Kemp Powers

“One of the first films that I saw was Cronos from Guillermo del Toro. Didn't know anything about the movie. I gradually discovered that it was a horror vampire film. I found it really, really fascinating. I mean, Ron Perlman speaking Spanish, which I've seen the actor before but didn't know he spoke Spanish, and it was really a great twist on The Vampire mythos.”

“I'll start with one of the basics for me, which is 12 Angry Men. One of my favorite films of all time. I guess I always describe this film as an action movie of words. In many ways, the reason why I thought that I could write the play version of One Night in Miami was because of seeing 12 Angry Men and saying that there was more excitement in this battle of ideas in this room than anything I'd ever seen. Very, very inspirational film for me.”

“One of my favorite animated films of all time, Watership Down. I first saw Watership Down it aired on television when I was a little kid and it kind of terrified me when I first saw the film and I loved that about it. I never saw animation as something for kids. I always just thought of animation as an incredible medium for a certain kind of storytelling. It's a lot of that philosophy that brought me to Pixar and was something that we always kept in mind when we were making the movie Soul.”

“Matewan. It's about union organizing in West Virginia coal mines. If you look up the Matewan massacre to see how the coal mining companies did their union busting. There's a great speech that Chris Cooper makes in this film when James Earl Jones' character shows up about how the corporations often separate people along racial lines or ethnic lines and that's how they keep people from power. I think that's a lesson that we could learn a lot from today.”

“Bill Duke's Deep Cover. Love this movie. Most people know that this film is most known because it was the first appearance of a song featuring Snoop Dogg. The Deep Cover soundtrack is really famous, but I just love this film. Laurence Fishburne and Jeff Goldblum. Laurence Fishburne is a cop who goes undercover and Jeff Goldblum as a lawyer slash sleazy drug dealer. This was just a really great crime noir film that I'm super excited to see added to the collection.”

“This is my first time getting my hands on the Criterion Collection copy of One Night in Miami that I'm the writer of, based on my play, directed by the incredible Regina King. We're so proud of this movie. Talk about like a labor of love. I cannot wait for everyone to see all the additional materials that both Regina and I and a lot of other folks involved in the film recorded for the Criterion release. So yeah, One Night in Miami, make sure you check it out.”