Fact V Fiction: A Conversation with Crowther and Baylin

[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - The best response you can have to a payoff in a thriller is someone goes, "Oh, right, I forgot, of course..." [multiple voices chattering] [Narrator] On Story offers a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators, and filmmakers.

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[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] [piano gliss] From Austin Film Festival, this is "On Story."

A look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators, and filmmakers.

This week's "On Story," "The Man in the High Castle" screenwriter, Jihan Crowther and "King Richard" screenwriter, Zach Baylin.

Those were some of my favorite because then I can just ask a million questions and sort of get a real color of what the time was like.

I just like to really read little articles from the time to see what people who were writing about the time at the time actually felt about that period.

I find that to be really interesting and to bring a different perspective.

[paper crumples] [typing] [Narrator] In this episode, join Jihan Crowther from "The Underground Railroad" and "Man in the High Castle" and Zach Baylin, screenwriter of "King Richard" as they discuss tackling real life events and how they translate on screen.

[typewriter ding] - I'm curious about balancing sort of the ethical and moral choices or dilemmas that may come up when you're dealing with a historical event or larger than life historical person or figure.

- It's tricky, especially when the people that you're writing about are alive.

I mean I think that the process with "King Richard," I wrote that script without the family's involvement originally so we sort of felt if we were going to get their blessing and get their trust to actually build it out in the right way that the only chance was to sort of bring them a script that was representative of what we thought it could be.

It's complicated because, one, everyone remembers certain events differently.

And particularly, this story was about their childhood and trying to go back and be like, "What was dinner time like when you were eight?"

- If we eat fast enough, we probably have time for the talent show.

- Oh wait, hold on.

I'm going first.

I already know what I'm singing.

- Let me guess... ♪ Because the greatest ♪ ♪ love of all... ♪ - What's so funny?

That song's a great song.

- Move, move, move, move, move.

Leave Serena alone.

- Thank you, mom.

- You're sort of then again extrapolating through a lens of time and memory.

For us on that film particularly it was really important to have it be as grounded in facts as possible.

So we tried to take very little liberties.

- The show that I'll be referencing, it's "Underground Railroad," so that was about a specific time period and it's historical fiction but there's a lot of things that were rooted in fact that were also then extrapolated into the story that we read.

Everything that we are doing has to feel true to the story but also true to that period of history because it's such the way it's taught... Every state has different feelings about slavery, right?

So even like I grew up in Virginia and we were taught about it as like the north is getting in our business.

And so I remember, like, repeating that at home and my mom's like, "Sorry, what?"

And so we wanted to be as clear as possible about that period and about what people actually lived through and what their lives actually looked like.

And so that was really very intense research but it was also worthwhile because if you were sort of thinking about where would Cora, or what might she be thinking, and I keep reading different slave narratives and you have a greater sense of what her true next steps are.

And of course, Coleson did a lot of the heavily lifting in the book.

- And to that point Jihan, I'm curious.

There's a lot of painful moments tied to the underground railroad and what you tried to represent going back to that earnestness.

How did you all balance that while also, from my perspective, imbuing the show with this sense of hope as well at every turn?

- I think the story itself in a lot of ways was a hopeful story.

Somebody who was living in a time, and it's hard too to think about how many generation's slavery went on where people were their great, great, great, great, great, great grandparents were enslaved and their great, great, great, great, great grandchildren will be enslaved.

And with Cora and some of the other characters, it felt like they imagine a life for themselves that didn't exist and they didn't know was possible because there was of course so much limited, on most plantations, the information is limited what people are able to find out.

It's a lot of whispering and maybe you hear some gossip about what's happening on another farm but it's all this internal understanding of yourself and your place in the world and wanting to go forward whatever that takes.

So, we just kind of went with the spirit of that, just sort of smaller narratives where you're just like, oh that need to be free is just human nature.

- See that red roof there?

[dramatic music] That's us.

[dramatic music] - You mean that's you.

Don't nobody know I'm coming.

[dramatic music] - Well they do now.

[dramatic music] You ready?

[dramatic music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - That makes those generations of enslavement just all the more, just devastating.

And I think we took the hard stuff and it was really hard.

There would be days where Berry's like, "Everybody okay?

Everybody okay?"

From what we were talking about the day before and we'd go home and do research.

And even he extended that to when they were shooting, which he had a therapist on the set in case anybody needed to talk about any of the work they were doing or what they were experiencing because obviously it's so realistic.

[dramatic music] ♪ ♪ [leaves crunching] [leaves crunching] [crickets chirping] - Zach, for you, what drew you to this project and what really sort of propelled you to continue the development process on it?

Like, we talked about it took a little time to get the William's family involved and work through some of the script process with them.

- There's this kind legendary story that Richard, who was not a tennis player, was a security guard in Compton in the 70s watched a tennis matched on TV, saw the victor young woman get a big check which was more money than he had made in the year and he sort of said, "Well if I had daughters, they could be better than this."

So he wrote a sort of legendary 80-page plan that night of everything, like, if I am going to teach these girls how to play tennis, here's what I'll do, here's the hours of the day they'll have to train, all this stuff.

But he had never played tennis.

He didn't have any sort of inroads into the sport and Venus and Serena had not been born yet.

[audience laughing] - So everything, he had this plan, he had Venus and Serena, and he started shopping, going around to coaches and country clubs and trying to raise money and get coaches to coach them pro-bono.

- This deal you're asking for, all of this for free Richard, nobodies taking that bet.

Tennis is a technical game, probably one of the most and if you didn't grow up with the game then... Yeah, it's like playing the violin.

It takes hours and hours a day, year after year, of expensive expert instruction just to hold the thing right.

And even then, even for families who have unlimited financial resources, the chances of achieving the kind of mastery and success that you're talking about, for one kid, let alone two, it's like asking somebody to believe that you got the next two Mozart's living in your house.

- And obviously essentially everything that he predicted in that plan happened.

I sort of knew that story tangentially because I'm a big tennis fan.

Then I had a meeting with a producer who had been trying to sort of get that story off the ground, it was very just kind of fortuitous that we met.

I also have young kids and I really had been interested in writing about being a parent and about the American dream in a way but maybe through a perspective that doesn't get told.

I kind of knew as soon as the conversation started that I was like, this could be a really impactful story.

It covered, I think when you're -- when I'm looking for something, does it have a huge character at the heart of it, is the story itself just propulsive and turning and can it get your blood going?

And then, does it have a chance to really just connect with an audience?

And so there was no other story that I'd been around that felt that powerful.

We are very lucky that Will Smith sort of had read the script fairly early on and we knew he was interested but again, everyone knew we needed the family's involvement.

So I was very contentious and very concerned about it in some ways.

I think you have a real duty to get it right but I felt particularly in this case that if I got it wrong it was going to be very disastrous.

I had so much achievable footage of Richard.

So beginning there, I knew that I could at least get his voice correct because a lot of times, I was frankly using a lot of real dialog that he had said.

And then also I knew going in that to really get it right that we would need to be able to sit down and allow Venus and Serena and Oracene and Richard really talk about experiences that I would not have been a part of.

Having the opportunity to sit with the real people and to say, "What was your experience here?

What was the things you were frustrated about?

What was bedtime like?"

- Turn it down girls, time for bed.

- Saturn.

[laughing] - All right.

You all wrote in your journals?

Made your plans for tomorrow?

- Yes, daddy.

- That's right.

Got to have a plan for everyday or else what?

- If you don't plan, you plan to fail.

- That's right, and we not failing, are we?

- No, dad.

- Okay, all the way to the top.

- Come on, let's go.

- You know, one day not to long from now, somebody going to hand you girls a check for one million dollars and you going to buy as many beds as you want.

- In one check, really?

- Maybe even a couple of them.

But we not going to be like this forever, okay?

- Okay.

- All right.

You girls go to bed.

- Night, daddy.

[typewriter ding] - For you Jihan, you've had work on "The Man in the High Castle" and now "The Underground Railroad," two pieces that were developed based off of historical fiction, or novels pardon me.

So how did you and your writers room go about developing those characters maybe further, adding some pieces to them that may not have been represented in the novel?

And how did you also find yourselves having to pull back potentially as well?

- Yeah.

With "Man in the High Castle," by the time I joined the room, we were already off book so a lot of it was just brand new invention.

And we had -- But the approach they took to the book is like, the book was like the bible and so it was just constant referencing, then anything we built outside of that had to feel like it was truly part of that world.

And then also we were really lucky to have Philip K. Dick's daughter as the executive producer and she, first of all, is an incredible producer and such a great collaborator but she also brought sort of a bit like saying like yeah, "This is kind of what dad meant," or, "This isn't quite right."

And for the fourth season, there were lots of sort of stories that he started and didn't get to finish and we used some of those stories to create the sort of arch for the fourth season.

And so I found that to be really exciting.

It's like, ooh, secret papers.

I love those kind of things, you know?

- Between "Man in the High Castle" and "Underground Railroad," both pieces utilize magical realism and sort of re contextualizing our ideas of these historical events in such a fascinating way.

As a writers room how did you all go about the process of utilizing that mechanic and that story telling technique?

- I think for "Man in the High Castle," it was about not letting it spin out of control because we were just like maybe they can go in the past and we would just like go crazy.

And then we were like, "Okay then, so actually, what's the story?"

And still focusing on the sort of matter at hand and the period at hand because it can be really fun to play with those things.

It's always exciting when you can do anything that feels a little bit like magic or that adds this kind of sparkle to something.

And so I think for "Man in the High Castle," it was really about is this going to function, is this going to tell the story better than if we didn't use it.

[gunshot] [dramatic music] - And then, for "The Underground Railroad," it's so interesting because the sort of magical realism aspect of it and the sort of sci-fi aspect of it is so light, it almost doesn't feel like it's happening.

So even something like an elevator is actually magical for that period because of course it didn't exist, like the idea of a high rise.

And that was Coleson's whole invention.

And so that was really exciting to sort of work with this idea of people in this period being more advanced than the time allowed, almost bringing the future in but in a way that felt like it was a natural part of the story.

A lot of that was Coleson's writing, then the other half of it of course was Barry's genius brain.

[dramatic music, bell chimes] [typewriter ding] - Were there a couple of particular moments from "King Richard," and then Jihan you can speak to "The Underground Railroad" or "The Man in the High Castle," that you were really looking forward to seeing that in it's final sort of produced stage?

- I mean there were certain scenes that I was like, this is the one I really want to see on screen and have people see.

Later in the film there's a big argument between Richard and Oracene, his wife, that's sort of where everything from the movie, between their characters for years, sort of bubbles to the surface.

- Do you think you did this by yourself?

- From the first day we met.

Remember that, out on that bus stop?

You didn't even tell me your real name because you thought I was just another dumb [bleep].

You just like them white boys, you never believed in none of this.

- When did I not believe?

I want you to tell me when did I not believe.

You're not the only dreamer in this family.

Wouldn't be no dream if it wasn't for me.

I carried them inside of me and on my back and I carried you too working two shifts so I could put food on your table.

That open stance, you got that from me.

- Oh, you did that?

Oh, okay.

- And I fixed Serena's serve because you messed that up.

- You did what?

- Yes, I fixed that toss because you messed it up.

I'm here.

I've been here dreaming and believing just like you.

You just don't want to see me.

- I find arguments to be sort of the funnest things to write and that scene is really explosive.

And it always existed in the script and the day of the shoot we knew we were shooting it the next day and stayed late on set with Will and Aunjanue, the woman who plays Oracene, who's incredible, and just rehearsed and rewrote the scene, and rewrote it.

And I typed up the pages that night and we had them the next day and it was just like that scene's amazing.

- In terms of kill your darlings, I think that the whole process of writing is just you're just constantly throwing things away and the things that you held onto in the beginning end up maybe feeling meaningless at the end.

- I think for TV, because the writing process is so much more collaborative, there's times where you're not even killing your darlings, they're just being murdered in front of you because they're just like no.

You just kind of love a scene and they're like, "Ah, I think that goes in episode nine."

You're like, "No, episode nine doesn't deserve that scene."

But it ultimately makes sense.

And so, I think with my episode of "Man in the High Castle," I was originally supposed to have this scene where I get to kill Nazi's in this really great way and I was just like, "Yes, I get to kill Nazi's."

And then they were like, "We're actually moving that.

I think that belongs two episodes down."

And I was just like, "I was told I could kill Nazi's."

[laughing] And I had this whole choreography, like, yes I have the scene.

and then it was gone so I just had to be like, "Okay, that's fine.

That's fine."

And then just trying to think of something else that felt true to the story but kind of fresh.

So I write plays as well, I started in theater and I love musicals although I'm not very good at writing musicals, but there was this song that we learned about that the British soldiers used to sing called Hitler's Only Got One Ball which I love and I was just like, "I got to have a song and dance."

[laughing] And so I conspired with one of my show writers and I was just like, "David, I need to have that song.

I want them to dance."

And he was just like, "What?

What?"

And so I kind of explained what the scene would be and really it was just about when people in revolutions, we see of course the sort of struggles but there's also moments of joy because there have to be or else you're just, you're not going to be able to make it and that's something that hadn't been kind of touched on in the show before.

And so I thought here's a moment, this is a quiet moment and a way we can make a scene of it that feels different and that feels true to anybody who's in revolution.

Which when I think a lot about Malcolm X, we read his words a lot but sometimes we'll watch him in a video and he's actually laughing or smirking just like... which I really love.

So somebody who's in the middle of something can find joy and that's what we did.

And so I remember I was like, "I'm going to name the episode Hitler's Only Got One Ball."

I'm committed.

This is not getting cut.

It's not getting cut.

And so I remember I was like, "Okay, we have to pitch it to Amazon."

And we were at some party for some other show and they're like, "Okay, let's get our exec aside and start to talk about it."

And as I was talking about it his face was like... and I was like, "Never mind.

Wait til you read it.

Wait til you read it."

But ultimately I got it but it was because of the death of this other thing that I was able to fight for that.

So yeah.

- Persistence is key.

- Yeah.

♪ Hitler ♪ ♪ Has only got one ball, ♪ ♪ Göring ♪ ♪ Has two but very small ♪ ♪ Himmler ♪ ♪ Is rather sim'lar ♪ ♪ But poor Goebbels ♪ ♪ Has no balls at all.

♪ ♪ Hitler ♪ ♪ Has only got one ball, ♪ ♪ The other ♪ ♪ Is in the Albert Hall ♪ ♪ His mother, ♪ ♪ The dirty bugger, ♪ ♪ Chopped it off when he was small.

♪ ♪ She threw it ♪ ♪ Into the conker tree ♪ ♪ It fell into the deep blue sea ♪ ♪ The fishes ♪ ♪ Got out their dishes, ♪ ♪ And had scallops and bollocks for tea ♪ - Zach, for you, how do you strike that balance of, for example, catering to big moments but also really respecting those characters, especially in the context with "King Richard" where you have a living character still able to give advice in the script process and things of that nature?

- When I outline a script, I know that I'm going to have, okay these are these huge, these are the sort of turning points, big touch zones in the movie, even if it's not an explosion, these are the set pieces.

This is like, the first time Venus plays a junior tournament.

What is that going to feel like when the family walks into a white country club for the first time?

- Look at that.

Look at that, come on.

You see who that is?

- Yes.

- Who's that?

- John McEnroe.

- That's right.

Who's that?

- That's Pete Sampras.

- Mm-hmm.

One day, they going to be bragging about the time they met the two of you.

- You want to walk the audience into that through these specific characters.

So yes we're going to introduce this huge setting but it's like, what was it like for Richard?

What was it like for Venus and Serena and Oracene?

What were the anxieties and all those little sort of day to day things, what were they bringing into that moment?

[Narrator] You've been watching Fact vs. Fiction on "On Story."

On Story is part of a growing number of programs in Austin Film Festival's On Story project.

That also includes the On Story radio program, podcast, book series, and the On Story archive, accessible through the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.

To find out more about On Story and Austin Film Festival, visit onstory.tv or austinfilmfestival.com.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [projector clicking] [typing] [typewriter ding] [projector dies]