How Hollywood Translated The Epic Poetry Of The Viral 'Zola' Thread

Director Janicza Bravo and co-writer Jeremy O. Harris talk to NPR's Mallory Yu about respecting the storytelling prowess of A'Ziah King while adapting her viral Twitter thread into a feature film.

Transcript

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

On October 27, 2015, @_zolarmoon tweeted...

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ZOLA")

TAYLOUR PAIGE: (As Zola) You want to hear a story about how me and this b**** here fell out? It's kind of long, but it's full of suspense.

(SOUNDBITE OF TWITTER WHISTLE)

SHAPIRO: What followed was a wild, mostly true tale about how an exotic dancer, Zola, found herself on a road trip that went dangerously awry, to put it mildly. The new movie "Zola" is based on that series of about 150 funny and often profane tweets. NPR's Mallory Yu talked to some of the people behind "Zola" about turning a Twitter moment into a feature-length film.

MALLORY YU, BYLINE: That viral thread in 2015 wasn't the first time Zola, born A'Ziah King, talked about that wild weekend on Twitter. She'd mentioned the story briefly after it happened the year before but didn't go into much detail.

A'ZIAH KING: Soon as I got home, kind of just was like, yeah, I met this girl at my job, and she completely lied.

YU: King's an exotic dancer, and she says her Twitter was already full of wild stories about people at the clubs where she worked. She got some sympathetic responses from her followers but not much else. See; intense encounters were just part of the job.

KING: Since I didn't go in depth, they kind of just felt like, oh, she had another one of her weekends, and we moved on.

YU: Then that night in 2015, King was at home pregnant and scrolling on her phone.

KING: I had came across the pictures from that weekend. I kind of just, like, got triggered. I was like, yeah, I'm going to tell this for real.

YU: And, well, Twitter did want to hear what happened next - every detail she wanted to share.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ZOLA")

PAIGE: (As Zola) We just met yesterday, and you already trying to take hoe trips together.

(SOUNDBITE OF TWITTER WHISTLE)

RILEY KEOUGH: (As Stefani) Be ready by 2.

YU: But the road to "Zola" the movie, much like the trip itself, would end up being full of suspense. Journalists called, then Hollywood. James Franco signed on to direct and brought his own writing team. But as a script took shape, A'Ziah King started to feel like the story was becoming less hers.

KING: They kind of added things in the blank space that I guess they thought would be entertaining, you know, in a film. It just started to really rub me the wrong way.

YU: In 2017, Franco left the project, and that's where Janicza Bravo came in. Her feature debut "Lemon" had screened at Sundance, and she directed episodes of "Atlanta" and "Dear White People." Bravo says she wanted to direct the movie adaptation from the minute she read the Twitter thread.

JANICZA BRAVO: I heard my own voice in it. It was how I dealt and process my own trauma, which is - how I'm going to get through that which pains me is to laugh at it. It's to recontextualize it. It's to recast myself.

YU: So she put together a pitch of images and inspiration for her directorial vision, and she got the job. Then she brought on writer Jeremy O. Harris to help her translate that story into a script. This was before Harris completed his MFA in Yale's playwriting program and became famous for "Slave Play." Bravo and Harris both entered the process with one uncompromisable goal - doing right by A'Ziah King.

JEREMY O HARRIS: We were never going to disrespect her work as a writer by not keeping her text as the king that ruled over every decision we made.

YU: Harris dug into interviews with King. He was on relevant Reddit pages, Facebook. But mostly he referred to the Twitter thread.

HARRIS: If you put a one, a two, a three, a four next to each of these individual tweets, it looks like reading classic Western texts. So we were just like, we'll treat it like you would treat homework.

YU: All this while Bravo worked with A'Ziah King herself.

BRAVO: The only way she was going to open up to me was if I felt safe and if I was giving her a read that what she thought mattered. And how I did that was that I invited her in.

KING: After several conversations with her, I really just trusted her. It's just like, she's got this. I don't really have to say much else.

YU: Part of what Janicza Bravo and Jeremy O. Harris got was that their movie's origin on Twitter was both unusual and essential to the story. So every time the movie directly references the Twitter thread, you hear this little leitmotif.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ZOLA")

KEOUGH: (As Stefani) We going to be at the club all night. This room for Derek. Don't trip.

(SOUNDBITE OF TWITTER WHISTLE)

BRAVO: It was also like a wink for A'Ziah. Like, when she's watching that movie, I want to remind her that she's why we're here. So it is a nod and a bow to her and to her source material.

YU: For her part, A'Ziah King, the real Zola, is happy to accept the bows she deserves.

KING: Without me, like, it wouldn't even be a thing. Now anyone who comes after me or anyone who wants to write or share anything on the internet - I think they now know they can have agency over their voice and over their work in that way. I think that we set the bar pretty high.

YU: She's listed as an executive producer, and her name is on the opening credits. And just for the record, A'Ziah King says she still has lots of juicy stories to tell.

Mallory Yu, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.