Before the age of 30, Rishi Rajani rose to become president of Lena Waithe's Hillman Grad Productions, the company that brought you Queen & Slim and BET's Boomerang and Twenties , among other projects. In this episode, he talks about how Hillman Grad wants to help other people break into Hollywood—especially underrepresented creators who want to make protest art. He also talks about how he worked his way up from the mailroom, and why, in 2020, the mailroom still matters. Because Rajani climb...
Jan 15, 2020•43 min•Ep. 10
Director Destin Daniel Cretton had no choice but to make sure Just Mercy , his Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx death row drama, was very accurate: Cretton says Bryan Stevenson, who inspired the film, "was constantly keeping us in check in the best way." Stevenson's memoir, Just Mercy, describes his efforts to save Walter McMillian, a man who was wrongly convicted of murder in 1988. Jordan plays Stevenson, and Foxx plays McMillian. 1:36: Destin Daniel Cretton interview begins. 2:10: How Bryan St...
Jan 11, 2020•25 min•Ep. 9
The Lighthouse was one of Willem Dafoe's biggest acting challenges: Dafoe and Robert Pattinson are onscreen for almost every second of Robert Eggers' film, shot in harsh weather on a barely hospitable stretch of the North Atlantic. But Dafoe says in our interview that he delighted in the challenge of having nowhere to hide. Then we talk with Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, whose film The Mustang is one of the most underrated of 2019. The Mustang stars Matthias Schoenaerts as a Nevada prison inmate w...
Dec 26, 2019•44 min•Ep. 8
Clemency is one of the last films to be released in 2019, and it's one of the best films of 2019. This week we talk to the film's director, Chinonye Chukwu, and the film's stars, Alfre Woodard and Aldis Hodge. You know all the cliches of death-row movies: the cruel warden, the Jesus imagery, the lawyers who clear their client at the last second. Clemency knows them too, and subverts them in favor of a nuanced and honest look at the fundamental problem with the death penalty. It doesn't preach. I...
Dec 25, 2019•51 min•Ep. 7
Alan Cumming and "Two Popes" screenwriter Anthony McCarten are our guests this week. We talk with Cumming -- whose Twitter profile describes him as a "Scottish elf trapped inside middle-aged man's body" -- about dancing, DJing, mentoring young moviemakers, and his role in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut . He tells us about the visual sex joke that Kubrick asked him to do again and again, and about what it's like to be Alan Cumming, witty and outgoing star, and Alan Cumming, real person. Then we...
Dec 19, 2019•42 min•Ep. 6
Margot Robbie, our first guest, is earning accolades galore for her role in "Bombshell" as Kayla, a Fox News employee whose TV ambitions draw the attention of the predatory Roger Ailes. She talks with us about playing a character with whom she has almost noting in common, and how she used social media to understand her. We also talk about one of the most underrated parts of her acting, how she balances acting and producing, and that story that she slapped Leonardo Di Caprio during her "Wolf of W...
Dec 11, 2019•35 min•Ep. 5
Hotel Mumbai , the feature debut from Australian writer-director Anthony Maras, deserved more attention when it premiered in the United States earlier this year. Now that the film has premiered in the most important country on its release calendar, India, we spoke to Maras about the horrific attacks that inspired Hotel Mumbai and the heroism of the real people involved. Maras' story is essential listening for anyone making their first film. Many surprises that seemed likely to doom the project t...
Dec 02, 2019•54 min•Ep. 4
Writer-director Annabelle Attanasio's debut feature film "Mickey and the Bear" stars Camila Morrone as an 18-year-old helping care for her father (James Badge Dale), a veteran coping with PTSD. In this episode, Attanasio talks about crafting an elegant, efficient script that skips exposition and lets the actors really act. Morrone and Dale also talk about the importance of persistence in being a professional actor, and Attanasio talks about her own acting on the CBS drama "Bull" helped shape her...
Nov 25, 2019•29 min•Ep. 3
This week, two interviews we love: The first is with "Queen & Slim" star Daniel Kaluuya, and the second with "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" writers Noah Harpster and Micah Fitzerman-Blue, as well as Tom Junod, whose Esquire profile of Mister Rogers is a major influence on the film. In "Queen & Slim," which is in theaters Wednesday, Nov. 27, Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith play a couple on a first date who are racially profiled on a traffic stop that quickly escalates into a nationa...
Nov 18, 2019•36 min•Ep. 2
In the first episode of MovieMaker Interviews, "Dolemite Is My Name" screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski tell us how they went from college roommates to masters of the biopic. They walk us through their writing process, from research to cards to first draft, then get into specifics about "Ed Wood," "The People vs. Larry Flynt," "Man on the Moon," "Big Eyes," "The People vs. O.J. Simpson," and finally "Dolemite Is My Name." Jokes are told. Mel Brooks calls. And we learn the "Dolem...
Nov 10, 2019•37 min•Ep. 1
