The creatives behind this year’s awards contenders convened for a series of conversations about their craft during Variety FYC Fest on Dec. 6 in Los Angeles.
Variety‘s senior awards editor Clayton Davis, senior artisans editor Jazz Tangcay and senior entertainment and media writer Matt Donnelly moderated several panels throughout the event. From the environmental documentaries “Common Ground” and “The Issue With Tissue: A Boreal Love Story,” to Marvel’s “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” a diverse array of filmmakers behind this year’s movies pulled back the curtain on their process.
Cord Jefferson Panel “American Fiction” Spotlight
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“American Fiction” director and writer Cord Jefferson sat down for a one-on-one interview with Variety‘s Davis.
Jefferson revealed that after stumbling upon a review of Percival Everett’s “Erasure,” he immediately picked up the novel that would later inspire his screenplay. “It resonated with me deeper than any piece of art had ever resonated with me,” Jefferson said. “I started reading the book in Jeffrey Wright’s voice actually, that’s how early I started thinking of Jeffrey Wright.” Jefferson would later pitch Wright the idea to star in his film on a beach in Malibu.
“Jeffrey Wright’s a big jock, that might surprise you all. Jeffrey Wright went to Amherst to play lacrosse as a kid,” he said. “Now he’s a huge surfer. He surfs a lot with the Hemsworth brothers from Australia, they’re a big surf gang.”
Jefferson added, “Three months before I found this novel I had a big, professional setback,” he said detailing a show he was certain was going to shoot that was suddenly killed. “We were so close to getting it on the air that people were telling me where we were going to open our production offices.”
“And also, a couple months before that, I had received a note from an executive on a script that I wrote that said I needed to make a character ‘Blacker.’ They, of course, gave me this note through an emissary, and I told the emissary, ‘I will indulge that note if this person reaches out to me and tells me what it means to be Blacker.’ That call never came because I know that the person who said that knew they were about to commit a civil rights violation if they tried to have that phone call with me,” Jefferson continued. “This industry beats the shit out of people. It really does. It especially beats the shit out of people who are trying to do something a little bit different. It’s really, really hard and a lot of people give up … it erodes your confidence; it erodes your spirit.”
Calling “American Fiction” a “minor miracle,” the director said the creation of his film reignited his passion for filmmaking. “I’m still a writer, I’m still going to be insecure until the day that I die,” he joked. “I’m going to have imposter syndrome forever, but this has given me some motivation to keep trying to make stuff. There are people out there who want to hear what I have to say.”
Watch the full conversation about the journey to make “American Fiction” above.
Documentary Panel
The documentary panel included Alisa Payne, producer of “Stamped from the Beginning”; Sean Mullin, director of “It Ain’t Over”; Rebecca Tickell, co-director of “Common Ground”; and Michael Zelniker, director, producer and writer of “The Issue With Tissue: A Boreal Love Story.”
Payne, whose documentary “Stamped from the Beginning” examines the history of anti-Black racism, said we do not live in a “post-racial Obama society,” despite what some people would like to believe.
“Redlining affects us, blockbusting and all the things that are systemic — unequal housing, unequal education, unequal pay affect us,” Payne said. “What we really wanted to say in the piece was that this actually exists. It was created, it was intentional. If it’s created and intentional, we can all walk away and rework the system. We have to acknowledge it.”
Mullin’s film is about the life of legendary baseball player Yogi Berra — though it’s not solely focused on sports.
“I think the trickiest thing for me was trying to not tell a baseball story, a sports story,” Mullin said. “It’s not that at all — it’s about a life well-lived. It’s about someone who just always did the right thing. A real American dream, at a time when I think we could use some heroes. I thought that was a good thing to rally behind.”
Tickell discussed the importance of her environmental film reaching a broad audience and potentially affecting legislation.
“We really wanted to make sure ‘Common Ground,’ a film about soil, which is all of our common ground, reaches not just people who are on the coasts but also people who are growing our food… We’ve been invited to show it at the White House, and hopefully it will affect the farm bill as it’s being rewritten this year.”
Zelniker’s “The Issue With Tissue” explores the impact of destructing boreal forests for the manufacturing of toilet paper.
“Among the first things I learned is the boreal is also home to more than 600 First Nations communities,” he said. “So what began as a story about trees and toilet paper evolved and emerged into a much deeper narrative that in some ways draws a link between colonial violence and unfettered extractive industrial exploitation.”
Watch the full conversation above.
Animation Panel
The filmmakers behind beloved animated films convened to discuss the arduous work that goes into their craft.
Panelists included Nick Bruno, director of “Nimona”; Karey Kirkpatrick, writer of “Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget”; Kemp Powers, co-director of “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”; Robert Smigel, director, writer and songwriter for “Leo”; and Peter Sohn, director and writer of “Elemental.”
The directors spoke to the messages behind their respective films. Powers discussed how any audience member can relate to Miles Morales’ feeling of being an outsider.
“This idea of feeling like you don’t belong, it’s something that everyone can understand. Regardless of your background,” he said. “One of the big takeaways that I like to think about for our film is that everyone has a place in this world and, not to be corny, but that’s the truth of it.”
Smigel spoke about the significance of children watching “Leo” and subsequently feeling more comfortable sharing difficult emotions.
“I know that I would have loved to have had somebody that I could have trusted when I was 9 or 10 years old to share my anxieties with,” he said. “It became very important to me, as we were putting the movie together, to get that across for little kids to realize that they shouldn’t be afraid to share their fears with somebody.”
Watch the full conversation above.
Song and Score Panel
Composers Gordy Haab (“Star Wars Jedi: Survivor”), Laura Karpman (“American Fiction”), David Metzger (“Wish”) and “Origin” co-writer and performer Stan Walker sat down in a song and score conversation moderated by Tangcay.
“If I’m actually working on something, I try to listen to music that is the opposite of what I’m working on, so I’m not influenced by it, necessarily. But I’m always sort of getting inspired by different music,” said Haab. “I like to listen to music from all around the world because I find it interesting … I think we’re all sort of lifelong students in music.”
As for coming up with the “Star Wars Jedi: Survivor” score, Haab wanted to ensure that he stayed consistent with the “Star Wars” franchise, which he’s worked on in the past. That didn’t prevent him from taking an innovative approach to the composition process, such as creating new instrumentals.
“There’s such a great legacy of music already attached to this franchise,” Haab noted. “I’m going to the same influences that maybe influenced the original score as well, but I’m always trying to push it forward and stamp it with my own personal aesthetic.”
Like Haab, Walker found incorporating one’s perspective necessary for creatively maneuvering the project.
“The way that I heard everything throughout the film, I wanted to emulate it by take it to the level that I thought it needed to go to,” said Walker of his work on “Origin.”
He continued, “I’m quite a deep and emotional person, even though I’m a clown. I get inspired by films and I feel like my life is a film when I’m walking around … I hear music to every different scenario, and I was brought up on so many different genres.”
“I’m inspired by so many genres and styles and I don’t really care where it’s from,” Walker continued. “When it hits me, it hits me.”
The combination of genres and styles proved especially vital for Metzger, whose “Wish” had to meld both a modern sensibility with the historical significance of Disney.
“One of my main challenges [in ‘Wish’] was to integrate my score with the songs. The songs in a musical pretty much always come first; they’re part of the narrative arc of the story,” Metzger explained. “It was a matter of just always keeping in mind what the path was going to be and how to get in and out of the songs.”
That also meant adjusting to the tonal shifts between the songs — which Metzger says were more “contemporary” — and Metzger’s score, which leaned more towards “traditional” and “classic” conventions.
“As I got closer to the songs, I wanted to transition instrumentally and color-wise to ease into the songs and, likewise, [come] out of them,” Metzger finished.
For Karpman, the most significant part of working on a project like “American Fiction” was the social implication of representation.
“The radical part of ‘American Fiction’ — you can watch it, you see the satire and everything — but the radical part is this family. You never see images like that on film, of Black doctors, lawyers, authors, really dealing with what it is, and what it means, in just a really funny and poignant way,” Karpman said.
“I love that a lot of the films we’re seeing this year are really about amplifying marginalized and underrepresented voices and celebrating that, and seeing lots of other experiences,” she added. “It’s really significant for me as a queer person and a woman in an industry that has been male-dominated.”
Watch the full conversation above.
Screenwriters Panel
Ilker Çatak, director and writer of “The Teachers’ Lounge”; Samy Burch, writer of “May December”; Alex Convery, screenwriter of “Air”; Maryam Keshavarz, writer and director of “The Persian Version”; and Josh Singer, writer for “Maestro,” sat for a conversation with Variety‘s Donnelly.
When asked what was the craziest note each writer had gotten from a studio, the writers provided an amazing look inside the editing process. Convery’s biggest shock was getting notes from the inspiration for “Air,” Michael Jordan himself. “It was a very heady thing. This movie is never going to happen if we don’t really respect these,” he said. “That was a real through the looking glass moment, from starting this as a spec to literally getting notes from the greatest basketball player of all time.” Jordan’s notes included elevating characters within the film such as Howard White (played by Chris Tucker) and asking for Viola Davis to play his mom.
Burch, who in addition to “May December” also penned “Coyote v. Acme,” which was shelved by Warner Bros. despite being completed, revealed the funniest note she received when writing the Wile E. Coyote film: “‘Would Tweety Bird say that?'”
Singer, who wrote “Maestro” and Damien Chazelle’s space drama “First Man,” received a lot of pushback from actual astronauts “who didn’t want to see Neil [Armstrong] in that light.” He said of the film, “It was a bit of a shocking portrayal. Neil was always just the great American hero, not someone who was tough to live with. Not someone who lost a kid and couldn’t get past it.”
Watch the full conversation above.
‘Trolls Band Together’ Spotlight
“Who gets an opportunity to make your own dream boy band? So it was a rare opportunity that we embraced,” “Trolls Band Together” director Walt Dohrn told Tangcay when asked about building the world of the latest Trolls franchise film.
Dohrn was joined by producer Gina Shay who told the audience that they were looking for a way to tell Branch’s (Justin Timberlake) backstory and discover what made him tick. Said Shay, “We felt that he had been hiding his musical talents for a while, especially in “Trolls One.”
The idea was to build a narrative that he had brothers and was in a band with them, but they soon dissolved. That gave the filmmakers a way to tell Branch’s backstory but also find a way to tell a story about solving a crisis within the family but also bringing the band back together.
That meant bringing in Kid Cudi, Eric Andre, Daveed Diggs, and Troye Sivan to voice the brothers and boyband.
Later in the film’s third act, the band comes together, with ’90s boyband NSYNC reuniting to sing “Better place.” Said Dohrn, “It really started with like Justin texting.”
Shay explained they were finding a way to find the perfect song that would represent the film. Timberlake landed on the song with producer Shellback and Amy Allen. Shay revealed, “He recorded himself singing the song and sent the demo, and it was absolutely brilliant and effervescent and fun. And then he decided to text after and say, I think I’d like to bring the band back together if they’re into it for the song, and I was screaming on my walk with my dog.”
Watch the full conversation above.
International Spotlight: ‘Alhamour H.A.’
Filmmaker Abdulelah Alqurashi was looking for a follow-up to his 2019 directorial debut “Roll ’em” when the script for “Alhamour H.A” came along. He wanted his next project to be more “commercial and artistic.”
The film is based on the true story of conman Hamour Sawwa, who was publicly exposed in 2004 after amassing a fortune of SAR 1.5 billion by conning 4,000 victims through a ponzi scheme.
Alquarashi’s film is now the official entry for Saudi Arabia in the international feature Oscars race, and the first R-rated Saudi Arabian film. “I didn’t believe them,” Alquarashi says when he heard the Oscars news from the country’s film commission. “This is huge.”
Alquarashi was joined by his cinematographer Egor Povolotskiy who discussed the challenges of working in Saudi Arabia. “There were only three crews available and they’re pretty booked on commercials and music videos.” Yet, they were able to pull it off using an international crew.
Alquarashi agreed it was a tough one to pull off, but it wasn’t discouraging him. “I believed in the story and the production, and for me, this is how we make movies.”
Watch the full conversation above.
