[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Narrator] "On Story" is brought to you in part by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, a Texas family providing innovative funding since 1979.

"On Story" is also brought to you in part by the Bogle Family Vineyards, six generation farmers and third generation winemakers based in Clarksburg, California.

Makers of sustainably grown wines that are a reflection of the their family values since 1968.

[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] [piano gliss] From Austin Film Festival, this is "On Story," a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators and filmmakers.

This week on "On Story," writer/producer, Tony Rettenmaier, and director Juel Taylor discuss their genre-bending debut feature, "They Cloned Tyrone," and how the writer/director duo seamlessly incorporated sociopolitical commentary into their science fiction, comedy, mystery film.

- Character-wise, you know, we started with Fontaine, and then we had the hear no evil, see no evil.

[chuckling] We kinda tried to give 'em all different angles on that theme of blame and responsibility.

So one person sees the problem, ignores the problem, or you know, like a ostrich puts his head in the sand, one person sees the problem, doesn't care about the problem, one person sees the problem, wants somebody else to fix the problem.

All three characters we thought of them kind of holistically, relative to the theme.

[paper crumples] [typing] [carriage returns, ding] [typewriter ding] - So "They Cloned Tyrone."

So you all were already kind of working together and writing.

Where did that idea start?

- I had the idea for a while before we ever did anything with it.

I was in a fellowship, like when we graduated, and I think the idea, kinda kicked it around right around this very loose, bootleg Scooby-Doo idea, where it was really just that premise of the walk into a bar, you know, a pimp, a drug dealer walk into a bar kinda situation.

Like wanted to make a detective movie where the detectives had no detective skills.

- [Bleep] like this always happens to my girl, Nancy Drew.

- Stop with that cartoon [bleep].

- No, no, no, I'm telling you, hear me out.

Sis be coming across some weird, kinky [bleep] that don't make no sense.

But in the end, it always turns out to be some regular, regular missionary position vanilla [bleep], hey, where the [bleep] you going?

Wait, wait, wait.

- [Bleep], I ain't got time for this [bleep].

I'm going on back, [bleep] that.

- Okay, look.

Somebody is [bleep] with you, okay?

You wanna know why, you wanna know who cool, but the block is hotter than a fresh perm right now.

So whoever it is, they probably looking for us as we speak.

So you go back out there, you liable to lead 'em back to us.

Me, and I ain't getting probed for nan [bleep].

Okay?

So, so I just need you to [bleep] chill, just [bleep] chill.

Look, you can stay here for the night, and tomorrow, Dexter's Lab will be there.

And-and-and-and we will go find out what that missionary position [bleep] is.

Just like my girl Nancy!

I promise.

I promise.

- And then people seemed to like the elevator pitch at the fellowship.

So it was kind of a year long fellowship I had.

And so people would just ask about, hey, what's up with the "Reagan Era" movie?

It was called "Reagan Era."

It's supposed to be a period piece.

And people kept asking about it, and then once I got outta the fellowship, we had a friend who actually optioned this...

The first thing we ever optioned to somebody, the dude ended up leaving that company and going to Columbia.

And so he was like, hey man, what's up with the "Reagan Era"?

And then the joke title was, "They Cloned Tyrone."

I was like, ah, it's kinda stupid, ain't nobody gonna take it seriously.

And then we kinda realized no one should take it seriously.

And so then we ultimately changed it.

[chuckling] And then from there, the theme kind of bled its way into it because I had a friend of mine who I grew up with.

I'll condense this story, but like basically, something really bad happened to him my freshman year of college.

But he was a football player, and something that was kind of outside his control ended up to him losing his scholarship, and he got arrested, and derailed his years, you know what I mean?

And I was frustrated with him 'cause he was super smart, he was super talented.

And I had ended up linking up with him one New Year's.

This was almost 10 years after our freshman year of college, you know, but this much distance from it, and just finally having this conversation with him, and just kinda talking to him.

And somehow these two things just coalesced, and that's how Fontaine's story kinda started to come in, this question of blame versus responsibility.

And that, once we kind of talked about it a little bit, and once this exec had, you know, kinda put our feet to fire to pitch it, I think that's when we started really sitting down and putting that theme with this very goofy, dumb story.

- We went in to pitch a rewrite for "Last Dragon," and didn't get it, but when we were there, that exec who we knew said, oh, like come in.

If you have that other idea, you can come in a week.

I'll set up a meeting, we can pitch it.

So we didn't have anything but the loose idea, but the fact that we had to come in in a week, you know, put our feet to the fire.

And so for that week, we just basically beat it out the whole story, and put it on note cards, very like arts and crafts, put it on a poster board, and went in and pitched it at the end of the week.

So it was like, it was very useful to have, you know, kind of a hard and fast thing you had to get to doing.

[typewriter ding] - ♪ 'Cause it don't matter ♪ [congregation shouting] ♪ how bad your life is.

♪ [Congregant] That's right!

- ♪ It don't matter ♪ [congregation shouting] ♪ that you're about to get evicted.

♪ [organ music] [congregation shouting] ♪ It don't matter ♪ ♪ if you got a light bill due.

♪ [congregation shouting] ♪ It don't matter, ♪ ♪ and you got a gas bill too.

♪ ♪ It don't matter ♪ Your grandson Jamal was gunned down in a drive-by shooting right next to the Dairy Queen.

[congregation shouting] ♪ Hey ♪ ♪ Trust in his vision ♪ ♪ Trust ♪ ♪ Say it with me, trust ♪ [congregants shouting] [upbeat music] Trust!

[Congregants] Trust!

[Preacher] Trust!

[congregants shouting] Trust!

Trust!

♪ Trust ♪ Hit me!

Woo!

[band playing gospel version of "Back That Thang Up"] - Process-wise, like with pretty much everything, we make a playlist.

So most of the songs that ended up in Tyrone, the needle drops just came from the playlist that we... We conceptualize everything usually.

We find a song that feels the way you want the movie to feel.

Like we just got S.O.S.

Band, and we thinking about people coming outta the club, and it ends up in the movie.

And most of it doesn't, but like, usually those first gut images that we talk about are things that intrinsically make us excited about it in the first place.

[typewriter ding] - And it sounds like from the pitch, it really started with those three main characters.

Can you talk a little bit... You talked about Fontaine, but can you talk a little bit more about developings like Charles and Yo-Yo for the story?

- Juel said he went to art school, and when we were talking about the characters, he said something that I'd never heard, but I guess it's a term in art, or something like the silhouette test.

And the idea that like, you know, if you see a silhouette of Darth Vader, you can identify Darth Vader, or Indiana Jones or stuff.

And so we talked about like, oh, the characters should not only be visually distinct, that you can identify 'em from a silhouette, but sort of archetypal enough that you can identify them holistically from a silhouette.

So that's kinda where it started.

- Character-wise, you know, we started with Fontaine, and then just kind of... We had the hear no evil, see no evil.

[chuckling] We kinda tried to give 'em all different angles on that theme of blame and responsibility.

So one person sees the problem, ignores the problem, or you know, like a ostrich puts his head in the sand, you know, one person sees the problem, doesn't care about the problem, one person sees the problem, wants somebody else to fix the problem, initially, you know.

So it's like, Yo-Yo like, we gotta go get help, we gotta tell somebody.

Slick Charles like, stick our head in the sand, act like we never seen the [bleep], you know.

And then Fontaine understands the problem, but just doesn't care.

- I can't get no tea?

- I ain't your mama.

And my grandmama got ears like a bat, so y'all mind y'all manners.

[Slick Charles] Listen.

Say we act like a turkey, stick our head in the sand, and leave the [bleep] alone, act like it didn't happen.

[Yo-Yo] Like an ostrich?

You stupid [bleep].

You know, I don't know how I let y'all drag me into this [bleep].

[Slick Charles] If it [bleep] smell like fish, get the [bleep] out the water right now, we's a got [bleep] sushi bar.

- That wasn't me.

- Hmm?

- I don't know what that was, but that wasn't me.

[Slick Charles] [bleep] what?

That wasn't you?

- No one said it was- - I'm me.

[Slick Charles] [bleep] I seen them shoot your [bleep].

- All three characters, we, you know, once we were thinking about it working backwards from Fontaine's character, I think we just thought of them kind of holistically relative to the theme, right?

And so like, or just this thematic question that we was kinda playing with.

Building out from Fontaine, I think we just really just tried to make him as distinct as we could.

But I think a lot of my sister is in Yo-Yo.

You know what I mean?

Like, you naturally draw from people that you know.

A lot of the characters are being drawn from just people that I know.

And then, a lot of it changes.

A lot of the character stuff changed when we cast it.

So like the ways Fontaine was originally written, he was really stoic, you know what I'm saying?

And our person we originally cast brought a lotta warmth in the audition.

It was like, oh man, you know?

He was a lot funnier than we originally wrote the character.

So we didn't, we never went back to the original very, you know, think like Travonte in "Moonlight."

Like very stoic, quiet kinda character.

A lot more genuinely menacing in the original script.

He was more of the archetype in the original script.

- You better stop.

Man, gimme that.

[wrapper crinkling] [gentle music] You remind me of someone, you know that?

- Who?

You remind me of someone.

- Who?

[child laughing and shouting] [Fontaine laughing quietly] - And I think he became a bit more, we leaned more into the drift between how they programmed them, and how they actually manifest themselves in the world.

'Cause he's clearly not the archetypal drug dealer, but in the original draft he was.

- And then specifically with Slick Charles.

We thought we wrote funny lines for him, but Jamie would just ad-lib a ton of stuff, and it's like, ah, this is better.

So it was just like, he added a lot of his own characterization, and his own slick talking lines and stuff.

- I love the moment where they're getting lunch, and Slick Charles starts looking around at everyone laughing, and he's like, oh no.

And he's putting the pieces together.

[people laughing] - I never seen you laugh.

I never seen you laugh.

[laughing] [all laughing] I ain't seen him laugh much.

[everyone laughing] [suspenseful music] [everyone laughing] [suspenseful music] [everyone laughing] [Bleep]!

It's the chicken.

[bleep] it's the [bleep] chicken.

It's the chicken.

The powder.

The powder in the chicken.

Look, when I was in the trap house, there was a white powder right there.

I thought it was cocaine.

I took some of it, it wasn't cocaine.

I started laughing.

You break something, I shoot the [bleep], now we here, we eating this chicken, we all laughing.

It's in the [bleep] chicken.

- How did you all kind of in the writing process decide how aware the characters were gonna be, and when they were gonna be aware of the situation they were in?

- Some of our comps were things like "They Live" and "Truman Show," where a big part of those stories are the characters kinda opening their eyes.

It was sort of like, structurally we wanted it to happen-- Basically, the midpoint of the movie is when everyone reali- Or Slick Charles and Fontaine realize they're clones.

So it's sort of like, we built their realization of what the conspiracy is into the structure of the movie, and kinda structured everything around their own revelations.

- Our kinda fun and games was, the awakening, quote unquote is like, the characters becoming aware in terms of the surface plot was part one, and then the second half of the script is the characters coming aware of the why.

And so I think more of the fun, offensive part of the movie, you know.

[chuckling] And maybe not fun, maybe just offensive part of the movie is in the first half, and we tried to hide it, but it's a pretty basic formula structure, you know?

Because we originally pitched it so quick, we just kinda had to really try to take a structure, and kinda of lean into it.

- There was supposed to be a meta reason why certain pillars of the community were clones, and why all the clones were almost these outdated stereotypes.

And it's supposed to be because they're, this program started in the '60s by a whole bunch of white people, and so they're all supposed to be reflections of what white people think these pillars are in the Black community.

[gentle R&B music] ♪ Think about it all the time ♪ ♪ Never let it outta my mind ♪ ♪ 'cause I love you ♪ [yelling and pounding glass] [Intercom Voice] You can feel beautiful.

[laughing] [Intercom Voice] I can feel beautiful.

[laughing hysterically] [Intercom Voice] You can feel beautiful.

[Intercom Voice] I can feel beautiful.

♪ I don't wanna get over ♪ ♪ ♪ [muffled hip hop music] [indistinct rapping] ♪ I need love ♪ ♪ I'm in love ♪ ♪ I got the sweetest hangover ♪ ♪ Yeah ♪ - We did that because we wanted, the theme is sort of, what Juel mentioned is blame versus responsibility and stuff.

So we wanted the actual trio characters to be a mix of that.

You know, like Fontaine and Slick Charles have the existential crisis to realizing that they are, they were created, and they were set upon this path.

Yo-Yo's existential crisis is that, it is more supposed to be more blurry.

The same way that Fontaine and Slick Charles had to deal with being a clone, she had to deal with not being a clone.

[gentle music] [mailbox door clanking] - Hey Yo-Yo!

That's you, girl?

[bleep].

Oh [bleep], that is you!

- Me!

It is me [indistinct] [bleep].

- You wearing that trench coat over there looking like Carmen San Die [bleep]!

[rolling tongue and laughing] All right, girl, do your thang, do your thang.

Hold on!

Baby, here I come.

[typewriter ding] - Something that I'll never forget from the marketing of the film is, I think it's the second elevator scene when they're singing as they're going down.

♪ I'm going down ♪ ♪ To the underground ♪ ♪ Hope [bleep] don't drown ♪ ♪ And get [bleep] up ♪ [elevator rumbling] ♪ Right now ♪ [Slick Charles beat boxing] ♪ Let a mother [bleep] try me ♪ ♪ Ooh, he gonna die beside me♪ ♪ I don't why ♪ ♪ Why, why, why ♪ - But watching the film, we have three kind of elevator scenes.

We have that first moment where they don't know what they're about to see, you have that second moment where they're kind of prepared for what they're gonna see, but not fully, 'cause they're about to have that realization of, you know, they're clones, and then you have the third elevator moment where the whole hood is, is going down, and is gonna cause some great chaos.

Can you talk about making those specifically?

- I mean we wanted to try our hand at building in a little bit of iconography within the movie.

It was originally a staircase, like the book he finds, the Nancy Drew.

It was originally a hidden staircase like the Nancy Drew book he finds in Yo-Yo's room.

The logistics of that, the production logistics of that.

We changed it to a elevator, which I think ended up making more, it definitely made more sense.

But you know, I think the kind of triptych of elevator down, it wouldn't have had the same effect if it was stairs, elevator, elevator.

So I wanna take credit for it, you know what I'm saying?

[chuckling] In terms of like, oh man, so in the first journey.

Like, it is different points of the journey in terms of just going underground three times.

So I think more to the elevator is just like the first time they go in blind.

[bass music] [doors clanking] [Bleep].

[Yo-Yo] They got a elevator in this [bleep]?

- See what I'm saying?

It's too crazy.

Don't make- Fontaine, Fontaine?

What you doing?

Fontaine, get your [bleep] outta that [bleep] elevator.

You know what?

You have it your way.

Yo-Yo, I need you to get your [bleep] in the mother [bleep] car right now.

- Fifteen minutes.

♪ ♪ - Slick.

- It's a elevator in got [bleep] trap house.

That don't make your spider senses tingle?

- Slick, come on.

♪ ♪ Man, come on.

♪ ♪ - Fine.

♪ ♪ - Huffing and puffing at me.

[suspenseful music] - And the second time, like, you know, they go in aware, and the third time, they go in ready.

[gun tapping] - Excuse me, kind sir, but if you could point me to the elevator that leads down to the freaky laboratory, I'll be out your atmosphere.

- Ah, [bleep], I got you, big-- oh.

[gun blasting] - Right over there.

[door hissing] - Okay, we're here.

- Open this [bleep] up.

- Open up all the surface doors, and hurry the [bleep] up!

[button ringing] [elevator dinging] - Well, [guns clicking] let's get it, man.

- You know what I mean?

I think that was kinda just the general idea of the three times they go underground, and I think that just, I guess manifested itself in those three elevator beats.

- I love that Yo-Yo has just stacks of Nancy Drew books.

[laughing] and it's so specific, but also I think in a part of the film in which so many aspects kind of in their community seem stereotypical, that's the one thing that really jumps out.

Especially like Nancy Drew books, they're bright yellow books.

- So that's just ripped straight from my sister's room.

- I love just the specificity in this film, it makes it such an enjoyable watch, but it also just makes it so funny.

- Film's great 'cause every department's trying to tell their the story in their own way, in their own set of tools.

I remember the first set that was built was Slick Charles' hotel room, or motel room.

And so they built it on a stage and everything.

And I remember going in there, and the art department had basically made the trash specific to Slick Charles, you know?

And we were never gonna look in the trash can.

It was never in the shot list or anything, but the fact that they were trying to tell the story within their own tools was really cool, and very inspiring.

I think we can take credit for some of the more story oriented details like the Nancy Drew books and stuff, but a lot of the details of the world came from the department heads too.

[typewriter ding] - Mom.

Please open the door.

[Mom] I'm good, thanks baby.

- I just need to see you.

Can you open the door, please?

[muffled TV program noises] Open the door.

Open the [bleep]!

[door crashing] [indistinct chattering on machine] [indistinct chattering on machine] I really need you right now, mama.

[Mama] I'm all right, baby, Josephine had a fish fry at the community center.

I'm still full.

- I also, especially on a re-watch, was thinking a lot about Fontaine's mom who turns out to be a tape recorder.

- That's my mama.

- That was your mother?

Can you talk a little bit about that discovery?

- I think it's really fun to make something kinda absurd, but then the emotion kinda sneaks up on you, right?

'Cause it's a very, I mean Tyrone's kind of a wacky story.

The characters are kinda wacky, you know, they're purposely hyperbolic and stuff, but we wanted it to tread into this area where it gets really emotional, you do really feel for them.

And that was sort of the kickoff point for it.

We thought if you could get to that point, and actually really feel for him, then it would've been successful.

- I think it goes back to the reverse engineering of, once we had this idea of blame versus responsibility, then you kinda start working backwards.

So it's like, okay, what if you had a guy having a literal identity crisis, where he could legitimately make the argument that none of this is my fault?

If I put a gun to the back of your head, and told you go kill somebody, and you did it, is it your fault?

Where's the logical end of the road of that character?

And you end up with O.G.

Fontaine.

It doesn't take long to go, well he can't have a mama.

You know?

And then once you realize he's a clone, then you realize he don't have a mama, then you're like, okay, well, what's the worst thing that can happen to somebody?

You know, like we just thinking of, what are the worst things we can put him through?

How can we keep taking from him, you know?

And that's all we're thinking about when we're writing it.

Like, what can we keep taking from Fontaine to the point where he has nothing?

And he truly has to, is a blank slate, and has to decide who he wants to be, you know?

And so you take his job from him, you take his life from him.

And then okay, well what's worse than that?

Okay, you take your mama from you.

[typewriter ding] [Announcer] You've been watching "On the making of 'They Cloned Tyrone'" on "On Story."

"On Story" is part of a growing number of programs in Austin Film Festival's On Story Project that also includes the "On Story" radio program, podcast, book series, and the On Story archive accessible through the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.

To find out more about "On Story" and Austin Film Festival, visit onstory.tv or austinfilmfestival.com.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [projector clicking] [typing] [typewriter ding] [projector dies]