“I think what's unique about this biopic and about Bob [Marley’s] story is that it really wasn't about his ego, it wasn't about him trying to be the biggest star in the world. It was about him connecting with God. I mean, he would smoke weed to kind of lower his ego and raise his consciousness so that he could read scripture, right? He would take these basic concepts: love thy neighbor, all people are equal, and try and channel that and inhabit that,” says Frank E. Flowers, co-writer of Bob Marley: One Love.
On today’s episode, I speak to Frank E. Flowers and Terence Winter about taking on reggae icon Bob Marley (Kingsley Ben-Adir) for their new biopic, Bob Marley: One Love, also written by Zach Baylin and Reinaldo Marcus Green. After an assassination attempt on Marley and his wife Rita (Lashana Lynch) in 1976, Marley went to London in self-exile. It’s there Bob Marley and the Wailers recorded Exodus, which some consider to be the best album of the 20th century. With scattered flashbacks, the film mostly takes place from 1976 to 1978.
“With the screenplay, we talked a great deal about how to tell the story. It's obviously a big life and a huge canvas and certainly, you could do the cradle-to-grave version where this happened, that happened, etc. But I'm always a fan of opening a movie as hot as possible, like start with an incident that just grabs you and is undeniably compelling and we both obviously arrived at the biggest incident in the movie in that sense is the shooting which is just horrific and feels like it kind of comes out of nowhere. It also lent itself to the classic structure of the Hero's Journey where our hero is shot, has this incident that happens in his home and then has to leave home and learn about himself before he comes back home again,” says Terence Winter.
I also talk to Winter about writing The Wolf of Wall Street, The Sopranos and one of my favorite shows, Xena: Warrior Princess. He also talks about the downside of writing for a dolphin when he worked on the show Flipper. “There were only 10 stories in the world that organically involve a dolphin. When you get to the eleventh one and then you look at each other like what do we do now?” says Winter.
To hear more, listen to the podcast.