A Father and Son Story Across the Generations
How Danny Strong, screenwriter of Lee Daniels’ The Butler, spun a newspaper article into box office gold
Danny Strong, the Emmy Award-winning writer of HBO hits Recount and Game Change, knows how to spin a compelling political yarn. In Lee Daniels’ The Butler, Strong tells the story of African American White House butler Cecil Gaines, played with frosty reserve by Academy Award-winner Forest Whitaker, who serves through seven presidential administrations, tracing more […]
Matt Manfredi & Phil Hay on R.I.P.D.
Screenwriters Matt Manfredi & Phil Hay describe how they keep comedy in the action
After languishing in development for nearly a decade, Universal’s R.I.P.D. finally took flight when screenwriting duo Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay successfully adapted the same-named Dark Horse Entertainment graphic novel, by Peter Lenkov. The tale centers on a pair of deceased cops who still clock in the hours at the otherworldly Rest In Peace Department. […]
Anatomy of a Production Deal
Nina Yang Bongiovi on producing Fruitvale Station
It began when Nina Yang Bongiovi—producer with Forest Whitaker’s Significant Productions, received word from her old USC film professor about an ambitious young film student with a compelling story to tell. It just so happened, Yang Bongiovi was looking for candidates for her company’s Emerging Filmmakers program. Yang Bongiovi subsequently met with Oakland native Ryan […]
Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station
Ripping drama from the headlines and driving change at the multiplex
The year was 2009, just hours after New Year’s Eve fireworks lit up the San Francisco skyline. Revelers were riding the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system on their way back home. Among them, a twenty-two-year-old local resident named Oscar Grant. A scuffle broke out. Grant was involved. The conductor parked the train at the […]
Nicolas Winding Refn discusses Only God Forgives
An Oedipus Complex and Hollywood desires
“I’m a pornographer. I make films that arouse me,” quipped provocative Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn, during a Q&A session following a packed Los Angeles Film Festival screening of Only God Forgives. Written and directed by Refn for The Weinstein Company subsidiary, Radius TWC, Only God Forgives is part martial-arts revenge saga, part religious allegory […]
