Category Archives: Interviews

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje erupts onto the screen as champion gladiator in “Pompeii”

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, it simultaneously destroyed and immortalized the Roman city of Pompeii, encrusting the city and its inhabitants in iconic ashen fixtures, many of which can still be seen today. When Pompeii erupts into theaters this weekend, a similar dichotomy of fury and affection will be on display in the form of Atticus, an enslaved gladiator champion played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. Atticus battles with the possibility that the Roman’s won’t live up to their word of granting him his freedom with one more arena victory, as well as his potential defeat at the hands of the Celt Milo (though he doesn’t seem to worried about that), causing tension to boil to the surface in metaphorical ways. But Vesuvius’ impending doom casts a literal cloud of doom over the entire city, leaving royalty, politicians and slaves alike with a much larger and lethal concern. Before Pompeii floods theaters Feb. 21, Wrestling with Pop Culture talks to Akinnuoye-Agbaje about working with co-star Kit Harington, director Paul W.S. Anderson and previous films with The Rock.

The disaster at the center of Pompeii is based on historical events. Is the character you play based on anyone who actually existed or is it more speculative?

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje portrays Atticus the champion gladiator in Pompeii. Photo by Caitlin Cronenberg.

It was more speculative. There was a lot of research done in preparation for the movie. As you’re probably well aware, the surviving relics in Pompeii were the starting point. What Paul Anderson was really keen on was to trace the possible lives of these lava-carved victims, from gladiators to servants to Roman royalty. The movie almost starts from these molten-carved figures and we see how they would have lived and arrived at that situation.

Your character in Pompeii is oddly similar to, yet drastically different from, the character you play in Thor: The Dark World. What comparisons do you see between these two characters? How did Thor possibly prepare you for Pompeii?

Actually, they couldn’t be any more different. Atticus is a captive African slave and because of his physical prowess, grows to become the champion gladiator of Pompeii. In Rome you could win your freedom by winning a certain amount of fights and he has one fight left to win before he wins his freedom. That fight is with none other than the slave he is imprisoned with played by Kit Harington. So there’s a very tense and unusual dynamic between two men who are forced to live together, but have to kill each other. The similarities, perhaps, in the characters are the nobility. They’re both characters portrayed in dire circumstances. Atticus is a man and gladiator of principle and honor, and he exudes that in the way he fights and how he treats his opponents. He also has a very compassionate heart, which is brought out in the relationship between Milo and Atticus. The marked difference between the two characters in Thor and Pompeii is that Atticus is a hero.

This was your first time working with director Paul W. S. Anderson. What was that experience like for you? What were you expectations going into this film based on the previous movies he’s directed?

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje takes direction from Paul W.S. Anderson. Photo by Caitlin Cronenberg.

My experience working with Paul was one of awe and excitement. Paul has a very kinetic energy to his movies, which I enjoy. This was a very dear pet project for him. I like his direction style. He’s very clear about the vision of how the movie should look, right down to who he wanted to portray the characters. This movie is very physical but at the same time he still has a sensibility towards the romance and drama. He’s a man of few words, which is what I like, and he’s concise and direct. But most of all, he’s very supportive of the actors to bring their input and to really give birth to the characters themselves. It was a great collaborative experience and I loved it.

Earlier in your career, you worked with The Rock in The Mummy Returns and again in Faster. What were those experiences like? Do you have any plans to work with professional wrestlers again in the future?

The Rock is a great guy to work with. I really enjoyed both movies with him. There aren’t any times in the foreseeable future to work on any specific projects, but I’m sure our paths will cross again at some point and I look forward to that. He’s a great guy and a consummate professional. I enjoyed working with him.

You’ve been quite busy over the past few years in film, and before that you made a name for yourself on TV. Do you have any other big projects coming out in the near future?

Yeah. I have both, actually. I return to TV on the NBC pilot Odyssey … and I’m excited to be going back to TV. I’m also going to be appearing in Annie, the film version of the musical, starring opposite Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz. So that’s a different side to what fans have grown accustomed to me playing. It’s more lighthearted, warm and humorous. I even get to do a song and dance and that’s a lot of fun. Those are a couple of things you can look forward to this year. We’re actually dabbling with animation as well, so there’s a particular project I’m going to come on with to do some animated voices.

Both you and your Pompeii co-star Kit Harington made names for yourself with TV shows before jumping to the big screen. How would you say TV helped prepare you for film? What was it like working closely with someone else who got his start on TV?

Adewele Akinnouye-Agbaje and co-star Kit Harington in “Pompeii”. Photo by Caitlin Cronenberg.

TV is a great discipline. I look at it as a form of boot camp. The shoot schedules are quite rigorous because the turnaround is very quick. I like that because it trains the actors to be ready. It’s a good discipline and a good grooming tool to prepare you for movies because things move quickly. As far as working with Kit, we derive from the same family that does a lot of acting for HBO. Not only did we have that in common, but we have similar cultural backgrounds because we’re British-born actors. That helped with the bonding of two actors and the two characters of Milo and Atticus. We could both talk about the expectations and what was involved with TV, and the subsequent success. I’ve been down that road and I could give him certain pointers and he shared what it’s like now. We also had a director in common who had worked with both of us at HBO, Alan Taylor, who shot Thor and also shot Game of Thrones. So, there were many things that allowed us to bond and share experiences.

www.adewaletheartist.com

The many ways in which Keith David’s talents have been “Enlisted”

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He may not be as instantly recognizable as the A-list actors he’s often co-starring with, but once you hear the deep bellow of Keith David‘s voice you’ll immediately start trying to figure out where you’ve heard it before. From voicing ominous animated characters such as Goliath in Disney‘s Gargoyles or the title character in HBO‘s Spawn to narrating the recent The History of WWE: 50 Years of Sports Entertainment DVD to appearances and voice work for a wide range of movies including Platoon, There’s Something About Mary, Cloud Atlas, Coraline and The Princess and the Frog. And who could forget that famous fight scene he had with “Rowdy” Roddy Piper in John Carpenter‘s They Live? With numerous new films slated for release this year, David also has a recurring role in all 13 episodes of the new military comedy Enlisted, debuting this Friday night. Next month, David will be part of a reunion of The Thing cast at Days of the Dead: Atlanta (where he will also reunite with Piper) and he continues to narrate upcoming documentaries for WWE. Amidst his busy schedule, David takes a moment to talk to Wrestling with Pop Culture about his many contributions to film, television and theater.

While watcing the recent History of WWE DVD, I immediately recognized your voice as the narrator, though I didn’t see you credited anywhere.

I guess I’m going to have to get on them about that, right?

Of course you do! You’ve done some previous work for WWE. How did your working relationship with WWE come about?

I do have a good working relationship with WWE. I’ve been narrating documentaries and stuff for them for a long time. First of all, I like to work. Second of all, I’ve been a fan of WWE since the days of Bruno Sammartino. So it was a nice thing to be asked to participate in their documentary and I was very happy to do it. We have several documentaries coming out about the history of WWE and how WWE is actually changing the face of sports entertainment. That’s what this documentary is about is how WWE has changed the face of sports entertainment and how we look at sports. They have hundreds of thousands of fans that attend these huge events and all these big stars that have come out of WWE. I don’t think any of them have become great actors in the same way that some NFL athletes have, but more and more of them are getting parts in movies, guest starring on television shows and things like that. Some are even becoming politicians, like Jesse Ventura.

What I like about [this documentary] is you get a very clear picture that the persona of the wrestler in the ring is exactly that, it’s a persona. It’s like an actor playing a character because they do have lives outside of the arena. And some of them, i.e. Jesse Ventura, are very responsible men with very strong political views who are wanting to make a difference in their communities.

How much did you learn about WWE while working on this documentary and how much were you already aware of?

Generally speaking, I knew about all the different leagues and I knew the names of the creators like Ted Turner and Eric Bischoff and those guys. But in the documentary you learn about some of the specifics about how [WWE] negotiated these different deals. I didn’t realize some of the internal battling that has been going on between some of the stars, the re-creation of some of their personalities and things like that. That kind of stuff is very interesting. We’ve seen the results of all that, but we’re not always necessarily privy to how they came about.

Prior to working directly with WWE, you worked with “Rowdy” Roddy Piper in They Live. What was it like working with Piper and being part of such an iconic cult movie?

Oh, man. Roddy was the first professional wrestler that I ever met up close and personal. What a wonderful human being! At that time, he was pound for pound the strongest man I had ever met in my life. I was weighing at least 230 pounds at the time and he would lift me up like I was a 3-year-old and look back at the director like, “What am I supposed to do with him?” We had a lot of fun. He taught me a few wrestling moves and we had a lot of fun choreographing our fight, along with Jeff Imada. It was some of the best fun I ever had in my theatrical life, in the movies or on stage. One thing about doing fights in movies that’s different than on stage is you have all those different angles to cover. We just had a great time. It was a really good time. All of his training in the ring and mine in stage combat helped us be able to sell a really great fight. It was very fun working with him.

Will you be working on any other WWE projects?

Absolutely. I have one coming up this week, as a matter of fact. I don’t know exactly what it is yet, but it’s going to be part of the ongoing documentary series.

You have several movies coming out this year. What can you tell me about some of those movies?

I have a movie coming out called The North Star, which was the first time I got to play Frederick Douglass in a movie. I haven’t seen it yet, so I hope it turned out well.

In the meantime, you have a new TV show coming out called Enlisted.

Keith David as Command Sergeant Major Donald Cody in “Enlisted”.

Amen! Yes, Enlisted is coming out on Friday, Jan. 10 at 9:30 p.m. on Fox. It’s a workplace comedy and we just happen to be in the Army. We are a rear detachment unit and I play the Command Sergeant Major on this post. It’s all about how we take care of the families of the deployed soldiers and how we run the business of the Army. Everybody can’t be deployed in Afghanistan or Iraq; some of us have to stay home and take care of running the business and that’s what we do.

Enlisted is one of several military roles you’ve played. You were also in WWE Studios‘ Behind Enemy Lines: Colombia with Mr. Kennedy in 2009. What was it like working with Kennedy?

It was fun. He was a good guy. He was playing a soldier and he certainly looked like a soldier. We were in Puerto Rico, so it was a good time had by all.

Would you be interested in doing more work for WWE Studios, especially considering how many more movies they are putting out each year?

I like to work, so if the right project comes along I will be very happy to work with them.

Are there any particular WWE stars you’d be interested in working with in a movie?

Oh, I don’t know. It would depend on the project. There’s a big difference between a personality and an actor. Depending on the project, you’ll see how those dynamics work together. Sometimes there’s a great personality in a particular show or movie and the story flows. Then there are other things that are far more challenging. There are plenty of guys that would be great to work with and I would enjoy working with any of the wrestlers under the right circumstances.

I understand you’re also working on a musical release. What can you tell me about that and when will we be able to hear it?

Every year I wind up saying, “By the end of the year.” But certainly by the end of this year I’ll have my CD project out. Also, my next project in Los Angeles will be playing Paul Robeson in a production called Paul Robeson at the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center with the Ebony Repertory Theatre in March.

www.keithdavid.com

“The Spectacular Now” takes a splendorous look at teens on the brink of adulthood

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James Ponsoldt (green shirt) directs a scene from "The Spectacular Now".

One could call The Spectacular Now, the new film directed by James Ponsoldt that received the Special Jury Award for Acting at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, a coming-of-age teen love story and not be incorrect. But such phrasing would also not do this film justice. Based on the novel of the same name, The Spectacular Now is the story of an affable loser named Sutter (Miles Teller) and the unlikely relationship he develops with unassuming bookworm Aimee (Shailene Woodley) after waking up from a alcohol-induced blackout on her front lawn. As their high school lives come to a close, Sutter and Aimee appear to be on very different paths into adulthood, a scenario that is given more depth by the fact that the characters are handled with a level of respect Ponsoldt feels is lacking in most teen movies these days. With the movie opening in more theaters each week, Wrestling with Pop Culture recently spoke to Ponsoldt about this film and other upcoming projects.

You filmed this movie in your hometown of Athens, though the book was not set in Georgia. How did that affect the story, if at all?

It was originally set in Oklahoma City in the novel, and the screenplay wasn’t really site specific. As soon as I read it it reminded me a lot of college towns that I knew like Bloomington, Madison or Chapel Hill, but especially Athens because that’s where I spent the first 18 years of my life. So that’s kind of the lens through which I compare everything else.

Did the author of the book have any issues with you changing the setting?

No. Tim Tharp is the author and Scott Neustadter and Mike Weber had already adapted the script. Tim was one of the most collaborative, open people that really realized this screenplay was adapting a book, the book still is what it is and with each adaptation from book to screenplay, screenplay to movie, you kind of let go and embrace the new elements. They were all totally open to it and were great collaborators.

How did you discover the book and end up directing the film adaptation?

Aimee (Shailene Woodley) and Sutter (Miles Teller) share a touching moment in "The Spectacular Now". Photo by Wilford Harewood.

I had heard of the book when it was nominated for a National Book Award about five years ago, but I hadn’t read it. After Smashed was at Sundance in 2012, the producers of The Spectacular Now approached me. The script had already been written by Scott Neustadter and Mike Weber and I was aware of them from (500) Days of Summer. I read the script and I had some apprehension initially because I wasn’t really interested in directing someone else’s script. But it was one of the fastest reads I’d ever had and probably one of the best depictions of adolescence I ever read. I immediately read Tim Tharp’s novel after that and the novel is fantastic.

You’ve previously said that American adolescence has become marginalized. That does seem to be true, but ironically Hollywood is trying to capture the teen and 20-something audience. How would you say movies have marginalized adolescence?

They haven’t marginalized their desire to take their cash; they’ve marginalized respecting fundamentally what it is to be that age. I wouldn’t say that’s necessarily specific to teenagers; I think they’ve marginalized what it means to be 6 or 30 or 50 or 70 or whatever. For the most part I think it’s all profit driven. Multinational corporations need to make lots of money and they need to sell product, which works out to action figures and things that can be ready made. So most of the movies that studio executives would be quick to have posters of up on their walls like Five Easy Pieces or Nashville or McCabe & Mrs. Miller or Psycho, they would never in a million years make those movies. They couldn’t. They’d be fired if they tried to, so they’re sort of in these creative handcuffs, I think. But I don’t think there’s a lot of films about teenagers that depict them as complicated human beings and respect them, or that take their lives and mirror it back to them in a way that might resemble their own without having to turn them into vampires or werewolves or something.

When this film screened at the Atlanta Film Festival, you said something to the affect of even though the main characters are adolescents, it’s easy to forget that once you get involved in the story. How important do you think the age of these characters is, especially given the parallels that are drawn between them and some of the older characters in the film?

Aimee and Sutter become unlikely prom companions in "The Spectacular Now".

I like to think of it as an adult love story and the characters happen to be teenagers. You have to acknowledge who the characters are: do they have the freedom to set their own curfews, do they make their own salaries, are they rich, are they poor, are they white, are they black? All these things influence who they are, but I don’t think it should affect how you respect the character and how you advocate for the character. For whatever reason in America, the “teen movie” is a genre just like torture porn or something. Both are kind of marginalized, but there are signifiers that are also intrinsic to them, for better or for worse. I would say for worse. Most teen films are really obsessed with … really, really clever and witty banter, which no 15-year-old would say. Or they’re going to be incredibly well dressed or it’s going to be really romanticized and nostalgic or it’s going to be like Porky’s or it’s going to be dick jokes or it’s just not going to feel real. People are complicated. Most daily life is pretty boring and people are just trying to get through their day. But I think anybody, from the time they wake up in the morning to the time they go to bed, we have a lot of boring stuff that’s just like the day before and some things that are really moving or sad or terrifying or whatever. I think it’s only in big dumb movies that it’s reductive and dramatic or comedic or whatever. Life is much more muted, people are complicated and contradictory and hypocritical and all people are basically the same, they’re just trying to get their shit together and be happy. No one wants to be a dickhead, some people just get stomped on by life and take it out on other people. You have to acknowledge that these are kids living under their parents’ roof, but if they were 35 I would respect them in the same way I respected these characters. Sounds like a no-brainer to me, but I don’t see it in a lot of big movies.

Given the success of your previous films and the recent success of this film at Sundance, how would you say your film-making process has evolved over the past few years?

I think I’m better at communicating what I want and using time. There’s a real ticking clock when you’re making a film in 19 days or 25 days and you really can’t afford to have a day go bad. You have one bad day and you’re not going to get to make it up at the end. It’s not like a studio films where you can just do re-shoots, so you just have to suck the marrow out of every single moment you have and prepare as much as possible while the clock is ticking.

Now that this film is in theaters, what are you working on next?

Right now I’m adapting a book called Pure for Fox 2000 that I’m attached to direct. It’s wildly different. It’s a science fiction story set in a post-apocalyptic Baltimore. It’s still with young people, so I guess it’s similar in that regard. But it’s wildly different and very much an urban vibe.

One of many contemplative moments for Sutter.

Rodham is a really amazing script I didn’t write. A guy named Young Kim wrote it and it wound up on the blacklist, which is the big list at the end of the year of the top unproduced screenplays. I had heard about it and it got a lot of attention then because it’s great, but also because of the subject matter – Hillary Clinton is one of the most famous women alive. The producer for that approached me before Sundance this year with the script and I read it and typically I don’t like cradle-to-the-grave biopics. It really reduces a life to try to tell that whole life in 100 minutes, it just becomes like CliffsNotes of a life. The ones that I really do like are more immersive in a very specific time like The Hours and Times, which is this really great one about John Lennon and Brian Epstein and a supposed affair they might have had. Or even Good Night, and Good Luck, Milk or Patton, which cover some time, or movies that we don’t really think of as biopics that I can still watch because they’re just so freaking good, like Goodfellas, which is essentially a biopic, but it’s also funny and weird and dark and stylish. So I loved the [Rodham] script, there’s essentially a first draft and I’m working with Young to make it really fantastic. It covers a very specific time in her life when she was still Hillary Rodham in her mid 20s when a House Judiciary Committee that put together a bipartisan group of around 50 lawyers, only three of which were women, to create a legal foundation with which they could impeach President Nixon. She was one of those lawyers and she was a real rockstar amongst other legal rockstars, people who were the best and brightest at that point, many of them went on to great careers. It’s about that time in her life when she was trying to figure out who she was and what she wanted while she’s balancing a relationship with her boyfriend from law school Bill [Clinton], who was living in Arkansas. The story, at its core, is not just a portrait of future famous people. If it was, I wouldn’t do it. It’s a very relatable and human story about a woman in her mid 20s choosing between her career and her personal life. It’s sort of about gender and equality and the sacrifices that anybody makes in any relationship, but especially that women are asked to make. It has no political agenda to get someone elected, to keep someone from getting elected. I’m not really interested in that, I’m interested in a portrait of a very complicated woman at a very specific time in her life. Hopefully that will shoot in the next year and a half, but it’s something you can’t rush because it has to work as a movie. You have to like the characters and care about the relationships the way you would with any movie, but if there’s one misstep about the way that you’re dramatizing history or something that’s interpreted as political, it can be so misconstrued that people will destroy you. When you look at movies like Zero Dark Thirty, which would be a great movie that can stand on its own, but [people] scrutinized the ever living hell out of what it was supposedly implying about torture. Any movie about famous people, especially when it gets into politics, is endlessly interpreted. So no one’s in a rush to make a bad version of that or the TV movie version of that. I certainly wouldn’t want to see that and I definitely don’t want to make that.

www.spectacularnowmovie.com

Ryan Coogler makes relevant filmmaking debut with “Fruitvale Station”

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Michael B. Jordan (second from left) stars as Oscar Grant in Ryan Coogler's "Fruitvale Station". Photo by Ron Koeberer, courtesy The Weinstein Company.

With his feature-length debut Fruitvale Station, writer/director Ryan Coogler offers an intimate look at a day in the life of Oscar Grant, a man struggling to right some of his previous wrongs as he prepares to ring in the New Year. Unbeknownst to Grant and those around him, these will be his final hours as he is fatally shot by a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer following a subway scuffle in the first few hours of 2009. Having received huge praise this year at the Sundance Film Festival and the Cannes Film Festival, Fruitvale Station now brings Coogler’s fictionalized portrayal of the events leading up to this real-life tragedy to theaters across the country. (And the timing couldn’t be more appropriate given the recent developments from a very similar incident that took place in Florida last year.) As the film opens in even more theaters this week, Coogler takes a moment to talk to Wrestling with Pop Culture about his filmmaking motivations and processes.

This film was a success at Sundance, it sparked a bidding war and has received all sorts of critical praise. What has all that been like for you as a first-time filmmaker?

It’s all been incredibly overwhelming. Every step in the process has been a big surprise. This film was made with a very modest budget, with very short time constraints and a lot of incredibly talented people. This was my first time making a feature film and for us it was a great victory. Each stage of the process was a great achievement, in my eyes. Just getting the movie done, then premiering at Sundance, it was like, “Wow! The movie’s going to play six times at this festival.” For me it was always about just getting people to see it, whether they love it or hate it, and at least think about some of the things that are in the film and engage in dialogue, hopefully. If people who didn’t know about this incident [could] learn about it, that was the mindset I had. So for it to acquire distribution and get released has been moving and completely unexpected.

Director Ryan Coogler (right) works with Jordan (left) and Octavia Spencer in "Fruitvale Station". Photo courtesy The Weinstein Company.

There’s been a somewhat similar incident in the news as of late that’s been getting a lot more attention than the incident from your film ever got. Why do you think one incident received so much exposure while you had to work pretty hard to make people aware of the incident in your film?

The release [of the film] coming at this time was purely coincidental. The similarities are what they are, but the biggest thing is the differences. The biggest difference is that what happened to Oscar was recorded and people filmed it, but in the other situation no one was there to film it so it was basically one person’s account. What inspired me to do this film was loss of life. The loss of life for African-American males in urban environments is happening rapidly; it’s a constant thing. For me, the focus isn’t necessarily who’s holding the trigger because the result’s going to be same for the people that person matters to. Whether it’s another black male holding the trigger (which it so often is), whether it’s a cop holding the trigger, whether it’s a person who’s neither one holding the trigger, that goes on whether or not there’s media coverage, whether or not there’s a trial, it keeps happening.

Why did you choose to do just one day in Oscar’s life rather than showing more of his life?

I’ve studied a lot of movies and I was in film school when I came up with it. As a viewer I would often feel closer to a character the less time elapsed during the movie. You have films that transpire over several years and you have films where you just spend a few hours with a person. I always felt that the act of waking up with somebody, following him throughout the day, watching him move in and out of the daily operations, was an intimate thing to do. Some of the films that operate like that are 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Elephant by Gus Van Sant, Spike Lee does it in a couple of films like Do the Right Thing and 25th Hour and La Haine, which is a French film. I think it comes from the nature of being a fly on the wall with somebody for a whole day [because] that’s something that you only do with people that you’re really close to. More than anything, seeing how somebody changes when they go into a location or how they change around certain people. I would think about just riding around with my dad back in the day and just hanging with him. I would look up at him while he went about his day and watch how he talked to somebody from this way and how he’d talk to somebody from that way, you learn a lot from somebody if you hang with them for a day.

The other thing was I found it to be insanely ironic that it was New Year’s Eve, the fact that he was talking, like everybody does, about resolutions. It was a very domestic day and I was interested in seeing this guy who was known for being an ex-con and a drug dealer dropping his girlfriend off, preparing for his mom’s birthday. The fact that this happened on the first day of the year was another reason why I chose a 24-hour period. And a big thing was that I was interested in his life, not everything that happened afterwards because you can find coverage for all that.

Oscar Grant (Michael B. Jordan) shares a touching moment with his daughter (Ariana Neal) in "Fruitvale Station". Photo courtesy The Weinstein Company.

Given the social and political aspects of this film, especially in light of what’s going on in Florida right now, this is the type of film where every single decision can be scrutinized. Every moment in this movie seems very deftly chosen, so how did you balance making every moment mean something without every moment being some grand statement?

It was a razorblade to walk at all times. At the end of the day all you have is yourself as a filmmaker. You can get feedback on the script or on cuts, but it really comes back to you making choices. And if they work for you, that’s what you have to go with. If you lose yourself, then you’re trying to hit a moving target. So I tried to make decisions based on the research that I did. It’s not a documentary, but I had a lot of material to pull from and was making decisions based off that. Sometimes I made creative decisions, but most of his day was pretty documented because he was around other people most of the time. So it was a combination of using research, using my own personal judgment and just going with it. I definitely don’t have it figured out though. This was my first time, so I’m looking forward to doing it again and getting better.

How much input did you have from the people that are portrayed in the movie? Did you run into any obstacles from people who didn’t want to co-operate or didn’t want this film to be made?

The people who knew Oscar were there as a source of information. That’s the position they took. They were very trusting of us with the project and it wasn’t them looking over our shoulders saying, “You can put this in. You can’t put that in.” So I would ask them about certain things and they would tell me about them and I would make decisions based off that stuff.

The biggest obstacles came from shooting on location, but those obstacles also worked in our favor because the community really embraced the film. So we shot in the real working businesses in the Bay Area, we used a local crew, local cast and people were very passionate about it. A big motif of the film was location, what kind of places Oscar had been through. The institutional places that he traveled through that day and his memories of that day were very important, so we shot in the real places. Because of that, some constraints came up. When we shot in BART facilities, we never got a full day. BART was gracious enough to give an olive branch to the community and let us film, [but] they’re not going to shut down the Bay Area’s transit system for us to make a movie. They still have to get people to work and get people home, so we had to go shoot in four-hour shifts from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. So we had to break that scene up over three days, and that was a scene with a lot of moving pieces to it. We could only shoot in Highland Hospital for basically a day, so the surgery, the doctors coming in and out of the morgue, that was all shot in ten hours. Same with San Quentin: only limited crew was allowed in there, there were real inmates and we had real time constraints. They’re not going to shut down a prison or a hospital for us to make a movie.

Your casting of Michael B. Jordan was critical because you can’t help but like the characters he plays. That’s important for the character of Oscar given the situation he’s in. What was it like working with Jordan and how you led him to discovering Oscar?

Michael B. Jordan as Oscar Grant in a climactic scene from "Fruitvale Station". Photo courtesy The Weinstein Company.

Mike’s an incredible actor. I can’t say enough good things about him and I wrote this script with him in mind before I knew him; I just knew his work. I needed somebody who could fit a lot of categories for this project because I knew it would live and die by his performance because he’s on the screen for 98 percent of this movie. His relationships are the vehicle that the audience travels in, and I needed someone who kind of looked like Oscar, I wanted somebody who was young, I needed somebody who could work on a fast schedule, and Mike’s done years and years of television. I also needed somebody that could be a bunch of different people. Oscar’s kind of like this community who, as an emotional tactic, was a people pleaser. He would kind of hide how he was feeling on the inside out of fear of rejection. So oftentimes he had to go from being tough to being soft, sometimes within the same scene.

I wrote the script with Mike in mind and I knew it would be a close working relationship, so I wanted to meet him before I offered him the part. So we met and he read the script and agreed to do it, which was the best thing ever because he’s truly a great actor.

When you were writing this character based on the impressions of people who knew him, what was the process of crafting and honoring this person like for you?

Coogler and Jordan collaborate to accuratley portray the character of Oscar Grant. Photo courtesy The Weinstein Company.

It was always my goal to get to the full depths of who this guy was, and that came from talking to his friends and family and learning things about him, and recognizing some of those things in myself. In looking at the scenes, you learn that Oscar was a people pleaser who often hid things from other people. He struggled with dishonesty, even with the people closest to him. So I investigated, “Why is that? Where does that come from?” My theory was that it came from a fear of rejection, somebody who didn’t want to be rejected. He oftentimes would mess up when he was by himself and get into trouble when he was away from his loved ones. I think there are people who want to be in the company of others so they don’t have to face their own vices. So I was really asking the question, “What does Oscar want from this person that he’s dealing with right now? What does he want to project?” That was kind of where the script came from. So when he’s dealing with his daughter, he wants her to feel safe, happy and secure – he wants her to love him. With his mom, he knows that her worst fear is him going back to prison. He doesn’t want his mom to reject him and shut him off again, so he’s going to try and deny certain things. With Sophina he wants to prove that he’s masculine and can take care of her, but also that he’s not going to go back to prison or being unfaithful, even though he might be. When he’s dealing with the girl in the grocery store, she’s cute, so what does he want from her? He wants to impress her, but he also wants to show her he’s somebody worth listening to, not somebody she’s just going to brush off. So the question was always, “What does he want from this person and what are the tactics he’s going to use to get that?”

Prior to Fruitvale Station, you directed some award-winning short films that dealt with similar themes of harsh realities. What draws you to the subjects that you choose to make films about?

I just try to make films about things that move me emotionally, things I don’t have answers to. I’m trying to find answers. I made a short film before this one that was about street prostitution. That’s something that, when I worked in juvenile hall back in the Bay Area, girls would often come through for loitering. I would talk with them and it was something I could never really understand. What would make a woman want to do that? That was something that impacted me emotionally and making a film about it was a way for me to deal with those questions and search for those answers. So I make movies about things that sit with me personally.

www.fruitvalefilm.com

Not even Brodus Clay survives the extreme horror of “No One Lives”

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Though he has become the fun-loving Funkasaurus in WWE, Brodus Clay has exhibited a more ruthless side over the course of his career. And in WWE Studios‘ latest film No One Lives, he plays the most intimidating member of a nomadic gang of killers and thieves who make an unexpected discovery in their latest victim’s contents. Though Clay does have a chance to display his physical prowess in this film, his character meets a gruesome fate that couldn’t have been predicted going into the movie. With the movie now in theaters, and Extreme Rules just a few days away, Clay talks to Wrestling with Pop Culture about how he got the role of Ethan, seeing his violent demise on the big screen and who he hopes to face at this Sunday’s pay-per-view.

So, your first WWE Studios film is out. What did you think of the movie?

Brodus Clay (right) is surprisingly not the biggest threat in "No One Lives". Photo courtesy Anchor Bay Films.

I thought it was a lot of fun. It’s different. I like the fact that it’s a non-typical story where there’s not a definite hero and villain. It’s definitely a different style. I like the fact that it was done in a classic style with actual special effects, not a bunch of computer enhancement and stuff. So it takes you where you need to go.

I was surprised to see the direction the movie takes at a certain point, especially involving your character. You’re probably the most intimidating presence in the movie, so I didn’t expect to see you be one of the first victims.

It was important to show how extreme the so-called victim is. You have no idea what he’s capable of until you see what he does to Ethan.

In WWE it’s often said that one superstar gets under the skin or inside the head of his opponent. But in No One Lives those phrases are taken quite literally.

Yeah. To have a Caesarean section birth go down in the middle of the movie with two guys is something that’s never been done before. So it’s definitely extreme. The reaction of the people in the audience at the red carpet showings I’ve been to was, they were completely freaked out. Sometimes they clapped.

Well, they were probably clapping at how well done the special effects were.

The Funkadactyl harkens back to the thug persona he portrayed early in his WWE career in "No One Lives". Photo courtesy Anchor Bay Films.

I think that’s because it’s the traditional stuff. It can be refreshing to see that stuff because you don’t see it that much anymore. I don’t think computer graphics would have had the same effect.

What was it like for you to see yourself going through these torturous moments on the screen?

The whole process of making the body double was strange. I’d be sitting in a chair getting makeup or something and look over and see myself with a dead expression on my face. That kind of bothered me so I was always like, “Hey, can we throw a blanket over him or something? It’s weird.” I didn’t see any of it until I actually saw the movie, so when I saw how it all came together it was really disturbing. But I think that’s the reaction the director was going for.

The Brodus Clay we see in WWE these days is a fun-loving giant, but we have seen a more aggressive side from you going all the way back to your days in the developmental system. Did you revert back to some of those traits when you were playing this character?

A little bit. But I was never as violent of a character as Ethan is. He’s that classic bully and is very sadistic to the point that he’s pretty much untouchable. I tried to think of what other ruthless bad guys would be like, so I did draw from my previous personalities a little bit.

How were you chosen for this part? Were they looking specifically to cast someone from WWE?

I’m not sure of the specifics of it because I didn’t give them a chance to explain it to me. It was right after Extreme Rules 2011 and I had 13 staples in my head from being hit by a ladder while trying to stop Christian in his match against Alberto Del Rio. John Laurinaitis, who was the head of talent relations at the time, came down and was like, “Hey, Brodus. There’s this movie…” and I just said, “Yes!” He was like, “You didn’t let me finish.” And I was like, “No, I’ll do it.” Then he was like, “Do you want to know about it?” And I was like, “No, no, no. I’ll do it. I’m in.” Then they flew me out to California to get casted, which I thought was reading lines and stuff, then I realized it was getting dipped in chemicals, rubber and plastic and stuff.

Speaking of Extreme Rules, that event is coming up again this weekend. Do you know yet if you will be competing?

Not yet. We’ve had a few run-ins with the Rhodes Scholars and have been battling back and forth with them for the last couple of months. I’d like to see the end of that at Extreme Rules, but I’m not 100 percent sure yet.

Having now done a WWE Studios film, do you foresee yourself doing more acting in the future?

I would like to, given the opportunity. I’d like to try a different type of movie. I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to do this one and see how it’s received. Hopefully there will be more projects for me down the line.

www.noonelivesthemovie.com

As “The Office” closes, “Peeples” offers Craig Robinson a new beginning

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After working his way up from secondary warehouse worker to a more prominent role on The Office, Craig Robinson has become one of the funniest guys in film with roles in Pineapple Express, Zack and Miri Make a Porno and Hot Tub Time Machine. And with the final episode of The Office airing next week, Robinson puts one part of his career behind him while another one begins. In the Tyler Perry-produced Peeples, Robinson has his first big-screen starring role as an aspiring musician named Wade, who finds out the hard way that his girlfriend (Kerry Washington) has yet to tell her parents about Wade. Co-starring David Alan Grier, Diahann Carroll and Tyler James Williams, Peeples provides plenty of comedic talent for Robinson to play off of. As the movie hits theaters, Robinson talks to Wrestling with Pop Culture about The Office, his first starring role and his burgeoning musical career.

Now that The Office is wrapping up after nine years, how does it feel to see that coming to an end?

Craig Robinson as Wade in "Peeples". Photo by Nicole Rivelli.

It got put into perspective for me [recently]. I was at Jazz Fest and some girls were like, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! I’ve been watching you from high school through college.” I was like, “Wow! That’s right. Somebody started high school and finished college watching The Office.” It’s an amazing and huge part of my life. It launched my career and opened unknown doors that I couldn’t have opened without it. I made some great friends and some great memories. I’m not sad about it because it’s like closing a chapter. I just shot a new sitcom and turned it in to NBC to see if they pick it up. I will miss a lot of things about The Office, but we had time to deal with it and be ready to move on. It’s taking us out very classy, too. The final episode is everything you expect from The Office: a lot of humor, a lot of heart, a lot of awkwardness. So I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next.

How did you get this role in Peeples and how did you initially get your role in The Office?

With The Office I was called in to audition and I read one of those talking heads. It was actually one for Jim. I’m a huge fan of deadpan. That’s always been my thing, so The Office really just made sense. You got one paragraph to read and you just had to go with it. When I walked in, Greg Daniels was at the head of the room with about nine or ten other people. He said he had seen a video I did with Jerry Minor called “Somebody’s Fucking My Lady” and he was like, “It doesn’t get any funnier than that.” It was weird to hear that because now you’re thinking, “Oh, my God. This is mine to lose” as opposed to, “Let me go get it.”

When Craig Robinson found out he'd get to kiss Kerry Washington, he was ready to star in "Peeples". Photo by Nicole Rivelli.

Peeples was brought to me to meet with the director, Tina Gordon Chism. She’ll tell you that I fell asleep in the meeting, I say it was just a little catnap. We met again and she was so passionate and so cool. She’s a great person, and smart, and she painted a picture of what this movie was going to be. Then she said, “You get to kiss Kerry Washington,” and I was like, “Where do I sign?” Kerry is brilliant and naturally funny. This is not just my first leading role, it’s also Kerry’s first foray into comedy and Tina’s first time directing. We all, collectively, pushed this boulder of Peeples up a mountain and Kerry is so talented. She’s like this ultimate woman: she can act, she can sing, she can dance, she speaks different languages, she’s political. I can’t say enough good things about her.

With this being a first for so many people, do you think it made everyone work a little harder on the film?

I think it put everybody on the same page. David said it best when he said he wanted to be there for Tina because she was getting a thousand calls a day. Whatever we needed, we were there for each other. It was definitely an ensemble effort. If David Alan Grier throws out a line, you’re going to go, “Yeah. Let’s try that.” There was a lot of that and Tina was open for playing and we got some fun stuff out of that. For example, in the grocery store scene where I make all those references to old black people, I don’t even remember if there were references to start with. So once we started going with that we just listed them all until it overlapped into the next scene.

What was it like working with an icon like David Alan Grier?

Wade (Craig Robinson) looks for the acceptance of Virgil Peeples (David Alan Grier) in "Peeples". Photo by Nicole Rivelli.

He’s amazing. He was the father of the set, he owns every room he goes in and he was hysterical on cue. It’s one of the most amazing things you could witness and he’s one of the funniest dude on the planet. I was pushing for him to be the office manager when Steve Carell was leaving [The Office] because once we shot Peeples, I was like, “This would be amazing.” He’s absolutely great. He’s a great person and it’s hard to out silly me. I think he out sillies me.

Based on this film, or perhaps from personal experience, what advice would you give guys who are meeting their girlfriend’s parents for the first time?

Don’t show up unannounced and have a wallet that doesn’t fall out your pocket. Be yourself. I think that’s the tone of this whole movie. I like how Wade was true to himself no matter what, then he kept finding out all these secrets about everybody else. So be yourself and maybe tuck your shirt in and clean up before you go meet your (hopefully) wife’s parents.

Have you had any memorable fan moments?

When The Office first started I went to a Comic-Con in San Diego. But I didn’t go for The Office, I went for a movie I was in called Dragon Wars, which none of you know. Dragon Wars was directed by this Korean director named Shim Hyung-rae and he barely spoke English. So we had all these souvenir books with pictures of the cast and pictures of the big snakes from the movie. I was walking with these books and I wanted to put them down somewhere. They were nice, but I didn’t want to walk around Comic-Con with them. Then this girl walked up and you would have thought I was Michael Jackson or something. We took a picture, it was real sweet, then I handed her one of the books and said, “Here, take this.” She broke down and started crying, she was so overwhelmed. I was like, “That must be what Michael Jackson feels like.” It tripped me out. But nothing like that has happened since then.

Do you anticipate anything else like that now that you’re starring in your own film?

Anticipate? No. I don’t know. I always take things a little bit at a time. When I started out L.A., I had to figure out how to get auditions. So I was in that lane, then I got the auditions and scooted over to callbacks, then to getting the part. So just a little bit at a time.

It seems like a lot of these scenes would be hard to shoot because you’d be laughing so much. What were some of the more difficult scenes to shoot?

For me it was the Timex scene. I could not stop laughing. The ridiculousness of them showing me their watches, I got into a little bit of trouble about that. I’ll bet it was seven takes.

What do you do to not laugh at moments like that?

That’s when it’s best to avoid eye contact. Maybe look just above the eyebrows or something like that. You want to stay in character, but you also don’t want to laugh. It’s like being in church and laughing; as soon as somebody else laughs your like, “Augh!” I haven’t mastered that yet. My best thing is to just look at somebody’s forehead instead of directly in the eye.

In addition to your comedic acting, your musical talents were also employed in Peeples. How involved were in that process of this movie?

Robinson's musical talents played a big part in "Peeples". Photo by Nicole Rivelli.

My brother has a song in the movie, but the guy who wrote all the music is Stephen Bray. He wrote “Turn You On,” “Speak It (Don’t Leak It!)” and all that stuff. I just pretty much sang and they were nice enough to put one of my brother’s songs in the movie. It’s in the club scene, underneath, so you’ve got to be paying attention.

A lot of your roles have to do with music and you have a musical background. Do you actively pursue musical roles in films?

It’s just the opposite. Music is my partner, really. In my comedy act I use music and play keyboard and have a band and all that. But several roles, such as Hot Tub Time Machine, the producers came to see me perform and said, “Well, he’s a musician.” With Peeples, Tina was like, “We’re going to make him a musician. He uses music through therapy to help the kids and stuff.” So it’s kind of my partner.

Do you find that to be an asset?

Yeah. I wouldn’t be where I am without having that ability. It’s definitely an asset. One of the first times I ever did comedy without my keyboard, there was this competition. Three people in the audience had rubber chickens and if you got all three rubber chickens you had to get off stage. I got two and was like, “OK, goodnight!” My thought was, “I’m not getting a third one.” The next week I came back with my keyboard and I spun a web or something, I had them hypnotized.”

Will you be putting an album out anytime soon?

I don’t know when that album’s coming out, man. I’m definitely leaning towards that. But I’m tired of hearing myself say, “One of these days I’m going to put an album out.”

www.peeplesmovie.com

Ray McKinnon offers stark and quirky look at New South with “Rectify” and “Mud”

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Aden Young stars in Ray McKinnon’s “Rectify”. Photo by James Minchin III

Whether it was his Academy Award-winning 2001 short film The Accountant, his ominous performance as Reverend Smith on HBO‘s violent Western series Deadwood or his more recent appearances on Sons of Anarchy and in the Footloose remake, Ray McKinnon has a simple Southern charm that adds depth to anything he works on. This week sees his range of talents being utilized on screens big and small as his New Southern Gothic series Rectify premieres on the Sundance Channel April 22, followed by the theatrical release of Jeff Nichols‘ Mud on April 26. Though McKinnon plays a different role in each project (he’s the creator and writer for Rectify and plays the father of a Huckleberry Finn-like adolescent in Mud), the parallels between the two are hard to ignore.

Rectify revolves around Daniel Holden (Aden Young), a man exonerated of a rape and murder for which he has spent 19 years on death row. Like a cross between Twin Peaks and the West Memphis Three story, Rectify shows Daniel’s struggles to adjust to the modern world after spending most of his life in a cinder block cell that offers no concept of time or reality as most of us know it. (At one point, another character in Rectify even refers to Daniel as Starman, referring to the 1984 John Carpenter film about an alien who crashes to Earth and has a hard time adjusting to his new surroundings.)

“In some ways Being There is an archetypal story that appeals to me, and Daniel is a little bit like Chance the Gardener at times,” said McKinnon at last month’s Atlanta Film Festival premiere for Rectify. “But Chance never changed, that’s part of his story. I’m interested in a lot of social and psychological issues as a curious human being, so I’m interested in sociopaths, are they born or made, is Daniel one or not? I’m interested in narcissism, family dynamics and how systems can convict people who, when you look at the evidence you wonder how that happened, and the group psychology that’s involved, like how a group of people can convince each other that this is the right thing to do. So I wanted to explore that and there are a lot of elements I’m interested in in the world. Like Mad Men, this is, in some ways, an examination of private lives and sometimes we see things in our story that even the characters aren’t aware they’re showing or doing. I like stories like that.”

Daniel (Aden Young) is fascinated by the simplest things in Ray McKinnon’s “Rectify”. Photo by Blake Tyers.

In Mud, McKinnon portrays an aging Southern man whose stubbornness to accept the changes happening around him creates similar problems to the ones Daniel faces in Rectify.

“Senior is an anachronism,” McKinnon said of his character prior to the Atlanta Film Festival screening of Mud. “He’s kind of of another time, but times have changed and he’s not dealing with it very well. His son, who is changing with the times, helps bring him along. He’s a sad character in some ways, but he changes and I see a good life for him and his son in the future. I know [Jeff] as a friend and he claims he wrote this character for me, so there was a lot of pressure. I didn’t want to disappoint him. He’s a very assured director, he knows what he wants and we had a good time together. I always try to enjoy myself and he made me a better actor.”

Though his role in Mud (which stars Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland) is as a supporting cast member, he represents the mindset of many people along Mud‘s Mississippi River landscape, as well as many of the citizens of Rectify‘s Paulie, Ga.

“[Jeff] claims that he stole the idea [for Mud] from Mark Twain in a very broad way, but it’s a modern film,” says McKinnon. “It’s a story about the 21st century South and the changes that are going on along the Mississippi River and the people who can’t change with it. In some ways it has universal and ageless themes, but it’s also a 21st century story about the South.

Ray McKinnon plays Senior in Jeff Nichols’ “Mud”. Photo by James Bridges.

“We as a bigger society – and certainly the South is a more magnified hyper version sometimes of the bigger society – want order in our world,” he says of Rectify. “We want to believe that if a bad guy does something he’s going to be punished for that. Sometimes the pressure for that from society causes the wrong people to be convicted. It also causes people who believe in that conviction to have a psychological unwillingness to change their belief system, to turn around and say, ‘Maybe I was wrong’ or ‘Maybe I saw this the wrong way.’ You see that throughout both sides of the political aisle where you have a belief system and you’ll be damned if you’re going to believe anything different.”

With both of these projects being released within just a few days of one another, audiences have multiple ways to experience McKinnon’s quirky take on a South that he is very much a part of. And McKinnon couldn’t be more satisfied and proud to see these projects (particularly Rectify, his own creation) coming to fruition.

“Getting older and seeing how fortunate I am to be doing what I love to do I really appreciate things more,” he says “I live more in gratitude and a little less in fear. For some reason, these two projects that I care so much about [are coming out] at the same time, so I’m just planning on enjoying and savoring it. I was fortunate enough to be in Jeff’s movie and doing this show has been beyond my wildest imagination of things to explore. So I feel full in the best way.”

www.sundancechannel.com/series/rectify

www.mud-themovie.com