USA TODAY International Edition
‘Black Panther’s Coogler shares insights
Director says he never expected to live to 30
CANNES, France – Wakandan spirit has taken over the French Riviera. Here at the Cannes Film Festival,
Black Panther isn’t in competition, but it’s still winning the popular vote.
How so? On Wednesday night, the festival screened the Marvel blockbuster free for the public on the packed beach. Then on Thursday, director Ryan Coogler spilled new film secrets at a Q&A packed to the gills with fans, including The Weeknd and 60 students Coogler invited himself.
“I’ve done a lot of film festivals and a lot of talks in the past, and sometimes it can be challenging when you’re in a talk and you don’t see faces that look like yours,” he said.
Coogler touched on racial themes embedded in Black Panther, including the fear of death as an African-American man.
“Death is constantly around us,” said the Oakland-born director. “To the point that when I turned 30, I almost had a crisis because I never imagined seeing myself that age.”
Coogler, 31, said that in America, “25 is the like magic number that you’re either dead or in jail. I saw a lot of good people who didn’t make it past that age, whether they went to prison or whether they were murdered.”
In approaching Black Panther, Coogler forged an understanding that the transatlantic slave trade “represented a kind of death for us, the death of who we were. And who we are now was born when they strapped chains on our ancestors . ... For me, (Black Panther) was about acknowledging that but at the same time reclaiming that extended history as well.”
Here are other Black Panther facts
Coogler revealed:
‘The Godfather’ was a major inspiration
When Coogler sat down with Marvel to discuss Black Panther, he says producers told him they were looking for a James Bond-style film. Casino Royale is Coogler’s favorite (and we know Shuri makes an awesome new Q), but as the director got deeper into the research stage, “we realized we’re making a film about a guy who lives in this secretive country no one really knows about; he works with his family and his father dies and he has to fill in (that) role. (And I went), this is like The Godfather! So I realized the best way for me to look at
Panther was as a crime film. “Once we pivoted and looked at The
Godfather films, that’s how a lot of things opened up for us. But it’s not something you can talk about; like, you’re making a superhero film but you want it to seem like The Godfather? I was worried about people thinking we were aiming too high.”
Coogler went off the grid his first time in Africa
For his Black Panther prep, Coogler toured Africa, “a place I wanted go my whole life,” he said. He began in South Africa but detoured from his itinerary.
“I was in these (fancy) Disneyapproved hotels, you know what I mean?” he said, to the crowd’s laughter. “So it felt like I was still in San Francisco or something.
“But the people who were working there, they seemed like my kind of people. I ended up hanging out with people who were loading bags, the bellmen and everything, (and) the people who worked in the kitchen . ... A bellman eventually invited me to come back and hang out and have dinner with his family.” At one point, “they passed a drink around and everyone would drink the same drink, an African beer. They called it their ‘ritual.’ But I’m like, ‘We pass the bottle around the same way!’ ” he said as the crowd cracked up.
Boseman may be a Jedi master
Even after he’d begun talks to direct
Black Panther, Coogler had yet to meet Chadwick Boseman, who originated the role in Captain America: Civil War. But the world wasn’t privy to this, so while Coogler was at a press day for Creed, T’Challa took matters in his own hands.
“I was doing a junket, so there was press crawling all over every floor of the hotel I was in,” he recalled. Boseman “did some kind of Jedi Black Panther ninja move and the next thing I knew, he was knocking on my door.”
The actor is 40 “but he doesn’t look it,” Coogler says. “He’s got the wisdom of a 60-year-old.”
That first meeting with Marvel surprised him. “I heard things about working with (Marvel), that it was a tough place for filmmakers,” he said. Coogler’s first meeting was with executive producer Nate Moore. “Nate’s black and he works at Marvel,” Coogler said. “So the first thing I said was like, ‘I didn’t know black people worked at Marvel!’ And he goes: ‘There’s plenty of us! You just don’t see us on TV.’ ”
He was overwhelmed at ‘Black Panther’s premiere
But not for the reasons you’d expect. “It was intense, man. Ava (DuVernay) was there. Kendrick (Lamar) was there. George Lucas was there. So I was really nervous. But the most important thing was I had like 50 family members there, including my nearly 90-year-old grandmother and my nearly 90-year-old father-in-law. So we had a lot of wheelchairs . ... It was a lot of pushing wheelchairs ... (maneuvering) a wheelchair (and going), ‘What’s up, Kendrick!’ ”
“25 is the like magic number that you’re either dead or in jail. I saw a lot of good people who didn’t make it past that age.” Ryan Coogler