Shaped By A Car Ride: Jamil McGinnis and Pat Heywood On Their Short Film "Gramercy"
Co-writers and directors Jamil McGinnis and Pat Heywood, who met five years ago working in advertising, collaborate under the moniker Seneca Village Pictures. The name was inspired by the little-known New York City settlement in the 19th century, where Irish immigrants and freed Black Americans owned land and coexisted in harmony. McGinnis, a Turkish and African American who lived in 13 different homes growing up on military bases, and Heywood, an Irish-American from Fall River, Massachusetts, figured the name fit like a glove. Gramercy is their fourth short film together, as well as their first foray into narrative, and it examines a young black man struggling with depression
Shaq, a young man grappling with depression, returns to his hometown in New Jersey, where his experiences with grief and brotherhood transform his environment into the vast landscapes of inner life.
This topical short received its world premiere at the 2020 Locarno Film Festival, where Variety named it one of the festival’s not-to-miss shorts. It was also programmed by Academy Award-winner Barry Jenkins at this year’s canceled Telluride Film Festival. We had the pleasure of chatting with Jamil and Pat about the film, its origins, how they nailed down the film’s look and navigated the editing, and much much more!
How did the concept for Gramercy come about?
Jamil: In 2016, I took a trip out to Piscataway, New Jersey to spend a weekend with my friend Chidi (who plays Chad in the film) where he introduced me to the area and the pocket of Gramercy. After Chidi’s car broke down, Shaq picked me up in his Cutlass and, we drove around the town where he began to reminisce about this place he had grown up in. Each place we rode by, he had a story to follow. It was a time of constantly seeing the killing of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile on camera; it was a moment where lots of us reflected on the life we have and how quickly it can go wrong. We exchanged stories, sentiments and thoughts, essentially a space to reprioritize what’s important in each of our lives. He dropped me off at the Edison NJ Transit train stop back to Brooklyn and I felt inspired. The groundwork of an idea shaped itself in that car ride.
Pat and I have been interested about the human mind from our personal experiences and wanted to explore it within the work we make. We found this canvas to be the perfect grounds in which to explore that.
The two of you met in advertising five years ago and have been working together ever since. What was it that drew you together, and how has your experience in advertising informed your work as filmmakers?
Pat: The first, and most practical, answer is literally the space between us. I’d started a job at an advertising agency, and the same week Jamil started an internship. We were put in the same cubicle, and it was just the two of us… so we really had very little say as far as instigation goes! Fortunately, our friendship developed quickly. We made each other think and laugh — we still do.! We both left within a few months, but our friendship grew into one of my most cherished.
The more spiritual answer defies language. It was energy that felt right, and it still feels right four films later, albeit in a different way now. It starts with mutual respect born of friendship and putting our egos to the side in service of the art. It’s inexact, difficult, and beautiful. I recommend it.
The biggest lesson from advertising was learning the logistics of what goes into making anything at scale. Budgets, crew, workflow, etc. That was invaluable. In my opinion, there’s not much honest artistry in the advertising industry, at least the kind that resonates with me. That’s not a slight on the people who do it for a living, there are some incredibly creative people who work in the field… It's a commentary on the nature of what’s being created. Or should I say, why it’s being created.
I love how the film uses color and black and white to illustrate the psychology of the protagonist. Was this visualization a part of the initial seeds of the idea, or was it discovered through the filmmaking process?
Jamil: It was a little of both. We illustrated the two different head spaces of our main character very early on in our initial ideas/scripts, but the black & white decision didn’t come about until after we shot and were in the editing room. We leaned into our influences and found that this was the best way in which to distinguish what we were trying to compose. The idea of making the present black and white felt like a very compelling method to shift the conventional way in which we view our “everyday” present lives. Monochrome has the ability to create objectivity and mysticism within the same breath that color inherently cannot create since the world around us is not that way. I heard a filmmaker say a black and white image helps make up for lost time for the black diaspora in American society. That’s such a complex sentiment and I’d say that resonates deeply.
What are some of the challenges you faced assembling such a poetic and lyrical film?
Pat: Two come to mind.
One is financing. We got a lot of feedback to clarify details and fill in the plot… but we didn’t want to alter our vision to get funding. We had clear minds as to what and how the film would be, but it was challenging to communicate that. You want to say “just trust us,” but of course people want a formula they can point to and say “oh, it’s like that,” which I understand.
The second is editing. When you take the guard rails off and widen out your storytelling structure possibilities, you’re opening up Pandora’s box. Everything is possible when you’ve realized there’s no such thing as a correct formula. Just what you feel. Because there was no target, there were times where it felt like we’d never be done editing. We kept trying different structures, moving entire chunks of the story around. We eventually realized that we could spend the rest of our lives doing that, because what’s poetic and lyrical to us one day may not be so the next.
How did you get connected with cinematographer Maceo Bishop and composer Zach “Shigeto” Saginaw?
Jamil: One of our producers, Claire McGirr, introduced us to Maceo and our Music Supervisor, Midori McSwain, introduced us to Shigeto. Claire had worked with Maceo on a couple of projects he op’d on and was beginning to build his resume as a DP. She sent him the initial script and lookbook we had, and we met him at a coffee shop in Bed-Stuy near his old residence (shoutout to Playground Coffee on Bedford!).
Midori and Shigeto are originally from Detroit, and they fostered their friendship in the beautiful music scene that thrives there. Midori was curious how Shigeto’s musical background would blend in composing for a film, and I’m happy we trusted her instincts. His jazz-influenced background really came through in the language he was helping us translate. Couldn’t have asked for more between these two that built this world truthfully.
How did you find your cast and work with them to build and develop these characters?
Pat: Jamil went to Florida A&M University with Chad, who plays (and is) one of Shaq’s friends at the party. He introduced Jamil to his friends and the area in New Jersey one weekend in 2016. That began a long process of writing and rewriting the story as we got to know them by going back and forth to the area over the years. We rehearsed a lot, but they were less about hitting markers and more about getting the emotions and feeling right. When it came time to shoot, they mostly improvised dialogue. They’re longtime friends playing versions of themselves, so it didn’t make sense to be rigid about words we’d written for them. It was more magical to let ourselves be surprised.
What drew you to the visual arts? How did you get into directing?
Jamil: Visual arts help replicate or document the world in front of us that we want others to see. Filmmaking takes those visual arts and helps one mix them with other arts that represent life in a non-visual way. Filmmaking is the only medium that can blend all those forms together to create something far more superior than what those elements could have done alone. To me, life can never be one photograph, or one poem or one sound but it could be a blend of those things together. I think directing gives us the ability to use creative concepts that you’ll see on screen and evoke feelings that transcend off screen from the important creative process that the audience will never see for the greater project. All those processes expose different facets of yourself to get to the deeper truth of new language, which is what we’re ultimately trying to do to communicate our existence for others to relate.
What films or filmmakers have inspired you, your style, or your approach to telling a story?
Pat: There are many names and titles… so much wonderful art (both cinema and not) inspired Gramercy. Keeping it to a handful: Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Mirror, Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher, Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry, and Joachim Trier’s Oslo August 31. Filmmakers and filmmakers that create language from subjective experience, that value ambiguity over certainty; that demand patience.
What do you hope audiences take away from the film?
Jamil: Above all else, we hope to give the audience room to think and find something new about themselves, whether that means they love the film or do not. We hope the 22 minutes of this film will showcase more of each individual’s truth rather than trying to tell them what to think or how to feel. Maybe what I’m trying to say is I hope it can be a mirror for others like it’s been for us.
Do you have any future projects in the works that you can share with us?
Pat: Jamil and I have both been writing, independently excavating our minds and our hearts. I’m reluctant to write the ideas down here, as it feels like bad juju since they’re so illusive and ever-changing. Stuff is brewing, though! We’ve talked about how we both feel extremely open to the world right now, and that feels like the most important project an artist can take on. Allowing yourself to be inspired by everything.
What do you think? We want to know. Share your thoughts and feelings in the comments section below, and as always, remember to viddy well!