[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - The best response you can have to a payoff in a thriller is someone goes, "Oh, right, I forgot, of course..." [multiple voices chattering] [Narrator] "On Story" offers a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators, and filmmakers.
All of our content is recorded live at Austin Film Festival and at our year-round events.
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[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] [piano gliss] From Austin Film Festival, this is "On Story."
A look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators, and filmmakers.
This week's "On Story," "Hustle and Flow" producer Stephanie Allain.
- When I'm reading something, my heart starts beating fast.
It's like meeting a new lover.
You're like, "Oof, who is that?"
Like, "I'm attracted to that."
And so I really learned to go with my gut.
Go with your gut all the time because if you go with somebody else's gut and you win, you don't know nothing.
And if you go with somebody else's gut and you lose, then wow, how dumb are you, you know?
So I would just say, go with your gut.
[paper crumples] [typing] [typewriter ding] [Narrator] In this episode, prolific producer Stephanie Allain discusses her career at large and how she uses her position to discover and green-light diverse stories with underrepresented voices at the helm.
[typewriter ding] - Stephanie, I'm so curious about your beginnings in the industry, obviously it was a very different time when you were coming up as a filmmaker/producer.
Just to start there, what was that process like for you, breaking through those doors and trying to make a name for yourself?
- I didn't come from an artistic family, my father was a biochemist, my mother's an educator.
I went to college for English and writing.
And then I got pregnant really quickly after school and I had to do something with this young baby and the one thing that I could do was read.
So I became a reader, I didn't even know there was a thing called reader.
I mean, somebody's gonna pay you to read?
That is fantastic.
So I started reading and it was so easy.
I mean, you know, you're an English major, you read.
It was basically write a book report, write coverage.
And then it became, it changed into story analyst, because once you work for a studio -- it's a union job.
And so I found myself literally right out of school, making what I thought was an incredible amount of money, $50,000 a year, reading.
So I read thousands of scripts.
And then I found out that the next job up was actually becoming an executive at the studio, I was at Columbia Pictures.
So I interviewed for that job, no mistake that two women hired me for that entry-level position.
And then I was tasked with finding, Don used to call us golden retrievers, like go out there and find the good stuff and bring it back.
Who did I know to call?
I didn't know anybody to call.
So I sort of focused on replacing myself in the story department because I was the only person of color.
There was a young guy who was still at school at USC who said he wanted the job.
I interviewed him, he didn't want the job, he just wanted to tell me about "Boyz N The Hood".
[all laughing] And so I sat there in this interview and he's just going on and on about "Boys N The Hood" and I said, well, "I have to read this script, I grew up in Inglewood, I knew these kids."
And what he was talking about, I thought, was really, really interesting.
But he wouldn't give me the script, he teased me for like a month.
I finally got it.
I read it and I thought, "Holy smoke.
This is why I'm here."
It was truly one of those Oprah aha moments where I just said, "This is why I'm here.
I need to get this movie made."
And so I just went about it.
- Okay.
[hip hop music] [partiers chattering] Sup, Dough?
- Oh [bleep], what up, G?
Tre love in effect.
- Yo, what's up, Tre?
- Sup, Chris?
- Heard you're like Mr. GQ Smooth now.
Working over at the Fox Hills Mall?
- Yeah, I get discount on clothes and [bleep], you like?
- You look like you selling rocks.
- It's a group of 10 to 12 executives every weekend, you put something on weekend read, and then Monday you come back and you discuss it.
So I knew that if I did that just off the jump, it might be difficult.
So I literally took a month or two to get every single person to read it before we got to that weekend read.
And to promise me that -- it's very political.
I was like, you know, "I'm really passionate about this, we need to get this movie made."
And then we came back from the weekend read and nobody supported it.
It was truly, it was my first eye opening, "Oh, so this is what a studio is like."
But the head of the studio said, "I read it and I love it and we're gonna make it."
And that was it, yeah.
- And then of course you started the project with John and sort of taking on that path.
What was the relationship between you all from the onset?
- John was like my little brother and my boss.
[audience laughing] He was 10 years younger.
He was just so exuberant and so passionate about telling this story.
It was infectious.
Like I, just whatever he wanted, I wanted to give it to him.
We developed a friendship and a love over the years.
We made five movies together and it was devastating when we lost him a couple years ago.
That just opened up just the whole world because writing is the basis of all that we do, really is, you can't make a movie without a script.
And so I worked my way up through the studio system.
Really, John was my first, "Boyz N The Hood" was my first movie and it was such a success that they kind of just left me alone.
They were like, "Whatever that girl's doing, just let her do it."
And so I stayed at the studio for a decade, really supervising John's movies, Robert Rodriguez, I saw his movie on a VH, what do they call?
VHS, yes.
And I flew here to Austin and brought him back to Hollywood and I supported another filmmaker, who was one of the first Black women to make a movie, Darnell Martin, at a studio.
And I just realized there was an opportunity to hold the door open because I was at the table.
And I was able, because of the success of "Boyz N the Hood," able to advocate for these young first-time filmmakers.
And they all turned out to be pretty good.
So that was my first real incarnation as a Hollywood person was working at Columbia Pictures for a decade.
[typewriter ding] - What do you look for in as far as voice or writing technique, any of those sort of notes from a producer?
- It's really, really simple.
When I'm reading something, my heart starts beating fast.
That's how I know.
Like when I read "Hustle and Flow," I was like, "Oh my god," And when Craig wrote that script, there was no music in it.
He would just indicate, like, DJay tries to make a record off of it.
It was that writing.
It was the specificity of it.
It was thematically what it was about, 'cause for me, that was really about how art elevates everybody.
It's like meeting a new lover.
You're like, "Oof, who is that?"
Like, "I'm attracted to that."
And so I've really learned to go with my gut, like, go with your gut all the time.
Because if you go with somebody else's gut and you win, you don't know nothing.
And if you go with somebody else's gut and you lose, then wow, how dumb are you, you know?
So I would just say, go with your gut.
[R&B music] [DJ] Power 107.1, number one for hip hop.
This your man Boogaloo holding you down.
Man, I got a brand new exclusive from my man DJay, straight from the north north, north.
Put your thumbs up out there, man.
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Did you slap Skinny Black?
Did you do it, man?
Holler at me, man, it's Power 107.1, brand new right here.
♪ Whoop that trick, whoop that trick ♪ - Hey man, this is me!
I made this beat!
♪ Whoop that trick ♪ ♪ Whoop that trick, whoop that trick ♪ ♪ Whoop that trick, whoop that trick ♪ ♪ Whoop that trick, whoop that trick ♪ ♪ Whoop that trick, whoop that trick ♪ ♪ Whoop that trick, whoop that trick ♪ - Moving on to "Boyz N The Hood," it felt like such a pivotal moment for representation of Black people, Black men, both in front of and behind the camera certainly.
And specifically for the Black community, it felt like it almost gave us this superhero in John.
What was it like just working in that, or on that project, pardon, day in and day out and seeing it through the whole process?
- It was awesome.
John knew exactly what he wanted.
He knew he wanted Ice Cube and he knew he wanted Fishburne.
One of the most exciting parts of the process is when you are casting and you're putting people on tape and you're listening to the words come alive for the first time, and you see it.
It's just, you say, "This is happening.
This is real.
I'm witnessing the birth of this thing."
So when we started doing that, people got so excited because guess what?
It was Ice Cube, it was Regina King, it was Morris Chestnut, it was Fishburne, it was Angela Bassett.
I mean, just that casting process was, I can remember it now, and I still have the tapes, they're on VHS by the way, [all laughing] of the casting process.
So that was fun, and then we got to set and John was faking it till he made it too.
Like, in fact, I said to John, before we sold it, I said, "Look, do you have anything?
You know, you're a film student.
Like, do you have a short, do you have..." He said, "Look, I do have one thing.
It's a music video I did."
I was like, "Oh, thank god, let me see it."
And I saw it and I was like, "We are never showing anybody this.
[all laughing] This will not help us."
So he didn't really know what he was doing either, to be honest.
And if you watch "Boyz N The Hood," you can see the development of a director because they actually shot that movie in sequence.
By the time you get to the end of that movie and Ricky gets killed and it's just, you're now in the hands of a young master, a young Jedi master.
But if you look at the beginning of it, woo!
[all laughing] Like, there's actually a scene in the movie when one day when Steve Nicolaides, who was the producer on it, wasn't on set, the entire company is, I'll tell you what the scene is, look for it.
It's when they're young and Fishburne brings Tre home from fishing and they're driving home and they're singing, "O-o-h Child".
- Why'd you get it all over me?
- I don't know.
- Don't do that no more, that's nasty.
- What?
- Oh, wait a minute.
Oh, listen to this song, I love this song!
- And if you look in the background, out of the window, you'll see the catering truck, [all laughing] you'll see all the trailers, you'll see staff, I mean, everybody, like they shot the wrong way.
[all laughing] And nobody notices it because the moment is so real and so heartbreaking and it's the scene where they pull up and they look across and they see Doughboy's being arrested.
And all you're looking at is their faces.
All you're feeling is what they're feeling.
Anyway, so we shot it.
There was a lot of gang activity.
Thank God, Steve kept me from all of the minutia of it.
But there was some problematic moments in the shooting of it.
But the moment that they put it together and we had a screening in the studio, I was just like, "Wow, this is bigger than I thought it was," like, you could tell, you could feel it.
But then when it came to releasing the movie, the studio wanted to sell it as a gang movie.
The trailer they put together was just all the gun moments, all the gang moments, and John and I were devastated because we were like, "Oh my god, this is not a gang movie.
This is a coming of age movie about making the right choices, about having good parents to guide you."
Like they said, "butts in seats, we need butts in seats."
Like, "We'll get 'em in with the gang stuff and they'll leave with a new perspective."
And that's basically what happened, but that's why at the end of that movie, it says, "Increase the peace", because we're like, "By the way, this is what the movie's about.
Increase the peace."
That was our message to the world.
It was great.
[typewriter ding] - John has been to the festival in the past.
And you alluded to his unfortunate passing a couple years ago.
And for me personally, he was, as I mentioned, really a hero.
I remember watching his "On Story" piece before deciding to work here.
And I'm just curious for you, who are some of your heroes, if you have any, or inspirations?
- My heroes were really writers, to be honest.
You know, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker.
Those storytellers touched me in ways that triggered growth.
I've always loved movies, I've always watched movies, but I never even thought of myself as a filmmaker or that I was going to be a filmmaker.
I didn't have access to, you know, an uncle in the business.
I didn't know anybody really in the business.
Obviously Coppola, like I think "The Godfather" is a perfect movie.
I really do, especially "Godfather Two."
I mean, you can watch them, I can watch that movie over and over and over again and learn something new every time I see it.
As I've come up, every single director that I've worked with has inspired me, from, you know, Craig to Sanaa Hamri, to Gina Prince-Bythewood to Gerard McMurray.
I like to put the inspiration for the director all over the walls of the production office.
And I think that's a big part of being a great producer is making sure everybody's imagining the same movie.
Because if somebody's got some other movie in their head, they're gonna show up with the wrong color, the wrong dress, the wrong prop, you know?
We all have to be on the same page.
- That sounds like it would be something that would've been really important on another one of your projects, "Poetic Justice," which you alluded to, another film that is certainly incredibly important to the Black community and culture.
How did that project come together?
- Okay, so after John did "Boyz N The Hood," he could do no wrong.
They were like, "Whatever you wanna do, whatever you wanna do."
And so he said, "Yeah, I wanna do this movie 'Poetic Justice', and it's gonna be Tupac and Janet, and it's going to be another story about a kid that is killed, 'cause that's the backstory.
- J, come on.
Where you gonna go?
We out in the middle of nowhere.
Ain't you kind of hot out there?
Lucky said he'd apologize.
[all snickering] Justice!
She get kind of stubborn sometimes.
- But it's a road trip, it's really road trip and he was very inspired by, you know, French auteurs.
And he wanted to do his own version of a road trip.
And then the LA uprising happened in 93, I think it was 93, Rodney King, and the city was burning down.
And literally we were in the middle of prep, I think, when that happened.
And then it really changed, it became incorporating all of that and all of the angst that we were feeling and all the drama.
There's just, and then we had Maya Angelou on set with us 'cause she's in the movie.
And while the city had burned that last week, we were on set in some beautiful, idyllic park and just sitting at her feet and just her talking to us about the importance of what we were doing and, and Tupac was gorgeous and crazy.
He's not on the poster because he didn't get the right barbecue sauce for the shoot that day and so he left [all laughing] and that's why Janet has the poster to herself.
[all laughing] But, but it was, again, it was just, the studio left us completely alone so it was exactly what John wanted to make at that time.
And then he followed that with "Higher Learning," which was so prescient.
I mean, think about "Higher Learning", if anybody's seen it.
It's about kids on campus really grouping up in terms of ideology and what happens when we separate ourselves over politics, over belief systems.
- I'm curious about "Beyond the Lights."
I had the honor and pleasure of speaking with Gina Prince-Bythewood last year at our virtual event.
How did you get involved with that project and what was the sort of process like working with her?
- When I was a studio executive, I was the only Black female studio executive.
And so anybody who was in film would call me up.
They would find me, they would call me up.
And I can't tell you how many people, even now, come up to me and say, "You don't remember this, but 20 years ago when I was sleeping on my brother's couch, you gave me, you took me to lunch," and blah, blah, blah.
And Gina was one of those people.
Like she reached out, "Hey sis, I'm a filmmaker," you know, blah, blah, blah.
And I was like, "Great, let me see your work."
You know, we talked and Black Hollywood is a small group.
We, most of us, you know, have either worked together or know each other.
So one day she just called me and she goes, "I got this script and I'm gonna send it to you."
And I said, "Okay, okay, cool, cool, cool."
And then she sent it to me and I read it and I was like, "Oof, I don't think I can do this, G." Because in the first version of "Beyond the Lights," I don't know if you guys have seen it, it's about like a Beyonce or Rihanna-type performer who's forced to sort of sexualize herself in order to sell records and this is really destroying her self esteem.
And so at the beginning of the movie, she tries to throw herself off of a building.
And she's caught by this cop who pulls her back up and they fall in love and the love allows her to break from her domineering mother.
But in the early script I read, then you get to the end of it and she falls.
[laughing] You know that great film school movie, "Incident at Owl Creek," anybody seen that?
"Incident at Owl Creek" is a classic short film from probably the 70s, I guess, about a guy who's being hanged and the rope, he goes through the hole and the rope breaks and he runs.
And he runs and he runs and there's dogs and they're chasing him.
And he finally gets home to his beautiful wife and they hug and everything, and then it cuts and he dies.
And so it was a device that she really wanted to explore.
But I said, "I don't wanna make a movie about a girl who throws herself off a building.
I really don't."
And she said, "aight", I said, "aight."
[all laughing] And then a year later she called and she goes, "I changed it."
[all laughing] And I said, "Okay, I'm in."
- Girl was a rhythmless idiot.
See her counting steps?
Bloody hell!
Bloody bloody hula hooping is [bleep], it is [bleep]!
It's [bleep]!
[sniffling] [sniffling] Chuck it.
Go on, throw it away.
- Why, mummy?
- You wanna be a runner up or you wanna be a winner?
[trophy clattering] - You've done a number of different type of pieces and help shepherd other young filmmakers.
"Dear White People" certainly fits within that canon.
I remember the first time I saw the trailer and heard about this film, it seemed like it was causing shock waves everywhere.
Did you all know from the get go, this was probably gonna be something special and really subvert a lot of expectations and conversations?
- When you have a title like "Dear White People," you know you're in for some trouble.
- Kurt, it's Lionel, I'm locked out.
You know my parents call this line?
All right.
Bye.
- Dear white people, apparently Morgan Freeman wasn't enough.
Obama could cure cancer and somewhere, white folks will be embroiled in protest.
- Justin was a junior publicist on a movie I produced called "Something New," probably 10 years before he brought me that script.
And he was always going, you know, "I'm writing this script, I'm writing."
That script took probably 10, 12 years to write.
Then my daughter basically said, "I saw this trailer and it's so great.
It's like me and all my friends."
And I was like, "Oh, what's that?"
And I looked at it, I was like, [gasps] "He made the movie without me!"
[audience laughing] And I called him up and I said, "What happened?"
And he goes, "Oh yeah, that's just a teaser.
Like, I still don't have the money, I don't have anything, but I do have the script now."
So I read the script and I was like, "Yeah, this is closer, this is closer.
So let's go put it together," so I went out and found the money.
But we always knew it was special, we knew that it was controversial, we knew that it was satirical.
We knew that it was probably gonna be a TV show because it was an ensemble cast and that we wanted to continue those stories.
- From there we go, certainly, to some of your more recent work with the Academy Awards last year, which you produced.
It was an incredible event.
- The Oscars were one of the most fun things I've ever done.
And I will say that running the festival totally prepped me for that, because live event producing is you've got one shot.
You guys don't know, with the Oscars, there are only two run-throughs and then it goes live.
And the run-throughs are the night before and the day of, and then you're just live to 50 million people.
It was so exciting, so fun, and such an opportunity to really showcase diversity and inclusion.
That was what we wanted to do, you know?
Just starting with Janelle Monae, a queer Black woman, like opening the Oscars.
Those people at Disney were losing their mind.
They were just like, "What?"
I was like, "No, it's gonna be great, it's gonna be great," you know?
And then of course, "Parasite" won at the end, which also freaked everybody out.
But I had a partner on that, Lynette Howell Taylor, who is an amazing producer, she produced "Star is Born" and a lot of other stuff.
And it was just two ladies just dreaming.
And, you know, it's the Oscars, so we had everything at our disposal.
[typewriter ding] [Narrator] You've been watching "On Producing: A Conversation With Stephanie Allain", on "On Story."
"On Story" is part of a growing number of programs in Austin Film Festival's On Story project.
That also includes the On Story radio program, podcast, book series, and the On Story archive, accessible through the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.
To find out more about On Story and Austin Film Festival, visit onstory.tv or austinfilmfestival.com.
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