It's clear when you meet Ryan Coogler that he is something special.
I met Ryan in January 2012 at Sundance Film Festival. Soon after the festival, we
met again back in San Francisco and began talking about living in the Bay Area,
filmmaking and his film, Fruitvale, which
follows the true story of Oscar Grant, who was
killed in a police shooting in Oakland on New Year’s Eve 2008.
He
shared his script with me and it was clear that he was a natural fit for our
recently launched Off the Page
program, where we bring actors to the Bay Area to workshop scripts with
writer/directors involved with us in various ways. Ryan had actors Melonie Diaz
and Michael B. Jordan attached and it looked likely that they were going to
start shooting in July. We thought it would be an incredible experience for
them all to get to know one another in the Bay Area where the film would be
shot, and to meet Oscar Grant’s family prior to beginning production.
Ryan
was already a finalist for the SFFS/Kenneth
Rainin Foundation Filmmaking Grant, but it was during the months leading up
to and during Off the Page that we
really got to know him, his producing team (Nina Yang, Sev Ohanian and Gerard McMurray) and his project.
He had recently graduated from USC and had returned to the Bay Area determined
to make films here. We introduced him to Bay Area crew and then in late spring
2012 awarded him a $100,000 SFFS/KRF grant for production. The grant review panel
was incredibly moved by this very timely and poignant story of Oscar Grant, and
its exploration of the contemporary issue of the police shooting and killing of
young unarmed African American men. And while we are committed to working with filmmakers from all over
the country, finding someone local who so perfectly fit our mandate to support
filmmakers and films that uplift the Bay Area professionally and economically .
. . was like hitting the jackpot.
But
to be honest, a big reason the film was funded is because we were so taken by
Ryan as an individual. He
is talented, passionate, creative, collaborative and yet very humble . . . Every
interaction with Ryan has been a pleasure. He is the heart and soul of his film
and that really came out in the way we’ve worked together this past year. Hard to believe it’s only been a year.
I
wonder who I’ll meet next year . . .
