The Dilemma The guy sitting next to you at the bar keeps insisting that John Wayne Gacy wasnt a serial killer but a mass murderer, which is really creepy. But is he. Kevin Costner Gets Candid About Hidden Figures, Racism, and Rewriting His Role. Hidden Figures traces the true story of Katherine Johnson Taraji P. Henson, Dorothy Vaughan Octavia Spencer, and Mary Jackson Janelle Mone, three black women who made an invaluable contribution to NASAs space race efforts in the 1. Dubbed computers, they were talented mathematicians who pored over calculations made by the Space Task Group as they labored to send astronaut John Glenn into space. Hidden Figures focuses mainly on Johnson as she takes on a new position working under NASA bigwig Al Harrison Kevin Costner. Though he appreciates her formidable mind, Harrison himself is not mindful of the daily challenges Johnson must face as a black woman, and his slowly dawning awareness gives the film one of its most resonant story arcs. As Costner told Vulture recently in a very candid conversation, thats an arc he had to fight for. I know you had a big hand in shaping this character. What happened When I was approached with the film, I basically said, Look, I can see why theyre making this movie, but anybody in the world could play this role. I wouldnt choose to play this role. Not because the movie wasnt significant, but because the part was a little schizophrenic and I just want to say, I dont have anything against playing a schizophrenic Or a serial killer, or anything. But the character was saying something on one page and then on another page saying something different, and you didnt understand him in the arc of the movie. There should be a reason why a person is the way they are, and it should manifest itself in something important to the film. And it didnt. You told this to Ted Melfi, the director We didnt have a lot of time for niceties, to be honest. I love writers, but this was a moment where I had to come very clean with him, very quickly. I just said, simply, Congratulations on the screenplay. Its not my M. O. British Netflix users are getting a raw deal heres how to watch American Netflix in the UK. Fed up with getting a raw deal on your Netflix subscription Story of heroic Scotsborn SAS soldier to be turned into bigbudget Netflix drama. John McAleese, born in Stirling, was one of the British Armys most famous and. Hidden Figures traces the true story of Katherine Johnson Taraji P. Henson, Dorothy Vaughan Octavia Spencer, and Mary Jackson Janelle Mone, three black women. Ever wish there were a Netflixstyle subscription service for brand new movies that just released in theaters Well, there is. Its called MoviePass, and now for. Make sure you are getting the best out of your account with our best shows on Netflix guide. John Truby analyzes successful TV drama structure to help you craft a TV series that is marketable. Writing for TV has never been more exciting than it is today. Netflix Serial Cracking Software' title='Netflix Serial Cracking Software' />Its schizophrenic. And he was quiet, and I thought, Well, fuck. I just hurt his feelings and I didnt want to do that. And he said, You know, its the one part Ive had trouble with. I focused so much on the women and I was unsuccessful in obtaining the rights to any of these mens lives there were three of them so I had to make a character out of these three people. And I said, Well, it kind of reads like that. We can try to fix this, but it means were going to have to work on this. Youre about to go down to Atlanta and shoot, and the last thing youre going to want to do after a long day is call me back in California and work on the supporting part, but thats what its going to take for me to do it. I told him, Ill help if you want me to, but if youre just going to do pages on your own and they come back and I start drawing red lines through them, I know thats going to get frustrating. And perhaps youll get tired and we wont get there. Ive done what youre doing, and I know youre going to be tired. So how did he respond He goes, Ill do it. And well do it together. I said, Really And he said, Really. Listen, a lot of people will promise you a lot of things to get you in a movie, and then all of a sudden, reasons will come along as to why they cant do them anymore and that promise gets broken. U. S. based streaming giant will see several of its original shows crack difficult Chinese regulatory market, something Netflix had nearly given up on. There are thousands of good movies on Netflix. If you need a place to start, here are the absolute best movies on Netflix. Updated November 2017. A group of narcissistic friends runs a Philadelphia bar where their juvenile behavior brings situations from uncomfortable to hysterically horrible. Watch trailers. That didnt happen with Ted. He was very true to me about his pledge to make this be a supporting part that supported these women and this movie. When you started working on the character, how did you know you had cracked it Ill tell you, its when the scenes get easier to write. Youre starting to know what the character would say, and you can start writing with a level of economy. When you know a character really well, sometimes you know just by looking at them what theyre thinking. And we understood that my character needed to have what you might call a real or vague form of racism, which is that he wasnt paying attention. He wasnt paying enough attention in the workplace to know that this was even a problem. You know, I work around a lot of scientists and engineers because I invest in those kinds of companies I actually own those companies, Im talking about as a founder and they dont do well with politics. Right That group of people who are trying to develop something from a technical standpoint, they just want to work, and politics can be the thing that screws them up the most. Theyre not equipped for it, theyre a different breed of cat. I was able to bring that sort of stuff to Ted. Is there a moment in the movie thats informed by that knowledge Ill tell you when it came into relief for me. Theres a scene where Katherine reads through the redacted moments of the space program and figures them out, and originally, my character was square in the center of that scene. I said to Ted, He would not be in that scene. He would be ten or 1. That was more interesting to him, that she could come up with these numbers somehow, rather than interrogating her. His intellectual curiosity has trumped any desire to be hostile to her, and Ted understood that. Even though I was written into that scene, I said, Take me out of it. You dont even realize Im in that scene until you come over and find me. So we started to find moments like that. This guy wants the cream to get to the top, and thats it. Hes formidable, but he has this achievement based moral code. You get the feeling that if you could successfully appeal to that, he will listen, and Tarajis character comes to understand that and use it to plead her case. I think thats right. Listen, this isnt a flashy role. Its a straightforward role. To me, its kind of like a Spencer Tracy role where you just stand there and deliver, and I think thats whats appropriate. Sample Foxpro Program Code. In a lot of movies, to show you where the scene is, youd cut to a shot of the NASA building to show you the NASA sign and tell you youre at NASA. I said, Lets create a character where, when you cut to my face, thats what tells you youre at NASA. The character is presented as a decent man, but hes spent much of his life not paying much attention to the racism going on around him. I think those people can often make racist statements without being racist. They dont know. Those jokes that used to pass in the 5. We talked about the scales coming off his eyes, that he suddenly starts to see things clearly. He wants to know, more than anything, why theyre second in a two man race. The truth is that the best ideas arent getting to the top. Was there a moment in your life where you went through the same journey as your character, when you became more aware of racial prejudice and privilege I was born in Compton, California. I was around people who used the N word not being mean, but they used it. They used it in jokes, they used it in everything. Youre a product of where you grew up, but there came a moment in my life where somehow, nothing was funny anymore where that word was concerned, and it was never spoken again. It was in my teens, and Im not exactly proud of that, but I never remember using that word in anger. I told you I grew up in Compton, and the first girl I thought was really, really pretty was Diana Ross, so it shouldnt come as a surprise that Whitney Houston was in The Bodyguard. A lot of people have talked a lot about that movie, because I kiss her. I really kiss herI thought to myself, Who wouldnt want to kiss her Youve got to be a blockhead to not want to kiss her.