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Film and television director Cheryl Dunye has come a long way from her debut film The Watermelon Woman — the first film from an out Black lesbian — directing popular shows such as Lovecraft Country and Umbrella Academy and the development of her company Jingletown Films.
BGN was grateful to have this time with Dunye via Zoom just in time for Pride Month.
How did the creation of Jingletown Films come to be? How has it shifted/expanded over the years?
So Jingletown initially started as a loan-out company for my work as an episodic director in 2017. My wife [Karina Hodoyan] who is also involved in the arts and media and is a college professor, decided leading up to the pandemic (and even before) [to support my] urges in trying to both start something bigger than just my loan out as well as address the lack of companies making work like mine that are for queer people of color and helping people in that way. In particular, women of color. It’s a commitment to a cause we both share about makers of narrative work in the Bay Area. It’s the perfect place to really launch this moment.
Currently, we are now involved with Boots Riley and other filmmakers in the Bay Area. In particular, Oakland. We are launching an organization called Cinemama, and it’s for Bay Area filmmakers trying to get narrative work off the ground. People can gather, hang out. We just had one event, and are hosting the next event in another week or so [at the time of this interview; May 30, 2023]. That’s what we do publicly.
For myself, it’s option work. We’re promoting that as a company now. The [Writer’s Guild of America] strike is around, so we can’t really do much. But we are definitely negotiating some of the option material, developing that with two or three companies in Hollywood.
Thank you for the way that you keep the people and community members who matter to you close to you.
You’re welcome. And it’s so exciting that we have everybody right now in the Bay Area — people to gather together and actually have an impact on creating, kicking up dust, and kicking it aside so folks like us can be seen and heard and create work.
Do you have any favorite Black queer collaborators you’d like to name?
A wonderful one I’d like to highlight right now in this conversation is a young maker named Martine Syms. Martine made this film called The African Desperate. The film is about a young Black woman in grad school trying to graduate, and it’s done in that cinema verite style with lots of innovations and playing with form.
The Watermelon Woman is being relaunched by Criterion, which is very exciting. In that promotion [Criterion] asked, “Who would you like to have a conversation with?” I said Martine. I want to talk about this intergenerational work as queer folks of color trying to change form, change media. That’s one person I have my eyes out for, putting energy into.
They also have their foot in the art world. They just won a Guggenheim like I did! I love watching their work and having the chance to promote it on a big scale; but they’re also just doing it on their own.
What are you seeing more of in film since The Watermelon Woman, especially as you’re talking about intergenerational collaborations? What do you see is still missing in film?
I feel like what’s still happening is people are digging into finding fresh new voices. They strike upon me sometimes and they strike upon others. I think storytelling in narrative film has become so commercialized and standardized, and you have to fit into this box to make it to the streaming. You have to have a big idea, a big Sundance idea.
But I do see people looking for interesting work, then taking it and making it their own. It’s an encouraging thing to see people playing with form and using all of their identities as they speak from their work. I also see people popping out of the box that’s solely for Hollywood and finding new places to screen their work and collaborate. The pandemic allowed us to reach other collaborators globally even though we weren’t connected physically.
What is an approach in your directing that has surprised you over the years? Especially when it comes to film versus television. What had you not considered before or you initially thought, “I would never do this,” and you ended up doing it?
What I never thought I would be doing that episodic has allowed me to do, until I started doing it a lot, is action. I’m able to do a lot of action and fights. And dance! I’m working a lot with stunt coordinators and creating interesting groovy scenes, dropping in on a scene with a fight, like in The Rookie: Feds. Niecy Nash is a good person I collaborate with on the show.
Another genre I never thought I would have an easy fit with was gore or body horror. So my episode of Lovecraft Country Episode 5, I knew exactly how to piece it [snaps] all [snaps] together [snaps]. I call it Reese’s Pieces — make something whole that gives you an emotion or a theory, as many pieces as you can grab, then you’ll have more power in the edit.
What do you do to nourish yourself when you’re not working?
It’s important to ask how we free the mind. I connect with people, which I also do when I am working. But it’s important to disconnect too. What I do, when I come back straight from a show, is tend to my garden. I put my hand in soil and plant. I’m in my garden in a way where I am creative in another modality. This includes volunteering too.
I think it’s also important to nourish your other modalities outside of cinema. You need a full course of you in every experience to tell stories, to be a good director and communicator. Make sure you tap into all the aspects of who you are or could be before you lay down anything that you want to call creative.
What do you like to plant in your garden? Where do you volunteer?
Right now, I’m really trying to nourish these broccoli seeds! They’re coming along, and that’s on the veggie side.
In the neighborhood we live in, we do a lot of clippings when we’re walking our dogs. I break them off and try to make them grow.
I love to volunteer for our block’s group watch. So I do my service to walk the block, communicate, and show up at meetings so I feel like I’m a part of my community. It’s my own community, and I’m invested in it.
**This interview has been edited for time and clarity.
Film and television director Cheryl Dunye has come a long way from her debut film The Watermelon Woman — the first film from an out Black lesbian — directing popular shows such as Lovecraft Country and Umbrella Academy and the development of her company Jingletown Films.
BGN was grateful to have this time with Dunye via Zoom just in time for Pride Month.
How did the creation of Jingletown Films come to be? How has it shifted/expanded over the years?
So Jingletown initially started as a loan-out company for my work as an episodic director in 2017. My wife [Karina Hodoyan] who is also involved in the arts and media and is a college professor, decided leading up to the pandemic (and even before) [to support my] urges in trying to both start something bigger than just my loan out as well as address the lack of companies making work like mine that are for queer people of color and helping people in that way. In particular, women of color. It’s a commitment to a cause we both share about makers of narrative work in the Bay Area. It’s the perfect place to really launch this moment.
Currently, we are now involved with Boots Riley and other filmmakers in the Bay Area. In particular, Oakland. We are launching an organization called Cinemama, and it’s for Bay Area filmmakers trying to get narrative work off the ground. People can gather, hang out. We just had one event, and are hosting the next event in another week or so [at the time of this interview; May 30, 2023]. That’s what we do publicly.
For myself, it’s option work. We’re promoting that as a company now. The [Writer’s Guild of America] strike is around, so we can’t really do much. But we are definitely negotiating some of the option material, developing that with two or three companies in Hollywood.
Thank you for the way that you keep the people and community members who matter to you close to you.
You’re welcome. And it’s so exciting that we have everybody right now in the Bay Area — people to gather together and actually have an impact on creating, kicking up dust, and kicking it aside so folks like us can be seen and heard and create work.
Do you have any favorite Black queer collaborators you’d like to name?
A wonderful one I’d like to highlight right now in this conversation is a young maker named Martine Syms. Martine made this film called The African Desperate. The film is about a young Black woman in grad school trying to graduate, and it’s done in that cinema verite style with lots of innovations and playing with form.
The Watermelon Woman is being relaunched by Criterion, which is very exciting. In that promotion [Criterion] asked, “Who would you like to have a conversation with?” I said Martine. I want to talk about this intergenerational work as queer folks of color trying to change form, change media. That’s one person I have my eyes out for, putting energy into.
They also have their foot in the art world. They just won a Guggenheim like I did! I love watching their work and having the chance to promote it on a big scale; but they’re also just doing it on their own.
What are you seeing more of in film since The Watermelon Woman, especially as you’re talking about intergenerational collaborations? What do you see is still missing in film?
I feel like what’s still happening is people are digging into finding fresh new voices. They strike upon me sometimes and they strike upon others. I think storytelling in narrative film has become so commercialized and standardized, and you have to fit into this box to make it to the streaming. You have to have a big idea, a big Sundance idea.
But I do see people looking for interesting work, then taking it and making it their own. It’s an encouraging thing to see people playing with form and using all of their identities as they speak from their work. I also see people popping out of the box that’s solely for Hollywood and finding new places to screen their work and collaborate. The pandemic allowed us to reach other collaborators globally even though we weren’t connected physically.
What is an approach in your directing that has surprised you over the years? Especially when it comes to film versus television. What had you not considered before or you initially thought, “I would never do this,” and you ended up doing it?
What I never thought I would be doing that episodic has allowed me to do, until I started doing it a lot, is action. I’m able to do a lot of action and fights. And dance! I’m working a lot with stunt coordinators and creating interesting groovy scenes, dropping in on a scene with a fight, like in The Rookie: Feds. Niecy Nash is a good person I collaborate with on the show.
Another genre I never thought I would have an easy fit with was gore or body horror. So my episode of Lovecraft Country Episode 5, I knew exactly how to piece it [snaps] all [snaps] together [snaps]. I call it Reese’s Pieces — make something whole that gives you an emotion or a theory, as many pieces as you can grab, then you’ll have more power in the edit.
What do you do to nourish yourself when you’re not working?
It’s important to ask how we free the mind. I connect with people, which I also do when I am working. But it’s important to disconnect too. What I do, when I come back straight from a show, is tend to my garden. I put my hand in soil and plant. I’m in my garden in a way where I am creative in another modality. This includes volunteering too.
I think it’s also important to nourish your other modalities outside of cinema. You need a full course of you in every experience to tell stories, to be a good director and communicator. Make sure you tap into all the aspects of who you are or could be before you lay down anything that you want to call creative.
What do you like to plant in your garden? Where do you volunteer?
Right now, I’m really trying to nourish these broccoli seeds! They’re coming along, and that’s on the veggie side.
In the neighborhood we live in, we do a lot of clippings when we’re walking our dogs. I break them off and try to make them grow.
I love to volunteer for our block’s group watch. So I do my service to walk the block, communicate, and show up at meetings so I feel like I’m a part of my community. It’s my own community, and I’m invested in it.
**This interview has been edited for time and clarity.
One of the most prolific and legendary artists to ever work for Marvel Comics has left us. John Romita Sr. has sadly passed away at the age of 93, on June 13. The news arrived via Twitter, in a post from his son John Romita Jr., himself an art legend at Marvel Comics. The elder Romita was especially famous for taking over art duties on The Amazing Spider-Man, redefining Peter Parker’s look. This was after Spidey’s co-creator Steve Ditko left the title. During his time with Spidey, he introduced several of his co-creations to the lore, like the Kingpin and Peter Parker’s future wife, Mary Jane Watson. Stan Lee asked Romita to draw “the most beautiful girl you can imagine” when creating MJ. Romita delivered on that promise in just one iconic panel.
In addition to his five-year run on The Amazing Spider-Man, Romita also co-created the characters of Wolverine, Luke Cage, and the Punisher. Technically Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko co-created the bulk of the classic Marvel heroes and villains. But by the early ’70s, Romita was the chief architect in how Marvel’s characters looked in merchandising. John Romita became the go-to guy when you needed images of Marvel’s pantheon of heroes drawn in heroic poses. In fact, during this period, John Romita Romita would serve the role of Marvel’s art director.
John Romita was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1930, the son of Italian immigrants. By 19, he was already working as a comic book artist. He would then find success drawing romance comics aimed at a female audience. In 1966, he got hired by Marvel, to draw their relatively low-selling series Daredevil. But after eight issues, Stan Lee hired him to take over for Steve Ditko when he left The Amazing Spider-Man.
During Romita’s time, he put his experience with romance comics to good use. He made Peter Parker more handsome, like a soap opera lead. He became a character MJ Watson would believably fall for. During Romita’s Spider-Man tenure, the title would go from Marvel’s second best-selling title to their biggest seller.
If you were a Gen-X kid growing up in the ’70s and ’80s loving Marvel Comics, then the art of John Romita was the way you perceived the Marvel characters. From calendars to plastic cups to posters to lunchboxes, it was Romita’s renditions that were on almost every piece of merchandising during this era. The Marvel “House Style” ultimately wasn’t Jack Kirby or Gil Kane or any other prolific artist, it was Romita’s. The heroic pose of Spidey standing in the center of his web was an image every kid knew back in the day. Most kids didn’t know who drew it, but it was the distinctive touch of John Romita. Although Romita mostly retired for the last several decades, he drew the occasional issue or cover for Marvel, reminding younger readers that he still had it. His contributions to the art form of comic books will not be forgotten.
The post Iconic Comic Book Artist John Romita Has Passed Away, Age 93 appeared first on Nerdist.
The Sonic the Hedgehog live-action renaissance continues with Knuckles, a Paramount+ series with Idris Elba reprising his role as the red ball of Echidna fury. Well, he’s not so angry now but don’t test him. We’ve known about the Knuckles spinoff series for a while; however, we are finally getting some new casting information. Not only is Tika Sumpter reprising her role as Maddie in the Knuckles TV series, but Adam Pally will also join the cast as Wade Whipple. In case you forgot, he’s a Green Hills police officer and Tom’s BFF.
According to Variety, Knuckles will take place between the events of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and the upcoming third installment. The next Sonic adventure will hit theaters on December 20, 2024. In this series, Wade will become Knuckle’s protégé as he learns “the ways of the Echidna warrior.” Why is this happening? We don’t know, and we do not care. We just want to see more Knuckles on our screen, especially if he is playing base of ball. It’s not clear when this series will drop, but it is in production as of April 2023. So maybe we will see it later this year or even early next year.
We don’t know if James Marsden will reprise his role as Tom or not, but a few others are joining Sumpter. The Knuckles series cast includes Edi Patterson, Scott Mescudi (known as Kid Cudi), Ellie Taylor, Rory McCann, Christopher Lloyd, Cary Elwes, Paul Scheer, Stockard Channing, and Rob Huebel. Either way, Knuckles is back on the scene and getting the solo love that he so deserves (no shade to Sonic) in his own spinoff series.
Originally published on April 17, 2023.
The post SONIC THE HEDGEHOG Spinoff Series KNUCKLES Adds Christopher Lloyd and More to Cast appeared first on Nerdist.