“Creed” is Ryan Coogler’s second feature film, and he shares a screenwriting credit with Aaron Covington, the movie based on a story by Coogler. In 2012, Coogler was named a Time Warner Foundation Fellow when he was accepted into the Sundance Institute Screenwriter’s Lab.
In very short order, Coogler will become a significant part of cinematic history. His films and screenplays will be inserted into filmmaking curriculums, and from that vantage point, the beginning of his journey will be lost—barely a footnote in a reporter’s notepad.
Mind you, it’s the journey that has the richest part of life’s lessons, and it’s the first part of a long trek that holds the sweetest bounty. Coogler’s first marks were made with a pair of football cleats. Coogler knows football like the back of his own hands. He was so good at the sport that he earned a football scholarship and attended Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, Calif., and it was there that his career trajectory began.
After turning in a creative writing assignment, his professor asked him, point blank, what he wanted to do with his life. Coogler replied, “Play ball, become a doctor and be a positive influence in my community.”
Said Coogler, “I remember the professor saying, ‘I think you should become a screenwriter [because] you can reach more people. Looking back, I was always thinking about stories but I was a focused athlete.”
Fickle fate had another plan, as when one door closes another one opens. When Saint Mary’s cancelled its football program, as a talented wide receiver, Coogler got another scholarship to Sacramento State. There he changed his major to finance while also taking every film class he could.
By graduation, Coogler was “in love with filmmaking.” Sage advice (again) came from a professor who told him about USC film school. “It was either go there or play wide receiver. I was short, my prospects weren’t the highest, so I jumped off that cliff and drove to L.A.”
The transition was thick with thorns, and Coogler lived out of his car his first semester, but he paid attention to the people around him. Subsequently, he made a series of short films, including “Fig,” which is about a prostitute trying to clean up her life and keep her daughter. It was the result of “deep research. … I never want to shy away from the truth,” he said.
To win in film, it’s a team effort, that’s the truth. And a boxing film must feel authentic, grueling, sweaty and bloody.
Coogler and company had that covered. The look of the fight scenes in “Creed” are enhanced because the team had Sylvester Stallone—who choreographed nearly all the “Rocky” fights—on set. “To Ryan’s credit, I gave him my blueprint, he analyzed it and took it for what it’s worth,” Stallone told Men’s Health. “I also told him that there are really two movies in a film like this: the drama and the fights. And you have to cram these fights with as much drama as the rest of the movie, in about nine minutes. It’s very complicated, very daunting. And he did it, no problem.”
Coogler and his director of photography, Maryse Alberti, used a Steadicam throughout the film, particularly in the fight scenes, but the fight between Adonis and Leo Sporino was shot in a single two-minute take.
Shared Coogler, “Because we were trying to capture for the audience what it feels like in the moment, in the ring, we got the idea to have a circle shot. So we did a continuous tight shot that spins around while Adonis is pinned with his back to the ropes, with nowhere for him to run.”
Using a Movi camera rig, which enabled them to do a 360-degree shot, Coogler said, “We went around over the top of the ropes while the two fighters are just going at each other. It was crazy to pull it off because it was a real complex setup for a shot that’s a few seconds of the movie, but I think it was effective. I think audiences will get a sense of what it’s like in there.”
In the film, Adonis says, “I’ve been fighting my whole life. I ain’t got a choice.”
Rocky responds, “It’s always about a choice.”
Nov. 25, choose “Creed.”