The Stories We’re Missing with Franklin Leonard

Franklin Leonard I was definitely the kid who like, you know, I had an early bedtime and my parents were super strict and I thought I was getting away with something because I had a flashlight and I would like be under the covers reading a book. And only in adulthood did I realize like one, if I fell asleep and my parents woke me up the next morning, they clearly saw the book and the flashlight and put two and two together, but also like the flashlight never ran out of batteries. And so clearly my parents were like replacing the batteries in this flashlight so that I could read after bedtime. Which is an interesting like lesson for me I think you know when I become a parent that is definitely a framework I will deploy for my own benefit as a parent for sure.

Michael Feigelson It took Franklin years to realize the flashlight wasn’t the story, the batteries were. One of those situations where the standout performance from a supporting actor makes the movie special. Where the question of who the story is about changes over time until suddenly it clicks.

This podcast begins with a simple idea: when a baby is born, a parent is also born. And in that transition, just like their babies, parents’ brains and bodies team up to help them learn and adapt at high velocity, developing a set of skills and perspectives valuable for their kids and for society as a whole.

This is Birth of a Parent, and today’s guest is Franklin Leonard. Franklin has spent much of his life thinking about stories. Which stories get told, which ones don’t, and who gets to decide.

He’s best known as the founder of The Black List, the annual survey of Hollywood’s most-liked unproduced screenplays. The Black List has helped bring films like Juno, The King’s Speech, and Slumdog Millionaire to the screen.

So after speaking to Richard Reeves in our last episode about the evolving scripts for parenthood, Franklin seemed like the perfect person to ask a question I’ve had on my mind, why the parenthood stories we see on TV and in the movies often feel so flat.

Michael Feigelson I want to start with Franklin the child, before Hollywood, before movies when you were a kid, what were the first stories that really left a deep impact on you?

Franklin Leonard So I think the funny thing about the fact that I now work in film and television is the fact when I was a kid, I was not really allowed to watch much movies or TV. My parents were very strict, you know, my dad was in the army, my mom was a teacher, they had very high expectations of me and my siblings and TV wasn’t really a part of it. And we had spent three years in Germany when I as five to about eight, so it wasn’t like we were going out to movies as often. So I think a lot of my early stories were books. Like I have a very specific memory of The Giving Tree as a book that my mother would read me as a kid. And I feel like that imprinted very heavily.

Michael Feigelson What do you remember about The Giving Tree? What made it stick?

Franklin Leonard I remember it being very sad. And again, these are like these, maybe fictive memories, but I remember as a child thinking that the story was very sad that that there was something I wouldn’t have had the word for it at the time, but like mournful about somebody giving and giving and giving and continuing to give despite not getting anything in return. But also still understanding that that giving was a necessary feature of being a good person. And I think that was sort of echoed by my parents in just every aspect of my siblings and I’s childhood. It was like, you are very lucky. You have two parents. Your father’s a doctor who’s in the military. Your mom’s a teacher. You don’t really want for much. You were very loved. Like we as kids, there was no doubt that our parents loved us and that we had a safe place to return to no matter how scary or complicated the world was. And I think it was very clear to me and my siblings that because we had that, we had an obligation to provide that as much as possible for the people in our lives that we may clock that didn’t have that.

Michael Feigelson Franklin’s first memorable stories weren’t movies. In fact, some of the stories he remembers most vividly were not produced or even written. They were told without fanfare or ceremony almost in passing.

Michael Feigelson What about stories handed down in the family? You know, some families, mine included, there’s sometimes not done formally, but there are stories that get handed down to us because they’re told so often as inheritance as custodians? Are there any that were passed down to you?

Franklin Leonard So, my father’s father, who died in his 80s, but was literally born at the tail end of the 19th century in Columbus, Georgia, where we ended up moving after my devastation. In Germany, where my dad grew up. My dad was in the army. His mother died. We moved back from Germany and lived with my grandfather, who was at that point in his 80s, mid-80s, legally blind, but lived on his own. And we lived with him, I think, for like roughly the first nine months when we were back in the States. And I have very distinct memories of sitting with my younger brother as he told us stories about playing baseball in the Negro Leagues, specifically the time he beat Satchel Paige. Now I have no idea if that’s true or not. Like Satchell Paige, legendary Negro League pitcher who played in the major leagues is in the baseball hall of fame. And my grandfather who apparently played baseball for a black army baseball team when he was a cook in the army, beat satchel page as a pitcher. No idea if that’s true or not, but that was the story that my brother and I definitely hung on to. You know, my mom’s mom, who is currently 108 years old, still with us, um, wasn’t terribly inclined to telling those stories, but from time to time, you know, she would let slip a story about her parent or her grandparent. They grew up in the mid Atlantic region, like Virginia, that area, and a lot of those were stories about navigating around racism, navigating around the Klan. I think her grandfather was a doctor who basically was kidnapped by the Klan to treat one of their members who had accidentally shot himself. It was stuff like that. And again, some of that stuff is almost definitely apocryphal, but I do remember in those stories sort of taking from it, the world is complicated, the world is not hospitable to you, but through some combination of wit and capability and intelligence, you can navigate it and play it to your own advantage.

Michael Feigelson Franklin wasn’t sure these stories were entirely true. His grandfather beating Satchel Page? A doctor being kidnapped by the Klan? But these stories weren’t only about what happened. They were about how to move through the world, and every family passes down lessons like that. Sometimes as stories, sometimes simply by example.

Michael Feigelson One of the topics of this podcast is around the story we tell about parenthood. And I was wondering about motherhood and fatherhood stories that you recall, it could be yours, could be others, but which mom or dad characters kind of stuck with you.

Franklin Leonard I don’t have kids yet, but my younger brother and younger sister both have three. And I think about my parents a lot in the context of the fact that I am currently the age that my father was when I left for college. But I have lived the entire life that they had lived through the process of raising me. And I think about what it was like being two black parents in the deep south in the late 80s and early 90s, raising three kids. And I’m sort of in awe of it. But I don’t know that they spent that much time thinking about those things. I think for them it was, let me make sure they’re doing well in school. Let me make sure they’ve got all of these other sort of enrichment opportunities that will give them the widest aperture on the world as possible. And then beyond that, let me make sure these kids are safe and fed and whatever. So I don’t really have a lot of recollection of those things, but I do have like, you know, just incredibly warm memories about being taken care of. And so I guess my references for motherhood and fatherhood are just my mother and my father, and you know, I’m 47 now, I’ve seen a lot of versions of it both in fiction and in person, and I still feel like they are two of the strongest references for those roles that I can imagine.

Michael Feigelson The stories Franklin inherited from his parents all seemed to point in the same direction. Be kind, pay attention, and look beyond the obvious.

In 2005, while working in Hollywood, Franklin started emailing people in the industry a simple question: what was the best screenplay you’d read all year that still hadn’t been made?

He made a list, sent it around, went on holiday, and, when he came back, the list had gone viral. Something that was much harder back in the day. This became an annual ritual and eventually a successful business called The Black List.

Michael Feigelson The premise of The Black List was underestimated talent, do you remember the first one where you read and thought this is amazing and there’s no way this is getting made and it’s a tragedy?

Franklin Leonard There were a ton of scripts like this. I mean, I remember reading Juno, the Diablo Cody script that ended up being number two on the Black List and ended up winning best original screenplay, and thinking, this is a really funny, really well-written screenplay, and this is from someone who is a proper new voice. But at the end of the day, it was a comedy about a high school student who gets pregnant and is trying to decide whether she wants to have an abortion. And at least in that form, it was very difficult to imagine how it was going to sort of become a movie. You know, Lars and the Real Girl number three on the first Black List. I remember getting recommended that script by a friend. It’s about a young man who buys a sex doll to get over some sort of emotional trauma after feeling like it’s girlfriend. And I remember thinking, okay, that sounds terrible. And they were like, no, it’s amazing. That’s the thing. And I read it and I was, you know, sort of giving the same speech the next day. It sounds like it should be awful, but it’s incredible. And again, you read that and you’re like, I have no idea how this is going to get made, you there’s a lot of assumptions about what. Audiences are willing to see. And I think the reality is that audiences are interested in great stories well told more than they’re interested in any specific story.

Michael Feigelson And that’s the Black List, which I think you’ve described as a metal detector for overlooked value. Can you briefly say what that means and how you do it? Sort of what kind of overlooked value are you looking for and what’s the method to not get trapped in conventional wisdom?

Franklin Leonard Yeah, so the annual blacklist, it’s really just a survey of the industry’s most liked unproduced screenplays. And we’re asking people to list up to 10 of their favorite unproduced scripts every year. We aggregate that list and then we share it. So really what that means is that the scripts on the list are things that haven’t gotten made yet, but are beloved by a large number of people who read scripts professionally. But oftentimes, there’s not a clear high concept idea, there’s nothing that conforms to the conventional wisdom about what an industry success will be. That list ends up being a high predictor of success, I think, because people are choosing the things that are on it because they loved them, not just because they think that they’re going to make a lot of money. And it turns out that the things people love, because they love them, also have a pretty good chance of making a lot of money. In fact, there was a Harvard Business School study that found that movies made from on the annual Black List make 90% more in revenue than movies made from scripts not on the annual blacklist, controlling for all other factors.

Michael Feigelson And do you have a personal metal detector? Is there something, because you’re sort of saying that it’s unconventional and people you respect love it. Is there something that goes off in you that tells you this is a great story or this is a great writer that you can sort of feel really quickly?

Franklin Leonard Yeah, I mean, it’s sort of like the Supreme Court’s definition of pornography: “You know, when you see it.” I know that a script is something special when at the end of it, I’m a little bit sad that I can’t spend more time in that world with those characters. I think the other thing while I’m reading it is that I tend to start turning the pages more quickly because I want to find out what happens next. And that doesn’t mean that it’s like the world is about to explode or it is that there are emotional stakes that draw me through the story. And I think if you can do those two things, make my brain crave to know what happens to these characters? What happens to these people? What happens in this world? And then when it’s over, I’m like, yeah, it’s just like, I wish I could spend more time with these characters. I wonder what happens to them after X, Y, or Z, that’s when I know that there’s something special there.

Michael Feigelson The Black List exists because sometimes the people in charge don’t recognize value before it’s obvious. Franklin built a career around that idea, which made him an interesting person to talk to about parenthood, a story and an identity where I think there’s a lot of unrealized value just waiting for someone to pay attention.

Michael Feigelson The season begins with a simple idea, a phrase that we keep repeating, which is “when a baby is born, a parent is also born.” And I’m curious, as someone who hopes to be a father one day, what happens in your mind when you hear that framing?

Franklin Leonard Yeah, that makes total sense to me. Yeah, your life changes when you have a child. And the changes that happen are unlike any other changes that you’ve had in your life. So that tracks for me 100%.

Michael Feigelson And do you see this framing as a good sort of marketable strategy for stories about parenthood?

Franklin Leonard I do actually, yeah, I think that fundamentally, look, the best stories are usually about people in transition. And I talk about a lot about this in terms of biopics, traditional biopics are sort of cradle to grave stories. A person was born here. They do all of these things and then they die. The best biopics are really about an inflection point where sort of everything prior to that moment is obvious and everything after that moment is obvious too, and you’re catching a person becoming the thing. And I think that this notion of what does it mean to become a parent? How does that change your worldview beforehand and where does it leave you as you sort of begin the process? So I guess you’re constantly becoming, but like to identify those periods of transition, those inflection points, or I think, that’s what capital D drama is.

Michael Feigelson Franklin’s instinct is that the most interesting stories begin at the moment somebody starts becoming someone else. Parenthood certainly qualifies. The strange thing is that for the last couple centuries, science paid remarkably little attention to what that transformation actually looks like. So I decided to share with Franklin some of the things I learned in earlier episodes of this podcast to see how they would land with him.

Michael Feigelson One of the big changes, and here I’m gonna talk about, in particular, mothers who get pregnant and give birth. We spoke to a neuroscientist named Susana Carmona, who was one of the first people with her colleagues to publish a study on the impact of pregnancy on the brain, which you may or may not be surprised to learn came out in 2017, so this is a very new area of research. In fact, we knew far more about the brains of cab drivers in London than we did about pregnant women at that time.

Franklin Leonard Yeah, sadly not shocking.

Michael Feigelson And it’s changing, but what struck me is that culturally motherhood is often narrated as ‘decline’ or ‘depletion’. There’s this meme around mommy brain, but what she found was something very different, which was that the maternal brain during pregnancy and postpartum is more plastic than any time since one is a baby, more than adolescents. So I’m curious for you thinking about this, how does this alternative story land?

Franklin Leonard I mean, it honestly lands as very exciting and I hope that writers sort of take advantage of that as fodder for screenplays and television shows. I mean look, it is not too far of a leap to talk about sort of that period of motherhood as superhero dome. And this idea, you know, you don’t need to be bitten by a spider in order to develop superpowers, you might just be pregnant and have superpowers as a result of that. And it’s not hard to imagine a superhero going through that transition of life. And look, there are films that have sort of flirted with that, right? I’m thinking of Nightbitch, the Marielle Howard movie adapted from the Rachel Yoder novel that I think is sort of a literalizing of that, sort of this animal self, et cetera. But I feel like there’s probably a bunch of movies that could be built just based on that single data point of information. And I hope people do, because that could really be cool.

Michael Feigelson What do you think the superpowers would be?

Franklin Leonard I’m particularly intrigued by this notion of brain plasticity and the ability to learn, but all of the other sort of animalistic ideas about protection and, and strength and capacity for pain, survival, all of these things that are a bit cliche, but I’ve never seen them knit together in such a way that that speaks about pregnant women or new mothers as literal superheroes, even though I think when we all sit down and think about it, really they are. I mean, they literally created and gestated life. I don’t know what greater superpower there is in humankind than that.

Michael Feigelson I loved Franklin’s reaction and thought it was quite telling. Presented with evidence of change, he didn’t see loss, not even for a second. He saw new capabilities, superpowers. Franklin’s point was that we’ve gotten used to telling the story backwards and I wanted to surprise him further. Motherhood is not the only example.

Michael Feigelson Another guest, Lee Gettler, is a professor of human biology, anthropology and Notre Dame. And he studies how men’s bodies change when they take care of babies. And he’s particularly well known for showing a dramatic decrease in testosterone when men become fathers and get really involved. And some of this is related to the infamous ‘dad bod’ because we process fatmore slowly, but there are other reasons that have to do with lifestyle. But it’s difficult to communicate this to men sometimes. And I’m curious, as a man, are you prepared emotionally for evolution to look at you and say, you know what, this man needs slightly lower testosterone and less visible abs. Is that something that is appealing?

Franklin Leonard I mean, it’s been a very long time since I had visible abs. So I don’t know if there’ll be a market change if we’re being honest. But no, look, it sounds like a pretty good trade to me. Yeah. Slightly lower testosterone to be a good dad. Sure. Great. Let’s do it.

Michael Feigelson And do you have any thoughts about how to talk about that as a good thing? Because oftentimes it lands especially for men who are particularly concerned about their masculinity in a way that has the opposite of the intended effect.

Franklin Leonard It’s an interesting question. I will admit that I don’t really understand a lot of the discourse around masculinity in 2026 because the things that are being praised as being manly or as definitionally masculine run very counter to the definition of masculinity and manhood that I grew up with. But I think that being a man is about being self possessed. It’s about recognizing the feelings and safety of the people around you, contributing to the wellbeing and the feelings of safety and security of everyone in your family, in your community, and just in general. And I feel like a lot of the discourse around masculinity right now is not that. It’s about power and aggression and things like that. I don’t understand it. Again, I think it’s because I grew up with a model of masculinity, and my father, who was both a Colonel in the army, but also a neonatologist who had to have by virtue of his role, a softness and an instinct towards caretaking, there’s nothing more masculine, nothing more manly to me than that. So when I look at fathers who are engaged in their children’s lives, who can both be the protector and the caretaker, that to me is the goal. The goal is to be the kind of person that like, if God forbid something goes down, you can sort of step up and everybody get behind me. But when your kid is sobbing, you can also sit with them and maybe you tear up too. And they see that, oh, okay, me feeling sad is not something wrong with me. Everybody feels sad. And now I feel safe in my own emotions. That to me, I think is what masculinity is. And so I really have a hard time being like, oh, testosterone goes down, that’s bad. I don’t know, does it make me a better dad? Great, then I’m more of a man than I was before. I’m not a man because of my, you know, my T-levels.

Michael Feigelson He described it as making him more patient and calm, especially in moments like in the middle of the night when the baby’s got colic and he just can’t anymore.

Franklin Leonard Yeah. What’s more manly than that? To just handle business and to do it calmly and with care and to not cause stress to the people in your life. And again, that to me is the definition of manlyhood. Whatever chemicals need to be in my body to make that happen. Great. Let’s do it.

Michael Feigelson Franklin rejects the trade-off, not strength or care, protection or tenderness. For him, the job description includes both. But stories, sometimes out of necessity, tend to simplify people.

Michael Feigelson The last finding I want to share of the parent’s story is Richard Reeves, who argues that the modern fatherhood is being reinvented in real time, at least in Western society, and that the old scripts no longer fully work, but the new ones also haven’t settled, and so men are still searching for what fatherhood’s going to be in this century. And curious as someone who thinks about stories and identity, what kinds of stories about fatherhood would you hope emerge from that search, from that exploration?

Franklin Leonard I think we need more stories about fatherhood, period. I wanna see models for what it means to be a good father. I mean, look, the sort of paradigmatic fatherhood movie, I think even still, probably over the last 25 years is Taken, right? Daughter gets taken, I have a special set of skills that happen to be violence, and I’m going to rescue my daughter. And fair play, loved the movie, thoroughly enjoyed it. I think a movie like Aftersun, is a really special film that talks about the nature of fatherhood. I would like to see movies about what it means to be a good father and a good partner, right? Like a sort of equal partner, where it’s not I’ve been absent and I pay for that absence by rescuing somebody when they get kidnapped, but what it mean to be the shoulder that my child cries on, that what it meant to be, you know, the person that lionizes that, that celebrates that as, again, definitionally masculine. And I think that the more Hollywood can sort of talk about all of those things, not just: absent father provides physical protection or: single father is inept and slowly becomes capable. What are all those models of fatherhood that are out there? Because I think we’d all benefit from seeing them.

Michael Feigelson The fathers Franklin described are not amateurs or action heroes. They’re men trying to figure things out. Which raises a question. Is the trend towards these simpler stories a function of culture, business acumen, or something else?

Michael Feigelson You say Hollywood is a lot of convention, not enough wisdom, which to me is a cause of flattening stories. But I wanted to ask first, if you think this statement applies to parenthood, and if there are any reasons that are unique to parenthood that explain this, or if they’re just the same reasons that apply to the rest of the industry.

Franklin Leonard Yeah, I mean, I think the way I usually talk about it is, um, you know, conventional wisdom is usually convention, not wisdom. And I think that that really applies to a lot of the decisions that are made about what gets made in Hollywood, right? Like audiences want X and don’t want Y. Like those assumptions are usually based on convention, not wisdom. I think that flattening is inevitable for anything, because we’re talking about the transition of stories to a capitalist business that requires a great deal of capital to make the movies. So you have people trying to make assessments about like, okay, what do audiences globally and in the United States want? And so I have to make a series of assumptions or a series of claims about what audiences want in order to make decisions about what I want to invest large amounts of money, tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars, right? So I think some flattening is inevitable. I think there’s probably slightly more flattening when it comes to stories of parenthood. And I think gender is probably one of the big reasons why. I think that when we think about parenthood still in 2026 and unfortunately probably beyond, we still default to motherhood. When it comes the question certainly of like, parenthood as caretaking of children that is still believed to be, you know, women’s work, if you will, or primarily women’s work. And whenever that is true, just like most stories about women in Hollywood, you see increased flattening relative to stories about men, and that’s because, you know, if you look at the number of studio movies that are directed by women, it’s below 15%, which is crazy. So I think that’s probably the main reason why. I think there’s a gender thing happening there. That would be the speculation for me.

Michael Feigelson Franklin’s explanation focused on the industry. Who gets to tell stories? Which stories get funded? Whose experiences are treated as universal? But what about the story itself?

Michael Feigelson One colleague said, is it harder to show the internal world? So, so much of the transformation happens inside, the person is not outside in this case, unlike a child who’s visibly growing. Could that be a reason?

Franklin Leonard Yeah, I think as a reasonable assessment of the medium that parents aren’t growing, therefore it is more difficult to show the ways in which they are changing. We do a pretty good job though of showing major transitions on screen emotionally. You can externalize them, you can sort of turn them into big external changes. I think Nightbitch is a great example of this, where you’re seeing physical changes from the character. I would definitely attribute it more to the gender bias thing in the industry, but that’s not wrong, is that we’re talking about internal changes more than external changes.

Michael Feigelson Before speaking to Franklin, I had never heard of the movie Nightbitch. But after hearing him bring it up twice, I decided to check it out. The movie is about a stay-at-home mom who begins to believe she is turning into a dog.

At first, I was a bit hesitant because I suspected it might be a film that focuses on how debilitating and raw early parenthood can be. And I’ve seen that story many times, on the screen, in my work. And frankly, in my own life.

And while I think it’s important to bring that reality into the light, I also wanna see stories that get beyond the obstacle, the burden, that honor the incredible learning and transformative potential of parenthood.

Now, no spoilers here, but as it turns out, Nightbitch did all of this and more, and in ways that I was definitely not expecting. But, it still feels like an exception. And I was left wondering why.

Michael Feigelson There’s a trend in stories about parenthood that’s really focused on how hard it is and the kind of the suffering or the unrealistic expectations, which I understand as a reaction to the lack of support and very high expectations that parents feel. Makes a lot of sense. But it also feels to me like it’s becoming a new kind of trope in a way. And I’m wondering if you see any risk of doubling down on that version of the story.

Franklin Leonard It’s understandable why those are the versions of the stories that get told in film and TV, right? Like the whole premise of most film and television is character obstacle success, right, or success or failure, like that’s sort of the nature of drama in the Western canon. How do you triumph over a challenge and how great is that challenge? And so if you’re going to talk about parenthood, you have to present it as a challenge. You have to present it as a hard thing. Certainly we all know that, yes, it’s not the easiest thing that anybody goes through, but also that with it comes great joy. But I think the reason why it’s talked about that way in our entertainment is because that is sort of the basic structure of most entertainment. Protagonists > challenge > how do they triumph over it? That’s just the structure of those things. And so if you’re going to do a story about parenthood or that involves parenthood, you’re gonna talk about it as being hard. And if you’re going to talk about it as being a challenge, how do you set the challenge that seems insurmountable for the character and therefore it is, you know, fulfilling when they do rise above it.

Michael Feigelson Yeah, maybe it’s a question of diversifying the range of things that are presented as challenges.

Franklin Leonard I think that’s probably right. And I think it’s probably also about adding parenthood to these typical stories as not the focus. So that doesn’t have to be the challenge that has to be overcome. It’s just like the, the, the oxygen in the room for that’s while all these other things are happening. And by the way, you can present then those things as challenges, but they’re not the main challenge, right? It may make other things more challenging because you have a child. But also it’s opportunities for comedy and absurdism, all these other things. But again, I think that’s just the nature of capital D drama is that everything needs to make things harder for the protagonist. Otherwise, you probably shouldn’t have those things in the plot itself.

Michael Feigelson And here we are, back to the batteries, the best supporting actor. A story that takes a little more time to notice, but once you’ve seen it, it starts to grow. We can have stories where the protagonist is the new mom or dad, but we can also have stories where they’re the oxygen, part of the atmosphere, a force that shapes the story, even when the story appears to be about something else.

Michael Feigelson Hello? Hello?
Mom Hi? Hi, Mike.
Michael Feigelson Hi, where are you?
Mom I’m in the garden, planting.
Michael Feigelson Planting. What are you planting?
Mom Flowers.
Michael Feigelson Are you hydrating?
Mom Of course, and I have my water bottle right here with me, thank you.
Michael Feigelson I’m talking to someone who told me a story about when he was little reading books under the covers with a flashlight after bedtime.
Mom Ha! That sounds familiar.
Michael Feigelson He thought his parents didn’t know.
Mom Oh, that’s cute.
Michael Feigelson Why? Why is that cute?
Mom Because every parent knows…
Michael Feigelson Knows what?
Mom Much more than their kids think.
Michael Feigelson You think that’s the secret of parenting?
Mom No, no, no.
Michael Feigelson What’s the secret?
Mom The secret is pretending that you don’t know.

Michael Feigelson According to my mom, that’s the real trick. Not knowing everything, just knowing a little more than your children think you do. It’s funny because this also seems to be what Franklin is really good at in his professional life. Not knowing every thing, but knowing a little more about what, or who, is likely to make a good story than the rest of the industry.

Michael Feigelson If you could green light a few new variations on the transition to parenthood or transition to fatherhood? What would they be? What are the ones that you would most want to see personally?

Franklin Leonard I have to be honest, I don’t know the answer and I don’t know the answer because I try very hard not to have clear ideas of the kinds of movies and TV that I’m looking for. What I’m most interested in is great filmmakers, like the filmmakers who I love telling their version of those kinds of stories. So like Moonlight is one of my favorite examples of this. And I think of that as a parenthood story. And the reason I could not have told you, “oh, I’d love to see a surrogate parenthood story about a young gay black teen in Florida.” Wouldn’t have known to ask for that. But when Barry Jenkins tells the story of parenthood, you get something incredible. And so for me, it is much less about I would like stories like this, and more about I would these people to tell the stories of parenthood. Like, give me a Ryan Coogler movie about fatherhood.

Michael Feigelson What might that look like for someone who doesn’t know him?

Franklin Leonard Ryan Coogler directed Sinners, he wrote and directed Black Panther, he’s probably the greatest filmmaker under the age of 40 in this business. He is also a father. He has recently gone through the process of being a father, and if you’ve watched any of his interviews, the way that he talks about his wife and children, I have very little doubt that he is an excellent father and that his wife Zinzi is an incredible mother. But he’s also a black man who grew up in Oakland who played college football, but is also a filmmaker. I would love to see him direct a fatherhood story. I think that’s it for me is like, who are the filmmakers who are going to make extraordinary films about parenthood? That’s the thing I’m most excited about, more than I am about any particular film itself.

Michael Feigelson Nobody asked for Moonlight, nobody asked for Aftersun. The stories that change how we see something usually arrive before we know to ask for them. We just need to be attentive enough to see them when they emerge. And oftentimes, this means listening to new voices.

Michael Feigelson Do we need then stories about parenthood that are more in the realm of fantasy or science fiction or animation or about animals? Do we need to go there then?

Franklin Leonard The short answer is “yes”. And by the way, that’s true about everything. I think the reality is audiences will almost always be more receptive about talking about like ideas if they don’t realize that their ideas being talked about to them. Like give me the story of a race of aliens or give me this story of humanized emotions inside a child’s brain, right? Like those things where you feel like, oh, I’m just being entertained, no one’s preaching to me, no one is making an argument to me about the way the world should be or how I should feel about something. I’m just getting an entertaining story about something I can just sit back, relax and enjoy. And then whether you realize it or not, your brain cells are being rearranged and you walk out of the theater thinking differently about things, seeing the world differently, seeing yourself differently, seeing other people differently. That’s the goal in my mind.

Michael Feigelson Franklin’s favorite stories all seem to promise the same thing, a chance to inhabit a perspective that isn’t your own. And when he thinks about the future possibility of fatherhood for himself, this is also the feature he finds most compelling.

Michael Feigelson What makes you excited? There must be something that you imagine and get most excited about.

Franklin Leonard I’m really looking forward to the experience of seeing the world through wholly new eyes that are not my own. And then processing the world, through watching them have the experience of processing the whole world. The things that I take for granted, and I think at my age now, there’s a lot that I take for granted. Seeing all of it through new eyes will be incredible.

Michael Feigelson Plus going to soccer games together.

Franklin Leonard Yeah, but, you know, they might not be into soccer. Like that’s the other thing. My wife gives me a hard time about this all the time. Like, what are you gonna do if they don’t like soccer? And I think the answer is, is that I’ll be into whatever they’re into, right? And that I’m excited for too. I think it’s inevitable that my appreciation of this short little life will be increased.

Michael Feigelson I feel that I’m going to a K-pop concert in two weeks, so…

Franklin Leonard Exactly, exactly.

Michael Feigelson Might be soccer, might be K-Pop, Franklin seemed relaxed about either possibility. He’s looking forward to becoming interested in things he can’t yet imagine caring about, which may also be another way of describing ‘a good story’.

Franklin Leonard There’s this quote by Alan Rickman, RIP, that I feel like goes to all of this stuff, but it’s, “the more we’re governed by idiots and have no control over our destiny, the more need to tell stories to each other about who we are, why we are or where we come from and what might be possible.” And, who we are, why we are where we come from and what might be possible, those are fundamentally part of parenthood stories, right? In terms of like where we came from, obviously, but like why we exist, what are the things that happen in our childhood and in our early parenthood that guide everything else, that reach to everything else. And I think that the what might possible part is always the most interesting thing to me. But I think we’ve only seen a very narrow sliver of stories that can or should exist in the world. And I think the more we can see different kinds of stories about what is possible As parents as surrogate parents as communities, etc. I just think we’re all better off.

Michael Feigelson Franklin spends his life looking for stories that other people overlook. Maybe that’s why this conversation felt so important to me, because the transition to parenthood is a great story far too frequently overlooked.

It’s one of the biggest transformations that can take place in a human life. It is, as Franklin put it, capital D drama, but it’s also capital C comedy and capital A action, and at times. Capital H horror. It’s got it all and yet somehow we struggle to tell it well.

So to speak with someone who is known as a metal detector for good stories overlooked and to hear his enthusiasm for the birth of a parent, well, it felt good. It felt like this could become a good story well told. One where as you read it you turn the pages more quickly and when you get to the and you’re a little bit sad, because you’re gonna miss the characters.

Franklin helped us rethink the stories we tell about parents. And in our final episode, Alison Gopnik helps us think about the greatest storytellers of all, how they evolved and the unique superpowers with which they are blessed. Next week on Birth of a Parent, the grandmother hypothesis.

Alison Gopnik The very fact of grandmotherhood is a very distinctively human phenomenon. If you go back and you think about life history and you think about all those different animals, post-menopausal grandmothers, the fact that we continue to live for 20 years or so after we’re no longer fertile, is very distinctly human.

Michael Feigelson If you’d like to support this series, the best way is simply to follow Birth of a Parent on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. It really helps more people discover the show. Thanks for listening.