It’s amazing to be reminded that director Ava DuVernay didn’t pick up a camera until she was 33 years old. She has come so far in such a short time. I sat down with her last week and talked about her career trajectory. She told me that when she first started directing, her biggest aspiration was to be “the black Lynn Shelton” and release a movie every year, supporting herself through work in episodic television.
In “13th,” DuVernay explores the racially skewed mass incarceration of U.S. citizens. The documentary just made its world premiere at The New York Film Festival, making it the first ever nonfiction film to snag the prestigious spot. It will also screen at BFI London Film Festival this month. It will hit select theaters and begin streaming on Netflix be streamed on October 7.
Women and Hollywood spoke with DuVernay about why she was drawn to making “13th,” what type of movies she gets offered now, and how she managed to hire all women directors for her OWN series “Queen Sugar.”
Listen to the podcast below via SoundCloud or on iTunes. You can also read a transcription of the conversation below.
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W&H: Why were you driven to make this movie?
AD: I think this has always been with me. It’s been a topic that I’ve always thought about, even when I was a little girl. Growing up in Compton, there was a heavy police presence. I would always see cops on my block. The interactions weren’t positive, as I’d see officers interacting with the citizens in my community. Much more negative encounters than positive, which I think is interesting.
As a child, when I think back, most folks in this country who don’t live in black or brown communities regard the cops [with] a sense of safety. Imagine growing up and feeling just the opposite when you see an officer. That’s a real, completely different way to move through the world. So that’s always been with me and, then, putting historical context to that, a cultural context to that as I studied African American studies at UCLA. And, just in general, throughout my life knowing people who had to touch the incarceration institution, whether it be through parole, probation, or incarceration.
W&H: What I found really interesting in “13th” was how you took “Birth of a Nation” and showed that it became a racist anthem. There are a lot of conversations about, “Do movies affect culture or are they just a reflection of culture?” or the power of movies. And I think that you really laid it out and said “This movie had so much power in its influence as things went on.” We need to talk a little bit about that.
AD: It’s a great question, and it’s a question that’s been ongoing. I think, though, in the case of D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” it was the first movie to employ many of the cinematic tools that elicit emotion, that make people feel a heightened moment. The things that he was innovating… He was a masterful filmmaker as far as craft is concerned. Too bad he was a racist. Those images… seeing it for the first time: Imagine, for the first time ever, seeing a dolly shot, where it’s moving. Your eye can move around. What that does, seeing it in the culture for the first time, then apply that to whatever image it was. That is going to be a permanent imprint in the collective memory. So, yes, it’s a conversation: do we reflect the times? Do we craft the times? I think there’s arguments for both, but, in that particular film, I think it is indisputable that it was shaping the time in which it was debuting.
W&H: And, interestingly, we have another film this year with the same name coming out. I would imagine we’ll talk about if that is going to influence or reflect our culture.
AD: That remains to be seen.
W&H: Did you have a sense that this movie was going to be so of-the-moment when you were making it, in terms of where we are as a culture in this conversation?
AD: No, no. I wasn’t thinking about it in those lines. Certainly — to summarize — we’re cutting and we’re seeing another rash of videotaped footage of murders of unarmed black men or black men who legally have firearms by police. It feels [like] a very heightened moment of connection with what was happening. Not that it hasn’t been happening throughout the time, but this flurry of it this summer was quite disturbing.
It was similar to the situation we had with cutting “Selma,” because that summer was the summer of Ferguson, the summer of Mike Brown’s murder, side by side with us cutting Jimmie Lee Jackson’s murder in Selma protests. So, it’s the second time that’s happened with Spencer [Averick], my editor, where we’re cutting in the room in the day and go home and watch the news and we’re seeing the very thing that we’re cutting.
W&H: That must be so spooky.
AD: Yeah, it is.
W&H: What was the craziest, most shocking thing you learned while making this movie?
AD: That ALEC [the American Legislative Exchange Council] stuff blew me away. There’s this section in the film that delves into this organization where corporations and politicians are in bed together — primarily GOP politicians, Republican politicians — conservatives who belong to a group where they sit side by side with corporate interests [and] corporations and actually take, word for word, suggested policy from corporations and put them through the lawmaking process. Many of the laws that we abide by serve and were initiated by corporations who benefit from them. That stuff blew me away. That was the biggest surprise
W&H: I want to pivot a little bit to your amazing run over the last couple of years. With the conversations we’ve been having about women and people of color in the film business, do you think if you walked off the stage this year at Sundance having won Best Director you would have the same opportunities, or lack of opportunities, that you got when you walked off the stage a couple of years ago?
AD: Interesting. I think it…no, I think it would be a tad different. I think that all the work that you’ve been doing, I think all the work that Stacy Smith at USC’s been doing, all of these [are] pushing this idea that there’s a problem with stats and calling people on the carpet. The success of some key women over the past couple of years, like a Jill Soloway, that, as at least an awareness, even if it’s tokenism. Where I would’ve gotten a call: “Oh, there’s a woman who won Sundance? Let’s bring her in.” None of that happened when I won. So, I think I’d probably get some meetings, more meetings. I don’t know if I’d get the job, but there’d be that pat on the back: “Let’s do this to make ourselves feel like we’re doing something.”
I can’t say for sure that I’d have more opportunities, but I think there’d be more of an awareness. That maybe there could be. That’s just such slight progress…
W&H: I know, but it’s interesting because I was just thinking about that. And I was also thinking about “Queen Sugar.” You were really deliberate about wanting only women to direct this. Was that a hard thing to sell to the network? When did you make that decision? How did that come about?
AD: As soon as I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to direct everything. I wanted to pull a Soderbergh or a Fukunaga. If these men can direct all the episodes of their series [“The Knick” and “True Detective”], I wanted to direct every episode of mine. Which is a goal for me [that] I still want to do in some form. But the time when I was first talking about doing the show, it was a six or eight episode season, which is manageable.
When it became the interest in the network and the studio to become more robust, it was a 13 order. There was no way I could do it. So, immediately, as soon they asked for the order of 13, I was like, “Oh, then I have to get people like me to do it. And people like me are women. People like me are people of color, women of color.” And so it was just an immediate thing. I said it once and they said, “Great.”
W&H: Wow!
AD: They said, “Fantastic.” But you get that because the day is Oprah Winfrey’s. It’s Oprah Winfrey: it’s a woman-owned network. It was immediate and I said, “If I can’t do it, I want to have an all-women directorial team and I know exactly who I want to choose. People who I’ve been on the festival circuit with, people who I know are amazing. I’ll tell you right now: the majority of them have not directed television. They directed better than television. They directed award-winning, world-traveling feature films and we’d be lucky to have them.” I did all that. I was going fast, talking talking talking, thinking I had to pitch it, and she’s like, “Sounds great, Aves.” And that was it.
W&H: Those women who you hired would never have gotten on the list for another show, because they just don’t have TV experience.
AD: I don’t know about “never,” but they had been trying for awhile. Victoria Mahoney, man! We would talk about the meetings that she was taking, the meetings that she couldn’t get. That sister is powerful — powerful maker, powerful voice. And it just always hurt my heart that she wasn’t moving forward. Now? Listen, I talked to her on the phone yesterday; I was throwing some stuff her way. She told me about three things she passed on. I was like, “Oh, you’re just passing on shit now? That’s how it is?” Literally, she’s booked solid until next spring on, like, six different shows. And now she doesn’t just have to take any episode; she can be discerning. “Oh, well, I didn’t like the script.” Oh, you didn’t like the script? Okay, good!
W&H: That must make you feel pretty proud.
AD: I’m thrilled with it. All of them [“Queen Sugar’s” directors] are directing now in episodic. That’s important because they’re all filmmakers, and, being an independent filmmaker, we have to still pay our mortgage! So to be able to do that through episodic, and still be able to have something for your films, is important for women because we run out of that gas.
W&H: Absolutely. Do you think you’re going to do that same thing for season two?
AD: Oh, yes, we are. A whole different group of women.
W&H: Wow! This is just embedded and interwoven into your existence. It seems so hard for some people to get it, you know? “This is me.”
AD: Yeah, it is. It’s me just like the guys on “Game of Thrones.” It’s them just to have three seasons of men. It’s just them. It’s just how they feel. So, this is how we feel.
W&H: The only other show that did a season — not the series — was “Call the Midwife.” They did a whole season with women directors in the UK.
AD: Oh, really? See? We’re talking to the foremost historian of women’s images in television and film.
W&H: Let’s talk about the Academy.
AD: Do we have to? [laughs]
W&H: Yeah… In some respects they are trying hard. It’s really difficult to turn a ship around that’s been going one direction for a really long time. You were part of [the Academy’s initiative] to bring in more women of color, and more women, to the directing branch, which literally had, like, 35 women and now has almost hundreds. I forget the number off the top of my head, but that branch is completely different. I keep saying that it’s not gonna happen the same way again. It can’t, just [based on the] numbers. What are your thoughts on that?
AD: The branch that I entered into when I was invited in is very different than the branch that Amma Asante enters in and I’m happy that that’s the case. Is is enough to really affect change, when you look at the numbers statistically? Hmmm… kind of, maybe? There needs to be another couple of big pushes.
W&H: We have to wait and see.
AD: Yeah, but it was a process. It wasn’t an easy process, but it happened. And it’s important in that the world looks to the Academy as the arbiter of achievement. It’s important to some of us personally in that same way — some more, some less. But, in general, I remember being in a cab in Bamako, Mali and the cab driver asked me, “What do you do?” I said, “I’m a filmmaker,” and he said, “Mmm, so you won an Academy Award?” “No.” He kind of turned away like, “Huh. There’s no reason to really talk about this.” That is the gold standard.
W&H: All over the world. This is the brand.
AD: It is the brand.
W&H: So, that’s how people know it’s interesting. You’re a story that people aspire and you’re also inspirational: “She made movies with her own money and now Disney’s giving her $100 million to make ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ that’s starring basically everyone on the planet — Mindy Kaling, Reese Witherspoon, Oprah Winfrey — and headed by a young girl of color.” And you’re just like, “Holy crap! This woman is living the dream.” You have a clear vision. You know what you want. What is it that people should take away from your success?
AD: I picked up a camera and started making films really late, at 33-years-old. I had another job as a publicist before that. I never went to film school. The only thing I had starting out that I think a lot of filmmakers don’t have was experience with other filmmakers as a publicist, seeing what they do. That constant striving for achievement and awards and money and a bigger budget and it being a distraction to their work.
All I tried to do was focus on my work, not focus on the rest of that. That’s how I started. And then making and distributing my own small films. My first three films I made by hand with my own money, cobbling together what I could, and actually distributing them, getting them out into the world on my own. So, never imagining any of the rest of this, the only path that I could face, that I just focused on me and my work. That I was happy in that every step of the way.
My biggest aspiration: I wanted to be the black Lynn Shelton. I just wanted to make a film! Like, every year! And that lady makes a film every year if she wants to, and she supports herself through episodic. And I just thought, “Wow, that would be fantastic if I could be consistent.” That’s all I wanted. So, I think it’s a lot about working inside as opposed to seeking permission and authentication from the power structure. That’s the only thing that I did differently than I see a lot of people do.
W&H: So now you’re going to be the black Christopher Nolan, though.
AD: Am I? Oh my gosh.
W&H: I don’t know if that’s the right name. But I was trying to say “big budget male director.”
AD: Okay. [laughs]
W&H: So, any big budget male director. There are no women to compare you to!
AD: But, you know what, I won’t be that. Know why? Because half the films I want to make, the stories I want to tell don’t necessarily need that much money. The stories that Chris Nolan wants to tell need trillions of dollars. I don’t know how many more stories I’ll need that much money for, but it’s good experience.
W&H: And that doesn’t matter to you, necessarily?
AD: The budget? No. I mean, yeah, I can’t have too low of a budget that I can’t tell the story. And this is great that it gets me into a place where I can manage a higher budget. But, no, I’m looking at projects now that are in lower ranges, that are great stories.
W&H: Do you get offered every movie now?
AD: I get offered every black historical drama you’ve ever heard of. “The first black firefighter in Wisconsin: his great story. Can you do his movie?” I get offered a lot of “first” movies. And that’s it. I don’t get an awful lot of women’s movies. I don’t get an awful lot of mainstream stuff. I get offered a lot of black history, “Selma: Part IIs.” But it’s better than zero.
Transcribed by Rachel Montpelier.
