January 10, 2024 • 64 mins
Ava DuVernay went from working behind the scenes as a Hollywood publicist to picking up a camera at the age of thirty-two and changing her career path to become an award-winning, celebrated writer and director.
Ava joins Sophia to talk about her journey into filmmaking, why she is at the most vulnerable time of her life, and what it was like crowdfunding her latest and most personal film, "Origin," which tackles race and hierarchies.
"Origin" is in theaters on January 19th. To support the film, go to Seat16.com and gift $16 for a ticket and a one-year subscription to masterclass to teens across the United States.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome to work in progress. Hello friends,
Today I am almost beside myself because our guest is
(00:21):
a woman who I admire so much that I'm actually
nervous about how I'm going to manage to talk to her.
I perhaps have done more prep and taken more notes.
My laptop screen looks like a beautiful mind because I
just have so many things I want to pick her
brain about, and I'm so inspired by her work. She
is none other than Ava du Vernet. You likely know
(00:43):
her as an award winning director and writer. Perhaps you
know her from being on the Time one hundred list
of the most influential people in the world, having one
Best Director at sun Dance and by the way, being
the first African American woman to do so, being nominated
for Best Director for the Golden Globes for Selma directing
a film nominated for Best Picture for Oscar. Also Selma
(01:05):
directing a film with a budget of over one hundred
million dollars A wrinkle in time. Her accolades go on
and on. Her humanity somehow, despite the size of her star,
precedes her in every room. I am constantly blown away
by her and inspired by her because she is not
(01:26):
only an artist and a storyteller, but a teacher. Ava
is the kind of person who invites everyone in to
learn more, do more, and imagine more for all of us,
just by being herself. And her new film, Origin will
be in theaters on January nineteenth. Origin is based on
(01:48):
the best selling book cast by Isabel Wilkerson. The book
is about the unspoken system that has shaped America and
also the world, the caste system. It chronicles how lives
to day and historically have been and are defined by
a hierarchy of human divisions. It is a book that
is incredibly intellectual, written by one of the most brilliant
(02:11):
academic minds of our time, and yet Ava managed to
pull a narrative story out of this five hundred page
book that is so human and so personal and somehow
so universal. I really believe you will see yourselves reflected
in it. I think you will be touched and crushed
(02:33):
and motivated to be more human, more loving, more active
in your families and communities. And I just I can't
wait for you all to see this movie, and I
cannot wait to ask her questions about how she manages
to take stories like this and bring us all along
for the journey. So, with no further ado, let's speak
(02:55):
with Ava du Verne.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Hello, how are you, friend? Hi? How are you I am?
I'm good. I'm learning me too. I'm learning things. You know,
a lot journey, so I'm embracing the lessons. How are you.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
I Different journeys, but same energy for sure.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Listen, I hear that.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yeah, it's been a season of learning. I was catching
up with a friend of mine today who is a
he's a beautiful artist and he's really been in it.
And I just said, you know, maybe that's the thing.
When you sign up to learn and you age, the
lessons get bigger, so they're more complex and more difficult,
(03:51):
but more profound.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Listen, amen, Amen to that.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Yeah, I mean you made the most beautiful piece of
art about exactly this.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yes, I think you know it's about uh, you know,
it's about embracing the lessons and really seeing them as
experiences that are happening not to you. Why is this
happening to me but for you? Right?
Speaker 1 (04:18):
You just gave me full chills. I have this conversation
one hour ago.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Yeah. Yeah, And so as soon as I ever think
that and I heard that from from from my my,
a good friend of mine who used to have a
talk show many years ago. Yeah, she said that to me,
and it really changed everything for me. And when I
forget it and I remind myself of it, it immediately
calms me. This hard thing, this challenging thing, isn't to you.
(04:47):
It's happening for you, and it makes me stop and
just changes my perspective. Okay, wait, what's the lesson here?
What am I supposed to take from this? What am
I supposed to do or how am I supposed to be?
So I'm having to remind my I solve that about
a lot lately.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
So wow, so full transparency. I just had that conversation.
Tuesday mornings, I do therapy and then I record the podcast,
and I was having this conversation with my therapist about
how so many people I know are in this big
season of transition and transformation that is coming with lessons.
And then I said, and it's it's not lost on
(05:25):
me that when you really get into it and you
pull the thread, you realize everything's connected, right, And then
I started talking about your movie and I was sobbing
on zoom with my therapist. I was like and then
she made this movie and she managed to get the
whole book in the movie, and it's really intense, and
I was just weeping, and I was like, I haven't
stopped crying since I watched it. And I think about
(05:48):
the way, since I became aware of your work, I
have been so moved by your work and by you
as a person.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
You are.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
You are so such a powerful presence and such a
kind soul. You will take the time to, you know,
respond to an Instagram note you advocate in this way
that is so true. You are an artist and a
writer and a director and a storyteller and a change
maker and a justice seeker, and you invite other people
(06:21):
to seek with you. And it's something that I realize
in these seasons of transition, I really want to take
the time to stay out loud and just say thank
you for thank you.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I received that thank you. I feel your words fla
very much. Thank you. I drink it in and and yeah,
you know, it makes me sad when I hear that,
because I wonder, and I hear it quite a bit.
I'm just people saying gosh you thank you for replying
(06:58):
to me, or thank you to people. Don't reply, do
you like is this not happening? People are not I
think people are experiencing a lack of response, a lack
of kindness, and a lack of connectivity. And so when
you a small gestures sometimes mean so much, and you've
(07:21):
gone through the day thirsty for even someone to look
you in the eye acknowledge it, you know what I mean,
and that that there's that that kind of absence of connection.
And so but for me, it's it's it's harder to
ignore people than it is to just lean in and
you see something. Why would you not say I like it?
If someone comes into your head. My mother always taught me,
(07:42):
if someone comes in your head, called them, that someone
comes into your head, texts them they're there for a reason,
you know what I mean, Like follow your feelings. And
I think for me, it's more effort to cut it off.
And I think our industry, you know, our industry, and
and then and this life in general, work and all
the things that society tells us we should think about.
(08:04):
There's just a way from listening to Hey, if that
person came to your hit or if you thought about that,
that's follow it. Yeah, don't follow the world. Follow what's
in here, and and so I find when I do that,
I'm much I'm much more happy.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
That's beautiful. I think it's also a nice reminder to
hear you say that because so many people. I've had
this conversation with a lot of folks on this show
and in life, and I know I suffer from this
a little bit. I never want to bother anybody.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I know me too, you know.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
I think we can get really cultured into I don't
want to be in the way I And what that is,
I think is the it's the sort of action of
imposter syndrome a little bit. Well, I'll be a little
annoying if I do this, or maybe I'll be bothering somebody.
They're probably so busy, And what can happen is when
everyone assumes you're busy, nobody bothers you.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
And so to take the time to do that and
to remind people that you should follow those sort of
instincts or those moments of you know, energetic motivation, that yeah,
that's going to help people.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
I think I like that that term energetic motivation very much.
And I completely hear what you're saying, and I think
the word The word that comes to me is vulnerability.
You know, I don't want to show people that we're vulnerable.
And by asking or by reaching out, you basically say
please answer me, and you have to wait, you know,
(09:34):
and you don't know what that's going to be, and
all those what those feelings will be or what they think,
and it's kind of leaning into vulnerability. For example, right
now in this season of my life, I'm in a
very vulnerable place. The most vulnerable place the artists can
be and is I always thought, is sharing their work.
So when we were first you know, sharing some are
or thirteenth there are all these things or even origin
(09:57):
back in the summertime at the big film festival at
Venice Film Festival in Toronto, that's a vulnerable time in
the audience. Will they like my work? But I'm wrong.
I had not experienced what is even more vulnerable than that,
And that's right now with what's going on with the
film and needing to ask people for help because film
(10:19):
is not reaching. It doesn't have the money, it doesn't
have a big marketing campaign, it doesn't have a big
studio behind it. You're having a problem reaching the people
who I made it for and so I feel very vulnerable.
How do I do this? You know, I've used to
be with big studios and Netflix and Warner Brothers and
Disney and all of that, Like what do I do?
You have to ask people for help? And I'm telling you, Sophia,
(10:43):
I am struggling with picking up the phone and asking
people who I know can help. Yes, I can't even
bring myself omals gonna cry. I can't even bring myself
to pick up the phone and say I need help.
And so maybe about three days ago, my great brother
and friend, David o'yelowell, he uh, he said, my sister,
(11:06):
I'm going to pray for you, because you need to
lift this up. You know too many people, and you've
got to tell them what's going on, and you need
to ask for help. And I guess what happened. I
asked one or two people. I sent an email. I say,
I'm feeling very vulnerable right now, this is what's going
on with the movie. I need help. I asked two people,
and within three days, fifteen different people who I did
(11:30):
not even know, very famous people. I started to get
these crazy emails. Hey, I saw your movie. What can
I do to help? Hey, I've got this, Can I
help well? By opening up right to tell the universe
I need help, and to say that full throated yes,
help started to rush in. I can't even believe it,
(11:53):
and so I just say, I just I don't know
who that hits right now. But in whatever way the
fear was blocking off whatever was supposed to come to me,
I was so afraid. I was holding this so tiny.
As soon as I opened up and just said, please
help me, this is what's going on it, you know,
so many beautiful things have rushed in. And maybe it's
(12:14):
because my eyes are open, maybe because I'm open to
receiving it. Who knows. I don't know, but I do
know that something fundamentally changed when I said the words
out loud and when I and when I asked yes.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
And isn't it interesting when you acknowledge what you need,
when you finally, when you really finally tell that that
deepest root of the root truth, yes, the world goes, oh,
that's what you need, that's what you want here it is.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yeah. I think that's what happened in a way, But
also you change, you hear differently. Maybe help was always
there and I was maybe things happening on the fact
that I wasn't seeing. So there's like a mindfulness there,
you know. I was reading, reading some spiritual spirit to
work this morning, which is just about you know, every
step you take, your take is a sacred step on
(13:05):
this planet. And when you're rushing around in your head
thinking about your grocery list, you're not observing the bird
that disturbed and the butterfly that flew by, or the
person that tried to smile at you, but you didn't
see them and you didn't smile back. And now it's
too late because they've passed you. And what that's why
I would have done to them, right, And so it's
just like being present, being mindful and and I think,
(13:27):
you know, declaring where you are and knowing where you
are for being able to say, I am vulnerable right now.
I am scared. My movie is not reaching people that
I put my whole heart into. I need I need
some help getting the word out and to quiet and
open my eyes to it. I saw people waving, hey,
I'm over here, I can help. I can help. So
who knows how it works, but it works.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
It's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
I invite people to think about it for the for themselves.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
And now a word from our sponsors that I really
enjoy and I think you will too. Well when you
think about that, you know, pulling on that thread and
seeing how much everything is connected, which is what Isabelle
Wilkerson does in her book. You You have such a beauty.
(14:14):
I mean, the entire movie is so beautiful. I don't
quite have words for it, and I'm a person who
has a lot of words. The scene where she's explaining
to her editors what this book is going to be
and they admit, we don't get it. But if you
(14:34):
can do it, that's a book, you know. The That's
something that also really inspired me when when you have
to sort of admit I may not see it, but
I want to. Yeah. And the profundity of her book
carrying us all on this journey to say, the ways
we're examining the world around us, the ways we're examining
(14:56):
prejudice and tribalism. It's bigger than we think it is.
It's bigger than we say it is. It's more insidious.
It's a shape shifter.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
I think about how you read that book and you
spoke about it in the you know, you did a
great article with the rap and not at all the
point of this interview, but my god, that white dress.
I was like, girl, come on, like you're out here
speaking so poetically about the human condition, and also just
like leaving not a crumb on the plate. I was like,
this woman, I love her. But you talk in the
(15:32):
article about how you read the book and it was
so big you had to go back and read it again,
and then you started to formulate this movie. And again
it just speaks to the thing that as a fan
of yours, I'm so impressed by and always drawn towards
what it appears, at least from the outside and to
be is your inquisitiveness and your desire to really follow
(15:56):
things to the sort of origin of the path the
road when you think about your story, because everybody who's
at home listening is like, hey Va du Verne, the director,
the award winning filmmaker, she's so incredible. I can't wait
to hear what she has to say. Do you pull
the thread of your inquisitiveness and your desire to tell
(16:19):
story all the way back in hindsight when you look
at yourself, through your life, through your childhood, were you
were you sure you were destined to be a director
when you were eight years old? Or was that an
evolution for you, a calling or an evolution or maybe
a mix of both.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Yes, no, thank you for the observations. I didn't pick
up a camera until I was thirty two years old.
So at the age of eight, nine, eighteen, twenty twenty one,
you know, twenty seven, I had no idea i'd be
a filmmaker. Isn't that wild? You couldn't have told me
fifteen years ago that I would be working professionally as
(16:57):
a filmmaker. There was no thought in my mind elementary school,
in high school, in college, after college that one could
make a living. Me, see a filmmaker? What's that? Oh,
Steven Spielberg, he directs movies. That was it. I didn't
even know anyone else who directed. Steven Spilberg and Spike Lee,
those were two names I knew. If you asked me
(17:19):
who directs movies, I couldn't tell you one woman, certainly
not a black woman. I don't even know what that
looks like at that age, and so you know that
that's not even impossibility. I loved movies. I never thought
I could work in an industry that made them. But
then I became a publicist for movies, and I got sets,
(17:41):
and I got to got to meet people who made movies,
and I got to amplify movies and travel with with
with with filmmakers and directors and hear them talk about
their their films like I'm doing right now, and I
started to say, Wow, this is this is this is
something that people are making with their hands. It looks
like magic when you watch a movie theater or but
it's really like a handmade craft. Everyone just kind of
(18:03):
coming together to do this thing, and isn't that amazing?
And then one day, on one particular set, I said, well,
can I be a part of it? Can't I want
to make it. I want to make something. I have
something to say, and started to make my short own
short films at the age of thirty two thirty three.
You know, I didn't go to film school. I didn't
know anything about cameras. I didn't know how to direct actors.
(18:24):
I didn't know how to block a scene. I didn't
know how to edit. I don't know any of it.
And I just embraced the joy of teaching myself and
learning along the way, and the fact that you cut
to moments like this where I get to talk to
someone like you on the phone about my on the zoom,
about my movie, and that movie will be in theaters
(18:45):
and people will pay money and sit in seats to
see what's in this head. It is. I won't even
say dream because I didn't dream it. It's like a miracle,
you know, that was made just for me, and it's
an honor and a privilege. And uh, it's like magic
(19:05):
to me because it was it was nothing that I
ever imagined, you know, And it was it was, it was.
It is a gift. It was given to me, and
so I treasure it and I and I don't take
it for granted, and you know, but certainly it was
it was never anything that was that was planned. Now,
once the magic presented itself, I'm going to work my
(19:26):
butto like, once the miracles here, okay, how do I
how do I take that gift and run with it?
But gosh, I never saw it coming.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah. Well, and and when you talk about not only
what you didn't know, but what you didn't see, you know,
the the lack of women occupying the director's chair, certainly
women of color occupying the director's chair, You've broken boundary
after boundary and barrier after barrier, and the I think
(19:59):
people can forg get when they meet someone like you
in the Accolade list is as long as it is
that that there was no roadmap you You drew the
map while you walked to the terrain.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
You know, I followed steps that have been there before,
but women whose names were not amplified. I'm a good point,
not the first to do these things. I'm the first
that the establishment has said, oh, well, we'll say her name,
But Julie Dash, Nina Barnett's not alls, Casey Lemon's. You know,
(20:37):
Kathleen Collins, you know, Maya Angelou, Debbie Allen. No women
who had done all this stuff before, but never one,
never was nominated, never was the cover of a magazine,
never walked, never did all the all the things that
have been decided that they're going my direction. That's why
(21:00):
when people say first, this first, that you know it's bittersweet. Yes,
I embrace the sweet part of it. Any artist wants
to be acknowledged for the work. But the fact that
it's the first and the film medium is over one
hundred years old. The fact when I'm the first African
American woman to ever compete in competition at Venice. It's
the oldest film festival in the world. It's twenty twenty three.
(21:23):
That's not a thing to celebrate. I don't think to
say there's been an absence here, there's been an error here.
And by saying first with cheers and collaps, what you're
really expressing is we have not done this before, And
to say it because the work wasn't worthy is untrue.
To say we didn't open our eyes to its worthiness
(21:45):
before is the fact. So you know, to be in
occupy that position, I always like to really make sure
I'm being clear and sober. We spoke about, you know,
what it really is, and.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
It speaks I think volumes about you sitting in that
space with this film, because this film is talking about
the complexity of these systems that often refuse to see,
acknowledge or uplift the worth of people, the desire in
(22:22):
some part of the human brain, or these toxic systems
we've built to other people, yep, and how deep it
goes and global it is and historical it is. As
you were reading this book, how did you begin to
(22:44):
wrap your mind around the calling the tug you felt
to make it into a film to share this in
a way that more and more people would see it,
experience it, and understand it to be true.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Yeah, that's a beautiful connection between those two. Thank you.
I you know, there's one thing that I know about myself,
and I think it's important for us to be able
to name the things that we do well. You know,
it's hard to be able to do that, especially as women.
You know, we we don't say I can do this,
I can do this. Well, I'm good at that I
(23:22):
can really do this. You know, I know how to
do this. And one of the things that I've in
trying to kind of own that for myself, to define
and actually count the things I do know how to
do the things I feel confident in, you know what
I mean. I'm good at translation. You know, I'm good
(23:44):
at being able to tell you a story in a
way that might make a complex idea go down a
little easier. You know. I know that I'm good at
taking a huge, which unruly thing like criminalization and the
prison industrial complex, and I know a way that works
(24:07):
for me to make you feel what that is in
thirteenth and when they see us, and the way for
me is I'm gonna humanize it. I'm gonna take this
huge thing, so big, so big, I can't even understand
all the nuances. It's overwhelming. I don't even want to
think about it. And I'm gonna bring it all the
way down to one person, and I'm gonna show you
(24:29):
how that thing works with this one person or these
five boys who used to be known as the Central
Park Five and their families. Let's just focus on them,
and once you get to know them and you understand
how what their hopes and dreams were and how it
worked with them, WHOA, Now I feel like I understand
the whole thing. It's the same with Caste. I can't
(24:50):
write a movie about cast I don't know. It's so
big cast How am I going to write a movie
about that. I'm going to write a movie about a
woman on a journey, a woman on an intellectual and
emotional journey. I'm going to show you what she goes
through as she's writing a book about cast and then
you can go read that book. But I'm going to
(25:10):
bring you into the heart of it through one person.
And so that was really my approach to it, and
that's when my approach on Selma I can't tell you
the whole civil rights movement and all the motivations, but
there was this one time that the black folk got
together and say, we want this, and we're going to
march every day until we get across this bridge and
(25:31):
exert our influence and demand our rights. I can bring
it down to that one that one piece, and so
I think, you know, bite sized pieces, you know, humanizing
the moment, humanizing the big issue. Those are things that
I feel like I know how to do. And that's
how I tackled this idea. After I read this book,
(25:55):
I wanted more people to know about it. It was
so big that when I finally decided, oh, I'll just
focus on her telling us what it is, it became
a viable, possible route. And I just followed that.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
It's incredible for people listening at home who have not
perhaps read the book yet, but who you hope the
film inspires to do. So, can you can you explain
for listeners what cast is the overarching connection that you're
talking about drawing through Isabelle's story.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yes, now I always preface this by saying I'm not
isabel Wilkerson Junior. I'm a filmmaker. I'm not a scholar.
I'm not an academic. I'm not an intellectual, and I
might get this wrong. I'll tell you what I interpreted
the book to be and what I understand casts to be,
and what I put into this film, guest. Is the
(26:55):
foundation that all of the rooms in the house sit on.
The rooms in this house, the householl called our society.
One room is racism, one room is sexism, one room
is homophobia, one room is anti Semitism, one room is Islamophobia,
(27:15):
one room ableism, agism, all the isn't. All the rooms
are there, but the rooms sit on top of the
foundation of this house, right, And the foundation that all
sits on top of is called caste because cast is
the very simple to understand idea one kind of person
(27:39):
is better than another kind of person. Now, in this
room it's skin color, and in this room it's age,
and in this room it's gender, and in this room
it's your sexual preference or your room. But they all
sit on top of a foundation, right, And until you
know that the foundation of all these isn't is the same, right,
(28:01):
and you can't really make your room through the way
that your way through the house, because the other rooms
are dark. But once you understand that they all sit
on top of this of expectation, all the lights in
the house are on. Well you see that this room
leads to this room and these are all connected. Now
the lights in the house are on, I can make
my way through. I can figure out how all this works,
(28:24):
and I can see how they all touch each other
with common walls. Right, And so you know we're in
these silos. Everyone's in their dark room. And I think
Cass turns the lights on and says, wait a minute,
this is all the same. And whether it's happening in
Nazi Germany or whether it's happening today, right, Nazi Germany,
they're burning books today, they're banning books right, whether or
(28:47):
not you're in you're in India and feudal India, or
you're in the United States and you're Trayvon Martin. Underneath
it all, someone is saying you are at the bottom,
and I am at the top. And because I'm at
the top, I will have power and status because you
are at the bottom, based on random traits. And so
I just think that I thought the idea was like
(29:09):
a whoe idea, and I wanted to know about it,
and it's more about it than the book goes into
great detail. It's almost a five hundred page book. It's
a thesis. I know that everyone's not going to read
a five hundred page book, and I know that there
are ideas in here that I might be able to
express down to one person. And so that's what Origin is.
(29:31):
The book is called cast the Origins of our discontents.
An Origin just tries to boil that down through the
journey of this woman. And I hope that people take
from it a new idea about how to organize our
thoughts about our place in the world and everyone around us.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
That's so beautifully put helping people to understand how getting
obsessed with the rooms can actually be a distraction to
the truth of the foundation, and how the insidiousness of
the foundation wants to create every outlet for it, every
(30:09):
one of those isms to keep people fighting, to keep
people figuring out. Well, if you, if we could criticize
you for this, but someone could criticize me for this,
maybe I should lean into the critique of the other
over there, so you stop looking at me. We have
to get to the root of the root.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely, And you know when you think
about you know, if the foundation was broken through, then
everything in the room would fall apart. The room would
fall through the floor. There's nothing there to hold it, right,
Cass holds it all up. So you get to you know,
and and this is not saying, well, there's no sexism
(30:46):
and there's no racism. It's cast That's not what the
what the material is saying. That's not what origin is saying. Anyway,
you're saying these things exist and they sit on top
of this other thing. And as long as you're only
dealing with the room, as long as you're only dealing
with the with the wound, and you're not dealing with
the disease, right, then you're never going to be cured,
(31:08):
you know, with the surface issue the symptoms, yes, right,
you know I can. I can. I can have the
flu and take nikul all day and treat the symptoms.
But until I lay down, rest, you know what I mean,
let my body heal, you know, take the appropriate medicines,
push fluids like stop and and and get over that flu.
(31:31):
I'm just I can go three weeks. I've done it before,
go three weeks. I'm just I'm just keeping it going
because I'm treating my symptoms, so I don't I don't sneeze,
and I don't love as much. But the thing is like,
how do you get to the core of what's wrong?
You don't know what's wrong, you can't.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Yeah, how do you get under the symptoms into the sickness?
Speaker 2 (31:50):
That's right?
Speaker 1 (31:52):
And now for our sponsors correlation that I find fascinating,
the exam that you're giving, And the greatest privilege I
think we have as storytellers is when we get to
take the specific and mirror across the microcosm of one
character to the macrocosm of us and say, this specific
(32:14):
is universal. Yes, you've taken You've taken Isabelle's story, her
specific story about the most universal and harmful you know, big,
big foundational sickness in human society, and you've made her
her unique story so specific for everyone.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Yes, I'm glad. I think it's the power of art,
that's the power of storytelling. You know. I remember seeing
Philadelphia when I was in junior high and being so
afraid of HIV as I had no idea what it was.
I just knew I'd heard about it and then you
could get it, and I didn't know when I was
scared and people were sick and people were dying. And
(33:00):
saw that film, and it was a film with two
stars and Denzel Washington, Tom Hanks and this man had
had at aides and and and and and he was
talking about it and sharing and telling the story and
through the story of one person, I came out of
the film and I understood, Oh, I get it. I
(33:22):
don't have to be afraid of this. It's it's uh,
it's it is. This is happening to people. This is
happening to people just like me. This is how I
care for and I and I and I interact with
people like this, and there's something, there's something worth seeing
it through the eyes of an individual. And that's a
big thing of what CASS talks about is the way
(33:45):
that CASS function is by functions, is by dehumanizing. You know,
if I put all these people into one bucket and
I call them criminals, then they're criminals. So I could
just move forward. But if I meet one and if
I talk to one, and if I know one of
those persons, those people's individual stories, their dreams, their life,
(34:06):
their mom they're you know what I mean, They're there,
They're feelings, then well he deserves a chance, or let's
give her a chance, you know, not everybody, just the
one that you know. And and that's what we need
to kind of move out of, is this idea of
dehumanizing people by putting them in a big group because
it's easier to disregard them. And now that that big group,
(34:29):
within that big group are individual hearts and minds, right,
individual people with individual stories. That is how cast happens.
You dehumanize a whole group of people. And it's to
say women are flighty, you know, uh, you know, redheads
are so crouchy. They never want to talk about their
red hair, like they're just they're they're they they're just
(34:51):
they're they're they never want to embrace it. Or you know,
people work in the entertainment industry are this way, or
you know those people who live on that side of town,
they're just so stuck up. I hate to go over there,
or you know what you know, vegans, Oh my god,
it's just annoying, you know what I mean. It's like, yeah,
whatever the group is, and we group them all together
and there's no nuance, there's no humanity. We do it
(35:14):
every day, Yes, we do it all the time. These
are the things that the film asks us to think about.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Yes, And in researching some of the places that you
take us the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, to the National
Memorial for Peace Injustice in Montgomery, Alabama, the artistry of
a memorial to people that we lost in America, to
lynching echoing the architecture of this memorial, to the Jews murdered,
(35:49):
and the Holocaust, both of them, both of them I
find breath taking experientially because you sink into them. Before
you know it. You are, you are inside and underneath
and all around you. You're being confronted with these visceral,
physical manifestations of people who we've lost because of that
(36:12):
tribalistic instinct to other to want to be superior too.
And reading about them in preparation for today led me
to this piece of writing by a man named Primo
Levy who said, to sync is the easiest of matters.
He's talking about surviving in Auschwitz, and he said, then
(36:34):
it is enough to carry out all the orders one receives,
to only eat the ration, to observe the discipline, and
work the camp. And it's that thing where if people
are grouped. Suddenly you can go along with whatever harm
is being done to the group because you feel like, well,
I'm the one person kind of against this other thing,
or I'm the one person trying to avoid the harm
(36:56):
happening to this big group. I don't know that I
can do anything about all of that. And to constantly
remind yourself of the humanity of other people is how
you pierce the veil, you burst the illusion. It's such
a big conversation to bring to the forefront. It's a
(37:19):
big reminder to give to people in a time where
we feel perhaps more viciously siloed than ever. And maybe
we feel it because we see it because we're more
digitally connected than ever. But as you're bringing this incredible
piece of work to light, you someone that so many
people at home I imagine, go, well, she's made it, she's
(37:41):
done it. She can do anything she wants. You've been
really vulnerable, to use your earlier term about how hard
it was to get this movie made. How For some reason,
and maybe it's because we're in an ear of I
don't know, superheroes and fantasy. People didn't want to make
this movie. Funding this movie was difficult. You had to
(38:03):
tighten it and shoot it in thirty seven days, you know,
in multiple countries, no less. But you you didn't give
up on it and you made this movie. What what
is that journey like? Is it? Is it something you
don't let go of because you know the importance of
the work and it feels like a calling. Is it
(38:25):
something you don't let go of because you're like, by damn,
I'm going to get this movie made. And anybody who
told me I can't watch me? Is it a little
bit of both?
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Well, first of all, you are such a smarty pants.
I love it you are you are. Thank you. I
love the rigor and the robust nature of your questions,
and I can hear the research and the preparation, and
it's a it's a pleasure. It's rare. I've been doing
a lot of interviews, okay, So it's such a such
(38:54):
a delight to be in conversation with you. So thank you,
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
That's really kind.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Yes. And also, you know you're the first person that's
pointed out the monuments in the film. You know there
are three three I meant to make sure that in
the three interlocking spaces or times that we explore, you know,
the American South and segregation, the Holocaust in Germany, and
(39:21):
then the cast system in India. I went to make
sure that we went to a monument, a museum that
represented each in the modern day. We're at the Holocaust
Memorial in Berlin. We were at the Bedcar Museum in Delhi,
and we were at the National Lyunching Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama.
And we went all of these spaces. The author in
(39:43):
the film is visiting these actual spaces in her research.
And now one person since September has asked me a
question about it, except you, so thank you, Mari. I
integrated it, but yes, it was. It was a journey
to get this made. We were shooting this time last year.
You know, this is this is. This has been a
(40:05):
fast turnaround in terms of the film. I wrote it
for two years. We started raising money for it last summer.
We started making it this time last year in January,
and now we're in January and it's coming out. So
if you take out the writing, it's been a year
long process. Now, while that is it's a long time,
(40:27):
it's certainly a drop in the bucket to what it
takes to make most films. So this has been a
very propulsive, very energetic process. It's been full till every
hour of every every waking hour of the day for
a year, and that's been intense. But really, when I
think about it, it's been a swift journey in the
(40:53):
grand scheme of things. And it has been one where
doors have opened and ways have been made that where
it looks like there is no way and there is
no door, And it has taken holding hands with people
who believe in it and believe in the vision. And
because I've done this a few times before, I have
some tricks of my sleeve as to how to, you know,
(41:15):
keep moving in a certain direction. But I look back
and I think, wow, we did this in a year
and a half, from raising the money to being in
theaters a year and a half, and that is not done.
And so what that tells me is with the right
intention and with a focus and a mission to be
(41:44):
deliberate and focusing on the things you have instead of
the things you don't have. Right, I don't have a
studio giving me all the money I need. I don't
have the seventy days that I should have to do this.
I don't have this I don't have that. Okay, I
(42:06):
raised enough money for thirty seven days. Okay, I know
these people who want to help me, and I'm going
to focus on them, not the people who are saying,
don't do it. By focusing what I had instead of not,
instead of focusing what I don't have, I shifted my
attention and I green light my greenlit myself. And whether
(42:26):
you are making a film where you're doing whatever, green
light yourself, green light yourself, say I'm going I'm doing it.
Watch me, And you don't have to know all the steps,
but you can take one. I take one step, and
then you can figure out the next and the next,
(42:46):
and one day you're going to turn around and there's
more behind you that's in front of you, and you're
almost there or you're there. And so for me, the
steps it was about a year and a half. But
every day I took a step, even if I didn't
know which way, or even with if it was just
a little one said I have to do something today
(43:07):
to move this forward. And that's the way we approached it.
And we didn't approach it from a place of lack.
I didn't let the words come out of my mouth
every day, I don't have this or what's going on?
And I moved it, We all moved it forward. When
I stopped was about a month and a half or
so ago where I started to say those words, what's
(43:30):
going on? Why aren't people coming in? Why don't want
people know about the movie? Why can't I get the
word out on this movie? What? And I started to
get into this vulnerable dark place because I'm using language
and I'm feeling in the lack and over the holidays,
I just I just was was blessed and fortunate enough
(43:51):
to start to come out of that haze and to
start to change my language and to look at what
I had. And I'm just telling you the ways in
which we talk to ourselves, that's the life we're living.
You know what I mean. You're either talking to yourself
in your head all day from a place of lack
(44:11):
and woe is me? And why isn't this and why
didn't this happen? And why is this happening to me?
Or you're paying this is happening for me? This is
what I do have, This is what I am going
to do, this is what's going to happen today. I'm
going to take a step. And I'm not saying this
to be preaching. I'm just saying you asked me a questions.
This is my experience, Like I have experienced the dark
(44:32):
side of it, and I've experienced when I look up
and like whoa, I'm moving. I am moving. And so
this film was all about moving and moving forward and
sitting here with you today and just talking about the time.
I haven't really thought about the time, but like on
this day last year, I was calling action on set,
(44:52):
and now a year later, I'm here talking about the
movie comes out on the nineteen. That's that's that's that's beautiful.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
It's a yeah. And for people at home, I mean
you said it's it's a quick turnaround and the energy
behind it and that propulsion. It's about the movie, but
it's also about you. You're talking about these transformative principles,
and I'm so grateful you're willing to share them because
(45:23):
someone at home who's listening to us talk today is going, well, shit,
if Iva du Verne, can you know, hit a hurdle
and figure out how to navigate around it, maybe I
can too. Maybe I can go make my short, maybe
I can start that book I've always wanted to write,
maybe maybe I can have this hard conversation with my
(45:44):
family about something that I know we need to change,
whatever it is professional, personal. The reminder that at every
stage of your life, no matter what wrong of the
ladder you've made it up to, you will be tested,
You will have to read examine your commitments, capabilities, creativities,
(46:04):
and that you can always find a workarounds.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
That's profound, I hope, so you know, I think, and
the workaround I just want to remind people is the
steps are small. You get the rebel and the small steps,
you know. So over the holidays, when I was feeling
down about certain things, certain aspects professionally, and I remember something,
(46:36):
my aunt Denise said, clean up. So I looked around
and my environment reflected what was in my head. Whatoes
were on the chair that I hadn't hung up, you
know what I mean. My shoes were all off, the
shelf rowers were open, you know what I mean. Like
I was getting out of it and not making it,
(46:57):
you know what I mean. And I just looked around.
It's like, let me just when I say this, because
it's the small step. If you want all this to happen,
get yourself together, So I just start to clean up
my room and hang up the clothes. I can't do
all the things I want to do out in the
world right now. What can I do right now? I'm
going to clean that closet. I'm going to hang these clothes.
(47:21):
I'm going to wash these clothes. This is what I
can do right now. And guess what. Tomorrow, I'm gonna
go take a walk, I'm gonna call a friend. I'm
gonna pull myself out of this. And then the next
day I'm gonna make that phone call. And then the
next day I'm gonna buy those ads. And the next
day I'm gonna be less bronable and call a friend
(47:42):
and say I need help. And the next day I'm
gonna be with Sophia Bush on a podcast, and the
next day my movie's coming out, and like and look
now I'm up and out. I'm out of my bed.
Yeah what I mean. But just to tell people, it's
so it feels so big when you're down or you
feel like you're stuck. Just start small, start with whatever
(48:05):
you can. You know, there's something to be said for momentum.
You know, get some success today. What can you succeed
at today I hung up my clothes. There are no
clothes on the chair. The only one that puts closed
on the chair. Is it just me? Because I know
it's all of us.
Speaker 1 (48:26):
Any any chair or bench or we couch in a bedroom,
if you're lucky enough to have room for it just
becomes the place the clothes go.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
That's right, you know, but you know what I mean,
It's just it's just I think sometimes we talk about
these big things and how you do it, and it's
just good to hear. Just start where you are with
a small thing and let that propel you to the next.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
We'll be back in just a minute after a few
words from our favorite sponsors. Did it feel like that?
You know, this is the microcosm of your room and
how you talk to yourself and you know the words
you use. It's like why we talk about spelling. You
cast spells with your words, Like how are you talking
(49:10):
to yourself? How are you feeling yourself? And as a storyteller,
as that gets out and gets into the big you
know macro of these projects that you make, these big
stories that are the undertaking at the basis of a
film like this, how do you do the cleanup? How
do you figure out what the next right thing is
(49:33):
in a movie this big? Because this movie is made
up of a lot of hard stories to watch. You know,
when you talk about these these monuments, what we get
to see as viewers of this film and go to
Berlin with you, and go to Alabama with you, and
go to India with you, and see inside of the
narrative story of Isabel's life and her family. You know,
(49:58):
I heard myself. I realized the sound I was hearing
was the sound of myself gasping when she was standing
above that window into the ground, looking at all the
empty bookshelves to symbolize all the books that were burned
in Nazi Germany, and you had to recreate that. You
had to burn books. You you recreated and brought the
(50:19):
audience into the belly of slave ships. These are these
are the most horrific things that we've done to each
other through the course of humanity. How do you figure
out like which which is the next right step to?
How do you how do you undertake something like that?
(50:41):
Where do you where do you begin as a as
a filmmaker, as a director to to lead us that way?
Speaker 2 (50:48):
Thank you for the question. I think you know, for me,
I'm not telling stories of trauma. I'm telling stories of triumph.
In order to tell a story of triumph, you have
to overcome something. So I have to show what's being overcome.
And I think about, well, how do I show that
in a way that humanizes it? How do I make
people empathize with this so that they really feel the triumph?
(51:13):
You know, how do I portray what's being overcome? And
that's really what I where I start. So if I
want to show this brilliant black woman, author, academic, and
I want to share with you look at what a
dream in a mirrorle school she is, I have to
show maor right, I have to show you why she's
(51:37):
such a genius and a wonder and what went into that.
And I have to show her personal loss, and I
have to show where she comes from and the idea
is about her and people like her that make it
a lot less likely that she would occupy the space
that she occupies. So I try to build it that way.
(51:59):
You know, you know, if it's Selma, and you know,
doctor King is out and he's leading the margins, he's
doing and he's doing all the things, he's just a figurehead,
unless you know that Corretta and the children are home
missing him, and what he sacrificed to be out on
the front lines for all people was time with his family.
(52:22):
We don't think about that. He's a symbol and he's
up there and he's doing his thing. He's a human
being and what that did to him and what that
did to her, and what I did to their family, right,
And so as I'm building stories, I'm always looking at
making it deeply personal. You know, in this film, you
follow Trayvon Martin, who, for those that don't know, was
(52:44):
a boy, a teenager, who was stalked and killed by
I don't know, a random citizen who thought that he
looked suspicious as he walked through the neighborhood and he
shot him and killed him. I'm going to give you
some time in the film to get to know him
a little bit before that happened, so that he's not
(53:06):
just a statistic that you hear on the news. You
knew him, and you knew what he was talking about
on the phone, and you knew what he bought from
the store, and you knew what his plans were for
the next day. So now when he's taken from you
you care. So that's how I try to build the films.
(53:28):
When you ask how it is, how do I get
to the personal place, the human place? How do I
break cast humanize whatever idea and not let you lump
everything in, but get down to a place where you're
on a feeling level. That's really how I approach you
as I'm writing and I'm directing, is you know, not
(53:48):
to just go for the spectacle, but to try to
get to the singularity of an experience, because when you
get singular, you really are universal.
Speaker 1 (53:58):
Right, Yeah. And what strikes me about what you're saying
is that you can't be fully human without being fully honest.
And it's not lost on me that we read about
the death of Trayvon Martin at the hands of a
man who I shan't name because I don't think he
deserves the time. But that young boy was taken from
(54:20):
his family and from all of us in Florida, where
we see a governor who, as you referenced earlier, wants
to ban books, who doesn't want us to read about
our history. And you see this across the country, and
it strikes me as a form of real insanity because
it's a denialism of who we are. You know, how
(54:42):
can you govern a state where you're going to try
to stop the teaching of what happened last week? Do
you if you're going to ban the books about history,
do you also stop the newspapers from writing about what's happening?
Speaker 2 (54:53):
Like? How far does it go? It goes to well
want us not to learn history, so we don't know
how far it goes, but where it leads. These are
the exact same steps that led to the Holocaust. Yes,
the same steps. I show it to you in the
movie the book before that the camps opened. The thing
(55:18):
did is let's take away knowledge, let's take away ideas.
Let's make people afraid to talk about it. Let's make
people afraid to raise their voices. And once we take
away the knowledge and we make them afraid, and they
make sure that they don't talk to each other and
they're not speaking up. Now we can do anything, Yeah,
do anything. And why would they do it? It's cast.
(55:42):
The more that they do it, the more power and
status tilts their way. The way to break cast is
to set, is to raise your voice, to assert yourself
as a human being, as an individual right and to
collectively raise your hands, and the power then tilts back.
And we've seen it country. It teeters and it tilts.
(56:02):
But now it's tilting so far away from justice. The
fear is that it's going to get so far that
it's going to take generations to tilt back. We are
coming on the We are at the end of a
glorious period in which every decade gains were made to
humanize the lives of more kinds of people. Yes, and
(56:26):
status and power shifting to a place where it was
shared by more kinds of people, never fully but tilting
more in that direction, bending more towards justice, as doctor
King would say, the arc of justice, bending towards equity building,
bending towards dignity building, towards an acknowledgment of different kinds
(56:50):
of people. It's going the other way now, right, And
the reason why I wanted this film to be out
this year, this year, so that we can engage one
another about this in other countries in an election year,
in a kind of like this, we would be taking
to the streets every day. There would be no dinner
(57:12):
table of conversation that's not about this. But we are fatigued.
We're exhausted. We are spoiled as Americans. We are privileged
enough to think that the lives that we enjoy can
continue in this way. And we don't even see the
danger up ahead. Why because we're not looking at history.
This is what happened already. I'm just trying to wave
(57:32):
a flag and say, folks, please, please, let's here and
wake up to what's going on. And so you know,
the film is an invitation to interrogate our interior lives, right,
But also by doing that, you cannot stay sheep. You
cannot stay following by interrogating your tirior lives and asserting
(57:55):
yourself as a human being, an individual, you cannot allow
this happen. The more you allow it, the less you
are leaning into your humanity. Because this is an in
you humane time that we're in accepting of the stripping
of rights of all kinds of people. In this moment,
(58:15):
you and I cannot even decide what we want to
do with our own bodies, not make that decision legally.
Right in this moment, there are people who exist in
different ways, who their way of life, way of thinking
is considered illegal. Those freedoms that we think we enjoy,
the illusion of that is just going to slip away,
(58:36):
slip away more and more. We have a candidate right
now who is honest, face bold face said out loud, repeatedly,
this is what I'm going to do when I'm back
in power. If you didn't like it last time, I'm
just going to tell you exactly what I'm going to
do this time. Because I'm mad and I'm back.
Speaker 1 (58:57):
And saying this time it'll be worse.
Speaker 2 (59:00):
He's saying it every day, every day, still not listening,
and so it's just it is. We're going to look
up and it's going to be too late. Yeah, And
that is why I didn't wait for studios, and that
is why we got this done in a year. It
(59:21):
is to say, even if a small group of people
see this film and become activated by it, maybe it's
a spark. Maybe it's a spark that lights a fire
that we need to have roaring at this point.
Speaker 1 (59:34):
What I love and thank you. What I love about
what you're saying is that in order to triumph, you
have to be honest about where you come from. Yes,
in order to defeat harm, you have to be honest
about what harm has looked like. Yes, and you are
reminding people that by being willing to explore things honestly,
they can be more human. I wept, I'm I mean
(01:00:00):
ugly cry for the entire second half of the film.
I was exhausted at the end of it in the
best way. I felt more human waking up the day
after watching your movie, less less exhausted by the state
of the world, more inspired to keep going for us,
(01:00:22):
and that I really believe is the power of honest storytelling.
So I want to thank you not only for sharing
it with us, but for sharing the reasoning behind it
with us so that we can be reminded of how
powerful we are.
Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
There's no better compliment that you can give me, no
better gift, because that is what I hope people get
from it, that they you know, there's a lot being made.
I cried in the movie. It has hard stuff. You
showed this and this, but you come out feeling the
way that you just talked about, come out feeling awake, activated, curious,
(01:01:01):
curious about yourself, about wanting to read, wanting to know
more what, Yes, you know. And so that's the hope,
is that it's a spark and you know, yeah, you
got to watch some tough stuff. But the feeling at
the end, you know, those are cleansing tears. You're crying, Yes,
you know what I mean. Those are clearing away. And
(01:01:24):
I just hope more people embrace it and allow themselves
to feel that.
Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
Oh, I believe it. I will go ahead and say
to all of our friends at home, who I know,
your souls are beating a little louder as mine are
after spending an hour with Ava, I'm excited to see
I always joke or not joke. I guess I uplift
that a lot of the people who I've aggregated online
have come in because they want to help. They believe
(01:01:51):
in helping helpers. I call them all my first responders,
and I just can't wait to see how many people
who listen to this show are like out here publicizing
this movie. I want to remind everybody at home that you,
no matter how big you think your platform is, you
have one. If it's five family members or five hundred
people or fifty thousand people online, people gravitate to you
(01:02:13):
because they trust you, and I would love for all
of you to share about this movie. I obviously want
you all to go see this movie. I believe you
all will be transformed by this movie. And I know
I speak on behalf of myself and all of you
when I think the incredible miss to Vernee for taking
time to be with us today.
Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
Well, I appreciate you. I appreciate this conversation. I'll appreciate
this call to action that you just made. And I'll say,
Seat sixteen is a very simple thing. We made it
up and for sixteen books, it ad buys a seat
for a young person and they get a one year
subscription to masterclass.
Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
Oh my god, Dreamboat of a Human is just a
way to you know, share it with you know, kids
who won't buy the ticket, but they make us something
for free.
Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
I will never make a dime from this movie. I
haven't even said that anywhere. I did not get paid
to make this movie. I put my salary into the movie, right,
no amount of money. We have to pay back the
people who gave us the money to make the movie. Right,
So I'll make money on this movie. It's not about
money for me. It's about this time that we're in
the message that the movie shares mission urgent. It's a mission.
(01:03:22):
This is urgent. It's urgent, and I don't want to
be able I don't want to look back and say,
what did I do? I didn't I didn't do enough.
This is what I can do, you know, and everyone
has the thing that they can do. If you can
cook and figure out how the cooking serves you know,
the moment that we're in. And if you, if you,
if you've got five family members, if you have well,
(01:03:44):
if you, if you do, do a walkathon, put a
new put a couple of books out on your porch
for folks, whatever you can do to move us forward
in this time a little bit more towards justice and
community for all doing this is what I could do. Yes,
So what what Sophia's saying? It's not about any kind
(01:04:05):
of there's no corporation getting this money, there's none. It
is about how can you amplify the message, and if
it's not for this movie, find a way to wake
up the people around you and to wake up yourself,
you know, find a way to hang the clothes, find
a way to clear a path, find a way to
be less fatigue and exhausted, so that we can we
(01:04:27):
can bloom, and we can blossom together, because right now
we're wilting, but I believe we can. We can shine
a light and turn things around. And now's the time.
Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
Well here's to the blooming yeah say man, thank you,
thank you, my friend,
Hey everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome to work in progress. Hello friends,
Today I am almost beside myself because our guest is
(00:21):
a woman who I admire so much that I'm actually
nervous about how I'm going to manage to talk to her.
I perhaps have done more prep and taken more notes.
My laptop screen looks like a beautiful mind because I
just have so many things I want to pick her
brain about, and I'm so inspired by her work. She
is none other than Ava du Vernet. You likely know
(00:43):
her as an award winning director and writer. Perhaps you
know her from being on the Time one hundred list
of the most influential people in the world, having one
Best Director at sun Dance and by the way, being
the first African American woman to do so, being nominated
for Best Director for the Golden Globes for Selma directing
a film nominated for Best Picture for Oscar. Also Selma
(01:05):
directing a film with a budget of over one hundred
million dollars A wrinkle in time. Her accolades go on
and on. Her humanity somehow, despite the size of her star,
precedes her in every room. I am constantly blown away
by her and inspired by her because she is not
(01:26):
only an artist and a storyteller, but a teacher. Ava
is the kind of person who invites everyone in to
learn more, do more, and imagine more for all of us,
just by being herself. And her new film, Origin will
be in theaters on January nineteenth. Origin is based on
(01:48):
the best selling book cast by Isabel Wilkerson. The book
is about the unspoken system that has shaped America and
also the world, the caste system. It chronicles how lives
to day and historically have been and are defined by
a hierarchy of human divisions. It is a book that
is incredibly intellectual, written by one of the most brilliant
(02:11):
academic minds of our time, and yet Ava managed to
pull a narrative story out of this five hundred page
book that is so human and so personal and somehow
so universal. I really believe you will see yourselves reflected
in it. I think you will be touched and crushed
(02:33):
and motivated to be more human, more loving, more active
in your families and communities. And I just I can't
wait for you all to see this movie, and I
cannot wait to ask her questions about how she manages
to take stories like this and bring us all along
for the journey. So, with no further ado, let's speak
(02:55):
with Ava du Verne.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Hello, how are you, friend? Hi? How are you I am?
I'm good. I'm learning me too. I'm learning things. You know,
a lot journey, so I'm embracing the lessons. How are you.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
I Different journeys, but same energy for sure.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Listen, I hear that.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yeah, it's been a season of learning. I was catching
up with a friend of mine today who is a
he's a beautiful artist and he's really been in it.
And I just said, you know, maybe that's the thing.
When you sign up to learn and you age, the
lessons get bigger, so they're more complex and more difficult,
(03:51):
but more profound.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Listen, amen, Amen to that.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Yeah, I mean you made the most beautiful piece of
art about exactly this.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yes, I think you know it's about uh, you know,
it's about embracing the lessons and really seeing them as
experiences that are happening not to you. Why is this
happening to me but for you? Right?
Speaker 1 (04:18):
You just gave me full chills. I have this conversation
one hour ago.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Yeah. Yeah, And so as soon as I ever think
that and I heard that from from from my my,
a good friend of mine who used to have a
talk show many years ago. Yeah, she said that to me,
and it really changed everything for me. And when I
forget it and I remind myself of it, it immediately
calms me. This hard thing, this challenging thing, isn't to you.
(04:47):
It's happening for you, and it makes me stop and
just changes my perspective. Okay, wait, what's the lesson here?
What am I supposed to take from this? What am
I supposed to do or how am I supposed to be?
So I'm having to remind my I solve that about
a lot lately.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
So wow, so full transparency. I just had that conversation.
Tuesday mornings, I do therapy and then I record the podcast,
and I was having this conversation with my therapist about
how so many people I know are in this big
season of transition and transformation that is coming with lessons.
And then I said, and it's it's not lost on
(05:25):
me that when you really get into it and you
pull the thread, you realize everything's connected, right, And then
I started talking about your movie and I was sobbing
on zoom with my therapist. I was like and then
she made this movie and she managed to get the
whole book in the movie, and it's really intense, and
I was just weeping, and I was like, I haven't
stopped crying since I watched it. And I think about
(05:48):
the way, since I became aware of your work, I
have been so moved by your work and by you
as a person.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
You are.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
You are so such a powerful presence and such a
kind soul. You will take the time to, you know,
respond to an Instagram note you advocate in this way
that is so true. You are an artist and a
writer and a director and a storyteller and a change
maker and a justice seeker, and you invite other people
(06:21):
to seek with you. And it's something that I realize
in these seasons of transition, I really want to take
the time to stay out loud and just say thank
you for thank you.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I received that thank you. I feel your words fla
very much. Thank you. I drink it in and and yeah,
you know, it makes me sad when I hear that,
because I wonder, and I hear it quite a bit.
I'm just people saying gosh you thank you for replying
(06:58):
to me, or thank you to people. Don't reply, do
you like is this not happening? People are not I
think people are experiencing a lack of response, a lack
of kindness, and a lack of connectivity. And so when
you a small gestures sometimes mean so much, and you've
(07:21):
gone through the day thirsty for even someone to look
you in the eye acknowledge it, you know what I mean,
and that that there's that that kind of absence of connection.
And so but for me, it's it's it's harder to
ignore people than it is to just lean in and
you see something. Why would you not say I like it?
If someone comes into your head. My mother always taught me,
(07:42):
if someone comes in your head, called them, that someone
comes into your head, texts them they're there for a reason,
you know what I mean, Like follow your feelings. And
I think for me, it's more effort to cut it off.
And I think our industry, you know, our industry, and
and then and this life in general, work and all
the things that society tells us we should think about.
(08:04):
There's just a way from listening to Hey, if that
person came to your hit or if you thought about that,
that's follow it. Yeah, don't follow the world. Follow what's
in here, and and so I find when I do that,
I'm much I'm much more happy.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
That's beautiful. I think it's also a nice reminder to
hear you say that because so many people. I've had
this conversation with a lot of folks on this show
and in life, and I know I suffer from this
a little bit. I never want to bother anybody.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I know me too, you know.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
I think we can get really cultured into I don't
want to be in the way I And what that is,
I think is the it's the sort of action of
imposter syndrome a little bit. Well, I'll be a little
annoying if I do this, or maybe I'll be bothering somebody.
They're probably so busy, And what can happen is when
everyone assumes you're busy, nobody bothers you.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
And so to take the time to do that and
to remind people that you should follow those sort of
instincts or those moments of you know, energetic motivation, that yeah,
that's going to help people.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
I think I like that that term energetic motivation very much.
And I completely hear what you're saying, and I think
the word The word that comes to me is vulnerability.
You know, I don't want to show people that we're vulnerable.
And by asking or by reaching out, you basically say
please answer me, and you have to wait, you know,
(09:34):
and you don't know what that's going to be, and
all those what those feelings will be or what they think,
and it's kind of leaning into vulnerability. For example, right
now in this season of my life, I'm in a
very vulnerable place. The most vulnerable place the artists can
be and is I always thought, is sharing their work.
So when we were first you know, sharing some are
or thirteenth there are all these things or even origin
(09:57):
back in the summertime at the big film festival at
Venice Film Festival in Toronto, that's a vulnerable time in
the audience. Will they like my work? But I'm wrong.
I had not experienced what is even more vulnerable than that,
And that's right now with what's going on with the
film and needing to ask people for help because film
(10:19):
is not reaching. It doesn't have the money, it doesn't
have a big marketing campaign, it doesn't have a big
studio behind it. You're having a problem reaching the people
who I made it for and so I feel very vulnerable.
How do I do this? You know, I've used to
be with big studios and Netflix and Warner Brothers and
Disney and all of that, Like what do I do?
You have to ask people for help? And I'm telling you, Sophia,
(10:43):
I am struggling with picking up the phone and asking
people who I know can help. Yes, I can't even
bring myself omals gonna cry. I can't even bring myself
to pick up the phone and say I need help.
And so maybe about three days ago, my great brother
and friend, David o'yelowell, he uh, he said, my sister,
(11:06):
I'm going to pray for you, because you need to
lift this up. You know too many people, and you've
got to tell them what's going on, and you need
to ask for help. And I guess what happened. I
asked one or two people. I sent an email. I say,
I'm feeling very vulnerable right now, this is what's going
on with the movie. I need help. I asked two people,
and within three days, fifteen different people who I did
(11:30):
not even know, very famous people. I started to get
these crazy emails. Hey, I saw your movie. What can
I do to help? Hey, I've got this, Can I
help well? By opening up right to tell the universe
I need help, and to say that full throated yes,
help started to rush in. I can't even believe it,
(11:53):
and so I just say, I just I don't know
who that hits right now. But in whatever way the
fear was blocking off whatever was supposed to come to me,
I was so afraid. I was holding this so tiny.
As soon as I opened up and just said, please
help me, this is what's going on it, you know,
so many beautiful things have rushed in. And maybe it's
(12:14):
because my eyes are open, maybe because I'm open to
receiving it. Who knows. I don't know, but I do
know that something fundamentally changed when I said the words
out loud and when I and when I asked yes.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
And isn't it interesting when you acknowledge what you need,
when you finally, when you really finally tell that that
deepest root of the root truth, yes, the world goes, oh,
that's what you need, that's what you want here it is.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yeah. I think that's what happened in a way, But
also you change, you hear differently. Maybe help was always
there and I was maybe things happening on the fact
that I wasn't seeing. So there's like a mindfulness there,
you know. I was reading, reading some spiritual spirit to
work this morning, which is just about you know, every
step you take, your take is a sacred step on
(13:05):
this planet. And when you're rushing around in your head
thinking about your grocery list, you're not observing the bird
that disturbed and the butterfly that flew by, or the
person that tried to smile at you, but you didn't
see them and you didn't smile back. And now it's
too late because they've passed you. And what that's why
I would have done to them, right, And so it's
just like being present, being mindful and and I think,
(13:27):
you know, declaring where you are and knowing where you
are for being able to say, I am vulnerable right now.
I am scared. My movie is not reaching people that
I put my whole heart into. I need I need
some help getting the word out and to quiet and
open my eyes to it. I saw people waving, hey,
I'm over here, I can help. I can help. So
who knows how it works, but it works.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
It's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
I invite people to think about it for the for themselves.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
And now a word from our sponsors that I really
enjoy and I think you will too. Well when you
think about that, you know, pulling on that thread and
seeing how much everything is connected, which is what Isabelle
Wilkerson does in her book. You You have such a beauty.
(14:14):
I mean, the entire movie is so beautiful. I don't
quite have words for it, and I'm a person who
has a lot of words. The scene where she's explaining
to her editors what this book is going to be
and they admit, we don't get it. But if you
(14:34):
can do it, that's a book, you know. The That's
something that also really inspired me when when you have
to sort of admit I may not see it, but
I want to. Yeah. And the profundity of her book
carrying us all on this journey to say, the ways
we're examining the world around us, the ways we're examining
(14:56):
prejudice and tribalism. It's bigger than we think it is.
It's bigger than we say it is. It's more insidious.
It's a shape shifter.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
I think about how you read that book and you
spoke about it in the you know, you did a
great article with the rap and not at all the
point of this interview, but my god, that white dress.
I was like, girl, come on, like you're out here
speaking so poetically about the human condition, and also just
like leaving not a crumb on the plate. I was like,
this woman, I love her. But you talk in the
(15:32):
article about how you read the book and it was
so big you had to go back and read it again,
and then you started to formulate this movie. And again
it just speaks to the thing that as a fan
of yours, I'm so impressed by and always drawn towards
what it appears, at least from the outside and to
be is your inquisitiveness and your desire to really follow
(15:56):
things to the sort of origin of the path the
road when you think about your story, because everybody who's
at home listening is like, hey Va du Verne, the director,
the award winning filmmaker, she's so incredible. I can't wait
to hear what she has to say. Do you pull
the thread of your inquisitiveness and your desire to tell
(16:19):
story all the way back in hindsight when you look
at yourself, through your life, through your childhood, were you
were you sure you were destined to be a director
when you were eight years old? Or was that an
evolution for you, a calling or an evolution or maybe
a mix of both.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Yes, no, thank you for the observations. I didn't pick
up a camera until I was thirty two years old.
So at the age of eight, nine, eighteen, twenty twenty one,
you know, twenty seven, I had no idea i'd be
a filmmaker. Isn't that wild? You couldn't have told me
fifteen years ago that I would be working professionally as
(16:57):
a filmmaker. There was no thought in my mind elementary school,
in high school, in college, after college that one could
make a living. Me, see a filmmaker? What's that? Oh,
Steven Spielberg, he directs movies. That was it. I didn't
even know anyone else who directed. Steven Spilberg and Spike Lee,
those were two names I knew. If you asked me
(17:19):
who directs movies, I couldn't tell you one woman, certainly
not a black woman. I don't even know what that
looks like at that age, and so you know that
that's not even impossibility. I loved movies. I never thought
I could work in an industry that made them. But
then I became a publicist for movies, and I got sets,
(17:41):
and I got to got to meet people who made movies,
and I got to amplify movies and travel with with
with with filmmakers and directors and hear them talk about
their their films like I'm doing right now, and I
started to say, Wow, this is this is this is
something that people are making with their hands. It looks
like magic when you watch a movie theater or but
it's really like a handmade craft. Everyone just kind of
(18:03):
coming together to do this thing, and isn't that amazing?
And then one day, on one particular set, I said, well,
can I be a part of it? Can't I want
to make it. I want to make something. I have
something to say, and started to make my short own
short films at the age of thirty two thirty three.
You know, I didn't go to film school. I didn't
know anything about cameras. I didn't know how to direct actors.
(18:24):
I didn't know how to block a scene. I didn't
know how to edit. I don't know any of it.
And I just embraced the joy of teaching myself and
learning along the way, and the fact that you cut
to moments like this where I get to talk to
someone like you on the phone about my on the zoom,
about my movie, and that movie will be in theaters
(18:45):
and people will pay money and sit in seats to
see what's in this head. It is. I won't even
say dream because I didn't dream it. It's like a miracle,
you know, that was made just for me, and it's
an honor and a privilege. And uh, it's like magic
(19:05):
to me because it was it was nothing that I
ever imagined, you know, And it was it was, it was.
It is a gift. It was given to me, and
so I treasure it and I and I don't take
it for granted, and you know, but certainly it was
it was never anything that was that was planned. Now,
once the magic presented itself, I'm going to work my
(19:26):
butto like, once the miracles here, okay, how do I
how do I take that gift and run with it?
But gosh, I never saw it coming.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah. Well, and and when you talk about not only
what you didn't know, but what you didn't see, you know,
the the lack of women occupying the director's chair, certainly
women of color occupying the director's chair, You've broken boundary
after boundary and barrier after barrier, and the I think
(19:59):
people can forg get when they meet someone like you
in the Accolade list is as long as it is
that that there was no roadmap you You drew the
map while you walked to the terrain.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
You know, I followed steps that have been there before,
but women whose names were not amplified. I'm a good point,
not the first to do these things. I'm the first
that the establishment has said, oh, well, we'll say her name,
But Julie Dash, Nina Barnett's not alls, Casey Lemon's. You know,
(20:37):
Kathleen Collins, you know, Maya Angelou, Debbie Allen. No women
who had done all this stuff before, but never one,
never was nominated, never was the cover of a magazine,
never walked, never did all the all the things that
have been decided that they're going my direction. That's why
(21:00):
when people say first, this first, that you know it's bittersweet. Yes,
I embrace the sweet part of it. Any artist wants
to be acknowledged for the work. But the fact that
it's the first and the film medium is over one
hundred years old. The fact when I'm the first African
American woman to ever compete in competition at Venice. It's
the oldest film festival in the world. It's twenty twenty three.
(21:23):
That's not a thing to celebrate. I don't think to
say there's been an absence here, there's been an error here.
And by saying first with cheers and collaps, what you're
really expressing is we have not done this before, And
to say it because the work wasn't worthy is untrue.
To say we didn't open our eyes to its worthiness
(21:45):
before is the fact. So you know, to be in
occupy that position, I always like to really make sure
I'm being clear and sober. We spoke about, you know,
what it really is, and.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
It speaks I think volumes about you sitting in that
space with this film, because this film is talking about
the complexity of these systems that often refuse to see,
acknowledge or uplift the worth of people, the desire in
(22:22):
some part of the human brain, or these toxic systems
we've built to other people, yep, and how deep it
goes and global it is and historical it is. As
you were reading this book, how did you begin to
(22:44):
wrap your mind around the calling the tug you felt
to make it into a film to share this in
a way that more and more people would see it,
experience it, and understand it to be true.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Yeah, that's a beautiful connection between those two. Thank you.
I you know, there's one thing that I know about myself,
and I think it's important for us to be able
to name the things that we do well. You know,
it's hard to be able to do that, especially as women.
You know, we we don't say I can do this,
I can do this. Well, I'm good at that I
(23:22):
can really do this. You know, I know how to
do this. And one of the things that I've in
trying to kind of own that for myself, to define
and actually count the things I do know how to
do the things I feel confident in, you know what
I mean. I'm good at translation. You know, I'm good
(23:44):
at being able to tell you a story in a
way that might make a complex idea go down a
little easier. You know. I know that I'm good at
taking a huge, which unruly thing like criminalization and the
prison industrial complex, and I know a way that works
(24:07):
for me to make you feel what that is in
thirteenth and when they see us, and the way for
me is I'm gonna humanize it. I'm gonna take this
huge thing, so big, so big, I can't even understand
all the nuances. It's overwhelming. I don't even want to
think about it. And I'm gonna bring it all the
way down to one person, and I'm gonna show you
(24:29):
how that thing works with this one person or these
five boys who used to be known as the Central
Park Five and their families. Let's just focus on them,
and once you get to know them and you understand
how what their hopes and dreams were and how it
worked with them, WHOA, Now I feel like I understand
the whole thing. It's the same with Caste. I can't
(24:50):
write a movie about cast I don't know. It's so
big cast How am I going to write a movie
about that. I'm going to write a movie about a
woman on a journey, a woman on an intellectual and
emotional journey. I'm going to show you what she goes
through as she's writing a book about cast and then
you can go read that book. But I'm going to
(25:10):
bring you into the heart of it through one person.
And so that was really my approach to it, and
that's when my approach on Selma I can't tell you
the whole civil rights movement and all the motivations, but
there was this one time that the black folk got
together and say, we want this, and we're going to
march every day until we get across this bridge and
(25:31):
exert our influence and demand our rights. I can bring
it down to that one that one piece, and so
I think, you know, bite sized pieces, you know, humanizing
the moment, humanizing the big issue. Those are things that
I feel like I know how to do. And that's
how I tackled this idea. After I read this book,
(25:55):
I wanted more people to know about it. It was
so big that when I finally decided, oh, I'll just
focus on her telling us what it is, it became
a viable, possible route. And I just followed that.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
It's incredible for people listening at home who have not
perhaps read the book yet, but who you hope the
film inspires to do. So, can you can you explain
for listeners what cast is the overarching connection that you're
talking about drawing through Isabelle's story.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yes, now I always preface this by saying I'm not
isabel Wilkerson Junior. I'm a filmmaker. I'm not a scholar.
I'm not an academic. I'm not an intellectual, and I
might get this wrong. I'll tell you what I interpreted
the book to be and what I understand casts to be,
and what I put into this film, guest. Is the
(26:55):
foundation that all of the rooms in the house sit on.
The rooms in this house, the householl called our society.
One room is racism, one room is sexism, one room
is homophobia, one room is anti Semitism, one room is Islamophobia,
(27:15):
one room ableism, agism, all the isn't. All the rooms
are there, but the rooms sit on top of the
foundation of this house, right, And the foundation that all
sits on top of is called caste because cast is
the very simple to understand idea one kind of person
(27:39):
is better than another kind of person. Now, in this
room it's skin color, and in this room it's age,
and in this room it's gender, and in this room
it's your sexual preference or your room. But they all
sit on top of a foundation, right, And until you
know that the foundation of all these isn't is the same, right,
(28:01):
and you can't really make your room through the way
that your way through the house, because the other rooms
are dark. But once you understand that they all sit
on top of this of expectation, all the lights in
the house are on. Well you see that this room
leads to this room and these are all connected. Now
the lights in the house are on, I can make
my way through. I can figure out how all this works,
(28:24):
and I can see how they all touch each other
with common walls. Right, And so you know we're in
these silos. Everyone's in their dark room. And I think
Cass turns the lights on and says, wait a minute,
this is all the same. And whether it's happening in
Nazi Germany or whether it's happening today, right, Nazi Germany,
they're burning books today, they're banning books right, whether or
(28:47):
not you're in you're in India and feudal India, or
you're in the United States and you're Trayvon Martin. Underneath
it all, someone is saying you are at the bottom,
and I am at the top. And because I'm at
the top, I will have power and status because you
are at the bottom, based on random traits. And so
I just think that I thought the idea was like
(29:09):
a whoe idea, and I wanted to know about it,
and it's more about it than the book goes into
great detail. It's almost a five hundred page book. It's
a thesis. I know that everyone's not going to read
a five hundred page book, and I know that there
are ideas in here that I might be able to
express down to one person. And so that's what Origin is.
(29:31):
The book is called cast the Origins of our discontents.
An Origin just tries to boil that down through the
journey of this woman. And I hope that people take
from it a new idea about how to organize our
thoughts about our place in the world and everyone around us.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
That's so beautifully put helping people to understand how getting
obsessed with the rooms can actually be a distraction to
the truth of the foundation, and how the insidiousness of
the foundation wants to create every outlet for it, every
(30:09):
one of those isms to keep people fighting, to keep
people figuring out. Well, if you, if we could criticize
you for this, but someone could criticize me for this,
maybe I should lean into the critique of the other
over there, so you stop looking at me. We have
to get to the root of the root.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely, And you know when you think
about you know, if the foundation was broken through, then
everything in the room would fall apart. The room would
fall through the floor. There's nothing there to hold it, right,
Cass holds it all up. So you get to you know,
and and this is not saying, well, there's no sexism
(30:46):
and there's no racism. It's cast That's not what the
what the material is saying. That's not what origin is saying. Anyway,
you're saying these things exist and they sit on top
of this other thing. And as long as you're only
dealing with the room, as long as you're only dealing
with the with the wound, and you're not dealing with
the disease, right, then you're never going to be cured,
(31:08):
you know, with the surface issue the symptoms, yes, right,
you know I can. I can. I can have the
flu and take nikul all day and treat the symptoms.
But until I lay down, rest, you know what I mean,
let my body heal, you know, take the appropriate medicines,
push fluids like stop and and and get over that flu.
(31:31):
I'm just I can go three weeks. I've done it before,
go three weeks. I'm just I'm just keeping it going
because I'm treating my symptoms, so I don't I don't sneeze,
and I don't love as much. But the thing is like,
how do you get to the core of what's wrong?
You don't know what's wrong, you can't.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Yeah, how do you get under the symptoms into the sickness?
Speaker 2 (31:50):
That's right?
Speaker 1 (31:52):
And now for our sponsors correlation that I find fascinating,
the exam that you're giving, And the greatest privilege I
think we have as storytellers is when we get to
take the specific and mirror across the microcosm of one
character to the macrocosm of us and say, this specific
(32:14):
is universal. Yes, you've taken You've taken Isabelle's story, her
specific story about the most universal and harmful you know, big,
big foundational sickness in human society, and you've made her
her unique story so specific for everyone.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Yes, I'm glad. I think it's the power of art,
that's the power of storytelling. You know. I remember seeing
Philadelphia when I was in junior high and being so
afraid of HIV as I had no idea what it was.
I just knew I'd heard about it and then you
could get it, and I didn't know when I was
scared and people were sick and people were dying. And
(33:00):
saw that film, and it was a film with two
stars and Denzel Washington, Tom Hanks and this man had
had at aides and and and and and he was
talking about it and sharing and telling the story and
through the story of one person, I came out of
the film and I understood, Oh, I get it. I
(33:22):
don't have to be afraid of this. It's it's uh,
it's it is. This is happening to people. This is
happening to people just like me. This is how I
care for and I and I and I interact with
people like this, and there's something, there's something worth seeing
it through the eyes of an individual. And that's a
big thing of what CASS talks about is the way
(33:45):
that CASS function is by functions, is by dehumanizing. You know,
if I put all these people into one bucket and
I call them criminals, then they're criminals. So I could
just move forward. But if I meet one and if
I talk to one, and if I know one of
those persons, those people's individual stories, their dreams, their life,
(34:06):
their mom they're you know what I mean, They're there,
They're feelings, then well he deserves a chance, or let's
give her a chance, you know, not everybody, just the
one that you know. And and that's what we need
to kind of move out of, is this idea of
dehumanizing people by putting them in a big group because
it's easier to disregard them. And now that that big group,
(34:29):
within that big group are individual hearts and minds, right,
individual people with individual stories. That is how cast happens.
You dehumanize a whole group of people. And it's to
say women are flighty, you know, uh, you know, redheads
are so crouchy. They never want to talk about their
red hair, like they're just they're they're they they're just
(34:51):
they're they're they never want to embrace it. Or you know,
people work in the entertainment industry are this way, or
you know those people who live on that side of town,
they're just so stuck up. I hate to go over there,
or you know what you know, vegans, Oh my god,
it's just annoying, you know what I mean. It's like, yeah,
whatever the group is, and we group them all together
and there's no nuance, there's no humanity. We do it
(35:14):
every day, Yes, we do it all the time. These
are the things that the film asks us to think about.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Yes, And in researching some of the places that you
take us the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, to the National
Memorial for Peace Injustice in Montgomery, Alabama, the artistry of
a memorial to people that we lost in America, to
lynching echoing the architecture of this memorial, to the Jews murdered,
(35:49):
and the Holocaust, both of them, both of them I
find breath taking experientially because you sink into them. Before
you know it. You are, you are inside and underneath
and all around you. You're being confronted with these visceral,
physical manifestations of people who we've lost because of that
(36:12):
tribalistic instinct to other to want to be superior too.
And reading about them in preparation for today led me
to this piece of writing by a man named Primo
Levy who said, to sync is the easiest of matters.
He's talking about surviving in Auschwitz, and he said, then
(36:34):
it is enough to carry out all the orders one receives,
to only eat the ration, to observe the discipline, and
work the camp. And it's that thing where if people
are grouped. Suddenly you can go along with whatever harm
is being done to the group because you feel like, well,
I'm the one person kind of against this other thing,
or I'm the one person trying to avoid the harm
(36:56):
happening to this big group. I don't know that I
can do anything about all of that. And to constantly
remind yourself of the humanity of other people is how
you pierce the veil, you burst the illusion. It's such
a big conversation to bring to the forefront. It's a
(37:19):
big reminder to give to people in a time where
we feel perhaps more viciously siloed than ever. And maybe
we feel it because we see it because we're more
digitally connected than ever. But as you're bringing this incredible
piece of work to light, you someone that so many
people at home I imagine, go, well, she's made it, she's
(37:41):
done it. She can do anything she wants. You've been
really vulnerable, to use your earlier term about how hard
it was to get this movie made. How For some reason,
and maybe it's because we're in an ear of I
don't know, superheroes and fantasy. People didn't want to make
this movie. Funding this movie was difficult. You had to
(38:03):
tighten it and shoot it in thirty seven days, you know,
in multiple countries, no less. But you you didn't give
up on it and you made this movie. What what
is that journey like? Is it? Is it something you
don't let go of because you know the importance of
the work and it feels like a calling. Is it
(38:25):
something you don't let go of because you're like, by damn,
I'm going to get this movie made. And anybody who
told me I can't watch me? Is it a little
bit of both?
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Well, first of all, you are such a smarty pants.
I love it you are you are. Thank you. I
love the rigor and the robust nature of your questions,
and I can hear the research and the preparation, and
it's a it's a pleasure. It's rare. I've been doing
a lot of interviews, okay, So it's such a such
(38:54):
a delight to be in conversation with you. So thank you,
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
That's really kind.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Yes. And also, you know you're the first person that's
pointed out the monuments in the film. You know there
are three three I meant to make sure that in
the three interlocking spaces or times that we explore, you know,
the American South and segregation, the Holocaust in Germany, and
(39:21):
then the cast system in India. I went to make
sure that we went to a monument, a museum that
represented each in the modern day. We're at the Holocaust
Memorial in Berlin. We were at the Bedcar Museum in Delhi,
and we were at the National Lyunching Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama.
And we went all of these spaces. The author in
(39:43):
the film is visiting these actual spaces in her research.
And now one person since September has asked me a
question about it, except you, so thank you, Mari. I
integrated it, but yes, it was. It was a journey
to get this made. We were shooting this time last year.
You know, this is this is. This has been a
(40:05):
fast turnaround in terms of the film. I wrote it
for two years. We started raising money for it last summer.
We started making it this time last year in January,
and now we're in January and it's coming out. So
if you take out the writing, it's been a year
long process. Now, while that is it's a long time,
(40:27):
it's certainly a drop in the bucket to what it
takes to make most films. So this has been a
very propulsive, very energetic process. It's been full till every
hour of every every waking hour of the day for
a year, and that's been intense. But really, when I
think about it, it's been a swift journey in the
(40:53):
grand scheme of things. And it has been one where
doors have opened and ways have been made that where
it looks like there is no way and there is
no door, And it has taken holding hands with people
who believe in it and believe in the vision. And
because I've done this a few times before, I have
some tricks of my sleeve as to how to, you know,
(41:15):
keep moving in a certain direction. But I look back
and I think, wow, we did this in a year
and a half, from raising the money to being in
theaters a year and a half, and that is not done.
And so what that tells me is with the right
intention and with a focus and a mission to be
(41:44):
deliberate and focusing on the things you have instead of
the things you don't have. Right, I don't have a
studio giving me all the money I need. I don't
have the seventy days that I should have to do this.
I don't have this I don't have that. Okay, I
(42:06):
raised enough money for thirty seven days. Okay, I know
these people who want to help me, and I'm going
to focus on them, not the people who are saying,
don't do it. By focusing what I had instead of not,
instead of focusing what I don't have, I shifted my
attention and I green light my greenlit myself. And whether
(42:26):
you are making a film where you're doing whatever, green
light yourself, green light yourself, say I'm going I'm doing it.
Watch me, And you don't have to know all the steps,
but you can take one. I take one step, and
then you can figure out the next and the next,
(42:46):
and one day you're going to turn around and there's
more behind you that's in front of you, and you're
almost there or you're there. And so for me, the
steps it was about a year and a half. But
every day I took a step, even if I didn't
know which way, or even with if it was just
a little one said I have to do something today
(43:07):
to move this forward. And that's the way we approached it.
And we didn't approach it from a place of lack.
I didn't let the words come out of my mouth
every day, I don't have this or what's going on?
And I moved it, We all moved it forward. When
I stopped was about a month and a half or
so ago where I started to say those words, what's
(43:30):
going on? Why aren't people coming in? Why don't want
people know about the movie? Why can't I get the
word out on this movie? What? And I started to
get into this vulnerable dark place because I'm using language
and I'm feeling in the lack and over the holidays,
I just I just was was blessed and fortunate enough
(43:51):
to start to come out of that haze and to
start to change my language and to look at what
I had. And I'm just telling you the ways in
which we talk to ourselves, that's the life we're living.
You know what I mean. You're either talking to yourself
in your head all day from a place of lack
(44:11):
and woe is me? And why isn't this and why
didn't this happen? And why is this happening to me?
Or you're paying this is happening for me? This is
what I do have, This is what I am going
to do, this is what's going to happen today. I'm
going to take a step. And I'm not saying this
to be preaching. I'm just saying you asked me a questions.
This is my experience, Like I have experienced the dark
(44:32):
side of it, and I've experienced when I look up
and like whoa, I'm moving. I am moving. And so
this film was all about moving and moving forward and
sitting here with you today and just talking about the time.
I haven't really thought about the time, but like on
this day last year, I was calling action on set,
(44:52):
and now a year later, I'm here talking about the
movie comes out on the nineteen. That's that's that's that's beautiful.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
It's a yeah. And for people at home, I mean
you said it's it's a quick turnaround and the energy
behind it and that propulsion. It's about the movie, but
it's also about you. You're talking about these transformative principles,
and I'm so grateful you're willing to share them because
(45:23):
someone at home who's listening to us talk today is going, well, shit,
if Iva du Verne, can you know, hit a hurdle
and figure out how to navigate around it, maybe I
can too. Maybe I can go make my short, maybe
I can start that book I've always wanted to write,
maybe maybe I can have this hard conversation with my
(45:44):
family about something that I know we need to change,
whatever it is professional, personal. The reminder that at every
stage of your life, no matter what wrong of the
ladder you've made it up to, you will be tested,
You will have to read examine your commitments, capabilities, creativities,
(46:04):
and that you can always find a workarounds.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
That's profound, I hope, so you know, I think, and
the workaround I just want to remind people is the
steps are small. You get the rebel and the small steps,
you know. So over the holidays, when I was feeling
down about certain things, certain aspects professionally, and I remember something,
(46:36):
my aunt Denise said, clean up. So I looked around
and my environment reflected what was in my head. Whatoes
were on the chair that I hadn't hung up, you
know what I mean. My shoes were all off, the
shelf rowers were open, you know what I mean. Like
I was getting out of it and not making it,
(46:57):
you know what I mean. And I just looked around.
It's like, let me just when I say this, because
it's the small step. If you want all this to happen,
get yourself together, So I just start to clean up
my room and hang up the clothes. I can't do
all the things I want to do out in the
world right now. What can I do right now? I'm
going to clean that closet. I'm going to hang these clothes.
(47:21):
I'm going to wash these clothes. This is what I
can do right now. And guess what. Tomorrow, I'm gonna
go take a walk, I'm gonna call a friend. I'm
gonna pull myself out of this. And then the next
day I'm gonna make that phone call. And then the
next day I'm gonna buy those ads. And the next
day I'm gonna be less bronable and call a friend
(47:42):
and say I need help. And the next day I'm
gonna be with Sophia Bush on a podcast, and the
next day my movie's coming out, and like and look
now I'm up and out. I'm out of my bed.
Yeah what I mean. But just to tell people, it's
so it feels so big when you're down or you
feel like you're stuck. Just start small, start with whatever
(48:05):
you can. You know, there's something to be said for momentum.
You know, get some success today. What can you succeed
at today I hung up my clothes. There are no
clothes on the chair. The only one that puts closed
on the chair. Is it just me? Because I know
it's all of us.
Speaker 1 (48:26):
Any any chair or bench or we couch in a bedroom,
if you're lucky enough to have room for it just
becomes the place the clothes go.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
That's right, you know, but you know what I mean,
It's just it's just I think sometimes we talk about
these big things and how you do it, and it's
just good to hear. Just start where you are with
a small thing and let that propel you to the next.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
We'll be back in just a minute after a few
words from our favorite sponsors. Did it feel like that?
You know, this is the microcosm of your room and
how you talk to yourself and you know the words
you use. It's like why we talk about spelling. You
cast spells with your words, Like how are you talking
(49:10):
to yourself? How are you feeling yourself? And as a storyteller,
as that gets out and gets into the big you
know macro of these projects that you make, these big
stories that are the undertaking at the basis of a
film like this, how do you do the cleanup? How
do you figure out what the next right thing is
(49:33):
in a movie this big? Because this movie is made
up of a lot of hard stories to watch. You know,
when you talk about these these monuments, what we get
to see as viewers of this film and go to
Berlin with you, and go to Alabama with you, and
go to India with you, and see inside of the
narrative story of Isabel's life and her family. You know,
(49:58):
I heard myself. I realized the sound I was hearing
was the sound of myself gasping when she was standing
above that window into the ground, looking at all the
empty bookshelves to symbolize all the books that were burned
in Nazi Germany, and you had to recreate that. You
had to burn books. You you recreated and brought the
(50:19):
audience into the belly of slave ships. These are these
are the most horrific things that we've done to each
other through the course of humanity. How do you figure
out like which which is the next right step to?
How do you how do you undertake something like that?
(50:41):
Where do you where do you begin as a as
a filmmaker, as a director to to lead us that way?
Speaker 2 (50:48):
Thank you for the question. I think you know, for me,
I'm not telling stories of trauma. I'm telling stories of triumph.
In order to tell a story of triumph, you have
to overcome something. So I have to show what's being overcome.
And I think about, well, how do I show that
in a way that humanizes it? How do I make
people empathize with this so that they really feel the triumph?
(51:13):
You know, how do I portray what's being overcome? And
that's really what I where I start. So if I
want to show this brilliant black woman, author, academic, and
I want to share with you look at what a
dream in a mirrorle school she is, I have to
show maor right, I have to show you why she's
(51:37):
such a genius and a wonder and what went into that.
And I have to show her personal loss, and I
have to show where she comes from and the idea
is about her and people like her that make it
a lot less likely that she would occupy the space
that she occupies. So I try to build it that way.
(51:59):
You know, you know, if it's Selma, and you know,
doctor King is out and he's leading the margins, he's
doing and he's doing all the things, he's just a figurehead,
unless you know that Corretta and the children are home
missing him, and what he sacrificed to be out on
the front lines for all people was time with his family.
(52:22):
We don't think about that. He's a symbol and he's
up there and he's doing his thing. He's a human
being and what that did to him and what that
did to her, and what I did to their family, right,
And so as I'm building stories, I'm always looking at
making it deeply personal. You know, in this film, you
follow Trayvon Martin, who, for those that don't know, was
(52:44):
a boy, a teenager, who was stalked and killed by
I don't know, a random citizen who thought that he
looked suspicious as he walked through the neighborhood and he
shot him and killed him. I'm going to give you
some time in the film to get to know him
a little bit before that happened, so that he's not
(53:06):
just a statistic that you hear on the news. You
knew him, and you knew what he was talking about
on the phone, and you knew what he bought from
the store, and you knew what his plans were for
the next day. So now when he's taken from you
you care. So that's how I try to build the films.
(53:28):
When you ask how it is, how do I get
to the personal place, the human place? How do I
break cast humanize whatever idea and not let you lump
everything in, but get down to a place where you're
on a feeling level. That's really how I approach you
as I'm writing and I'm directing, is you know, not
(53:48):
to just go for the spectacle, but to try to
get to the singularity of an experience, because when you
get singular, you really are universal.
Speaker 1 (53:58):
Right, Yeah. And what strikes me about what you're saying
is that you can't be fully human without being fully honest.
And it's not lost on me that we read about
the death of Trayvon Martin at the hands of a
man who I shan't name because I don't think he
deserves the time. But that young boy was taken from
(54:20):
his family and from all of us in Florida, where
we see a governor who, as you referenced earlier, wants
to ban books, who doesn't want us to read about
our history. And you see this across the country, and
it strikes me as a form of real insanity because
it's a denialism of who we are. You know, how
(54:42):
can you govern a state where you're going to try
to stop the teaching of what happened last week? Do
you if you're going to ban the books about history,
do you also stop the newspapers from writing about what's happening?
Speaker 2 (54:53):
Like? How far does it go? It goes to well
want us not to learn history, so we don't know
how far it goes, but where it leads. These are
the exact same steps that led to the Holocaust. Yes,
the same steps. I show it to you in the
movie the book before that the camps opened. The thing
(55:18):
did is let's take away knowledge, let's take away ideas.
Let's make people afraid to talk about it. Let's make
people afraid to raise their voices. And once we take
away the knowledge and we make them afraid, and they
make sure that they don't talk to each other and
they're not speaking up. Now we can do anything, Yeah,
do anything. And why would they do it? It's cast.
(55:42):
The more that they do it, the more power and
status tilts their way. The way to break cast is
to set, is to raise your voice, to assert yourself
as a human being, as an individual right and to
collectively raise your hands, and the power then tilts back.
And we've seen it country. It teeters and it tilts.
(56:02):
But now it's tilting so far away from justice. The
fear is that it's going to get so far that
it's going to take generations to tilt back. We are
coming on the We are at the end of a
glorious period in which every decade gains were made to
humanize the lives of more kinds of people. Yes, and
(56:26):
status and power shifting to a place where it was
shared by more kinds of people, never fully but tilting
more in that direction, bending more towards justice, as doctor
King would say, the arc of justice, bending towards equity building,
bending towards dignity building, towards an acknowledgment of different kinds
(56:50):
of people. It's going the other way now, right, And
the reason why I wanted this film to be out
this year, this year, so that we can engage one
another about this in other countries in an election year,
in a kind of like this, we would be taking
to the streets every day. There would be no dinner
(57:12):
table of conversation that's not about this. But we are fatigued.
We're exhausted. We are spoiled as Americans. We are privileged
enough to think that the lives that we enjoy can
continue in this way. And we don't even see the
danger up ahead. Why because we're not looking at history.
This is what happened already. I'm just trying to wave
(57:32):
a flag and say, folks, please, please, let's here and
wake up to what's going on. And so you know,
the film is an invitation to interrogate our interior lives, right,
But also by doing that, you cannot stay sheep. You
cannot stay following by interrogating your tirior lives and asserting
(57:55):
yourself as a human being, an individual, you cannot allow
this happen. The more you allow it, the less you
are leaning into your humanity. Because this is an in
you humane time that we're in accepting of the stripping
of rights of all kinds of people. In this moment,
(58:15):
you and I cannot even decide what we want to
do with our own bodies, not make that decision legally.
Right in this moment, there are people who exist in
different ways, who their way of life, way of thinking
is considered illegal. Those freedoms that we think we enjoy,
the illusion of that is just going to slip away,
(58:36):
slip away more and more. We have a candidate right
now who is honest, face bold face said out loud, repeatedly,
this is what I'm going to do when I'm back
in power. If you didn't like it last time, I'm
just going to tell you exactly what I'm going to
do this time. Because I'm mad and I'm back.
Speaker 1 (58:57):
And saying this time it'll be worse.
Speaker 2 (59:00):
He's saying it every day, every day, still not listening,
and so it's just it is. We're going to look
up and it's going to be too late. Yeah, And
that is why I didn't wait for studios, and that
is why we got this done in a year. It
(59:21):
is to say, even if a small group of people
see this film and become activated by it, maybe it's
a spark. Maybe it's a spark that lights a fire
that we need to have roaring at this point.
Speaker 1 (59:34):
What I love and thank you. What I love about
what you're saying is that in order to triumph, you
have to be honest about where you come from. Yes,
in order to defeat harm, you have to be honest
about what harm has looked like. Yes, and you are
reminding people that by being willing to explore things honestly,
they can be more human. I wept, I'm I mean
(01:00:00):
ugly cry for the entire second half of the film.
I was exhausted at the end of it in the
best way. I felt more human waking up the day
after watching your movie, less less exhausted by the state
of the world, more inspired to keep going for us,
(01:00:22):
and that I really believe is the power of honest storytelling.
So I want to thank you not only for sharing
it with us, but for sharing the reasoning behind it
with us so that we can be reminded of how
powerful we are.
Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
There's no better compliment that you can give me, no
better gift, because that is what I hope people get
from it, that they you know, there's a lot being made.
I cried in the movie. It has hard stuff. You
showed this and this, but you come out feeling the
way that you just talked about, come out feeling awake, activated, curious,
(01:01:01):
curious about yourself, about wanting to read, wanting to know
more what, Yes, you know. And so that's the hope,
is that it's a spark and you know, yeah, you
got to watch some tough stuff. But the feeling at
the end, you know, those are cleansing tears. You're crying, Yes,
you know what I mean. Those are clearing away. And
(01:01:24):
I just hope more people embrace it and allow themselves
to feel that.
Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
Oh, I believe it. I will go ahead and say
to all of our friends at home, who I know,
your souls are beating a little louder as mine are
after spending an hour with Ava, I'm excited to see
I always joke or not joke. I guess I uplift
that a lot of the people who I've aggregated online
have come in because they want to help. They believe
(01:01:51):
in helping helpers. I call them all my first responders,
and I just can't wait to see how many people
who listen to this show are like out here publicizing
this movie. I want to remind everybody at home that you,
no matter how big you think your platform is, you
have one. If it's five family members or five hundred
people or fifty thousand people online, people gravitate to you
(01:02:13):
because they trust you, and I would love for all
of you to share about this movie. I obviously want
you all to go see this movie. I believe you
all will be transformed by this movie. And I know
I speak on behalf of myself and all of you
when I think the incredible miss to Vernee for taking
time to be with us today.
Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
Well, I appreciate you. I appreciate this conversation. I'll appreciate
this call to action that you just made. And I'll say,
Seat sixteen is a very simple thing. We made it
up and for sixteen books, it ad buys a seat
for a young person and they get a one year
subscription to masterclass.
Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
Oh my god, Dreamboat of a Human is just a
way to you know, share it with you know, kids
who won't buy the ticket, but they make us something
for free.
Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
I will never make a dime from this movie. I
haven't even said that anywhere. I did not get paid
to make this movie. I put my salary into the movie, right,
no amount of money. We have to pay back the
people who gave us the money to make the movie. Right,
So I'll make money on this movie. It's not about
money for me. It's about this time that we're in
the message that the movie shares mission urgent. It's a mission.
(01:03:22):
This is urgent. It's urgent, and I don't want to
be able I don't want to look back and say,
what did I do? I didn't I didn't do enough.
This is what I can do, you know, and everyone
has the thing that they can do. If you can
cook and figure out how the cooking serves you know,
the moment that we're in. And if you, if you,
if you've got five family members, if you have well,
(01:03:44):
if you, if you do, do a walkathon, put a
new put a couple of books out on your porch
for folks, whatever you can do to move us forward
in this time a little bit more towards justice and
community for all doing this is what I could do. Yes,
So what what Sophia's saying? It's not about any kind
(01:04:05):
of there's no corporation getting this money, there's none. It
is about how can you amplify the message, and if
it's not for this movie, find a way to wake
up the people around you and to wake up yourself,
you know, find a way to hang the clothes, find
a way to clear a path, find a way to
be less fatigue and exhausted, so that we can we
(01:04:27):
can bloom, and we can blossom together, because right now
we're wilting, but I believe we can. We can shine
a light and turn things around. And now's the time.
Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
Well here's to the blooming yeah say man, thank you,
thank you, my friend,
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