Radha Blank: The Forty-Year-Old Version

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

Lemonada Media

Society & Culture, Film Interviews, Tv & Film

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2020

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Writer/director Radha Blank joins us! We talk about taking back control of her voice in her debut film, now available via Netflix, The 40-Year-Old Version (6:04), the catharsis of rapping under the moniker Radhamus Prime (11:11), the experience of coming out as an artist to the world (20:52), the personal family archiving within the film itself (26:56), the importance of portraying a different version of Black life on screen (34:25), and why she needed to make a love-letter to New York City. (41:02)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Pushkin. This is talk easy. I'm San Francisco so. Welcome to the show. Hey yo, yo, Hey everyone. Thank you for being here. Today on the podcast I'm sitting with
0:40.8	writer, director, and actor Rata Blank.
0:44.0	Her debut film, the 40-year-old version, just recently dropped on Netflix.
0:49.0	It's a deeply autobiographical piece, following a struggling playwright and professor who suddenly
0:55.7	finds refuge in a different medium.
0:58.9	Rap.
1:00.3	Here's a snippet from the trailer.
1:02.1	Any more thought on what kind of play we want to write?
1:05.0	Remember, if you put in nothing, it'll be nothing.
1:08.0	Like your career?
1:11.0	Remember this face?
1:12.0	She was one of Spotlight magazine's 30 under 30 playwrights to watch. We watch, but where'd she go?
1:20.0	How are you? Archie tells me you're teaching.
1:24.0	How's somebody who ain't had no real hair going to tell me how to play?
1:28.0	She ain't no Tyler Perry.
1:30.0	I did win a 30 under 30 award.
1:32.0	Yes, it was quite a couple of years ago.
1:34.0	What do I got to do, write a slave musical, an all-white play?
1:38.0	This is some bullshit.
1:39.0	It rang a little inauthentic.
1:42.0	I asked myself, did a black person really write this?
1:45.0	This is some fucking bullshit, bullshit.
	...

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