The Exchanges

Q on to make a documentary, uh, about the Good Life Cafe, where you had performed back in college, and then I guess right after that, you, you started to work on an entirely different kind of film, a narrative, which was, uh, based on your experience of taking care of your aunt, uh, Aunt Denise, who was, who had been sick with, with cancer, um, a few years earlier, right?

A Yeah, yeah. She had had a recurrence of her breast cancer. It was like a stage two the first time she had a Uh, surgery, and then it came back, like, six years later, which was the cruel part, you know, they say, oh, if you're five years, you're out of the woods, and then, like, in the sixth year, it came back at stage four, and, um, I remember, because we moved into a house together after she got diagnosed, I gave up my apartment, I moved her out of her apartment, and we moved to an apartment near the beach in an area that she always wanted to live in, in Long Beach, and Because at that point, she was, you know, basically given a death sentence a certain amount of time to live. And so I went to make sure that she was in a place that she found beautiful and enjoyed.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, yeah. She had had a recurrence of her breast cancer.”

Q You went to UCLA, um, and you majored in African American studies and English, um, and you were, you, you wrote for the, for the black student newspaper there. Um, what, what did you make of UCLA? You were there in, in the early nineties. Um, did you like it?

A I loved it. I had a beautiful experience there. Learned a lot, was involved with the black student union, you know, learned about the power of protest, um, learned about, um, Communities of color in Los Angeles that hadn't been engaged with, because I, you know, I think people who aren't from LA think it's all together, but it's really quite a sprawl. So if you're from Compton, Long Beach, Linwood, you really have no reason to be in LA proper unless... I had no reason to be in LA, so I really wasn't familiar with LA proper until I got to college. And, um, it's like 40 minutes up the coast, but, um, it felt like a different world. And so, yeah, just, just had a dorm experience, lived in the dorms for the first couple of years, you know, worked my little job as a waitress, came home with my tips, uh, going through, you know, to the games, like it was a very normal college experience. Except for the fact that there was, like, huge, huge racial unrest happening in the city at that time, so feeling, um, you know, being a college student and becoming conscious of my history and the historical context of the times that we were in, um, really had a big effect on me.

AI assessment note: “I loved it. I had a beautiful experience there.”

Q Well, let's talk about it then, just for a moment. Um, tell me what, from what I understand, the story was about When you were a little girl, your mom would dress you up, um, and, and, and listen to people, um, compliment you and, and your sisters. Is that, what was the film about?

A Uh, the film was about, yeah, uh, I, I told my mom I wanted to make a short film and try to make something. I had been taking kind of, uh, these extension classes at UCLA, uh, film extension classes, um, where you would, you know, there's like weekend courses on two days to talk about how to make a short film, that kind of thing. And so I decided I was going to make a short film, and I was asking my mom, I need to Figure out a little story to tell, and she reminded me about this, which is basically that she, when she, before she met my dad, when we were little, that she was really, really struggling as a single mom, struggling with money, struggling with her confidence, everything. The way that she would cheer herself up was she would dress us up, Grease us down. Now, the greasing down is important, so our skin shines, so Vaseline on our little brown faces and arms and chubby legs. Put us in our, you know, patent leather shoes, our matching dresses, because it was me and my two sisters, so there were three of us. Do our hair, take us in the car on hardly any gas, to the Alpha Beta, which was the grocery store. And We would go there, and she would dress us all up just to get a couple noodles or a bag of chips or whatever she could afford. And she would do that, it makes me emotional just to say it, she would do that because she knew that her girls were so beautiful that someone …

AI assessment note: “the film was about, yeah... she reminded me about this”

Q When you were a teenager, um, and people would meet you, and they would say, oh, Ava, she's gonna be this or that. What would people say about you? They would say, oh, she's gonna be the president, or what, what would you remember people saying?

A Um, I always got that I was, you know, bright, that I was smart, the things that every kid should hear, right? Just that, you know, I had potential, and I could be anything that I wanted to be at the time for many, many years. When I was young, 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? I'd say a lawyer. Um, and I would always hear, you know, positive reinforcement. Oh, I can see that for you, or that's perfect, or you're going to be that. I remember my godmother, Charlene, uh, gave me a briefcase for my eighth grade graduation. And I thought, right, this is, these are the tools that I need to go into the courtroom, and I am truly a few short steps from the courtroom. This will not take long. I am that smart, and I will use this briefcase, and I will go to the Supreme Court and do whatever I need to do.

AI assessment note: “I always got that I was, you know, bright, that I was smart”

Q And did you do anything with the film? Did you try to, um, I mean, you, you were a publicist, so you had that experience. Did you try to screen it and get it out into the world in, in any way?

A Yeah, there was no market for shorts, you know, which is just further evidence of, I didn't really care about the outcome. I remember my big goal was, ah, it would be great if I can get this into a festival. And someone was telling, someone said, oh, people don't really care about shorts at the big film festivals. You got to go to a shorts festival. And the biggest shorts festival, there were like three big festivals at the time in the world. One of them was in the United States. It's the Palm Springs Short Film Festival. Really considered one of the top festivals at the time. So I was like, oh, Palm Springs, that, that, that's possible. So I submitted it to Palm Springs, and I remember the day I got the letter. I was in my office, and I got this letter that I, the film was accepted. And literally, I, 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. I thought, oh my god. Isn't this a miracle? And the first time seeing the film with an audience is in a shorts block, so it's like six other films, and I think my film was fourth or something, I remember it was coming up, I was so nervous, and to, for the first time being in the back of a theater, I mean, any filmmaker that's in a screening of their films not watching the film, they're…

AI assessment note: “I submitted it to Palm Springs, and I remember the day I got the letter.”

Q you, I mean, you worked with Clint Eastwood and Bill Condon and a bunch of really, you know, well-known directors, and, and I read that you were, um, brought on to work, uh, to publicity for the film Collateral, the Michael Mann film, which was kind of a turning point for you and, and how you started to think about what you wanted to do. Is that, is that right?

A Yeah, that was a big deal for me to be on the set of Collateral. First of all, it was just so cool, the concept of the film, but it also just had very hot actors at the time. Tom Cruise, Jada Pinkett, Jamie Foxx, a young Javier Bardem, and it was just an exhilarating project to work on. But yeah, something happened on this, that set. I, I, a couple things. First of all, he was using these digital cameras, and it was the first time I'd ever seen a, Film shot on a digital camera. He was one of the first to use these digital cameras called Vipers, which could shoot through the night. You could see the depth of the night. It would capture distance in the night, which is why that film looks so milky and gorgeous. And then also he was shooting in a part of town that I knew very well, East L.A., shot a lot in East L.A. with brown people and black people, and the story had black people in it and brown people, and I thought, Wow, he's shooting kind of like in the hoods that I know, and I just began watching him and thinking, oh, I, I want to do that. I'd been on many sets before, and it never really hit me like I want to do that. I'd been on sets before where I thought I could do that. I could do what he's doing, you know. I mean, everyone's on a set, watches. Now I know people think that now, because they're watching me on a set, and they'll be like, I can do, I can totally do that. Bu…

AI assessment note: “Yeah, that was a big deal for me to be on the set of Collateral.”

Q There's a quote, um, that I read in an article, an interview you gave, and you said, you're talking about the entertainment industry, and you said, we need to be thinking more broadly about how we not only reform the system, but rebuild the system, um, which is huge, um, just a huge, enormous task ahead. Do you think that's Either happening or, or will happen?

A Yeah, I think it will happen. It may not happen and be fully realized in my time, but someone's going to see it, right, in the future, or someone's going to be activated by it, and you know, this whole journey is just all of us taking Our own little steps, like, especially the journey of black people, the journey of women, the journey of black directors, like, each person's lifetime is just one step and a long walk to get to a certain place, and so I'm hoping that my step can be a big one. I'm, like, trying to leap and get us a lot further in my time, and that's really my hope for Ray, that this is something that even after I'm gone, You know, even if my time on this, this planet is done, could the principles and the work and the, you know, way of working that I'm trying to embed in this kind of array way, can that continue on without me? That's the goal.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I think it will happen. It may not happen and be fully realized”

Q And how did you like it? Was it everything that you had imagined and more? Was it exciting? Were you, did you feel like you were shaping stories?

A Yes. I love publicity to this day. If I was not a filmmaker, I would be a publicist. I think about it as, in terms of offering stories, and, um, presenting stories, and, you know, understanding the power of publicity, and that, you know, helped me understand That, you know, everyone has a story, you just have to present it correctly, and, and that's giving me a lot of confidence in my own storytelling as a filmmaker, whereas I'll talk to filmmakers who will sometimes be driven by, oh, is this sellable? Can I market this? I never think that way, because I know you can sell and market anything if you know how to do it, which I do. So yeah, I, uh, I loved it, and I still do. And I'm so happy that I had that tool set. That was, my time as a publicist was really my film school in so many ways.

AI assessment note: “Yes. I love publicity to this day. If I was not a filmmaker”

Q I'm curious about what you think makes a great director. Do you think that great directors are great because they can get actors to Give them their best work. Is that a definition of what makes a director strong?

A No, I don't think so, because I think, uh, I mean, I think that's a part of it. But, I mean, you can have a great actor give a fantastic performance in a film that's, yeeks, not working. Uh, we've all seen that. For me, it's a film that I can look at a film and say, oh, that person got their vision out. Like, they, they told the story that they wanted to tell. Like, I made a film called Wrinkle in Time. I look at that film And for all of the beautiful experiences that I had on it, and for the beauty that I think is in the film. It's not my film, right? It was the first time I made a film for a massive studio, and went through a process of, uh, kind of like group filmmaking. You know what I mean? Like, a lot of people with a lot of opinions who have a lot more power than you do, and ultimately, you compromise, and you get to the end, and you say, ok, I think this will be ok. You know, and sit back and say, oh, ok, that, that wasn't quite what I meant. Not quite what I started out wanting to do. And that, that was ok. That was what that experience was for me in my career. And so many, you know, directors go through that. There were so many, there, there are many people around the world that I continue to hear from about the film, you know, in ways that are nourishing and necessary and beautiful. But I look at the film, and I remember the process, and it was a process that wasn't …

AI assessment note: “No, I don't think so, because I think... that's a part of it.”

Q Yeah. How did you start to perform yourself?

A I was going to this open mic night, just enjoying it. This was the place to be. It was a place called The Good Life. It was a health food store that on Thursday nights would, uh, put a, open a mic, and people would, um, perform, and it was all hip-hop, all rhyming. You'd come with your tape, you'd press play on your tape, and you would have like two minutes to rhyme and impress the crowd. And so on Thursday nights, you would listen to You know, a colorful cast of local emcees who, you know, were known in the neighborhood, uh, and eagerly anticipated what they were going to do, and had fans, and didn't have record deals, but were like stars to us.

AI assessment note: “I was going to this open mic night... It was a place called The Good Life.”

Q radio in my life. I didn't know anything about it. I just liked listening. And, um, and the way I learned how to do it was like by cutting reel to reel with a razor blade, you know, and, and doing it really badly. And, and over time I learned how to do that, right? The technical side. How did you start to learn the technical side of making movies?

A Well, that's, that's a good question. You know, for me, early on, I had to embrace what I did know how to do and not be intimidated by what I didn't know how to do. And I had been around enough filmmakers as a publicist to see that not all filmmakers were technically proficient. That the core of what made a great filmmaker was, did you know the story? Not did you know the lens, did you know, you know, the technical aspects, but there are a lot of filmmakers out there who are story and performance focused and less technically focused. I thought the most important thing is the story, and all these people around me are supposed to know that stuff. So if I can write the story, then I will be the leader of the story because it came out of my mind, and no one will know more about it than I will. And from there, I made sure that I surrounded myself with people who did know their jobs, and one of the things that I learned from running my own business was to never be shy about saying I don't know. And that that, especially for women, And for women of color, black women, you know, um, to feel like you won't be taken seriously if you don't know everything, you know, uh, to feel like you cannot ask a question were all things that I had to combat, but the reason why I felt entitled to do it is because I saw white, white men do it.

AI assessment note: “I made sure that I surrounded myself with people who did know their jobs”

Q I mean, you wouldn't have probably known it at the time, but did it feel like, did it feel like you were part, I don't know, you were part of something special?

A Yeah. No, you definitely knew it at the time that you were in something that was very special. Especially if you were able to be inside of it, to know the artist, and then eventually to become an artist there. Uh, the first time that I did anything, uh, as it related to actually being a maker of art and not a consumer or a fan of art, which is a big part of the art practice is people to consume it. So I, I, I value that, and that's what my aunt Denise was. You know, art that sits in a room by itself can only go so far. You need the appreciator. And so my aunt was that. I was that for a long time until, um, I was encouraged to pick up the mic and really enjoyed it, and so did that for a little while.

AI assessment note: “No, you definitely knew it at the time that you were in something that was very special.”