Ryan Coogler’s Journey to Oscar Gold Began in a Saint Mary’s Classroom

Even before the Academy Awards ceremony on March 15, when Ryan Coogler accepted the Oscar for Original Screenplay and his film Sinners received multiple awards, the Oakland-born writer and director had been on a legendary ride. The movie grossed over $369 million worldwide, garnered critical and audience acclaim, racked up trophies at numerous award ceremonies, and received 16 Oscar nominations, more than any other film in history. 

Sinners would make more history on Sunday night, too with its four Oscars. Autumn Durald Arkapaw became the first woman ever to win Best Cinematography. Composer Ludwig Göransson won Best Score for the third time. And Michael B. Jordan was awarded Best Actor, only the seventh Black actor ever to receive this honor.  

For Coogler, stepping up to the microphone to accept his first Oscar was overwhelming. “Please, please, please sit down, ’cause I’m very nervous and they’re gonna play me off,” he told the roaring crowd at the Dolby Theater, trying to subdue their standing ovation. "I grew up in Oakland and Richmond, California, and we can talk a lot.” Coogler went on to give a warm, brief speech, showering gratitude on his cast, his crew, his wife and creative partner Zinzi Coogler, his parents, and finally, his children. “When you’ve been blessed to live a long life, and Dad becomes just a memory, I want y’all to remember this one thing: I love y’all more than anything.”

Coogler is no stranger to critical and commercial success, of course. His previous films include Fruitvale Station, the wrenching, Oakland-set indie that took the Sundance Film Festival by storm; Creed, the beloved Rocky Balboa reboot; and Marvel’s Black Panther, one of the highest-grossing blockbusters of all time. Unlike those movies, though, Sinners was an original conception, rooted in Coogler’s family history. As he has explained throughout award season, the film is ultimately a tribute to his Uncle James, a blues musician from Mississippi who moved to live near their family in Richmond, California, when Coogler was 11. 

Something else Coogler has highlighted in recent months: Saint Mary’s. As a teenager, he attended Saint Mary’s College High School, a private Lasallian academy in Berkeley that was once part of the College itself. After graduating in 2003, he enrolled at Saint Mary’s College on a football scholarship, redshirting as a freshman wide receiver and intending to study Chemistry. As CBS Sports recently noted, Coogler was a real playmaker, one who seemed poised to join the Gael greats.

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In one sense, timing was not with Coogler. In the spring of 2004, Saint Mary’s announced that, due to budget constraints, the struggling football program would end. (Other Bay Area Catholic colleges and one-time rivals, including Santa Clara University and University of San Francisco, had closed their programs years or decades prior.) Coogler soon transferred to play football at California State University, Sacramento, where he went on to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in finance, then onto film school, then Sundance, then the Marvel Cinematic Universe… and now, the Academy Awards.

Sinners is historic in a number of respects, from its record-breaking number of Black artists nominated for Oscars to the rare deal Coogler secured to own the film’s rights by 2050 (a savvy move his former finance professors would no doubt celebrate). Of course, there might not be a Sinners at all if not for Coogler’s brief stint as a Gael. As he often recounts, it was Rosemary Graham, a longtime creative writing professor, who encouraged him to pursue filmmaking in the first place. 

“I’m standing here in front of you guys because an English professor, a creative writing professor at Saint Mary’s College named Rosemary Graham, read something that I wrote.”

— Oscar-winner Ryan Coogler

Lighting the flame

During his first year at SMC, Coogler and some football teammates took a writing course with Graham. One early assignment, he told the Los Angeles Times, was to recount an emotionally intense experience. Coogler wrote about a family medical emergency and submitted it, not thinking too much about it. Later, though, back in his dorm room, he got a call from Graham. “I want you to come to my office,” she said. 

“I thought I was in trouble for what I’d written, so I was a little nervous,” Coogler said. Entering Graham’s office in Dante Hall, he was met with an unexpected question: What do you want to do when you grow up? “I thought, ‘Oh, now I’m in all kinds of trouble.’”

He definitely was not. What immediately struck Graham about Coogler’s writing, she told KRON 4 News recently, was its vividness. “He knew how to tell a story, and the story involved a lot of visuals…It was almost like [there was] a camera in the room.”

At the time, Coogler was considering following his degree in Chemistry with medical school—assuming a career in football didn’t pan out. During that conversation, though, Graham encouraged him to lean into his gifts as a storyteller. “This is really visual; that’s rare to be able to do that,” she told him. “You should think about becoming a writer instead of a doctor. Maybe you could even go to Hollywood and write screenplays.”

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Graham’s words sparked something in Coogler. In Sacramento, he took numerous film classes and tried his hand at writing screenplays. During that time, too, his girlfriend and future wife, Zinzi, spurred him on his path, buying him the software Final Draft, the industry standard for screenwriters. In 2007, he began a master’s program at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, where he spent three years honing his craft and forging creative partnerships that he would bring to his feature debut, Fruitvale Station, and every film since.

While Coogler’s other work gestures toward Oakland, Fruitvale Station is the one most devoted to the beauty and pain of his hometown. It tells the true story of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old unarmed Black man who was shot and killed in 2009 at the city’s Fruitvale train station by a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer. The film, made for less than $1 million and starring Michael B. Jordan in a breakout role, swept the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Awards at Sundance. 

One of the earliest people to see that film and Sinners? His former creative writing professor.