Ava DuVernay: Groundbreaker

And of course Selma, right, Brian, I mean, that was an amazing film. If you care about the civil rights movement, or Lyndon Johnson or how the Voting Rights Act was passed,

you have to see this movie. It became actually very controversial at the time, and one of the big controversies around it was why Ava was not nominated for Best Director, which we get into a little bit in this conversation, and of course that omission really helped fuel the Oscars So White campaign, which really changed the face literally of

the Academy. Anyway, we had the privilege of talking to Ava at Disney Studios, where she was in the middle of a deadline for her upcoming movie, A Wrinkle in Time, and we covered a lot of ground from her relationship with her frequent collaborator, somebody named uh Oprah I think is her name. You may have heard of her. I think that's how you pun the official Ava diverne a Barbie and how she went from doing pr and publicity to making movies, a pretty dramatic career transition. And folks,

by the way, you know the drill. We left our studio, We ventured out into the actual world for this recording, and so the audio isn't perfect because we did it in Ava's office, so we hope you'll forgive us for that. And in Ava's office where she had very good snacks, we might add, including those little breadsticks with nutella. She told me to help myself. So what can I say? People, I did? You taught me the true meaning of asking forgiveness,

not permission anyway. So here's our conversation with the one and only Ava to Burney, I kept thinking about the Alicia Key song this girl is on BiH my god woman. First of all, thank you for doing our podcast. You're doing a million things too, so you're my girl. People don't know we hang out when we're Yeah, we've partied together. That's your party together. Yeah, well, I'm We first met at Sundance and we sat across the table from her. I think she probably thought I was super weird at

the time. Ava. She was obviously doing great things, but it was really before start a huge development in Ava's career or causation. We don't know very little to do that, but I was snedd then by Ava's backstory, which I want to get to in a moment, but first we have to say muscle mozzle, Ava, because you have been nominated for lots o Emmy eight Emmys, eight Emmys for thirteenth and you know, the great thing about it is when it happens, it doesn't feel like you thought it would.

It feels lovely, but like a cherry on top, because the main thing was making the piece and people loving it and responding to it. So when the nominations came in, I was like, oh, wow, this is lovely. I was more excited for my editor and for my my sound mixer who all got nominated and uh. And so it just helps me stay focused because I just like telling the stories and I like the people's reaction because everyone walks up to me about thirteen. You know, people walk up,

they want to talk about it. And so it's been a gift that keeps on giving. It's it's still though, must be a nice piece of validation for you, right, nice. I just didn't doesn't hit the same as I always dreamed it would. You know, you think you're you're making the speech in the mirror, and you your brush is this is a trophy. You know what it made. You think it's going to feel a certain way. It's really nice, but the way isn't everything that I thought it would be.

But it did feel I think, sort of like a disc when you weren't nominated for Selma for a lot of other people, I never thought it would be nominated. I'm on record a long time before the nomination saying it wouldn't want to because I don't know anyone in my in my in my branch. It's very much about you know, I have no connection Sider's Club, Yeah, and I don't. I don't know them and they don't know me, and so that's a big part of what that is.

It's just that connection with your peers, and I didn't have it at that Hollywood is just like high school. Another little bit as a movie goer, I really resented it even if you didn't, even if it didn't but but no, no, really, if I didn't even know you and the movie Selma and the fact that, um, I thought it was a fantastic movie, and I think it should have been recognized. But I think this was sort of on the cusp of people understanding how undiverse the Oscar.

It was. The year before this was the that was the year that said all that conversation helped to spur the Oscar. And I think that that was valid that came from the fans and uh, and it was a valid conversation that needed to happen, not just for people of color, but for women, which has become a big, big conversation now, so they people thinking differently about it. And so I'm happy that that campaign was effective. Do you think it drove real change? It did? I mean

it was. It was definitely had fundamental changes within the academy in terms of the ways in which new members are brought in, in terms of the ways in which the conversations that are had around the table. Um. I know because I've been sitting in them and I can see how they've changed since I joined the Academy in

two thousand twelve to now radically different. Isn't it amazing how when people are made aware of an issue, how rapidly in some cases, change can happen so fast, I really can What do you think it were the keys to to changing sort of the color if you will, at the Academy and and and the choices they were making. I mean, I think it was the uproar and the outrage and the real urgency that people were feeling at the time about this is unacceptable. And it's not as

if the conversation hadn't happened before. But there was something of alchemy about, you know, whatever whatever was going on the culture around that time, Black lives matter, Absolutely there was there was at the forefront. There was a conversation, whether it be people of color or women, that this was no longer something that could be uh set aside. But when you're talking about change, you know, we were talking about another conversation we had about um about your

your dock and your dock work. How quickly I even look at the trans community, how quickly, I mean, I can think of three years ago, no one even knew how to articulate or what it meant or how or had a respect for it being a uh, you know, an issue that we all had to embrace or a reality that we had to embrace or we should embrace. And now it feels very you could have a conversation with people and they may not know everything that they should know, but there's at least a base of recognition.

And that's been I mean, what would you say I'd say to three years and I being concerned of it now, I think you're right, And I think that Caitlyn Jenner did a lot to bring it out into the forefront and then that provided I think a foundation for a conversation to talk about it, and then actually paid the way for a documentary like mine that couldn't have happened, I think, in a weird way without Kasman kind of making more people understand that this was an actual phenomenon

and that this was something that was affecting a lot of people that was being kept in the closets. That's a reality for a lot of people. And before we go further down this road, I want to talk a little bit about who you are and where you come from. People you don't know, because you grew up a few miles but also a world away from here, near Compton. And you've talked a lot about this. How how did your childhood and background kind of shape the director that

you are today. Had a beautiful childhood, very you know, lovely community, very tight knit, a gorgeous, loving family, UM, but my childhood was in a community that was, you know, uh, kind of besieged by l a p D at that time that really used excessive force and instances when it wasn't necessary, and instances of everyday life, the constant surveillance, the police presence living under that made it so that I'm hyper aware of issues of criminal justice and and

and the ways in which law enforcement of really um can kind of rule with an iron hand in some places. And so that that's made its way in my work, from the early narrative films to The Docks Now to the TV show Uhich is something that's a part of my DNA and something I just want to continue to talk about. Did you have any firsthand experiences a growing up where you know an image has stuck with you or an experience has stuck with you. I just read a Brian Stevenson Peace and the New York Review of

Books about he was your so great. And I guess that same story about being a young lawyer in Atlanta and a racially mixed neighborhood was also in his book US Mercy. You know, you and I both have a complete crush on Bryan. Really Equal Justice Initiative and my daughter's working for the Southern Poverty Law Center exactly have to connect that. But anyway, I mean that experience he described Brian real quickly. He was coming home. He was listening to a radio show about slide in the family stone.

You could just put yourself. He was staying in the cars sometimes you do when you're you're mesmerized by something on the radio. And Atlanta police officer came. Apparently someone had made a call. He was, as I said, in a racially mixed neighborhood, basically almost you know, killed him. And the fear that he had as this Harvard educated lawyer coming back from his firm, and I don't know that the scene, he said, was so profoundly moving to me, and it really made you realize in sharp relief what

it was like. What about you, Eva? Was there anything for you that made you this is completely screwed up. Many many little things throughout my my growing up, but there was one in particular around my father recently onto another realm recently departed, and he was in his our house watering the lawn in the backyard of his own home and police came through the side gate and wrestled him to the ground in his own backyard. We had to rush out of the house, UM with no warning,

that didn't say anything. Guns drawn on us, my mother and and it was me. My sisters weren't there. I don't know, maybe maybe eleven or twelve, something like bad to see my father such a proud, elegant man on the ground UM with police on top of him, guns pointed at us, not knowing who we were. And basically in the end they said he matched the description of someone who was running through the neighborhood. UM, despite the fact that he was saying, this is my home, I'm

the homeowner in his own backyard. Not safe. So those kinds of like I say, excessive police force and a disregard for the humanity of people, uh, something that I grew up with. It was just a part of daily life when you spoke very eloquently about this in the Atlantic. You said you'd see a cop growing up and you didn't think safety like your counterpart who didn't grow up in Compton, you'd think, oh boy, what are they coming for? And who are they coming for? Yeah, exactly. So it's

be because of instances like that. So you know, I find it. It makes its way in my work. And at one point I would try to push that away and say, oh, I need to really engage with Hollywood

in the ways that our standard Hollywood. But I've just tried to embrace the fact that these are the things I'm interested in, and it's okay to talk about those things, and whether it's a documentary or whether it's like a series like Queen Sugar, you know, to be able to find the spaces where I can say the things I want to say about these issues is okay to do. I read Eva, I learned something new about you every day, and I read that you actually helped cover the O

J trial for Did Did I not know that? And you became disillusion with journalism. Yeah. I really really wanted to do what you do, Katie. I really wanted to be a broadcast journalist. I don't know what that was in me for all through high school and uh and going through college. That was what I wanted to do. And so anyway, I got this prestigious internship with the

CBS Evening News. This isn't the Dan and rather Connie chung Era the small window when it was both of them, right, almost as prestigious as the later Katie Kurk almost, but it was a slim window when there was the two of them. And that landed at some point around the trial. Anyway, the trial was just starting, I got to sign my juror packet. I was assigned to one specific juror, and

I was like, this is it. It's a few short months and I'll be on the air anchoring like this is it's all happening for me and um And basically I was kind of capped out in front of Drew's house and um and you know, kind of invited to kind of look through her I don't know, trash things, mail get a sense of when she came home, who was coming, and I just felt like that's not what I want to It was around the time O J. Tim I think things the traditional news had to become

a tad more tabloid e to compete with a new world. I think I felt that, and so things were changing and I didn't I didn't take to it. Well, I wasn't good at it, and so instead I got no trash, no dirt. Yeah, well that was a bad assignment and probably not a fair representation of the kind of work have been able to do. I wouldn't stuck with it, you know. I was just I couldn't see through when

you idealize something, you know. Either that That brings me back to though, the o J trial, and I just want to kind of take a left turn for a moment, because I was in the hallway when that verdict was announced, and I was actually standing near o J's kids. And I'm not sure if either of you remember. Of course you remember the external outside reaction, but the black and white reaction was dramatically but I mean, I know you remember that. But in that hallway was a microcosm of

sorts of this racial divide in this country. And I'm curious what you thought about the reaction by the African American community, because I have to say I was, I was stunned. Um, you know, I knew Johnny Cochrane very well, and the whole defense team. I actually loved Johnny cochrane. And and yet it was pretty clear that O J had committed this crime, and the jubilation when he was not convicted, when he was acquitted, and the image of this very different reaction from black and white America. Uh

is still somewhat hard for me. Less hard for me to understand given everything that I've explored and read and people I've talked to, But help me understand it a little more. I mean, I think it was and that we've had, you know, both document or in narrative pieces that have since explored that whole case. I mean, it was seminal case and American criminal justice, but also speak

so clearly to you know, the racial divide. And I think, you know, just being around at that time I was in college, the feeling was, you know, so often the criminal justice system is unjust towards the black man, right,

It's so skewed, it's so destructive. I mean, day in and day out, years and years of never winning, of never that the win on such a hype in such a high profile way, even though intellectually you know this is not a good guy, but the optics and the triumph of finally being on the on the winning side, I think was such a powerful um it was such a powerful feeling. Did you feel that way? I don't remember how I felt at the time about it. I

don't know if it was following that close. I was in college and having a good time, But I do remember a sense of kind of drama and excitement and energy during the high speed chase. I was in l A. I saw it go by. I mean, at some point it became um, you know when when I was young and then watching it, it became it was entertainment in a way, you know, and not regarding it as you know, a life or death matter, and and people who lost their lives over this, you know, it became spectacle. It

was a cultural spectacle. I think that's how people, you know, you know African Americans. Uh, some people were able to divorce themselves from the actual lives lost and say, wow, we won, when really it wasn't quite the wind that that that it was embraced as at the time. So rather than pursue journalism, you decided to move towards the entertainment. So I forget that that you wanted to do for all, they're not going to be going through. But you chose

a kind of unconventional path for what you're doing. Now, you started your own marketing and publicity agency, and you did that for many years, even after you had started making films. How did that training and background inform your filmmaking. I loved films, So what that did is just allowed me to immerse myself in film even more. Uh So, I started out after the news stint um, working for

studios and publicity firms that specialized in films. How do you as a film go or when you think about how do you know that a film is coming out? You know how whatever whether it's the commercial, it's the red carpet, it's the entertainment to nice piece, it's the review in the newspaper. All the ways that you know that a film is coming out, that's what the public system the marketers to do. So that's what I did, and I loved it because it gave me close proximity

to filmmakers. And I love sets and movies and so just working for thirteen years and film that closely gave me a set of tools that really made up for not going to film school because I didn't go to film school, but I was working as a publicist on film sets and traveling with filmmakers, and so when I decided to make my own films, I had some bass uh to go from, even though I hadn't gone to

a traditional school. And so all that marketing experience must have come in incredibly handy because so much of filmmaking today obviously is the artistry and what you're doing to to produce this this piece of work, but also to make sure it's seen and heard and that people are aware of it. I mean, I'm sure that's been Have you continue to get where your marketing has in some saying it's really odd. I don't think about marketing when I'm casting. I don't think about it when I'm making

the thing, uh. And I think, knowing so much about marketing publicity, I know that you can market and publicize anything. So I just let myself be free with what I'm doing when the time comes to market and publicize. I can have different kinds of conversations with studios and networks than a lot of my filmmaking partners do our colleagues do, because I know what they're talking about in a in a deep way, um, but I really don't think about I don't think when I'm casting, Oh, this person will

be good on a poster. Oh this person. I know that I can publicize this piece of paper sitting on the desk. I can do that. I can make you want to read this piece of paper on the that that must be very useful even after the film is right. So it allows me to be free in the creative because I don't feel constrained by having to do certain things in order to get publicity. Didn't you weren't you working in publicity and then you got hired to Actually

that's what what movie was? That was that? So in earlier iteration you were actually I read did his homework and he tells me, really, but basically you started for someone. How crazy is that? Wait? How did that happen? And then you became the director? I know it was Lee

Daniels was directing and I was not directing yet. I was asked to come on and be the publicist for it because they wanted to have conversations with the King of State and they wanted someone to be in the middle of that, and so liaison between the filmmaker and the family and that's what I was hired to do my path A, the French financers. I still have the contract where I signed to be the publicist, but the

film never went forward, so that fell apart art. I did get paid though, and and so years later, maybe five years later. You know life, you know, life is mysterious. Crazy Daniels made the Butt Lord. He said that he had sort of made his civil rights movie, so he didn't produce. Yeah, he left the project and David or Yellow Woll had been cast by him and remained with the project. David Yellow was the actor who played Dr King. I just happened to work with David Yellow on my

little indie film. So David said, you know this film doesn't have a director. You're a director. I want to work with the kid. Can I put you together with the with path A the French financiers? And I was like, yeah, I know them already. I'm the publicist for this movie. You want to kiss David on the mouth? I do, and I do often. Yes, yes, yes, he's a great friend.

But yeah he basically when I think of like one Simon, a moment of one person who made a critical decision that helped me sit where I am today talking to you at Disney on you know, posting Wrinkling time. It was David connecting me to SMA. Well, it had a million dollar budget, and while I think obviously clearly David thought you were extraordinarily talented and had great potential, I mean that was a pretty big leap, wasn't it. Eva. I think, yeah, the film before it was two d

thousand to twenty million. But you know the bottom line is so many of my male counterparts make that leap and no one blinks an eye. I mean it's a it's a standard leap from INDI two million range, So I mean it's not unprecedented in any way, and it

was quite easy. So, without relitigating the kind of the controversy around how lb J was portrayed in that film, because I think that's been discussed at length, I do want to know your view on sort of how much of responsibility filmmakers have when they're depicting historical events to be as truthful as possible, or is there artistic license to tell the story in a way that the diverges a little bit from the facts of history. Where where

is that line drawn? To you? Yeah, I think It was interesting because during that time there was a bar that I was being held to, a standards that was being held to that you know, counterparts two are not African American are not held to you know, when I look at Oliver Stone, when I look at Catherine Bigelow, when I look at many many people who've taken a really Scott, I mean so many people that are dealing with issues around history or or true events, UM that

are kind of not ricked over those coals. I think there are a lot of stones movies aren't true to history. But the idea that when you say the word story, you're inserting um opinion, perspective in a certain point of view. I mean, we can all tell the story of sitting here in this room together right now, and we will all tell it in a different way. I'm seeing and feeling different things, and you may be sealing our feeling and that's your version of the story and your version

of the story. Who's to say what's wrong and what's not? And I so I think gross distortions are one thing. I think perspective is another. And in Selma, I took the perspective of an African American community and the ways in which I'll be lb J was regarded by us by a lot of black folk, and uh, and so that was deemed as wrong and kind of held up as wrong by the LBG LBJ Library. But again, all I was saying was it's a matter of perspective, and

can't we invite more perspectives into a historical context. What did you make of that whole controversy? Yeah, but I've said that before. We'll have more with Ava Duverney from her office here on the Disney lot in beautiful downtown Burbank right after this, and now back to our conversation

with Avia di Verney. Let's talk about what you're doing now, because we're here in in Burbank and lovely downtown Burbank, and you are editing your brains out on on this new movie or working on called A Wrinkling Time, which of course many of us read as children. This is something that you're working on with Oprah Winfrey. She's one of the stars. She's one of the stars. And Crispine and you guys have been shooting in New sing Is

that right? Yeah, we Shotmindy and Reese and Oprah and Eye and Storm read the Star of the film Young Star of the film. I went to New Zealand. I never know you can have so much fun, you know, in another in another, in a place that just it's very pristine. It's just nature. It's untapped. Nature's where we were. And I'm from the continent, from the city. I like city girls, Like what is one to do here? Everything? You know what I mean? What did you do? I just to make a movie like I don't swim like

I don't. I don't like dogs and animals like I really I like to be inside and in the city like I am not. Like I've never not a hiker, no, never camped like none of that Zealand loving it boots mad up to my ankles in the jungles in the forest and they have a little bit of everything. I thought. And I'm like forty four years old experiencing nature untouched for the first time. How were you? There were everybody about three weeks and I visited over that year before

four times. And the scouting in the preparation, Oh my gosh, I want to go to New Zealand. You'll love it. Will come for the premiere? Okay, yeah, when is it? Times in March? I definitely want to go when it's warm, because they're they're summer is our winter. So I was thinking about maybe trying to do a bite trip to New Zealand. You love it, you love it, and you can finish it up with the premiere of I don't know problem. But how did you and Oprah become friends

and colleague? He was around David Yellow. He's like my fairy godfather is six degrees of David. Obviously initially with Selma no before that. Initially before that he had given her when they were working on The Butlers. He played her son. And he was in this small film for me that at one Sundance and he said, hey, check out this film. I man. I said, I can't believe you're asking Hope for one for to watch her indie film that for two dollars. But he did, and she did.

She watched it, and she wrote me and said that she and she tweeted me. I thought I framed the tweet. I was run in the net over went free tweeted me and but she tweeted that she liked the film and encouraged people to see it. And from there, as it continued on, um we started to all collaborate on Selma and next Queen Sugar and next Wrinkland time. And you told a very funny story about bringing flowers to

Oprah's house. All right, Well, you know, the first time I'm invited to her home was up for Mother's Day. I brought my grandmother, uh and she had a lovely Mother's Day brunch and I went in and of course you're gonna bring flowers to someone comes to their homes. So I went, Katie. I spent the most I've ever spent on flowers. I went to the fanciest place in l A. How much did you spend on It was like it was like five with the flowers. I mean, that's like, that's what's right. And so I went and

I bought these flowers because it's Oprah. I really want to make a good impression. I wanted and let her know how much she means to me have these flowers. I go in and I give them to her, and she's lovely and gracious. She looks at them like she's never seen flowers. Oh oh, aren't they lovely? Thank you? And she takes the flowers and she doesn't hand them off,

she takes them herself. She puts them in the sink, the whole thing, and out the window of the sink, I can see past the kitchen window a field of endless flowers. She's got a garden that looks like the botanical gardens of whatever the best botanical gardens are with like gardeners in green green jackets, like tending to the

tulips that was there was no garden. What is it that makes Oprah that you know what I mean, to not blink and eye, to still make you feel special even though you brought flowers when she's got to fill the flower it's just the extra thing. She's one of those people they you say, you leave her feeling better about yourself, even in a quick encounter. Its lovely lady, and she's very normal. Yeah, she's a very normal, lovely woman.

So I know we've got limited time, and I do want to ask you in the wake of thirteen about the prospects for criminal justice reform in this country, because that was supposed to be the one thing that Democrats and Republicans could get together bipartisan moment exactly didn't happen last year. The prospects have gone down dramatically under President Trump, where do you see this issue going? You know, I don't.

I don't have the answers to where it's going, especially when I think of the political layer and how dire things are right now. But I know what it's done in the community. Uh, It's created a unity and a real strength around the issues, where you know, places that might once have been fractured around it are really coming together and holding hands. It's a very intersectional effort in terms of you know, you can see Black Lives Matter

activists connected with the Native Americans in their plight. You can see Native Americans, uh, you know, focused on the Flint water crisis and starting to see the connections between people who are marginalized across you know, color, religion. I mean the ways in which all kinds of communities of color and marginalized people are standing up for Muslim Americans.

So there's something that's happening there that I think I have to be hopeful is and then and then just like minded you know, uh, you know, liberal allies who who aren't of color and who aren't women right saying we will stand with you and we we are part of this. I feel that, um, and I think that's only going to increase as the kind of the opposition increases.

Even the Koch Brothers are behind criminal justice reform, and they you know here they are have very disparate views from sort of the traditional progressive point of view, but uh, they feel strongly that something has got to be done about mass incarceration and criminal justice reform. But and this woman, Agnes Gunn have you heard of? Uh? And what she did? She saw at the New York Film Festival premier. She immediately called the Four Foundations and said, what can I do?

They said, well, you got money, what do you want to do? And she decided to sell her her artwork um and create a fund for criminal justice Art for Justice, a hundred and sixty million dollars uh that she's put aside from her art sales specifically earmarked for criminal justice reform. So people are you know, from that to people that are planning community actions in their neighborhoods, there's a lot going on. But clearly President Trump and Attorney General Sessions

in particular have cut against that grain. And they believe in the old you know, policy of mandatory minimums and lock them up and and all the rest. Do you think that they're doing this because substantively they believe in those policies, or do you think there are political motivations behind that, Oh, political motivations. I think they are racist policies, misogynistic policies, policies that are at odds with the good of humanity. So they're going to race part in your

in your mind, I think that they are. Not that they're disingenuous in their you know, statements that they're they're looking to make America great. The question is what America are they trying to make great. It's a very thin slice and it leaves behind and leaves out a whole bunch of people that look like me and so uh so, Yeah, you know, the easy sound bite is to say they're playing the race car. But that's not what I'm interested

in talking about. I'm interested in saying, you know, these folks are saying one thing and behaving another way, and there are a lot of people who have uh kind of blinders on as to the real destruction that's happening in terms of the fabric of what holds us all together. So do you think, I mean, what what can be dune? What more? I mean, I think sometimes people see a

movie like thirteenth, which I thought was so extraordinary. My daughter, I thought it was so important and and they say, we've got to change this, but they also in some ways feel powerless. You know. So someone listening to this wanted to do something that would contribute to kind of transformation for the criminal justice system or some kind of change,

what would you tell them to do? Well? I think you know, the reason why I didn't put any easy solutions or one d number of website or anything at the end of thirteen to action or a call to action is because you know, it is an an individual quest. You know, who were you at this time and what did you do? You know, during these circumstances you were in the world at this time, you saw an injustice. What did you do? And that answer is going to

be different for everyone. For Agnes Kunnant was one thing. For Malkia Cyril, who works in Oakland and organizes folks on the ground there, it's a different thing. And so the question is a personal to intimate question because I think it's really kind of surface to donate or or or sign a petition. Our question with thirteen is look inside, what of this whole story really really hit your heart

and what can you do where you are? And some of it, av I think is just asking people to see the world different or and behave and treat and treating right. And it could just be it could inform their day to day interactions and how they analyze a news story, or how they look at something that's transpiring in their neighborhobsolutely, or how they teach their children. I wanted to ask you about Central Park five because you are now doing a scripted version of that story for Netflix.

Something that I covered um I interviewed the victim of of of a rape and brutal beating in Central Park for which these kids were blamed and convicted and by President Trump, who took out a full page ad, as I recall at the time, saying that these people who were accused of the crime and later exonerated, tell me why how that came about and why you're excited about this project. I'm on fire for this project. This is something that I heard about when I was a teenager.

Those guys the same age as I am, and I was on the East Coast in Los Angeles. They were in New York and Harlem, uh, and I remember hearing it and and tuning into it because they were my age. They look like me, they look like my friend. And I remember because the news kept talking about this word wilding, wilding, and I was like, what's wilding? What it was? So I called my cousin who lives in New York. I was like, what's wilding? Is that? Is that a slaying

like New York slaying? And they're like, nah, we don't know what it is, right, So even that term is so fascinating. Well, it was a made up term by the media that was that was based on a on a slang term called wilding out, which is something totally different. It's like I'm just gonna wild out tonight, have fun. And so it was just this whole distortion of black youth culture at the time that really just you know, came into my head and just never let go that.

When I saw Sarah Burns great documentary Central Park five, it just ignited it even more. And when I got to kind of follow where these guys what they had gone through, it really, um it just took hold of my heart. So I started to correspond with one of them, Raymond Santana, on Twitter. He had actually reached out to me on Twitter City like my stuff. I was like,

oh my gosh, you wanted this gentral Park five. We started to correspond and I started to ask about their rights, and um, over two years, we've developed it and we're going to shoot it next year. Yeah. Twitter seems it'll be out for the thirtieth anniversary of the crime. Yeah, and Twitter seems to be playing a central role in your career because you're set also for Netflix to direct this movie starring Rihanna and Loupete and Nyongo that started

as a kind of internet dream on Twitter. We have confirmed that that's not a done deal yet, but the ladies are all talking about it and we'll see if we can. We can, uh if it's something real, but it's fun. I mean, just the power of the people

on Twitter. Can you just briefly tell us that story just just a Twitter idea, an idea that actually started on Tumbler and then Twitter and then kind of made its way around social media from a couple of different fans who saw this picture of Lupita and Rihanna at a fashion show and started to make up stories about

the picture and it started to go viral. Some of these different ones went viral, and eventually studios started well online people said, oh, wouldn't be great if Avia directed, Isa Ray wrote it and these women were in a movie and uh, and then studio started calling and are going to do it? We're all we're going to do but we're all talking about it. That's crazy, isn't that?

How these were these ideas bubble up. You never now And finally I know you're you're itching to continue your editing process, and you're so kind to give us even this much time. But I have to ask you about the AVA to Barney Barbie, right, how was that? That was a thing that just even now when I hear

about it, it just tickles me. Ah, that is a thing that even you know, when we were started the conversation talking about how the Emmys feel and all that stuff, that feels like I thought an Emmy would feel that Barbie, I mean, what a thing? How How can it be? I used to love barbies. That was my first storytelling. It's playing with barbies and making up those stories. And when I saw at the time you probably didn't have

many barbies who look like I did not. I did not, I did not, And so I mean, what a thing? And she has her own director's chair and she's got like like and it's this that's the thing that really lifts my heart. And yeah, so loud and well, you've got your own Barbie, You've gotta all these Emmy nominations doing incredible work. I mean, do you have a second to say, take a breath, Ava and say, wow, this is happening for me. And I feel so so happy.

I do. And it's so cool that I get to talk to you this week because I was just talking with Oprah. I said, this is a really special week for me because on Monday's Central Park five was announced. Um, on Tuesday we had this big cover of Ebony magazine, which is a you know, landmark magazine in the black community, with the cast of Queen Sugar, a show that came out of my head in my heart, which we didn't

even have a chance. That was Tuesday. On Wednesday, we released the first pictures of Wrinkle, the first pictures that anyone had seen of it. And then today Thursday, I sit with you with the Emmy nominations and I can just say, wow, a week of beauty and happiness. I feel so happy. You know, Yes, I'm moving around I'm going fast, but I am smelling the roses and they smell good, smell beautiful. They should because everything is coming up roses for you, Ava, Thank you so much. This

was so funny. We can't wait to see what you do next for next and next. Thanks Katie, appreciate, thank you. Bye. To the team who helps make this show possible. Thank you, Thank you very much our producer Gianna Palmer, our production assistant Nora Richie, Ryan Connor for recording Burbank, Jared O'Connell for mixing this show, plus of course alis At Bresnik on social media, and Emily Beena who holds down the fort at Katie Kirk Media. Mark Phillips wrote, are fantastic

theme music. Thank you Mark. If you have questions, comments, are concerns, less you forget, you can email us at comments at kirrekt podcast dot com or please leave us a voicemail at four four six three seven. We truly love hearing from our listeners. We'd love to hear what you like, what you don't like, and what we can do more on the show that might please you. And if you can't get enough of us, I'm at Katie Couric on Twitter and Instagram, and Katie dot correct on Snapchat.

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