you kind of got to start thinking about this dude and kind of like taking just like little things about because there's not a lot known about him so you got to mine these things for clues into who he is right so i got a couple clues you know one was um one was a photo of him. It's one of the few photos of him as a young man where he has on a kerchief and sunglasses. And you're like, oh, this guy's a dandy, you know. And so that gave me, because, you know, even though the Black Panthers were known for their style, what was interesting to learn was that the Illinois chapter, one of the reasons you don't see Fred Hampton in as much leather as some of the members of, you know, the other chapters is that the Illinois chapter wore a lot more sort of militaristic, like army jackets, you know, jeans, boots. It's that Midwestern cold, like utilitarian.

Like, yo, I need a warm coat. I can't wear leather in the winter, you know? And, you know, so they weren't fops, you know? And William O'Neill, when he's off duty, he is, you know? Like, and that could compromise his cover, maybe, you know? But he still, it's important that he look good. And you look at him in his suits later and you find out that he had, you know, in the 70s, he was driving a car with two phones. You know, let's use know some things about him. Right.

And so then you also look at how he. The fact that he he could have stolen a car anyway, like Mitchell says, like why the badge, right? So then you got to think about what kind of person does that, an adrenaline junkie, you know, a daredevil, you know, someone who takes pleasure in manipulating others. It's not just about the acquisition of the thing, it's the sport as well, right? So that gave me some clues into who he was um and then his interview uh his eyes on the prize interview where it's a very clear two things apparent to me in that interview one he uses the term we and us uh to talk about the panthers and the f. So here's a person who's clearly, all these years later, still fuzzy on who he is, right?

And then there's also his response, not response, he brings it up, that he says he always wanted to be a cop. And, you know, cops got respect in his neighborhood, right? And so then you think about, he wanted to be a cop, you know, the way that, you know, Rudy Giuliani wanted to be a lawyer. You know what I mean? He wanted to weaponize his power. It had nothing to do with, you know, I want to protect the blah, blah, blah. That was like, I want I want to be the boss, you know. So all of those things kind of call those were clues to, you know, okay, who is this?

Who is William O'Neill? Well, you know, he's an opportunist, you know, um, he would be a captain of industry if he wasn't, you know, born poor and black in Chicago in 1969, he was a white man. He'd be Donald Trump, you know, he'd be a, he'd be a, a, you know, a, a mogul, right. He's the same values and practices of those types of individuals. And so he's apolitical.

He stated that outright, and I do believe he was, I think, until his death. I don't think that he was invested in the FBI's cause in any way, shape or form. He was only invested in what it could net him, you know, from a materialistic perspective. And, you know, what that made him feel, you know, the power that having things in the acquisition of the acquisition of things made him feel, i think is you know a lot of us feel that way you know that's just very like american and really just like western aesthetic you know um you know when you when you ask the kid what you want to be you say rich you know so like he is just, like, very much a regular guy, you know, in some ways.

You know what I mean? Like, which is kind of, like, when you look at it that way, he becomes that, you know? And so then you start to say, okay, how did he make these decisions? And you start to chart what would make one to do that, you know? And to me, like, he's a guy who just kind of, you know, if you look at what he's doing early on, and this is, remember, this is the character William O'Neill, not the real William O'Neill. Those are two very different things.

But the character William O'Neill, he kind of like charted his progress. You know, he, the movie starts out with him getting in trouble, and he has an opportunity to either go to prison, or he doesn't even know who the black bandits are he does he does for all he knows they're street gang you know so infiltrate this in his mind street gang he does so realizes these dudes are not street gangsters like what am i actually doing here it's probably boring for a guy like him in my mind so you know he's like what have i been doing here you know and he's like, what have I been doing here? You know, and he's

not really giving the FBI any information. He's just kind of there, you know? Um, and then he's finding himself, his cover's getting blown and he's like in danger, you know? Uh, and then he realizes, oh, I can get paid for information. Like, and then he becomes quite effective at providing information and just causing chaos and destabilization, not even necessarily for profit, even though the real William O'Neill certainly did that, but also just to throw the people off the scent that he's a liar, you know?

And then I have to imagine, because Fred Hampton was such a powerful presence, speaker. I mean, you can even see it in the way that William O'Neill talks about how he felt after, which, you know, I think there's a lot of lies in there. But if you watch the interview

and even read the transcript, every time he's asked about the murder, by the second or third time, he's like, I can't, I can't do it anymore. And the fact that he, you know, showed up to the interview wearing sunglasses and didn't take them off for the first 45 minutes, you know, and obviously the fact that he killed himself,

you know, after, you know, the interview came to light. Like, all those things, it makes it clear that Fred Hampton did get to this guy on some level. Like, even if he didn't get him to change his politics I think that he did get to him he got to his soul you know for all for him to for him to take his life the way he did I think he really did get to his soul so you have to have a a moment in the in the movie where you're like maybe maybe he will have a shift, you know? And so we kind of structured that around, you know, this just, you know, the, the headquarters burning down and him being tasked to be building it. And the fact that at that moment, his life is like, he sees the police will shoot him.

His life is somewhat in peril. He's at a vulnerable point. You know what I mean? And then it's, you know know one of his comrades passes away you know fred kind of puts his arm around him and thanks him for having you know helped rebuild this you know be rebuild the headquarters like these things kind of contribute to him starting to maybe you know he's seeing like this whole thing about like the people having power he's seeing that in action it's like they you know rebuild this burnt down building together

and he's starting to maybe think like okay fred maybe there's something what this guy's saying and then you know he's he's tasked to do the worst the worst thing yet you know and he's got this thing hanging over him he's got this situation hanging over him and he's he sees the might of the state so he and he's again always motivated by saving his own skin he's very much an individualist so it's like do I betray the movement

and this person who has an effect on me or do I save my own ass the choice but this kind of person is a logical one do you see him as did you and lakeith see him as sympathetic at all because i think audiences will walk into the film saying oh there's the judas and if there's anybody who's unsympathetic it's judas

but to put him in the middle of the movie i just thought was such an a fascinating choice and it works really well but i i was almost picturing in my mind the creative conversations with executives who were like i don't know you can't spend so much time with this guy you got to spend more time with the guy who we're rooting for you know like did you do have sympathy for william not quite sympathy no i don't think we had sympathy for him um but i was able to sort of i did I could have sympathy. I could not have sympathy for him and still look at his life as a tragedy and see the tragedy in it, um, and see the lessons to gleam from it.

And, you know, I think that it wasn't a tough sell because of that. You know, I think, I think it, and i don't think that the drafts that we kind of like put forth you know what we took around the studios necessarily reflected that i think that that was something that was developed in concert with the studio how do we you know kind of bring that not like i said not make him sympathetic but also show that he's a victim of power it's far stronger than him. So there's all this sturm und drang around these movies going straight to HBO Max. Your movie is one of those films. My sense is that in your case, this could be a good thing because I think a lot of people are going to get a chance to see this movie. But I'm sure you have some conflicted

feelings about not having as much of the theatrical experience. How do you feel about it? I am. I'm pretty, you know, I think one of sort of like just kind of the way I am, you know, like I'm the type of person where like, you know, if I don't really repair much like furniture, if it's still working, you know what I mean? So I just embrace, I embrace things. And I think I try to find, you know, even though most people probably wouldn't call me like a crazy optimist, I do think I'm able to really find like the silver lining utility and the difficulty a lot of times.

And so I think there's a tremendous upside to, to us coming out on HBO max, you know, it's far more eyes on the material just cause it's, you know, I mean, there was no way we're going to get that many people to go out to a theater, even, you know, in, in normal circumstances. Um,

but I think it also helps not only, you know, political climate that we're in contributing to people's interest in the movie, but the fact that you have literally a captive audience who can't even, they can't not only go to the movies, there's really not many places they can go um and you know tv consumption is up uh and they haven't they didn't release a lot of movies last year because they were trying to determine how long this all would last and you know a lot of studios are trying to wait and see um and so people have

been just dying to watch movies at home and a lot of people are going to watch this movie who you know don't even agree with the politics of the film just because it's something to watch and we've cut a trailer that you know makes it very clear that it's an exciting movie so a trailer that's like one of the great trailers of the last five years man it's an incredible trailer incredible trailer i think you're right though i think that's going to contribute to more people tuning into this movie who might otherwise not go to see a movie about someone who was a black panther um yeah how is all this stuff affecting your ability to do new projects and figure out where you want to take your career from here like is is covid

you know radically minimizing the options that you have is it you know what's your state of mind around your work going forward i actually i mean i don't you know i haven't been in this position before in terms of you know um having making a studio movie, having to promote a studio movie. The things that I've heard from my friends who have done it is that it's exhausting and tiring and you're flying around the world and you're getting sick all the time. I'm not getting sick all the time. I'm not flying around the world. It is a lot of time spent you know doing zooms and staying in front of a computer but i'm sorry i do apologize

but i do get i do think i probably have more time like i have in this time in a very recent like in a very recent past i've started to kind of maybe have the seed, not even maybe, I've started to have like the seeds of an idea. And I've found like pieces of time that, you know, kind of tinker with that a little bit. And I think it'd be a lot harder if,

you know, I wasn't forced to stay home. So no, I think it, I think it might even contribute to, you know, me getting things made shaka we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen

are you are you watching a lot now that you've been home all this time yeah i've watched i've watched a good amount i'm trying to think of the but i know the last i know the sort of the last thing that kind of blew me away but i want to think about the last thing i watched that i just like oh this is good i just go the last thing blew me away and it blew everybody away really is lovers rock yeah you know can you speak away yeah um you know i love music more than i love almost not anything but like a lot of things you know what i mean like way more than films i love music way more than and it's easily my favorite um form of expression and like you know i probably listen to it way more than 60 of the day every day so as a music lover I've always wanted to make something as a music lover and

a filmmaker which you know as you know so many filmmakers are I've always wanted to make something that um kind of captured music lovers love of music, but was also cinematic. And it wasn't a musical. It was just like people, it was just like you listening to music, having an experience of listening to music, but also having a cinematic narrative journey. And, you know,

I wasn't, I didn't like sitting, I didn't even know that was what I knew. I wanted to make something like that, but I didn't even know how to even put the words together until i saw love is rock and he did it and he did it i mean it's just one of the greatest things of all time like it's just it's one of the greatest things of all time it's just of all time i try i talked to steve a couple months ago about it and I tried to get him to kind of like basically elucidate what you just elucidated, you know,

almost to just like explain how he made the feeling of hearing music into a film. And I don't think he was like, I don't, I'm just not even gonna try to do it. Like I reject your question. And you know, he's, he's, he's real, uh, unafraid to be like next question, please. But, uh, you did a great job of breaking it down um shock i can't wait to see more work for you man i thought judas in the black beside was awesome so thank you for being on the show today thank you to shock thanks to bobby wagner amanda we are reviving

and revising a gimmick from 2020 for next week's show this is such a terrible idea what are we doing we're saying it out loud so so we're going to commit to it. So previously on The Big Picture, we did a, I think, ultimately much hated episode called 35 Movie Stars Under 35. You know, I didn't really participate in the discourse about it, but you told me that people were angry. So. I don't know about hated.

Hated is a strong word i think get your angry hats on because we're doing 35 movie stars over 35 and guys let me tell you there are a lot more movie stars over 35 than are under 35 yes um sophia loren is still alive and she is over 35 emily blunt is just barely over 35 and she is alive. Who is better? I don't know yet. We haven't decided. We have like very little

in the way of rules or rubrics for this. I think, you know, I slacked Sean earlier this week just being like, well, how are we doing this? So it's an evolving process that you all get to be a part of. You have a front row seat to list making history on the big picture. I couldn't have sold it any better myself. We'll

see you guys then.