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.