[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - The best response you can have to a payoff in a thriller is someone goes, "Oh, right, I forgot, of course..." [multiple voices chattering] [Narrator] On Story offers a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators, and filmmakers.

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[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] [piano gliss] From Austin Film Festival, this is On Story.

A look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators, and filmmakers.

This week's On Story, "Soul" co-writer and co-director and "One Night in Miami" writer, Kemp Powers.

- Jazz really was perfect, both as a metaphor for the meaning of the film itself and the fact that no one really pursues being an instrumental jazz musician who wants to be rich and famous.

It's such a niche genre of music.

It's obvious by the fact that they're doing it that they don't care about wealth and fame.

[paper crinkles] [typing] [typewriter ding] [Narrator] This week on On Story, Kemp Powers, co-writer, co-director of Academy Award winning "Soul" and writer of Academy Award nominated "One Night in Miami" talks about the process of adapting his own play and what is needed to build compelling narrative.

[typewriter ding] - One of the things I think is so interesting about both "One Night in Miami" and "Soul" is that they're both intensely reflective films and "One Night" is centered on the here and now and of that evening and really focused on the men's individual struggles and their shared reflection.

And then "Soul" obviously centered on the who am I, what am I, where am I kind of existential journey, but both are essentially existential in nature and as a writer who has written for almost every form of media, I'd like to hear you talk about how all of those backgrounds helped you write two pieces that are so reflective.

- That's interesting because the reflective nature of these, these two projects is part of what made them so special to me.

And like, honestly, such a multi-year odyssey, it really, it feels like a miracle that both of them got made to be perfectly honest.

I mean, in the case of "One Night in Miami," it had been, it's a play.

It started as a play that I wrote that allowed me to explore these issues that are really personally important to me.

And they have been ever since I was a young man, they're issues that are prominent in my community, they're discussions that have been had since long before that night in Miami and they're discussions still being had today.

It's about what, if any, greater social responsibility do you have when you're a Black public figure and, you know, the issue of can I just be a writer director, does it have to be a Black writer director?

These are issues that I think it's not just specific to Black people, it's specific to any different group when they get into a business like entertainment.

And "Soul," I mean I think it was just incredible, well, you know what, now that I think about it, part of the reason I got, that Pete Doctor reached out to me to work on "Soul" was because he read the play "One Night in Miami."

So I think he saw in that piece me kind of going through this exploration and that's exactly the type of thing that, if you know Pete Doctor's work at Pixar, he's kind of the guy who does like to ask the big questions.

He's definitely one of those creators who likes to kind of swing for the fences and ask those big types of questions and I think of other works that I, that maybe didn't find a big audience that I found pretty amazing.

I love stuff that kind of explores what we're doing here on this planet, you know, like what is our purpose, what are we meant to be doing, and I just think that coincidentally "One Night in Miami," writing that, getting that done, it kind of became a bit of a calling card specifically to Pete when he was looking for a writer to help him, you know, execute the story that was literally about the very type of thing that I tend to explore.

[typewriter ding] - You spent so many years as a journalist, right, almost 20 years?

- Yes, or 18, yeah.

- Yeah, and so you move, you go from there to being a dramatist and that to me is particularly interesting and the thing you chose for this play is that it's a newsy story, right?

- It's funny, the first draft of "One Night in Miami" was awful for so many different reasons, but chief among them was that it was basically just a book report.

It just was not, I was so caught up in the reality of it and my own research, you know, when I first found out about this night, I went about a personal journey of doing research on each of those four men with the intention of writing a book about their friendship.

So I really first tackled that night with a journalist eye, but when I then made the switch over to writing it as a work of drama, it took me a little while to convince myself to kind of let go of the reality and to just use everything that I knew that really happened, everything that I really knew about each of those four men, to basically then just create for all intents and purposes an avatar, you know, that I was then going to put into a situation that was a situation of my creation.

So it's like, okay, how do I think Cassius Clay at 22 years old would behave in this situation?

How do I think Sam Cook on this particular night with everything going on in his life would react to being challenged by a Malcolm X on this situation?

I mean the wonderful thing about the journalistic aspect of it is there was a scenario that was a very hooky kind of scenario.

It wasn't very hard to get people interested in the idea of that night, especially as a stage play, but I'll admit a lot of people, what they got when they sat in the theater was not what they signed up for.

A lot of people did not want to come into a film with a play with a boxer, a football player, and a singer and have no boxing, no football, you know, and very, very little singing and really just getting to the core of who these guys were as men and their insecurities.

That was not what a lot of people wanted, but that was the me of it.

That's what I wanted.

- You opened the movie in I think a really interesting way to me, it kind of threw me, actually, that having these four sequences of humiliation for each of these fellows and a moment of people who were all at some point very much on the top of their game, but starting this movie where they each had a moment of utter, kind of humiliation or despair.

And so I'd really love to hear why that made it into the opening of the film.

- I wanted to show the wound that each man brought into that night.

And it really was as simple as that.

It was like each of them carrying a wound into the room, a wound that most of the public, with the exception of the case of Cassius Clay, who almost lost to Henry Cooper very publicly, most people were not aware of the wounds that they were carrying into the room that night and I think that it helped put each of them into a greater context, because again, you see them as always winning, always at the top of their game and it was important to put them into a more nuanced context to understand all the reasons they would have to be insecure at this time in their lives when they were, at least to the public, seeming like they were on top of the world.

- When you're talking about people watching this, though, who are coming in this movie in their twenties or their thirties with real lack of familiarity probably for most people other than Muhammad Ali, maybe not even knowing that his name was Cassius Clay.

- On the night that this happened, all of us know the most famous person is Muhammad Ali of these four.

And you could argue that based on today's knowledge, Malcolm X is probably the second most famous, but on that particular night the most famous person in the room was Sam Cook followed closely, very closely, by Jim Brown.

You know, I mean, and that's an important thing to remember is that I had to let go of thinking about what people know or don't know so that could create a realistic power dynamic.

And that was a power dynamic of three older brothers whose younger brother is about to make an important decision and they disagree about what he should be doing.

So it's like basically, Muhammad Ali's almost a Trojan horse.

- The reason we're here is to celebrate Cassius's official transition.

- Malcolm!

- Transition?

- What, can we give them news Cassius?

- Well, I suppose if you want to tell them Malcolm.

- Now wait a second, you ain't about to say what I think you gonna say.

- I've been thinking long and hard about it, boys, and I'm officially joining the Nation of Islam.

[clap] - Cassius, you sure that's such a good idea?

- Why not?

- I thought this Muslim jive was some to rile up white folks.

- No, it's no jive, Sam.

- Cameras are off.

- He became champion on his own terms, naysayers be damned.

- We can't all just go out and declare the white man the devil.

- Oh, why not, huh?

We're entering a new time where no one can hold us back from voicing our honest opinions.

Look at Jimmy.

Jimmy hasn't bitten his tongue for one day of his career.

- Well, you ain't lying.

- In writing, particularly the debate between Malcolm and Sam, it was like trying to play a game of chess against myself, it's that challenge when we're kids when we're doing, if you ever do speech and debate and it's like pro or con, so, you know, first I'm gonna do the pro, then I'm gonna do the con and the rollercoaster ride of the film itself, I wanted to make sure that when each character was making his strongest point, that it felt almost airtight so that when the counterpoint was made, that it again, if it works well, which it did with a lot of people, when the counterpoint is made, it makes it more powerful because you are a hundred percent going, you know what, Sam is absolutely right.

I'm a hundred percent behind it, his logic is infallible.

To then get a counterpoint that the logic is equally infallible.

You know, because ultimately you should not come down feeling like one side is right or wrong.

That's the ultimate reality of their entire debate is that Sam and Malcolm simply represent two sides of my psyche.

You know, they're, all you, it's my internal monologue.

- One of the things that I was most interested in as far as how you chose to add this in and utilize it is the relationship with, Malcolm X's relationship with his wife, Betty.

- That's actually one of my favorite little moments in the film and it really speaks to how wonderful it was to collaborate with Regina King, the director, because we were already having, writing the script, it was already necessary because of the fact that it wasn't real time and we were having time cuts to move the characters around a lot more when they got to the hotel.

It couldn't just be something that took place in a room.

It had to be in parking lots, in phone booths, on the roof.

All those sets, scenarios were not present in the play.

So it was about moving them around and giving them adequate reasons to move around and Regina in doing her own research, which was wonderful, she actually reached out to the daughters of a lot of these men and she had a wonderful conversation with Ambassador Shabazz, Attallah Shabazz who was Malcolm X's oldest daughter and one of the things that really jumped out at her was that Ambassador Shabazz said that when her father was on the road, he would hide notes around the house to send them on scavenger hunts.

So he'd call and be like, give them clues and they would find the notes and they be these really sweet letters he wrote to his daughters.

And I'd never heard about that before.

So when Regina told me that, I was like, wow, you just like, talk about an incredible little detail to paint a nuanced picture of who this man is as a father.

- All right, well I need you to get down from the stool.

I want you to take three big jumps forward.

And look to your left.

Now what's in front of you?

- Books.

- Books, that's right.

Now I want you to take one of those books.

- Which one?

- It's your favorite number.

- One, two, three, four, five, six.

[Malcolm X] There you go.

Now open it up and take a look inside.

You see it?

- Thank you, daddy.

[typewriter ding] - Obviously Pixar takes risks and they have this what seems like very much not a kid's movie, seems very directed at people who are probably over 30 in particular, you know, and just, it's just an interesting kind of battle between the existential and annihilistic and very esoteric concept for an animated film.

- Jazz really was perfect both as a metaphor for the meaning of the film itself and the fact that no one really pursues being an instrumental jazz musician who wants to be rich and famous.

So that really kind of worked, I think, for the purposes of the story.

I had lots of questions about this Joe Gardner character.

I said like, you know, how old is he?

And Pete was like, well, we see him as about 45.

You know, I'm 45, he's from New York, I'm from New York.

So as I was asking these questions and they're answering and it sounds like they're describing me, that kind of became the fuel for me to fill in all the blanks of this character.

I think that's why it was just such the perfect fit.

Plus this whole idea of like a dream deferred, the idea that Joe has been pursuing this dream of music far past the point at which he should have given up, which pretty much reflects my own screenwriting career.

Because, you know, if you speak to, I mean the scene with Joe speaking to his mother, I mean, it's basically almost verbatim a conversation I had with my own mom.

- Our prayers have been answered.

A full-time job.

- Working man coming through.

- Yeah mom, but I.

- You're going to tell them yes, right?

- Don't worry, mom, I got a plan.

- You always got a plan.

Maybe you need to have a backup plan too for when your plan falls through.

- A backup plan never hurts.

- Joey, we didn't struggle giving you an education so you could be a middle aged man washing your underwear in my shop.

- Walking around with a hole in his pants.

- With this job you'll be able to put that dead end gigging behind you and Lord knows we need more teachers in this world and just think, playing music will finally be your real career.

So you're going to tell them yes, right?

- Please say yes.

- Yeah, definitely.

- Good.

- It was pretty easy to just pull from my experiences as someone who was getting older and older and older and still chasing this insane dream to understand emotionally all the things that the character was going through.

So I just, I tell people, I think, I think I was just like the perfect person at the perfect time for this perfect project because as soon as I came on board as a writer, I felt like Joe was me, you know.

I felt like this story was as much my story as it was Pete's, you know, and it was very much Pete's story.

If you talk to Pete Doctor, you'll hear about, you know, Joe's, we can both, it's so funny.

We could talk about a completely different set of experiences and they both equally reflect Joe Gardner.

So it really is a wonderful mashup of the people involved.

- The suit scene is so deep and rich and it's just thick, you know.

It takes us from where Joe stops just trying to run the treadmill and actually starts thinking about why he's running the treadmill.

- That was actually one of the first scenes I wrote when I came on board because you know, you write animated films out of sequence.

And there was already a decision that like the story was at a point where we knew Joe would need to get a gig suit.

The getting of a nice suit used to be a much bigger component of the story.

It was like literally the details of the suit were like dominating the story, but it was always a big part of it.

And I think it was one of our story artists who made the suggestion that the suit be his father's.

- I'm just afraid that if I die today, that my life would have amounted to nothing.

- Joey.

Oh.

Let's make this work instead.

- That's my dad's suit.

- Lulu, Melba, bring your good scissors in here.

We got work to do.

- Wow, this feels really nice.

- You look marvelous.

- It fits perfect.

That is one fine wool suit if I do say so myself.

- Can I try on that?

- Of course you can.

- Thank you, mom.

- Ray would have been so proud of you, baby.

Like I've always been.

- We had a lot of questions about, was Joe doing this because his dad was a jazz musician and you know, it would be very possible for his mother to interpret his passion for jazz as simply wanting to follow in his father's footsteps.

And the point of that scene was for her to see who Joe was and what it meant to him and how it was not about his connection to his father.

In fact, it was about this fact that he can't feel, if he's not doing that, he cannot feel satisfied in his life.

And if he has to fail and be poor for the rest of his life, he's willing to accept that in order to do the one thing that gives him that satisfaction.

You know, so not doing it, not pursuing his music, for him, is a kind of death almost.

And that's honestly how I feel about what I do.

It's not necessarily being brave.

It's more like I don't know what else to do.

And of course, the journey of Joe with 22, particularly during the body swap portion, is what both gives him the tools and the idea of finally having the conversation with his mother that he has never had before.

In particular, when they get to the barbershop and the scene in the shop and you know, both learning all these things about Dez the Barber who he would have called a friend and the fact that seeing 22's jazzing, her improvisation, the very thing that he should do naturally being a jazz musician, he won't do in life and learning that he kind of has to wing it in certain situations where he feels uncomfortable.

- Wait, but you were born to be a barber, weren't you?

- I wanted to be a veterinarian.

- So why didn't you do that?

- I was planning to when I got out of the Navy.

Then my daughter got sick and barber school is a lot cheaper than veterinarian school.

- Well, that's too bad.

You're stuck as a barber and now you're unhappy.

- Whoa, whoa, slow your role there, Joe.

I'm happy as a clam, my man.

Not everyone can be Charles Drew inventing blood transfusions.

- Or me playing piano with Dorothea Williams, I know.

- You are not all that, anyone can play in a band if they wanted to.

- Don't pay Paul any mind, people like him just bring other people down so they can make themselves feel better.

- Oh, I get it.

He's just criticizing me to cover up the pain of his own failed dreams.

[laughing] - You cut deep, Joe.

- I wonder why sitting in this chair makes me want to tell you things, Dez.

- That's the magic of the chair.

That's why I love this job.

I get to meet interesting folks like you, make them happy and make them handsome.

- Wow.

Am I crazy or do I look younger?

- I may not have invented blood transfusions, but I am most definitely saving lives.

[typewriter ding] - 22 is almost Joe's alter ego.

And 22 really is, they're each their own, they're each their own antagonist.

They're always pushing up against themselves which is really unique, right?

It's also very unique for animation, but particularly unique for storytelling in general.

- That was an interesting journey as well because you know, and in the initial pitches, we would always say that 22 was a know-it-all teenager who really knew it all.

Like imagine if you're, the attitude of a know-it-all teenager was backed up by that teenager actually having spent thousands of years learning about everything because it's like if that teenager learned everything there is to know about earth, they would see the daily hypocrisy in everything that we do and go, "Forget it.

Like I don't, I want nothing to do with that."

So, you know, people should get 22's point of view.

And it was, you know, there was one version of the film where the main character was twenty-- that was another thing, Pixar has a tendency to do buddy films where it's, you know, it's two mismatched characters, you know, on the road together going back to Woody and Buzz Lightyear.

And while there's definitely buddy elements of this film, I think as it progressed, it was important that it became less of a buddy film and more Joe Gardner's story because in initial iterations, it was 22's story where it was all about this soul who does not want to go to live on earth because of so, all these things and this Joe character inspiring her to want to go.

And then in middling iterations, it kind of became more of a classic buddy story, but then it really wasn't working because for any number of reasons, that would be like a whole other set of conversations.

But then it finally started to click and work when it became, this is Joe Gardner's story and every other secondary character is just that, they're secondary and they're there in service to Joe's story and Joe's growth.

And that's really the, that ended up being the sweet spot I think for the 22 character that took her from being annoying because she was very annoying in earlier versions, to a character that the audience really wants to protect in the same way that Joe ends up wanting to protect her by the end of the film.

[typing] [typewriter ding] [Narrator] You've been watching a conversation with Kemp Powers on "On Story."

On Story is part of a growing number of programs in Austin Film Festival's On Story project.

That also includes the On Story radio program, podcast, book series, and the On Story archive, accessible through the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.

To find out more about On Story and Austin Film Festival, visit onstory.tv or austinfilmfestival.com.

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