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In the latest episode of The Envelope video podcast, brothers Malcolm and John David Washington talk about collaborating on a new August Wilson adaptation, plus screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes discusses his breakout year.
Kelvin Washington: Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Envelope. Kelvin Washington glad to be here with a couple of folks you know, we have Yvonne Villarreal, also Mark Olsen. Everybody doing good? Everybody well? Did you acknowledge I’m getting better with the name?
Yvonne Villarreal: You’re really getting better with the rolling of the Rs. Kudos to you.
Washington: That’s the only time I’ll do it in this episode, just so I can stay on a hot streak here. I’ll start with you, Yvonne. We have “The Piano Lesson” with a couple of brothers in this in Malcolm and John David Washington, I would imagine it was cool spending time with them and then obviously talking about the film.
Villarreal: Malcolm Washington and John David Washington, who of course are the sons of Denzel and Pauletta. So they already hail from quite the dynasty. And Malcolm co-wrote and directed this adaptation of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play. It really tells the story of a brother and sister debating what to do with an heirloom that was engraved by an enslaved family member. And it really tackles this idea of the past and the future through their dynamic. And John David returns to this character, Boy Willie, who is the brother in this story, and it’s a role that he made his Broadway debut with the recent stage revival of the play. And it was fun to hear the brothers talk about what it’s like collaborating as brothers because I don’t think I could do it.
Washington: Right. A lot. Start arguing …
Villarreal: It’s a lot. But they seemed to handle it well. And it really was a family affair. You know, their sisters were involved as well as their parents. But it was interesting to hear Malcolm talk about his approach for this adaptation and to hear John David talk about sitting with this character for as long as he has.
Washington: I think it’s going be cool just to also, as you mentioned, the sisters being involved, then obviously Malcolm, who wasn’t maybe as known as John David, obviously his parents. So it’s cool to continue to see the layers of the Washington family be out there, exposed, we get to know more about them.
So we go over to you, Mark. We have Justin Kuritzkes with “Challengers” and also “Queer,” a couple of films here. Tell us about Justin and also these films.
Mark Olsen: He really has emerged as one of the most exciting new screenwriter voices this year. He had his film “Challengers” that came out earlier in the year, starred Zendaya and Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist. And that’s sort of a love triangle set in the world of tennis. Then working with the director Luca Guadagnino, their collaboration then rolled forward into making “Queer,” which is an adaptation of the novel by William Burroughs. It stars Daniel Craig. And so this has just turned into such a big year for Justin with both an original screenplay and an adapted screenplay [that] seem like they’re going to be in the mix for competition.
Washington: All right. That sounds interesting. We’ll get to that in just a bit. But right now, here is Yvonne with Malcolm and John David Washington with “The Piano Lesson.”
Villarreal: Your take on “The Piano Lesson” is such a dynamic adaptation of August Wilson’s work. You [Malcolm] co-wrote this and directed it. You’re [John David] returning to the character of Boy Willie after starring in the recent stage revival. But I imagine you guys came to this work a lot sooner than that. Your father is a student of Wilson’s work. Tell me what you remember about your first introduction to the play.
John David Washington: I had read “Seven Guitars” years ago. I got to experience “Fences,” seeing it on Broadway; saw “Two Trains Running” in an Atlanta production that my mother was in, and the director of the play was Latanya Jackson [director of the 2022 stage revival of “The Piano Lesson”]. But when I got into this, I found myself thinking, “This might be my favorite of the ones I’ve read because of the supernatural element and the family dynamic.” And something about Boy Willie’s character really spoke to me. I knew I couldn’t pinpoint it and articulate it then like I can now, maybe — I knew that my life was going to change after I explored this character.
Villarreal: Why?
John David: Well, for one, the words, the poetic writing, the brilliance of August Wilson to be able to chew on those monologues, especially towards the end; when he’s [Boy Willie] talking about death and how he’s overovercome death and inherited his father’s trade and how to be a farmer, the anthropomorphic nature and relationship he has with his tools. I would like to be able to really dive into that, do that every night. I knew I was going to be a different actor because there’s so many layers to that writing. And yes, there’s a “Wow” factor to it. He’s funny, he’s charming, he’s passionate. What’s happening at the same time is there’s the trauma and the pain in his experience that he hasn’t properly gotten to express. But he does it here. And then as an actor — sorry for getting long-winded, but you asked — when it’s in dialogue, everything the character’s going through, his insecurities, his flaws are actually in words, you salivate. You live for those moments. It was an incredible experience. If I could conquer that, if I could do that, I felt as an actor I can do anything. It answered my own questions about my faith and my relationship to the artistry itself.
Villarreal: How about for you, Malcolm, when did you first come to this work?
Malcolm Washington: It was when he [John David] started working on it. We were stuck in COVID lockdown. We were staying together again. My whole family came together. It was like high school again, sleeping in your childhood bed and that kind of thing. And I saw he was kind of preparing away over there. I had never read it before, but I’d seen what he was doing. So I was like, “Let me just take a peek at what he’s working on and read it for the first time.” And it was a profound experience.
Villarreal: What do you think it was that really spoke to you about it? You mentioned you were with your family at the time. Were there a lot of conversations over the dinner table about this text?
Malcolm: Not really, because he was just off —
Villarreal: In the zone.
Malcolm: He was, like, over there ...
John David: “Over there”? [Laughs] What does “over there” mean?
Malcolm: Bro, you know how you are. What are you talking about? [Laughs]
John David: Continue. I’m sorry, this is your experience. This is your truth.
Malcolm: When he prepares, he goes into —
Villarreal: A lockdown.
Malcolm: Yeah, over there.
Villarreal: Over there.
John David: [To Villarreal] What are you doing? Now you’re just hyping it up. [Laughs]
Villarreal: I want to know more about “over there.”
Malcolm: It’s extreme focus. We’ll give him that. But when I read it, it hit me in a moment where I was ready to receive it. I was in my parents’ house and I was archiving our family photos and I was looking at images of my grandparents and great grandparents and so on and so on, trying to find the connection between their stories and mine and understand myself in relation to them, the parts of them that live in me now — just already wrestling with things like that. And when I read “The Piano Lesson,” it was something that confronted that idea directly. It was expressing that and gave me an opportunity to learn more about that and read more into it. It was a really profound moment.
Villarreal: Tell me more about that. I feel like, in our youth, we sort of want to distance ourselves from our parents sometimes or figure things out on our own. But as we get older, we sort of crave that connection or understanding of them differently. For me, I used to hate like the music my mom would listen to. Now it’s really all I listen to on my drives. This is my way to connect with her. Or even the shows my father watched. Do you find that you experience that yourself?
John David: I was just about to ask you, for example, what artists? Because Sade, Anita Baker, it reminds of [being] 7 years old, right in the car with my parents. But I’ve never hated that music. I’ve always loved it and I appreciate it even more. I think I understand her lyrics a little better now as I’ve gotten older.
Villarreal: Mine was Mexican music and I was like, “I want to listen to the American artists.” But now I’m like, “Give it to me.”
Malcolm: It’s about identity. It’s who you see yourself as, what do you make yourself to be. And when you take that departure and you are finding your own independence, your own autonomy, you define yourself in relation to yourself in that crucial development stages, in your teens to 20s, that’s so important to you to build that up for yourself. I think that you see that play out in the characters in our film. They build it up for themselves. And then later, once you have a little more perspective, you have a little more worldview. You’re like, “Hold on, hold on. Wait. I’ve been denying myself this huge resource, which is generations and centuries of experiences that I’m directly tapped into. If I can open up myself to it, then you can build on that. And that’s why I feel like later in our life we reconnect to it and say, “Actually I’m Mexican and American, both of these identities live in me,” and I’m encouraged and fortified by that.
Villarreal: I grew up in a family that where the past isn’t known. They didn’t really share stories. And that’s what I really enjoy about this, is the passing down of stories and learning about your history. Were you a family that talked a lot about where you come from and your past?
Malcolm: Definitely more now. We have a direct connection to my grandparents on my mom’s side for sure. We grew up going to North Carolina [where their mother Pauletta Washington is from]. And our story in the film is the story of migration. It’s a story of a people that have come; the American South is the Black ancestral homeland. That’s where our story, so many of our stories as a culture, originate. That’s where we’re tied to. And growing up in L.A., Black people in L.A., we’re always kind of tied back, often, to Mississippi, Louisiana. That’s like the path of the Great Migration. So what comes with you in that journey, what cultural traditions, what touchstones come with you, is something that you get tied to. But over time you kind of you can lose that connection. My mom has always been really great about continuing that connection for us, but as we’ve gotten older, it’s been nice that more stories come out. My dad, it seems like every two months gives me some old photo or something and he’s like, “That was your grandfather.” And tells some story. So it’s opened him up in a certain kind of way and that’s been wonderful.
Villarreal: Do you have a favorite family story?
John David: I have several. It might not be that interesting, but it’s very emotional for me. It was for my birthday. I could have been no more than 8, 7 years old. And I wanted this football helmet that Marcus Allen wore. There’s a certain face mask that he had, very specific. I knew all about it. I knew what it was. And my grandfather, God bless him, we drove all around North Carolina — and there’s a lot of factories in North Carolina. It took all day and I was getting devastated, I was getting discouraged. And we finally found one, a Riddell helmet. It’s in my room right now. It’s all white with a red face mask. And he found it. It was just that the fact that he was so patient, my grandfather, but cared that much and we found it. These were very patient men. I remember that patience, I remember their quiet calmness and their confidence. These men have seen so many things. So I’m connected to that. And in the artistry I try to pay it forward and remember them.
Villarreal: Do you feel like you need to guard that helmet with your life? This is a thing I want to pass down?
John David: I guard the memory. Things happen, but I have the memory, which is what we’re talking about. These stories. How August Wilson writes, in the familial sense, you see them communicating, sharing stories. The uncles and the nephew talking and Lymon talking about the farm experience, they can exchange these traumatic instances or these triumphant moments through song, through dance and through communication and alcohol.
Villarreal: Malcolm, how intentional was it for “The Piano Lesson” to be the work that was your directorial debut? Why was it important for you?
Malcolm: It wasn’t that intentional. It’s so corny quoting “The Alchemist,” but whatever. It’s like if you want something bad enough, the universe conspires to make it happen. I wanted to tell stories. I wanted to be a filmmaker. And the conspiring was me meeting this text at a moment when I was most ready to engage in it. It was more of that. That idea that I really needed to understand these things for myself, for my own understanding of who I am as a man and what I want to do in the world and in my life in context of so much that came before. It was more wrestling with that thought that turned into the film.
Villarreal: It very much became a family affair. Your sister Olivia and your mother Pauletta are in the cast; your other sister, Katia, and your father, Denzel, are among the producers. Can you tell me what the experience is like collaborating with your family on that level? Because I love my family, but I don’t know if I could create something with them.
John David: We’ve been hearing that a lot from people that can’t believe that we didn’t kill each other.
Villarreal: I was that person that had to have control of the group project at school —
John David: To that point, I think everybody understood their position. It’s his [Malcolm’s] vision. It’s his movie. We go as our director goes. With that power, though, he was very generous. And he established an environment of creativity. It was a very safe environment. As I spoke of, too, what this means to me, this play and this character, I needed family because there’s going to be a lot of trial and error. There’s going to be a lot of vulnerability in a way that I don’t know if I could of done it the way I did it, if I couldn’t be that vulnerable, if I couldn’t have been that honest. Sometimes you have to protect yourself on set, depending on who you’re working with. But you didn’t have to, if you protected yourself. You’re doing a disservice to the entire work. We all knew what our assignment was, we knew our positions and it felt very good. It felt nice.
Villarreal: How was it for you [Malcolm]? Did you settle into your confidence? Did you start with the confidence?
Malcolm: If you’re doing something you really care about, there’s always a certain pressure and doubt of like, “I hope that I’m doing this to the best of my ability.” But I was so empowered by our cast and crew. We had such incredible people working with us and we became such a strong community together that it wasn’t about me. It was about all of us. And we all poured everything into it. It was such a community that there was no pressure after all, just kind of submit to the group. We’re all just in it together, figuring it out every day.
Villarreal: Do you feel like you have a shorthand with each other? Did it make the process easier?
John David: A look. A lot of times, it’s what he didn’t say. We just know it. On a set, I think that’s so important.
Villarreal: Do you remember a note that really helped you in a way you weren’t expecting?
John David Washington: He told me to calm down on the first day. I came in a little amped up. I know the play, but this isn’t the play. This is something different and harness it and just use that energy for the work. And I loved that he told me that. And it was the first day, so it established the tone.
Villarreal: How would you say it was directing your brother?
Malcolm: A dream. It was really wonderful.
Villarreal: He wasn’t over there.
Malcolm: He was very present. He’s somebody with so many great ideas and so much creative energy that when he’s in that zone, when you’re in the room with him, it changes the room. And everybody has to respond to that in a way that keeps the film really alive, and that’s great.
Villarreal: How did you think about how to make this accessible for today, to shorten the distance between the younger generation and this work?
Malcolm: Both in the language, the visual language of it, and the tone of it. And in the music. The themes of the film resonated with me and I felt like that could be translated. Some of it is dealing with, how do we process trauma, how do we confront our past, how do we confront parts of ourselves that we don’t want to deal with? How do we do that? That’s a very contemporary idea. So many people younger than me have much better language about how to confront ideas of it, whether it’s their mental health or how they process anxiety; they’re a much better equipped generation than the ones that came before them. That’s how it connects directly. Also, dealing in genre. Making a film that’s exciting, that’s scary in moments and deals with supernatural — there’s a ghost haunting these ideas. Also, the music itself. Like I am such a product of the BET and MTV generation, of Power 106 and music shaping our culture. So to engage contemporary music and music that spans time, spans the decades, to put that in something like this, I think, was exciting.
Villarreal: Did you have to fight any impulse — I don’t know if there were executives thinking this — to completely modernize it?
Malcolm: I really respect the text and wanted the spirit of that to be there, so I wasn’t throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It was more connecting that to contemporary time. But I hope that with these — there’s seven other August Wilson plays that haven’t been adapted to films — I hope with them they do push past what we did even and continue to stretch what these interpretations can be and have radical visions for it. I hope they challenge it.
John David: One thing I want to say, in addition to what he’s talking about, is who we hire. The cast, we’re standing on the shoulders of Wilsonians. Michael Potts — I believe he’s done every play. Samuel Jackson originated the role of Boy Willie in 1987. Ray Fisher, [of] DC’s “Rebel Moon,” he’s bringing the fan base. They’ve never seen him like this. He’s actually a theater geek. And we got Corey Hawkins who was coming off of a Tony nomination. Incredible actor. Dr. Dre [in “Straight Outta Compton”]. Never seen him quite like this. Danielle Deadwyler, obviously. No need for me to even say it. Seeing actors that you know, that you’ve been following, in this context, in this story, that’s part of the intergenerational thing, and the words are there, he’s written it that way. He’s literally said this in an interview — August Wilson — that he wants it to reach everybody. That’s the intention, not just the theater. So we’ve seen that in the hires, you’re seeing that in the chemistry.
Malcolm: Our department heads too. Our cinematographer, he did “Us” and “It Follows” and these really exciting movies for younger audiences and our composer, our editor, everybody, we all have the same vision for this.
Villarreal: I want to talk about the way you thought about the piano. It’s such a looming presence, obviously. We see people leaning on it. We see it over there as Berniece and Boy Willie have their battles. It’s lurking in the background. Talk about the process of creating the design — there’s even times where we get the perspective of the piano with how the camera’s angled.
Malcolm: This is a haunting. It’s a ghost story. And the piano is both a physical object and has so much significance to it too. And all of these things have to be imbued into it. The piano acts as an altar in our story. It’s an altar for Berniece that she must go to and touch and activate. It’s the conduit between us and our ancestors. It has to have all these meanings. So when we’re constructing it, we tried to imbue as much meaning as we could put into it and hopefully that would come through. Our production designer, David Bomba, he was very committed to this idea of, “How do we make this into something?” We worked off the foundation that was laid for us by the first production of “The Piano Lesson.” We took the basic structure, the blueprint that they had for it, and we built on it. We carved the faces of my ancestors, of our ancestors, onto the piano so that it represented real people or represented real stories immediately. And in that process, we hoped that that feeling would emanate from it, and when we’re working in the space, that would come through. All the images in the film, all the portraits you see, they’re all real people that are connected to our production, either from my family or Danielle’s family, our crew’s family — all those faces are connected to this story. So we wanted to charge the set in that way, both with the piano and everything around it.
Villarreal: What was it like being near that?
John David: Everything he’s talking about, it informed the performance. There might be choices you didn’t necessarily know that were going to be happening and he yells “Action!” and it’s happening. There’s literally an ad-lib, which is a no-no with August Wilson, that Boy Willie says to his niece, “You feel that? That’s your family, that’s your blood.” He [Wilson] didn’t write that. But I felt compelled to say that; I didn’t plan for it, but because of what I’m touching, because of what I’m looking at, this thing that lives, it has its own life, you know? I love how the movie opens. It’s almost like we’re in the perspective of the piano. That’s the lead character. This is what we’re fighting for. So I love that.
Villarreal: Where is the piano now?
Malcolm: Parts of it are at my house. There was actually two. We made two pianos. One exists. Netflix owns that. Wherever they keep these things.
Villarreal: We’re going to get it back.
Malcolm: We’re going to steal it. But the panels of the piano have actual carvings on it. Those live in my living room.
Villarreal: You talked earlier about Mr. Samuel L. Jackson, who played Boy Willie in the original production. He’s in this playing one of the uncles, Doaker Charles. I know his wife Latanya Jackson, who directed the stage revival, had instructed him not to give you [John David] any advice about Boy Willie. And I guess you stopped asking after awhile. But have you had a chance to dissect this character with him or hear his thoughts about Boy Willie? Did it illuminate anything for you?
John David: What was interesting, it was like one of our first interviews — this is before we did the play — and he just exploded with some truth about his life and his relationship to the play, which I was like, “Oh, my God.” He talked about how he relapsed because of this role. He originated it because Charles Dutton wasn’t available. Then Charles Dutton became available for the Broadway run. He wins the Tony and Sam Jackson was his understudy — and how emotional that was, what this character meant to him from 1987. August Wilson’s estate has pictures of [Jackson] onstage at Yale. So we talked about the relationship that Boy Willie has in our actual life more so than the character. What it meant to him in 1987, what it means to me in 2022. It’s a defining moment for him in his life, me and my life. That was interesting. There was one critique. I was eating banana chips during a table read and he called me out on like, “Don’t eat no banana chips, 1936.” I’m like, this is John David eating banana chips, trying to find the character. I’m not in character. This is my banana chip. And then, of course, Michael Potts laughed, which is contagious. You laugh when he’s laughing. You wonder what he’s laughing about. I just want to laugh with him. They just ganged up on me. So in that regard, that was good stuff. But nothing specific to the character. At least I’m not going to share with you, because I’m not a snitch.
Villarreal: How intimidating is it, though, to embody this character that he reveres so much in front of him?
John David: It was terrifying every night. And that was a part of the challenge, knowing that my old man is a producer, knowing that Sam Jackson originated, knowing that Michael was intimately familiar with August Wilson’s words. He’s off book on any play at any moment. Giants. And here I am — again, that’s what I’m talking about, defining moment for me. But it was one that I felt encouraged to do. Once they signed off on me, it was off to the races. I’m going for it. But yeah, every night I’m finding new discoveries and I’m looking at him, listening to me, reacting to me. But he was very gracious and he was a true uncle in that way. And he’s a tough critic, as we all know. Sam don’t like nobody. So if he likes you, you’re in good hands. It was such a relief, to say the least.
Villarreal: Not to belabor this point, but I want to talk more seriously about what “over there” does involve for you. What does your prep work or your focus look like? This is a character that you’ve sat with for two years, but I imagine it still feels like there’s stuff to find out about him or you’re still discovering. So tell me what that’s like.
John David: The process varies from job to job, character to character. With August Wilson’s brilliant writing, you don’t have to go search. It’ll come to you if you’re just open to it. ... I stayed in North Carolina for two weeks. I brought in my birthday there and I was visiting, talking to my grandfather’s grave site, talking to my Uncle Woodson’s grave site, telling him what I’m about to do to help me, to guide me, to be there with me, that kind of thing. And you trust and hope that it’s there. I have my journals. I have books and books. I’ve written about the feelings, about lines and feelings about what he thought, his spiritual journey, all that; the fears I have trying to do great for my brother, do great for my sister, who’s a producer. So all these things I just conjure up. But then you have to let it go on the day and trust that it’s in your body and in your spirit.
Villarreal: Malcolm, to bring it back to Mr. Jackson, how the heck do you pitch Samuel L. Jackson to come do this film?
Malcolm: It’s a good question because he’s somebody, as discussed, who’s as connected to this material as anybody on Earth. He’s been attached to it for 40 years. So it was a big undertaking.
Villarreal: Do you create a PowerPoint presentation?
Malcolm: I made so many materials. I had books, I made books, I cut little videos. We wrote the script, which was like a big pitch document because the script is very different from the play. So I wanted to go into this with an understanding of like, “Here’s what I plan to do with it. Here’s the risks we’re taking, the swings we’re taking, here it is in the script.” So I took it to his house and it was coming prepared to make this presentation and he came and just started talking to me about people in his family, and he started showing me his photos of his ancestors. And we just went off into that and we started talking about the themes of the movie without talking about the movie. It was just honest. It was two generations meeting in the middle and having a shared understanding and shared vision. And at the end he shook my hand and he said, “Let’s do it.” And it was incredible.
Villarreal: So what is it actually like to direct Samuel L. Jackson? How do you give him a note?
Malcolm: You still have to do your job. He’s somebody who is so generous, both in his time and his experience. If you look at his catalog, he’s worked with so many up-and-coming filmmakers. He’s worked with a lot of young directors, somebody of his status you wouldn’t expect to have made so many films with younger directors. But he is constantly grooming the next generation and giving opportunities out. So I was grateful to share that moment with him.
Villarreal: That part where he’s in the kitchen — the power that he can bring to a moment like that.
John David: That line, “I almost shot you.” We were off to the races after he said that.
Malcolm: He’s just fun, you know. And he’s a different kind of Sam in this movie than in other films. He’s so dynamic and exciting, but I think he really flexes his chops and he’s like, “Hey, you know I’m a movie star, but I got a bunch of different pitches in my arsenal.”
Villarreal: As we’ve talked about in this conversation, this film is about legacy and also the debate of whether you should use that legacy to build a better future or how you can do that. As a viewer, I kept changing my position of whose side I’m on. And I imagine you’ve changed your position. You know I’m going to ask it —
John David: Well, first I’m going to ask you. That’s why I’m making this face. Who would you land on that?
Villarreal: I think the last time I checked in with myself, I was Team Berniece because I get very nostalgic. But tell me.
John David: Five in 100 — five wins, 100 losses.
Villarreal: Sell me on yours.
John David: Right now, I’m probably with you too. I’m probably with Berniece too. Listen, I love how he’s [Boy Willie] on the front foot with his beliefs. He’s kind of crazy. He wants to go back to the South and reclaim this land. He says in the play, “ain’t no difference to me in the white man.” That’s how he sees himself. ... The fact that he wants to take care of his family, leave something for his family, cultivate generational wealth, provide jobs for his family later on down the line, I think that’s admirable and forward-thinking in 1936. But they both present great points. I can’t land on it.
Villarreal: Malcolm?
Malcolm: I think the truth is it’s a synthesis. You need both. And they needed each other; that embrace that they have at the end, that’s what it’s about. So I needed both. There needed to be an exchange here. Boy Willie will find a way. And so will she.
Villarreal: Do you think he found a way?
John David: He does say, “If you’re using it, I have to find another way.” So he does bring that up. To me, he knew he was going to die. And he was OK with that. So to me, once he goes back there, even if he does get the land, as he says, he’s probably still going to die. But the film gives it hope. We don’t see that necessarily. I had this feeling that it was this ticking time clock of life. This visit to Pittsburgh wasn’t really about the piano, necessarily, but to find favor and forgiveness from his sister, from his family, before he probably goes to his demise.
Villarreal: There’s that crucial moment in the story where we learn the backstory of the piano. And we see Boy Willie process that story as a grown man. But also you get a sense of the little boy inside. How did you approach that scene and what you wanted to convey in that silence?
John David: The film is telling you that, what you picked up on. It’s a remarkable job by Leslie [Jones, the film’s editor] and Malcolm, how they crafted that. He [Boy Willie] might not necessarily want to hear that, at that time. He might see it another way. He might be, I don’t know if ashamed of it, but maybe proud of that moment. Not necessarily remorseful about it or sad about it. I don’t know. It’s something that, I think, if he thinks about it too long, it’s going to be a distraction from what he’s trying to do. The love I was talking about before that is the forgiveness that he’s trying to get from his family. So that moment, there’s a whole bunch of things working, which is what’s beautiful about what they crafted.
Villarreal: Malcolm, you’re faithful to the text, but you and your co-writer Virgil Williams do bookend the film in ways that take us beyond the central setting. You open the film with looking at that moment of the Fourth of July in 1911. Talk about wanting to open it with that way, allowing the viewer to see what happened.
Malcolm: Yeah, we wanted to recontextualize the story, to visualize and deeper explore its themes. There’s a strong theme here and thread of Black American reclamation that runs through it, a taking back and retelling of your own story and declaring who you are as a people, as a person, and your histories. Examining that is something that we were interested in right away. We also wanted to put Boy Willie at the scene of the crime. This is such a big moment in his life, it brings out the father-son story that’s in there. This is such a big moment: The last time he sees his father is this night that’s tied to this touchstone to the whole history of their family. How special is that? How much can we mine that to understand his character? Because Boy Willie is so clear about what he wants. He’s so singular in how he goes about it. He sees this thing and he’s going after it. And how can we help the audience understand what’s happening under the hood there, what’s happening internally. Recontextualizing the story in that way gave us more insight into his character, gave us more access into his interior life and what was happening internally.
John David: That’s why I love this character, though, because like to that point, because there is that dynamic, and then as August Wilson wrote as well about — I’ve talked about it before — his relationship to death and faith in God, he’s such a full character and so complicated, a walking contradiction at times. To mine that and to use it and to display it in cinematic form, it was fantastic.
Villarreal: How would you describe how “The Piano Lesson” or even just the character stays in your system?
John David: Michael Potts talked about this a bit. You never really forget the monologues; it never leaves you. That’s the power of the penmanship. And August Wilson to me, partially to what I was talking about before, about Sam Jackson as well, how personal that it is, it’s now forever tethered to a lot of memories I have with my uncle and my grandfather. It’s almost like an offering to them in some way. I imagine what they would have thought about this if they were alive to see this, both of my grandfathers on both sides. So a lot of my memories, the one I shared with you earlier, there’s another chapter to that now and that’s this story, that’s this experience from the play to the movie. So it’s forever in me because of how I adopted those memories and folded them into the process of doing this film.
Villarreal: The film [was] available to stream on Netflix the same week that your father’s role [as Macrinus] in “Gladiator II” [came] out in theaters. And for him, he’s playing a character that’s trying to reclaim his power in a more vengeful way. That performance just had me rapt; it’s so sly and brilliant and fun. Can you talk to me about watching your father do something like that?
John David: He’s one of the greatest of all time. I’ve been a fan of his since I was born. It’s funny, I’ve been going back a lot recently. I’ve been watching “Philadelphia” on repeat. I just went through this Jonathan Demme run, and I just landed on that a lot. And just that performance you’re talking about and when you compare it to like some of his stuff in the 1990s, you’re seeing the dexterity, you’re seeing the range that maybe hasn’t been fully appreciated and this character [Macrinus] might make people appreciate even more. This character is almost on some of the shoulders of those other characters he’s played. It just shows you with longevity, drive and this fervent passion for what you do, what can be produced at this age. You have to love it. And I’ve been on sets with some people. These Gs — Sam is one of them — that at their age, they’ve conquered so much, you still have to love it. I think you see just how much he’s enjoying himself.
Mark Olsen: “Challengers” was originally intended to come out last year, but because of the strike, it ended up being released this year. So you actually have both of these films [including “Queer”] coming out this year. What has this been like for you so far?
Justin Kuritzkes: It’s pretty crazy. It’s a weird sort of circumstance that they both ended up coming out this year. “Challengers,” we were supposed to go premiere at Venice in 2023 and then the strikes happened and I was actually on set for “Queer” when the writers’ strike broke out. And then I had to come home. So all of a sudden, the year I was planning for in 2023 looked very different. But then it’s led to this really kind of nice situation where I have two movies coming out in 2024 that are really different movies.
Olsen: The first thing I want to ask you is, do people actually smash their rackets that much in high-level tennis?
Kuritzkes: Have you watched high-level tennis? Yeah, they do it. They do it in low-level tennis. They smash the rackets a lot. So much so that there’s a whole system of penalties based around racket abuse. And if you’re an experienced player, you know that once you start abusing the racket, that’s one penalty. So you may as well go all out and really destroy it. But yes, they do.
Olsen: One thing I have come to really appreciate about the movie is simply its structure, the way that you have the sort of challenger final as the spine of the story. And there are these series of flashbacks that we get throughout the movie that are creeping closer and closer to the events of of the final. How did you kind of come to that structure and what did you like about it?
Kuritzkes: The structure kind of came of a piece with the inspiration to write the movie in the first place, which was that I hadn’t been a massive tennis fan or even really a big sports fan. And then I just found myself in 2018 watching the U.S. Open because it was on and it was the match between Naomi Osaka and Serena Williams in the final. And there was this very controversial call by the umpire where he accused Serena Williams of receiving coaching from the sidelines. And I had never heard about this rule because, again, I didn’t watch a lot of tennis. But immediately that struck me as this intensely cinematic situation. You’re alone on the court and there’s this one other person in this massive stadium who cares as much about what happens to you out there as you do, and that’s the person you can’t talk to. And so I started thinking, well, what if you really needed to talk about something? And what if it was something beyond tennis? What if it was about the two of you? And what if somehow it included the person across the net? How could you have that conversation? And how could you communicate the tension of that using film? And so that started me thinking about writing this movie.
It also started this path of me becoming a legitimate, obsessive tennis fan to the point where I was watching so much tennis, initially for research but then eventually just because it was like the only thing that was holding my attention. It was better than movies, it was better than TV. And that really freaked me out because I started to ask myself what felt like an existential question: What could I write that would be as good as tennis? And then next to that, what would make tennis even better? And for me, the answer to that question was tennis would be better if I could know at every moment exactly what was at stake and not just on a sort of superficial level, but on a deep emotional level. And so within that desire to write this movie in the first place comes a structure where you drop the audience into a match and gradually they get let in on the secret of why this thing matters so much. So that was all kind of there from the beginning. And then the details came as I thought about it for a couple of years doing other stuff, and then finally sat down to write it in 2021.
Olsen: One thing I think people find so striking about the movie is simply the energy of it. And that’s in the music, it’s in the editing, it’s in the performances. How did you convey that on the page?
Kuritzkes: A tennis match has its own sort of logic, its own dramatic logic, and it’s building to a crescendo. Every tennis match is building to a crescendo. Some are more interesting than others, but they all are flowing in one direction. And so that, I realized, pretty naturally mapped itself onto the structure of a story. You know, there’s three sets in tennis — in most tennis, except for Grand Slams, where the men play five sets. But this is a movie about the challenger tour where it’s full of guys who maybe never play five set matches. so that matched up. Then on a page by page level — this is so silly it’s almost embarrassing to talk about — I kind of realized that the way we were going to transition between time periods was going to be through tennis courts. Because every tennis court basically looks the same, especially if they’re all the same surface, which in this movie they are. It’s all hard courts. And so tennis courts became a kind of time machine. And I knew that the way that we would move from one time period to another would be the movement of the ball across the net. So I started writing in the script “Thwack” instead of like “smash cut to” or “a match cut” or something like that. I just wrote “Thwack.” And that became the signal to the reader that we’re going somewhere. Which was also a nice cop-out for me because I was new to screenwriting, so I didn’t know all the technical terms.
Olsen: Tell me more about that. You’ve been known up until now as a playwright. How have you found the transition, just style-wise, from playwriting to screenwriting?
Kuritzkes: Style-wise, the thing that carries over is who you are as a writer or who you are as a dramatic storyteller. The kinds of characters or the kinds of situations that feel worth spending time with, those are the same across mediums. I think what’s particular about screenwriting is that it’s always two things at once. It’s, on the one hand, this thing that’s supposed to be an exciting and meaningful reading experience, but then on the other hand it’s this very practical document that’s meant to serve as a kind of invitation for hundreds of people to do their jobs. And because of that, there’s a very rigid formalism to it, on just the formatting level. In theater, there is a standard way that a play is supposed to look, that you get taught at some point, but nobody follows that. And if you read 10 plays by 10 different playwrights that you like, they all look different on the page. And in fact, the way that they’re written on the page is meant to kind of inform you how you’re going to mount them or how you’re going to perform them. And so when I was starting to write screenplays at first that was very daunting to me, the rigidity of that formalism, having to write slug lines and all of that. Even like having to write the action lines, because a lot of my plays, there’s no stage directions. It’s just characters talking. And I kind of am leaving it up to the director or to the actors to figure it out. But I quickly realized that just like in a play, a screenplay too needs to teach the reader how to read this screenplay, and you have to find your own vocabulary and you have to sort of create your own parameters of how language works in the world of this movie.
Olsen: If you’ll indulge me in being a little overly literal for just a minute, one of the things I have really enjoyed in rewatching “Challengers” is the fact that it does seem as if the level of manipulation happening among those three characters, you can read it a lot of different ways. And so I just have to ask, was in fact Tashi manipulating this thing from the start? Did she intend for Art and Patrick to play each other from the moment that she put Art in the challenger?
Kuritzkes: I think what was important to me as I was writing the movie and something that I didn’t even really realize until I had written it — when we were starting to rehearse it and the actors were starting to ask me and Luca questions about their characters — was that on the surface of it, there’s a lot of moments where characters are being cruel to one another or being manipulative. But always it’s the case that they’re also trying to be kind. They’re trying to do what they think is best for this other person. So I think Tashi, whatever her designs are, she thinks it’s almost always for the benefit of these two guys who drive her crazy for very different reasons, who are insufferable for very different reasons, and also who she’s drawn to and who she has a lot of love for, for very different reasons. I think it wouldn’t be particularly satisfying to me to write a character who’s a cold manipulator, you know, because first of all, you don’t meet that many people who are purely just that. So that doesn’t feel like life, but also because it’s just not that interesting dramatically.
Olsen: It’s one of the things that is so fascinating in thinking about those three characters. Yes, obviously Art is cheated on, but also his game does improve. He sort of gets the thing that he needs out of it. So there is a way in which all three of these characters are stuck in some kind of a rut, and they do, in fact, get out of it in some way.
Kuritzkes: I think it’s a feel-good ending. To me it’s a very happy ending.
Olsen: Well, tell me more about that, because people definitely have a lot of questions about the ending. So Art leaps up, does not hit the ball, sort of crashes over the net into Patrick’s arms. First of all, what is the call on that? What would the umpire do in that situation?
Kuritzkes: So if you hit the net with your body or your racket at all, you’ve lost the point. So he gets the ball, the ball goes in, but he does hit the net and hits the other player. So he’s lost the point, but it’s only the first point of the tiebreak. We’re not seeing the last point of the match and it’s completely open what happens in the rest of the tiebreak after that. For me, the point is that they’re all really playing tennis again, you know, and that all their cards are on the table, which is part of what allows them to do that. They’re having the most open and direct conversation that they’ve had the whole film, and they’re having it through tennis. So once that happens, for me I’ve got what I came here for and I don’t need to know anything else.
Olsen: So that’s why to you it doesn’t matter who wins?
Kuritzkes: To me, the actual match has never mattered. It’s a low-level match for less ranking points than will change either of these people’s lives, for an amount of money that won’t change either of these people’s lives. Part of the reason I set it at a challenger event in the first place [was] so that the stakes could be interpersonal and not official. Because that’s the sort of hang-up I have with sports movies sometimes — a movie about the NBA finals is very rarely going to be as engaging as the NBA finals because the NBA finals is already really good. It’s already really dramatic.
Olsen: A lot has been made of the fact that your wife, Celine Song, wrote and directed “Past Lives,” which is also about a tumultuous love triangle. Was there a moment when the two of you traded pages and kind of realized what was happening?
Kuritzkes: Well, we read each other’s work. I mean, we live together. I can’t speak for Celine’s work beyond just saying that I’m incredibly proud of her. And it’s been incredible watching a lot of people realize what I’ve known for a long time, which is that she’s this incredible artist. I will say, I don’t know that it’s quite accurate to call “Past Lives” a love triangle movie, whereas I do think “Challengers” is very much a love triangle movie. I also think they’re very different movies in that respect.
Olsen: And how do you feel about the fact that so many people have tried or want to read the two movies against each other somehow?
Kuritzkes: That’s OK. That’s for them to do if they want to do that. I think there’s an impulse in culture generally to try to sort of see a work of art as a series of clues to find out the truth about a person. And I don’t really think that’s what art is or ever has been. So I think it’s a somewhat shallow engagement with a work of art to come at it from that perspective. Because the truth is, the movie is happening in the space between the screen and your mind. And anything else is sort of, I think, depriving you as the viewer of having a richer experience with this thing that somebody has taken a lot of time to make. But that’s up to people how they want to deal with it.
Olsen: Tell me about moving on from “Challengers” to making “Queer.” Luca Guadagnino presented you with the book? I know he had had a desire to adapt the book for quite some time.
Kuritzkes: “Queer” is a book that Luca had read when he was a teenager when it came out in Italy, because the book was written in the 1950s but didn’t get published until the 1980s. And it was a book he had been wanting to make into a movie since then. And so one day we were on set for “Challengers” and he handed me this book and said, “Read it tonight and tell me if you’ll write it for me as a movie.” And I read it that night and immediately said yes, even though I had no idea how I was going to approach it. The thought of adapting this book by this legendary author and more importantly, the thought of getting to watch Luca make that movie, was so exciting to me that it just felt like something I had to do. And so of course I was like really insanely honored that Luca would trust me with that. But then I also felt this tremendous responsibility. To give him this movie he had been dreaming about, to give him the blueprint for that. But that sort of fear only hit after I said I was going to do it.
Olsen: How did you sync up your approach to the book so that you knew you were giving Luca what he wanted?
Kuritzkes: In a way, I had to teach myself a lot on that script, because it was the first time I had adapted anything. Everything I had written, whether it was a play or a novel or “Challengers,” which was the first screenplay, those were all originals. So my first sort of way I saw my job was just being a good reader and trying to really figure out what was fundamental in the book so that I could figure out what would be fundamental in the movie. But then, as I kept working through it, I started to sort of see my job as being like a medium between these two artists, one who I knew very well at that point and one who I was never going to know except through the work he left behind. And so I started to try to kind of open a channel between the two of them and write scenes that I felt honored Burroughs, but also write scenes selfishly that I was excited to watch Luca make.
Olsen: I think some viewers will be surprised to realize that the person who wrote these two movies is married to a woman. For you, making these two films that deal with queer desire, or at least a certain homoerotic desire, is that a challenge for you? What is it that draws you towards these stories?
Kuritzkes: In the case of “Queer,” that’s a movie that I was very much writing for Luca. It’s probably not a book that I would have adapted if I didn’t know who was going to direct it. But as I was writing it, it wasn’t that difficult to find what was universal about the relationship and the psychology between these two very complicated characters. Lee and Allerton are these American expats living in Mexico City in the 1950s in this culture and in this world that just doesn’t exist anymore and that maybe never existed because it’s partially a sort of fantasy in Burroughs’ head. There’s bars they go to that don’t actually exist in Mexico that are based on a bar he went to once in Austria or something. So it’s this total world of Burroughs that I was trying to be faithful to. But when it comes to the specifics of their love and their relationship, I had to do a lot of research for a lot of things in this adaptation and I ended up having to do quite a bit more research about what it’s like to do heroin or what it’s like to do ayahuasca than I did about how two men might have sex. You don’t have to be a genius. At the end of the day, it’s human relationships.
Olsen: The book itself is a very unusual text. It was written in the 1950s, didn’t get published until the 1980s. And in particular, Burroughs talked about the fact that the key motivation for his writing the book was an event that’s not depicted in the book, the killing of his wife, Joan Vollmer. And you include a couple of allusions to that in the story. What made you want to do that and how did you come to figure out how to reference that?
Kuritzkes: It’s this really interesting thing with “Queer,” because in a sense it’s an unfinished book and it’s very hard to tell where the sort of “main text” of “Queer” ends and where the life of Burroughs and his other work begins. Because in any edition you get of “Queer” [it’s] bookended by appendices and by forewords, some of which are written by Burroughs himself, and in some of those, Burroughs talks about this event, the shooting death of his wife, as something that haunted the writing of “Queer,” and that haunted his whole life and but certainly his whole career as a writer. In fact, he almost says without this event he wouldn’t have been a writer. There was something about it that made it possible for him to be a writer. And so it felt like we had to find a way to bring that into the movie because otherwise we wouldn’t really be adapting “Queer.” But at the same time, it was very important that we not make a movie about an actually existing person and instead make a movie about a character, because at the end of the day, the character is William Lee. It’s not William S. Burroughs. And I wasn’t interested, and I don’t think Luca was interested either, in writing the William S. Burroughs biopic. At the end of the day, I have faith in the character William Lee, and that’s who I have to be responsible for. But that character doesn’t fully exist outside of the context.
Olsen: One of the things that I found most striking about the movie is the fact that it’s set in Mexico City [but] was actually shot in Cinecitta in Rome. The use of the miniatures is so striking, there’s just a strangeness to the movie, a feeling that something’s not quite right. How did you include that? How did you capture that in the writing of it?
Kuritzkes: I knew that we weren’t going to shoot it in a way that softened the edges of Burroughs’ surreality. I knew that we were going to engage with that in some way. I didn’t quite know how Luca was going to do that, but I knew that he was. And so I found myself actually drawing on the way that I would write a play, where I was being evocative rather than writing step-by-step instructions about something or being descriptive. In other words, trying to capture the feel of something. But then there’s many moments where Burroughs would talk about something that was happening inside of Lee’s head that I would choose to externalize because I was excited to watch how Luca would pull that off, and trust that Luca would pull it off. So I ended up writing the script in a way that I wouldn’t have written it if I didn’t know that Luca was going to make it.
Olsen: The only other really major film adaptation of a Burroughs text is David Cronenberg’s “Naked Lunch.” Did you and Luca reference that, did you talk about that movie at all? Were you specifically trying to make something distinct from it?
Kuritzkes: Well, we’d both seen that movie. And interestingly, in that movie, there’s sections of the text from “Queer” that are actually used in that movie, but in this completely different context from which they occur in our movie. But no, I don’t think we were ever trying to make a movie in response to any other movie. We were trying to make our own thing.
Olsen: How did you write the ayahuasca trip? So much of that imagery is so astonishing. Is that from the text or are these things you had to come up with on your own? And also things that Luca was going to have to somehow visualize.
Kuritzkes: The entire ayahuasca trip, the entire third act of the movie, is a departure from the book. Because basically in the book, they reached Dr. Cotter’s hut in the jungle. And it looks for a moment like maybe they’re going to get the ayahuasca. And that possibility is quickly shut down and they descend back into civilization not having gotten what they came for. And early on in the process of talking about what this movie could be and the kind of cinematic possibilities that were within the book, something Luca and I discussed was it felt like the book was opening a door and then quickly closing it. And we wanted to see what would happen if we opened that door and walked through and saw what was on the other side. And for me, that meant that they were going to get the ayahuasca and we were going to see what speaking on the level of intuition, what actual telepathy, [what] getting what they think they want would do to each of them and their dynamic and whether they would respond the same way. And whether that would bring them closer together or push them further apart. So that was the force kind of driving that sequence.
In terms of actually writing the specifics of it, I did a lot of research about ayahuasca trips, I watched a lot of testimony, I watched a documentary where somebody was sitting with a person as they were going on a trip and documenting it. I think it was a neuroscientist who had volunteered to trip and have his lab partner document the whole thing, which was totally fascinating and a lot of fun to do. And then I wrote a sequence that was, again, more evocative than descriptive. It was kind of meant to be an invitation to Luca and to the actors to find something and to find a way to communicate what was happening that couldn’t possibly be communicated in words.
Olsen: It’s interesting to hear you mention that idea of opening a door and whether one goes through or not, because that’s a line of Lesley Manville’s in the movie. And when she says, “The only thing you can do is to look away,” that really felt to me like almost a thesis statement for the film. That seemed very much like a motivating concept for the entire movie.
Kuritzkes: I feel that way too. And that’s a line that came purely from casting Lesley and wanting to hear her say that.
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