Tap In: Ryan Coolger and America's Distain for Black Excellence

and making it work for you. Ryan is a picture of playing the game and displaying black excellence. And I tell you what, it still not only surprises America, terrifies it taping with so Ryan's new film Centers is not only a box office smash, but is a filmmaker's wet dream, just nerded out, really doing for film what Kendrick Lamar did for hip hop.

And when you prove you got the chops, you get the bread for the next project. And the next project was Creed. With a thirty five million dollar budget. We made forty two point six million dollars in the opening weekend. So if you come out the box on the opening weekend making all the money back, bruh, you get to

do whatever the hell you want to do. But bre was just beginning to rumble because his next project was the Black Panther film, which netted a one point three billion dollars, the highest grossing black film maker ever and the youngest director to lead a billion dollar movie. And I don't know if you notice. Black Panther is the only Marvel film nominated for Best Picture Black Excellence and if you may or may not notice, each of those movies all had Michael B. Jordan in it. You know why,

town Biz Baby. We keep our day ones around us. But all of this is bringing us to the absolute nerdery level of this new film, Centers. Centers was shot on film, literally so much so that there are so many different options for which you could watch this film.

And he does a video explaining the difference between eight millimeters sixteen millimeter, forty five millimeter Imax and widescreen shot showing the film and the holes on there, proving that this is shot with the type of mastery and nerdery in the same way that us backpacker nerd wrap dissecting type head ass dudes would go through lyric by lyric explaining Kendrick Lamar's versus you may just be bouncing to squabble up or mustard. I'm still saying black Pendleton ball

cap Wes West. We don't say the same synonym fall back West West. I'm still looking at the Ryan patterns. It's something for everybody. This film was not only for the film school nerds. It came out bigger than expected at forty eight million dollars on Easter weekend and fifteen million dollars overseas. The only other film to come out that hard and earn a cinema score was James Cameron's

sequel to Aliens in nineteen eighty six. See there's a belief that black film don't travel, that they don't work overseas, and what the hell is a black film anyway? The very name of it is problematic. Ryan built different. But when you built different, if you have that type of success, you know what happens. You could start negotiating for yourself.

See these are the things that unless your parents had the financial margins to not just be always in crisis mode, then they really just don't have the bandwidth to teach you these types of things that kids who come from wealth, from generational wealth learn there is a way to play this corporate game. We don't learn negotiation skills. We won't know a four one ks are we learned that later.

You may have heard us say things like this, Lord, grant me the confidence of a mediocre white man, because that mediocre mid khaki C minus barely getting by white man gets elevated at that career and lands him as salary. I could never dream of that. He know for a fact he not worth, but you're worth what you can negotiate. I didn't know that. We oftentimes feel we just lucky to be in the room. But that's not every black experience.

Some of us were trained well, some of us came from good schools, some of us had supportive parents, and we took that opportunity in that network, and we worked as hard as we possibly could to get to the place that we are. Ryan knew he wasn't gonna do this again. Ce See here's the crazy thing. Ryan let us know in a podcast while he was directing Creed he was two hundred thousand dollars in debt for film School. You mean this man has made this studio billions of dollars and he's still in debt.

he said, which is the part that's blowing everybody. My man said, after twenty five years, I want to own this film. And boy did that break the internet. See, anti blackness is tricky and can be insidious in a number of ways and very gaslightly. There's on one end this belief that if one of us actually makes it, that means racism is over. But then there's also this belief that you must also be the exception to the rule. See this ain't a headline because he's the first person

to ever negotiate this type of deal. It broke the internet because America really doesn't.

my daddy. See, America can deal with that type of black success. Oh, they like movies like The blind Side because they get to pack themselves on the back and say that they not like they ancestors that put us in chains. No, we're different. We give of our generational wealth. Oh, this is my little tar baby that I have helped to become successful.

are even at the table because of our mercy. The other type of racism is different, rich Nigga racism. Damon Wayan said on yet another fall off club Shaysha that he knows racism is real because the richer you get, the less black faces you see. The higher up you get, the less black people are around. They even have your team switch out look ause Serena Williams's parents Beyonce's daddy. At some point you start making enough money to where

they say, you know, we got it from you. You find yourself being the only black family in the neighborhood, your children the only black kids at this private school. The richer you get, the less you see us, unless it's Atlanta. The type of excellence that really bothers these people, that really terrifies America is the big Baller brand is the ball brother. Oh. I'm not here to defend that old man, but I tell you what. They don't come

from poverty. They come from Chino Hills. And he bet the house on his sons and built a brand off their own strength. Oh that's different. I know he might be a NEPO baby, but isn't Jeanie Buss. I'm talking about the guy who come from a supportive family, who goes to college, proves his worth, and then walks in and negotiates a deal that the rest of y'all was too scared to negotiate. Oh that got these production houses terrified. That got all kind of little bro headlines about what

Ryan has done. And Ryan stood on Democracy Now during an interview and said, I'm not the first person to ever negotiated. I don't know why it's such a big deal that I did it. Oh, And Terry Gross was like, why do you think Ryan, and his most town talk voice said, oh, you know, I'd rather not say, but I think we know. I think America is still terrified when we actually understand our worth, when we actually understand

that we can negotiate, just like y'all can. I remember my mother told me once when I was in high school, the reason why I got shipped out to that suburban high school from the neighborhood I lived in is because she said, whatever it in white kids is getting my son.