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I found the podcast a few months back and have loved and learned so much from the back catalog — but it took this Feb. 14 episode of Fresh Air (https://freshair.com/guests/ruth-e-carter), to make me feel like I needed to create an account and reach out with something for the Forums.
For anyone who hasn’t heard it already, Tonya Mosley’s conversation with Ruth E. Carter (Costume Design, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever), is *SO* worth the time — and more than several times during the episode, I caught myself thinking “gosh, I wonder what the [Roger/James] follow-up question to that would be.”
For Team Deakins fans, I don’t know, there was something really cool about how this Fresh Air conversation really did seem to drift into similar terrain (not just the neighborhood of “how people make movies”, but more the “we’d like to hear your stories about people telling stories”). Of course, from a filmmaking point of view, the NPR interview gets frustrating because the closer they get to the tall grass of the whys and hows of a given movie, that’s when they have to move onto “…so your next project…”
It would be so great if you guys can make the stars align and get something like a deep dive sequel to this conversation to happen.
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Thanks so much for the quick reply with the exciting news!
If you happen to see this in time and it fits the flow of conversation, I’d love to hear some of what she has to share about working as a Costumer with a Director who’s also such an on-screen presence in his films — some standout moments for me are his curtain call at the end of the opening dance number in Malcolm X and Mookie’s final confrontation with Sal in Do The Right Thing.
I’ll own that some of that curiosity is just gossipy “What’s it like to pick out clothes with Spike Lee?”, but I also don’t think that curiosity would be there if his movies didn’t communicate so much intensity around what a person puts on to wear, who has the agency to choose wardrobe, and the ways people inhabiting clothes make them their own. There’s really nothing in my experience that lets me go beyond observing “the shirt saying Mookie’s delivering pizza works like a superpower for navigating the neighborhood”, but the details like that throughout are the ones, I think, where connections to the story form in ways that really matter and encourage finding out more.
That’s a lot of big stuff to try and squeeze into one or two rambling sentences 😅, so thank you for bearing with me! I really just wanted to say thanks again, and that I’ll be looking forward to this one too.
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