By her early thirties, Ava DuVernay was already a successful entrepreneur, having founded her own film publicity agency in Los Angeles. But after years of watching other people make films, she started to get an itch to tell her own stories onscreen. Ava's first films were rooted in deeply personal experiences: growing up with her sisters in Compton, performing Hip Hop at Open Mic Night at the Good Life Café in L.A. Her self-funded and self-distributed projects began to draw attention, and in 2012, Ava won the award for best directing at the Sundance Film Festival. She went on to direct powerful projects like Selma, 13th, and When They See Us; and through her production and distribution company ARRAY, she's created a movement that is helping change how movies are made—and who gets to make them.




This episode was produced by Rachel Faulkner, with music by Ramtin Arablouei.

Edited by Neva Grant, with research help from Liz Metzger.




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Black perspectives haven't always been centered in the telling of America's story.

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Hey, it's Guy here, and before we get to the show, you know that feeling when you think back to some of your early work and you cringe?

Well, I recently spoke with Tom Hanks and he told me he gets that feeling too.

And for a man widely known as the nicest person in Hollywood, Tom Hanks also struggles with what it means to be authentic.

Check out our conversation on my other podcast, The Great Creators.

Just search for The Great Creators with Guy Raz wherever you listen to podcasts.

And now for today's show, another great conversation with a creator and a builder, 1 of the most successful in Hollywood.

Any filmmaker that's in a screening of their film is not watching the film, they're watching the audience.

I've become really good at watching the backs of heads.

Like I can tell what you're feeling by your neck at this point.

And for the first time being in the back of a theater, watching you know just the side view of the light of the screen hit people's faces as they smile, as they nod, as they cry, whatever.

That feeling just, you know, it was my first hit and I was addicted and I've been addicted ever since.

Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Ava DuVernay took her skills as a publicist, writer, director, and entrepreneur, and built a movement that's changing how movies are made and who gets to make them.

When it comes to thinking about who is an entrepreneur, we often overlook people who get their start in the creative arts.

Before he built what would become 1 of the biggest media companies in history, he created the most iconic cartoon character in history.

Artists usually make their money by selling their art, their acting skills, their paintings, their music, their novels.

But over the past decade, more and more creative types have started to take more control over how their work is used, and in some cases, to own and distribute and market their own work.

This is how Ava DuVernay has constructed her entire career.

She's not only 1 of the most entrepreneurial creators in Hollywood, but increasingly, 1 of the most influential.

Now, you might think of Ava as a director.

Her documentary, 13th, about mass incarceration in the United States, was nominated for an Academy Award.

And her drama When They See Us, based on an assault in Central Park and the wrongful conviction of Black and Latino teenagers, made a huge impact when it was released in

Ava's directed big budget films like A Wrinkle in Time and historical dramas like Selma.

But her directing business is only 1 part of a much bigger enterprise, Even a movement that Ava DuVernay has built from the ground up.

She began her career as a publicist and at age 27 started her own publicity agency.

She self-financed her first films, and because she had a background in marketing and knew how to network, she was able to build her own distribution company.

Today, Ava oversees a campus just outside downtown LA that encompasses much of her work.

Array is a production company, a distributor of films, a non-profit education center, a community event space, and a resource center to help people of color get into the film industry.

Ava fell in love with the arts at an early age.

For the first years of her life, she grew up in Compton, California, and then moved to the nearby neighborhood of Linwood.

And 1 of the most important people in her life was her Aunt Denise.

She was a frustrated artist who loved music and fine art and movies and didn't grow up in a time or in an environment that encouraged or celebrated that those interests in her.

So she became a nurse, following in her mother's footsteps, but always fostered her love of art as a, just a lover of it, just a fan, and really exposed me to all kinds of things that I would not have, I don't believe I would have come across if it hadn't been for her.

And it sounds like, and we'll talk about this later, but it Sounds like you particularly had a strong bond with her.

Yeah, I mean, there were 3 of them who raised us.

It was my mother, her mother, my grandmother, and her sister, my aunt, were just a big, big part of our lives.

So this is a lot of ladies, a lot of that energy.

And I would go to my aunt's after school and I just spent a lot of time with her.

So, you know, was as close to her as I was to my mother but they had very different interests.

My mother's interests were, you know, my education and the clothes on my back and the food on my plate and just trying to keep it all going.

And my aunt who was single, Her interests were art and fun and, you know, kind of the things that my mother was so busy and focused on taking care of us, you know, didn't really have the space, the mental space for.

I guess when you were a little girl, maybe 8 or 9 years old, a man named Murray May came into your life.

And he would become a hugely important influence on you as a kid and then as a grownup, right?

Yeah, my dad, I remember the first day that he came to pick her up for a date and opened the door.

I opened the door and he was just so handsome.

And he had on a starched white shirt, button up, and slacks, and a belt, and shiny shoes.

He was such a gentleman and so kind to me and continued to be that to me all of his life, for the rest of his life.

Yeah, I love you calling him an entrepreneur because I think that we don't use that word for people who are not creating companies that are fancy, so to speak.

But he owned his own business, a small carpet and flooring company.

And yeah, he had about, I don't know, 6 or 7 men who worked with him, but he would get down on his hands and knees and put in carpet and flooring for residences and commercial spaces in Los Angeles.

When you were a teenager and people would meet you and they would say oh Ava she's gonna be this or that what would people say about you they would say oh she's gonna be the president or what what would you remember people saying?

I always got that I was, you know, bright, that I was smart, the things that every kid should hear, right?

Just that, you know, I had potential and I could be anything that I wanted to be at the time.

For many, many years when I was young, when people would ask that horrible question that you ask children, which I don't think children should be asked, what do you wanna be when you grow up?

And I would always hear positive reinforcement, oh, I can see that for you, or that's perfect, or you're gonna be that.

I remember my godmother, Charlene, gave me a briefcase for my eighth grade graduation.

And I thought, right, these are the tools that I need to go into the courtroom and I am truly a few short steps from the courtroom.

I am that smart, and I will use this briefcase, and I will go to the Supreme Court and do whatever I need to do.

Was there anything in your childhood or teenage years that would in any way you could look at and say yeah that I was gonna be a filmmaker?

Anything that they played at the Lakewood Mall.

That's the only place that I went to see movies with my aunt Denise who would take me after school to the Lakewood Mall.

That would probably bring back such emotional, so much emotion but yeah anything, so this is this is the late 70s early 80s.

Yeah I mean so everything from I don't know like ET to action movies to just whatever was playing.

But just a bunch of studio stuff with different views of white life.

And then as I got into, I mean, I enjoyed movies.

And so as I got into high school, I remember, you know, loving the John Hughes stuff and wondering if there was any black people at the school.

I remember seeing the film that I really liked.

And I remember I saw the 1 Asian character, I really thought, oh, that's not nice.

Everyone was laughing and I remember thinking that that's not nice.

But just generally, consuming the movies as a young person would, and at some point in there being aware that I wasn't seeing films with black folk in it.

What was the first film you saw where you saw black characters and actors on screen that you were very conscious of it.

The first film I saw where I saw people of color on screen that was very formative for me was West Side Story.

Come to find out years later, half of them were not brown.

But you couldn't tell me that Bernardo was not straight from Puerto Rico at the time.

Like it was that, that film was such a big deal for me, that It was a while to shake off and realize that it was the magic of movies that made me see what I was seeing and feel what I was feeling.

But that was the first film where I saw people like the folks in my neighborhood, because I went to school with a lot of Latino and Filipinx people.

And so I remember loving the colors and the culture.

Oddly, the first film with black people, I can remember seeing and really, and I know it's not the case.

I know I'd seen other ones, but for whatever reason, the 1 that I really remember feeling deeply was not until I got to college which was Moe Bitter Blues, Spike Lee's Moe Bitter Blues.

I know I'd seen the other films before then and I'd seen all kinds of other films, Lady Sing the Blues, other things, but the 1 that really had an effect was Smoke, Butter, Blues.

You went to UCLA and you majored in African American Studies and English, and you wrote for the black student newspaper there.

Learned a lot, was involved with the black student union, learned about the power of protest, learned about communities of color in Los Angeles that I hadn't been engaged with because I, you know, I think people who aren't from LA think it's all together, but it's really quite a sprawl.

So if you're from Compton, Long Beach, Linwood, you really have no reason to be in LA proper unless, I had no reason to be in LA, so I really wasn't familiar with LA proper until I got to college.

And it's like 40 minutes up the coast, but it felt like a different world.

And so, yeah, just had a dorm experience, lived in the dorms for the first couple of years, you know, worked my little job as a waitress, came home with my tips, going through, you know, to the games.

Like, It was a very normal college experience, except for the fact that there was a huge, huge racial unrest happening in the city at that time.

So feeling, you know, being a college student and becoming conscious of my history and the historical context of the times that we were in really had a big effect on me.

You were there, you were a student at UCLA when the footage of Rodney King beating came out and then also the acquittal of those police officers in the aftermath of that.

What do you remember about that time when you were a student?

I remember that the Rodney King assault was 1 in a steady litany of assaults on the black community at that time.

And so it was just a very oppressive LAPD presence in black communities and in spaces where black people convened all around the city that was deeply felt and became quite combustible when Really the first video footage of a police assault that reached national prominence was still not enough to Result in any kind of you know punishment for the officers who who were involved.

When you were a teenager Would you just see police cars driving around your neighbor?

Do you remember seeing police presence all the time?

and it just it was just part of the Background it was just that was just there all the time.

Yeah, it's interesting even to get the question because I'm, it makes me think, you know, at my age, oh, right, that's not normal for people who don't live in those communities.

It's a helicopter helicopter that flies low across black and brown communities You know in Los Angeles, especially was 1 of the tactics of the LAPD.

I guess when you were in college, you started to get into performing, like performing in a hip-hop troupe, a duo, called Figures of Speech.

Down in the Lomert Park area, this glorious black arts district in Los Angeles and became a part of the arts and culture space there and just a young person who was very attracted to hip hop and all the disciplines within hip hop.

So, I think from Tribe Called Quest, to Public Enemy, to Farside Freestyle Fellowship, all kinds, everything that was at that time.

I was going to this open mic night, just enjoying it.

This was the place to be, it was a place called The Good Life.

It was a health food store that on Thursday nights would open a mic and people would perform.

You'd come with your tape, you'd press play on your tape, and you would have like 2 minutes to rhyme and impress the crowd.

so on Thursday nights, you would listen to, you know, a colorful cast of local MCs who, you know, were known in the neighborhood and eagerly anticipated what they were gonna do and had fans and didn't have record deals, but were like stars to us.

I mean, you wouldn't have probably known it at the time, but did it feel like, did it feel like you were part, I don't know, you were part of something special?

Yeah, no, you definitely knew it at the time that you were in something that was very special.

Especially if you were able to be inside of it, know the artist, and then eventually to become an artist there.

The first time that I did anything as it related to actually being a maker of art, not a consumer or a fan of art, which is a big part of the art practice is people to consume it.

You know, art that sits in a room by itself can only go so far.

I was that for a long time until I was encouraged to pick up the mic and really enjoyed it and so did that for a little while.

Were you nervous about performing in front of other people?

Yeah I think I think it's the rare artist who, you know, doesn't have nerves about the presentation of work.

And so, yeah, definitely very nervous to get up there.

I read that when you graduated you wanted to become a journalist And at some point you actually went to to CBS to pursue this career path.

And I guess this was what like the mid-1990s?

I got an internship with CBS Evening News with Dan Rather and Connie Chung.

And this was right at the time of the OJ Simpson trial.

And I was an intern with a very prestigious paid internship that I was very excited about.

That was like the highest, that was a big deal.

So that's the kind of thing you needed to move on and in space and Did it and was assigned a juror on the first day I remember going were

signed a jerk you were assigned to what to follow a juror on the OJ Simpson trial You

couldn't follow them because they were sequestered But I had to sit outside of their house

because obviously that that was I guess a way to get breaking news and what did that feel awkward that feel weird

yeah so I was basically outside of this I think it was a lady I can't remember and I basically just sat outside her house you know and saw what was coming and going and like made notes and and I remember hating it and feeling like this is stupid and wrong and I don't want to be doing this and and it really soured my appetite for news So that was my last job in news.

So when you really kind of began your career then at this point I mean you're a young woman, graduate, you went into into film publicity.

How did how did you How did you get into that?

Because I was really interested in media still from the news days and had heard that publicists shaped the news.

So I was really interested in the media at that time.

And so I went I worked at a small studio for a while, about a year.

I was an assistant on a publicist's desk and then went to an agency and worked in agency life where I was juggling multiple projects.

And this was all in the film and television space.

Was it everything that you had imagined and more?

Were you, did you feel like you were shaping stories?

If I was not a filmmaker, I would be a publicist.

I think about it as in terms of offering stories and presenting stories and understanding the power of publicity and that helped me understand that everyone has a story.

And that's giving me a lot of confidence in my own storytelling as a filmmaker.

Whereas I'll talk to filmmakers who will sometimes be driven by, oh, is this sellable?

I never think that way because I know you can sell and market anything if you know how to do it, which I do.

So yeah, I loved it and I still do and I'm so happy that I had that tool set.

That was my time as a publicist was really my film school in so many ways.

I guess you worked for a few different agencies for a couple of years, and then when you were like 27, you started your own agency.

And the story I read was that your dad, Murray, was the 1 who encouraged you to do that.

Like he kind of led you to realize that you weren't getting paid enough.

Is that how you ended up starting your own business?

Yeah, yeah, that was 1 of the steps in it.

I talked with him about some of the projects that were coming into the agency that I was, where I was at the time, that were coming to the agency because there was a young black publicist working there.

And that there were, you know, black films or films that were youth-oriented that were coming into the agency or I was being used.

Yeah, I was bringing some in or I was being, I was a centerpiece of the pitch of the agency.

Like this will be your day to day and look at her and she can do this and I get in the meeting and I do my thing and we'd get the business.

So yeah, it was a conversation with my father who just got me thinking about the numbers because I was like, oh, I'm getting a nice salary.

And he's like, yeah, but, and he never said it.

I mean, he was just such an elegant, soft-spoken, lovely man.

Like I would have said, cut to Ava's version, I would have said, okay, dummy, what are you doing?

But he just kind of walked me through it as, so how much are the retainers?

I said, oh my gosh, it's like 10000 dollars a month He's like wow, so yes, you've brought in you've brought in 6 Clients that are at 10000 dollars a month and I said, yeah, he's like so that's 60000 dollars a month And I said, yeah, and he said and how much do you get paid a year?

So, yeah, it was, that was an eye-opener.

And there was a woman who's still working today by the name of Jackie Bazan, black woman, who had 1 of the few black-owned entertainment PR firms at the time.

Jackie Bazan handled films out of the East Coast.

There was another woman named Marcy DeVoe who had a small practice with 2 people.

And so there were these 2 women who I think it's important to say their names.

I saw doing it, and after my father had put that in my head, I looked for those examples and got to know them, and it was really Jackie Bizan who was very kind.

I remember She gave me copies of her letters of agreements early on with clients.

She told me, you know, how to set rates and how to do some of that stuff really early on.

And, even early in my, my own agency days, we would share films.

She would do the East and I would do the West.

And so yeah I eventually started to do film and television and home entertainment, corporate, crisis, event, unit publicity, strategy, got into marketing, promotions, and eventually by the time I closed my agency, had run campaigns for every major studio in Hollywood.

You, I mean, as you kind of went on your own, 1 of the things that I'm always curious about is how people get customers and in the early days did you have to go out and and kind of pitch yourself or were things kind of coming in through word-of-mouth?

Yeah you know some of that idea of you know this is a young black woman and I worked on, you know, black stuff and lady stuff, anything to do with women, anything to do with youth, animation.

And so that's basically how I started and that business was coming in really nicely.

And so, and yeah, we would pitch, we would pitch stuff, send out proposals, rarely cold, you know, I had those contacts, but yeah, it was a constantly, you know, that business is constantly trying to make sure you have enough business.

And that you're servicing those clients so they'll come back again.

And were you, I mean, were you like also managing like press trunkets for stars?

You know, when they would come, so you would be the person with them at times while they would you know do the five-minute TV interview after interview after interview.

I do red carpets that's why whenever I walk on a red carpet now I have so much respect for the people who...

A red carpet, most people who are notable who are asked to go on a red carpet, they walk out there thinking, I'm a star, like this is, or this is my moment, or I have to do this red carpet.

You know, my gosh, I don't wanna do it or whatever.

And people are yelling your name and you're doing the whole thing, but you gotta think back to 2 weeks before when that red carpet was constructed and media alert was written, it was sent out.

Everyone that's on that carpet yelling your name was booked, confirmed, directions had to be sent to them, they arrived, they had to be put in their places.

Oftentimes they will fight over their place.

The publicist is there trying to wrangle that.

You know, the red carpet company that has to come and put down the red carpet, put up the stanchions, put up the lights.

There's a whole industry around this, the hair and makeup and the hotels that participate and I mean it's it's a machine and it's a you know it's a machine that's around the business of making and selling movies and that's what what I did.

I've always felt like a publicist has to have the same level of patience as like a realtor or even a talent agent in that they are servicing clients who can sometimes be really difficult, right?

Like if you're a realtor, your client might blame you if the house doesn't sell for what they want.

Or if you're a publicist, the client might blame you if they don't get as much publicity as they think they should get.

That kind of, I don't know, are you just super patient?

So in your example, like a real estate agent, that's so true, the real estate agent has to be the patient 1 because they're interfacing with the client, I would be considered the broker.

I was the publicist for the film, not the individual people.

So I didn't have to deal with how you got your hair done and why you didn't like your sandwich and this person was mean to you and you don't like that question.

So my clients were studios and networks, not individual people.

And that was by design because I'm not patient.

I'm not gonna tell you everything's okay if it's not.

I'm not gonna sit there and listen to your sad story.

When your sad story is you don't like your sandwich, you know what I'm saying?

I would be the 1 that would be able to just have the straight talk with the client.

I don't have to go home with you and be with you forever.

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ARRAY: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay (2021)