Five years before he made the world’s most culturally significant blockbuster with “Black Panther,” Ryan Coogler was at the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters Lab, workshopping his first feature “Fruitvale Station.” The five-day gathering overlapped with Martin Luther King Jr.
Day; on that morning, lab coordinator Michelle Satter invited fellows to share thoughts about its significance over breakfast.
Until that point, Coogler struck many other participants as a quiet, soft-spoken young man.
Then he stood up.“He gave this beautiful, deeply felt, and completely extemporaneous speech about how Dr.
King’s legacy inspired him as a storyteller,” recalled David Lowery, who was then developing “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” at the lab.
(Like “Fruitvale,” it would premiere at Sundance a year later.) “It was an incredibly moving testament, both personal and all-encompassing in its scope, and we all heard the voice that has since been resonating so powerfully in Ryan’s work.
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