Cary Fukunaga is gearing up for a busy few months ahead as he gets onto the awards circuit to promote Netflix‘s "Beasts Of No Nation," but the rising filmmaker does have a couple of projects that he’ll be asked about: "True Detective" and the adaptation of Stephen King‘s "It." And in recent weeks he’s addressed both of those subjects.
When it comes to HBO‘s hit show, Fukunaga says it was always his intention to get in and get out with the first season. “The whole pitch was that in a true anthology, we want to sit it on a shelf, and every season we have a new feature director and make this wonderful miniseries,” he told Variety about how the series was presented to networks. “I was going to be the first one. And I’d be there to shepherd as much as I could the following seasons. My departure was always planned.”
And while Fukunaga does retain an executive producer credit for season two, it appears it was mostly in name only. “I really wasn’t involved,” the director said. “My involvement in the second season was as much or as little as they needed me. It turns out they didn’t need me.”
Following ‘Beasts,’ Fukunaga has a few options on his table for what to do next, but one promising endeavor that fell off was his planned, two-part adaptation of Stephen King’s "It" for Warner Bros. The filmmaker spent three years working on the movie but walked away this summer reportedly over budget cuts. “Ultimately, we and New Line have to agree on the kind of movie we want to make, and we just wanted to make different movies,” Fukunaga told EW. “It’s like a relationship: you can try to make the other person who you want them to be, but it’s impossible really to change. You just have to work.” Fair enough.
"Beasts Of No Nation" hits Netflix on October 16th.
Wow, this comments section quickly turned serious and boring. Can\’t we just talk about superficial things and save real debate for nowhere at no time?
As you can see, Dave, Fukunaga\’s personal history and socialization (ongoing even in adulthood), involve a high degree of self-awareness of how Otherness operates (individually or in common groups) within boundaries, across borders.
Dave, before your treatise on Fukunaga proceeds further: Since you purport to read Fukunaga\’s biography heavily into his work, do consider the bare minimal we the public can glean from wikipedia and his Vulture interviews: That Fukunaga is part of an extended multi-cultural family, with step-parents of Argentine and Mexican-American extractions. That his third-generation Japanese-American father experienced internment during WWII. That his college years entailed heavy interest in post-colonial studies.
Dave, please give examples from Beasts from No Nation that exhibit "pity" for blacks. Well-observed as you might be about Spielberg, it is facile to transpose one set of conclusions about Spielberg, wholesale onto another director of very different career track of funding and distribution. If the only thing to glean from Jane Eyre is the huge gulf between its literary status and Fukunaga\’s ethnicity (nevermind the types of canons he was exposed to in the American school systems), then the same facile arguments can be imposed onto Ang Lee, suspected of Kurosawa and Polanski for adapting from canons outside of their own cultural identities. And is Danny Boyle\’s monocultural ethnicity, the reason you give him a pass from similar scrutiny about "exotic, pitied" others? So give us specific examples of "exoticizing" non-biracials people of color by Fukunaga, before sweeping him into the center of Spielberg\’s influential sphere.
Dave, your comment has me very curious. Would love to discuss this more with you
I don\’t think either Armistad or Color Purple can claim to be told from a black perspective, when both were written and directed by White men, the fact that they feign a black perspective highlights the inherent disingenuousness, it\’s only skin deep and consequently can only exoticize.
*uneasily codifies his point of view
Now that said…I do think the point about Raiders of the Lost Ark is valid. His interest in "integrating" Judaism into the American mainstream, however, is much more present in the films WITHOUT Jewish (or at least explicitly Jewish) protagonists than in the films that explicitly deal with Judaism later in his career, by which point he seems more interested in exploring Judaism as a separate culture on its own terms.
As for exoticizing other minorities as a way of integrating Jews, maybe it would be more accurate to say as a way of integrating himself, since he only uneasy codifies his point of view as Jewish in any pre-Munich films. And even then this seems a much too self-conscious description of the lazy stereotypes in the Indiana Jones films re: Middle Eastern, Indian, and East Asian characters (also it\’s worth pointing out, since you mentioned black people, that they are actually the one group the Indy films avoid "othering").
Can\’t say much about Fukunaga here, as all I\’ve seen of his work so far is True Detective.
Strange statement, Dave. Which Spielberg films "exoticize" Blacks? Amistad or The Color Purple, which are largely told from an African or African-American perspective (Color Purple more than Amistad, but even Amistad tends more in that direction than 90% of white-directed films about slavery or civil rights)? On the other hand, Jews are very much "the pitied other" in Schindler\’s List; Cinque in Amistad is a much more central and important character than any Jewish person in Schindler\’s List. Munich is the only film that even remotely seems to fit the pattern you\’re describing and it\’s all about Jews being caught in this awkward position between being "us" and the "other", victim vs. persecutor – so actually pretty far from what you\’re describing. It seems like you have a thesis in search of actual evidence.
*central antagnoists are Nazis, not Jewish, oops
@Jay I can\’t believe I forgot Indiana Jones. I wouldn\’t say it\’s just a Jewish revenge fantasy against Nazis though. Spielberg is much more sophisticated than that. By making the central antagonists Jewish, but the central protagonist a gentile, Spielberg positions the enemy of the Jews as the enemy of the gentile moviegoing audience. The Nazis are not just a political party that did something evil, but a force of evil in itself. They oppose Indiana\’s quest for knowledge and truth and adventure because they want the same MacGuffin for power. The MacGuffin itself, the Arc of the Covenant, is a legend from the Old Testament, a relic of great mystical power. This further brings something from Jewish arcana into mainstream gentile zeitgeist, further bonding the two. Also, Indiana Jones was one of the first heroes who was a college professor. Think about that. An intellectual who is also capable of action. Of course, gentile WASP culture, descended from the tribes of Western Europe and the ethos of the Roman Empire, greatly values action, namely organized violent action, whereas Jewish culture has always valued intellectual achievement, wherein the passage into manhood and womanhood includes memorization of texts. Indiana Jones is the fusing of these two value systems. It may seem like a stretch, and I would think it was, too, except that this pattern is prevalent in most of Spielberg\’s films in one way or another.
@skiplittle Skip, I\’m obviously not making a blanket statement about "all Jews". I\’m talking about Spielberg and an underlying thematic current in his films. I\’m not even saying that what he\’s doing is bad or wrong in any way. He\’s advancing an agenda just like all powerful men do, and he\’s doing it through the medium of film.
What a weird thing to say, Dave.
I get what Dave\’s saying about Spielberg, Indiana Jones is the most obvious example though – the white masculine hero enacting jewish revenge fantasies against the nazis, with some orientalism of arabs and indians thrown in… dunno about fukuyama though, too early really. I mean Alfonso Cuaron did Great Expectations, but he came back with Y Tu Mama Tambien, I dont think its an instant sell-out move, its about keeping your hand in in the industry to fund your cooler, more meaningful, projects. And as far as oppressing other races in order to up his own, to be honest the lack of (and lack of interest in) Asian faces in US movies is prob the bigger issue here, it seems Hollywood is happy to throw some sexy asian chicks on the screen, but NO dudes, never the dudes… Dragon Ball Z poster sez it all.
(Dave) Doesn\’t how you\’re raised and who you are as an individual have anything to do with your outlook on things? Is Spielberg necessarily "all Jews"? Or does he necessarily have the outlook you may presume "all Jews" to have? (I ask this putting aside your general assertions about what Fukunaga and Spielberg say about other races in their movies.)
As much as I liked Sin Nombre,Jane Eyre and superb True detective first season… I believe the brilliant director will come up with many awesome movies in the future. Cary Fukunaga is one of the most talented and visionary young director just like Justin Kurzel.
@Manish I dunno, I haven\’t seen JP2 since I was a kid, and quickly forgot everything about that film. But just off the top of my head, the Spielberg films that have elements of what I talked about: ET, JP1, Empire of the Sun, The Color Purple, Munich, Amistad, Schindler\’s List
@Laura You\’re right Laura, but look at the layer beneath that. By portraying these "socio-economic realities", the implicit effect is to draw a stark contrast between "those people" and our vast wealth and comfort in the West. Directors choose to tell the stories they tell for a reason. Someone with Fukunaga\’s level of craft can aim for more than just making a career niche for himself, but also for bending the culture towards his own ends, which all the most gifted and powerful directors do.
Stop this douche-y hack from making anything else, please – he\’s horrible.
Dave, you sound like a troll. Fukunaga\’s filmography is obsessed with looking at socio-economic realities from the perspective of his characters.
wow @DAVE, that\’s pretty wild and very interesting, you may have just mined some deep, subconscious, liberal layers there.
The moment Mr. Fukanaga left the \’IT\’ reboot movie my interest went from excited to disapointment.
Please continue making movies MR Fukunaga. It\’s rare to see a young director with such a clear vision and idealistic view.
Bolt statement Dave. What about Jp2?
Does he get paid cash upfront for the executive producer credit, or is that part of the residuals formula? I\’m curious about the specifics of these kinds of deals…
Fukunaga\’s filmography is interesting. As a biracial person, half white half Asian, he has chosen films that portray Latinos and Blacks as "the pitied other", and also adapted Jane Eyre, which is about as White canonical as you can get. He seems to be cutting a path like Spielberg, who in his films have moved the culture to make Jews more White and exoticized Blacks and Asians, as if to point the finger at these "others" and say "they are not us" to further emphasize the "us-ness" of Jews.