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The Treatment

Morgan Cooper: ‘BEL AIR’

The Treatment

KCRW

Arts

4.6639 Ratings

🗓️ 8 March 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week on The Treatment, Elvis welcomes “BEL AIR” creator and director, Morgan Cooper. The series, which was inspired by “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” is streaming on Peacock. Cooper tells The Treatment he wants to tell everyday stories of “Black normalcy” in his work. He says his influences, which include hip-hop artists and producers J Dilla and MF Doom along with photographer Gordon Parks and Roy DeCarava, find their way into “BEL AIR.” And Cooper says, if not every viewer understands the specific choices and references he made in the series, that's OK with him.

Transcript

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0:00.0

From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

0:14.6

Welcome to the treatment, the home edition. I'm Elvis Mitchell. My guest, Morgan Cooper,

0:19.3

made a splash a few years back with a short film called Roomtone,

0:23.2

which gave us an idea what to expect from him.

0:26.2

Room tone looks at what we think is in front of us versus what we're actually seeing and hearing,

0:30.9

and that carried over into his thoughtful viral short, Bel Air.

0:34.5

A reimagining of the beloved sitcom, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air,

0:38.7

but root it more often than drama. Morgan, I can't thank you enough for being here. Oh, thank you so much for having me,

0:43.6

glad to be here. So let's talk about what you do. Let's go back to Roomtone with what we think is in

0:48.5

front of us versus what's actually there. I guess I wonder where that comes from. Yeah, for sure, man. Roomsone was such a great project. And,

0:55.6

you know, I remember, you know, I was on set. This was back when I was doing cinematography work

1:00.7

before I pivoted fully into writing, directing. And, you know, me and the sound guy on the shoot,

1:05.4

guy named Larry, you know, we'd become really close. And, you know, in between breaks and the shoot, he would just

1:11.1

like, tell me about his life and how he started out as a musician and how, you know, it's very

1:16.2

hard for your musician to make money. You know, it's a grind, you know, especially for touring

1:21.5

musicians. And so he pivoted into sound mixing. And, you know, I remember he was taking room tone,

1:27.4

which is, you know, when a sound guy at room tone, which is, you know, when a sound

1:29.1

guy at the end of a scene, you'll stand there and it'll just say room tone and everybody

1:32.9

stands still and they capture the tone of the room. And in that moment, like the entire

1:37.0

idea hit me to tell his story, you know what I mean? And that's always been a desire of

1:41.3

mine is to tell stories of black normalcy. You know what I mean? Black people

1:45.2

that just wake up every day, show up and do their job. There's no, you know, extravagant scenario,

...

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