You Know That Scene - a Pilot From Focus Features

Behind The "Scene": Talking To Jacqueline Coley

A Q&A with i of the moderators of the new Facebook Scout original series "Y'all Know That Scene"

x.16.2018

In the pilot episode of the Focus Features Facebook Watch original series "You Know That Scene," Jacqueline Coley (editor, Rotten Tomatoes) leads a spirited conversation on African American filmmakers among movie writers and cultural influencers Scott Mantz (president, LA Online Picture Critics Society), Matthew Hoffman (correspondent, Royal Cinemas), Wendy Lee (actress/content creator, Collider), and Trisha Hershberger (entertainment influencer, host, producer), the part of host rotating among the panelists in each episode. As an editor and journalist, Coley brings her experience and expertise to the panel past making the movies nosotros dearest part of a larger conversation about picture palace, politics, and gild. The pilot, "African American Filmmakers," is currently streaming on Facebook Watch. Future episodes include "LGBTQ+," "Politics," "Legacy," and "Women in Picture."

Nosotros talk with Coley nigh her own journey equally a moving-picture show journalist, what's happening in film today, and what excites her nearly upcoming "You Know That Scene" episodes.

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Lookout man the Pilot episode of "You Know That Scene," focusing on a word on African American filmmakers

You've worked for various sites at unlike positions. How did you go started as a film journalist?

When I tell the story of getting started, I get dorsum to Ava DuVernay who picked upwardly a camera at age 32. We're not the aforementioned age, but I too came to this tardily. I started about five years ago. I was ever a writer, always a creative writer, merely like a lot of African Americans who were the showtime generation to go to college or pursue an avant-garde degree, writing was non something that I actually wanted to tell my female parent I wanted to practise, to tell her "after all the time and expense you lot put out to send me to college, I want to go a creative writing degree that could probably never pay the bills." I worked in business for a decade after I got out of school. But through freelancing at sites similar The Huffington Post, Indiewire, and Black Daughter Nerds, I started to hone my arts and crafts every bit a film author. Most gifted writers that I read and beloved didn't come out of the womb like that. They kept at it and they got better. That was my journey.

How did y'all larn about film?

I've always been a fan of flick. When I was younger, I worked in local video stores and flick theaters, worked in the theater community. I was definitely on the cusp of it, but it was never my profession. I am originally from Alabama by fashion of Texas, where I went to the Academy of Texas in Austin. I minored in musical theater and creative writing. If I could have, I would take majored in creative writing and minored in musical theater, since I obsessively studied both of those as much as I could. I learned near film everywhere. I took this smashing online film course from MIT. Today there is then much you tin can pick upwardly almost film online just as if you lot went to USC film school.

When did you fall in love with movie? What was the first film that touched you? The first one that transformed your view of the globe?

I can't tell yous the beginning moving picture that touched me, but I remember when I roughshod in love with movies. My father, who worked in the film industry as a driver, would wake me upward early Saturday to watch TCM. They usually played all the westerns then. While I capeesh westerns like Shane or El Dorado, my dad watched every John Wayne movie. When they did their classic musical month, however, I was transformed watching movies similar At that place's No Concern Like Show Concern, Singin' in the Rain, and the Judy Garland A Star is Born. I was obsessed with Seven Brides for Vii Brothers. I told the kids at school about it, and they were similar, "What are you lot talking about? Why are y'all telling us about this movie about vii dudes marrying seven chicks?" That was non what nearly 8th graders talked about. I realized then that I was different, that not everyone got obsessed with movies like these.

The pic that transformed me? My biological father and my mother are both African American. But my mother divorced my father when I was very young and married a white man, and I was pretty much raised by him. There were so many elements of Fasten Lee'due southJungle Fever that rang true to me. In that movie, the Wesley Snipes character leaves his black wife to date this non-black person. That whole idea of people from 2 races trying to come together while everyone around them is against them—that is when I realized that films can talk about your life and maybe get people to sympathize it. When people asked me what was it similar growing up in my household, I tell them, "Simply picket this movie."

Having been a groovy observer of the film world for a while, what practise yous recollect has changed? What hasn't inverse at all?

What has changed the most is many important people realize that if they are going to exist non-progressive nearly inclusion in the filmmaking process, they are going to receive pushback. It used to exist that deals were washed in the night. If you had an all white cast and crew, people might discover information technology, but no one was going to call yous out on it. Now people are vocal nigh it. If you don't brand your cast and crew diverse, if you don't have inclusion riders, if you don't ensure that the junket has an equal make upwardly, you'll exist called out. What has not inverse is that there are still lots of people who keep doing the aforementioned thing, although quietly. Some people are making changes for diversity now, but in a few years may very well go back to doing what they used to exercise.

Encounter the "You Know That Scene" panel: from left to correct, Trisha Hershberger, Matthew Hoffman, Jacqueline Coley, Scott Mantz, and Wendy Lee.

In moderating the panel, what did you learn?

As an African American, I bring a specific perspective to African American film. It is really refreshing when I am with not-black filmmakers and influencers and get to hear their perspective. I hear people say things like, "I didn't realize how much this has not changed." We are looking at older films and we realize that we even so dealing with the same stuff they dealt with years ago.

What will audiences run across in upcoming episodes?

When you wait at the Focus Features' catalog, you lot see just how diverse it is, non just with African American filmmakers, but also with all facets of the filmmaking experience. It captures the full human experience. I don't think that is by design, but rather by only finding great stories to tell. Over the course of the entire flavour of "You Know That Scene," we'll bear upon a lot of dissimilar perspectives. Each episode and every topic volition have a unlike flavor.

Are there particular episodes you are looking forward to?

Politics! They are all groovy, but I think the politics episode is going to be very poignant. We talk most films similar Milk, simply not in a divisive fashion. More like, "Let'south look at this. Even though nosotros've fabricated films that bargain with these problems, nosotros are notwithstanding dealing with them."

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Source: https://www.focusfeatures.com/article/you-know-that-scene_interview_jacquelline-coley

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