One of my favorite scenes in the film is the dance club sequence. Much of the film is a two-hander between Micah and Jo, but this is one of the scenes where you’re playing with quite a few variables with regard to the crowd in the background while Micah and Jo slow dance in the foreground. How did you pull that off?
Sometimes you set out to make a work, and you’re trying to orchestrate it as much as possible, but at a certain point, you don’t have control. Or you just relinquish control. Whenever there were more than two characters in a scene, with the exception of the museum, we had no control. The gallery scene, we had no control over who else was in the frame. I love that when they come out of the Museum of African Diaspora, they’re on the sidewalk, and they’re walking, and there are no other Black people passing them on the sidewalk, or very few. Then when they go to the nightclub, as well, they’re the only two Black faces in the club.
We didn’t go out and recruit extras for any of those sequences. It was important to me for Micah and Jo to have this context of their interpersonal dynamic between one another. Then when they go out into the city, it’s almost like all these things they’re talking about are being juxtaposed against them as they’re out and about in the world. When we went to film this sequence, it’s this night that I used to go to called Soul Night with these DJs. So again, so much of this is autobiographical. There were these three white guys who would just spin nothing but 45 vinyls. It’s obvious that it was nothing but exclusively Black voices from a certain era. I would oftentimes be the only, or one of only two, Back folks in the room. And it was fine. There was nothing ever felt untoward about it. It was just what the makeup of San Francisco was.
So when we went to film that scene, that’s all the music that was playing. A lot of that music was independent music at the time. Of course, those labels got bought by larger and larger labels or insignias. So we couldn’t afford to get any of that music when we finished the film. Instead, what we could afford to get was all this white indie rock, which is something you might hear played in a club with that clientele that you see on screen. It was one of those really strange, odd things that we just showed up and did it off the cuff. The thematic impart that it had was just one of those things where you almost couldn’t lie about San Francisco in this window that we were filming. So many of the things that they were arguing about were actively being lived out in real time all around the frame.
The choice of the music adds tremendous tension to that scene, especially in the easy physicality of the dancing by Micah and Jo.
But isn’t it strange? They are dancing to nothing but Black soul music. That’s what Wyatt and Tracey are dancing to if you go and listen to our files. It was really tricky. Nat [Sanders] and I had to really dig to find these indie rock tracks that had these labels that were so willing to work with us to get the clearances. Yeah, there was indie R&B that we could have found. There was this kid named Jesse Boykins III, who I really love, and his work probably would’ve played really well in one or two spots there, but then you look at all the people in the room, and it’s like: But, are they gonna be playing Jesse Boykins at this place? [laughs] And I was like: Yeah, probably not. But once you went down that path, you’re right; it started to add this layer of social commentary that I thought was interesting as well.
In the years since, have you ever revisited the parts of San Francisco that are in the film?
I have, and I haven’t. The Knockout, I hear, is still there. Make-Out Room and Latin American Club, which is where a lot of the dancing in my time in San Francisco took place, I believe, are still there. But I mean, look, the city is so, so different. Even if those places are still there, it’s still inconsequential to the larger dynamics at play in San Francisco. It’s just a shame. But I have not tried to recreate [laughs] the life of Micah and Jo. I think I wrote this film when I was 26 or 27. I am now 43, my friend [laughs]. So things are a little bit different.
But you know, I don’t know that the characters of Micah and Jo would have the experience that they had in this film circa 2007 today. San Francisco is just a much different place. But maybe they would. I don’t live there. But there was something graspable. I think that’s where the anger and anguish from Micah’s character comes from. There is this possibility, the seeming possibility of being able to grab onto and pull back, or at the very least maintain, something of the San Francisco you see depicted in this film and even the San Francisco that predated this film. There was this counter energy that was just pushing that farther and farther to the margin that was rapidly flipping the city. I think when I went back, there’s definitely been more of that flipping than there has been, you know, that holding onto.
How did Criterion come about? Because I think everyone has, for years, been wondering when a Barry Jenkins film would be going to be in the Collection?
It’s interesting. So much of that stuff has to do with rights. There are certain films that, just because of the output language or the contract language, just can’t be in the Criterion Collection. It has nothing to do with Criterion wanting the film or the film itself being worthy. So that’s neither here nor there with one of my films that people often talk about being in the collection.
With this one, Peter Becker, unfortunately, mentioned to someone that he had never heard of this film, I think, around the time of “Moonlight” or something. So I guess after that, he went, or someone at the Criterion Collection went and saw it. I’ll be honest; they’ve been asking me about it for years. I just kept telling them that “Medicine for Melancholy” was not a Criterion Collection movie
So for a while, I was the one who kept this from happening to be brutally honest. It was Marcus Hu of Strand Releasing and John Waters, who were both in the special thanks of this edition; they were the ones who continued to softly work on me that this movie did have a place in the Criterion Collection. And once we committed to it and went down the path, I talked to James about it—he’s probably my closest collaborator on this film—we decided, yeah, why not? It is an honor to be in the collection, that’s for sure.
What was your reticence from thinking that this should be in the collection?
With anything, and I’m not saying that anything I made should be in the Criterion Collection, it’s all a matter of preference. This one, it’s just so rough around the edges, man. This is a scrappy little $13,000 baby. When I went to film school, we had all these laser discs of Criterion Collection movies, and this film is not one of those films. But that’s the cool thing about canon. As the canon itself evolves, and more things enter it, the space for what is or isn’t canon expands. I think that if there was anything that Marcus Hu and John Waters continued to impress upon me was that the canon moves, necessarily, and it can only move with the infusion of folks who maybe, in a certain way or at a certain time, didn’t imagine themselves or didn’t allow the canon space enough to include them.
I am glad that we did it. Shout out to John Waters, especially; he’s a really cool cat. I owe him an email. I’m gonna write him an email right when we’re done having this conversation. I’m not gonna say exactly what he said to me that pushed me over the hump with this, but it was quite colorful, I’ll tell you that.
There’s an interview with you in Filmmaker Magazine from the time you were promoting “Medicine for Melancholy” where you say: “Now it’s time to move on to the next challenge, which is: Who am I as a filmmaker? What kind of movies do I want to make? What kind of movies am I going to make?” As a filmmaker, you’re, of course, never in stasis. But looking back now, do you think you have answered some of those questions?
I’m pretty sure I know the piece that you’re referring to. And I didn’t get it right away. I don’t know what state of mind I was in when I said that, because for the next two and a half years, I didn’t take any of that to heart at all. [laughs] I tried to chase the kind of filmmaker that I thought the industry or the world wanted me to be. It was only through the power of Adele Romanski and Andrew Hevia, and Tarell Alvin McCraney that I came back to myself with their extreme patience and guidance. I think, now, I’m kind of at the same point where those questions apply again, especially coming out of the process of making “Moonlight,” “If Beale Street Could Talk,” and “The Underground Railroad,” and now we’re making this “Mufasa” film.
One of the really awesome things about seeing this film, and I hadn’t seen this film in a long, long time—but I had to watch it a few times to check the commentary because there’s a commentary track that we recorded at the time of release, but we never ended up releasing. I’m always questioning myself. But it’s on this edition. And then, I recorded a new commentary track, as well. So that’d be really interesting. You can see what we thought of ourselves, or I guess what I thought of this film and myself in 2008 and then in a reflection in 2023 on the other side of all these different things. But the question arises anew. You know, who am I, and what kind of stories do I wanna tell? What should I be telling? What is my place in the world as a person, as an artist, and all these different things.
The thing about watching a film you made for $13,000, especially in the context of such a humbling distinction of entering this collection alongside some really astounding films, is that: Holy shit. I could do that again if I needed to. You know, I don’t need to make another however-million dollar movie just because I’ve made one before. I can also go back and make something like this because I’ve done that before.
I just came back from London, where I saw Isaac Julien’s new piece with André Holland, more or less, playing Alain Locke in this piece. It’s a fine-art piece. It’s like six channels, black and white. Robert, it is stunning. I sat in this room, and I watched it—I think it’s probably around like 17 minutes each time it plays—I watched it at least four times. I just stayed in that room and just watched. I thought: Okay, I’m not doing this. And it’s not for me to do this. This is what Isaac does, and I think that they can coexist, and I’m glad that they do coexist because you can experience this thing, and you can experience that thing. But it just made me realize there were so many other places that remain to be explored for me as an artist, at least. And then there’s this $13,000 just run and gun with your friend’s space, as well. It’s nice to be reminded of that interview. I’m gonna have to look that up because maybe I need to tape that question to the wall again as I figure out what the next move is.