The upcoming ScreenCraft Winter Writers Summit, streaming Dec. 6–9, offers storytellers a front-row seat to intimate conversations with Hollywood’s most compelling voices—including a chat between Backstage senior editor Vinnie Mancuso and “Nickel Boys” writer-director RaMell Ross and actor Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor. One of the primary topics they discussed is how filmmakers and actors can successfully portray personal perspectives in a way that feels authentic.
Ross, who describes himself as a “language minimalist,” emphasizes the power of saying a lot with a little. “It’s about finding language that can be embodied by a character and it doesn’t feel like they’re saying it, because they have something that’s at the end of the sentence that completes it,” he says.
“Nickel Boys,” which tells the story of two African American boys forced to attend the segregated reform school Nickel Academy in 1960s Tallahassee, is shot in a first-person point of view, meaning that Ellis-Taylor performs straight to the camera. The directorial decision packs a powerful emotional punch, in no small part due to the actor’s ability to embody the language of the script crafted by Ross and co-writer Joslyn Barnes (adapted from the 2019 novel by Colson Whitehead). In one scene, Ellis-Taylor’s character, Hattie, must tell her grandson, Elwood (Ethan Herisse), that there’s no hope of getting him out of Nickel. She tries and fails to hold in her tears; it’s a master class in having that visceral something “that completes it.”
It’s “like what they’re saying is holding a whole bunch of other things that have their own storm system in the person’s head,” Ross explains.
For the full discussion with Ross and Ellis-Taylor, plus other conversations with icons like Jodie Comer, Noah Hawley, Steve McQueen, Denis Villeneuve, and more, sign up for the ScreenCraft Winter Summit! And if you’re a premium ticket holder, you can even get face time with agents and managers from Verve, Buchwald, and Lit Entertainment, meaning a direct connection to the people who help make movie and TV magic.