RaMell Ross: You ‘Don’t Need a Lot of Money to Make a Film That’s Cinematic and Deserves to Be in Theaters’
RaMell Ross had strong words about the state of the independent film industry and what he’s looking to post-“Nickel Boys” while on the Spirit Awards blue carpet, speaking to IndieWire Saturday, February 22.
The documentary-turned-narrative director’s “Nickel Boys” (Amazon MGM Studios) is up for two Film Independent Spirit Awards, including Best Feature and Best Cinematography. DP Jomo Fray had already won that award as of writing for his first-person-perspective dive into a 1960s Florida boarding school where Black students are being abused. Colson Whitehead wrote the novel that inspired the Oscar Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay nominee.
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Speaking to IndieWire’s Features Writer Alison Foreman at the Spirit Awards ahead of the night’s ceremony, Ross was asked about the future of theatrical releases for boldly minded independent films like “Nickel Boys.”
“It’s strange because big budget doesn’t necessarily imply theatrical release anymore,” he said. “I don’t think you need a lot of money to make a film that’s cinematic and deserves to be in theaters, but people feel like there’s a certain production quality that one needs. When unions come into play, the budgets are bloated. I don’t have the answers.”
When not making films like “Nickel Boys” or the Oscar-nominated documentary “Hale County This Morning, This Evening” (2018), Ross teaches filmmaking at Brown University, which he said has given him a knowing position as a mentor to younger directors and storytellers. And perhaps making him more savvy in terms of giving advice.
“The most important part of that mentoring process is trying to figure out what the student actually wants, not what they say they want, because what they say they want is what they rarely actually want,” Ross said. “Do you want the status of being a filmmaker, or do you want to make great films? Do you want your script to explore these ideas, or do you want to use the script and these ideas to make a film so that you can make another film about these ideas? The depth of one’s intention and the source of the drive to make one’s work really weeds out how much money you need.”
As for audiences, he said, they “have no idea what they want. Cultures in general are led by people who make decisions that are more geared toward what they want to see than what the culture wants to see, and the culture follows. Because what culture wants is more of what it go. That … psychological state is never right for artists.”
As for the future of filmmaking or what we should look forward to or be afraid of, Ross said, “I think we should be afraid of things continuing as they are, and we should hope for new models and paradigms and more risk, and a more generous assessment of relationships between return and piece, piece of work. It would be nice if they could be slightly more divorced so that the work isn’t being reduced to communicate, it’s actually being made more complex, to mistify. That doesn’t necessarily make money.”
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