Drew Turney
Out of nowhere, a movie called Fruitvale Station kicked in the doors along the stuffy corridors of power like the brutal, violent cops it depicted. The story of the killing of Oscar Grant (Michael B Jordan) by San Francisco police on New Year’s Eve, 2008 blazed the awards circuit and installed writer director Ryan Coogler and star Michael B Jordan as names to watch in Hollywood.
A couple of missteps by Jordan (Fantastic Four, That Awkward Moment) notwithstanding, all eyes will be on the duo again soon with the release of Creed.
Depicting the son, Adonis, Apollo Creed (from the Rocky movies) never knew before his death at the hands of Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundren), Creed chronicles the young man’s search for a father figure to guide him on his own boxing career, one he finds in the unlikeliest of man – Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) himself.
Coogler spoke to Moviehole.net in LA
Where did the idea come from?
I’ve got a very close relationship with my father and he was a huge, huge, huge Rocky fan. I was an athlete growing up and right before I would go to sports events he would make me watch Rocky with him and get really emotional.
When I got older right around the time I was at film school, my dad fell ill and he and I talked and I found out the reason he liked the Rocky films so much and got so emotional was because he watched them with his mother at a time when she was dying.
That was something we shared generationally and I came up with this idea kind of venting through art, this story line that became Creed. It was inspired by my relationship with my dad.
How did Stallone get involved?
Before Fruitvale Station was in motion I was thinking about working on this and I talked to Mike [Michael B Jordan] and our agents said ‘actually that sounds kinda cool, let me introduce you to Stallone’. Right around the time I met Stallone’s agent was the time Mike and I started working together doing chemistry reads for Fruitvale.
We were in the middle of doing those reads in LA and I got a call from Stallone’s agent saying ‘hey come to the office right now, I want you to meet Sly’s producer, I want you to tell him about what we talked about’.
Tell us about when you first met Stallone to talk about it.
I’d only known him from his movies. Every time you meet an actor it’s always a trip because you’re kind of shocked to find out the actor’s not like his characters.
With Sly it’s even more so, because I’m a Rocky fan, I know Rocky like the back of my hand, and they have nothing in common. Rocky’s somewhat simple minded and he’s very, very meek and Sly is super academic and super talkative.
I went in thinking I was going to meet someone I was familiar with and I met somebody totally different. I realised; ‘holy shit, this dude’s a great actor!’ He’d tell us stories and act out other people in the story and I’m thinking ‘man he is crazy, if we get to do this it’s going to be pretty fun’.
Rocky comes from a very different era, how do you keep a movie from the same series so much later current?
Our movie without question is very current, but it’s just like every art form, it’s like fashion, journalism, all kinds of different things where if you look at what’s fresh and what’s current you’ll see throw backs to the past.
Our film will be dealing with very current issues and very current relationships. It’s got a new face, a new feel, but it has familiar elements and you’ll see the influences of other styles of filmmaking.
There’s been a rush of boxing movies lately (Southpaw, The Fighter). Why do you think it’s popular again?
There’s something in the air. It’s not a coincidence that the biggest fight in the last twenty five years happened near here.
We released a movie in 2013 called Fruitvale Station and in that year you saw a lot of films that dealt with racism and violence like The Butler, Twelve Years A Slave.
I’m very close with Jake Gyllenhaal and we were all rooting for each other. I can’t wait to see the other boxing movies, they’ll all be different and they’re all going to be worth seeing.
What kind of journey was it going from a small indie movie like Fruitvale Station to a big franchise movie like this?
Anybody who knows me didn’t find it strange at all. This movie very much comes from something personal to me. For people who might not know that about me who only know me through Fruitvale, I can see that being somewhat odd.
A lot of people thought this was a project that was developed at the studio and then they hired me to direct it, you see it a lot where studios develop a franchise thing and say ‘lets get a hot young indie guy who can come in and we can control him and maybe get something that feels current’.
That wasn’t how this went down. This was something we actually brought in. I wrote Fruitvale out of a sense of deep emotional connection – how could something like this happen where I’m from? Creed was very much about the same kind of question, what’s important about my father in my life, what kind of person would I be if he wasn’t around?
