"Fruitvale Station": How a 27-Year-Old Rookie Filmmaker Humanized an American Tragedy

Learn the inside story behind the raw, heartbreaking indie film that's already generating heavy Oscar buzz.

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Image via Complex Original
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It was an all too familiar, entirely senseless American tragedy.

The date was January 1, 2009; the time, 2:15 a.m. PST, in Oakland, California. Oscar Grant—a 22-year-old black ex-con from San Francisco's Bay Area—was on his way home from celebrating New Year's with his girlfriend, Sophina, and their closest friends. They were stopped at the Fruitvale Station of the BART, or the Bay Area Rapid Transit, by police officers. Grant and a few of his boys were pulled to the side, told to sit against a wall. Grant, specifically, was told to lie on the ground, on his stomach. After the fact, the cops said he began resisting the arrest; Grant's friends said he did nothing of the sort. Whatever the case, though, Officer Johannes Mehserle, in the midst of the heated commotion, shot Grant once in the back. Mehserle, like everyone else present, was stunned at what he'd done. And it was all captured via several camera phones and mobile recording devices.

Grant died later that day. The video footage circulated to millions of viewers online. Angry citizens violently rioted throughout Oakland, prefacing a peaceful protest on January 7. In July 2010, Mehserle was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to two years behind bars (he was released from prison after 11 months, however). And now, over four years after Grant's untimely death, there's an award-winning film about it, Fruitvale Station, that's on the verge of becoming a major awards season contender.

Fruitvale Station (opening in limited theatrical release tomorrow before expanding nationwide) is the feature film debut of writer-director Ryan Coogler, 27, an Oakland native who was one of Oscar Grant's peers at the time of his passing. A graduate of of the USC School for Cinematic Arts, Coogler felt he was the right person to humanize Grant through cinema—rather than allow parts of the media to keep painting Grant as a criminal, Coogler wanted to find out more about who Grant really was: a son, a father, a friend. Through research and many hours spent with Grant's loved ones, Coogler wrote Fruitvale Station. The result: a harrowing, deeply sad examination of someone who acknowledges his flaws, is ready to better himself and those around him, but whom we know—as is made clear by Coogler's use of the real-life camera footage from the BART—won't have the chance to change his life.

At the center of Fruitvale Station is actor Michael B. Jordan, whose scene-stealing supporting work in acclaimed projects like The Wire, Friday Night Lights, and Chronicle were preparation for what's sure to be his official breakthrough—a Best Actor nomination is a definite possibility. Playing Oscar Grant during his final day alive, Jordan, 26, is a revelation. Through Grant's on-screen interactions with his mother (played by Oscar winner Octavia Spencer), girlfriend (Melonie Diaz, who's fantastic as the loving, resilient Sophina), and daughter, Tatiana (Ariana Neal), Jordan is charismatic and endearing; in Grant's rougher moments, like a flashback to his mom visiting him in prison, the young actor conveys a natural combustibility that's both dangerous and human. By the time Fruitvale Station reaches its unavoidable and gut-wrenchingly staged BART sequence, Jordan's Grant is tragic—you know that a conflicted but genuinely caring man is about be robbed of his shot at personal redemption, and it's profoundly upsetting.

It's also the work of two on-the-rise talents—Coogler and Jordan—for whom Fruitvale Station should turn into major, in-demand Hollywood players. The almighty Harvey Weinstein certainly thinks so, seeing that his major studio brand The Weinstein Company is distributing the film and currently strategizing its hopeful awards season omnipresence.

Complex recently sat down with Coogler and the film's two leads, Jordan and Diaz, to discuss the making of Fruitvale Station. Read on to get to know the young, gifted minds and the motivations behind their emotionally devastating and superlative film.

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"Fruitvale Station": How a 27-Year-Old Rookie Filmmaker Humanized an American Tragedy

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It was an all too familiar, entirely senseless American tragedy.

The date was January 1, 2009; the time, 2:15 a.m. PST, in Oakland, California. Oscar Grant—a 22-year-old black ex-con from San Francisco's Bay Area—was on his way home from celebrating New Year's with his girlfriend, Sophina, and their closest friends. They were stopped at the Fruitvale Station of the BART, or the Bay Area Rapid Transit, by police officers. Grant and a few of his boys were pulled to the side, told to sit against a wall. Grant, specifically, was told to lie on the ground, on his stomach. After the fact, the cops said he began resisting the arrest; Grant's friends said he did nothing of the sort. Whatever the case, though, Officer Johannes Mehserle, in the midst of the heated commotion, shot Grant once in the back. Mehserle, like everyone else present, was stunned at what he'd done. And it was all captured via several camera phones and mobile recording devices.

Grant died later that day. The video footage circulated to millions of viewers online. Angry citizens violently rioted throughout Oakland, prefacing a peaceful protest on January 7. In July 2010, Mehserle was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to two years behind bars (he was released from prison after 11 months, however). And now, over four years after Grant's untimely death, there's an award-winning film about it, Fruitvale Station, that's on the verge of becoming a major awards season contender.

Fruitvale Station (opening in limited theatrical release tomorrow before expanding nationwide) is the feature film debut of writer-director Ryan Coogler, 27, an Oakland native who was one of Oscar Grant's peers at the time of his passing. A graduate of of the USC School for Cinematic Arts, Coogler felt he was the right person to humanize Grant through cinema—rather than allow parts of the media to keep painting Grant as a criminal, Coogler wanted to find out more about who Grant really was: a son, a father, a friend. Through research and many hours spent with Grant's loved ones, Coogler wrote Fruitvale Station. The result: a harrowing, deeply sad examination of someone who acknowledges his flaws, is ready to better himself and those around him, but whom we know—as is made clear by Coogler's use of the real-life camera footage from the BART—won't have the chance to change his life.

At the center of Fruitvale Station is actor Michael B. Jordan, whose scene-stealing supporting work in acclaimed projects like The Wire, Friday Night Lights, and Chronicle were preparation for what's sure to be his official breakthrough—a Best Actor nomination is a definite possibility. Playing Oscar Grant during his final day alive, Jordan, 26, is a revelation. Through Grant's on-screen interactions with his mother (played by Oscar winner Octavia Spencer), girlfriend (Melonie Diaz, who's fantastic as the loving, resilient Sophina), and daughter, Tatiana (Ariana Neal), Jordan is charismatic and endearing; in Grant's rougher moments, like a flashback to his mom visiting him in prison, the young actor conveys a natural combustibility that's both dangerous and human. By the time Fruitvale Station reaches its unavoidable and gut-wrenchingly staged BART sequence, Jordan's Grant is tragic—you know that a conflicted but genuinely caring man is about be robbed of his shot at personal redemption, and it's profoundly upsetting.

It's also the work of two on-the-rise talents—Coogler and Jordan—for whom Fruitvale Station should turn into major, in-demand Hollywood players. The almighty Harvey Weinstein certainly thinks so, seeing that his major studio brand The Weinstein Company is distributing the film and currently strategizing its hopeful awards season omnipresence.

Complex recently sat down with Coogler and the film's two leads, Jordan and Diaz, to discuss the making of Fruitvale Station. Read on to get to know the young, gifted minds and the motivations behind their emotionally devastating and superlative film.

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Written by Matt Barone (@MBarone)

Ryan Coogler's Background

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Only 27, Ryan Coogler is already living the dream. Namely, the dream that all aspiring filmmakers have during those sleepless nights, wondering if their first passion project will ever be seen by anyone outside of their inner circle. Coogler, though, submitted his independently produced debut, Fruitvale Station, into the prestigious, career-making Sundance Film Festival, watched it premiere to rave reviews and immediate buzz this past January, and walked on stage to accept to major Sundance awards for his work, the Audience Award for dramatic features and, even bigger, the Grand Jury Prize for dramas. Then, in May, it won Best First Film at the even more esteemed Cannes Film Festival.

Harvey Weinstein—the Hollywood heavyweight whose distribution company, The Weinstein Company, purchased Fruitvale Station for a reported $2 million out of Sundance—and everyone else who's been enamored by his film might be surprised to learn that the Oakland, CA, native didn't initially set out to make movies. At one time, he was just a Chewbacca-loving gridiron star.

Ryan Coogler: "I played football when I was younger, but before I started playing football, I didn't really fit in anywhere. I was having trouble finding myself. I lived in a rough neighborhood in Oakland. My parents were both really forward-thinking, even though they didn't have much money between them. But they were really focused on raising me and my little brothers right. They're just really great people. They put me in private school, so back in my neighborhood I didn't fit in because I had two parents and walked around with Catholic school clothes on, and in the private school I didn't fit in because I didn't have any money.

I would just read a lot, since I didn't have many friends, and when I did hang out with kids, I hung out with the nerds. [Laughs.] I had this one friend who told me about Star Wars; he was the only white kid in our school, and I hung out with him. We'd have these little air-lightsaber fights, just real nerdy stuff, but it was fun for me at the time. Once I started playing sports, though, I fit in everywhere. I fit in back in the hood, I fit while I was in school. Stuff changed for me through sports, but I still remained a geek on the inside. I hung out with a lot of different types of people.

For college, I got a scholarship for football, for this small liberal arts school in the bay, called Saint Mary's College. They actually have a really good hoops team, they go to the NCAA tournament a lot. I went there to play football, I was a wide receiver, and I majored in chemistry. I figured, if the football thing didn't work out, I would try to become a doctor. My freshman year, I had this creative writing class, and the teacher, I'll never forget, she starts talking about how she hates football and how it's barbaric. [Laughs.] We got into an argument, but then she assigned us a project where we had to write about our most emotionally intense experience. I wrote about something I hadn't told many people about before, I turned it in, and after she read it, she asked me to stay after class one day.

I thought I was in trouble. I went in, sat down, and talked to her, and she was basically like, 'So, what do you want to be when you grow up?' I told her I wanted to be a doctor, and she hit me back with, 'Why do you want to do that?' I said, 'Well, I'm good at it, and I think I can use to do positive things in our community.' She's like, 'That's cool, but I read your paper, and you write really visually. I felt like I was right there with you. Would you ever think about becoming a screenwriter?' At that point, I thought she was crazy. I didn't even know what a screenplay looked like. I left, though, and I stayed up thinking about it all night. I went online and found the Pulp Fictionscreenplay, that was the first screenplay I'd ever looked at. So I opened up Microsoft Word and I started trying to do my own mock version of it.

I quickly fell in love with it, and I started writing my own scripts from there. That school, St. Mary's, dropped their football program because it wasn't financially stable, so I then got a scholarship to Sacramento State. I went there, switched my major to finance, and started taking all of the film class electives, on the side. I was taking, like, 24 credits a semester. I completely fell in love with filmmaking. Once I was done playing ball, I applied to film school at USC, got in, went there, and made filmmaking my primary focus.

I still love different genres like science fiction today as much as I did when I was a kid, but where my deepest interests lie are in providing three-dimensional perspectives of people you don't normally get to see three-dimensional perspectives of. I think film has that power to bring you into worlds that you'd otherwise not be able to go into. I realized that when I started to watch foreign films, cinema out of Europe and Latin America. I loved it, because here were these worlds that I'd never been to, probably would never go to, watching the kinds of people I'd never get the chance to meet, but I related to them so much by the end of the film.

I realized, man, film really has this power, and I have access to certain types of people in intimate ways. I always like to tell detailed stories from the inside out. People can be from Schenectady or, say, Rochester, and go see a film about somebody from the area where I'm from, who they probably never met anyone like, but then leave the film with some insight into who that person really is. There's more to the human condition that's relatable than not relatable, I think, and films can bridge that gap. Like with my film and Oscar Grant, someone from the suburbs can see Fruitvale Station and, I hope, relate to how he's really trying to become a better man, a better father, a better partner for his girl."

Humanizing Oscar Grant

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Spending Time With Oscar Grant's Family

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Even though he and Oscar Grant lived in the same area and shared similar experiences, Ryan Coogler had never actually met the late Bay Area native or any of his friends. He'd written a first draft of Fruitvale (the film's original Station-less title) only using his own secondhand research, but to fully understand the man, Coogler needed to spend as much time as possible with those who were closest to Grant: his mother Wanda Johnson), girlfriend (Sophina), and he and Sophina's daughter, Tatiana, who was 5 when her father died.

The same went for Coogler's actors, Michael B. Jordan and Melonie Diaz, though further opening emotional wounds, merely three years after Grant was killed, wasn't easy.

Coogler: "I ended up having a lot of access to Oscar's family, but initially I didn't. For the first draft of the script that I wrote, the one I turned into the Sundance Labs, I just used the publicly available documents from the criminal case and the municipal case, and what was cool about that was that everything that was said in court was publicly available. It's similar to what's happening with the Treyvon Martin case right now. Everybody was under oath, so I was able to read about what all of the cops said, what all of Oscar's friends said."

"So I wrote that draft, and once Forest Whitaker was backing the project, the family started to engage with the project more and sign over the life rights. Forest Whitaker's production company, Significant Productions, reached out to my mentor at USC film school asking about young talent, and that's how my name came up. I went in to meet with the head of Forest's production company, Nina Yang Bongiovi, and she was saying Forest was working on a TV show called Criminal Minds at the time, and that they were interested in television. I showed them some things I had written, and since she liked my stuff, she got me in a room to sit down with Forest and talk about some projects. When he asked about projects I was interested in making, I mentioned Fruitvale, and he really responded to it. That was in spring 2011, when he came on board as a producer for the project. That was my last year in film school, too."

"That was when I was able to sit down with all of Oscar's family to interview them. I talked to Sophina, I talked to his mom, I talked to Tatiana, I talked to his friends. From there, I was able to pepper into the script everything I'd learned about Oscar from their stories, and that's when Oscar started to come alive as a character. He started taking on the three-dimensional qualities that I was looking for."

Jordan: "Talking to Oscar's family was a little awkward at first. I was a little hesitant. You're thinking about what they're thinking about you. You know it's still fresh for them, it's only four years old. I know, me personally, I wouldn't be over it yet. I sat down with his mother, Wanda, first, and then I had the chance to talk to Sophina and hear about their relationship and how they treated one another. Then I got to hang out with his best friends, and go to the park, order some BBQ, play some Dominoes, drink a little bit. The stories just flowed from there. It helped that I was on The Wire, too, because they were all huge Wire fans. [Laughs.] That definitely broke the ice a little bit and made it more comfortable."

"I can't talk to Oscar, you know? That couldn't happen. So it was important for me to hear the different perspectives of Oscar. He was different around everybody, so I heard about different versions of him. And thankfully, through Ryan's due diligence of researching so much, he really did most of the heavy lifting for us actors."

Diaz: "It was really intense for me, meeting Sophina for the first time. When we first met, it was more about getting to know her as a person—I didn't want to have her talk about the most terrible day of her life right away. I wanted to earn her trust, and soon after, we started hanging out some more. We got our nails done together, we went shopping. It was serious bonding time. I wanted her to be involved with my Sophina's physicality, the way she dresses, to make it more authentic."

"The more we hung out together, the more she opened up, and we were able to start talking about her relationship with Oscar. It's still extremely painful for her, and she's still angry. She hasn't seen the film yet, and I doubt if she ever will, to be honest. I totally respect that. It's still weird for me—I know this is a movie, and I'm playing a role, but it's also someone's life, and someone's real pain."

Coogler: "The story of Oscar Grant was always very clear to me, even before I started speaking with his family. I was always focused on the fact that he died unnecessarily, and the fact that his death had an impact. Not the impact that came from the media, or from the results of the trial, but the impact on the people who knew this person, who expected him to come home and were deeply hurt when he didn't. It's the fact that so many young black males die at the hands of a gun, no matter whether it's a white person or another young black male pulling the trigger. These young lives get ended before these men get a chance to become the people they truly want to be. I found the tragedy in that."

"It was important for me to end the film with his daughter, and not with any of the trial or what happened after his death, because that was what I was more interested in. It's more about the intimate impact, because those are the people who are affected the most by these tragedies. Those are the people who get glossed over, especially when a case gets publicized as much as Oscar's has. When people hear about this case, they're hearing about the trial, about how much time the cop is getting, about the riots and the protests—that's what's publicized. That was what there was footage of and reports on. There wasn't reports about how his girl had to tell his daughter that he daddy wasn't coming back."

"The most important people in Oscar's life were his mom, his girlfriend, and his daughter—three women. For me, his mom represented his past, his girlfriend represented his present, and his daughter, who was the most important person in his life, represented his future. It made perfect sense to end the film with his daughter, because his future got cut short."

Taking Creative License

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Shooting at the BART

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The Time is Now

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