'Nickel Boys' Director RaMell Ross Makes The Camera 'An Organ'

Summary

Fresh Air: 'Nickel Boys' Director RaMell Ross Makes The Camera 'An Organ'

Episode Release Date: February 13, 2025
Host: Tonya Moseley
Guest: Romel Ross, Filmmaker, Photographer, Professor, and Writer

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of Fresh Air, host Tonya Moseley sits down with the multifaceted filmmaker Romel Ross. Ross, renowned for his Academy Award-nominated documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening, delves into his latest project, the adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Nickel Boys. Nominated for both Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture, the film offers a harrowing portrayal of two Black teenagers navigating the brutal realities of a 1960s Florida reformatory academy, inspired by the real-life Dozier School for Boys.

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Filmmaking Philosophy: The Camera as an Organ

Ross introduces a groundbreaking approach to filmmaking by transforming the camera into what he describes as "an organ." This technique involves attaching body-mounted cameras to the actors and employing continuous, unbroken takes, immersing the audience directly into the protagonists' perspectives.

Romel Ross [04:56]: "To make the camera an organ is to acknowledge first that the camera is something that others use. It's something that abstracts. It's something that produces sort of false positives."

This methodology ensures that the narrative remains an extension of the characters' consciousness, fostering a visceral connection between the audience and the protagonists, Elwood and Turner.

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Sentient Perspective: Collaborative Innovation

Collaborating closely with cinematographer Jomo Frey, Ross and his team developed the technique they term "Sentient Perspective." This process relies heavily on the actors' ability to engage with the camera as if it were a character themselves, creating an intimate and authentic viewing experience.

Romel Ross [03:46]: “The camera operator is sitting there as the character, and then you shoot it from both scenes. It offers an assurance that while you're encountering this image, you know that it's from a specific person's consciousness.”

This innovative approach not only challenges traditional filming techniques but also deeply personalizes the storytelling, making viewers feel as though they are experiencing events through the characters' very eyes.

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Adapting 'The Nickel Boys': Balancing Truth and Mythology

Ross discusses the delicate balance required in adapting Colson Whitehead's novel, which intertwines factual brutality with almost biblical mythology. He emphasizes the importance of maintaining the story's rooted truth while infusing it with his unique visual language.

Romel Ross [06:36]: "I think it's what wasn't on the page. My first thought is, like, what's the world look like then?"

Ross's approach focuses on envisioning the 1960s from a Black perspective, questioning how historical narratives are shaped and seeking to present a more authentic, subjective truth.

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Micro Narratives and Visual Symbolism

A significant aspect of The Nickel Boys is the use of micro narratives—recurring imagery that deepens the overarching story. Ross explains how elements like alligators and images of Martin Luther King Jr. serve as symbolic threads that enrich the narrative.

Romel Ross [08:37]: "If you're showing images that Jo Monfre and I made, and it's from a black point of view... we get to do something almost impossible: thickening time."

These visual motifs not only enhance the storytelling but also comment on the historical portrayal of Black individuals, challenging the predominantly white lens through which most Black histories have been documented.

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Personal Journey: From Athlete to Artist

Ross shares his personal trajectory from a promising basketball player at Georgetown, sidelined by injuries, to a sociologist and filmmaker. This shift was further influenced by the loss of his mother, propelling him into the world of photography and film as a means of self-discovery and identity formation.

Romel Ross [34:07]: "I needed to see myself. I'd always been disciplined and basketball-obsessed... I never had to reflect on the composition of myself."

This introspective journey is reflected in his work, where Ross continuously explores themes of identity, community, and the subjective nature of truth.

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Hell County: A Deepening Connection

Before adapting The Nickel Boys, Ross created Hale County This Morning, This Evening, an ethnographic documentary that received critical acclaim and a Peabody Award. Ross elaborates on his long-term relationship with the community in Hale County, Alabama, emphasizing the importance of genuine connections over mere observation.

Romel Ross [18:26]: "I think if every image made by every other person across time had always been as if that person was your brother or sister, we would have a different relationship to humanity at large."

His commitment to portraying Hale County authentically stems from his deep ties to the community, allowing him to present a nuanced and personal narrative that contrasts sharply with external, often detached, representations.

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Experimental Art: Shipping Himself in a Boxcar

In a revealing segment, Ross discusses an avant-garde performance art piece where he secretly shipped himself in a boxcar, an act inspired by Henry Box Brown's historic escape from slavery. This daring experiment not only served as personal catharsis but also influenced the visual elements in The Nickel Boys.

Romel Ross [21:37]: "My goal was to exist... It was terrifyingly loud... it's just a project with deep meaning to me."

This bold endeavor exemplifies Ross's fearless approach to art, pushing the boundaries of conventional storytelling to explore deeper themes of existence and liberation.

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Conclusion: The Intersection of Personal and Political

Romel Ross's work on The Nickel Boys exemplifies his commitment to melding personal narratives with broader socio-political commentary. By redefining the role of the camera and embedding himself deeply within the communities he portrays, Ross creates films that are not only visually innovative but also profoundly impactful.

Romel Ross [36:54]: "I take it so seriously as a knowledge production of identity."

His dedication to authentic storytelling challenges audiences to engage more deeply with the histories and identities depicted, fostering a more inclusive and truthful cinematic landscape.

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Final Thoughts

Tonya Moseley's conversation with Romel Ross offers invaluable insights into the mind of a visionary filmmaker dedicated to reshaping how stories are told and perceived. Through his innovative techniques and profound personal experiences, Ross invites viewers to look beyond the surface, experiencing narratives through a deeply human and empathetic lens.

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Listen to the full episode of Fresh Air to explore Romel Ross's transformative approach to filmmaking and gain a deeper understanding of his powerful adaptation of The Nickel Boys.

Transcript

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[Tonya Moseley]

This is FRESH air. I'm Tonya Moseley and today my guest is filmmaker Romel Ross. His adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize winning novel the Nickel Boys is nominated for an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay and for best picture. It tells the story of two Black teenagers in 1960s Florida as they attempt to survive and escape a brutal reformatory academy. The story is loosely based on the real life Dozier School for Boys, which was a notorious place for its brutal treatment of students. Ross's approach to this story is really unlike anything most viewers have ever experienced. The film is shot almost entirely from the perspectives of the two protagonists, Elwood and Turner. Ross turns the camera into what he calls an organ by attaching body mounted cameras and filming the scene continuously with Unbroken Takes. The outcome for the viewer feels like being both Elwood and Turner. Now I introduced Romel Ross as a filmmaker, but really this title is too narrow. He's also a photographer, a Brown University professor and a writer. A former Georgetown basketball recruit sidelined by injuries, Ross pivoted to sociology and English before honing his visual language rooted in what he calls liberated documentation. His 2018 Academy Award nominated documentary Hale county this Morning, this Evening is an ethnographic story told through fractured vignettes of black Southern life and it won a Peabody Award for documentary in 2019. Rommel Ross, welcome to FRESH AIR.

[Romel Ross]

Thanks for having me. Thanks so much.

[Tonya Moseley]

Elwood Curtis, who is played by Ethan Harisi, is a bright, idealistic teenager who lives with his grandmother, played by Angenou Ellis Taylor. And while on his way to college, he gets caught up and wrongfully accused of something and sent to Nickel Academy, which is this reformatory that he'll soon learn is really a house of horrors. In the scene I'd like to play, Elwood is in the infirmary recovering from this beating at the hands of this school's corrupt white administrator, Spencer, and he's punished for trying to stop a fight. So Elwood is arguing with his cynical friend Turner, played by Brandon Wilson, about whether the civil rights movement will bring about change. Let's listen.

[Elwood Curtis]

If everybody looks the other way, then everybody's in on it. If I look the other way, I'm as implicated as the rest. It's not how it's supposed to be. Don't nobody care about supposed to. The fix has always been In Game's rigged. That's what I'm telling you. It's not like the old days. We can stand up for ourselves. Man, that barely works out there. What you think it's gonna do in here? You say that. Cause you got no one out there sticking up for you.

[Tonya Moseley]

That's a scene from Nickel Boys, adapted by my guest today, Ramel Ross and Rommel. This film and this scene in particular, it captures your attention and it demands your attention in the same way that you and I are sitting across from each other right now, and you're staring in my eyes and I'm staring in your eyes. These characters are staring into the camera, which means they're looking at us, which means we. We are them. How did you pull that off?

[Romel Ross]

Yeah, it's way easier than one might imagine. You basically don't have the character there, and you have a camera operator that's sitting there as the character, and then you shoot it from both scenes. So it's quite difficult for the actors because essentially their scene partner is a camera operator. And of course, the character is standing behind or sitting behind the camera operator delivering their lines, but the other character, who's looking down the lens is not allowed to look at them, of course. They're supposed to be engaged with the camera. And so this offers, I think, an assurance that while you're encountering this image, you know that it's from a specific person's consciousness, an extension of their consciousness, one could say. And with that, it's a type of personal truth that I think one fundamentally connects to.

[Tonya Moseley]

I think your collaborator, Jomo Frey, the cinematographer, called this process Sentient Perspective. How did you all come up with this technique?

[Romel Ross]

Yeah, I made this film Hell county this morning, this evening. And before this film.

[Tonya Moseley]

Right before this film, several years before this film. And that was your first documentary, which you were nominated for an Oscar.

[Romel Ross]

Yeah, yeah. And essentially halfway through the process, I realized that I wanted to make the camera an organ because there was something that maybe we'll get into, but that has to do with photo history and authorship and the production of black films.

[Tonya Moseley]

When you say make the camera an organ, like, literally, what do you mean by that?

[Romel Ross]

I think to make the camera an organ is to acknowledge first that the camera is something that others. And it's something that abstracts. It's something that produces sort of false positives.

[Tonya Moseley]

It's observational. It's anthropological.

[Romel Ross]

It's anthropological. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah. I think in terms of the way that photography and film presented truth, that is perspectival. But presents itself as unauthored, often just by fact of it. Not being clearly from someone's point of view has always been the problem, because from an anthropological perspective, when you go to a place and you make something from your point of view and you present it as science, it just reads as factual. And that's why we believe certain things about certain places. It replaces that perception. And so to make the camera an organ, to me, is a strategy to ensure that the person encountering the work knows that it's authored, that it's subjective.

[Tonya Moseley]

Nickel Boys is an astounding story, and what makes it especially heartbreaking is that it is based on the truth. Take me to. When you first read the book, what were the things that you saw on the page as you were reading it that you felt compelled that you wanted to adapt this story?

[Romel Ross]

Yeah, I think it's what wasn't on the page. I think reading Colson Whitehead's Nickel Boys, my first thought is, like, what's the world look like then?

[Tonya Moseley]

You know, in the 1960s?

[Romel Ross]

In the 1960s. And I say that with, like, an armchair philosophical undertone in that I like to think about, we don't know what the world looked like specifically from our lens. Now, the world that we see is not the world that they felt. It's the world that we think we know from our future position. I look at that, I read the book, and I'm like, what would I photograph then? What would I see? Like, what would I feel? A person who's grown up with the privileges that I have and leans towards a poetic exploration of the visual field and society. I think one of the challenges of the adaption is the adaption itself, you know, like, how do you do that?

[Tonya Moseley]

Yes.

[Romel Ross]

And you want to take liberties that lean into your strengths, but you don't want to take liberties that undermine, at least from my perspective, because Coulson's work is rooted in truth, and it does have this mythology that is almost biblical in the way in which it's trying to get to the. Through archetypes. It's trying to get to some sort of deeper fact. You don't want to stray too far.

[Tonya Moseley]

You and your writing partner, Jocelyn, do this thing where there's the narrative and then there are the micro narratives. There's imagery that just pops up throughout the entire film. So, like, there's an alligator that we see that continues to show up, and then there are these images of Martin Luther King Jr. Who is, like, this sign of hope and progress. Can you tell me about why and how you came to use that imagery as a micro narrative to tell the bigger story.

[Romel Ross]

The idea of the images popping up is kind of how we're dealing. We deal with images, I think, in our own head. Like when we see something, there's an association that happens and it flexes or accents some sort of visual thing we've encountered in the past. It helps us read that thing, and then we're off to the races. But also in the context of the film, I think it allows the. The viewer, if they're open enough to it, if they're not taken out by that gesture, to participate in an understanding of larger image production. And specifically in this film, in the production of blackness. Right. If you're showing images that Jo Monfre and I made, and it's from black point of view, we're using a Sony Venice. It's 6K. It's poetic. And then you're seeing these archival images from. From yesteryear that were taken from a completely different context. Who knows if the people that were in the images were even asked? But 99%, I would say, of all images of all black people across the history of time have been made by white people. And that's not necessarily a bad thing made by white people. But we know the history of blackness, and we know the transatlantic slave trade, and we know how images were used then. And so we get to do something. I think that is an almost impossible thing to practically do, and I think we can only conceptually do it, which is, like, thicken time. Right. And it's an Aristotle phrase, like, how thick is time?

[Tonya Moseley]

You know, thickest.

[Romel Ross]

Yeah, yeah. And how interesting, right? To be able to watch something and be engaged explicitly and emotionally in the history of that visual process.

[Tonya Moseley]

And it's beautiful that you think about these things in your work. You're a trained photographer, and I wonder, have you ever been in a place and, like, you want to capture it and, like, you start to take out your camera and you start to take pictures, and it just can't capture it. Like, you look then at what you shot, what you snapped, and it just doesn't do the thing. I'm just thinking about that in terms of you talking about the images of us from the past and how they were taken from a different eye. Do you think that there's something somewhat mystical, too, in what happens between, say, a person who has a clue, closer connection to an image and they take it, versus those who are an anthropological. When they're taking an anthropological look?

[Romel Ross]

That's essentially the origin of all of my work because I filmed Hell county this morning, this evening, that documentary in the south, of course, Alabama. I think I had about 1300 hours of footage.

[Tonya Moseley]

You lived there for 12 years?

[Romel Ross]

Yeah, I still live there. I have a house and go back as much as possible and still film. I'm interested in, like, a longitudinal relationship with image making and with people. And so I basically spent. I felt like, to some degree, both Daniel Collins and Quincy Bryant, the two main characters in the film, that I was part of their family, like nuclear family. And then when you add a camera, you also get to see moments that no one else is there for, that only the nuclear family is there for. And those are the moments that endear you so much to the person that when they do something horrible or they make some mistake where it's just like, you're not a sum. You're not the sum of that. That's just one thing. I know you really well. And so how do we account for the fact that almost every image made by every other person that's been disseminated to represent them has never been those images? It's government news, reportage, street photography, Always in the intent of someone else who has no family relationship to you. So you have to ask yourself, what if every image made by every other person across time had always been as if that person was your brother or sister? I think we would have a different relationship to humanity at large. And I love your take a picture and it doesn't represent the thing entry point, because everyone knows that. But if you start to question why and you start to look for strategies to account for that, you get to a film, you will get to a film like this. You will get to Hell county this morning, this evening. It's. It's. It's just not settling for that and making that a mission.

[Tonya Moseley]

So we've been talking about Hale county this morning, this evening, as it relates to the Nickel Boys. This was your first step into filmmaking. It is loosely based on two young men, Daniel Collins and Quincy Bryant, as they move through their final years of adolescence into full adulthood. It won the special jury award at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar. What was it about that time and experience that captured your imagination that made you say, no, I need to pick up a camera for this?

[Romel Ross]

Yeah. What a decision. In hindsight. I moved there in 2009, and I was freelancing in D.C. and just couldn't really afford to live. And my roommate had a connection to an organization called Project M, which is a design build organization out of Micah that was doing workshops in Hell County, Alabama. And he was like, I'm gonna go, do you want to come? And so there was an opportunity through chatting with folks to teach a two week photography course there. And so I go to teach photography and I'm like, whoa, this place is incredible.

[Tonya Moseley]

What was incredible to you about it? Do you remember what really during that trip?

[Romel Ross]

Mostly the sense of time, you know, when you go to the historic south or any place that is storied in that way that I like to say that the iconography of the south is so spread out where you can have dreams and you can have more dreams and nightmares in between icons than you can in the city. Because in the cities especially, because stuff is always refreshed and they're always doing renovations and there's so much money and so much people and it's so dense. You're always engaging with things and it's just way faster. But in the south, there's just these huge fields and then you have this church that was built in 1800.

[Tonya Moseley]

That's what you mean by the icons. Yeah.

[Romel Ross]

Then you have this huge field and then you have this weeping willow tree. And so you're just like out in the middle of this expanse, essentially a desert for metaphorical reasons. And then you come to this thing that holds this meaning culturally. And so like, what a meaning making space. That's why, like, time feels different there. And it's like it is a. It makes you question what time is which is on everyone's mind, maybe has always been on everyone's mind. But there in which the architecture doesn't change. Then what else does not change?

[Tonya Moseley]

You're coming from a city. So like, what did. What are some things you had to unlearn to actually be able to like, get that lesson you're talking about?

[Romel Ross]

Well, I think I went there and I'm like, I can photograph. I can get better. And I made photographs for quite literally three years nonstop, every day, spending all my money. Large format photography, like rapacious image making of my students of the landscape.

[Tonya Moseley]

Was your camera basically like your appendage?

[Romel Ross]

Oh, for sure. I had it in my hand almost all times, you know, when I was shooting with the dslr. Otherwise it was right in my backpack. I'm like always thinking photographically and looking cinema graphically and. And every image I made looked like someone else's image for three years, no joke. And like, I don't show these images unless they're in some sort of artist talk, which I'm trying to talk about my process. And that's when I realized that my imagination was curated because I'm trying so hard. And the images. I think the images were beautiful, and I know they were. People would tell me, but why do they feel like someone else's?

[Tonya Moseley]

Can you articulate the difference? Because one of the things that I was very clear to me in watching Hale county was even from, like, the first images in the church is where you all start out. Those kids just are ignoring you. Like, you are not there. You are in such intimate moments. And yet, like, I don't feel like you're there.

[Romel Ross]

Yeah. Because while this time I'm making images, I'm teaching in the community. I'm working at an organization called Youth Build, and I'm also coaching at the high school basketball team. Coincidentally, I played basketball at Georgetown one year overseas. I was, like, the best basketball player in the area. And so that gives you just mad respect. People respected me fundamentally. And then I'm working at this program that's helping kids who are 16 to 24 who are dropped out either get back into school or get some workforce training. And I think when I moved to Hale county, in the local school system, public school system, I think they had 70 seniors, and I think 30 graduated. I know everybody. Everybody's family. And that's my role. My role is not a photographer or an art maker. My role is a community facilitator or assist or assistant to some degree. So when I decided to make a film, people still thought that I was working at Youth Build, and I would correct them. You know, like, I actually left. I'm living in Rhode Island. I'm in grad school. But the foundation of my relationship to the community was not to be there to make images or films. And so no one cared that I was filming them because we had a relationship.

[Tonya Moseley]

Otherwise, how did the folks in Hale county respond to the Oscar nomination?

[Romel Ross]

It's funny because I think now people see me as an artist photographer. Though sometimes people, when I'm there, they still ask me if I can get their kid into a program or, you know, how I can help the kid connect with a college. But a slight tangent. Why I call the film Hell county this morning, this evening is because it's not Hell County. It's my Hell County. And when people use the names of places, there's. There's some sort of absolutism that I think is fundamentally attached to it, as if that's the experience for everyone else, when it isn't. And it's. It's not their fault for using language like, like that. But I always think when someone, someone should make things more personal.

[Tonya Moseley]

Break down what you mean there. Like it's not Hale county, it's your Hale County.

[Romel Ross]

I wrote this article for the Huffington Post and added one of the photos that I don't show and people and the question was, yeah, what's it like in Hale county or what's it like in this place? And I spoke about it and in the comments section, a couple people from Hell county were like, that's not Hell County. What I know to be Hell county is this. And you said that this was the best restaurant, but this is the best restaurant and this is this. And coincidentally it was a white black dynamic. I'm spending my time with the majority. Well, I'm spending all my time with black folks. They're spending almost all their time with white folks. They see Hale county as something else. I see Hale county as something else. And that filtered into my image making. It's like, oh yes, of course it's true. I did use the language in a way that totalize the place in my point of view. I need to be more specific. What is my Hale County? I need to say it's my Hale County. How do you make images that feel that specific? How do you make images that feel that personal? So that again, you're not presenting the place as incorrect because it is actually your perspective and that's built into the reading of it.

[Tonya Moseley]

Our guest today is Oscar nominated filmmaker Ramel Ross. Tonya, we'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tanya Moseley and this is FRESH air.

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[Tonya Moseley]

You did something a few years ago. You shipped yourself from Rhode island to Hale County. How did that idea come about Rommel and why did you want to do it?

[Romel Ross]

I'm so glad you're asking. That's so man, I forget that I did that even after.

[Tonya Moseley]

Wait, you forget that you shipped yourself in a 4 by 4 by 8 foot box?

[Romel Ross]

I do. Well, it's not something I thought about it every day leading up to it for about three years. But afterwards, in the same way that you skydive or you. You swim in the Mariana Trench, you take that experience in, and then now the anxiety is over. You have it in your body and in your brain, and you kind of go forward.

[Tonya Moseley]

I feel like this just might be an insight into your psyche that you're thinking about so many ideas and thoughts and experiences that, like, you could forget something like that. But continue. How did the idea come about? And. Yeah, yeah, say more about it. And why did you want to do it?

[Romel Ross]

Well, I love that you asked, because that idea is where the boxcar imagery came from in Nickel Boys. Like, that's how I came up with that thought.

[Tonya Moseley]

Because, yeah, there's these images that pop up where you're in a boxcar and you're looking at the night sky through the boxcar. Yeah.

[Romel Ross]

Cause I wondered, like, I mean, the box, it was built by myself, and the design, it was led by this guy, Bobby Davis, who kind of runs my art studio in Rhode Island. And it's built out of Alabama Railroad Ties, too, which is just really, really, really cool. You can't access it from the outside. You can only get out because, you know. You know, we're relatively thoughtful dudes. And the person whose truck I was on, it was a gooseneck trailer. Open Air. We got him from this website, u ship. He didn't know I was in there.

[Tonya Moseley]

You just said, would you please ship this item?

[Romel Ross]

Yeah, we told him that it was a kinetic sculpture because, you know, lights would go on and off, and there would maybe be some movements. And we know that he didn't know what kinetic meant. We don't even know what kinetic sculpture means. But, like, that mystery will allow him to, like, accept that weird stuff is happening and don't call the police. But he didn't know I was in, and so we were worried about if he got suspicious trying to open it. And of course, the liability of human trafficking. Like, all of these law problems that we can't even account for because we're just regular folks.

[Tonya Moseley]

Yeah.

[Romel Ross]

But in that building of it and being inside of it for 59 hours, like, it was supposed to be 36, 38 hours, but he wasn't as truthful as he could have been. And he had overdriven his hours, and he ended up stopping at a rest stop in Pennsylvania.

[Tonya Moseley]

Were you keeping time inside?

[Romel Ross]

Well, I had a GoPro. I had, like, 80 batteries or something, and I had enough SD cards, and I had a timer on my watch. And I had a light in there with a battery, and every hour I would change the GoPro battery and so I could record the whole thing. And that's kind of how I knew. I also have my phone, but I didn't use it, so. Yeah. So I wondered over the course of it, like, if I was. If the door was open, like, how beautiful. If I could just, like, see the landscape from a boxcar. And, of course, it's great migration, you know, from that perspective. But the origin of the project is thinking about the reverse of Henry Box Brown, who shipped himself out of slavery in the mid-1800s, and the idea that, you know, people of color and black folks need to. Or should, or I'm encouraging them, as many people are, to go back to the south to reverse migrate and to claim land and to, you know, sort of dilute.

[Tonya Moseley]

Why did you want to do it? Why did you. I understand the origins and the symbolism, but why did you want to experience being in a boxcar, in a car?

[Romel Ross]

Well, it's a very personal reason. Like, I. Very serious athlete, and I'm used to mind over matter and, you know, playing through pain and putting my body on the line for what I want to do, what I believe in. When I stopped playing sports, I lost that aspect of my physical relationship to things I cared about. And I think intellectual labor has its own version of that. But I'm, like, not a person to go to protest. Like, I'm not. I've been to them before, but it's not. I. It's not me, whatever that means. It can be impact more. So I think that doing performance art and doing work like this is my version of putting my body on the line in the way in which so many people go and are battered by police officers and. Or always at risk of being hit in the face by some pepper spray or some tear gas. Like, who knows what could happen? This is my version.

[Tonya Moseley]

Did you feel claustrophobic at all? Did you feel any sense of fear at all being in that box?

[Romel Ross]

I never said this publicly. I loved it. I loved being in there.

[Tonya Moseley]

What did you love about it?

[Romel Ross]

I loved that there was nothing else to do. Yeah. I was just in there. What am I gonna. What am I doing? What am I gonna do? My only goal was to, like, survive or to. I mean, it's a bit dramatic because two people knew I was in there. I could get out whenever I wanted.

[Tonya Moseley]

Yeah.

[Romel Ross]

I'm not saying that this was anything like Henry Box Brown's. Yeah, just. Just a project with. With deep meaning to me. But my goal was to exist. And the sound, it sounded like I was time traveling because I sound like I was on a freight train. I thought the box was going to fall apart.

[Tonya Moseley]

It was loud. Yeah.

[Romel Ross]

Oh my God. It was terrifyingly loud. At times I can't see how it's strapped. I know my guy, Bobby Davis, he's one of the smartest people I know. I know that the box is built well. I know it's strapped down because he would not he was hesitant to even do this thing. I had to like almost force him. But he's a big supporter of my work. But also I can't see it. So I think so. It's terrifying. It's calming because you have to submit. You're putting your hands in the life of someone else. But I think the reason why I liked it is simply because I just had to be.

[Tonya Moseley]

Our guest today is Oscar nominated filmmaker Ramel Ross. We'll be right back after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

[John Powers]

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[Tonya Moseley]

Okay, so Rommel, you were born in Frankfurt, Germany. As you mentioned, your parents are both in the military. Were in the military. How long were you in Germany before you all moved? You all moved to Fairfax, Virginia. That's where you spent most of your childhood.

[Romel Ross]

Yeah, not so long actually. I was born there, left I think within a year. My sister was also born there. And that was really influential, I think, in the way in which I always I viewed the globe.

[Tonya Moseley]

The world.

[Romel Ross]

The world, yeah.

[Tonya Moseley]

And I want to go to college with you because you're six. Six. You're a tall guy. You were playing basketball at Georgetown and then you were injured.

[Romel Ross]

Dream man. A dream. I still dream about basketball. Daydream about it. Like I still feel it. Like I so much muscle memory. Like I am a trained basketball player. You know, you could imagine like a person that's like a green parade. I was a trained killer.

[Tonya Moseley]

When did you start playing?

[Romel Ross]

You know, really late. Like I'm a late boomer to all this stuff. Like I was just a relatively, you know, free floating child, really into math, honestly, and really into drawing until I found karate in like middle school and then basketball. I think my fresh about my freshman year of high school, of high school, really late. I met one coach whose name's Robert Barrow. He was, you Know, arguably the most influential person in my life outside of my father, male at least. And he was like, you know, rommel, you got it. And I'm, you know, I'm like, 14 years old. I'm like, what is it? He's like, you know, I played with Grant Hill, and, you know, I played at college, and I think you could go to the NBA. You're smart enough, you're athletic enough. And I say enough because you're not, like, naturally talented in any of those things, but you have the bones, essentially, if you do this. And he, like, pulls out a sheet of paper and is like, if you do these workouts, you can go to the NBA. And I was like, all right, Coach.

[Tonya Moseley]

How were you injured? Do you remember?

[Romel Ross]

Oh, I remember. I remember. Well, first time I dislocated my shoulder was at a AAU tournament in Las Vegas. It was before my senior year of high school, and I already committed to Georgetown, and some guy was going up for a shot, and under the hoop, really big guy, and I swipe with my left arm, and I'm really extended, and the force of my palm hitting the ball, you know, ricochets through my arm and pops my shoulder out. Really painful. Throw my arm up, scream for my father. I think eventually my arm slid back into place. We didn't think much of it. You know, people get injured all the time. Turned out to be a reoccurring injury where I needed to have, like, kind of reconstructive surgery on my shoulder.

[Tonya Moseley]

When did you realize that dream of the NBA was over?

[Romel Ross]

My sophomore year, when I was ready to start and I was playing my best basketball. Recovered from my left shoulder injury, and I broke my foot in the summer before my sophomore year. It's fine. I can deal with that. Got fixed, rehabbed, was ready to play, ready to start. And the first practice of that season, I break that same foot again. I break the screw out of it. I knew it right when I rolled my ankle, and that's when I was like, oh, I might. I might not go to the NBA. You know? Yeah, it's so. It's so visceral. Like, I remember it. Like, I've never. That was my first time being depressed, you know, hold myself up in my dorm, grew a beard for the first time, and, like, didn't talk to anyone for, like, two weeks, which isn't a long time, but, like, the opposite of my personality at that time, at least.

[Tonya Moseley]

Yeah. Do you still feel phantom pain at all?

[Romel Ross]

Oh, yeah. I can't play now. I can play for like 15 or 20 minutes, but my foot still hurts. You know, both my. I ended up rehabbing back, ready to start. And then my junior year, same thing happened to my left shoulder, happens to my right shoulder, rehab again. Then my senior year, same thing happens again to my right shoulder. And so it's always been a constant body failing me. Relationship to basketball, my first love, which to tie back to filmmaking is why one, I care so much, and two, why I am not so concerned with the reception or the outcome. Because first career is done. I've already had my biggest hopes and dreams squished. And the meaning that I got from basketball was replaced by photography and film. And so not only do I care about it more than most things, I'm also used to. I've also gone to the extreme of hope and despair. And so this is all like second life to me, genuinely.

[Tonya Moseley]

There was also something else that happened during that time. You lost your mom.

[Romel Ross]

Yeah.

[Tonya Moseley]

I'm sorry. Yeah.

[Romel Ross]

Yeah, it's okay. You know, I think happens to everyone, and it's never a good time. Yeah.

[Tonya Moseley]

What opened up for you in that time period that photography looked like, not a savior, but like an interest that you say, okay, I'm gonna focus my attention here.

[Romel Ross]

Yeah. It's a combination of. I don't think photography would have felt. Felt or filled the space or done what it did if I didn't lose basketball and my mom at the same time. I think if it was just either one of those, something else would have happened. That's probably with everything in everyone's life. Takes a combination of factors. I think there's something about. I want to say, dangling the carrot. The. The way in which basketball is like, you're. You know, every time you make a shot, like, it's perfect. You're. You could be done, you know, but you do it again. Because it's not about that one moment of perfection. It's about perfection over time. Or it's about the pursuit of it. It's something else. There's something about photography that is like that in which you, like, need to prove that you can do it again to yourself. You're, like, trying. You're chase. You're chasing something, you're in pursuit. You're on some treadmill. Like, it's. And it's ineffable, and you want to do it forever, and you're never satisfied. And it's essentially not about the thing itself. It's doing something else for you. And. Yeah, I just need it. I just needed that. You know, I needed what like, what a big hole to fill. You know, two first loves, mom and sports. I think maybe now for the first time, I'm understanding that it actually filled. This is what it did. It filled the role. It allowed me to see myself. I'd never seen myself because I'd always been disciplined and basketball obsessed and so loved by my family and so privileged in all those ways. I never had to reflect on the composition of myself, the constitution of myself. What I believed, I didn't know what I believed. I didn't know what I believed till I started reading books. Because then you're engaged with the interior life of others in a way in which you can't always through conversation, especially when you're going through puberty or you're becoming a person. So I think it let me think about identity deeply while forming my identity. And that's probably why I take it so seriously as a knowledge production of identity.

[Tonya Moseley]

Yeah, I'm just curious about the kind of conversations you'd have at home with your parents and your siblings. Like, were you deconstructing life? Trying to pick apart things growing up? Is that part of Innately you? Is it your family, too? Like, take me there.

[Romel Ross]

I think I was always curious. My dad and my mom, I think, encouraged that for my sister and I. I think once I went to college is when I really started to think in a way in which was annoying for everyone in my family.

[Tonya Moseley]

In what way? Like, how would you annoy them?

[Romel Ross]

Because the deconstruction and picking apart was. They were the targets. What do you have access to your mom, your dad and your sister. Right. And their decisions. Yes. Yes.

[Tonya Moseley]

They loved you.

[Romel Ross]

Yeah, they loved me, but they didn't want to talk to me, probably. Yeah. And then, of course, you get out of that mode of. I mean, I question. I began to question everything. And when I mean everything, I mean, yeah, everything. I would go outside, I would read nutritional facts because, I mean, I felt undereducated. Like, once you come into. Once I came into my own, especially as an athlete at a school like Georgetown in which everyone's vocabulary is just like, I don't even know what they're talking about. I didn't know what indifferent meant. I remember when I was walking and a friend was like, man, I'm indifferent to that. I was like, indifferent. How do you get inside something that's opposite of something else?

[Tonya Moseley]

This was such a pleasure to talk with you. Congratulations on your nominations and thank you.

[Romel Ross]

Thanks so much. Thank you.

[Tanya Moseley]

Romel Ross film Nickel Boys is in theaters nationwide and will be available on Prime Video later this year. It's been nominated for best picture and adapted screenplay for this year's Academy Awards. The ceremony will be held on March 2nd. Coming up, a review of the new season of the hit TV series the White Lotus. This is FRESH air.

[John Powers]

This message comes from Comcast Every day, thousands of Comcast engineers and technologists create connectivity solutions that change the way people work, live and play. Like Kunle, a Comcast engineer who is focused on revolutionizing the in home WI Fi experience today and for the next generation. Kunle builds powerful Xfinity WI Fi devices for a fast, reliable connection with capacity to connect hundreds of high bandwidth devices at once. [e-mail] wi fi one of this year's.

[Tanya Moseley]

Most eagerly awaited TV series is the new season of the White Lotus, mike White's acclaimed comic drama about privileged tourists getting up to trouble in posh seaside resorts. In this latest installment, whose first episode drops on HBO this Sunday, the action has moved to Thailand with visitors that include characters played by Michelle Monahan, Walton Goggins, Carrie Coon, Jason Isaacs and Parker Posey. Critic at large John Powers has watched a big chunk of the series and says it aims deeper than earlier seasons.

[Narrator]

One of the most exquisitely cynical lines in 20th century literature comes in the Italian novel the Leopard. A young aristocrat is telling his uncle, the Prince, why he's joined up with Garibaldi's revolutionaries. If we want things to stay as they are, he explains, things will have to change. This is precisely the thinking behind successful TV franchises which try to change things just enough to seem fresh while still serving up what the audience loved the first time. Except for maybe Fargo, no show tackles this challenge more honorably than the White Lotus, the Emmy grabbing HBO series in which rich entitled white folks cause trouble at enviably gorgeous beachfront resorts. Written and directed by Mike White, the White Lotus doesn't merely introduce new characters and locales every season. The latest one is set in Thailand, but also shifts its tone and preoccupations. Still, it follows a template. Like its predecessors, season three begins with an unidentified dead body and then flashes back to show us who's dead and why. We watch the guests arrive at the White Lotus, a wellness centered resort on the island of Ko Samui. These include the well heeled Ratliff family from North Carolina. The parents are played by Jason Isaacs and Parker posey. There are three 40something girlfriends led by Jacqueline, a TV star played by Michelle Monahan. There's gloomy Rick, that's Walton Goggins a scruffy dude who's here with his far younger girlfriend, Chelsea. And as always, in paradise, there's a serpent. It would take an hour to tell you the plot. Suffice it to say that after a low key start, the show becomes a stir fry of financial secrets, dark family histories, drug abuse, kinky hijinks, poisonous snakes, scary gunfire and oddball comedy. White loves to shove his characters and audiences out of their comfort zone. We often can't be sure whether something is supposed to be funny or serious or both. We don't know which characters are actually nice, are deeper than they first seem, or are blithely headed toward bad things. Take, for instance, the Ratliff family, Timothy and Victoria and their three grown up kids. Their provincial complacency is on display when they arrive at the White Lotus and meet the hotel manager.

[Romel Ross]

The Ratliff family. Yes, that's us. How was your flight?

[Victoria Ratliff]

Long layover in Doha, but it's all forgotten now.

[Tonya Moseley]

We flew over the North Pole.

[Romel Ross]

How did you find.

[Victoria Ratliff]

Asma is well. Piper here is a senior. Thank you. At Chapel Hill.

[Romel Ross]

I was also a Tar Heel, but.

[Tonya Moseley]

Timothy went to Duke.

[Romel Ross]

Saxton graduated, Duke Lachlan, our youngest, just.

[Tonya Moseley]

Got accepted to both, so you can.

[Victoria Ratliff]

Imagine it's a whole thing. And she's a religious studies major, so she's writing her thesis on. Well, what's your thesis on, Pipe? Well, it's on Buddhism and there's a monk and a monastery near here. Anyway, she wants to interview him, so we made a family road trip over there.

[Romel Ross]

Would you please escort them to the villa? Certainly. Please enjoy.

[Victoria Ratliff]

Right this way.

[Romel Ross]

Enjoy.

[Victoria Ratliff]

Thank you.

[Tonya Moseley]

Enjoy.

[Narrator]

If you've seen either of the two seasons, you know that Victoria and her kin are likely to face trickier issues than the rivalry between Duke and the Tar Heels. In truth, season three is less effervescent than one or two. Yet the show's still superbly acted by its stars and White stuffs his scenes with pleasures. I love the comedy of the Ratliff's alpha male son, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger's son Patrick, driving everyone crazy by obsessively making protein shakes in a deafening blender. I love the increasingly fraught dynamics of Jacqueline and her friends. The others are played by Carrie Coon and Leslie Bibb, by the way. Whenever two of them get together, they grow catty about the one who's not there. I was especially knocked out by the scene in which Rick meets an old friend who launches into a monologue about his sexcapades in Bangkok. It is, I promise you, the most surprising thing you're going to hear on TV this year. The White Lotus takes it as a given that its privileged characters have no interest in the culture they're visiting, be it Hawaii or Sicily or now Thailand, they treat it as a theme park or a stage on which they can act out. White clearly hopes to avoid doing that himself, although he does glamorize Thailand. Conspicuous luxury is one of the show's selling points. After all, he treats Buddhism respectfully and he makes a point of trying to incorporate Thai characters. The two best are the hotel's owner, a silver haired diva, and a sympathetic security guard whose fecklessness makes us constantly worry for him. Now, over the course of the six episodes available to screen, there are eight in all. White repeatedly shows us two very different things, monkeys and Buddhas. This motif is fitting for White's theme here is the tension between our animal nature and our yearning for a deeper, more spiritual existence, one free from the values and egotisms that imprison us, pushing its characters toward questions of life's meaning. This is the most soul conscious of the three seasons. No matter how safe and comfortable things might seem, White suggests there comes a time of reckoning when we have to face how alone we really are.

[Tanya Moseley]

John Powers reviewed the new season of the White Lotus, which begins Sunday on hbo. Tomorrow on FRESH Air. We hear from some of Saturday Night Live's early cast members ahead of their three hour 50th anniversary special on Sunday, Dan Aykroyd, Al Franken, who was one of the show's original writers before becoming a cast member, and writer Alan Zweibel talks about creating iconic sketches with Gilda Ratner. I hope you can join us. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Meyers, Ann Marie Boldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly CB Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show with Terry Gross. I'm Tanya Moseley.

[John Powers]

This message comes from NPR sponsor Shopify. Start selling with Shopify today. Whether you're a garage entrepreneur or IPO ready, Shopify is the only tool you need to start, run and grow your business without the struggle. Go to shopify.com npr.