BPS 168: How to Write for and Land a Movie Star for Your Indie Film with Shaye Ogbonna

As our Sundance Film Festival 2022 coverage we have on the show
today writer Shaye Ogbonna.

When not in pursuit of retro sneakers, Shaye Ogbonna can be found
worshiping at the Temple of Story. His most recent feature project
is the contemporary western feature GOD’S COUNTRY — starring the
incomparable Thandiwe Newton.

Based on a short story by acclaimed author James Lee Burke, God’s
Country is a character-driven thriller set in the snowy wilderness
of the American West. Thandiwe Newton plays Sandra Guidry, a Black
professor living and working in a rural college town. She’s also
grieving her recently-deceased mother, for whom she'd served as
primary caretaker. On the day of the burial, Sandra discovers a
mysterious red truck parked in her driveway.

She soon learns it belongs to a pair of local hunters seeking to
enter the forest behind her house. Sandra turns them away politely
but firmly – her experience tells her these are not the sort of men
to welcome freely into her world. But they won’t take no for an
answer, and soon Sandra finds herself drawn into an escalating
battle of wills that puts her most deeply-held values to the
test.

In the television/streaming space, Shaye is currently developing
JUMPMEN -- a one-hour drama set in the cutthroat world of the
sneaker industry – with Showtime. He is also staffed on Showtime’s
THE CHI and JJ Abrams’s DUSTER on HBO. His feature writing debut —
2017’s genre-bending LOWLIFE — opened the 2017 Fantasia Film
Festival and became a darling of the genre festival circuit,
culminating in its acquisition and worldwide distribution through
IFC Midnight.

Shaye’s creative mission is to center marginalized voices within
genre storytelling. Enjoy my conversation with Shaye Ogbonna.

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