Interview (Written): Ryan Coogler (“Creed”)

A Variety interview with Creed co-writer and director Ryan Coogler:

So I understand the “Rocky” movies meant a great deal to your father and grandmother.

Yes. It’s complicated. So my father had me when he was young. He got married to my mom — they were married for a year or so and they had me. And then we moved to Oakland. He was an athlete coming up and he was always kind of a tough, young dude, strong. We would watch movies together as a family all the time. My mom was into movies. My dad was into movies. My dad’s thing was “Rocky.” He would make me watch the “Rocky” movies all the time. So I can’t even remember not knowing who Rocky was. I was watching it probably before I could talk. He would watch the films and get really emotional at the same parts every time. And it was really the only time I ever saw my dad get choked up. It’s the only time I ever saw him cry. He’d get fired up.

When I was older, I got into sports. And he would make me watch sections of “Rocky II” before I’d go off to a game or before I had a big test in school or whatever. It was kind of a thing. When I got older, like high school, maybe, I started to think, “Why did it make my dad cry?” I remember asking him, and he didn’t come out and say what it was but I kind of asked and dug and dug and dug and dug. And then I realized that he watched all these movies with his mom. I never met his mom. His mom died when he was 18 years old; she had a long bout with breast cancer. She got sick when my father was like 7, 8. They took her to the hospital and found out she was stage four and told her that she could get treatment, but she probably wouldn’t live through the year. She ended up fighting the disease and going through double mastectomy and different types of treatment that kind of broke her body down, but she lived to the point that my dad got out of high school. And in the last year or so of her life, she was really debilitated from the disease and from the treatment. She was bedridden and my pops was her primary caretaker. And the only activity they could do together was watch movies, and “Rocky II” happened to be what was on TV a lot at the time.

So when we watched “Rocky II,” he was really having an emotional reaction to his experience with his mom. That was why they were so important to him. And then when I got out of film school and was getting ready to make “Fruitvale,” the same thing kind of happened to me. My dad got sick. He got a neuromuscular disease and they couldn’t understand what was going on and they were misdiagnosing different things. His skeletal muscles were atrophying, so he wasn’t able to take care of himself. And they couldn’t give him a prognosis. A lot of the stuff they were saying he could have was fatal, like ALS, PMA, you know, MS. So I kind of went through seeing somebody who was so strong and kind of heroic to me become frail and unable to care for himself, and our relationship changed. It was really emotionally damaging for me, and mentally damaging. It kind of broke my concept down of what a man was. Because all the things I thought my dad was — being strong and fit and able to fight and run and pick me and my brothers up with one hand — he couldn’t do that anymore. It was almost like the physical side of this man was unrecognizable. And I had a question: “Well, what makes you a man? My father, is he still a man right now even though he needs my brother’s help to get from the bedroom to the bathroom?”

So I came up with the idea of seeing that happen to his favorite film character. And it was motivation to him, as a gift to him, and a vent for my emotions at the time. And how you said you felt when you were watching the movie, being on the verge of tears — I felt like that every day at the time my dad was going through that. So it was really our relationship that inspired me to write this story and to pitch it to Sly and pitch it to MGM.

Whenever a writer asks me if they should write a particular story, after assessing its merits, good or bad, I always ask this question: What is your emotional connection to it? Coogler’s sentiments here are a reminder about how important that component is in a writer’s creative package. We are much more likely to wrangle magic and put it down on the page when we are empowered by a strong resonance with the material.

For the rest of the interview, go here.

Reminder: On Monday, we begin a week-long analysis and discussion of Creed. If you haven’t seen the movie, do it this weekend. It’s a terrific film.