Executive Creative Director
BBDO San Francisco
2) There are now so many places for ideas to live that our playground has essentially become limitless. I learn about a new platform, partner or technology nearly every week. A truly big idea now has dozens upon dozens of lives, each nuanced and specialized to the medium in which it lives. I love that. But at the same time, I hate how we as an industry sometimes think the medium is the idea. We forget that the power comes from using the medium’s strengths to give a unique, new angle to an already amazing idea.
6) This year, I’ve resolved to actually learn about all the things that in the past I would have pretended to already know about. There’s a pressure for those in charge to pretend they know everything. I’m not ashamed to say I’m just as guilty of that as the next guy. But me pretending to already know about every newfangled social platform, tech innovation or media opportunity doesn’t help me or my agency. I need to check my pride at the door and put in the time to learn in order to stay relevant. I need to know how to use the new in a way that makes our work as relevant as possible.
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More