Jun 21, 2021 · 1h 28m · how-i-built-this
ARRAY: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of NPR's 'How I Built This,' acclaimed filmmaker Ava DuVernay details her journey from entertainment publicist to award-winning director and cultural entrepreneur. She discusses overcoming industry barriers, maintaining creative autonomy, and founding ARRAY to build equitable distribution channels for underrepresented artists.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 24.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 3.9 Guest teaching 3.2 Guest disagreement 1.7 Guy pushing back 1.1
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:10:46 Correcting the phrasing on the 30-day shoot constraint
Ava directly pushes back on Guy's phrasing that 'it took you 30 days' to shoot Selma, clarifying that she was constrained to only 30 days.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 27:31 Guy challenges PR role by comparing publicists to realtorsGuy presses Ava on whether working in PR requires saintly patience to deal with difficult, complaining clients.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 1:13:24 Ava demystifies Oscar campaigning and directors' branch politicsAva breaks down the structural and demographic realities of Academy voting, explaining why a Best Director nomination was statistically impossible.
Guy holds their own ▶ 1:08:58 Guy identifies Steven Spielberg as holding King speech rightsGuy demonstrates deep research by correctly guessing Steven Spielberg had acquired the rights to Martin Luther King Jr.'s speeches, earning praise from Ava.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Childhood Influences: Aunt Denise and the Arts | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Guy Raz establishes rapport by referencing specific figures in Ava's upbringing, such as Aunt Denise and her stepfather Murray May. Ava warmly elaborates on the contrast between her mother's practical care and her aunt's artistic influence, appreciating Guy acknowledging her father as an entrepreneur. | |
| Early Aspirations and Discovering Cinema Representation | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Guy asks if there were early signs of Ava becoming a filmmaker, which Ava dismisses succinctly. She walks through how mainstream cinema shaped her early viewing until she recognized the stark absence of authentic Black stories. | |
| UCLA Years and the Rodney King Era | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Guy inquires about Ava's college years during the Rodney King verdict and asks if seeing heavy police presence was typical. Ava reframes the question, noting how normalized airborne police surveillance and helicopters were in Black neighborhoods. | |
| Hip-Hop Performance at The Good Life Cafe | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Guy brings up Ava's early hip-hop performance background at The Good Life Cafe. Ava details how participating in the underground LA rap scene transitioned her from purely admiring art to creating it. | |
| CBS News Internship and Turning Away from Journalism | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Guy asks about Ava's CBS News internship during the O.J. Simpson trial. Ava recounts the distaste she felt being assigned to stake out a juror's home, which pushed her away from journalism toward PR. | |
| Founding an Agency and the Mechanics of Film PR | 4 | 5 | 3 | 2 | Guy suggests that publicists must possess saintly patience similar to realtors handling demanding talent. Ava flatly rejects the premise, explaining she represented studio titles rather than individuals specifically so she could be transparent and direct. | |
| Epiphany on the Set of Collateral | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Guy prompts Ava about her experience doing publicity on Michael Mann's Collateral. Ava explains how observing Mann shoot digitally in familiar neighborhoods catalyzed her realization that directing was within her reach. | |
| Learning to Direct and Managing Technical Fears | 4 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Guy draws an analogy to his own technical radio beginnings and asks how Ava acquired film technique. Ava explains that technical expertise is secondary to story, observing that white male directors often succeed through sheer confidence rather than technical mastery. | |
| Directing Saturday Night Life and Palm Springs Premiere | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Guy asks about her debut short film Saturday Night Life. Ava recounts the emotional autobiographical inspiration, her humorous early mistakes like omitting a musical score, and the intoxicating rush of watching audience reactions at Palm Springs. | |
| Envisioning a Low-Budget Independent Career | 3 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Guy asks if she envisioned making directing her primary profession. Ava corrects any assumption of grand ambition, explaining there was virtually no commercial precedent for Black female feature directors at the time, making indie filmmaker Lynn Shelton her modest role model. | |
| I Will Follow and the Creation of AFFRM | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Guy inquires about self-distribution mechanics for I Will Follow. Ava uses a vivid analogy of getting homemade cakes into supermarkets versus local bakeries to explain how she mobilized Black film festivals into the AFFRM distribution network. | |
| Middle of Nowhere and Meeting David Oyelowo | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Guy asks about financing Middle of Nowhere and working with David Oyelowo. Ava shares the serendipitous story of an airplane encounter between Oyelowo and an investor that resulted in funding and casting. | |
| Sundance Award and the Directorial Role | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Guy asks about winning Best Director at Sundance and whether directing is like being a corporate executive. Ava reframes the director as the mayor of a small town managing diverse departments and human personalities. | |
| Taking on Selma and Rewriting History | 6 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Guy demonstrates strong background knowledge by naming Steven Spielberg as the holder of Dr. King's speech rights. Ava corrects Raz's phrasing regarding the tight 30-day filming schedule, emphasizing that having only 30 days was a strict budgetary constraint rather than a casual feat. | |
| Selma Reception, Oscar Realities, and Creative Control | 4 | 5 | 2 | 1 | Guy asks if Ava was hurt by being passed over for a Best Director Oscar nomination for Selma. Ava educates him on Academy demographics and campaign mechanics, noting she knew the institutional odds made a nomination statistically impossible. | |
| ARRAY Campus and Structural Change in Hollywood | 4 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Guy highlights the expansive ambition of Array's mission and campus. Ava candidly discusses the exhausting structural labor required of creators of color compared to white male peers who only have to focus on filmmaking. | |
| Hard Work, Destiny, and Spiritual Blessings | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Guy asks whether Ava attributes her success to grind versus luck. Ava reframes luck as divine alignment and blessings while acknowledging the essential role of hard labor. |
Statements from this episode (20)
DuVernay: The word 'entrepreneur' is unfairly reserved for fancy companies
“I think that we don't use that word for people who are not, you know. Creating companies that are fancy, so to speak”
DuVernay: Adults should stop asking children what they want to be
“When people would ask that horrible question that you ask children, which I don't think children should be asked, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
DuVernay: Rodney King video was first national police assault without punishment
“Really the first video footage of a police Assault that reached national prominence was still not enough to result in any kind of, you know, punishment for the officers who were involved.”
DuVernay: Paid internship at CBS Evening News coincided with O.J. trial
“I got an internship with CBS Evening News with Dan Rather and Connie Chung. And this was right at the time of the OJ Simpson trial, and I was an intern with a very prestigious paid internship that I was very excited about.”
DuVernay: Staking out an O.J. Simpson juror made me quit journalism
“And I basically just sat outside her house, you know, and saw what was coming and going and like made notes and I remember hating it and feeling like this is stupid and wrong and I don't want to be doing this. And it really soured my appetite for news. So that…”
DuVernay: You can market anything if you understand storytelling
“I never think that way, because I know you can sell and market anything if you know how to do it, which I do.”
DuVernay: Michael Mann pioneered Viper digital cameras for night shoots
“He was one of the first to use these digital cameras called Vipers, which could shoot through the night.”
DuVernay: Great filmmaking relies on story and performance over technical mastery
“That the core of what made a great filmmaker was, did you know the story? Not did you know the lens, did you know, the technical aspects, but there are a lot of filmmakers out there who are story and performance focused and less technically focused.”
DuVernay: White male directors often lack know-how but succeed via confidence
“I see white guys all the time don't know what they're, the hell they're doing, but you know what they do have? Confidence. They're gonna get out there and say, I want to figure it out, and I'm sure I'll be okay. I'm sure I can figure this out.”
DuVernay: Debut short film 'Saturday Night Life' cost roughly $5,000
“And I think I made the whole thing on like, I don't know, five grand or something, but I made it.”
DuVernay: Palm Springs festival acceptance felt more euphoric than Oscar nomination
“And literally, I Did not feel that same joy even when I got the Academy Award nomination. Like, nothing has since felt as euphoric and like breaking me wide open as the Palm Springs short film festival acceptance.”
DuVernay: Filmmakers watch the audience, not the screen, during screenings
“I mean, any filmmaker that's in a screening of their films not watching the film, they're watching the audience.”
DuVernay: As of 2012, no Black female filmmaker made a sustainable living
“There was no precedent for Sustainable livelihood as a black woman filmmaker as recently as 2012.”
DuVernay: AFFRM used Black film festivals to distribute indie movies
“And so I started to put together a coalition of black film festivals that Not only supported my work outside of their festival, because they had lists of film lovers, black film lovers, they had relationships with theaters where they showed their festivals, th…”
DuVernay: Middle of Nowhere was produced on a $250,000 budget
“Yeah, the second one, I used profits from the first one, plus my landlord in my office building said, oh, I have some friends who Might invest. And so he collected 20,010 1050 thousand from some, you know, people he knew that were, you know, doing pretty well.…”
DuVernay: A film director operates like the mayor of a small town
“Yeah, I think of the CA, I think of the director as the mayor of a small town, because a film has every element of a small town. I mean, a fire department, a hospital, that's the medic, you know what I mean? There's some people working construction, there's so…”
DuVernay: A Sundance peer landed a Jurassic Park sequel within six months
“One of my fellow filmmakers at Sundance who won the Screenwriting Award that year, who within six months had a deal to direct the sequel to Jurassic Park.”
Spielberg owned film rights to MLK's speeches during Selma's development
“Steven Spielberg had the rights to the speeches in film at that time.”