237 | Malcolm Washington & Virgil Williams (The Piano Lesson) On Adapting August Wilson's Pulitzer-Winning Masterpiece

Listen to this episode from The Screenwriting Life with Meg LeFauve and Lorien McKenna on Spotify. JOIN TSL WORKSHOPS: https://tslworkshops.circle.so It's no secret that plays and movies are entirely different mediums, so how do you give the cinematic treatment to a play as celebrated as "The Piano Lesson" by Pulitzer Prize-winning August Wilson? From the start, co-writer and director Malcom Washington came in with a very specific take on the material, and was incredibly grateful when Oscar-nominated "Mudbound" co-writer Virgil Williams came on board to help nurture that take on the page. In today's conversation, you'll hear how the two of them wrote together in the desert, creating a routinized approach to the material, while still leaving space for discovery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices