Working: George C. Wolfe on His New Film Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

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Music, Tv & Film, Arts

4.2 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2020

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week, Rumaan Alam talks with George C. Wolfe. Wolfe is a playwright, film director, and two-time Tony winner. His latest project, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, takes place in a single day of 1927, when trailblazing blues singer Ma Rainey and her band gather at a recording studio in Chicago, and tensions begin to rise. The film is out now, playing in select theaters and streaming on Netflix. They talk about how Wolfe wanted to approach this project from the ground up, reimagining how the story would be told to fit its new form. He also explains how his own experience as an actor in college has informed the way he collaborates with professional actors today. Afterward, Rumaan and co-host June Thomas discuss what they found most surprising about the interview and discuss how they implement George C. Wolfe’s tactics into their own creative collaborations. Send your questions about creativity and any other feedback to working@slate.com. Podcast production by Morgan Flannery. Host Rumaan Alam Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody it's Tim Heidecker you know me Tim and Eric Bridesmaids and
0:03.4	Fantastic Four. I'd like to personally invite you to listen to office hours live
0:07.8	with me and my co-host DJ Doug Pound and Vic Berger.
0:12.3	Howdy.
0:13.0	Every week we bring you laughs, fun, games and lots of other surprises.
0:16.4	It's live, we take your Zoom calls.
0:18.0	We love having fun.
0:19.0	Excuse me?
0:20.0	Vicks said something.
0:21.0	Music, music.
0:22.0	Music. I like having fun. like to laugh I like to meet people who can make me laugh
0:29.0	Please subscribe
0:31.0	No subscribe no. I. I always think that when you work on any project the goal is ultimately to render the
0:47.4	writer and the director invisible so that therefore you do all the work that you do and you do other research that you do to animate it in a way so that you feel like you're watching live spilling towards you.
1:01.0	Welcome back to Working. I'm your host June Thomas.
1:05.0	And I'm your other host, Raman Alam.
1:08.0	Raman. We just heard the distinctive voice of theater and movie director George C. Wolf.
1:14.8	I can't wait to talk about that conversation, but I'm curious how you're doing in what feels
1:19.7	like a particularly weird time in this very weird year. In some ways the holidays are just
1:24.8	doing their usual steamroller through the calendar thing, but otherwise this is still a totally
1:30.9	atypical year. What's it like in your house? I think it's a fitting end to an odd year. You know, I'm just as usual I'm trying to finish up a last couple of assignments and you know sort of stumble into the break I will say I think it's a mercy
1:45.5	right now for us to have kids my kids expect Christmas as usual so you know we're gonna bake
	...

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