UPDATE 3/2/2014: John Ridley won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for "12 Years a Slace," which also won Best Picture this year.
For KPCC's new iPad app, Off-Ramp host John Rabe sat down with screenwriter and director John Ridley ("Undercover Brother," "Three Kings") to talk about his two new films - "12 Years a Slave" and "All Is by My Side."
Ridley on finding a way to tell a story about Jimi Hendrix that has not been told already:
"I wanted to tell the story about, not just Jimi Hendrix, but the people that were close to him, and the people who were influential to him. I think that with Jimi, his iconography as a person is so overpowering that a lot of times we don't think of him in terms of a person, we don't think about the relationship, we don't think abut his human nature."
Ridley on the pitfalls of making a movie about slavery:
"I think sometimes the dangers are trying to preach to an audience, proselytize. I mean, people go in, unfortunately, and think, 'I know about slavery, I've heard all there is to hear about slavery.' And the reality is that most of us don't really have a concept of that system, of the stories, of the individuals who lived through it."