“Sing Sing” co-writers Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley virtually ignored the 2025 Oscar nominations — and it’s factor they didn’t.
The duo, together with John “Divine G” Whitfield and Clarence Maclin, are nominated for Greatest Tailored Screenplay. The function additionally acquired nods within the Greatest Authentic Music and Greatest Actor classes, with Colman Domingo touchdown his second consecutive Oscar nomination.
Kwedar and Bentley dropped by the IndieWire Studio at Sundance, introduced by Dropbox, to debate their newest function, “Prepare Goals.” However first, IndieWire movie editor Ryan Lattanzio needed to know the way it felt to be newly minted Oscar nominees.
“I didn’t wish to watch it,” Bentley mentioned of the nominations, which have been introduced in a livestream by Bowen Yang and Rachel Sennott. “I used to be packing to return right here [to Sundance], truly, and I used to be within the closet packing a suitcase, after which my spouse turned it on the TV and he or she’s like, ‘Simply don’t be an fool. Simply watch it.’ And it was my spouse and my son and I, and we watched it and I don’t know, we had no expectations, and so all of it simply felt like Christmas morning coming by. It’s superb. It’s loopy.”
Kwedar agreed, saying that he couldn’t consider he was an Oscar-nominated screenwriter now.
“I simply began weeping sort of uncontrollably within the airport, simply serious about the eight-and-a-half 12 months journey we’ve had with that film [‘Sing Sing’] and all of the people who we traveled with and simply attempting to get to a spot of gratitude earlier than realizing some end result that we had been additionally working in direction of,” Kwedar mentioned.
He later quipped, “I’m additionally at all times crying in airports and making folks uncomfortable, however then I used to be on a aircraft when it occurred, I didn’t have the web on, and I used to be simply sitting subsequent to some man in medical gross sales who was simply telling me about his job, and I didn’t say something about how momentous a morning it was that was unfolding. After we have been touchdown, I turned on my telephone. I used to be like, nicely, I feel I’m going to seek out out if I’m an Oscar nominee. He’s like, wait, what? And I had 150 textual content messages as I turned my telephone on, and actually, it took some time to even determine what occurred or what we have been nominated for.”
Nevertheless, there was one obtrusive omission within the nominations for “Sing Sing,” as IndieWire’s Lattanzio identified: Clarence Maclin, who’s nominated alongside Kwedar and Bentley for Greatest Tailored Screenplay, was snubbed for Greatest Supporting Actor. Maclin gained that title on the Gotham Awards, and has been acknowledged by different ceremonies for his performing debut.
“He’s received the perfect perspective of all of it,” Kwedar mentioned of his co-writer Maclin. “I imply, as soon as we have been even at Toronto in 2023, he was like, ‘Y’all, we did it. And all the pieces after that occurs is simply a part of the enjoyment and the experience.’”
Kwedar continued, “However I imply, if you consider it, like Gotham Award-winning actor, unbiased Spirit Award nominated to be nominated, and now he’s additionally an Oscar nominee due to the screenplay. And so he did get some stunning recognition that I truly simply hope allows him to make a profession out of this. I simply wish to preserve seeing what he creates and does as a performer.”
Forward of the Oscars, Kwedar and Bentley are selling their new function “Prepare Goals,” which made its world premiere at Sundance. “Prepare Goals” facilities on a day laborer, performed by Joel Edgerton, who’s constructing America’s railroads firstly of the twentieth century. The movie is a Dennis Johnson adaptation; Kwedar and Bentley beforehand introduced Johnson’s “Jockey” to the display screen.
Actor Edgerton mentioned in the course of the IndieWire Studio at Sundance that the “Prepare Goals” script virtually “felt virtually too good to be true.”
“These guys had performed such an exquisite job of turning fairly a difficult transition from the novella to a screenplay, provided that the story spans such an enormous breadth of time in a single man’s life,” Edgerton mentioned of the story and supply materials. “So I used to be very keen from the second that I used to be contacted about it, and all the pieces that occurred afterwards simply felt like the fitting step ahead.”
Edgerton teased that “Prepare Goals” was an unprecedented expertise on set for him.
“I like films that help you be taught new issues and get bodily, and I really feel good being on set in nature,” he mentioned. “I used to be actually drawn to this for these different causes as nicely. And there’s sure expertise and also you wish to just remember to’re doing issues simply so, and alongside the way in which, we’ve to actually take care as a result of we have been speaking about logging, and we clearly don’t wish to simply go in cavalier and begin presuming we might chop down a bunch of timber. So there was an actual artfulness truly within the consideration of how [writer/director] Clint captured these items. And but we have been doing it in ways in which we have been performed with sure methods and sure builds, and I imply caring for the character whereas additionally speaking about an trade that wasn’t fairly conscious of caring for that nature.”
Edgerton additionally spoke concerning the awards love for “The Brutalist,” which he was initially set to star in. Adrien Brody as a substitute leads the Oscar-nominated movie alongside Edgerton’s “Prepare Goals” co-star Felicity Jones.
“I’m not tender about it,” Edgerton mentioned of lacking out on “The Brutalist” position. “Truly, I’m completely satisfied for plenty of causes. There’s a protracted story as to why I’m not part of that movie, and so they’re the fitting causes. And it additionally signifies that I might sit again and recognize what [writer/director] Brady [Corbet] had achieved, what they’d all achieved. I feel it’s a rare movie, and I do know numerous filmmakers will take a look at that movie and go get excited for the explanations of the finances he made it for within the variety of days, which normal audiences gained’t, but it surely’s a double feat contemplating all that additional stuff. I used to be very impressed after I noticed it.”