The crowd let out a monstrous applause just before the private screening of Fruitvale Station inside Oakland’s Grand Lake Theatre. The majority of the audience then turned away from the screen, toward the back left corner of the room, to honor Oscar Grant’s mother; I saw her acknowledge the crowd with a wave in return.

People then took their seats and the movie started; opening with the footage of Oscar Grant III being shot in his back at point blank range by a transit officer on New Years Day 2009 on the platform of BART’s Fruitvale Station.

The movie then backtracks, to tell the story of the 24 hours that lead up to Grant’s death; a turbulent series of events that depict Oscar as a father, a friend, an unemployed weed smoking ex-convict, and a son who obeyed his mother’s wish that he take the train instead of driving on that fateful evening.

Watching the movie Fruitvale Station, in Oakland– It was like something out of a movie.

I worked these streets as a journalist during the Oscar Grant protests in Oakland. I wrote about the court case in Los Angeles. And during an interview, I once asked former Mayor Ron Dellums about the possibility of changing the name of Fruitvale Station to “Grant Station”.

That was during the summer of ‘09. Four years later, this story has hit Hollywood.

Lead actor Michael B. Jordan, who gained notoriety in his role on the hit series The Wire, and Academy Award winning actress Octavia Spencer, were two names that brought Hollywood credibility to the project; And their performances did nothing but garner more respect.  And what makes the story even better, is the storyteller: Director Ryan Coogler, who grew up in Oakland and Richmond.

All of the aforementioned contributors, plus many more, were in the house for a star-studded Oakland affair.  I sat in a row with two cameramen from the local Fox affiliate, Oscar Grant’s mother and sister in-law, three friends of mine, artists, and activists, who had all been involved in the Oscar Grant saga in some fashion.

The familiarity in the room made it feel like we were watching old family videos at times. When the movie showed people smoking on the BART train, one friend whispered: “We used to do that”  When the movie played Mack Dre’s “Feelin’ Myself”, another friend said: “Ah, that still SLAPS!”  And when the main character repetitively said “Bruh” during a dramatic moment, I thought to myself: “they’re overdoing this Oakland-lingo…Bruh.”

But I’d much rather see a movie that is overly representative of the genuine article than something that is completely manufactured in a studio in Hollywood. I’m glad they filmed it in Oakland.

I wasn’t completely impressed with the camera work, namely the action shots. They looked like documentary film shots. But maybe that was the idea—to tell a real graphic story in a real graphic way.

The usage of digital graphics to depict text message communication was ingenious. Everyone knew about the role the cell phone played in the Oscar Grant story, even the guy in the front row of the movie theatre: the guy whose phone rang while the movie was playing.

The crowd noticed the details in the film like they noticed that guy’s phone ringing. The theatre lit up when local celebrities made guest appearances on the train, in the store, at the hospital. Even the brief cameos resulted in some sort of reaction. It’s a thrill to see real life local people on the big screen. Then again, it’s a thrill to see a real life local story on the movie screen.

The two story Egyptian style neoclassical theatre served as a community gathering ground, a place where people shared a couple of light hearted laughs, a few romantic awwww’s, and the solemn silence of the final moments of Oscar Grants life; this time not on a cell phone screen, but on a silver screen.

When Fruitvale Station hits select theaters on July 12th, the world will know Oscar Grants story—the only question is: will they feel it the same way we did in Oakland? I hope so.

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