Kemp Powers is having the sort of year that fledgling screenwriters dream about. After two decades as a journalist, and a few more years as a playwright, Powers has seen his first two screenplays turn into two of the year’s most celebrated films: Regina King’s directorial debut “One Night in Miami,” and Pixar Animation’s existential comedy “Soul.”
“Almost like a stroke of luck, just when my journalism career was beginning to contract, that thing I’ve been doing as a hobby for so many years was starting to get attention. ‘One Night in Miami’ was actually my first play, produced at an Equity-waiver theater on Pico Boulevard across from Roscoe’s. There was no expectation of it turning into anything else. To be perfectly honest, even my playwriting career caught me a little off guard.
The film, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival, has been acclaimed as a vivid and timely reflection on Black masculinity and racial injustice. “When they brought me on,” Powers says, “[‘Soul’] was still early in its development. And it was a film about a middle-aged Black man from New York who finally got his artistic break in his mid-40s. Hello!”Given how much Powers related to the character, he poured his personal experiences into the “Soul” script. “The conversations between Joe Gardner and his mother are variations on conversations I’ve had with my own mother. It’s not autobiographical ... but [also] it kind of is.
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