Fruitvale Station

Ryan Coogler was a graduate student at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts when Grant was shot on January 1, 2009. Coogler expressed his desire to make a film about Grant's last day: "I wanted the audience to get to know this guy, to get attached, so that when the situation that happens to him happens, it's not just like you read it in the paper, you know what I mean? When you know somebody as a human being, you know that life means something." Coogler met the Grant family's attorney, John Burris, through a mutual friend, and also met with and worked with Grant's family.[8]

In January 2011, Forest Whitaker's production company was looking for new young filmmakers to mentor. Coogler met the Head of Production Nina Yang Bongiovi and showed her his projects. He soon had a meeting with Whitaker, who supported Fruitvale.[9][10] Coogler met with advisers of Sundance Screenwriters Lab and developed the script with the help of creative advisors Tyger Williams, Jessie Nelson and Zach Sklar.[11] The film received funding from the Feature Film Program (FFP)[11] and the San Francisco Film Society.[9]

Coogler had Michael B. Jordan in mind to play Grant before writing the script.[10] In April 2012, Jordan and Octavia Spencer joined the cast.[12] Spencer also received a co-executive producer credit as she directly participated in funding the film and contacted investors when a deal was lost during the filming.[13] Notable investors included Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help, a bestselling novel adapted as a successful film, for which Spencer won an Oscar.[14] In April 2012, Hannah Beachler signed on as the film's production designer.[15]

Fruitvale Station was shot in Oakland, California,[8] for 20 days in July 2012.[16] Scenes were shot at and around the Bay Area Rapid Transit platform where Grant was killed.[17] BART agreed to let the crew film at Fruitvale station for three four-hour nights. Most of the platform scenes were shot over the course of two nights (with another night dedicated to the sequences on the train that led up to the police confrontation).[18] San Quentin State Prison served as a filming location for a flashback scene with prisoners featured as extras.[19] The film was shot in Super 16 mm format using Arriflex 416 cameras and Zeiss Ultra 16 lenses.[20]

The film includes actual amateur footage of the shooting, which Coogler initially did not want to use:

I didn't want any real footage in the film. But you sometimes have to take a step back. Being from the Bay Area, I knew that footage like the back of my hand, but more people from around the world had no idea about this story. It made sense for them to see that footage and see what happened to Oscar, and I think it was a responsibility that we had to put that out there.[18]

Fruitvale Station's musical score is by Coogler's fellow USC graduate Ludwig Göransson,[21] who said of the scoring process:

Ryan and I talked a lot about how sound design was going to have a huge role in the movie and very early on I got sent the actual sound recordings of the BART train. I manipulated the train sound and made it almost feel like a dark ambient synth sound and I used it almost throughout the whole BART platform scene. The other element in the score is lots of layered and manipulated guitars sounding almost like haunting pads.[22]

Coogler added:

One thing that we always wanted to be conscious of with the score was to make sure that it always felt organic. A lot of the film would play without score, so Ludwig made sure that whenever we brought score in came out of sounds in the environment.[22]

A soundtrack album, Fruitvale Station: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, was released digitally on September 24, 2013, and on CD on October 15, 2013, through Lakeshore Records.[22]

Fruitvale Station premiered on January 19, 2013, at the Sundance Film Festival, where it was listed as Fruitvale before undergoing a title change.[29] After premiering at Sundance, it was at the center of a distribution bidding war which included studios such as Fox Searchlight, Paramount Pictures, Focus Features and CBS Films. The Weinstein Company acquired the film rights for about $2 million.[30] In May 2013, Fruitvale Station appeared in the Un Certain Regard, an award section recognizing unique and innovative films, at the 66th Cannes Film Festival[31] and won the award for Best First Film.[32]

The Oakland premiere was held as a private screening at Grand Lake Theater on June 20, 2013.[33] The film opened in select theaters on July 12,[34] about the same time as the verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman for shooting Trayvon Martin.[28][35]

Fruitvale Station was made available in Digital HD via Anchor Bay on December 31, 2013.[36] DVD and Blu-ray combo packs were released on January 14, 2014.[37]

The film grossed an estimated $127,445 on its first day[38] and ended its first weekend of limited release with $377,285 from seven theaters for a $53,898 per-theater-average.[39] It is the third-highest opening of the year for a film in limited release (behind Spring Breakers and The Place Beyond the Pines)[40] and one of the best openings for a Sundance festival top prize winner.[41] A week after its debut, Fruitvale Station expanded to 35 theaters and garnered $742,272 for a $21,832 per-screen average.[42] The film opened nationwide on July 26 in more than 1,000 locations.[43][44] It ranked #10 at the box office, earning $4.59 million.[45] The film has grossed $16,101,339 in the United States and $1,284,491 elsewhere, for a worldwide total of $17,385,830.[3]

On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 94% with an average rating of 8.10/10, based on 216 reviews. The site's critical consensus states: "Passionate and powerfully acted, Fruitvale Station serves as a celebration of life, a condemnation of death, and a triumph for star Michael B. Jordan."[46] On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 85 out of 100, based on 46 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[47] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of A on an A+ to F scale.[48]

Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter called it "a compelling debut" and "a powerful dramatic feature film". He also praised the lead performances: "As Oscar, Jordan at moments gives off vibes of a very young Denzel Washington in the way he combines gentleness and toughness; he effortlessly draws the viewer in toward him. Diaz is vibrant as his patient and loyal girlfriend, while Spencer brings her gravitas to the proceedings as his stalwart mother."[49]

Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt praised the film as the "best film" of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.[50] Singer Billie Eilish has stated it is her favorite film four years in a row in her annual Vanity Fair interview.[51]

Writing for The Village Voice, chief film critic Stephanie Zacharek called Fruitvale Station "a restrained but forceful picture that captures some of the texture and detail of one human life" and praised Coogler, writing that he "dramatizes Oscar's last day by choosing not to dramatize it: The events unfold casually, without any particular scheme. And yet because we know how this story will end, there's a shivery, understated tension running beneath."[52]

In his Sundance festival wrap-up, critic Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Made with assurance and quiet emotion, this unexpectedly devastating drama based on the real life 2009 shooting of an unarmed young black man at an Oakland Fruitvale Station of BART (San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit System - Fruitvale Station) impressed everyone as the work of an exceptional filmmaker."[53]

In a more mixed review, Geoff Berkshire of Variety called it "a well-intentioned attempt to put a human face on the tragic headlines surrounding Oscar Grant." He praised Michael B. Jordan's performance but critiqued the "relentlessly positive portrayal" of the film's subject: "Best viewed as an ode to victim's rights, Fruitvale forgoes nuanced drama for heart-tugging, head-shaking and rabble-rousing."[4]

In a negative New York Post review and subsequent opinion piece in Forbes, Kyle Smith accused Coogler of omitting key information and fabricating other scenes in order to manipulate viewers into a distorted impression of the depicted events.[54][55]

The film appeared on several critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2013:[56]

Ryan Coogler accepts the U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic with the crew at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

• 2nd – Matt Zoller Seitz, RogerEbert.com[57]
• 3rd – Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times
• 3rd – Mara Reinstein, Us Weekly
• 4th – Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
• 4th – Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly
• 5th – Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
• 8th – Lisa Schwarzbaum, BBC
• 8th – Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News
• 9th – Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post
• 9th – Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News
• 9th – Anne Thompson, Indiewire
• 9th – Sasha Stone, Awards Daily
• No rank – Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal
• No rank – Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
• No rank – Claudia Puig, USA Today
• No rank – Carrie Rickey
• No rank – Jonathan Rosenbaum