I’ll bet that at the end of the year, when you look at all
the articles we’re written on S & A, 12 Years A Slave will be the film that we wrote about the most. And
how could you blame us?
But practically everything that has been written about the
film, either by us or anyone else, focuses on the director Steve McQueen. However, there was a screenwriter involved as well and, needless to say, without the script, there would no 12 Years
to talk about.
So it’s rather refreshing to see an interview with 12 Years
screenwriter John Ridley on the Huffington Post webcast, discussing how
the film came to be, his collaboration with McQueen and how Django affected the
making of the film.
But Ridley not only wrote 12 Years, he also wrote and
directed the Jimi Hendrix bio-pic All Is By My Side, which was picked up
for theatrical distribution by Open Road
after its premiere at Toronto. And
in the interview he talks about why he wanted to make the film, his approach to
the subject, including the legal issues they faced in the making of the film, like the use of Hendrix’s more popular
music – a situation he calls “a win all the way around”.
Ridley, who has occasionally appeared on MSNBC as a political pundit, is a veteran of the screenwriting trade,
starting out writing some episodes for Martin
back in the early 90’s, and has continued on with a very long list of credits including
writing and producing sit-coms, dramatic TV series and features such as Three Kings, Undercover Brother and Red Tails (so O.K. not everything he’s written is a masterpiece…)