It is impossible for Ryan Coogler to talk about his creative process and not discuss his family. The two are inseparable. While on this week’s episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, an introspective Coogler talked about how his new film “Sinners” was “a heart on the sleeve” endeavor, something he admitted to grappling with as he began a weeks-long publicity tour for the ambitious genre picture.
The origins of “Sinners” sprung from Coogler mourning the death of his beloved Uncle James, and the guilt he felt that, while shooting “Creed” in Philadelphia, his uncle was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
“He would send me voice notes of encouragement when I was homesick and I’d want to go home,” said Coogler, who got visibly emotional discussing his uncle. “When I got into post-production on ‘Creed,’ which was in Los Angeles, I was at Wildfire Studios, and I got the call that he died. And I felt really guilty, because I got the call trying to picture lock this boxing movie, and I felt bad that I wasn’t home.”
When Coogler was growing up, his parents couldn’t afford to buy a home in Oakland, so they settled in Richmond. Soon after, James and his family moved in down the street.
“I was 11 years old in this new city, I had my uncle down the street and would go spend time with him [because] that was one of the few places my mom would let me walk in Richmond was to his house,” said Coogler, recalling afternoons and evenings filled with his uncle’s two great passions: San Francisco Giants baseball and blues music. “He would get off work and want to do is listen to old blues records, and drink Old Taylor whiskey. And I would just sit there with my uncle, who was the oldest man I knew, listening to stories about Mississippi, and talk to him about life and baseball.”
Coogler admitted that, for most of his life, he thought of the blues as “old man music,” but that changed after his uncle’s death. “A mourning ritual for me, in a way [to] ease that feeling of guilt and loss, I would play these blues records,” said Coogler. “But, I would play them with a newfound perspective, and I would kind of conjure my uncle.”
Coogler would imagine his uncle’s Mississippi stories, which would only emerge when the elder gentleman sipped his whiskey and listening to the blues. Most of Coogler’s large extended family in the Bay Area are descendants of the Great Migration, a period between 1910 and 1970 when a mass movement of Black people left the South. Two prongs of his family tree, represented by James and his maternal grandfather (who died before he was born), had come from Mississippi.
Most reviews and articles about “Sinners,” set in 1932 Mississippi and featuring some nefarious vampires descending on a local juke joint owned by brothers Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan), mention how it is also an exploration of why many, like Coogler’s uncle and grandfather, fled Mississippi. That aspect is certainly present in the film — “Sinners” doesn’t shy away from the hardships of cotton-picking, Klan-invested, rural Mississippi. But that wasn’t at the soul of his uncle’s stories, nor was it what was on Coogler’s mind as his mourning ritual morphed into his new artistic undertaking.
“[‘Sinners’] is also about why some people chose to stay. To understand the Great Migration is to also understand for a long time our people’s home was the South. To migrate means to leave something behind,” said Coogler. “Very often, and rightfully so, that part of time and that physical location in the United States, is a place that’s associated with a lot of pain, a lot of shame, a lot of discomfort, but to completely look away from it is to not look at what else was there. The resilience, the brilliance, the fortitude, and also the art, the artistic wonder, the cultural wonder.”
It’s a spirit that resides in the blues music of that era, and it was that aspect of history Coogler would imagine as he conjured his uncle and his stories of the South. His imagination eventually leading him to the fictional story of Smoke and Stack who, after surviving the trauma of World War I and gangland Chicago during Prohibition, return home to Mississippi to start a juke joint — a refuge of culture, food, dancing, and (most of all) blues music.
Once he decided to pursue “Sinners” as his next film following “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” Coogler and his long-time collaborator composer Ludwig Göransson went on a tour of the roots of Delta Blues music, an exploration that changed the trajectory of the film.
“I found that there’s a legitimate argument to be made that the Delta Blues music is America’s most important contribution to global popular culture. It might be America’s most important artistic contribution to humanity came out of this place, and that’s when I realized that the film had to be epic,” said Coogler. “At first I thought [‘Sinners’ was] going to be a small genre film, but [the more] I learned I was like, ‘Oh, this thing has to actually be massive’ for it to feel right, to do it justice. It was an astonishing discovery for me. You’re talking to somebody who went back to the continent of Africa to connect with his ancestors [with the two ‘Blank Panther’ films], but I skipped over the American South. I hadn’t been to Mississippi, I hadn’t been to Port Arthur [the small town outside Houston, Texas, where Coogler’s grandmother is from], I hadn’t been to these places where my family just worked.”
Not only did Coogler hear the music and see the history differently, he stopped seeing his beloved grandmother and uncle as old people. Their stories were no longer two generations removed, but present.
Coogler told IndieWire, “One of the most powerful things about my community is that it is a trans-generational one,” discussing how, while writing, he could just pick up the phone and call his 93-year-old father-in-law in Chicago, who also came from Mississippi, to ask questions. Coogler credits asking his grandmother about her first date with his grandfather (the one from Mississippi) as an important turning point of how he saw the film — her story of going to a movie reminding the writer/director of first date with Zinzi, his now-wife and producing partner, at the Regal Jack London Theater in Oakland to see “Bring It On.”
“[My grandmother] said, ‘Well, I had trouble watching the movie because he kept trying to make out with me.’ And she said, ‘Eventually, I told him, ‘Look, we can do that after, I’m trying to see this movie,’” Coogler said with a laugh. “And me imagining my grandmother saying that, it made me realize the youthful nature of these people, their virility and vitality.”
That his grandparents’ first date was at also at an Oakland movie theater felt like a cosmic connection to Coogler that influenced how he saw what would be his first period film: “Sinners” maybe set in historical 1932, but every decision he and his collaborators would make — from the use of color, to shooting in IMAX — would make the past feel alive and present.
The timelessness and vitality with which Coogler was seeing his story and characters needed to play like now for audiences. It’s a vision best represented in a musical sequence that comes at the film’s mid-point, which Coogler and his collaborator would refer to as the “the surreal montage” — a moment of musical euphoria at Smoke and Stack’s juke joint, a live blues performance that conjures the spirit of Black musicians past and present, from West African drumming to funkadelic and hip hop.
“It all started with the fact that I would listen to that blues music to think about my uncle, and I thought, ‘Man, who was he thinking about when he was listening to it?’ Did he listen to that [music] and was it people that he was conjuring?,” said Coogler of the inspiration for what is destined to be the most discussed sequence in his film. “[It’s about] that feeling of being at a live performance of any art, it could be a stage play or it could be a really good movie, but usually it’s music, and when you see a virtouso perform and you’re in the presence of a group of people who also appreciate the art form, but also know the context of it and know where the artist is coming from, they relate to what’s being portrayed, and the feeling of euphoria becomes like a storm system. It’s feedback happening and rippling. I’ve had a few of those moments [in my life], and you feel immortal, like you are outside of space and time for [a moment], like there’s another presence there with you.”
It’s an example of how listening to blues to conjure his uncle turned into pure cinematic creation. Throughout writing, Coogler would also imagine conversing with James and his uncle’s two sons, creating moments in the film that would entertain each, but that also sounded like them.
“I would play blues music and I would kind of talk to my cousins, both of [James’] sons who passed away, there’s a lot of Smoke and Stack in my Uncle Rod and my Uncle Mark. I would talk to them, I would say, ‘Man, wouldn’t they get a kick outta this?’ When I would write Stack’s lines, I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, my Uncle Mark would say something crazy like this,’” said Coogler. “And when I got done, I said, ‘Oh, man, wait a minute, Uncle James, wouldn’t you get a kick out of Buddy Guy [being] in a movie?’”
Eighty-eight year old blues legend Buddy Guy was James’ favorite musician. Coogler remembered his uncle getting dressed up to go see Guy whenever he played in California. And when he became older, and could no longer drive himself, Coogler’s mom or cousins would get dressed up to take him to see the musician perform.
The baseball-obsessed, blue-listening James didn’t go to movies — Coogler speculated his 2013 “Fruitvale Station” premiere was his uncle’s first 30 years. Coogler so associated Guy with his uncle, he assumed movies would not be the blues legend’s thing as well, and he stood little chance of getting him to play a small, but significant role in “Sinners.” When casting director Francine Maisler set up a meeting for Coogler at Guy’s Chicago club, Legends, the nervous director had his pitch prepared, but was braced for a quick, polite “no.”
“I went in there and he had all his grandkids and his kids in there, he was surrounded by family,” said Coogler, who would discover the younger generation of Guy’s family were, not surprisingly, “Black Panther” fans. “And they’re looking at me smiling, and I wasn’t prepared for this, [Guy] says, before I could tell him anything, ‘Hey, my grandkids tell me I should talk to you, and the way they talk about you, I figure whatever you want me to do, I’m in.’ I was like, ‘Can I at least tell you what the movie is about?’ and he’s like, ‘Sure.’”
To say much about Guy’s role in the film would be a spoiler, but the use of his presence goes well beyond cameo and becomes a deeply meaningful thruline connecting the supernatural story and music and characters and history with the now. Seeing the film, it is hard to imagine “Sinners” without the blues legend, but knowing the original creative spark stemmed from Coogler’s simple desire to entertain his deceased uncle is also a full-circle moment in the creation of the writer/director’s most personal and ambitious project to date.
Warner Bros. will release “Sinners” in theaters on Friday, April 18.
To hear Ryan Coogler’s full interview, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. You can also watch the full interview below or on IndieWire’s YouTube page.
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