In 1976, when Rocky Balboa was introduced to the world (by writer/star Sylvester Stallone and director John Alvidsen), he represented every man and woman who strived for greatness in a world that expected nothing of them. He was the ultimate underdog back then and, to most of us, still is today. Now, nearly 40 years later, the Italian Stallion is training a new underdog boxing hero ready to prove that it’s time to pass the torch.

His name’s Adonis Johnson, he’s played by Michael B. Jordan, and he’s the hero at the center of the seventh film in the Rocky series, Creed, directed by Ryan Coogler. Adonis is the son of Rocky’s dead former nemesis turned best bud, Apollo Creed, but hides his paternal lineage so that he can find his own path to glory. He grew up loving to box just like his dad (though he resents Apollo for reasons he keeps close to his chest) and moves to Philly so that the one and only Rocky Balboa can train him to be the best boxer in the world. The aging former champ reluctantly agrees, though he soon discovers that a fight of his own awaits, this time outside the ring.

It’s a simple hero’s tale Coogler, co-writer Aaron Covington and spiritual guide Stallone are working with, though it’s the finer details—the psychological nuts and bolts of the characters, the searing performances, the showstopping camerawork—that make Creed the best Rocky movie since the character’s debut.

Adonis first meets Rocky at his restaurant, Adrian’s, named after his late wife whose absence has left a hole in the former world champ’s heart. Given Rocky’s tight relationship with his father, Adonis decides to address him as “unc” as he picks his brain for boxing knowledge. For two actors who come from completely different eras of Hollywood and schools of acting, Stallone and Jordan match up incredibly well as mentor and pupil, perhaps even surpassing the chemistry Stallone had with Burgess Meredith. There’s always been a fiery energy to Jordan’s performances, from his early days in The Wire and Friday Night Lights to Coogler’s own Fruitvale Station, so he’s a perfect fit for a story about a young man learning to fight smart, not angry.

The issue with Adonis is, well, it isn’t a simple one. He seems to become most emotionally distressed at the thought or mention of his father, but it’s not clear exactly why his resentment runs so deep. The only way Rocky has any hope of unlocking Adonis’ potential is by getting to the root of his uncontrollable aggression, which manifests itself as carelessness in the ring. It’s that same carelessness that got Apollo killed in the squared circle, and Rocky wants no part in helping his best friend’s son meet the same fate. When he receives the news that he’s facing life-threatening health crisis, his will to guide Adonis runs dry. “It was all in our heads,” he says to the heartbroken kid. “We aren’t family.” Stallone’s been playing Rocky for decades, and he hasn’t felt this in-tune with the big lug since the first movie.

This is where the relationship balances out. Adonis refuses to let his mentor call it quits on life by refusing treatment. He strikes a deal: “If I fight, you fight.” The franchise’s classic montages return, with Adonis sprinting all over town and honing his footwork with his coaches and Rocky coping with the side effects of chemotherapy. Adonis isn’t as jacked up and bulky as his dad and Rocky were, but he makes up for it in speed and ferocity, a dangerous gift he works hard to harness. The training’s all in preparation of Adonis’ unlikely title fight in Liverpool with unstoppable Brit “Pretty” Ricky Conlan (ABA heavyweight champ Anthony Bellew).

Providing a welcome, steamy distraction from the rigors of fight camp is his musician downstairs neighbor, Bianca (Dear White People‘s Tessa Thompson, channeling Lisa Bonet in High Fidelity). Something that makes Rocky Balboa such an interesting character is his narrow-minded devotion to his wife. Adrian is his everything and has been from the moment they met. Thompson is terrific as Bianca, but the character doesn’t feel as vital to Adonis’ journey at this point. In future installments, her role will likely be expanded and tread new ground, but for now, she takes a back seat to the real object of Adonis’ obsession: Apollo.

That’s the key here, Adonis’ internal fight with his father’s legacy. Legacy, not memory. They never met: Adonis was born of an affair, his father dying in the middle of the ring before he was born. How haunting it must be, to live under the long shadow of a man you never knew. How consuming the appetite for violent release must be. Creed‘s story comes from a very personal place for Coogler, and you can feel it. The young Bay Area director took a long-running franchise and infused it with his own life experience, and that’s a wonderful thing. It’s a triumph in that it sets a precedent for other filmmakers who work in the franchise bubble to liberate themselves artistically from the clutches of legacy, lineage and fan expectation. Like Adonis, Coogler’s finding his own way.

The character work isn’t what people will see Creed for; it’s the fights, of course, and what Coogler and his team deliver are some of the most dynamic, vicious, tactile boxing scenes ever filmed. Honestly. It sounds like hyperbole, but these fights knock everything else we’ve seen in the Rocky series so far clear out of the ring. An early exhibition fight is done in one continuous shot, the camera as fleet-footed as Adonis, staying close so that we can see the sweat dripping down the back of his neck. The big finale is all about virtuosic editing, staying in the pocket when Adonis is dipping and dodging against the ropes and glimpsing key characters in the crowd at the perfect moments. To say the fight scenes are thrilling is an understatement; by the end of the movie, I was in tears. Talk about exceeding expectations.

Josh Trank‘s Fantastic Four is a diabolical assault on everything great about one of Marvel’s most popular and beloved superteams. It takes itself too seriously, it’s colorless visually and emotionally, and it dupes us by promising something “Fantastic” and instead delivering a lifeless black hole of an experience that’ll ruin your day. There’s no fun to be had here.

Strangely enough, the absence of fun was sort of an artistic choice by Trank, who landed the Marvel gig off of the success of his 2012 superpower drama Chronicle. That movie focused on the real-world implications of superpowers, showing one troubled teen’s pent-up rage manifesting itself as a city-leveling act of revenge against the world. Trank’s approach with Fantastic Four is to similarly ground the source material in the real world, pondering what would actually come of Mr. Fantastic, The Invisible Woman, The Human Torch and The Thing if they existed on earth today.

In trying to strip away the comic book cheese in favor of a science/body-horror take on the characters, Trank actually saps every drop of life out of the source material in an act of selfish franchise perversion and disfiguration that’s actually somehow worse than the Adam Sandler monstrosity that is Pixels, which is still terrorizing audiences across the country with its blatant prostitution of retro gaming. At least Pixels tried to entertain you; Fantastic Four makes you feel like crying in a corner.

The movie’s story is based on an arc from the Ultimate Fantastic Four series of comics. It’s a revised origin story that sees Reed Richards (Miles Teller), a brilliant inventor, scientist, and engineer, team with siblings Sue (Kate Mara) and Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan, who acted for Trank in Chronicle), and Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell), Reed’s anti-establishment intellectual rival, to build an inter-dimensional teleporter. The first two-thirds of the movie creep along as we watch them build the damn thing, going through the motions of clichéd team dynamics (love triangle, sibling rivalry) as we wait for something, anything, to excite us.

Be forewarned: this is a crappy body horror movie, not a superhero movie. Following a rogue mission to “Planet Zero” by the boys and Reed’s old friend, Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell), the kids do acquire powers: Reed gets stretchy; Johnny turns into a fireball; Sue turns invisible; Ben turns into an ugly rock Thing. Victor gets left behind on Planet Zero, and he turns into Doctor Doom.

You’d think the movie would finally, mercifully kick into high gear at this point and at least give us some action, but no. Instead, we watch the kids blow up rocks and storage crates at an industrial (bland-looking) secret base so that the government can observe their freakish abilities. They’re miserable lab rats running in circles, and watching them agonize and writhe in pain as their bodies betray them is a pointless play for existential drama that falls flat on its face. Hellbent on revenge, Victor plans to sap the earth’s resources and shape Planet Zero to his liking as its all-powerful dictator (and sole inhabitant). Yadda yadda.

The plot isn’t worth talking about any further. It stinks, and most of the storylines vanish into thin air inexplicably. What’s worthy of note is that Trank’s intentions were good. He was trying to make the anti-superhero movie by sprinting to the opposite side of the spectrum of Fox’s failed 2005 Fantastic Four movie adaptation, which was goofy as all hell. He ran too far, however, and the risk, unfortunately, didn’t pay off. In fact, it blew up in his face, and in turn, all of our faces as well.

Maybe the most intolerable thing about this movie is its look. It’s like watching someone smear gray and blue paint over a black canvas for 100 minutes. This movie feels like that time of year when fall fades into winter and all the rain and overcast mush just makes you feel like frowning and napping all day. The visual effects are ugly, the cinematography is pedestrian, and the movie’s two (yes, two) action scenes are so poorly staged and nonsensical and unsatisfying it’ll give you blue balls.

The obvious beacon of hope for this dreary piece of work is the young cast, most of whom have proven they have enough charisma to carry a movie on their own. The material proves to be unsalvageable, however, as proven leading-men Teller and Jordan are forced to navigate their way through dialog that’s so unconvincing and artificial it hurts. The worst scene comes last, as the four friends stands around their new government-funded research facility, trying to figure out what to name the team. Admiring the new digs, Ben says with a smile, “It’s fantastic.” Reed’s eyes widen. “Say that again…” Ben obliges: “It’s fantastic.” Seriously, guys? Seriously?

This past Thursday in San Francisco, the San Francisco Film Society held their inaugural Fall Celebration, honoring four films that look to be contenders come Oscar season: Nebraska, Fruitvale Station, Her, and The Square. Patrons gathered at elite social club The Battery to celebrate cinema and raise money for the Society.

Filmmakers and actors from the films were in attendance to participate in a panel before the night’s festivities, including directors Alexander Payne, Ryan Coogler, Spike Jonze, and Jehane Noujaim, and actors Michael B. Jordan (Fruitvale Station) and June Squib (Nebraska). The questions tossed at the star-studded panel covered a wide range of topics, from origin stories to locations to budgets to filmmaking processes.

Hometown Hero

Bay Area native Ryan Coogler was visibly proud and humbled to be in San Francisco representing Fruitvale Station, his debut feature which reconstructs 22-year-old Oscar Grant’s last day on earth, before he was shot and killed by a transit officer in a BART station in Oakland. Coogler remembered being deeply affected by the news of Grant’s death, but felt the media lost the human angle of the incident. “Nobody was really talking about the fact that Oscar was a human being,” he recalled. “He wasn’t just a symbol…he was a 22-year-old guy who had hopes and dreams and relationships, and it all got cut short.”

The movie was filmed mere miles from where the panel was taking place, which Jordan (who plays Oscar) emphasized was key. “It was very important–especially to Ryan,” he said. “[Ryan] just didn’t see the film being shot anywhere besides here, where it happened, where Oscar was from.” Coogler got the green light to shoot in the Bay Area with some help from an influential supporter. “It’s always easier when you have somebody like Forrest Whitaker writing a letter or making a phone call,” Jordan said about the film’s famous producer and mentor to Coogler.

When asked about the state and future of the film industry, Coogler seemed to have an optimistic outlook. “The studio films that we’ve seen succeed this year…some have been about comic book characters from pre-existing franchises that studios could put money behind. But, we’ve had others that have been incredibly human. The more we see projects that can make a lot of money and also have human connections…we’ll see studios doing more of those.”

Big Studios and Indies Get Along…in Nebraska

Alexander Payne’s Nebraska–a road trip movie about a father (Bruce Dern) who takes his son (Will Forte) with him on a pilgrimage from Montana to Nebraska to collect prize money he’s won from a lottery–is a studio film shot in gorgeous black and white, with no major stars in its cast, one of those “human” films Coogler was gushing about.

Payne, whose first film, Citizen Ruth was shot over 40 days, was blown away when he asked Coogler how long it took to shoot Fruitvale (20 days.) “It takes me 20 days just to walk to the bathroom!” he joked.

When asked if anyone at Paramount, the film’s distributor, questioned the bankability of the project, Payne assured us that there weren’t any studio heads poking around the production. “To Paramount’s credit, no one [questioned that.] They gave me carte blanche. Once we agreed [on the] 13 and a half million base budget, they left me totally alone.”

Something in the Way She Moves…

Her, Spike Jonze’s latest window into his brilliant, hyperactive imagination, follows a sad-sack writer named Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) as he begins to fall for an operating system named Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), something like a super-advanced version of “Siri” tailored to be Theodore’s perfect companion. Despite a premise absolutely dripping with social satire, Jonze insists no grand statements exists at the core of Her. “I wasn’t trying to make a comment or a satire about society,” Jonze explained. “…the character of the operating system is just a voice, but we tried to create a character that is a fully developed being with their own longings, needs, and passion.”

“One of the things that was important to us when we were designing the movie was to design this very warm world…a heightened version of the world we’re in,” Jonze said of the significance of place in cinema. He further elaborated on geography’s emotional significance: “L.A. is this place where the weather’s always nice, the ocean is there, the mountains are there…but even in that light, in this world, the loneliness and isolation maybe hurts in a specific way.”

The Never Ending Story

Documenting the lives of six protesters in the Egyptian uprising that started in 2011 in Tahrir Square (and continues to this day), director Jehane Noujaim’s The Square went through a major change earlier this year when the state of the revolution continued to evolve. The film premiered at Sundance, where it won the audience award, and concluded with president Mohammed Morsi stepping down, to the joy of the Tahrir protesters. But “the story kept changing,” Noujaim explained.

Morsi’s replacement turned out to be just as disagreeable as he was, so the people, outraged, returned to the square. “Initially, we [followed] the bringing down of a dictator to the election of a new president. That was the political continuum,” she continued. “The more interesting story was when all of our characters were back in the streets again.”

So, Noujaim and her crew returned to Tahrir, filmed additional footage, re-edited the film, showed it at the Toronto International Film Festival, and got another audience award. Despite the ever shifting political landscape in Egypt, Noujaim is positive the project is finished. “Our characters have gone through a full arc.”

For more info, visit SFFS.org

On New Year’s Day 2009, Oscar Grant, a black 22-year-old Bay Area resident was pulled off a BART train and taken into custody by a police officer. Unarmed and defenseless, he was shot in the back and killed on the Fruitvale BART station train platform in front of dozens of passengers. The incident was captured on a cell phone camera and went viral, making national news. The shocking footage opens director Ryan Coogler‘s debut feature, Fruitvale Station, a dramatization of Oscar Grant’s last day on earth which aims to humanize the shamefully under-discussed news story by spotlighting quiet, ostensibly meaningless moments in his final hours. This intimate, personal perspective on Oscar’s story illuminates the magnitude and cultural significance of his death in a way no news story ever could.

The decision to open the film with the raw footage is brilliant, providing weighty context for every scene that follows. After the clip, we loop back from New Year’s Day to New Year’s Eve and the beginning of Oscar’s (Michael B. Jordan) day. He’s bickering with his girlfriend, Sophina (Melonie Diaz) in their bedroom, trying to convince her that a recent affair was a one-time-only mistake. Diaz and Jordan have real chemistry, and their speech dynamic feels natural. When their daughter Tatiana (Ariana Neal) knocks on the door, and Oscar hurries to hide a zip of weed before letting her in. He clearly ain’t no saint, but who is?

Coogler’s unobtrusive camera follows Oscar throughout his day as we’re introduced to the pile of mistakes he’s accumulated. He’s lost his job at the grocery store, he’s an ex-convict (which we discover in an unforgettable flashback scene), and he’s got an explosive temper, but he clearly loves his family and is trying hard to shake his demons for their sake. His life is a mess, but he’s determined to clean it up.

Jordan respects the role and convinces us that he was born to do it. He embraces the ugliness of his mean streak while convincing us that he’s a caring family man deep down, a challenge that would be easily flubbed by most young actors. He’s got the chops to be truly great. Octavia Spencer is characteristically captivating as Oscar’s mother, Wanda Grant, a soft-spoken, caring matriarch with an exhausted patience for his bullshit (she’ll never forget how Oscar going to jail affected her granddaughter.) Still, she loves her son, so when he tells her that he and Sophina are going to San Francisco to watch the fireworks she thoughtfully suggests they take BART instead of driving.

Coogler’s passion for his subjects is felt throughout the film, and he shows that he’s a director of taste and discipline. The key to the film’s success is making sure we get to know Oscar as a person, and he keeps his priorities straight. There are occasional moments of high drama that jar the tone of realism (Tatiana clairvoyantly asking her dad not to get on the BART train is totally unnecessary), and the post-Fruitvale scenes feel a little bloated, but for the most part Coogler makes all the right moves.

Returning to the titular train station for the film’s third act is as terrifying as you’d imagine. Watching the raw footage the first time was hard enough, but now we feel like we know Oscar inside and out, which makes the reenactment of his death simply earth-shattering. The fact that this dramatization is somehow more gut-wrenching than the raw footage is a testament to the power of cinema.

When I got out of the San Francisco press screening for Fruitvale Station, all I wanted to do was rush home, kiss my wife, and tell her I love her. I darted out of the theater in a panic, a sense of urgency compelling me to walk faster, faster, faster. I wanted to get home so bad I could burst. Then, I remembered something that stopped me cold. My ride home? A BART train. Fruitvale Station will rattle you to the core.

We spoke to Michael B. Jordan (The Wire, Friday Night Lights), who plays Oscar in the film, and Octavia Spencer (The Help) who plays Oscar’s mother, Wanda Grant, in a tiny roundtable interview the day after the film’s premiere in Oakland. They spoke to us about their reactions to the shooting, meeting Oscar’s family, learning to curb their expectations in the movie industry, and why the film is able to touch the hearts of people across the globe. Check out the edited transcript below.

Read More Fruitvale Station Interviews:

Ryan Coogler
Ahna O’Reilly
Melonie Diaz

Before you were approached for the project, how knowledgeable were you on the Oscar Grant story?
Octavia Spencer: I did hear about it when it happened, but to put it in context, that was also the year that Barack Obama had been elected, so I was in more of a jubilant state of mind and decided since I was in that celebratory state of mind, I wasn’t really going to allow anything else to permeate that. I didn’t, unfortunately, revisit it until it was brought up as a project.

Michael B. Jordan: Same here. I remember being on my laptop and somebody posted the video on my wall. I remember looking at it and being disgusted by it, watching it over and over again trying to make it make sense, rationalize it, or justify it, but there was no justification. I felt helpless and a little bit angry. It feels like there’s nothing you can do in the moment, so life goes on. Four years later, this project pops up and I had to jump at the opportunity. I felt a certain responsibility to get the story out there.

What attracted you to the project?
Michael B. Jordan: The opportunity to express [myself] as a person of color, as a person from the inner-city who’s been put in situations like that before. Also the opportunity to give this guy some of his humanity back that was kind of lost over the [course of the] trial. To tell this guy’s story and hopefully prevent it from happening again.

Octavia Spencer: It resonated with me as a woman. I’m not a mother, but I have nephews who would be contemporaries of Oscar’s and Michael’s. I almost didn’t take the part because when I saw the video I felt that all I had to offer it was anger. Because the Trayvon Martin case was so topical, I felt like anger was the wrong emotion to associate with it because it was so public and it was so volatile an issue here in the Bay Area. My agent made me read the script and I found it refreshing to learn that Ryan Coogler—who is also an African-American male—could have written a movie that was an indictment of our judicial system, an indictment of our public service, but he didn’t. What he did was choose to—as Michael said—restore some of Oscar’s humanity, showing his flaws and showing him doing regular human interaction with his family. That was really profound.

How did you approach the movie already knowing the fate of Oscar Grant?
Michael B. Jordan: Honestly, you have to put yourself in that position. That’s the last 24 hours of his life. His death is such a small fraction of the film. I think the movie is about this young man who’s trying to do right by the people he loves, trying to figure out this thing called life that nobody seems to have the blueprint to. You have to make mistakes. You have to get to know him through the family—through his daughter, through his mom, through Sophina, his best friends—and kind of live in the moment, honestly. That’s all this movie [is]—Oscar’s moments.

Octavia Spencer: It’s acting 101. You can only deal with the given circumstances. Wanda has no idea that her son is going to die at the end of the day. Neither does he. You have to really immerse yourself in the world.

Neither of you have kids, so what did you channel to portray such loving parents?
Octavia Spencer: I am not a parent, but I do have family members that I love. It’s about the truthfulness of the relationship and the bonds that we feel with our family members. That was the toughest part for me. It’s about being true to the relationship.

Michael B. Jordan: I love kids. I’ve got little cousins running around, so I’m always interacting with younger kids. Honestly, I can’t wait to be a dad one day. Sometimes when you deal with so many adults in this industry with ulterior motives it’s like one big chess match. You’re always trying to figure out somebody’s angle. When you’re around a kid who has no bad habits, still learning good from bad, it’s refreshing to be around that. Playing with that relationship was a lot of fun.

How was it when you met Oscar’s family for the very first time?
Michael B. Jordan: My approach was meeting everybody and getting as much information up front, before I started doing this thing. Then, just building this guy up. You have the skeleton, then you have to keep layering up, layering up. By the time we actually started filming, you have a pretty good idea of who this guy is, and then you just live with him throughout the rest of the film. That was my approach.

Octavia Spencer: I second that. We had different windows of opportunity to do that, for me much more limited, but I’m also not carrying the entire film as Michael is. It was important to meet Wanda because there’s only so much you can gleam from the information provided via the internet. Ryan is a prolific researcher and he viewed her a lot, so I was given those tapes. When I actually had the chance to sit down and meet with her and realize that we were so different…those are things you can’t possibly know. It was about trying to emulate the essence of Wanda because I had a truncated window of prep time. I knew all that I needed to know except for those intangibles, and meeting her filled in the blanks.

Michael, you played a character on Friday Night Lights, Vince, who is, similarly to Oscar, trying to turn his life around. What’s it like creating a character over seasons as opposed to a single day, as in Fruitvale Station?
Michael B. Jordan: I’ve been fortunate enough to work with some very talented writers that seem to write human relationships so well. With Vince, it’s a different pace because it’s a longer arc. With this movie…I feel like if you spend a day with anybody, from sunup to sundown, through their day to day routine, you can get a pretty good idea of who somebody is. I think that formula works very well with Oscar because that day was so eventful for him. He interacted with a lot of people that he cared about the most and was putting them in a vast number of situations that show different sides of him. You got a chance to see him when nobody was looking…which I think really defines somebody’s character. Then, you see him through different flashbacks and different tools of storytelling. You got a chance to see this guy when he didn’t have such a handle on his temper. You see him in moments with his daughter. You see all these different, complex sides of this guy all compacted into one day. You try to do the best you can to make him as real as possible. You just want to make it real and relatable.

How do you suppress expectations before you begin a project like this?
Octavia Spencer: You don’t have them! You can’t have expectations because the reality of Fruitvale Station, when you look at all the independents that people shoot—usually, they don’t get to go the festival route. Sometimes, they sit in a can and nobody ever gets to see them. You can’t enter into anything like that with expectations. At least, I don’t.

Michael B. Jordan: From a young age of acting, going to auditions and getting your hopes up all the time…you think you did a good job. “I’m going to get it!” When you’re young, you don’t understand that there are so many other things that come into play. When you have a few letdowns, you start to mentally train yourself to not have expectations. You learn how things work in the system. You realize how not in control you are. Once you understand that, it’s easier for you to put your all into [something], walk away and say, “Whatever happens, happens.”

The film is about a specific community, the East Bay Area, that’s generally unfamiliar to people across the country. Why do you think it touches people across the globe, like it did at Cannes?
Michael B. Jordan: It’s universal. Everybody knows what it’s like to lose a loved one, lose life, or to care about somebody, or to love somebody. [Fruitvale Station] is like a love story in so many ways. It’s about Oscar’s love for his family and his family’s love for [him.] Anybody who’s had a best friend or a mom or a daughter who they care about can relate to somebody being taken away from them. I think when [someone’s] taken away in such a fashion that [Oscar] was, it hits people and they’re affected by it. That’s one of the many themes that people relate to no matter what language you speak or where you’re from.

Octavia Spencer: Absolutely. A mother’s love, a father’s love—those are universal themes. Injustice is a universal theme. We all can understand that and I think that’s why the jargon that might not translate into another language…you still see the human emotion on the screen, and it reads.

Was there a particular scene that you read in the script that made you think, “I really have to do this.”
Octavia Spencer: The script as a whole captured my heart. That’s the other thing that you learn as an actor: Don’t fall in love with scenes! It may not make it to the final cut.

Michael B. Jordan: As a whole, I read the script and I was very moved. I cried while reading, which was not an easy thing to do. Favorite scene? There’s a couple, but probably the prison scene. The scene with the dog I had fun reading and shooting at the same time. After shooting, I thought, “That was one of my favorite scenes.” Those two really jumped out at me.

Octavia Spencer: At my second viewing at Cannes I got the profundity of [the dog scene.] I don’t even know if Ryan intended to do this, but the pitbull is a symbol of fear and terror—marginalized. Then, he’s killed and the driver never slows down. It’s not a stretch to say that the character of Oscar Grant was viewed in the same way. It was this beautiful harbinger use of foreshadowing by Ryan. I just thought it was a dog the first time, but when I saw it the second time, I was like, “It’s a pitbull!” It really affected me. You know, I’m an English major, so you always have to look for, “What’s the metaphor?” and all that stuff. I thought that was very profound.

What has the feedback from people in the Bay Area been?
Octavia Spencer: We just got her last night, but I can tell you the feedback in the theater that we were in was very positive. Usually, when you have Q&A’s, a lot of people leave, but they stayed. I guess time will tell, but gauging from the audience last night it was very positive.

Michael B. Jordan: That was the first time anybody from up here had a chance to see it, so we’re curious to see how it affects the community who lost [Oscar.] Time will tell.

Fruitvale Station opens in theaters this Friday.

]]> http://waytooindie.com/interview/interview-michael-b-jordan-and-octavia-spencer-of-fruitvale-station/feed/ 0 http://waytooindie.com/interview/interview-ahna-oreilly-of-fruitvale-station/ http://waytooindie.com/interview/interview-ahna-oreilly-of-fruitvale-station/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=13324 We spoke to Ahna O’Reilly (The Help) who plays Katie, a girl who meets Oscar by chance, shares a pleasant interaction with him, and later becomes a witness to the horrific shooting in a tiny roundtable interview the day after the film premiered in Oakland. She talked to us about her friendship with The Help […]]]>

We spoke to Ahna O’Reilly (The Help) who plays Katie, a girl who meets Oscar by chance, shares a pleasant interaction with him, and later becomes a witness to the horrific shooting in a tiny roundtable interview the day after the film premiered in Oakland. She talked to us about her friendship with The Help and Fruitvale Station costar Octavia Spencer, her first time watching the film with an audience, shooting at the titular train station, and more. Check out the edited transcript below.

Read More Fruitvale Station Interviews:

Ryan Coogler
Michael B. Jordan and Octavia Spencer
Melonie Diaz

How was the premiere?
It was wonderful. I felt more excited for this premiere in Oakland than any one we’ve had.

How familiar were you with the story of Oscar Grant?
Embarrassingly, not enough. I lived in LA at the time it happened, but my parents still lived here. I remember talking about it with them vaguely. One of the things that is most crazy and upsetting about this is that I didn’t have one conversation with people about it in LA. Most people that see this movie, this is the first they’re going to hear of it. One of the main differences between the premiere last night (in Oakland) and the other premieres we’ve had—at Sundance, at Cannes—is that most of those people had no idea who Oscar Grant was. When I’m talking to people about this movie, it’s rarer that they know who Oscar Grant is. That is tragic.

You don’t work with her on the film, but talk about your friendship with Octavia and how she got you involved with the film.
Octavia and I worked together on The Help, but we actually worked together before that. She and I have been friends for years. She’s one of my best friends. I was working on a film in Savannah, Georgia at the time they were shooting Fruitvale Station. She called me and she said, “Can you come be a part of this movie? We need someone to play this part. Please please please?” I was like, “I would do anything for you!” I read the script and I thought, she’s giving me such a huge gift. She’s acting like I’m doing her this huge favor, but she’s just given me such a gift. Being from the Bay Area, to be a part of telling this story, to be working with such an incredible group of artists—it doesn’t get any better.

Is your character is based on anyone?
Ryan told me that [my character] was a combination of a lot of different people. Because it was a combination of people, I didn’t feel I had to base my character on someone 100 percent real. There wasn’t someone I had to go interview. Because this movie came to me so last minute, I was kind of thrown into it. I watched the Youtube footage, I read up on it, but I was kind of thrown into it, which was perfect, because that’s what it was on the train—everyone was just thrown into that dramatic and heart-wrenching and horrible situation. It worked for me to just show up. The grocery store scene is just someone talking to me out of the blue. I actually had no real preparation to do other than I wanted to do my research on Oscar Grant.

Your scene with Oscar in the grocery store goes a long way in showing what kind of a guy Oscar was.
I think the scene is so lovely in that we see Oscar being a great dad, we see him in this moment with this dog, and then we see him having a total random act of kindness with a stranger, and that is such a beautiful trait in him to just want to lend a hand to a community member. Ryan was talking last night about how a lot of what this movie is about is community. I love that little random act of kindness. I think we’re increasingly closed off to the people around us—we’re always on our phone, we’re not looking up and taking people in. That’s what I’m doing in the scene. I’m totally ignoring him, kind of hoping he’s not going to keep talking to me. That’s how I often feel in life, and I have a sense of shame about it. Why didn’t I just say hello to the person helping me out? Why didn’t I just ask them how their day was going? Those little things matter so much. It shows a beautiful side of [Oscar.]

How was it was it watching the movie for the first time with an audience at Sundance?
[It was] incredible. You could hear a pin drop towards the end of the movie. All you heard was people being emotional. [It] didn’t matter—age, sex, race—everyone was shocked. I was a mess. I was sitting next to Michael, gripping him. I knew [the film] would be powerful, but what Ryan did with it really bowled me over. When you have a film going to Sundance, the fact that the film is going to Sundance is exciting, so I was already like, “This is great! We’re here! We made it!” I had no idea [the film] would have the life that it has. I think everyone’s pinching themselves, and it couldn’t happen to a greater group of people who are in this for the purest of reasons—to tell honest, socially relevant stories.

How was it working with Ryan Coogler?
The first scene I shot was the grocery scene, and it was a night shoot. I remember being in [the store] and seeing how he was interacting and talking with everybody and thinking I would literally serve coffee to people on set on his next movie. I want to be around him. He has such a quiet, powerful presence. I think one of the greatest qualities a director can have is finding the balance between being collaborative and wanting to hear everybody’s ideas, but also having a very clear vision. He totally embodied that.

(On the film’s script)
I think it’s brilliant that he started the movie with the real footage. Even if you’ve never heard of Oscar Grant, you know how it ends. The fact that he keeps us glued to the screen, knowing how it’s going to end—that’s an incredible accomplishment.

What was it like filming at Fruitvale Station?
That was one of the most powerful days of work I will probably ever have. On any day of work, you get there and it’s a little chaotic. Who’s going to hair and makeup? Who’s doing what? People are being rushed to where they need to go. Then, we all got [to Fruitvale Station] and it’s like, oh yeah, we’re here. We can see the bullet hole. Ryan took a moment of silence and a prayer circle. It was very, very powerful. Then, you have to get going because you have only until sunlight to make it happen. You’re dealing with a moving train. Those are technically difficult things to have to shoot. It was wild on many levels.

Not all of the train stuff was shot on the same day. The interior train stuff we did down at the Bart repair station. When we were on the Fruitvale Station platform it was a separate shoot.

Why is this film, about such a specific Bay Area community, able to touch people across the world?
I personally wondered how many Europeans watching [the film would know] what Oakland, California is. They know San Francisco, but will they know Oakland? It’s a really American story about a very specific place in our country. You wonder how it will translate [and if] the humor will resonate with them. When [the screening] was over, it got a 10 minute standing ovation. That was incredible. For this [tiny movie]—in terms of budget and scale—[to touch] people from around the world…I’m speechless thinking about it. It’s a universal story. Ryan is asking us, the audience, to think about how we treat each other as human beings. [Can we] erase our ideas about what you are because you’re black or you’re from Oakland or you’re 22 or you were in prison? Can we try to push all that aside and try to look at the heart of this person? People from anywhere should be able to think about that. I think that’s why it succeeds.

The French know about the American South. That’s something people have ideas about. They know about New York, Boston. Oakland? I doubt [it.]

Fruitvale Station opens in theaters this Friday.

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