KARLA FULLER, MFA, PhD, is currently an Associate Professor in the department of Cinema and Television Arts at Columbia College Chicago, where she teaches Cinema Studies and Screenwriting to undergraduates and MFA students. Prior to teaching at Columbia College, Fuller held the position of Director of Feature Film Evaluation at Vestron Inc., which produced the hit movie Dirty Dancing. She was also a freelance script reader for New Line Cinema, Miramax, and other production companies.
Her book Hollywood Goes Oriental: CaucAsian Performance in American Film was released by Wayne State University Press in 2010. She edited and introduced Ang Lee: Interviews, a compilation of interviews of award-winning director Ang Lee published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2016. Her latest book is titled, DO THE RIGHT THING: FIVE SCREENPLAYS THAT EMBRACE DIVERSITY, is now available from Michael Wiese Productions.
Dave Watson: Congratulations on Do the Right Thing, a great little book so you don’t waste peoples’ time. What inspired you to write this?
Karla Fuller: There are so many threads, but the most direct one has to do with my first book, Hollywood Goes Oriental, which focuses on caucasian actors playing Asian roles. I’m pretty focused on minority roles and how most minorities are misrepresented. Hollywood Goes Oriental talked about what Hollywood got wrong, while this book talks about what Hollywood gets right. They bookend each other.
DW: They complement each other. Like government, you hear what they’re doing wrong and don’t hear what they’re doing right. I also immediately thought of the 1989 Spike Lee movie. Was your title inspired by that at all?
KF: Of course! I borrowed that title. It’s riding the wave of diverse initiatives of the motion picture academy and smaller academies in this country. There is a movement for more diversity in storytelling, led by diverse visionaries, writers and filmmakers. I thought that this is the right time to highlight and showcase these new voices.
DW: The sub-header is "Storytelling Secrets of Five Screenplays That Embrace Diversity." How did you choose these five screenplays and movies? Jordan Peele’s Nope is out now and Get Out is now already a classic of its kind.
KF: That was really tough to do. Part of the decision was practical. I’d been writing about really old films for a long time and I wanted to write about something more contemporary, no further back than five or six years, and that starts with Moonlight. I also wanted them to be the range of writers, race, gender, sexual orientation, that whole thing, but I also wanted to explore genre. I wanted to pick each of those things. More diverse on many levels.
DW: You mention Moonlight. A storytelling maxim is the more specific storytelling choices are, the more universally they relate. Would you agree?
KF: Absolutely. I quote Lorraine Hansbury in the book about getting to the universal through the specific, and I couldn’t agree more. Most people think the opposite, that they have to make it everybody’s story and it turns out to be nobody’s story.
When you go at a story on a personal level, from something intimate, people can relate. They can find pieces of their own lives, their own experiences, their own emotions, because I really believe movies are emotional, not intellectual. They can find themselves in many stories when they are specific with characters who are specific and well-drawn. There are no perfect movies but I think these five really moved the industry, craft, and artistry forward.
DW: Barry Jenkins did that twice. When Moonlight ended I was speechless. With If Beale Street Could Talk, many were expecting something similar to Moonlight but he went after a similar theme with a different, specific story.
With the first fifteen minutes of Get Out, one person said that’s the perfect short film, ending with the protagonist asking his white girlfriend, “Does your family know I’m black?”
I said, “This is a good thinking-person’s thriller. They’re going to incorporate ethnicity into this thriller. Did you feel like all of these screenplays did that?
KF: The diversity arises so organically from all five of these that it doesn’t seem forced.
Get Out is such a perfectly, well-crafted thinking-person’s, and there’s nothing wrong within thinking, but it’s the type of film that incorporates so much more. They call it the social critique thriller. In the book I go into how long it took him to write it, and what knowledge of classic films went into it.
We also talk about ow it bends and stretches the genre. My screenwriting students talk about how they don’t want to do genre, they want to make “my movie.”
Well, genres exist not to limit you, but to make stories somewhat familiar. They’re like an agreement, then you can make whatever you want to.
DW: Get Out was a personal story that stood on its own. Did these movies come to you or did you start writing your book and say, I’m going to do these five films.
KF: You got it on the second one. When I watch movies and I explain this to people, when you first see the film, you’re analytical juices are flowing. That’s not how I do it. I watch the film the first time just like a regular viewer, otherwise things get distorted because you;’re looking for things and always looking, looking, looking; things don’t come out at you organically.
With the book I picked a couple right off the bat, but the others I thought I’d like to incorporate an indigenous story and a romantic comedy. One of my friends who read an early draft said she was so glad you used a comedy because they’re not often taken seriously.
So I sat down and thought of ground-breaking films from the last few years that got accolades yet were very personal by the writers and directors.
DW: These are strong voices, too. We as viewers give ourselves over to films as organic art, yet structure is a very big deal. Especially with thrillers, you have to lead the audience by the nose. Roma is a memoir yet it has a structure. How did that come about in the book?
KF: I thought about the structure to each genre. There are so many books ons structure but they talk about it abstractly which is not helpful to readers. When you talk about structure in genre, there’s some familiarity there. With Roma, it’s not a straight-up rom-com, historical drama.
So I had to dig deeper and talk about it in terms of short story structure, in terms of a reactive protagonist, so the structure is there but it’s a little looser, but it’s absolutely there because with Alphonse Cuaron it’s such a personal to him, his childhood, his nanny but he understood how to approach the story so it made sense to the characters, where she. doesn’t have a lot of agency, so how are you going to tell this story that’s true to that character but not be a passive character?
So my approach with Roma is a little more challenging, more nuanced, so it wasn’t easy, not like the horror genre where you have to hit notes along the way.
DW: Roma reached global audiences as well, taking place in a particular place and time, Mexico City in the 1970s. You also mentioned the impact on the protagonist and the fact that the nanny’s actions are minimal says much about the impact of film as a medium.
KF: Seemingly minimal. With audiences we’re watching every movement.
Movies are particularly intimate, and I love stage plays. The fact that she doesn’t do a lot in a big way makes us pay more attention to any act, any action, she performs, or may perform. I really think Cuaron knew that: “We’re going to set up this character. There are going to be small moments, you’re going to pay attention because you don’t get much.” We want to understand. That’s the viewer. We want to understand the story, to get into the story, see what’s going on, that’s halfway there.
It doesn’t have to be big. You create the world, you create the character that goes about this world, and you will go along.
DW: Our experiences are confined to the screen, especially in the theater. When a character does very little, it brings out our imagination. We could almost sit with her. I like that you used the word intimacy. If there’s not a relationship between you and the screen, it loses its power., it’s nothing tangible but it’s there. With your book, the story starts first.
KF: Oh, the story starts first. Jordan Peele talks openly about how he was going to do a Meet the Parents type thing at the beginning, then he started looking at gender and the political realm and he said, “Oh we gotta put race in there.”
Part of the story you want to tell can incorporate as much diversity as you want, but there has to be a story you can follow, and that doesn’t mean cookie cutter at all. We’re talking about Roma here after all, and that is not Hollywood per se. We have to engage, we want to engage, and follow, and hopefully walk away with something we experienced and never thought about the same way. That would be wonderful.
DW: And there has to be emotional truth. We’ll go with movies anywhere they take us. What’s next for you?
KF: I have another screenwriting textbook in the hopper which takes a novel approach to it, and think mine will be helpful to short and feature filmmakers. I also have movie-making projects coming up. Sorry to be mysterious, but it’s all coming together.
DW: That’s okay, if you hold it in, it allows you to embrace your creativity. What is your favorite cinematic moment?
KF: There are so many and it’s so hard. When I was thirteen I watched Stagecoach and thought, “Wow, there’s something here.”
If I was on a desert island and had to take one film with me, it would be a Japanese film by Akira Kurosawa, Ran, which is a word that translates into chaos. There’s a scene where a character comes toward the camera on his horse with the town, his town, engulfed in flames. It’s an amazing, surreal, powerful image that I never saw before, never seen again, and I have to say, Kurosawa in I think 1995, he was seventy-five then, said, “You know, I think I’m just getting a handle on this filmmaking thing.”
The humility of someone, a master like that, who continued to push himself into older age.
DW: I saw it more than three decades ago and still remember it. I believe George Lucas and Steven Spielberg hauled him out at the Oscars and pretty much said, “He’s the one.” I saw The Hidden Fortress from 1958 in a packed theater twenty-six years after it came out and you could have heard a pin drop. He pushed himself for so long after that masterpiece.
KF: He had it.
Clip: Ran
Founder and editor of Movies Matter, Dave Watson is a writer and educator in Madison, Wisconsin.
Her book Hollywood Goes Oriental: CaucAsian Performance in American Film was released by Wayne State University Press in 2010. She edited and introduced Ang Lee: Interviews, a compilation of interviews of award-winning director Ang Lee published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2016. Her latest book is titled, DO THE RIGHT THING: FIVE SCREENPLAYS THAT EMBRACE DIVERSITY, is now available from Michael Wiese Productions.
Dave Watson: Congratulations on Do the Right Thing, a great little book so you don’t waste peoples’ time. What inspired you to write this?
Karla Fuller: There are so many threads, but the most direct one has to do with my first book, Hollywood Goes Oriental, which focuses on caucasian actors playing Asian roles. I’m pretty focused on minority roles and how most minorities are misrepresented. Hollywood Goes Oriental talked about what Hollywood got wrong, while this book talks about what Hollywood gets right. They bookend each other.
DW: They complement each other. Like government, you hear what they’re doing wrong and don’t hear what they’re doing right. I also immediately thought of the 1989 Spike Lee movie. Was your title inspired by that at all?
KF: Of course! I borrowed that title. It’s riding the wave of diverse initiatives of the motion picture academy and smaller academies in this country. There is a movement for more diversity in storytelling, led by diverse visionaries, writers and filmmakers. I thought that this is the right time to highlight and showcase these new voices.
DW: The sub-header is "Storytelling Secrets of Five Screenplays That Embrace Diversity." How did you choose these five screenplays and movies? Jordan Peele’s Nope is out now and Get Out is now already a classic of its kind.
KF: That was really tough to do. Part of the decision was practical. I’d been writing about really old films for a long time and I wanted to write about something more contemporary, no further back than five or six years, and that starts with Moonlight. I also wanted them to be the range of writers, race, gender, sexual orientation, that whole thing, but I also wanted to explore genre. I wanted to pick each of those things. More diverse on many levels.
DW: You mention Moonlight. A storytelling maxim is the more specific storytelling choices are, the more universally they relate. Would you agree?
KF: Absolutely. I quote Lorraine Hansbury in the book about getting to the universal through the specific, and I couldn’t agree more. Most people think the opposite, that they have to make it everybody’s story and it turns out to be nobody’s story.
When you go at a story on a personal level, from something intimate, people can relate. They can find pieces of their own lives, their own experiences, their own emotions, because I really believe movies are emotional, not intellectual. They can find themselves in many stories when they are specific with characters who are specific and well-drawn. There are no perfect movies but I think these five really moved the industry, craft, and artistry forward.
DW: Barry Jenkins did that twice. When Moonlight ended I was speechless. With If Beale Street Could Talk, many were expecting something similar to Moonlight but he went after a similar theme with a different, specific story.
With the first fifteen minutes of Get Out, one person said that’s the perfect short film, ending with the protagonist asking his white girlfriend, “Does your family know I’m black?”
I said, “This is a good thinking-person’s thriller. They’re going to incorporate ethnicity into this thriller. Did you feel like all of these screenplays did that?
KF: The diversity arises so organically from all five of these that it doesn’t seem forced.
Get Out is such a perfectly, well-crafted thinking-person’s, and there’s nothing wrong within thinking, but it’s the type of film that incorporates so much more. They call it the social critique thriller. In the book I go into how long it took him to write it, and what knowledge of classic films went into it.
We also talk about ow it bends and stretches the genre. My screenwriting students talk about how they don’t want to do genre, they want to make “my movie.”
Well, genres exist not to limit you, but to make stories somewhat familiar. They’re like an agreement, then you can make whatever you want to.
DW: Get Out was a personal story that stood on its own. Did these movies come to you or did you start writing your book and say, I’m going to do these five films.
KF: You got it on the second one. When I watch movies and I explain this to people, when you first see the film, you’re analytical juices are flowing. That’s not how I do it. I watch the film the first time just like a regular viewer, otherwise things get distorted because you;’re looking for things and always looking, looking, looking; things don’t come out at you organically.
With the book I picked a couple right off the bat, but the others I thought I’d like to incorporate an indigenous story and a romantic comedy. One of my friends who read an early draft said she was so glad you used a comedy because they’re not often taken seriously.
So I sat down and thought of ground-breaking films from the last few years that got accolades yet were very personal by the writers and directors.
DW: These are strong voices, too. We as viewers give ourselves over to films as organic art, yet structure is a very big deal. Especially with thrillers, you have to lead the audience by the nose. Roma is a memoir yet it has a structure. How did that come about in the book?
KF: I thought about the structure to each genre. There are so many books ons structure but they talk about it abstractly which is not helpful to readers. When you talk about structure in genre, there’s some familiarity there. With Roma, it’s not a straight-up rom-com, historical drama.
So I had to dig deeper and talk about it in terms of short story structure, in terms of a reactive protagonist, so the structure is there but it’s a little looser, but it’s absolutely there because with Alphonse Cuaron it’s such a personal to him, his childhood, his nanny but he understood how to approach the story so it made sense to the characters, where she. doesn’t have a lot of agency, so how are you going to tell this story that’s true to that character but not be a passive character?
So my approach with Roma is a little more challenging, more nuanced, so it wasn’t easy, not like the horror genre where you have to hit notes along the way.
DW: Roma reached global audiences as well, taking place in a particular place and time, Mexico City in the 1970s. You also mentioned the impact on the protagonist and the fact that the nanny’s actions are minimal says much about the impact of film as a medium.
KF: Seemingly minimal. With audiences we’re watching every movement.
Movies are particularly intimate, and I love stage plays. The fact that she doesn’t do a lot in a big way makes us pay more attention to any act, any action, she performs, or may perform. I really think Cuaron knew that: “We’re going to set up this character. There are going to be small moments, you’re going to pay attention because you don’t get much.” We want to understand. That’s the viewer. We want to understand the story, to get into the story, see what’s going on, that’s halfway there.
It doesn’t have to be big. You create the world, you create the character that goes about this world, and you will go along.
DW: Our experiences are confined to the screen, especially in the theater. When a character does very little, it brings out our imagination. We could almost sit with her. I like that you used the word intimacy. If there’s not a relationship between you and the screen, it loses its power., it’s nothing tangible but it’s there. With your book, the story starts first.
KF: Oh, the story starts first. Jordan Peele talks openly about how he was going to do a Meet the Parents type thing at the beginning, then he started looking at gender and the political realm and he said, “Oh we gotta put race in there.”
Part of the story you want to tell can incorporate as much diversity as you want, but there has to be a story you can follow, and that doesn’t mean cookie cutter at all. We’re talking about Roma here after all, and that is not Hollywood per se. We have to engage, we want to engage, and follow, and hopefully walk away with something we experienced and never thought about the same way. That would be wonderful.
DW: And there has to be emotional truth. We’ll go with movies anywhere they take us. What’s next for you?
KF: I have another screenwriting textbook in the hopper which takes a novel approach to it, and think mine will be helpful to short and feature filmmakers. I also have movie-making projects coming up. Sorry to be mysterious, but it’s all coming together.
DW: That’s okay, if you hold it in, it allows you to embrace your creativity. What is your favorite cinematic moment?
KF: There are so many and it’s so hard. When I was thirteen I watched Stagecoach and thought, “Wow, there’s something here.”
If I was on a desert island and had to take one film with me, it would be a Japanese film by Akira Kurosawa, Ran, which is a word that translates into chaos. There’s a scene where a character comes toward the camera on his horse with the town, his town, engulfed in flames. It’s an amazing, surreal, powerful image that I never saw before, never seen again, and I have to say, Kurosawa in I think 1995, he was seventy-five then, said, “You know, I think I’m just getting a handle on this filmmaking thing.”
The humility of someone, a master like that, who continued to push himself into older age.
DW: I saw it more than three decades ago and still remember it. I believe George Lucas and Steven Spielberg hauled him out at the Oscars and pretty much said, “He’s the one.” I saw The Hidden Fortress from 1958 in a packed theater twenty-six years after it came out and you could have heard a pin drop. He pushed himself for so long after that masterpiece.
KF: He had it.
Clip: Ran
Founder and editor of Movies Matter, Dave Watson is a writer and educator in Madison, Wisconsin.
