Ryan Coogler partnered with no one less than Oscar-winning actor Forest Whitaker to produce his first feature film. "Fruitvale Station" is based on the true story of Oscar Grant, who was shot by a police officer in the Bay Area on New Year's Eve in 2009.

StageBuddy: Why did you decide to tell this story?

Coogler: I was deeply emotionally affected by it. Same age as Oscar, same ethnicity. Having been in those types of situations before, I couldn't help it to see myself there; it affected everybody in the Bay Area.

StageBuddy: He's fighting for his life, I'd like you to address the whole panorama of the fighter archetype that humanized him. I'd like you to discuss the balance of the anger and the fighter.

Coogler: Oscar was dealing with a lot of anger and mostly towards himself; I think it's an issue that most African-Americans face which is self-hate. He's the man in so many women's lives -- everyone you see in his family, he's the man in their life -- but at the same time he's very emasculated because all these women have jobs and he doesn't have a job at this time. He's frustrated and he just got done spending a year and a half in prison away from his daughter. He's very angry at himself for having missed that time and he's trying to catch up, while he's fighting against all these elements.

StageBuddy: Forest Whitaker said he worked with a lot of unique voices as far as filmmakers and he knows when he's dealing with a talented filmmaker, and he cited you. Can you talk about your experience working with Forest?

Coogler: Forest is an incredible person. The day I met him, I had class and I left to go meet him, and I was very nervous because I'm a fan of his work, both in front of the camera and behind the camera. He has an impeccable reputation, he's one of those people that no one can say anything bad about. When he came in he had this quality; he's a very humble person. In many ways what he does with his career is very admirable; he's involved with a lot of African conflict resolution as well as domestically, and he works with the UN. It was great just to get to know him, just to see how he approaches his art and his life. He gave me a mental safety net.  When I was making decisions he gave me freedom; he made me comfortable and he was always available to offer me insight and to put me at ease when things were burning down. He was always eager to offer help with anything that came up, a political or logistical issue. Every time I thought something was hard, I thought about all he was doing; he works constantly, he makes 4 or 5 films a year and has a family, and has all these other responsibilities.

StageBuddy: How was it meeting Michael B. Jordan and did you have him in mind for the film? Can you talk about casting Michael?

Coogler: I had Michael in mind when I was writing the script, I had seen his work before. I knew this would be a film that was a major performance piece because his character would be on screen for 98% of the movie and the most important relationship to the film is the audience's relationship to him, so he had to be believable at all times. Oscar was such a complex character. I needed someone who was capable of being very professional on a short shoot, we only had 20 days, so it's great he had worked in television before, and our movie worked with a lot of non-actors and lot of crazy locations, so I wanted someone who had that experience as a base to wrap around him. He has a quality that can't really be taught, that draws you in when you meet him. He's an incredible thinker, an incredible talent.

StageBuddy: How did you decide how to portray the scenes when Oscar was alone? How did you keep account for what he did when he was off by himself that day?

Coogler: I was talking to Sophina, and she's very much the kind of girlfriend who will ask what he did when he was by himself. [laughs] So we had that, what she told us he did, and we had to make a choice for some of those times, but for the most part we went off with what Sophina said.

StageBuddy: How about the scene with the dog, when he sees a dog being hit by a car?

Coogler: That was a time we took poetic license. That tends to be a polarizing scene, some people hate it and some people say it's their favorite scene in the movie. For me as a filmmaker, and also for Michael as an actor, that scene is very important. It's NOT a scene about showing that Oscar is a good guy, or that he likes animals. It was symbolic, that was Oscar's favorite dog, and he would tell Sophina he wanted to move to a house with a backyard and get a dog. It's like the American dream that he had, because he always lived in apartments so he could never have a dog. Young African-American males our age are attracted to pitbulls, that's many times the dog we choose to have, and it's because we're so much alike. Every time you hear about a pitbull in the media it's because they're always attacking somebody or hurting somebody, but if you talk to pitbull owners, then they will tell you they're the sweetest dogs in the world. It's that perception we have of them being these awful creatures. Often times, pitbulls die in the street, so that's a parallel for us, and for how we lose our lives. Oscar was very much the type to put on a poker face for everybody that he was around, somebody that was always trying to keep you happy, trying to be cool, tough, and collected, but what he was going through you can see that in the other scenes. That was the moment when he was dealing with everything, and he broke. We always have these moments, when we're dealing with something, and that will come and put you over. He was by himself, so he broke it down at that moment. The inspiration from the scene came because I have a little brother who's very bubbly, but he's also the person who keeps a lot of stuff inside, that type of character exists, and one day he came home and he was all bummed out, so I asked him what happened. He told me he saw a dog at a gas station get hit by a car, and he pulled it over, and it just died right there. That made me think about Oscar, how someone dies in the street, and people just keep moving.

StageBuddy: Is that also a parallel to his destiny, and what's going to happen to him even before he knows it?

Coogler: Yeah, it's foreshadowing it.

StageBuddy: How was it for the guy who played the policeman who shot Oscar? Was it strange to play him for Chad Michael Murray?

Coogler: Yes, we talked about it, and Chad Michael Murray (Officer Ingram) was concerned about playing this role, and the choices he would make when he was doing the scene, but he's a very talented actor, and Kevin Durand who played the other officer (Officer Caruso), because that scene shakes everybody up.

StageBuddy: How important was it to take us into his home, see his grandma preparing a Gumbo, and Sophina's home?

Coogler: It was immensely important to me. For me, this film is a domestic drama. It's important to me because it's a side that you've never seen, was never shown, and was never talked about in this case. Because as a black man, it's always shown us being criminals and being thugs, and even though that's a very rare percentage of us, Oscar could fit in that category in some aspects of his life, but he also had this other aspect of his life, that he spent most of his time in this domestic fashion. I know this guy, I'm from this community. Birthday parties, those are the happiest places in a Southern home like that, especially because he hadn't been home, he was gone the year before. It was very important to show that, because that's where the similarities rely between all of us, that's remission.

Check out the interview with actors Michael B. Jordan and Melonie Diaz HERE!