5 Questions #3: Roger Ross Williams

The Director of CASSANDRO and STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING and...

I recently had the privilege of working with one of the busiest people in the FKATheFilmBiz. Somehow Roger Ross Williams not only wrote and directed his first narrative feature this year (CASSANDRO which I was one of the producers on), but also the riveting and powerful documentary STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING, the doc LOVE TO LOVE YOU, DONNA SUMMER and the limited series THE SUPER MODELS, both of which I have not yet caught up with. And that’s just directing. There’s more as a producer and executive producer. Although he is a friend and collaborator, I was not at all confident that I could slow him down enough to have him submit to my questioning. Somehow he found the time, and I am thankful.

And did I say that Gael Garcia Bernal is absolutely fantastic as CASSANDRO? Well, he is.

Roger Ross Williams leaps into the ring!

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Roger, could you tell us about a collaborator you’ve worked with and why you love/respect them? 

I have had a long working relationship with producer Julie Goldman. Julie and I first met in 2013 when I was about to make my first feature film, God Loves Uganda. I was invited to participate in the Tribeca Film Institute’s All Access Program for underrepresented voices. Julie was an advisor and she heard my pitch for God Loves Uganda and contacted me. She told me she was interested in producing my film. From that moment on, everything changed for me. I got to learn about the value of a producer, but not just any producer– I learned from the best in the business. 

Julie has produced hundreds of films, has won dozens of awards– including multiple Oscar nominations– and there's a reason for that. It's because Julie is smart, considerate, caring and nurturing all at the same time, making her a master at her job. She immediately took me under her wing, detangled all of the messy partnerships I made when I was working on God Loves Uganda and didn’t know anything about the business. Most importantly, she made sure I had security in the country where I was shooting and where my life was in danger. Over the years, Julie and I have made a tons of films together, features and shorts, including my second Oscar-nominated film, Life, Animated. I believe that Julie's generosity and mentorship has not only made me a better director, but has also made me a better producer. It's why I was able to create a production company called “One Story Up” and it was why I was able to dive into producing so much content. Luckily for me, I got to do this under the mentorship of a truly great producer. 

What I’m really trying to say is that having an essential, smart producing partner is the key to the success of any great director. Look at all the other incredible partnerships– Todd Haynes and Christine Vachon, Robert DeNiro and Jane Rosenthal– these partnerships last decades because there's magic in the way they connect and help each other to tell a great story together. I owe a lot of my success to Julie Goldman.

What would you do differently if you were starting out today?

When I decided to make my first independent documentary, I didn't know anything, I didn't know anyone and I had no idea what I was doing. I just got on a plane with a camera and went to Zimbabwe, a country I had never been to, on a continent I had never visited.

I think if I were starting out today, what I would do differently is invest time trailing other directors, working as a PA or as an intern on film productions so that I could really gain an understanding of the nature of the business. I had to learn by trial and error. I wasn’t focused on the story I wanted to tell, I didn't know how to tell it, and it was confusing and chaotic.  Had I watched and listened, even had I watched more documentaries, and studied more filmmakers and more processes, it would have helped me in making my first film. 

I didn't go to film school. I went to school for Journalism and Politics at NYU. I wish I had gone to film school, but from my experience, learning the business of film and how you learn is hands on and being on a set.   To be in it and observing those who are actually making films– absorbing that knowledge, watching them go through their trials and tribulations, and watching them come out of it glorious and successful, or even fail–all of that is what's going to help you to understand what you need to do as a filmmaker and to truly understand the rollercoaster ride of making a film.  It is equally difficult and rewarding.

What’s the difference between how you currently approach shooting (particularly the first day) versus the first time?

The first time I shot anything, I landed in a completely foreign country. I had a really big idea of the story I wanted to tell. I went and found my subject and I started just randomly filming with them without any real plan. That resulted in many months, and what would become many years, of trying to figure out what the film was. 

Now, I go into my first day of shooting so prepared, so researched, so clear on my vision that I leave little room for error, which actually allows a lot of room for error because nothing ever goes the way you plan– everything changes when you're on that set. But if you have a plan and a vision, a direction, you are ahead of the game. You are ready for anything the universe throws at you because you have an answer for it and if you don't have an answer for it, you’ve done enough research and prep that you will figure it out quickly. 

I can’t tell you how stressful it was making my first film, not being prepared, not knowing the story I wanted to tell, not knowing the subject, not understanding the subject, and just pointing the camera in any direction. When I made my first scripted feature film, Cassandro, I learned from these early mistakes and was smart enough to apply for (and thankfully get accepted to) the Sundance Screenwriting and Directing labs.   It was in the Sundance Directing lab– which is a brutal, 5-week intensive bootcamp led by the great Michelle Satter and her team, that opened my eyes to how much I needed to prepare and understand. Because even though those were 5 weeks of really hard work in the lab, it still was nothing compared to the actual shooting of my film. 

After the Sundance lab, I knew how much more work I needed to do to really understand the story I wanted to tell, the visual language I wanted to use, and how I wanted to tell it. It was the lab that taught me that I needed to really work hard at understanding my own vision for the film. Equally, when I started shooting Stamped from the Beginning, my Netflix feature documentary on the history of racist ideas, I went into that completely prepped and clear on the story I wanted to tell and how I wanted to tell it. I knew that I wanted it to be innovative, to use a hybrid vision with actors and VFX/animation/graphics, and I knew that I wanted to use brilliant, Black woman scholars and academics to do it. That clear vision of how I wanted to tell the story and the confidence I gained over the years of being a director who has made mistakes, gave me the confidence to execute that vision and I'm very proud of the film that came out of it.

How do we maintain the enthusiasm and tenacity for filmmaking when the world is so crazy and hard?

I think that we do it by walking into a cinema and watching a great film. Whether it's a classic from the past or a new film, I think that every time I watch a film that I love, I am transformed and reinvigorated. I walk out of a film that I love completely excited to make films myself. I have hope for the art of cinema. I fall back in love even if I’ve fallen out of love or the world has made me so depressed that I think “why bother?”. I fall back in love when I watch a great movie and I don't think anything is better than that. I got into the business because I love cinema and I love storytelling, and every time I see a great story, I fall in love all over again.

What did you learn about filmmaking, life, art, and yourself from one of your movies?

I learned so much about filmmaking and myself from making my latest film Stamped from the Beginning. Stamped was not an easy film to make. It is based on a dense 500+ page book. It's deeply academic and the subject– the history of racist ideas– is often difficult for people to watch, to think about and even process. This is precisely why I wanted to take on this task, because as a Black man in America, I was struggling to understand not only the hatred around me, but the self-hatred I’ve harbored within myself. I had to understand why these racist ideas were so powerful that even Black people themselves fall victim to them.

I wanted to do that in a way that was accessible, but not diluted. For me, as a filmmaker, I always want to give myself the greatest challenge and I wanted to challenge myself as a director to take a subject so intense– one that many refuse to face– and make it interesting and palatable for an audience. 

What I learned about myself is that over the years as a director, each film I made built to this one. Each film gave me the tools and confidence to make this film because this is not a film I could have made in the past. I didn't have the skills nor the confidence to take on a task like this and I didn’t have the confidence to execute something like this. Stamped has made me a more confident director, it has made me believe in my own vision more and my own ability to execute that vision more. It’s made me believe in myself, both as a filmmaker and as an African American who continues to fight and resist the racist ideas and the racism that I was born into in this country. One thing that Stamped has shown me is that we as Black people are resilient and have always resisted, and part of my drive and who I am is because I have all of that power, resistance and strength from generations and generations of Black people that came before me who resisted these racist ideas and continue to resist them. So Stamped from the Beginning for me is about our legacy, it’s a tribute to my mother, my grandmother, my great-grands, and all the ancestors that came before me.

Roger Ross Williams is an Oscar, Emmy, Webby, Peabody, and NAACP Image award award-winning director, producer, and writer–and the first African American director to win an Academy Award®, with his film Music By Prudence. Williams directed Life, Animated, which won him the Sundance directing award and was nominated for an Academy Award, and won three Emmys. Williams is the recipient of the Career Achievement Award from the International Documentary Association, The Woodstock Film Festival Maverick Award, The NYU Alumni Achievement Award, and an honorary doctorate from Lafayette College.

His production company One Story Up produced the acclaimed food series High On The Hog, an adaptation of Ta Nehisi Coates’ Between The World and Me, the Ben Crump documentary Civil, the award-winning film Master of Light, and Stamped from the Beginning. Williams first scripted feature Cassandro for Amazon MGM Studios had its World premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.