The directorsNickel Boysis a staggering achievement one well be talking about for years to come.
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This interview was originally published on September 27, 2024, out of the New York Film Festival.
On January 23, 2025,Nickel Boyswas nominated for two Oscars, including Best Picture.
Shockingly, he did not.
Its a staggering achievement one thats likely to be talked about for years to come.
Nickel Boysis your first feature-length picture in six years.
So, what happens the day after?
And it culminated with the release of the film.
I was like,I can keep it fresh, of course.
The work is poetry.
Ill just use poetry.And I just ran out of poetry!
Youre not going to wake up and be different.
So, it was quite depressing, because I no longer had that drug.
But thats just the personal side.
I teach, Im good, Im really happy.
But Dede madeThe Tree of Life!
It came pretty fast, because the way I entered the book aligned so much with my aesthetic values.
That time period is saturated with archival images that arent from our point of view.
Generally speaking, they lack the poetry.
They lack the interstitialness, the lyricism.
How does that affect todays quotidian?
And we assume itll settle into something more conventional eventually.
And it absolutely doesnt!
And in the first 20 minutes theyre the exact same person you knew forever.
What were your conversations with Colson Whitehead like?Id say they were non-existent.
He and Dede and Jeremy chose me, whatever that means.
And he wrote back, Thanks for your note.
And that was it!
At first, I was… not hurt, but I was like, Oh, man.
Then I realized, Wait, thats the best.
Hes actually giving me freedom to do my thing.
So, Im not beholden to him in any way.
I am, but not really.
Has he seen the movie?I think so.
Apparently, hes writing a book right now and hes hard at work.
One thing in the Zeitgeist that people can understand though its not the exact same thing is double consciousness.
F22, you could see everything super-clear, and its all super-formal.
Theyre not using the instruments formally and classically.
I dont use the eight-by-ten camera formally and classically.
I use it to express something deep that has to do with my experience in the world.
Not a picture of the world, but my experience of it.
My proof of concept forNickel BoyswasHale County.
But like you said, human vision is attention-oriented.
Its not linear, its not straight.
Its not a normal film.
I think this is actually the way that the brain wants to work.
It wants to let us have access to this wide range of associations.
But because were so utilitarian-oriented, were on these one-track minds, reading things in specific ways.
Images are reductive intentionally for legibility but theyre also complex, unconsciously, unknowingly.
I think that photography, one, rewires our senses.
And its also produced a language that has to catch up with our brains.
How did you build up and collect all these images initially?
Some of them are from the book, obviously.
But a lot of it is just life.Thats where it came from.
I just made it up.
The beautiful thing about the story is that I can just think about everything Ive seen.
I had a childhood, and I love images.
And so I can think in images quite well.
The original script was images and camera movement.
The hard part is shaping it.
We had hundreds of images.
When youre working with something scripted, does that process of discovery change?It does completely.
Especially when you have 33 days.
And then you lose 5 days because of COVID.
A person gets COVID and has to go, and you lose a scene.
But we realized really early, Jomo Fray and I, that you have to miss things.
Youdontwant to hit every mark.
If you hit the marks, then youre producing it.
But if youre catching up to the world, then youreinthe world.
Because the world is separate from your experience of engaging with it.
We called it single-point perspective.
The camera is situated in a way that it moves a bit like the human neck.
So, just being responsive to the environment, but not trying to synchronize with it.
I can talk about my work and my sensibility very clearly.
So, its convincing!
Before we made the script, I had a vision for the film.
Jomo comes in, and hes a master.
At 6K with a Sony VENICE on Rialto mode.
Have it be a 4:3 aspect ratio.
We did have to set their expectations that they werent going to be on camera the entire time.
But then to have itfeelright, that takes direction.
They were so open and wanted to genuinely play that.
And they were, I think, deeply enthusiastic to be part of a production that was predominantly Black.
As a director, I would say Im kind of fun.
Im not screaming at them.
I dont have rules.
They can do anything that they want, and then well go from there and start molding.
We went through hundreds to find them, as Im sure it’s possible for you to imagine.
Id never seen casting tapes directed at me to evaluate, right?
So, we got tapes like that.
Like a guy had a straw hat on, with a straw thing in his mouth.
But this is what Hollywood encourages!
He was so flexible and confident in himself.
And I thought,Oh, man, that feels like that could be Turner.
Thats Turner.Then Ethan, he was a version of that, but he had this optimism.
At a certain point in the film, a switch in perspective happens between Elwood and Turner.
Were watching the world through Elwoods eyes, and then suddenly were seeing it through Turners eyes as well.
How did you decide on this?Thats something that happened over the writing process with Joslyn.
then we thought, Oh, what if we gave it to Turner?
What if only Turner could see Elwood?
What if only Elwood could see Turner?
The switch, the swap.
It becomes more than a camera technique.
It becomes a way in which these people are exchanging vitality.
Later, you start to incorporate what seem like archival elements.
We have a whisper in our head, we watch ourselves.
Interestingly, Ive found one place where it’s possible for you to get that duality is the audiobook.
Because youre not using your eyes in that way.
I do this in my class, I call them Order of TimeWalks.
Do you know Carlo RovellisOrder of Time?
Its read by Benedict Cumberbatch.
It changes your relationship to time and space, because youre in the world experiencing what hes talking about.
But I was super-safe.
No one could get in the box.
I could get out.
Only two people knew I was in there.
But the journey itself was so visceral.
Our first idea was FedEx.
Did research with my studio manager for a year.
We were tracing trucks, were talking to FedEx.
Im like, Oh, do they have good airflow in there?
Theyre like, Why do you care about airflow?
Im like, Oh, just wondering.
So, way too dangerous.
Also, theyre putting forks through the boxes sometimes if they fall.
And we need an oxygen tank.
And well just use U-ship.
So we built the box out of Outlander railroad ties.
The person never shows up the first time, which no one knows.
So, then we bail on that one.
And then two months later we fully accomplished it.
Basically, I just lived in this box for three days.
Obviously, he didnt know I was in there, because we didnt tell them.
Im just sitting there, like, Why arent we moving?
But also, I filmed it.
I had two GoPros, 100 batteries, an alarm set.
Every hour I changed the battery.
I have 59 straight hours of the entire journey that Im going to make into a 59-hour film.
So, on the inside is all text from the Black Dictionary.
This also was the inspiration behind the boxcar scene inNickel Boys.
And then we put it in the film.
I thought,Ive never seen a time-lapse out of a boxcar.
How amazing would that be?
