RaMell Ross, San Francisco, CA 12/11/24
Click here to listen to the interview.
When I spoke to RaMell Ross on December 11, 2024 for his debut narrative, NICKEL BOYS, it was just a few days after he had presented cast member Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor with the Social Impact Award at the Seventh Annual Critics Choice Awards Celebration of Black Cinema and Television. I had been in the audience, and was curious what it had meant to him to be able to hand her that award. Before that, though, I wanted to know how he had managed to maintain the lyrically immersive experience he had used for his breakout, and Oscar®-nominated documentary, HALE COUNTY, THIS MORNING, THIS EVENING. Ross, a man given to an easy laugh and thoughtful musings, has created what he terms an experiential monument based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The sometimes oneiric effect of using a first-person POV in telling the story of Elwood, a young black man sentenced to a corrupt reform school with a body count brings an immediacy to the events depicted that is both poetic and emotionally devastating.
Of course I had to ask the obvious question about using that POV, but we then moved on to how Ross layered images, used quotidienne sounds, and the force of nature that is Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Hattie, Elwood’s nurturing grandmother.
The film co-stars Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Jimmie Fails, Luke Tenni, Hamish Linklater, and Daveed Diggs. Ross directed from a script he co-wrote with Joslyn Barnes based on the novel, The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead.
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