Tracy Oliver co-wrote "Barbershop: The Next Cut," her biggest credit in a career that's only getting bigger; The man behind the electro-pop band Owl City is spending 2016 on a passion project that marries his love of film scores with his passion for history; What does Comcast's $3.8 billion deal to buy Dreamworks Animation say about the state of Hollywood?
Writer Tracy Oliver's rise from 'Awkward Black Girl' to big-screen 'Barbershop'
Tracy Oliver was a teenager when the first "Barbershop" movie came out in 2002. Little did she know that 13 years later she’d have a writing credit on the third installment of the franchise.
Oliver is a rising star in the film business, having attracted attention for her collaboration with fellow Stanford alumna Issa Rae on the web series, "The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl." Rae is now developing that show for HBO.
Meanwhile, Oliver has a number of her own projects in the works, including a TV series in collaboration with ballerina Misty Copeland.
When Oliver stopped by The Frame's studio, we began by talking about how she and her “Barbershop: The Next Cut” co-writer Kenya Barris — who’s best known for creating the ABC comedy “Black-ish” — came to write the script together.
Interview Highlights:
How did you and Kenya Barris meet and decide to work together?
He hired me for a show that never aired, but the good part about it was we developed a relationship and we have a great love/hate relationship where we always fight with each other, but at the end of the day we produce great art because of our arguments. We started randomly talking about "Barbershop" one day and I discovered that he was going out for it and I was going out for it. So we were competing against each other. It made sense for us to join together, then we're not competing, we'll probably get this. And then we pitched it as a co-ed movie, a male/female, Mars/Venus thing so we could get both of our points of view in it.
Do you think that your sense of comedy is dramatically different [than Kenya's] or what were the kinds of things you were having these arguments over?
The thing about the "Barbershop" movies that are so great is that you get so many different perspectives, because you have some of the younger barbers, you have some of the older barbers. We even have an Indian-American barber in there who's very conservative. We got to play with a lot of different perspectives. Kenya is older than me and he's also married, he's a family guy. I'm not. I'm a young, single girl who's still wiling out a lot, so I got to talk about my dating stuff and he would give me advice ... we would just argue about all kinds of stuff, then literally would transcribe it and put it into the script.
Did you feel that there were any topics or jokes off limits?
Nothing was off limits, seriously — from [Ice] Cube to the producers to the studio, they were like, No one is off limits. Actually, we had one joke that was removed because Cube felt that going after children was not fair game. It was a Blue Ivy joke. He [said], "You can go after [Beyonce and Jay-Z], but not her."
Let's talk about this scene:
Can you talk about beauty and how it empowers the women in this story.
That scene came about because of a real conversation Kenya and I were having. We're always debating about men and women, and men always saying they want women like Beyonce and Kim Kardashian and all of these women with long hair and voluptuous curves and all this stuff. I would say, That's so unrealistic. Women have to go to work and do regular things. These are entertainers. I can't walk around, realistically, in a weave down to my butt and heels and then go write a script ... you're holding real women to these unrealistic standards. But there are women like Drea, played by Nicki Minaj in the movie, who make a career out of being that kind of symbol.
Lets talk about "The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl," the web series you co-created with Issa Rae. How did that show come about?
We went to Stanford together and we were always the two black girls going out for the same part. We were both into theater and always auditioning for plays and stuff, and literally it would be like one of us would get it, one of us isn't going to get it. There's only one part that's going to go to someone black, and the two of [us] are competing for it and you can't get another part, so, that's what it comes down to. It got to a point where we need to make sure that we create more opportunities so that it doesn't have to be like that. Both of us can act and produce and write at the same time ... She had this idea for an awkward character and I was like, I love it, let's figure it out. We partnered, I put a crew together, I had just finished film school so I was borrowing equipment from USC, borrowing money from my parents, and then we started shooting it for free and had no idea it was going to go viral.
Did you find that you were able to figure out the stories you wanted to tell through this web series?
Absolutely. There was a period where there just wasn't anything like that on the air. There were no black women on the air, this was pre-"Scandal," pre-"How To get Away With Murder," pre-"Black-ish." When I finished film school I was like, Oh, black women can't exist on television, so we have to put them on the Internet. After that, all of a sudden the landscape of comedy changed. You saw casting calls in show looking for diverse voices, and I was really excited about that.
Listen to the audio to hear the full interview!
Adam Young makes a fictional film score for 'The Spirit of St. Louis'
Writing a film score can take months or even longer to complete, but Adam Young is writing one every month for the rest of this year.
Young is mainly known for his electro-band Owl City, but he's taking a break from writing pop songs to write fictional film scores that are based on historical events. He started this passion project in February with his take on what a film about the Apollo 11 mission would sound like.
The catch is that there is no film. Young is crafting the stories and score from research he's compiled on historical events. He’s also not releasing these scores for fans to buy. They’re streaming for free on his website.
Young's score for April is called "The Spirit of St. Louis," which is about Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight from New York to Paris. (That story was originally told in a 1957 film starring Jimmy Stewart, with music by Franz Waxman.) The Frame's James Kim spoke with Young about what inspired him to take off an entire year to pursue this project, and what exactly goes into writing a score for a film that doesn't exist.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
What inspired you to write film scores based on historical events?
There's something about historical moments that just have a mystery to them. For me, having been born in the '80s and growing up in the '90s, there's just something so fascinating about life in the past. That's why I've chosen some of these historical events.
What was the idea behind the opening track, "Takeoff"?
I approached the opening track the way I would approach a romantic comedy intro. It's very light and exciting, it's sort of giddy a little bit. I wanted to capture the feeling of flight and those butterflies you get right when you take off.
I could definitely let my imagination run, and it's even fun to imagine what some other of my favorite composers might do. What would Hans Zimmer's version of Lindbergh's "Takeoff" sound like?
Stars Appear
On the track, "Stars Appear," there's this brief moment where the sun's going down. And just the way that I imagine Lindbergh being up there, there's just this brief moment where everything is sort of right, and everything feels settling. There's no foreboding as to what might be up ahead.
Fighting To Stay Awake
There's a point in the story where he's definitely having trouble keeping awake. At this point he's over the Atlantic Ocean and there's nothing to see — it's nighttime. I read that he actually descended to where he was a few feet above the water and flew like that for a long time to keep himself focused on what he's doing, because if he stops paying attention for a second, he could be gone.
I can't imagine how tired he would be after 30-some hours, 20 of those in the air. I'm sure there's sort of a hump where you just have to get over that bit of the journey, where you just cannot keep your eyes open. So the track, "Fighting To Stay Awake," captures that. It's a little bit more gritty and a little bit more drone-y. It's this slow pulse that just feels like your eyelids are lead.
Wheels Down
The last track is called, "Wheels Down." It's pretty self-explanatory, but I think it was [after] 33-and-a half hours, Charles Lindbergh touches down near Paris. I read that there was close to 100,000 people waiting for him because, remember, this was 1927 and air travel was a different world. So here's the first guy to fly solo across the Atlantic and all these folks show up to greet him and he's this instant hero.
The track is very simple, it's very triumphant, and it's this sense of accomplishment. There were dangers, and there were storms, and he was about to fall asleep and all of these things and he made it.
After you finished writing this score, was there a sense of relief, similar to what Lindbergh was feeling after he completed his flight?
The process of creating the album, "The Spirit of St. Louis," is definitely sort of a mirror of the actual journey. I think I was around 15 or 16 years old when I started to pay attention to film music. That was kind of the first music to inspire my love of music. Part of what I do musically is also under the project Owl City and I just put out an album last summer.
I was in this moment where, before my schedule gets cluttered, I would love to pause for a second and look back at all these things that I wanted to do for a long time and put to bed something that I always wanted to finish.
Adam Young will release his next film score on May 1.