CraveOnline: I talk to a lot of writers, directors and even actors, and they talk a lot about getting pigeonholed. They have one success and then everyone wants you to keep doing that over and over again.
John Ridley: Sure.
You seem very fortunate in that you did Undercover Brother – which by the way is one of my favorite comedies of like the last fifteen years…
Thank you, that’s very kind.
But even though you had a success with that or U-Turn, you didn’t get stuck doing U-Turn over and over again. You weren’t stuck doing Undercover Brother over and over again. Even though you’re doing more historical dramas now, they’re not all the same.
They’re not, and first of all I think it’s very kind of you. I know you’re not just saying it, that you like those things. I think it’s very kind of you to say. The thing is, they were not crazy successful. They did what they needed to do and they were certainly, for the audience that liked them, they loved them and they have a sort of cult following: U-Turn and Three Kings or Undercover Brother.
It was just enough where it allowed me… You know, for the people who like what I do they always found it very interesting, and there’s always that invitation of, now what would you do? What would you explore? But different from studios coming at you and going, “Oh, we want to turn over a $100 million franchise to you.” I’ve always felt like, if that’s the space you’re going to have, then it’s like, okay, people are going to come to you and they like intellectually what you’re doing, creatively what you’re doing.
I certainly have never been in a situation where I could go into a studio and say, “Okay, well now I want to do more of this because I’ve got the numbers to back it up.” But there have been people who are like, “Okay, you want to do a film about Jimi Hendrix? It’s not going to be easy, it’s going to be very hard. You’re not going to get a lot of money but…” It’s like, okay. That’s alright. I still want to do it because it means a lot to me, and I think the people who do come to it, they sense that. They feel that, that all the people involved, we’re doing it because we really care about it, not because we have an expectation that the cultural density is going to be so wide. But whatever density we get it’s going to be very loyal.
You talk about how you maybe haven’t had a big $500 million hit, but you do have an Oscar now. Can you just put that on a desk in front of you, at your meetings, and say, “Me and my friend here would love to make Undercover Brother 2?” Or whatever it is you want to do?
You can’t, and I have to say, I think in a very good way you cannot do that. I think probably, and I mean this very sincerely, as difficult as it is sometimes to get notes, as difficult as it is sometimes to have people tell you, “Oh no, you should do it this way,” I think there is really a value in having to fight for the things you want to do. As opposed to people just going, “Oh, you can do whatever you want now.”
Even with American Crime. We had amazing partners. ABC, first of all, they came to me wanting to do that show before the Oscar. To be honest, I haven’t even had sort of the post-Oscar phase of my life yet because the morning after that, the morning after the Oscars I was on a plane flying down here to Austin. We started American Crime. But the idea that you have to fight for it and work every round to make something happen, and then go home at night and go, “Okay, am I doing the right thing? Did I make the right call?” Maybe the idea really is a good idea, and maybe it was lousy and then you go home and go, “Okay, that was a bad idea and I want to go this other way.”
I honestly believe, as painful as it is, as sometimes difficult as notes are – whether they’re difficult because they’re not good or they’re difficult because it makes you go back and rethink what you’re doing – I really think there’s a value in the process. And I do believe… look, you’ve probably seen those films or TV shows where you can tell somebody got to do whatever they wanted, and sometimes it’s not the best thing in the world.
No, definitely not.
So… no. [Laughs.] I’m still trying to figure out exactly what the magnetic power of the Oscar is. I don’t know, is there something at the bottom I didn’t turn on?
It’s actually filled with chocolate. You should have eaten it by now, it’s going bad.
[Laughs.] I will say this: to be in a space now where, if nothing else you have conversations with people… I mean, to come to a festival like this, and people actually want to engage you because they recognize something about your or your work or whatever, to me that’s the value. In that there is a connectivity with whatever audience I have, at all, that I never had before. And that’s really nice.
Like today, the panel. Those guys are successful, they [directed] huge hits. So if that allows you to be on a panel with other individuals who are accomplished, and they’re really cool and they’re fun, then to me that’s sort of the entree. They did The LEGO Movie and I got this. So can we hang out together, you know what I mean? It’s like your friend that other people want to hang out with, or when you’re a kid and you had the basketball and everybody else [says], “You can play because you have the basketball, so you can show up.”
