- 4 hours ago
“We all have an inheritance from the history that we cover in that story. That’s part of the magic of it, it’s not just personal to me but I think it’s personal to a lot of people.”
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00:00Hi, this is Mariah Gullow from The Hollywood Reporter, and this is Meet Your Oscar Nominees.
00:06And I'm here with Virgil Williams.
00:08Hi.
00:08Hey.
00:09How are you?
00:10I'm great.
00:11I am great.
00:12Congratulations on being nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay.
00:16Thank you very much.
00:16And how does it feel to stand shoulder to shoulder with Dee Rees, Rachel Morrison, and
00:21Mary J. Blige?
00:22You know, humbling, to be surrounded by that kind of, I don't know, that kind of juice
00:30is just, this whole experience has been humbling, you know, it's, I can't, and magical.
00:37Yeah.
00:37It's because, I mean, to get, just to get a movie made is, it's a daisy chain of miracles.
00:41So to get it made and then to end up here is like, you know, it's a big fat miracle.
00:46Yeah.
00:47Yeah.
00:47It's out of body.
00:48Yeah.
00:49You've said before that this, this screenplay was really personal.
00:53Yeah.
00:53For you.
00:53Intensely so.
00:54Explain how that.
00:55Well, you know, my grandfather fought in a segregated unit in World War II.
00:59He was in the 92nd Infantry, he was a Buffalo soldier.
01:03And his brother, however, fought in a white unit because he could pass.
01:07And my grandfather didn't claim Negro out of some sense of like racial pride.
01:11He claimed Negro because he thought they would not send black boys into combat.
01:14He was wrong about that.
01:16Yeah.
01:16So the relationship between Jamie and Ronsal was intensely personal to me.
01:21It's like, you know, those, those two guys were me.
01:24Mudbound was me.
01:26Mudbound is really kind of all of us.
01:27Yeah.
01:28You know, there's, there's an access point for everyone in, in that film.
01:33We all have an inheritance from the history that we cover in that story.
01:38So, you know, that's part of the magic of it.
01:41It's not just personal to me, but there's a, I think it's personal to a lot of people.
01:46Mm-hmm.
01:47Are there certain scenes that really stand out to you when you were able to kind of see
01:51your, your writing come to life?
01:54Yeah.
01:54There's a couple in particular.
01:56The first time that I ever saw the movie was at Sundance.
01:58I hadn't seen a cut until Sundance.
02:00So it was a, it was a, that was a, that was a very powerful, powerful experience.
02:04And my wife wanted a weekend away from the kids.
02:08Yeah.
02:08But when I did the math, my, my 10 year old daughter for 70% of her life, I had
02:13been working
02:14on and or dreaming about that movie and they don't do what you say, they do what you do.
02:19So I knew that that little girl and her little sister needed to see with their own eyes what
02:24sort of hard work and tenacity and faith sort of manifest.
02:27So we brought them, we brought, and so my oldest daughter came to the screening.
02:31And so there was a scene, two scenes stick out.
02:36There's a scene when Ronsell and Jamie are in the barn and it's a scene that's not in
02:40the book.
02:42And Ronsell asked Jamie, why are you being so friendly?
02:45And Jamie says, because you look like you could use it.
02:49And Ronsell's answer to that is bullshit.
02:51Sorry.
02:52I don't know if I can say that.
02:53Fine.
02:54And then Jamie tells the story of what happened to him when he was at war.
03:00And spoiler alert, he was, his bomber, his plane was going down.
03:05He was as good as dead and he made a deal with God, if you save me, I'll do something
03:09good.
03:09I don't know what that is, but if you save me, I'm going to do something good.
03:13And then the Tuskegee Airmen show up and they save him.
03:18And in the book, there's not an answer to that question.
03:20But as a screenwriter, I wanted an answer to that question.
03:23I wanted a cinematic answer to that question.
03:25And the way that Dee shot that scene was so beautiful, sort of stripped the sound out.
03:32So it's Jamie's voiceover that takes us through the whole scene and it's very naked, which
03:36makes it very, very intimate.
03:38You don't hear any of the rat-a-tat-tat of the guns.
03:41You don't hear the engines whirring or droning.
03:45It's just Jamie's voice and that scene, I got goosebumps.
03:48You know, I get those when any time there's something honest, if it's in a song or a painting
03:52or a scene, and it's just, that scene blew me away.
03:56And the ending, another piece that's not in the book, the book ends differently.
04:01The book, you know, spoiler alert, she's, Hilary Jordan, the author of the novel, just sort
04:07of alludes to the possibility of what could potentially happen to Ronsal.
04:12And it leaves you in a state of thinking, which I think is great for a novel.
04:16And films can do the same thing, but I'm sort of more of a purist.
04:20I'm a classic movie goer.
04:21I want an ending that sort of sweeps you away.
04:23It makes you go like that, a sort of burst of emotion and some closure to sort of all the
04:28stuff that we've put you through.
04:29So, you know, and plus, you know, I'm half black, half Puerto Rican.
04:33I'm a black father.
04:34And there are too many fatherless black kids in the world.
04:36And in my opinion, Ronsal could not occupy the space of hero unless he went to go get
04:42his son.
04:43And his son is the very reason for which he got lynched.
04:48So it didn't make any sense to me that he would not cross the ocean again this time for
04:52love, not for war.
04:54So those two scenes really, they blew me away because they worked.
04:59And again, I hadn't seen the movie yet, so it was just like movie magic.
05:03Yeah.
05:03And those are, I mean, that is a wonderful ending to put in.
05:06You know, after everything that we put them through, you know, with intent, I wanted the
05:12last word of dialogue to be love.
05:14Yeah.
05:14Um, because, um, it, that's what it is.
05:18I mean, mud bound shows us that it doesn't matter what color, what creed or gender we
05:23are.
05:24We're all stuck here together on earth, mud bound.
05:28And that mud is fear, it's ignorance, and it's hate.
05:31And the only way to get clean is together and with love.
05:34That's what that, that's what I took from that story, and I think that's why people connect
05:39to it.
05:40Yeah.
05:41Do you think a lot of young writers know what it takes to get to this level?
05:47I mean, it's, you were, you were writing this in, um, like you said, for many years.
05:52But also on top of your day job and beyond, you know, into the night.
05:57Yeah.
05:57You know, I don't, I don't know.
05:58I think, especially in, in the television world, because there's such a proliferation
06:03of content, there's a need to fill a pipeline.
06:05So I think that nowadays, you know, you're getting young writers getting their own shows,
06:11for instance.
06:12And I think that there's many, many positives to that, because what you get is these beautiful
06:17young voices that get to emerge and sort of touch the world in a way that, that it hasn't
06:21been touched yet.
06:21And, and on the flip side of it, you've got, I think, you know, young writers are skipping
06:26a whole section of learning, they're skipping a whole section of sort of come up.
06:31And to me, it's, look, I'm a sort of a student and a, and a lover of the game.
06:37Everything always goes back to the page for me.
06:39I, I'm pure, I chase the cursor.
06:42I'm a writer.
06:43Um, I don't, I have, maybe I'll direct someday, but I'm, I'm at my core, a writer.
06:49And, and, and it, for me, it always comes back to that.
06:52So, you know, I don't know.
06:54I think that, you know, that there's great opportunities for young writers.
06:58Um, and I think that some of them are, are skipping steps that, that would only help them in their
07:04craft.
07:04Um, but I think they're learning on the job.
07:07What do you think it was, uh, about Mary J. Blige's performance that earned her that Oscar
07:11nomination?
07:12Um, in a word, stillness.
07:15Hmm.
07:16I think that there's, um, they're really, really great performances tend to, um, there's
07:25not a lot of physicality going on, externalized physicality going on, but there's a ton going
07:30on in the eyes.
07:31You know, it's like, you know, still waters run very deep.
07:35And I think the great actors that can, um, somehow magically take that.
07:41And, and, uh, and the good directors are able to locate that and sort of put it on screen
07:48somehow.
07:48It's one of this, it's sort of that movie magic.
07:50There's, there's some writers who write and you read their words and their words literally
07:53sort of pop off the page, still the same words as everybody else uses.
07:57It's just like a, a great musician, a composer, his or her notes may pop off the page.
08:04Same notes.
08:05Um, so, but I think stillness, um, I think that she, uh, again, like everybody brought
08:11an astounding amount of personal anguish and pain, um, to, to that part.
08:18And, uh, Dee, I think, allowed her to be vulnerable in a way that an actor needs to be.
08:24I started out an actor as a kid and realized pretty quickly that to be a great actor, look,
08:30we tell them what to say.
08:31We tell them where to stand.
08:32We tell them what to wear.
08:33We tell them what time to show up.
08:35They have to be able to find, they're like creative yogis.
08:38They need to be able to find space where there is none.
08:41And they need to be able to locate their create, their creativity in a very, very narrow window.
08:45And that's hard to do because you have to sort of, um, release and surrender.
08:50And, um, that's way easier said than done.
08:53If you could hand deliver this film to anybody, who would you like to see this film?
09:00Oh my gosh.
09:02I think our president, you know, off the top of my head.
09:07And, and, you know, anybody that voted for him and is still, and is still supporting him.
09:13Um, uh, off the top of my head and, you know, and kids.
09:18I really wrote it when I closed the book.
09:20What struck me was my God, this, this could be to kill a mockingbird for this generation.
09:26Yeah.
09:26I'm seeing a disc.
09:27There's a disconnectedness, uh, that, that I'm seeing a younger generation have.
09:32They don't, they're not connected to the, to the generations that I was connected to just because of distance.
09:37Um, and part of the responsibility that I felt was, um, creating a bridge.
09:44Something that they could see that, that, what the six different voices in Mudbound does is it creates this, this
09:51Twitter-like feed.
09:52Um, and it's, but it's an illusion because the story is marching underneath that at a very steady pace.
09:57And by the time you realize you've been sort of duped, it's too late and the story's got you by
10:02the throat.
10:02Um, but it creates this illusion of being kinetic.
10:05It's just like a Twitter feed because you're hearing these different voices sort of chime in on a particular thing.
10:11Um, and so, you know, I, I would show it to, to, to, to every, every 14, 15 year old
10:16kid who is, who is sort of trying to figure out their identity, um, and to figure out what to
10:24do with their inheritance.
10:25Because that's the age at which you start to realize, um, those things start to manifest.
10:31Yeah.
10:31Whether you're white or black, those, those things start to manifest once you are, you know, in high school, you're
10:36getting out into the world really for the first time.
10:39So the kids, man.
10:41Yeah.
10:41Yeah.
10:42Do it for the kids.
10:43Yeah.
10:44I often wonder if, if people were able, if younger, the younger generation was able to have the time to
10:51see the classics, would they like the classics?
10:53But it seems like we could maybe just create some new classics for them.
10:57I think it's that.
10:57And I think it depends on the kid.
10:59I think it's depends on how it's presented.
11:01I mean, you know, my daughter, my, my 10, 11 year old daughter loves some old movies because some of
11:06them do stand up.
11:08Some of them are slow.
11:10It's just, it's just sort of the nature of the beast.
11:13And they're used to, these are kids that grew up.
11:16My daughter could walk into the office when she was two years old and say giraffe.
11:21And I could pull up a hundred different pictures of a giraffe in animated form, photographs.
11:27She could say mouse and I could do the same thing.
11:29So there's the automatic, I think the younger generation has so much information at their fingertips.
11:36They, they, they sort through it faster than we did.
11:38Yeah.
11:39What was the first movie that inspired you?
11:41Oh, wow.
11:45You know, as a, as a, as a kid, my parents probably let me watch movies that were slightly inappropriate.
11:50Um, but I can remember seeing, uh, Alien in the theater as a boy and that movie blew me away.
11:56Wow.
11:57Um, uh, later in life, um, when I was an intern at Orion Pictures, when Orion was making movies
12:05like Dances with Wolves and Platoon and Silence of the Lambs, the day that I read, and if you
12:12were an employee and I was an intern, you got to, you got free movies because they had screenings.
12:15So the day that I read the script for Silence of the Lambs and then two hours later saw the
12:19movie,
12:20that's when I knew, that's when I knew.
12:22I was like, oh, I can do that.
12:26Not yet, but I, I can do that.
12:27And I understood what screenwriting, writing was.
12:31Um, so I have to say that was probably, that was a movie that really, that really flipped the switch
12:36in me.
12:36Silence of the Lambs.
12:37Wow.
12:38Yeah.
12:39Um, so I have a couple of Oscar related questions.
12:42Okay.
12:42This is a bit of a built, fill in the blank.
12:44Okay.
12:45The night wouldn't be complete unless blank happens.
12:49Um, I meet Beyonce and Jay-Z.
12:53Nice.
12:54Uh, the nominee I'd like to dance with at the after parties is?
13:00You know who I absolutely adore?
13:02I love Kumail and Emily.
13:04Like it would be fun for me and my wife to see them on the dance floor and to, because
13:10they're just awesome.
13:11They're really, really cool.
13:13What has been the most surreal moment since you've been nominated?
13:18Uh, seeing, uh, John Landis at the, um, at the, the, the luncheons, the Oscar luncheon.
13:28Um, so when I was, I'm from Chicago and when I was eight years old, I was in a movie
13:34called The Blues Brothers.
13:34Mm-hmm.
13:35And, uh, it was that experience that lit me up, those three days on set that really lit me.
13:41It was from the, at the time I was eight years old, I knew that I was gonna be in
13:45and around movies.
13:46Uh, it's the reason I came to California, went to USC, got rejected from the film school, but still stayed
13:52with it.
13:53It was because of the, I was in The Blues Brothers.
13:55That's really what, that's where I got bit by the bug.
13:58Yeah.
13:58So, I see John Landis walking across the room and I said, oh my God, I have to say hello
14:04to this man.
14:06And these parties are, you know, they're really like a series of interruptions.
14:10They're like 30 second conversations, someone interrupts and you go to the next person, another 30 second conversation, someone interrupts.
14:15And I try not, I try to be the change that I want to see in the world.
14:18And I don't, I try not to interrupt, but he was talking to Patton Oswalt.
14:22And so I couldn't interrupt and they were talking for a really, really long time.
14:26So I finally go, my wife goes, you have to interrupt.
14:29So I finally go up to John and I put my hand on his shoulder and I go, excuse me,
14:33I'm so sorry to interrupt.
14:34And he looks at my hand like, you are touching me. Why are you touching me?
14:39And I said, hi, my name is Virgil Williams.
14:41And I, and I, and I wrote Mudbound and I said, hi Patton, you're actually hosting the Writers Guild Awards.
14:45I'm nominated for Writers Guild Awards too. So I'll see you there. Oh, you wrote Mudbound. Hi, how are you?
14:50And then I said, Mr. Landis, I had to come over and say hello, because you cast me in the
14:55Blues Brothers some 40 years ago.
14:57And if you don't cast me in that movie, I'm not in that room.
15:01And he said this to me, he goes, you just saved the picture.
15:04And I took that to mean like, you better have a good reason for touching my arm.
15:08And you just gave me a better reason that I could have come up with myself.
15:11And then he said, come here.
15:12And he, and he, and he took me over to his wife, who's nominated as well.
15:15She's a costumer.
15:17And he said, tell her the story.
15:18And when I told her the story, I started crying, because I couldn't hold him.
15:22I couldn't hold him, because if this man doesn't cast me in that movie, I'm not in that room.
15:25Yeah.
15:26I'm not, I'm maybe not even in California.
15:28I maybe don't realize that this is a thing.
15:31And I'm getting emotional just talking about it.
15:34So that was, for me, profound.
15:36And so I start crying in front of his wife, and she gives me a tissue, and she starts crying
15:39a little bit.
15:41And then later on, Patton Oswalt tweets out to his four million followers that that was his favorite moment of
15:47the day, too.
15:48Wow.
15:48So that was, that was some sort of spirit heaven at work thing that was extraordinarily profound.
15:56And it's just an affirmation, like, you know, that I'm in the right place, that chasing the dream was the
16:04right thing to do, that all the sacrifice, and all the hard work, and all the time alone in that
16:08office on that keyboard, and all the faith, and all the ramen that I had to eat, that it was
16:15worth it.
16:16That, you know, you do all that, it's like, it's a little Olympian, because you toil in anonymity for, for,
16:21for years, for, for moments, like that man in Austin, who cried, like John Landis be happening to be, it
16:28just happened to be at that ceremony that day, because his wife happened to be nominated, too.
16:33Wow.
16:33So, you know, it's profound.
16:36I'm even still, like, just sort of tripping out, like, it feels like I couldn't write that, because you wouldn't
16:40believe it.
16:40Yeah, it's a beautiful lesson about how life really does come full circle.
16:44And we don't realize it until that precise moment when it happens.
16:49Yep, yep.
16:49And you better be listening, or else you'll miss it.
16:50Yeah.
16:51You better be sort of there, and present, because you're gonna miss it, because if they, they're like that, they're
16:55like that, and that was, you know, I, I hope God lets me keep my memory to my grave, because
17:02I'd like to take that to my grave, because that was very, very, that was a lovely moment for me.
17:06Oh, yeah.
17:07And I can't wait to see him again at the Oscars.
17:08Yes, yes.
17:09And his wife, you know, I can't, I can't wait to, yeah.
17:11He'll be a little nicer this time.
17:12And so, and so, yeah, he'll recognize me.
17:15And so then, the next morning, because Jordan Peele and I have become buddies too, it's like, this is part
17:20of the, like, such a gift.
17:22I know, you get to go on tour with all the Oscar nominees.
17:24And Jordan Peele sends me a direct message on Twitter with a photograph that John Landis had sent to him.
17:31John Landis had found an old still from the day that we shot of me.
17:35No way.
17:36Okay.
17:36With Cab Calloway.
17:38And then he made an image of a picture of me and him together at the luncheon.
17:42And he sent it to Jordan.
17:44And Jordan Peele was like, Landis sent me this this morning.
17:46And I was like, bro.
17:48Wow.
17:48I'm shook.
17:49I'm just shook that Jordan Peele is reaching out to me to tell me about this story.
17:52It was just like, wow, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, it makes me want to get back to work and keep
17:57writing.
17:57Yeah.
17:58You know, and keep chasing the dream because this, this shit is crazy.
18:02Yeah.
18:02Oh, Virgil Williams.
18:03Thank you so much for being here today.
18:06We will see you on Oscars night.
18:07Yes, ma'am.
18:08I'll be there.
18:09I'm not gonna miss it.
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