Interview: Ryan Coogler, Michael B. Jordan Take You to ‘Fruitvale Station’

Submitted by BrianTT on July 17, 2013 - 11:47am

CHICAGO – The Sundance Audience Award winner, “Fruitvale Station,” opening in many markets this month, including Chicago this Friday, tells the story of the murder of Oscar Grant in the first hours of 2009. Killed after a fight on a BART train on New Year’s Eve, writer/director Ryan Coogler’s film flashes back 24 hours to detail the final day of Grant’s life. Played with emotional precision by the great Michael B. Jordan, Grant’s story is already connecting with audiences and will surely be one of the most talked about films of the season. Jordan and Coogler sat down with HollywoodChicago.com a few weeks ago to talk about the film, Hollywood’s fidelity to fact, Oscar’s family, and why Jordan is as on the cusp of worldwide fame as any young actor.

As the interview began, Coogler stepped out and Jordan and I were looking at the poster, which contains a large profile image of Jordan.

Note: For great, exclusive photos of Jordan and co-star Octavia Spencer and interviews from the red carpet of the Chicago premiere, check out this link.

HOLLYWOODCHICAGO.COM: You’re carrying that poster. Do you feel more pressure for the movie to do well? And be received well?

MICHAEL B. JORDAN: A little bit. As an actor, you always look for roles like this. You can wait your whole career for an opportunity like this. You don’t always get a chance to do that. Then you get what you’re asking for and you have to deliver. Especially being an African-American actor, you don’t get many chances to be a lead. There’s definitely that pressure and that anxiety in my chest. But I sleep at night knowing that I gave 110%. I worked with some very talented people like this guy…[Coogler walks in]

HOLLYWOODCHICAGO.COM: Are you nervous?

RYAN COOGLER: I wake up in the morning nervous. I’m nervous about what I’m gonna eat.

HOLLYWOODCHICAGO.COM: Does winning at Sundance make you more or less nervous because the spotlight is brighter?

COOGLER: Oh, oh! You mean being nervous that someone’s gonna see it and think it’s overrated?

HOLLYWOODCHICAGO.COM: Nervous that it’s going to hit with audiences, critics, how people receive it…

COOGLER: To be honest, I’m nervous about everything but being honored at Sundance, that doesn’t make me more or less. I’m maxed out anyway. For that, I was just happy. Any time somebody says something good about the film, I’m happy for my collaborators. I don’t take it for myself. It’s all THEIR work up there on the screen. Especially the actors. If people engage, it’s because of their work. And the cinematographer, editor, I put it on them. I see it as them being rewarded for their work.

HOLLYWOODCHICAGO.COM: Yeah, but you coordinate that, direct that, and you got a lot to do with that.

JORDAN: Exactly. He has a LOT to do with that. You set the tone. If you don’t have the actors trust, if you don’t have people that listen, you can have all of the pieces and all of the ingredients to the cake but if it’s not mixed the right way, cake ain’t gonna be shit. Thank you.

COOGLER: Thank you for them kind words but my whole goal was to tell the story. The audience ought to know about this. So, from now on, if anybody sees the film, whether they love it or hate it, they’ll know about it. Any time it shows, I’m happy. But I’m always nervous.

Fruitvale Station
Photo credit: The Weinstein Company

HOLLYWOODCHICAGO.COM: There’s been a lot of discussion/debate lately about movies based on fact — Argo, Zero Dark Thirty — and how true we need to be to fact. How do you come down on creative license versus loyalty to specifics?

COOGLER: I think there is no law to it. It’s how much you want to hold yourself accountable to it. I wanted to hold myself extremely accountable but I know, first and foremost, you have to make a film that works. That’s my job as a filmmaker. It’s accomplishing what we intend to accomplish. That’s why I’m here as a filmmaker. It’s not a documentary. For me, I wanted to do as much research as possible for the story I was trying to tell so I could make every decision based off that research. The first thing I had access to was what was said in the trial. That was an immense amount of information. And we had all the video. Police, witnesses — I was able to build a first draft of the script just from that: What his family had said that he done the day before. I wanted to tell the story through the lens of the people that were closest to him. Not from outsiders. Perspective from insiders. Then I got access to those people and got immense research from those people and wove that into my first draft and made creative decisions.

Fruitvale Station
Photo credit: The Weinstein Company

HOLLYWOODCHICAGO.COM: One clear creative decision was to focus on fatherhood. We spend a lot of time with Oscar & Tatiana, his daughter. You could have spent that time with his mom or his girlfriend or his friends. Creatively, why his daughter? For both of you, Michael, why do you think fatherhood was a key here?

JORDAN: All of his relationships were very important in the storytelling but I think his daughter represented his future. She was the most innocent. She looks up to him the most. Showing that he’ll do anything for her, so much that he didn’t want to bring her to the jail to see her in that situation. He wanted to shield her from that side of him. He knew something had to stop and he had to step up and be a man. Showing the relationship showed what Oscar cared about the most — that was his family. That unconditional love that a daughter is going to give a father. I think it’s very important to show that relationship. That’s a relationship that every father who has a daughter would understand.

HOLLYWOODCHICAGO.COM: I got boys and I still related to it. You talked to people, Ryan. Michael, did you talk to family members?

JORDAN: I met Tatiana. This whole process is very foreign to them though. I had a chance to talk to Wanda for a little bit. And listened to stories from Sofina. It helped me and Melonia [Diaz] out. And I met his friends that was with him, his crew. I listened to stories.

Fruitvale Station
Photo credit: The Weinstein Company

COOGLER: Let me speak to that question too. For me…you asked about the truth…The first thing Oscar said when he got shot, on record, was “You shot me, I got a daughter.” That was the FIRST thing out of his mouth. It’s the next line of dialogue after you hear a cop call him the N-word twice. It was the most important relationship in his life, hands down. It was inarguable. When people look at this guy who’s been shot, people don’t often think “That’s a father right there.” People presume he wasn’t active in his daughter’s life but he was known to spend every waking moment he could with her. At that moment, he had just been incarcerated for a year and a half from when she was 2 to 3 years old, so, when he got out, it was every waking moment. If you want to tell a story about a guy from the relationships that were closest to him, I would have been a fool to ignore that relationship. He had three very important relationships in his life [his daughter, his girlfriend, his mom] and he was the leader among his friends. He was the MAN in so many people’s lives but the film is very much about him being emasculated. Every woman in his life was working — his sister, his mom. He drops his girl off at Wal-Mart. If you ever had to do that — drop your girl off at a blue collar job — it can be emasculating. So many people see him as this man but I thought that he had these three relationships that meant the world to him. His mom represented his past. She know him the longest. His girl represented his present. The person he went to sleep with. His daughter represented his future. Losing his life, who’s going to be impacted the most? The community that rioted? The people that lifted him up? Or the community on the other side that wanted to tear him down? Was it his mom? It was his daughter.

HOLLYWOODCHICAGO.COM: Michael, you have such a successful career already but this is clearly a breakthrough role. It’s getting that attention. Ryan, what does he do differently than the way other actors would approach the part of Oscar Grant?

Fruitvale Station
Photo credit: The Weinstein Company

COOGLER: [Smiling] Let me speak as to why Mike is so great.

[Michael gets a little uncomfortable with the in-person praise and goes to get something to drink in the back of the room.]

COOGLER: He has talent that he has nothing to do with. God-given. He’s an attractive guy. He’s got extremely emotive eyes. He’s very charismatic. As soon as you meet him, you care about him. That’s stuff you can’t teach. The other side of it and this is the professional side, he’s been acting for a very long time. How long, Mike?

JORDAN: 13 years.

COOGLER: Anybody that’s been doing something 13 years, goddamn if they’re not going to be good at it. I don’t care if it’s 13 years as a garbage collector. They’re gonna be good. He’s amazingly professional, amazingly experienced, and he has a work ethic that’s very, very blue collar. What your parents do?

JORDAN: My mom is an artist and my dad works at a food bank.

COOGLER: He has a very blue collar work ethic. Mike will work all day. I have to tell him to stop. You talk about someone who’s that talented who works harder than anybody is going to work. He will push himself. I challenge anybody to work harder. What you get is greatness. And he has a team mentality, which I think comes from playing sports.

HOLLYWOODCHICAGO.COM: And TV, right? You have a lot of ensemble experience.

JORDAN: Right, right. And a lot of work with veterans.

COOGLER: I’m not just talking about with cast though. He sees cast and crew as team. When we wrapped, I called him up, and he was buying a gift for the First Assistant Cinematographer. He knew he liked sunglasses. That’s how he approaches things. I’ve worked with a few really talented actors who are not like that at all. They leave the set only knowing my name.

You will know both names, Ryan Coogler & Michael Jordan, after “Fruitvale Station” opens in Chicago on July 19, 2013.