Connor Petrey [Interviewer]

Super nice to meet you. I'm honored to have now seen the film. It's honestly in my top five of the year. It’s one of those films that really is striking. And on further viewings now, knowing how it ends, it's gonna provide more and more every time you watch it. 

 

A question regarding the first person perspective. We swap between the two leads. Was that always the plan from the beginning, when you were writing the scripts with your co-writer, were you planning on always doing the first person perspective? Or did that come secondary?

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RaMell Ross [Director / Co-Writer]

That was the original idea. And the first thing you have to ask yourself is if you're gonna do a film POV, who gets the POV? Going through that [process] being, like okay you don't wanna give it to everyone. Don't wanna give it to Hattie necessarily, as it would just be too crazy. Maybe we'll just give it to Elwood [Ethan Herisse] or what if it came to Tucker [Brandon Wilson]? Then we wrote from that perspective. So what you see is what was in the writing?

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Connor Petrey [Interviewer]

And what about the addition of third person with Daveed’s character. I was curious personally about if that was to make [the audience] have a blatant awareness that this is not from, like, one of [the leads]? Or, are you supposed to clue in that this is one of those two individuals?

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RaMell Ross [Director / Co-Writer]

Well, it has multiple registers…

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Connor Petrey [Interviewer]

I love THAT perspective. I don't know how you did that, but I love that shot!

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RaMell Ross [Director / Co-Writer]

You know like the Snorricam they used in Requiem for a Dream? Same thing, but on the back. Jomo [Fray] knows all the tricks of the trade. He's a pretty savvy dude. You know if you're gonna take having the camera be inside the body seriously and that's how the film is filmed then you have to ask yourself then what happens when you disassociate. When you go through a traumatic moment, you're separated from yourself. And so, you know, adult Elwood, who was Turner in the future, is not exactly himself, you know. 

 

And then also, it reads differently. It's also like, is it a ghost, you know? Is it Elwood haunting him? It has a couple of different registers.

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Connor Petrey [Interviewer]

Okay, I was definitely curious about that. And I was curious, I've spoken to a couple people that have adapted novels into films, and I'm always curious, when you went into that process with your co-writer [Joslyn Barnes] how was that process? Making it from the page of the book to script and then to screen? Was there any trouble with that, in knowing what to include in the film?

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RaMell Ross [Director / Co-Writer]

It's always hard because, especially the written word is not the visual world, you know. And films, I'm sorry, books, especially ones like Colson [Whitehead]'s, are built to be one that's self-referential. It's not one that's like, it's not a Jonathan Franzen book, you know, it's not David Foster Wallace. It's like, a really tight ecosystem of references and symbols and sort of inside jokes and so one thing that Joslyn Barnes and I started to do, or decided to do, was start from a visual approach, to go from the visual then to the verbal, as opposed to starting with a script. Then going to the visual. 

 

Because then, if you start with images and then you go to language, then the languages are a servant to the visuals. But if you do the script before you do the visuals, then the visuals are a servant to the script. And that's a different type of translation and reduction.  

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Connor Petrey [Interviewer]

I love that answer… and I was talking to Brandon [Wilson] about the hug shot in particular and how  that worked with the rigging system? From an outsider's perspective, not knowing anything about the camera rig and everything, how was that done? Where she was able to hug him, so close to the camera? It was kind of on the side, and it kind of felt like it was genuine, especially that it's done twice in a row. You kind of get that, like, claustrophobia from the hug. 

 

I guess the first question is that camera rig? Is that like, something that you kind of, like, found and decided to put in the film? Or, like, were you well aware of this camera rig? And, like, because I'm not overly familiar with, like, the first person perspective camera rig that you're wearing? 

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RaMell Ross [Director / Co-Writer]

Well, the camera rig that we used for some of the first person shots. Most of the time, people aren't wearing the rig. But it was custom made from Sony Venice, the camera we used, and we use it on a special mode called Rialto mode. 

 

[We] can break it up into sections, so essentially the lens in the capture plane becomes a DSLR that's tethered to the main brain of the camera. In this shot, specifically, it's Sam Ellison, that's an operator, and he's just holding the camera on his shoulder. Brandon [Wilson] is to the left of him delivering his lines to Aunjanue [Ellis-Taylor], speaking in camera. And when [Sam] does it, he's a tall guy, almost a little bit shorter than me. He's just tilting the camera in a way that, you know, where the eyes would rest. Something like Jomo [Fray] and I practiced before, and then we conveyed it to Sam. So there's no rig on that one, but it was used sometimes.

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Connor Petrey [Interviewer]

I'm very fascinated by that. I know Nickel Boys will be going to Prime Video eventually, and I'm hoping that it will get a physical release. So then there's gonna be some kind of bonus features… 

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RaMell Ross [Director / Co-Writer]

…that explore the process.

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Connor Petrey [Interviewer]

Exactly because that would be incredible. You came from a documentary background, and then this is your first feature. You did your short. But with the feature, how was the process of going from documentary to now a narrative feature like that? A transition that was easy? Or did it take some time to adjust?

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RaMell Ross [Director / Co-Writer]

I think it was fairly easy because I was so well supported… the producers on the film gave me a lot of leeway, and they didn't, they didn't really put restrictions on the form of the film. 

 

My co-writing partner, Joslyn Barnes, also produced Hale County This Morning, This Evening - the film I did previously. And so we had a working conversation and working relationship. We had an archival producer named Allison Brandin, working for about four years on getting archival, and no one, you know, put up any barriers to us just having an organic process. 

 

So I imagine if I were asked to make a film in a specific way, then I'd have to adjust, because I wouldn't be able to naturally use the tools that I used previously.

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Connor Petrey [Interviewer]

Let me ask you this… Were you always planning on directing it when you were writing it?

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RaMell Ross [Director / Co-Writer]

I was asked to direct it before I was asked to write. When I was asked to direct, I also asked if I could write. And they said yes. And then I asked if I could have a co-writer - Joslyn.

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Connor Petrey [Interviewer]

That’s awesome. And when it came to that process, when you were hired on. Were you aware of the book prior? Or was that when they hired you on? That's when you discovered The Nickel Boys and really dove into it and created what you created?

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RaMell Ross [Director / Co-Writer]

Well, I had a meeting with Plan B, and I knew they wanted to talk about something. And in the meeting they were like, hey, there's this book that's gonna come out called “The Nickel Boys” by Colson Whitehead. 

 

And they gave me a copy. They're like, do you want to read it and maybe adapt it? So that was kind of the process.

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Connor Petrey [Interviewer]

I guess that would make sense. That it would be a process where they get the rights prior. Not having read the book like [this film] makes me super encouraged to read it and I'm very curious like were there any major changes from the book?

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RaMell Ross [Director / Co-Writer]

Oh my God. I'm excited for you to read it because they're nothing alike.

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Connor Petrey [Interviewer]

Oh, okay. That has me even more curious.

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RaMell Ross [Director / Co-Writer]

There's, you know, it has the core scenes. And we added some and then all of the details are completely separate. Main characters, of course, but details separate, just honestly, to what’s in the book… so good. 

 

It's impossible to make a movie of the book, cause then you’re just comparing it. Oh, you use this, but you didn't use this. Oh, why not this? Why not, you know?

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Connor Petrey [Interviewer]

And I was curious when I was watching it, you touched on it during the press conference but the alligator and the mule um and i know. There's symbolism. Can you really kind of go over that? Real quick, just for my own personally, because that's the one thing in the film that I was kind of wondering what that means or is here for.

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RaMell Ross [Director / Co-Writer]

[We] wanted to bring the metaphor to life. And in Florida, you know, alligators do roam around, and so it's something that you would see, so you're not allowed to dismiss it as just a metaphor or just a symbol. But then, you know, I came across the research a couple of years ago before Nickel Boys. That Black children are used as alligator bait in Florida in the historic south, obviously to pull alligators out for meat and for their skin, and then also I see it as a metaphor for systematic violence.

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Connor Petrey [Interviewer]

And how does the mule fit in?

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RaMell Ross [Director / Co-Writer]

… A product of culture in a way. And they’re always, you know, part of agriculture and Black life. And people treat, have treated Black people in the past as they treated animals.