‘Moonlight’ Turns 10: Tarell Alvin McCraney on the Film’s Lasting Legacy and That Best Picture Mix-Up

The word playwright and screenwriter Tarell Alvin McCraney uses to describe his thoughts on the journey his deeply personal film “Moonlight” continues to have is “incredible.” Wednesday, October 21, marks 10 years since the Best Picture Oscar winner was released to the masses. ”Seeing it now is worth the price of admission,” said the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar winner to IndieWire over Zoom.

An adaptation of his unproduced play “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue,” written with director Barry Jenkins, “Moonlight” still has McCraney asking himself the fundamental question, “‘Who am I and who can I be?’ And that’s powerful.”

The current Geffen Playhouse artistic director, who is still working on many TV and film projects he is not yet allowed to discuss, said, “I’m still expanding like the universe. And the moment that I stop, the moment that I just sit in it, then where am I?”

Read on for more of McCraney reflecting on “Moonlight” at 10 below.

How “Moonlight” Came to Be

“So ‘In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue’ was a film, a screenplay that I wrote in 2003, right after the death of my mother. She died of AIDS-related complications. And I had written a play called ‘The Brothers Size’ for my entry into the Yale School of Drama and the script called ‘In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue.’ I had written both of them because, one, I was making an application for grad school, but two, my teacher, Rafael Lima, who was our playwriting and screenplay teacher in high school, always told me that if a story was coming to you visually, then it’s a film. If you heard it, it was a play. So ‘In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue’ was always slated to be a film because it was coming to me in images, but I’d written it in a kind of hybrid, what I call a medium length.

“It wasn’t a full feature at the time. I previously had written a short in high school called ‘Silent Type,’ and it was more about me trying to put down the memories I was having of growing up in Liberty City. Now, I understand it’s something most people do when losing a parent. They sort of start trying to recollect their earliest memories and put them back together again. So that’s how ‘In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue’ came about. But in 2003, an indie film about a gay kid in Miami was probably a hard feat, especially for a just-recently-graduated undergrad. So André Holland, who I met later, had read a copy of it, Glenn Davis, who runs Steppenwolf, we had all read a copy and tried to make it into a film in Chicago. Then I quickly sort of said, ‘No, this is where we stay.’ And it stayed in my computer for probably another 10 years until I met Barry Jenkins in around 2012, 2013.

“We were both making a film in a film festival here in Miami. We had a couple meetings, and found out we grew up blocks away from each other. Barry said, ‘Look, I want to make this into a film. I’ve read the script.’ Our friend Andrew Hevia had given it to him. He said, ‘I think I can make this into a full feature.’ I was like, ‘Great, we should.’ He didn’t believe me a few times. This is before there was an A24 or Plan B involved. So I think he thought I didn’t believe him. He kept going back, getting more support, and saying, ‘Look, we’re going to make this into a film.’ I kept going, ‘Yes, yes you are.’

“So even to this day, he said, ‘Yeah, you did have to say yes to me a few times before I believed you.’ But yeah, that’s how we came together on the film. Barry did an incredible job of turning it into a full feature, taking the story that was already there and taking it from a place of memory into a place of palpability and something that we all could feel.”

Oscar-nominated director Barry Jenkins and Playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney take part in a Q+A after a preview screening of Moonlight at BFI Southbank on February 14, 2017, in London, United Kingdom.Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images

On the Role YoungArts Played in “Moonlight” Being Made

“I have had an incredible education in art thanks to Miami. Miami’s art has been nurtured in a real way by YoungArts and The National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts, specifically young artists, because it brings in artists from all over the world.

“I remember sneaking out of playwriting class to go to YoungArts to see the YoungArts finalists and thinking, ‘Those dancers are doing what I’m supposed to be doing in their form right now. Their dedication, their ability to control their body and use their technique is — ’ And I’m just over here in this acting class trying to remember my lines. I just thought even then, ‘I’ve got to get my shit together.’

“And so YoungArts has really paved a way for that. They have really dedicated themselves to nurturing the local artists, but also bringing in young artists and supporting them for longer stretches of time. That’s been so helpful. Andrew Hevia, who was an arts finalist, is the reason why Barry Jenkins and I met each other because he was producing films and said to us, ‘Hey, you both are Miami. You both have Miami connections. You should know each other.’

“YoungArts was instrumental in giving us space to do pre-production for ‘Moonlight.’ That organization has really carved a path for arts in this community in a way that national foundations rarely do. So I’m ever grateful for them and wish them nothing but success and hope that other national organizations, that the government, that our local folks really help celebrate them and keep them around for a long time.”

On How He Saw “Moonlight” for the First Time

“Watching it for the first time, even in New York, because though I was near and helping on production, I was not on set. There were just too many places that they were going to that were places I had grown up and places that I had actually lived in. So I didn’t know how I would feel sitting on a set in those moments. But I do remember watching a great deal of those moments on film, in screening rooms, and it was beautiful. First I thought, ‘Wow, I’m so glad that this exists. I’m so glad that these memories have been immortalized in these ways with these incredible artists rendering it for all of us to see.’

“Seeing it at TIFF, something else happened, which was like, ‘Oh, wow. And now I’m sharing all of these things with 2,200 people.’ And I did not expect that. I will tell you, and I’ve said to many people, whether people think it’s naïve or shortsighted, I really thought, ‘Yeah, a few hundred thousand people may see this film in total.’ I grew up on indie films. I grew up in Miami going to places like O Cinema, and my mentor would take us to art films all the time here in the cinema. So it was something that we were used to even when the blockbusters like ‘Bad Boys’ were being made here, we were still watching ‘Before Night Falls.’

“So I was used to that and thought, ‘This is going to be a great addition to that.’ It blew my mind to see that it was going beyond that, that it was pushing past that, that this was going to be seen by maybe millions of people. I don’t know that I’ve still come to full terms with that. It’s the reason why I look shocked and surprised when people want to talk to me about the film even now.”

‘Moonlight’: from left: Alex R. Hibbert, Mahershala Ali, 2016. David Bornfriend/ A24 /Courtesy Everett Collection

On Mahershala Ali’s Oscar-Winning Performance as Juan in “Moonlight”

“Mahershala and I crossed paths prior to ‘Moonlight’ because he was supposed to be in my play ‘In the Red and Brown Water.’ He is an incredible actor and was on stage then, and we were trying to get him into this play, and he sent me this note saying he’s so sorry he had to go do this other play and we couldn’t do it. So we ended up not working together on that, but I admired his work and loved seeing him on stage and on television as well. At the time, he was filming two or three shows.

“So when it came to the moment where Barry said, ‘Hey, here’s who we’re going to for Juan,’ I said, ‘Yeah, that’ll do.’ I always felt like it made sense, and the character clearly is based on someone who made a deep influence on my life as a young person. So there was no doubt in my mind that Mahershala would be extraordinary.”

On Naomie Harris’ Oscar-Nominated Performance as Paula in “Moonlight”

“It was incredible. She had about three or four days on set to film all of that. I didn’t know Naomie before, but she is an incredible artist who came in and just went, and it was extraordinary to watch. Sometimes it was hard to watch because she just went to this place where — that character couldn’t be more not like her. And especially in the earlier moments where she really embodies a lot of what my mother stood for, and then in the decline that she has in the film, some of the terror that my mother was going through. Thankfully, Barry kept the reconciliation that happens in the film that was in the script. He kept that and actually built on it in a way that was really gorgeous and really beautiful. So I was ever grateful for her portrayal, for going there, because she could have played it safe and she didn’t.”

On the Visual Legacy of “Moonlight”

“At the time, when we were both making and premiering the film, the democratizing, or the ability for folks to make film or visual depictions has exploded. In fact, the next film that I did make was shot on an iPhone. So the ability for people to make visual depictions and reach towards cinematic success became more palpable or more accessible. There were a lot of folks who were going, ‘Well, if those folks can do that, I can do this.’ And that was really extraordinary. I had tons of people write and say, ‘This made me go to film school. This made me take up cinematography in a way. This made me become a photographer.’ Literally, I have so many friends who just went, ‘Yeah, I write, but now I’m also a photographer, and I take it seriously, and I’m really about visual lenses.’ So that’s been extraordinary.

“That impact, a lot of it for me was being able to say, ‘Hey, I needed to make this film because I needed to see myself, or at least parts of myself that I wasn’t seeing.’ And I think a lot of folks went, ‘Yeah, I need to do the same.’ And I am grateful for that. And that happens: Films come along and do that. Films come along, or songs come along, or something happens in art where people go, ‘Oh, that artist really needed to see that depiction of themselves. I feel that, too, and want to do the same.’ So again, it was a gift to me that it is happening for other folks.

“When you think of a depiction of Black folk, specifically Black queer folks, there is a level of intimacy that the film has that folks recognized as ‘Oh wow, you can get that vulnerable on a subject that isn’t often seen.’ And again, when I say vulnerable, I mean the closeness of the shots, the deep peering into eyes that we hadn’t seen before. We’ve done that on tons of film. If you go back and look at some of the noir, you can get tons of close-ups of X, Y, and Z, but you watch things like ‘Ordinary People,’ and you see just how close and intimate, into the heat, that the camera gets. There are, of course, examples of those rituals like the baptism that happens to Chiron/Little by Juan, but they’re fewer and far between. The film is saying, ‘Hey, you can get closer to this and do more of it.’ And there’s a lot of filmmakers who have found their ideology, their way in through that, and found their own unique stamp to put on it, which is extraordinary.”

Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney – Writing (Adapted Screenplay) – ‘Moonlight’Stephen Lovekin/WWD/PMC

On “Moonlight” Entering the Best Adapted Screenplay Category — Even Though the Play Was Never Produced

“‘Fences’ is a play and then was adapted into a film, and so Adapted made sense. Again, you take a short, and you turn it into a feature length, and that’s an adaptation too. So it felt right to be there, for sure. Barry did really make it into a feature.

“The original script told this story in a very circular way, meaning you woke up and you realized that you would see the day going on of Little, Chiron, and Black all at once. So you would see one wake up, wash their face, the other get up, wash their face. At some point you realized that this was one life that you were watching. Barry thought, ‘No, we can chapter this out and make this more linear.’

“And then, he, of course, blew up that last 20 to 30 minutes of the film. [It] is an incredible Barry Jenkins lean-in, but peppering tons of shit that I do in my own life. I was like, ‘How did you…’ So yeah, adaptation, absolutely. It was incredible to collaborate with him on that, and I wish we could do it more.”

On Whether “Moonlight” Is Too Enmeshed with the Best Picture Mix-Up with “La La Land”

“It’s one of those things that just is. It’s like in the story, Juan disappears out of Little’s life, and it is just one of those things that is.

“And I don’t think that has tarnished the film in any way. The film is still the film. But yeah, it happened, and I’m grateful for however it manifested. I can’t undo it.

“I remember saying this to my friend Jeremy Pope — not just talking about this, but just life in general — I said, ‘Jay, if you don’t count it all joy, then you won’t stop counting.’ You have to count it all as joy. Every time you have to count it all joy, and it feels like one of those counts. You just count it all joy that we are headed towards this direction, that we’re 10 years out, and that this film that a lot of wonderful people put a lot of incredible work into was recognized in many ways.”