[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Narrator] "On Story" is brought to you in part by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, a Texas family providing innovative funding since 1979.

[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 on "On Story," we're joined by Justin Simien, the writer/director behind the film, "Dear White People," and its TV adaptation to discuss his process creating the show's hyper-real Ivy League setting and his strategies for tackling broader social issues within a character-driven story.

- I was ready because I was paying attention to what was in front of me.

I had pages and I had characters.

And so some of that, it felt like luck at the time, but I think if I were to put it into advice form is that if you're a storyteller, you're a storyteller.

You're always on.

You know, we don't always get to make a movie, but that doesn't mean that you're not working and doing it in some kind of way.

[paper crumples] [typing] [carriage returns, ding] [typewriter ding] - "Dear White People" is something quite extraordinary.

I would love to give you space to talk about people, institutions, systems that may have helped build you up as an artist to make that as your first project.

- Everyone said no to that script.

I was trying to do a multi-protagonist sort of smart take on Black, you know, at the time youth and no one was interested in that, really.

It was sort of like, you know, where's the dude in the fat suit?

You know, where's the part about slavery?

Like, it just was not what the industry was looking for at all really in a kind of like spec script.

And so I had to, you know, while I was at work and didn't have any money to make this movie, sort of scramble together what I had.

And I had a Twitter account and I started a Dear White People Twitter account and sort of in my mind, it was a way of testing out Sam White's Dear White People jokes.

And what it actually gave me was this kind of microcosmic experience or sorry, experiment of how people would react to this kind of humor.

And that reaction is actually what the movie's about.

So it was sort of about jokes, but it was also just about, like, just kind of inspiring the ideas of how humans just sort of operate in that space.

And then eventually we made a trailer with, like, some tax return dollars I had.

I had a job, nine-to-five, really more like 9:00 to 9:00 working in PR for Focus Features and then Paramount and yeah, that trailer went viral.

It really was something I had to build by myself.

Now, when it came time to do the show, I had a lot more support.

It's part of the reason I'm here.

Yvette Lee Bowser, creator of "Living Single," I mean, the blueprint.

Okay, hello.

That was really the first time I ever had an industry mentor.

- Can you just talk more, obviously, outside of the Twitter space, the actual development process for you on writing that original script?

[Dr.

Ruskins] 1965, Armstrong-Parker House becomes the residence of choice for a burgeoning community of Black students.

But not everyone approves, especially one Donald Hancock, a student who would become a wealthy benefactor of right-wing politicians and Winchester herself.

Two weeks ago, a protest led by firebrand Samantha White ends when Troy Fairbanks vandalizes Hancock Hall.

News of Troy's outburst spreads like wildfire, as did an actual fire, which coincidentally started at Davis House around the same time.

These events were assumed to be the result of rioting after the protest because, you know, Black people were involved.

February 1968, with violence in the South and Vietnam, Martin Luther King recants his I Have a Dream speech, calling it naive.

- As Jimmy Baldwin said on one occasion, "What advantage is there in being integrated into a burning house?"

[Dr.

Ruskins] Two weeks later, he's assassinated.

- I surrounded myself with Black women.

That was the strategy.

It worked really well.

Lena Waithe was really one of the first I wanna say... I mean, she was literally my friend.

We met in a writer's group that like a bunch of us would just be in these groups every weekend working on specs and, like, doing table reads and stuff and we sort of met and caught on in this writer's group.

And I remember we both had, like, day jobs at Paramount.

We were both, like, you know, on the lot one day and she just sort of, like, gave me hell for not having finished the script, you know?

And so she was one of the first voices that really helped to push me.

And then I remember the two of us were stalking Stephanie Allain at the LA Film Festival to see, you know, if she had seen the trailer, and she hadn't, but her assistant had.

It was a whole thing.

But then Stephanie Allain came in and was hugely, you know, helpful, but she was like, "I've never made a movie this low before."

You know, if this was, like, 10 years ago... I remember her telling us, like, you know, "I would know how to finance this, but today, I don't know how to do this so let me go talk to Effie."

And then Effie came on board, and it was just sort of like this, I don't know, like, snowball effect of very, like powerful Black women coming on board to help me figure my [censored] out.

And yeah, that really, it was an all hands on deck kind of effort.

[typewriter ding] - One of the obvious things that both the show and the film share is just Winchester as a setting and very much as a character in its own right.

Fictitious or fictional Ivy League school, how did you build that?

Like, what were some obvious references or points you were sort of pulling and tugging at and trying to put in front of the audience?

- I mean, the first versions of it are just, like, very nakedly the school I went to which is not an Ivy League school.

It's called Chapman University.

Great film programs where the Duffer Brothers came from, it's where I came from.

Very white.

Like, oh my God.

Like, sorry, no, it's suffocatingly white.

It's in Orange County.

And a lot of the film people are, like, from all over the world, but then the rest of the school is like, "No, we're also from Orange County."

It's very conservative.

Like, I remember, like, my sophomore year debating, like whether or not I as a gay man have the right to get married, and in this open forum.

I mean, it was like that, you know?

And so, the first version of it was just me just sort of telling my own story.

[Dr.

Ruskins] Only two months into the semester and already the ninth Ivy League squads buzz with future Olympians and presidents, with innovators trying to crack the next Facebook, with diverse students being forced into group shots for the admissions brochure.

One of Winchester's most well-known groups is the humor magazine Pastiche, whose members have left their mark as satirists, television writers, and most recently, hosts of a blackface party.

- But then, as I began to develop it and try to work it as something a bit more universal and treating Winchester as, like, this hyper reality, like, not a realistic school, but something that could kind of stand in for America and other American institutions.

That's when I began to sort of research the Ivy League experience and realize that it was so similar.

It was this great sort of, like, cinema metaphor.

[Sam] Dear White People is a misnomer.

My show is meant to articulate the feelings of a misrepresented group outside the majority.

I get it.

The realization that you contribute to a racist society can be unsettling, but you sound like a grown [censored] woman to me.

Next.

- Listen, the man could take an episode about Rudy getting a B minus and stretched into a half hour of comedic gold.

- Oh God, I pray he didn't stretch little Rudy out in any other way.

[censored] you going to hell.

- I'll save you a seat.

[Caller] Thanks sister for saying what we're all thinking.

Sometimes I feel like I don't belong on my own campus.

[Sam] Right?

They too busy patting themselves on the back for letting us in.

[typewriter ding] - I love that in both pieces immediately we're dropped into the very sharp tone and wit of these characters, obviously specifically Sam.

Logan does it in the series and then you have Tessa on the feature side.

Both different actors and wild incredible talents in their own right.

- First of all, Kim Coleman, our casting director is a big part of how any of these actresses, you know, got in front of me.

But I'm always looking for, like, okay, what's the thing that I wrote?

Like, who's gonna say it the way I hear it in my head?

But then who's gonna also, like, just have that other thing that I don't expect at all?

And both of those actresses had that.

I think Tessa had this kind of, like, I don't know, like, dreamy sort of ethereal thing.

She's like a kind of deity.

You know, she's there and not there at the same time.

And Logan's version of the character, it just felt, like, a little more emotional.

It felt like-- I really felt like with Logan, like, I was dealing with a young person encountering adult life for the first time, but who had this sort of exterior that seemed like she could handle it, but there's this vulnerable underneath part that especially, you know, with a TV show, you're really spending time with these characters.

I don't know.

I just felt like she had these different elements that really helped me sort of flesh that character out even more because I'm a big believer in once the actor comes on board, it's a co-ownership at that point.

It is coming alive in this person.

- Look.

I sent the invite.

I wrote it.

Broke into Pastiche's account and sent it.

It was fascinating to see what was lurking beneath the surface when you were given an excuse to suspend your polite passive liberalism.

I considered it a sociological experiment.

And guess what?

You proved my point.

Winchester, we got a problem.

Oh, one more thing.

To Gabe Mitchell, I'm sorry.

Please forgive me.

Hashtag hate it when bae's mad.

- And as far as the idea of expanding on characters from feature to series, I think one of the characters that really exemplifies that for you is Reggie.

And we see Reggie at the end of season one get faced with a gun.

- You and your friends show up places uninvited and cause others [censored] problems.

[punch thuds] - Hey.

Hey, bro.

Get your [censored] hands off of me - Everybody, stay where you are.

Get off.

Get off of him.

Are you a student here?

- What?

- We've had some complaints.

Are you a student here?

- Yeah, I'm a student.

My tuition pays your [censored] salary.

- He's a student here.

We just got into a little tiff.

That's all.

This is my house.

- I'm gonna need to see your ID.

- Why you need to see my ID?

[Officer] Son, I said ID.

- I'm not your son.

- Reggie, do what he says.

- Officer, he's a student here.

- I'm not talking to you.

[censored] these pigs.

[Officer] I said, show me some ID.

- No, he's a student.

- He's a student.

- And why the [censored] do you guys have guns?

[Officer] Did I stutter?

Show me some ID.

- And to see that flipped in the end of season four when he takes that step to address the school shooter and he has the gun.

There's just a lot of push and pull for him also morally.

Can you talk about the decision to really root him in that sort of arc?

- Yeah, I mean, this is one of those big things that I have to credit to Yvette, because originally, everything that happened to Reggie in that first season originally was gonna happen to Lionel's character.

And actually, Lionel's character, my first idea was to actually kill him off the show.

I felt like it would be a really dramatic and kind of heart-stopping moment.

And it would've been, but thankfully, Yvette, you know, sort of saw through the desire to, I don't know, be dramatic and do something, you know, that would be talked about.

And was like, "But you cannot kill yourself off your own show.

You can't do that."

And so we moved to Reggie and at this point, I didn't wanna kill him off.

But Reggie and Joelle, and there's a host of characters were really important to me because the movie was made before Black Lives Matter really kinda took hold.

And it takes place in this, you know, group of would-be activists.

'Cause you have to remember in 2013 when I was writing this, like, Black activism was in an interesting place because we had Obama so it was hard to, like, get white people to realize that racism still existed.

Like, maybe that sounds familiar.

But at the time, it was sort of like, "Girl, we got the Black dude in.

We're good."

You know?

The movie was more about what's happening inside of the Black community around these issues but I actually, I never really got to get into what it would be like to be an activist right now in a positive way, in a more fleshed out way.

Reggie was my chance to do that and so was Joelle.

- Yo, fam, can we cut the Love and Hip Hop auditions and get to it?

- Post-racial my [censored].

Everyone said we were crying wolf, but this is our proof.

- A bunch of white kids dressing up like us.

This is some real [censored].

- Yeah, guys, you know what this is?

This is racism.

- What a revelation, Kelsey.

Somebody should write this down.

Everybody, you got that?

- I just thought that this kind of thing only happened in the 50s or in Buzzfeed articles.

I don't feel safe.

- I'd like to use this meeting to cull some thoughts that CORE can actually take to the dean.

- What the hell's a cull list gonna do?

Y'all should let the BSU take lead because we've been fighting these issues since jump.

- We need a march on campus, fam.

Hashtag Sinchester.

- Uh-huh.

- Hashtag BlackFarceParty.

Hashtag [censored] the police.

That one's evergreen.

- And that's why that arc was important, is to, you know, show somebody who is a very strong, powerful kid who is faced with this impossible situation.

How do you take that and turn that poison into medicine, use that as a kind of strength?

And in the face of situations that, frankly, the choices aren't great.

Like, none of the choices are great.

You know, that was a natural evolution, but thank God it was set, that the course was set well through Yvette's intervention at the beginning.

[typewriter ding] - Can you just talk about the importance of understanding social context when not just your show, but really as we're looking at any of these pieces, but particularly, yes, with "Dear White People."

- I mean, you don't have a choice when the subject matter is Black people.

I mean, it's like it's the blessing and the curse of being a Black creator is that you have to weigh in this layer of social responsibility, which frankly is not always great for art making.

It actually really fights the artistic creative process to be politically minded when you're creating something.

However, we don't have a choice because we're not a liberated people, spoiler alert and so, you know, you have to think about these things.

You have to factor it in.

And with the Trump thing, I mean, there was no choice.

It was sort of like... I mean, it was the craziest moment because we all went to work.

It was the last day of shooting "Dear White People" Season One.

The last scene of shooting "Dear White People" Season One was us in a fake Oval Office set shooting a "Scandal" parody.

[laughing] - You listen to me and you listen very carefully.

- Yes.

- Yes, coat and the boots.

- You do not own me.

I am not your property.

You do not look, you do not touch, you do not grope and you definitely do not pinch my [censored] at the White House correspondence dinner.

[audience groans] - You don't seem to mind any other time.

- There were cameras there.

Roland Martin was a mere two feet away and we all know how he loves to blast people on Twitter.

I'm still in therapy from the last time I was trending.

- But I'm in love with you.

- You better tell 'em.

- You are the leader of the free world.

You don't get to fall in love.

- And what about you?

- I'm in love with my job which is to get little [censored] babies like you to act like grown [censored] men when the world needs them to do their job.

- That's my girl 'cause you gotta say something, right?

- And while that was happening, I could just see on the looks of, like, my now husband's face and Yvette's face and people's faces like, "Oh, Hillary lost, did she?"

And we're just trying to get through the scene, you know?

And we finally get through the scene and we find out Donald Trump is now our president which is sadly something I did predict in the Bible notes for "Dear White People" Season One.

Sorry.

- So we have you to thank.

- Oh, you have me.

Everything I wrote in that has come to pass.

- I just wanna give you some more space to talk about transitioning from feature to series.

You could have gone and done something wholly different.

Obviously, "Bad Hair" came.

- I couldn't have though.

That's the thing.

Let me cut you off.

- Oh, no, please go.

- No, I couldn't have.

- Go for it.

- I tried, okay?

I don't know if anyone's broken it to you yet, but having a hit independent film does not make you any money and so in order to pay my bills after "Dear White People," I did a lot of, like, speaking engagements.

I went to a lot of colleges and screened the movie and moderated conversations around it.

And it just so happened that that thing, which was not filmmaking and not necessarily what I would do for a living in any other situation, it was giving me so many stories, like, that I could not get out of my head.

And putting me back at Winchester because I'm sitting down with Black kids at predominantly white institutions talking about their daily lives and so when the opportunity to pitch a show for "Dear White People" came, I was so ready for that opportunity.

Because I mean, I remember, like, doing these panels and then going back to the hotel room and being in some city I didn't know and just, like, writing down what I heard that day and writing down what was inspiring.

And at a certain point, I had pages and I had characters and I had, "Well, this is what I would do if I had 10 up."

You know, I was ready because I was paying attention to what was in front of me.

And so some of that, it felt like luck at the time, but I think if I were to put it into advice form is that if you're a storyteller, you're a storyteller.

You're always on.

You know, we don't always get to make a movie.

We don't always get to make a TV show.

These things are expensive.

They take a long time.

But that doesn't mean that you're not working.

That doesn't mean that you can't be on and doing it in some kind of way.

And that's really what happened with the series plus Yvette, keeping me from, you know, destroying it.

- You have such an interesting sort of look at humor, and I can just tell from this conversation.

Where did your, like, comedic bent, your comedic backbone-- - Depression.

[laughing] Depression, homosexuality.

- Deep, deep sadness.

- The Houston Magnet School Program, okay?

No, I mean, I remember just being like... I remember all the family functions as a little kid... Yeah, literally though depression, like, literally, like, traumatic you know, upbringing, all that good stuff but then always feeling apart, you know?

Gay, Black, whatever it was, and Catholic.

So I was weird among Black people too, you know?

It actually was really helpful because I just remember being at family functions with my like, the cool cousins in the back throwing shade.

That's how we got through it all and it's where the sense of humor came from.

And then having, like, a real arts program and in Houston, that's where I'm from, getting into performing arts programs and then having an outlet for whatever was happening, whatever I was processing as a kid, that's where it came from, you know?

And yeah, survival.

[typewriter ding] - A lot was made of season four having this musical through line.

- I am so sorry.

- Remember when we weren't doing it for the publishers and the networks?

♪ Been through changes together ♪ - Jo, please no.

♪ All the high times and the lows ♪ - Okay, Jo, we get it.

♪ But we all stayed connected through the years ♪ ♪ And we're still close ♪ ♪ So close ♪ - I can't stand y'all.

♪ Nothing lasts forever, no ♪ ♪ But all the struggles we've been through ♪ - Y'all really get on my nerves, for real.

♪ Bonded us together for all time ♪ - It wasn't lost on me, especially after revisiting it, that for us, song has always been a tool of freedom of expression, things of that nature.

What were you trying to tap into with that?

And why did you make that choice?

- I remember when I got the call that they wanted to do one last final season and thinking to myself that I didn't wanna do it because I was tired if I'm being honest and I wanted to make another movie and I wanted to just do something else.

And it didn't feel fair, but that's how I felt.

And so when I though about what would make me excited to go to work every day, it was making a musical.

[laughs] So that's the first answer.

And then the second thing was everything you just said, that it felt like a form that we invented, that we perfected, that so many things from Black culture are the foundation of that format.

And yet it just... Where were the Black musicals at?

Like, where were they?

Why was it that even Black audiences were so kind of trained to hate musicals?

What I love about the way a musical is supposed to work is the song, you know, they have to sing.

Whatever they're singing about is because they can't say it.

It doesn't get expressed in any other fashion.

So that combined with the fact that... You know, like I think about this.

This is just the example that always comes to mind.

Since the song came out, "Weak" by SWV it has become a way for Black people to spontaneously start singing a song and be singing the same song.

And it just sort of was this weird community signifier thing.

And so we were always looking for a way to use a song in a way that you don't expect it to be used, but also, and most importantly, to say something that the character cannot say in the scene in any other way.

Now, the mistake with that, with doing an entire season four musical is something that I learned in high school, but I just sort of conveniently forgot, which is that, you know, it's hard to pull the rug out from under people with musicals.

You need to know it's a musical from the beginning or you're mad usually, even if you love musicals.

And I remember there's a musical, the Oscar winning musical that I have a weird relationship with because it doesn't admit that it's a sing out loud musical until the middle.

And so I think, you know, some of the outrage or anger or whatever over it being a musical is totally my fault.

But [censored] you, I wanted to and I could.

Yeah, I just felt like I had something to say in that format and I learned a lot, you know?

And sorry, Black folks who were mad that it was a musical, but... I did that.

[laughs] [typewriter ding] [Announcer] You've been watching On Dear White People, a conversation with Justin Simien 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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