OSCARs Exclusive: ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ Director Barry Jenkins On Race, Representation And Manifestation

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Barry Jenkins Says He’s Not An Activist

The 91st Annual Academy Awards are tonight and while we’re happy to see ‘Black Panther,’ Regina King, Mahershala Ali, ‘BlacKkKlansman,’ Spike Lee, Ruth E. Carter and Barry Jenkins nominated across a number of categories we’re convinced that ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ should have been recognized as a Best Picture nominee. In a year that saw a diverse range of black films – ‘Black Panther,’ ‘BlacKkKlansman,”The Hate U Give’ and ‘Sorry To Bother You’ were among our favorites – ‘If Beale Street Could Talk,’ was, as Regina King called it at one screening attended by our editors, ‘a visual symphony.’ The film truly struck a chord, pun intended, with our Sr. Director of Content Janeé Bolden, who spoke with Barry Jenkins in a one-on-one back in October, just before midterm elections, in a conversation that touched on the magnitude of reimagining James Baldwin for the big screen, the power of revealing the intensity of love between two dark-skinned lead actors and the importance of Regina King’s character as a symbol of black motherhood.

The first question Janeé asked though, was about the music, which speaks so deeply to the emotions conveyed in the film that it may as well have been another character.

Janeé Bolden: Can you talk about the score for the film and the song selection? The film was visually stunning, but the music played such an important role.

Barry Jenkins: “Nicholas Britell who did the score for Moonlight did the score for this film. It’s interesting, we were in Belgium together at this composers conference at this music Q&A and this other composer said “Oh wait, you never heard Nick’s music before you did ‘Moonlight?’” I didn’t realize it, but it was like, no I didn’t — it was just a vibe.

What happened was, as we watched, the film tells us what the music should feel like. We started out with this idea of jazz — you know brass, saxophone, French horn, things like that and as Nick started writing music in that way, we actually realized it wanted it to be strings but as brass compositions, so we organically began the film playing basically as a chamber orchestra but with jazz compositions, and by the end of the film we are playing with jazz instruments these orchestral compositions.

It was a really organic process and what happens is, as you cut the film, when you watch it, the music is meant to feel like Tish is feeling, the way Fonnie is feeling, so a lot of the way the score ends and begins is dictated by the characters.

And then with the needle drops, with the songs that play, I always just have in my head what the characters are vibing with. We’re just mixing and matching, put things in, you know Nina Simone, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Al Green, all those just things felt appropriate with the time period for these characters.

Janeé Bolden: The film does a great justice to the book and I almost imagined that if James Baldwin could have seen this film he’d have been extremely happy with the result. Did you feel pressure to make the movie as Baldwin would have?

Barry Jenkins: That was part of it for sure. Not that I was asking myself, ‘What would Jimmy do?’ in a certain way, but it was in the back of my mind. And just knowing how much of a cultural critic he was, how engaged he was, you know he wrote film criticism, he wrote about music, it was important for me to have a soundscape that reflected the things he listened to. He actually mentions a lot of music in the book. Music that I felt wasn’t the right fit for what we were doing, but it was a nice compass to have in my head. Not everything in the film is meant to be literally faithful to the book, but to be in the same spirit.

Hit the flip for Jenkins’ take on Kiki Layne and the importance of casting a dark skinned actress for ‘Beale Street.’

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JB: You spoke about Kiki Layne manifesting the role of Tish. What kind of things have you manifested for yourself?

BJ: I don’t think I have. I think my friends have manifested things for me. I’m always terrified of all the things I make, you know, but I keep friends around me, my producer, my editors, my cinematographer since film school, literally sixteen years now, whenever I get hesitant they push me to this place.

Looking backwards I can see how so many things have haphazardly added up. So I think that way and then I remember, ‘Oh THIS friend said you have to do this, or this friend said you can’t stop, you have to keep going.’ Some of us build villages and communities who help us manifest, but Kiki – oh man – she definitely manifested this movie. She did that. Literally. She was not on our radar, she should not have auditioned for this film, she saw a paper, she was helping her homeboy out, and she was like I am going to do this and she did it.

JB: Kiki talked about her shock as a woman with her hair texture and skin color winning a leading role, you’ve done so much in terms of uplifting black women and creating strong roles for black actresses. Can you talk about the importance of that?

BJ: It’s interesting though, I can’t take credit for those things because it doesn’t occur to me.

JB: You’re not intentionally casting this way?

BJ: With the main character in this film, yes, it was very clear to me that she needed to be a dark-skinned black woman. For sure. That is highly in fidelity to the text. [Laughs] This is going to work against that argument, because Stephan James’ character in the book is definitely mentioned as being light-skinned, it’s a point and a fact, but we cast a dark skinned actor for it. I can’t say that I’m doing this as a mission statement, you know, it’s a meritocracy. It didn’t occur to me that Kiki’s hair was a certain way that was going to add political agency to the role. I didn’t see it that way. Now I’m not blind. I totally understand how it functions but I can’t take credit for it. If anything I can say these people have wells of talent. I see it. And if people can’t see it because of the way they look or the way their hair is, or how much melanin they got that’s a problem. But it’s not a problem that I’m trying to counteract.

Hit the flip to continue

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JB: One thing about ‘Beale Street,’ there’s so much there that there is something almost everyone can relate to, would you agree?

BJ: It’s what you bring to the material for sure. I’m just trying to do justice to the material always. The reason why I say that is because there is a sharp distinction between what I’m doing in my work and what Ava is doing with “Queen Sugar.” That should be celebrated, shouted to the mountaintops. I think this is just the appropriate way that things should be done and I hope that in five years seeing someone like Kiki as the lead in a film is not something that is shocking or revelatory or a political act, but that’s me being glass half full, naïve in a certain way. And I love that people are coming to the work and walking away with this level of message because it’s important that people can see themselves. I think that it’s important that the next Kiki Layne can look at Beale Street and say – “SEE! You damn right, you should let me come audition for this thing.

JB: I see a lot of films and one thing that I liked about ‘Beale Street’ as well as ‘The Hate U Give’ is that you see the love in these black families, there are strong mothers raising daughters who have a lot to endure in the world, how important was it for you to paint a picture that was not the stereotypical single black mother on welfare type story?

BJ: To me it’s not about the importance of the picture. The picture is not important but I think black life, the black experience, Black America is not a monolithic thing. But it’s funny because as you were describing this thing that it’s not, you were describing ‘Moonlight’, you were describing my previous film, but I feel like these things go hand in hand. I think it’s important in both of those films you have these mothers who are doing the best that they can to protect their children from the world. I think it’s an interesting thought experiment if you were to take the Regina King character from Beale Street and made her the mom in Moonlight, and take Naomi Harris’ character from ‘Moonlight’ and made her the mom in Beale Street how would that affect the children at the center of the stories, it’s kind of a nurture vs. nature scenario.

But I want to go back to something you said before. I try to not necessarily get away from, representation definitely does matter, but I feel like in my work representation is not the point.

In trying to do justice to these stories, I’m choosing the stories that move me. So seeing someone like Kiki as the lead, even though I understand how for black women who look and feel like Kiki I can understand how there is something they’re going to feel that I can’t even fathom because it’s not my experience. Just like when I was directing this film, there were things that Kiki or Regina would tell me about the character that I had to as a director check my ego and go you know what I’m not a black woman, you are right. Let’s go down this path.

I say all that to say, looking at your pin for Stacy Abrams, there’s never been a black woman who has been the governor of a state in the history of this country, that’s insane. I think in seeing your pin and seeing Ms. Abrams, whether it’s on CNN, C-Span or whatever in the newspaper, it moves people. It moves me. I can’t imagine how it moves a woman who looks like Stacy Abrams so maybe I should own up to these women, particularly in this film but also in the last film and the strength that they show and again the nurturing they provide to the young black men in these films to grow and endure the things they’re enduring in these films, so maybe I should own up to it and take some credit but it’s just not the point.

Hit the flip to learn more about why Barry considers himself an artist, not an activist.

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When Barry Jenkins accepted his Spirit Award for Best Director Saturday, we weren’t at all surprised that his speech focused encouraging more movies be made with female directors. In our talk with him, Jenkins was adamant that while he doesn’t see himself as an activist, he feels his peer Ava Duvernay is both.

BJ: I’m an artist, not an activist. That’s why I try to big up Ava every time I can because I think what she’s done with “Queen Sugar,” is taken the art and made it activism. The art has enabled her to create very grounded activism and now, not just casting someone like Kiki in the film, but now enabling – all these women, I think it’s three seasons, four seasons, so now there’s like 30-40 women who can now go out and do what I’m doing and what Ava’s doing [because she uses female directors for every episode]. That is POWERRRRR! That is POWER! This thing that I’m doing if I can take credit for it, is symbolic in a certain way, although Kiki is so strong that she’s going to be a mogul. If somebody can trace back to Kiki being in this film and creating this mogul, then I’ll take some credit for it but it’s not the same, that’s why it’s always a difficult conversation for me because I don’t feel like I’m doing anything.

JB: Can we close out by talking about inclusion riders? Has there been more movement in the industry to use inclusion riders this year?

BJ: I think there has been. It got kicked off by Frances McDormand with that amazing speech and then Michael [B. Jordan] he pushed it up a notch. I think it’s been spreading a little bit but it didn’t become like law. I was looking back at ‘Beale Street’ and ‘Moonlight’ as a thought experiment and looked at the call sheets and on both ‘Beale Street’ and ‘Moonlight’ there are more women producers than male producers and you can look at the crew and you see this mixture of black and female and Latino, especially Moonlight because we shot in Miami and I thought ‘Okay this is cool,’ because again it’s not activism, but the principle of what these riders stand for was already included in our work in a certain way.

I think that change is not a destination, it’s a direction in a certain way and I love the idea of inclusion riders, I think they’re very necessary. I think it’s also important to look at where we are and where we’ve been to say what have I been doing in my work and how can I make sure I continue to do those things because what happens is we set inclusion riders and we set that metric and stop and say “Okay, good, problem is solved, let’s move on!’ And we’ve already seen how that can function against us because voter rights, because I think it was around 2002 it was like okay we don’t need this anymore and now ten years later look at the mess we’re in.

This was definitely one of our favorite interviews for the year and we’ll be rooting for Barry Jenkins, Regina King and Nicholas Britell tonight.