The world of filmmaking seems to be at a transition point. Each year seems to show more signs that the Los Angeles studio system, which has acted as pretty much the main hub for the creation of cinematic stories (what film producer Lynda Obst once referred to as the "
Old Abnormal"), is slowly coming to an end. Or even if it never amounts to a complete end, there are signs that the traditional production stage economy that used to be the very lifeblood of Hollywood is no longer capable of adapting to the ongoing advance of the digital age. Instead, they're relying now on a kind of latter day model of old world patronage, where various wealthy Silicon Valley types are now buying up and merging studios in an effort to help them avoid bankruptcy. It's kind of ironic, in a way. That's because it's almost as if Tinseltown is retreating back to a strange parody of glory days during it's Golden Age. They seem to be trying to see if the old Media Mogul Model is what's needed to keep things afloat. The trouble here is I don't see any sign that most of the current crop of studio owners have any of the interest, foresight, or genuine dedication and creative vision that old timers like Louis B. Mayer, Carl Laemmle, and Darryl F. Zanuck used to have that allowed them to turn MGM, Universal Studios and 20th Century Fox into the pioneering juggernauts they once were. These days, Hollywood is a shadow of its former shadows, and everything that once defined it as an industry is slowly winding down.
The most notable fallout from this ongoing development is the obvious lack of individual talent on display in the contemporary studio system. This is has been a slow dawning realization on the part of audiences, as it becomes clear that most of the actual content coming out the Valley these days is confined for the most part to endless tentpole franchise products, and somehow none of them manage to do the legacy media they're depicting any good. That's because the studio model is running on a paradigm which won't allow for the presence of actual filmmaking talent for the most part anymore. One gets the sense that if this legacy revival had happened during the mid-90s, when Hollywood was still riding easy in the traces, then the results would have been a bit better. Those were the days of Lynda Obst's "Old Abnormal". The "New Abnormal" (as she once referred to the current studio system) seems to be incapable of figuring out even the basic rudimentary elements of churning out a good movie crop. Then again, it's also possible to notice similar developments happening across a multitude of businesses in the ongoing early half of the 21st century. We seem to be in an age of what's best described as "Stupid Industrialism". It's all a version of the "boom-and-bust" entrepreneurship that gave American its Gilded Age back in the 19th century. The difference is the modern industrialists of our era seem to suffer from a curious malady. It's as if they couldn't run a business to save their own lives.
You almost get the sense that some of these guys (and they are all men, for the most part) never even learned how to make a simple amount of change at a cash register before. It's disconcerting to say the least. That's the kind of careless outlook that causes problems due to lack of foresight and knowledge of basic economics. I don't think this Country has ever seen such a considerable lack of economic and business illiteracy at any point in its history before. It's the kind of thing that spells trouble sooner or later, and in the field of the Arts, one of the logical results of such illogical reasoning is the tendency to smother any up and coming creative talent out of sight and out of mind. It's what makes the emergence of someone like Ryan Coogler all the more remarkable in an industry that is, for all intents and purposes, on it's last legs. The future breakout director was born in May, 1986, and grew up a product of San Francisco's Bay Area. While he was born in Oakland, he spent the majority of his childhood and the rest of his high school years in Richmond, California. In interviews, Coogler presents himself as a soft-spoken yet articulate, and clearly intelligent man, yet one who seems to be ill at ease with the entire ethos of Hollywood's showbusiness celebrity machine. This might just be to his personal and professional credit. As he's made clear more than once, even he's surprised to be in the spotlight.
What's remarkable about Coogler's upbringing is how little of it seems to prepare you for the expectation that you were seeing the development of a future cinematic talent. Coogler admits that films and moviemaking was sort of the furthest thing from his mind as he grew up, In first high school and then college, his biggest achievements were in the world of sports. Coogler proved himself a natural athlete on the football field, and so for the longest time, it looked like he might have grown up to be a pretty decent sportsman. Then while a student at Moraga's St. Mary's College, Coogler and his fellow teammates where signed up for a creative writing course as part of his football scholarship. It's there the director came under the mentorship of Rosemary Graham. She seems to have been the one to spark an interest in the Arts for the first time, and at one point Coogler was given the assignment to try his hand at writing a legitimate screenplay. This was a standard part of the course; just a simple creative exercise that in most cases was meant to fulfill the curriculum requirements, and that's how it remains for most students who take such courses. However, to both Coogler and Graham's surprise, it seems the assignment he turned in was actually a cut above the rest of the students taking her required curriculum.
To his own surprise, Coogler, discovered that he had a natural talent for scriptwriting. Graham recognized this and called him into a meeting where she did all she could to encourage him to both recognize and develop his gifts to their full potential. Coogler listened to her advice, and began to jot down ideas, and draft more screenplays, while at the same time starting to familiarize himself with the mechanics of filmmaking. On the technical side of things, he became such a good student, that he eventually learned how to manipulate the way the camera frame presents the story to the viewer in a number of creative ways. More important than this, however, he discovered that Graham was right about his natural talents as a writer. So he kept at it, and remained a serious student of the craft, to the point where he would end up producing and directing a series of short films. In time, some of these efforts would land on the film festival circuit. It was while he was still at film school that one of his teachers pointed out that acclaimed actor Forest Whitaker was sending scouts out to look for up and coming talent, and Coogler's teacher suggested that he contact the Ghost Dog in order to see if maybe he could impress the Hollywood professional enough to gain a foot in the door. So a meeting was arranged, and Coogler got a chance to pitch a number of creative ideas to direct as his first film.
One of them was a script called
Fruitvale Station, which was based on the real life story of Oscar Grant, and his death at the hands of the Bay Area's Transit Police. Whitaker could tell that
Fruitvale was the one project Coogler was passionate about, and that the script had all the ingredients necessary for a good film. So with his help, Coogler began production of
Fruitvale in July of 2012, and had its premiere January 19th, 2013. It was during the production of
Fruitvale that Coogler would first meet and collaborate with Michael B. Jordon, an actor who would go on to become integral to the director's latest project. The success of
Fruitvale Station was enough to bring Coogler's name and talents to the attention of the Hollywood studio system, as the director soon found himself tapped to helm the big budget tentpole franchises for both a
Rocky Legacy sequel, with 2015's
Creed, as well as the two
Black Panther films for Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe. While each of these later efforts have brought Coogler's name to a mass awareness, the director has also said that he was anxious to craft a story of his own. Something that would allow his own voice and talents to have their say in the same way as his debut feature did. Yet there also seems to have been an awareness that this was something he would have to fight for in a studio system that valued cookie cutter products rather than individual talent.
So what Coogler did was to allow his for-hire-work to buy him enough clout so that he could bankroll his next project, which was meant to be much more personal than his regular studio gigs, and produce it under the banner of his own production company, Proximity Media. Drawing back from a lifetime of movie watching, book reading, and personal experience listening to Blues music with his uncle, and a fascination with Irish culture, Coogler came up with an idea Inspired by films such as Night of the Living Dead and From Dusk Till Dawn, and novels like Stephen King's Salem's Lot to craft the tale of a group of desperate survivors holed up in an abandoned sawmill, as the try to survive the night with a hoard of ravenous vampires trying to break in and tear the main cast apart. In addition to the films of Quentin Tarantino and George A. Romero, Coogler has also cited the comedic and surrealistic period dramas of the Coen Brothers, as well as an episode of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone as key influences on his story. Coogler would slowly assemble all of these elements together into a script which came to have the title of Sinners. With enough clout on his side, Coogler reached out to the man who helped launch his directing career, and together he and Michael B. Jordon set about to craft the kind of old time B-Movie fright film that used to be such personal favorite crowd pleasers from their childhoods.
The final result was a film that saw its nationwide release in American theaters on April 18th, 2025. I first heard about
Sinners as a bit of word of mouth mentioned online, in passing. There was a Twitter conversation going on where one of the participants was raving about this brand new Horror flick that left those who saw it eager to talk about it. What I recall everyone going on about was that it had this climactic ending shoot-out between Michael B. Jordan and the KKK, and that it was one of the most awesome spectacles anyone had seen in a movie theater for quite a while. Being the complete pure fool I am, I waited and bided my time before finally deciding to sit down and take a look at it myself, and even then a major motivating factor behind that was because I'd just come from watching another fright flick that left me aggravated with boredom, and so I was stuck casting about for anything that would lighten the load. Since the film I'd just watched was a vampire related tale, I remembered that Coogler had also made his own film tackling this same ancient myth of the Undead. So I finally sat myself down, and let the story unfold. What happened next more than lived up to the hype, and the main reason for why that is comes down to the story Coogler has to tell, and what it means in real life.
