Coogler’s superpowers
At the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills, Ryan Coogler is at the last leg of what he says is a whirlwind race.
The 31-year-old Oakland native and director of Marvel’s latest superhero movie, “Black Panther,” was wrapping up more than a dozen interviews with national news outlets. The night before, he walked a royal purple carpet for the movie’s premiere at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, where actors such as the film’s star Chadwick Boseman and Lupita Nyong’o were eye-catching in African-inspired fashion.
The impact of “Black Panther,” which recently shattered the Fandango record for advance sales for a superhero film, and his career’s meteoric rise have not quite hit Coogler yet.
“I’m just trying to focus on the work; there’s a lot of it,” he told The Chronicle during the film’s press junket. “I try to be present for it, you know what I mean? ... If you’re fortunate enough to have a film that gets released, it’s really four stages of filmmaking: You’ve got your prep, you’ve got production, you’ve got your post (production) and you’ve got the promotion, which is like your last leg of the relay before your film goes out.
“I haven’t had a chance to slow down and be like, ‘Oh man, we really did that.’ ”
This moment would have seemed improbable to Coogler more than a decade ago, when the East Bay resident was considering medicine and sports as career options.
Coogler, who attended St. Mary’s College in Moraga on a football scholarship, didn’t know what a screenplay was until an English professor who read one of his stories suggested screenwriting.
Coogler then went on to attend the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, where he directed short films that received critical acclaim, including the Jack Nicholson Award for Achievement in Directing.
But while he learned to make movies in Los Angeles, Coogler never forgot his Bay Area roots and often traveled back to shoot his movies.
“It’s home,” he said. “It’s a place where a lot of my fondest memories are.”
His Bay Area upbringing informs much of his filmmaking, Coogler added.
“You grow up in an extremely diverse community, and it is not as segregated as other diverse cities in America can be,” he said. “You learn very early on that there is a difference between somebody who’s Chinese or Filipino or Cambodian. I knew all these things by the time I’m, like, 6 or 7 years old. … There’s an appreciation for everybody’s culture.
“We’ve got our issues like everywhere else, but the idea of multiculturalism is the norm there, and I always thought that was inspiring.”
That’s why he was so affected by the 2009 slaying of Oscar Grant by a police officer at Oakland’s Fruitvale BART Station.
“It was heartbreaking for me when I saw the footage of Oscar being murdered like that, you know?” Coogler said. “Back at home, it’s like, ‘That can happen here?’ That was the feeling that we had.”
Back in Los Angeles, Coogler brought up the idea for “Fruitvale Station” to actor Forest Whitaker, who met with Coogler after seeing his short films and would later sign on as a producer.
Coogler also turned to SF Film for help. The organization, which champions local independent filmmakers, supported the development of “Fruitvale Station” with $200,000 in grants.
“He’s someone we’re extremely proud of, and it’s been amazing to watch his career take off from there,” said Caroline von Kühn, SF Film’s director of artist development. “We really do look for the Ryan Cooglers of the world . ... We really look for unique artistic voices, and Ryan has such great vision and such consideration and empathy for how he approaches a tough story.”
SF Film’s Off the Page series also gave Coogler the chance to workshop his “Fruitvale Station” script with actor Michael B. Jordan, who would go on to star in Coogler’s next three movies, including “Black Panther.”
“I’ve been blessed to work with Ryan three times; we kinda grew up in this film industry,” Jordan said. “Our shorthand is incredible now. I trust him and he trusts me. And when you get on these bigger projects, time is super important. To be able to make adjustments on the fly and get to the point a lot quicker, it makes a lot easier.”
Fresh from filming “Creed,” the boxing spin-off of the “Rocky” series that starred Jordan, Coogler grappled with his own cultural identity and found himself in the midst of a personal journey when he began conversations to direct “Black Panther.”
“I was kind of obsessed with studying indigenous cultures and the effects of colonization,” he said. “That was something I felt like I had to do for this project, but also I had to do personally for myself, you know? Because I was thinking about it so much. I got to that point in my life where I had to go, like something was telling me — I mean, aside from the movie — ‘You gotta go. Before you move forward in life, before you mature, it’s time to go out there.’”
And so he went. In March 2016, Coogler traveled to Africa, where he spent three weeks visiting Johannesburg, Cape Town, the Kingdom of Lesotho and Kenya.
“I was realizing that I can put this energy into a film, this energy that I’m feeling,” Coogler said. “Once I went to Africa, I realized what the root of that energy was ... and in that, I got even more motivation for the film.”
He also found a way to infuse social impact in his storytelling. With “Black Panther,” Coogler wanted to convey that being African is a source of pride, not shame.
“You see media that can make you feel ashamed to be African. They can make it feel like it’s a shameful thing,” he said. “I think it’s not. For me, the biggest thing on this was making this awesome, globetrotting political thriller that just happens to be about Africans. It’s the best way to accomplish that goal and that’s what Marvel was interested in doing — that’s what I was interested in doing.”
Technically, for Coogler, the biggest difference between filming “Fruitvale Station” and filming “Black Panther” was the equipment. While “Fruitvale” was shot with just one camera, “Black Panther” required technocranes and many cameras.
“The kind of visual effects we’re doing in this, the amount of volume of shots — it was a monumental step up for me,” Coogler said. “So I had to put my head down and study and learn how it worked, what I liked or I didn’t like. It was coming rapid fire.”
The other difference was having to work with a lot more people.
“In ‘Fruitvale,’ it’s a few scenes with a lot of extras, but it was really dealing with Oscar’s family,” Coogler said. “Here, you have to tell a story about king and country.”
Jordan also spoke about the difference in working with Coogler on the two films.
“On ‘Fruitvale Station,’ I was with him on set almost all day, every day; we were connected at the hip,” Jordan said. “(On ‘Black Panther’) he has to answer so many questions to so many different departments and take care of so many different, powerful smart actors in this film. He really learned to multitask.”
Out of that experience, Jordan believes Coogler truly showed himself to be a visionary leader.
“It’s incredible — his vision for Wakanda and Africa and bringing that ancestry and culture and heritage to life,” he said, adding that Coogler is “unapologetically who he is 24/7; he is consistently the same man. He’s reliable, he keeps his word, he inspires and motivates.
“He’s a great leader. People want to follow him.”