Tarell Alvin McCraney is an award winning screenwriter and playwright. He cowrote the screenplay for 2016’s Moonlight, based on his original play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Tarell most recently wrote the screenplay for High Flying Bird, directed by Steven Soderbergh. High Flying Bird had its world premiere at the 25th Slamdance Film Festival in January 2019 and was later released by Netflix.
Tarell talks to Slamdance co-founder Peter Baxter about his influences, working with Steven Soderbergh, being a black artist in the industry, and how the sports world that High Flying Bird depicts has played a role in the way American society commodifies black bodies for capitalist gain.