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Screenwriter John Ridley on 12 Years a Slave at Final Draft Awards

By Meredith Alloway · January 9, 2014

Photo by Jeff Drongowski / drongophoto

The Final Draft Annual Awards took place this Tuesday in Los Angeles at the Paramount Theater. Celebrating the many successful and also promising new writers, the company and its customers vote on the honors. Modern Family took home the Best Television Comedy and Breaking Bad did the Drama.  Gravity was given the Best Original Screenplay, while John Ridley took home Best Adapted Screenplay for 12 Years A Slave.

On the red carpet before the ceremony, I had a moment to chat with Ridley about his incredible script. After seeing the film twice, I admitted to him I had two burning questions I’d been mulling over for months.

One thing I noticed was that the protagonist was more often slavery itself than the film’s main character Solomon (Chiwetel Ejiofor).  I wondered how Ridley navigated the almost double protagonist structure while writing the script. “The interesting thing to me, in putting this together, was we had the opportunity to do things that weren’t traditional in terms of narrative. If it were more a traditional film, one would expect Solomon to be more proactive in some ways. But that wasn’t the reality and that wasn’t the truth. We all wanted to make something that was very truthful. “

He continues, “The film in many ways ended up being more experiential and in the moment and enduring this time and this space with Solomon. For me, I don’t know that I thought of it as having a dual protagonist, more in the sense of this was an environment and it was not going to go away and Solomon had to endure it and witness it and survive it and making the audience do the same simultaneously with him.”

My other question was about the wonderful visual storytelling. I asked Ridley how much was in the script and how he and Steve McQueen cultivated that imagery. “I have to give great credit to all of the text. Solomon’s memoir is a phenomenal document – the level of detail and specificity. I just tried to take myself out of it as much as possible and give over to the narrative that he created.”

“In regard to the director and his team, I can’t say enough about everybody. People like Sean Bobbitt, the DP, Joe Walker, the editor, and the way that they fashion the story.  People look at the film and they compliment the script and I appreciate that.  But this film really is a total experience. In the scenes, obviously the performances, but the production design, the costumes, the hair the makeup- all of it is rendered in such amazing detail.  I think that’s why people come away with such an experience.”

I discuss with Ridley a particular moment that stood out in the film, when Solomon is hanging, an extremely long shot. I wanted to know if that was something he wrote, or that Steve McQueen wanted to draw out. “It is three things. One, it was in the memoir. He talks about how he hung there all day. And then we talked about making the scene like that. It was a moment from the very first reading we wanted to make as much like it was in the memoir as humanly possible.”

I agree that film time is often different than real time. “Yea, I mean it’s about 90 seconds all together.  The way that audiences feel really enthralled by that moment…people comment oh it felt like three or four minutes. We want it to feel long and I’m very happy that people got the experience that Solomon tried to impart in his own work.”

I have to know what’s next.  He laughs, “Honestly, trying to enjoy the next few weeks. After something like this, both the source material and the folks I got to work with, it would be hard to match this experience.”