Interview: Franklin Leonard
Topic: Who Really Won the Oscars.
Topic: Who Really Won the Oscars.
From the Masters of Scale podcast:
The Oscars aren’t just Hollywood’s biggest night. The ceremony and the scrutiny around it captures the trends and evolving values of American culture. Rapid Response host Bob Safian digs into the business implications of the Academy Awards with incisive Hollywood observer Franklin Leonard, founder and CEO of The Black List, an independent platform connecting screenwriters with studios. From Oppenheimer’s near-sweep to Killers of the Flower Moon’s donut — and how Barbie arguably won the night without taking home the top prizes, Leonard teases out lessons about creativity, missed opportunities, and where the future of entertainment is moving.
In the interview, Frankling states something I have noted here over and over again:
FRANKLIN LEONARD: I think all movies are on some level about identity. I think Killers of the Flower Moon is Martin Scorsese wrestling with his identity as a white man living on stolen land. Poor Things is about what it means to be a human encountering the world. Barbie’s about identity ’cause it’s about women: The struggles of more than 50 percent of the population
American Fiction’s about, you know, black people. It’s about an American family. And what it means to be an American family and the pressures that come with that.
From a psychological perspective, movies are about the Protagonist confronting this question: Who am I? The journey they take in the outer world, manifest as action and dialogue, is fundamentally about what transpires in their inner world — a journey of identity.
Here’s what else Franklin talks about in the podcast:
- Examining the economic value of being nominated for an Oscar
- Franklin Leonard on Oppenheimer’s success
- Franklin Leonard on Barbie’s success
- Is Hollywood risk averse?
- Exploring the speeches that addressed the outside world
- What do this year’s winners say about films in 2023?
- How the strikes impacted filmmaking
- Franklin Leonard on the future of streaming
- How bias continues to impact Hollywood
- The movies that explored identity
You may listen to the interview here.
For 100s more interviews with screenwriters, filmmakers, and industry insiders, go here.