Best Picture Nominee: Nickel Boys

Summary

All Of It Podcast Summary: "Best Picture Nominee: Nickel Boys"

Podcast Information:

• Title: All Of It
• Host: Alison Stewart
• Episode Title: Best Picture Nominee: Nickel Boys
• Release Date: February 17, 2025
• Description: ALL OF IT explores culture and its creators, engaging thinkers, doers, and artists to delve into the what and why behind their work. This episode features a conversation with Romel Ross, director and co-writer of the Oscar-nominated film Nickel Boys.

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Introduction to Nickel Boys

Alison Stewart opens the episode by introducing Nickel Boys, a film adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The film, nominated for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars, portrays the harrowing experiences of two boys at a segregated Florida reform school in the 1960s.

Key Points:

• Nickel Boys offers a first-person perspective, immersing the audience in the protagonist Elwood's experiences.
• The narrative shifts between Elwood’s and Turner’s viewpoints, highlighting their struggle to survive the oppressive environment of Nickel Academy.

Conversation with Romel Ross

Alison Stewart welcomes Romel Ross, who shares insights into his transition from documentary filmmaking and photography to directing a narrative feature.

Adapting from Documentary to Narrative Film

• Ramel Ross [02:54]: "When you're making a documentary, you're interested in figuring out how to tell a story. And you'll pull from family photos, you'll pull from news footage, you'll pull from cinema, you'll pull from absolutely anything, including making footage yourself."

  Ross emphasizes how his documentary background influenced his storytelling approach, allowing the narrative to organically shape its form based on the story's essence.

Photographic Sensibility in Cinematography

• Ramel Ross [03:35]: "My work as a photographer, I think underpins the aesthetic. This film is shot from the perspective of its two main characters. And, you know, my DP and I, we give them a photographic sensibility."

  The film's visual style is deeply rooted in Ross's photographic expertise, creating a visually immersive experience that reflects how the characters perceive their world.

First-Person Point of View: Technique and Impact

Choosing First-Person POV

• Ramel Ross [05:17]: "When I read the book and the first thought was, wow, I wonder what the world looks like from their eyes."

  Ross discusses the deliberate choice to use a first-person perspective, aiming to provide an intimate connection between the audience and the characters.

Emotional Depth and Audience Engagement

• Ramel Ross [06:21]: "When they're looking into the camera, into you with that love, you're touched by it, like you are a scene partner."

  This technique fosters a profound emotional bond, making viewers feel as though they are part of the narrative rather than mere observers.

Technical Implementation

• Ramel Ross [09:12]: "They had to always look down the barrel of the lens, have a brilliant friend and DP Jomo Frey, who built out two custom camera rigs."

  The implementation of first-person POV required innovative camera rigs to seamlessly integrate the camera into the characters' movements, enhancing the immersive experience.

Challenges in Adaptation and Production

Adapting a Complex Novel

• Ramel Ross [04:24]: "The potential challenges was the adaptation process... my co-writer and I decided to distill his book to its essence and then allow those totems to move into the film medium."

  Translating the depth of Colson Whitehead's novel into film involved distilling its core themes while respecting the source material's integrity.

Handling Sensitive Content

• Ramel Ross [13:45]: "We wanted to approach it without showing the violence... the film is a meaningful film that tries to forefront the poetry of life more so than the tragedy of the context in which life is existing."

  Ross opted to depict violence indirectly, focusing on the emotional and psychological trauma experienced by the characters rather than explicit physical abuse.

Sound Design and Emotional Resonance

Creating an Experiential Soundscape

• Ramel Ross [15:10]: "We wanted there to be that type of unpredictable yet fundamentally fluid dystopic soundscape."

  The sound design was meticulously crafted to reflect the characters' consciousness, especially during traumatic moments, enhancing the film's immersive quality.

The Editing Process

Navigating Complex Visual Languages

• Ramel Ross [16:29]: "The biggest challenge was the edit... making edits and leaping time... takes a lot of zhuzhi and sort of trusting."

  The editing process was particularly challenging due to the film's intricate visual and narrative structure, requiring careful synchronization of various elements to maintain coherence.

Audience Takeaways and Intentions

Creating an Indelible Experience

• Ramel Ross [17:56]: "I prefer for audience members to have an experience not unlike a roller coaster... leaving some indelible impression in you that you're constantly trying to work out and understand as to why it was so powerful."

  Ross hopes that the film leaves a lasting emotional and intellectual impact, encouraging audiences to internalize and reflect upon the historical and cultural narratives presented.

Conclusion

Alison Stewart wraps up the conversation by highlighting Nickel Boys as a significant cinematic achievement that not only adapts a powerful literary work but also innovates in its storytelling techniques to provide a deeply immersive and thought-provoking experience.

Final Remarks: The episode underscores the importance of diverse perspectives in filmmaking and the role of technical innovation in enhancing narrative depth. Nickel Boys stands as a testament to how film can honor literary works while pushing the boundaries of traditional cinematic storytelling.

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Notable Quotes:

• Ramel Ross [05:17]: "When I read the book and the first thought was, wow, I wonder what the world looks like from their eyes."
• Ramel Ross [06:21]: "When they're looking into the camera, into you with that love, you're touched by it, like you are a scene partner."
• Ramel Ross [13:45]: "We wanted to approach it without showing the violence... trying to forefront the poetry of life more so than the tragedy."

Transcript

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[Alison Stewart]

This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. We're taking the opportunity today to share some of our conversations with nominees for best Picture at this year's Oscars. The awards will be held on March 2, so while we're waiting until then to hear who will take home the Academy Award across categories big and small, we wanted to share some conversations we've had with folks who have worked on this year's standout films. So let's get into our next conversation, which is about Nickel Boys, based on Colson Whitehead's book of the same name. It's nominated for best Picture and for best Adapted screenplay. So let's get into my conversation with director and co writer Romel Ross. The new film Nickel Boy shows us the dreams and nightmares of a young man. As the film is shot almost entirely through the first person pov. That means we get to know our protagonist Elwood through what he sees through his eyes. We see his happy childhood growing up in Florida with his grandmother. We see the promise he shows at school. And we see how in one moment he is offered a ride by a man driving a stolen car and everything changes. Elwood is sent to Nickel Academy, a segregated reform school that uses young boys for labor. When those boys make any wrong move, they're taken to the White House where they're beaten. At the school, Elwood meets Turner, a kid who is back at Nickel for the second time. And is then that we finally see Elwood through Turner's eyes. The camera goes back and forth between the two boys as they attempt to make it out of Nickel with their lives and their sanity intact. Nickel Boys is adapted from Colson White Hood's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, which is one of our first get lit with all of it book club selections. I'm joined now by the film's co writer and director, Ramel Ross. Nice to meet you.

[Ramel Ross]

Hello, Alison. Nice to meet you too. Thanks for having me.

[Alison Stewart]

Thanks for coming. This is your first narrative film, but before this you were a photographer. You were a documentarian. In fact, the folks, the producers behind Hale county this morning, this evening, the documentary thought you Might be a good fit for this project. What part of your documentary background was useful to you on the narrative feature?

[Ramel Ross]

Yeah, it's a good question. I think it's. Is the by any means necessary? I think when you're making a documentary, you're interested in figuring out how to tell a story. And you'll pull from family photos, you'll pull from news footage, you'll pull from cinema, you'll pull from absolutely anything, including making footage yourself. And that approach, I think, allows one to consider letting what you want to say produce a form. And a lot of films are made thinking about the form, capturing what you want to say. And we brought that approach, Jocelyn Barnes and I, my co writer to Nickel Boyce.

[Alison Stewart]

What about your work as a photographer?

[Ramel Ross]

My work as a photographer, I think underpins the aesthetic. This film is shot from the perspective of its two main characters. And, you know, my DP and I, we give them a photographic sensibility. We allow them to, you know, turn their head, which is the camera, and look around the world and look at each other in the way in which we all look at the world, which is photographically. Photographs are so inscribed in our reality. You know, we leave our house knowing we'll be photographed. We build buildings to see how they look photographed. And with that, it's kind of built into the way in which we engage with the visual field.

[Alison Stewart]

When you read Nickel Boys, the Nickel Boys, what did you see as the.

[Unnamed Interviewer]

Potential challenges when adapting it?

[Ramel Ross]

Wow. The potential challenges was the adaptation process. You know, Colson's. You've had Colson on here, you've heard him speak, you know, his other books. He is, he is, you know, a genius amongst geniuses. And the ecosystem of his, of his book, the novel, the. His meaning making process, it's impossible to take that over to film. And so my co writer and I decided to distill his book to its essence and then allow those totems to move into the film medium and then talk to film and see what film wants to do with that essence. And I think that allowed us to pay homage to the book in a respectful way. And like, we won't try to replicate you or allow you to be a novel.

[Unnamed Interviewer]

When did you realize you were going to use the first person pov?

[Ramel Ross]

Yeah, that came right away. I read the book and the first thought was, wow, I wonder what the world looks like from their eyes. In 1960, I made this film, Hell county this morning, this evening, which you mentioned. And it essentially is a first person film without my hands being in it. The way the camera moves, I like to call it observational logic. And, you know, use the camera as an extension of consciousness, a lot of concepts to try to align the viewer's view of reality with the camera movement. And there's nothing better or more interesting to me than thinking about what's missing from the archive, specifically from black visuality in the 1960s. And so we could populate that with first person point of view, poetic images.

[Alison Stewart]

What do you think the audience gets that we are looking at through a character's eyes, A person's eyes? What do you think we can extract from that?

[Ramel Ross]

So beautiful. It's so beautiful. It was a concept that came to life with Angenou Ellis Taylor and Brandon Wilson and. And Ethan Harisi, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hetchinger, David Diggs. When you look with the love that you look at your child with, if you're filming that from the third person camera, which is most cinema, you're watching two characters do it right, and you're kind of a voyeur, fundamentally, and you're watching their behavior and you're seeing that love. But when they're looking into the camera, into you with that love, you're touched by it, like you are a scene partner. You get a sense for that ineffable power that is the gaze of a loving one. But you also get the opposite, which is as a character, as Elwood and Brandon. You get to see how the world looks at them and how Hattie does not look at them. And wow. It's a huge contrast.

[Alison Stewart]

It's wild. Yeah.

[Unnamed Interviewer]

I think the scene that really, really understand what it comes to me, and it's early on, is when the grandmother hugs the boy.

[Ramel Ross]

Oof.

[Unnamed Interviewer]

She comes right in, she comes right into the lens. And at that moment you're like, oh.

[Alison Stewart]

Wait, this is what this boy is.

[Unnamed Interviewer]

Feeling, the warmth of this grandmother.

[Ramel Ross]

Yeah. It's interesting, right? Like photography and film, you know, they kind of have always. They're built from theater, or at least film is, and they have their mainstay way of being used. But first person is the way that we are in the world, you know, and who would think that in that hug moment we could somehow escape that? We're sitting in a chair and we're looking at a screen and you can move in for a hug, and that can, you know, if you're open enough while you're watching, that can remind you of every hug you've ever given or gotten.

[Unnamed Interviewer]

How did you talk to your actors about reacting to a pov? The first Person pov, you know, I.

[Ramel Ross]

Didn'T talk to him too much about it. I just, it's. I think acting is, is not my forte. I think working with actors is something I'm interested in. But I believe that kind of whatever the actor does is essentially the right thing. Right. It may need to be nudged a bit or, or influenced. But like their behavior feeling authentic, like them being surprised, them having to adjust in the moment like that is what human beings do. And adding that to the space of fiction and acting, I think just offers that fundamental integrity, allows you to believe. And so we didn't talk that much about the process of filming. They knew we would film point of view. But what that looked like, they found out on set that day.

[Unnamed Interviewer]

I was going to ask about the logistics of it, never mind the creativity of it. I mean, did they have to stand a certain way? Did they have to behave a certain way?

[Ramel Ross]

They didn't have to behave a certain way, but they had to always look down the barrel of the lens, have a brilliant friend and dp Jomo Frey, who built out two custom camera rigs and brought forth a couple different camera systems that would allow us to work with neck movement and to have the camera be part of the body of David and part of the body of Brandon and Ethan when needed. And so it really varied. There was a lot of genuine invention and tweaking. Jomo's rig team made things on set for us. They were welding, they were buying Home Depot supplies.

[Unnamed Interviewer]

That's interesting because I would imagine you as a director have to make observations about the way a person moves their head or how a person looks at somebody's feet or somebody's hands, because it may not be the same in reality versus on the set when you have your camera crew and everybody around.

[Ramel Ross]

Yeah, well, the trick to this film or the key to this film is that I'm lucky to be a writer and the director. And so the film is written visually, you know, when the original script was like camera movement. And we're actually trying to explore the world from the way that the boys look at it. The order of operations of looking in a room produces a narrative of meaning. And so I'm taking that into the pre production process with Jomo. We start to build out the key elements to like what vision feels like, not what vision is. You know, we don't want a wide frame of view because the large scope allows the eye to wander. What vision does is vision is very specific. It feels like, you know, like it's attention based. And so the directing was as much writing and as much the camera movement.

[Alison Stewart]

My guest is Romel Ross, director and co writer of the new film Nickel Boys. It's based on Colson Whitehead's novel. It tells the story of two boys sent to an abusive Florida reform school in the 1960s. When you co wrote your script with Jocelyn Barnes, I read somewhere that you put drafts, you put images in your first drafts.

[Ramel Ross]

Mm.

[Alison Stewart]

So, yeah, yeah.

[Unnamed Interviewer]

How did you go about translating those images?

[Alison Stewart]

Or were they just for you?

[Ramel Ross]

Well, it's interesting. So, you know the mythology of the filmmaking process, it's like the game of telephone. It continues to, depending on who's talking. And, you know, we all use different. Different words. So it was that the treatment we made was an edit of the film. And of course, the edit is the last thing you do. But in our case, because the film was so visual, we wanted to allow for the language of the film and the dialogue to be servant to the image and not the other way around. And so basically the film was written out visually. Right. So it gives you an image of something. And these things are called adjacent images that have their sort of metaphoric, symbolic and experiential. So they're not just strictly narratively driven. And then there's another image that we would write out, and we wrote the entire film that way. And then we would take that and go into that image and then try to articulate what dialogue would participate in it. And I think that gave that richness that I think you felt when you.

[Alison Stewart]

Watched, you know, that the film uses.

[Unnamed Interviewer]

So many images, sometimes creating almost a collage of ideas so that you can get to the idea, the idea that you want, I think. Did you know what images that you wanted to use or did they come along the way?

[Ramel Ross]

Yeah, it was lovely reading Colson's narrative because I saw myself as both Elwood and Turner, as he has said that he is like the conversation is between himself. And so almost all the images are just from either my imagination or my childhood. I just think about what I did when I was a kid. Oh, I used to sit down and let a balloon slowly go up to the ceiling and hit a fan. You know, I used to lie down on the grass and twirl a leaf. These types of things just align with the narrative because I see myself as them. And I think it gives a kind of authenticity, too, to the images you're seeing. They don't read as hyper fiction. They just read as pretty banal and pretty quotidian. I like to call the images the epic Banal.

[Alison Stewart]

One of the most heart wrenching scenes in the book is where Elwood is beaten by the head of school. How did you decide you wanted to approach this scene? This is a tough scene.

[Ramel Ross]

Yeah, I think Jocelyn and I decided we wanted to approach it without. Without showing the violence. And I say that for those who are listening and think that the film may be too difficult for them. The film is a meaningful film that tries to forefront the poetry of life more so than the tragedy of the context in which life is existing. And so during this scene, we wanted to, you know, kind of get away from the voyeurism that is the experience of watching people of color experience suffering, physical suffering, and also acknowledge that that's just the first act of the trauma. There's. There's way more trauma aside from that first initial act. In while visualizing violence has been necessary to share it globally and to kind of. Kind of prove the injustices that were happening to people, at some point in time, it becomes a bit rote and becomes overindexed. And you realize that maybe it has the opposite effect of saying that maybe it only happens to these people, or it's supposed to happen to these people.

[Unnamed Interviewer]

Well, you're talking to an audience that likely read the book Public Radio. Probably almost everybody has read Nickel Boys.

[Alison Stewart]

I wanted to ask you about the.

[Unnamed Interviewer]

Sound design, because in that scene, for example, the fan is very loud in the room.

[Ramel Ross]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Interviewer]

How did you and your sound team decide to have the sounds work with this first person point of view?

[Ramel Ross]

Yeah, we thought a lot about what consciousness felt like or what consciousness does and the way that it accepts in, you know, sound and music and. And kind of everything sonic and make sense of it. And the way that when you're going through trauma and situations in which you're hyper aware, there's often an overriding sound. Right. Either some sort of hum or some tick that becomes some marker of time. But we're always trying to cope in these situations and our defense mechanisms are conscious and overriding in a way. And so we wanted there to be that type of unpredictable yet fundamentally fluid dystopic soundscape. It's really hard to explain. I would love to have a musician or one of my sound guys, Dan Timmons or Tony Valante, come in here and use their beautiful language. But I think you get the hint.

[Unnamed Interviewer]

What was your biggest challenge in making this film?

[Ramel Ross]

I think the biggest challenge was the edit.

[Unnamed Interviewer]

Oh, interesting.

[Ramel Ross]

Yeah. The film. Our editor is Nicholas Mansour. And the film, it's. It's collapsing so many different languages of the image and the camera both still and moving and a lot of different textures and formats of capture that it's easy for it to feel like kaleidoscopic in an off putting way and not kaleidoscopic in a rhythmic stream of consciousness type of way. And making edits and leaping time in the way in which we did and then working with a relatively underexplored use of the camera, which is point of view. It takes a lot of zhuzhi and sort of trusting, putting things together and thinking that, hoping that five minutes later when you make another gesture that will justify in retrospect the one that you made before. And it takes a long time, takes a really long time.

[Unnamed Interviewer]

Zhuzhing.

[Ramel Ross]

You have to zhuzh it off, zhu zh it. A little je ne sais quoi, a little sprinkle something on it. You know, we were sprinkling. Everyone was coming and praying to someone.

[Unnamed Interviewer]

This is a little bit of a generic question, but I think it's interesting considering the book and considering the themes of the book. What do you hope audiences leave the theater talking about or thinking about?

[Ramel Ross]

Mm. I prefer speechlessness. I prefer for audience members to have an experience not unlike a roller coaster, but not as dramatic as a roller coaster in which it's visually and sonically so visceral that it genuine feels something along the lines of a dream or it leaves some indelible impression in you that you're constantly trying to work out and understand as to why it was so powerful. I think if you can provide something experiential and something experience based inside ideas of blackness and inside historical narratives, inside the characters themselves, then I think you're actually changing the way that people relate to history. You're allowing them to absorb it into their physiology. I like to call the film an experiential monument. It's the type of history that you can't erase in the way in which we see history being erased in many states.

[Alison Stewart]

That was my conversation with Romel Ross, director and co writer of the new best picture nominated film Nickel Boys, based on the Colson Whitehead novel of the same name. Coming up, Edward Norton plays Pete Seeger in the best Picture nominated Bob Dylan. Pick a complete unknown. Stay with us.

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