Geri Cole: You really can’t. You really can’t. So let’s also talk a little bit about more of your background because we’re getting to the half hour mark. I do also want to talk about… You’ve also worked on a show called Random Acts of Flyness which those of you who have not watched, please watch. It’s incredible. I was trying to explain it to a friend and I think the description, I was like, “It’s like [inaudible 00:20:29] Master Files, but black.” Or just like, there’s no way to describe it. There’s no way to describe it. You just have to watch it. So can we talk a little bit about your experience working on that show? And my impression of it is also that it’s like just a room full of black excellence. I want to hear about that.
Mariama Diallo: I mean, it was truly amazing and it was such an incredible experience and it really did feel like a real community on so many… On creative levels, but also just on a sort of personal grid level was so important to me. And it was really nurtured by Terrence and also by our producers, Kishori and Jamund and Kelley. And it was wild. I mean, it’s the only writer’s room that I’ve been in, but from what I understand, it was not typical, but we’d start our day with a meditation. And the first two weeks of the room, we didn’t even write. It was just about sharing experiences and thoughts. And from that process, a lot of the segments grew from there. So we would come and in the morning we’d discuss just like whatever had been on our mind.
Or I remember one of them is like, “Okay, on the way here, there’s like this guy…” The sort of thing you get, it’s like the new form of cat calling is just like good morning. And I was like, we’d talk about that and be like, you don’t mean good morning.
Geri Cole: No.
Mariama Diallo: You don’t care about my morning.
Geri Cole: You don’t.
Mariama Diallo: You’re not saying good morning to this guy. What’s that about? And we just talk about it and then it would grow into like this whole sort of sequence that we had within the show where they’d have this format of different men speaking to the screen saying good morning in a variety of ways. Sometimes genuine, it’d be a good morning, good morning. And then there’d be one creepy way and say not good morning.
It was just all of these different personal experiences that we’d bring in and then try to find a way of, how does that morph into the creative expression? So it was really amazing and it helped me re-approach and shake up and make a little bit more weird the way that I just was thinking about writing and the whole creative process. So it was really cool. I mean, and truly everybody in the room is super inspiring and just great people. There’s Nuotama Bodomo and Shaka King and just so many amazing… Naima Ramos-Chapman, just amazing, amazing people who are all friends and just like brilliant, brilliant people.
Geri Cole: I mean, can I be their friends too?
Mariama Diallo: I know, right.
Geri Cole: It’s like, how can I join this friend group?
Mariama Diallo: Truly. I miss them, too. Because it’s like pandemic now. I haven’t seen them in so long.
Geri Cole: Man, but also the thing that truly struck me about that show and then also about your film was how familiar so many of these images feel, even though I’ve never seen them before, but there’s something and I think it’s because they’re also rooted in the black experience and they’re really getting in there, to the honest bit of it, that it was really… It really resonated.
Mariama Diallo: Thank you. I really tried to make it as specific as I could. And since it was drawing from something that was really close to me, I would just have all these memories. I would try to put in just like all of the texture of these moments like what you were talking about earlier of walking into your dorm room and that feeling of… And it’s like the beginning of the year and you don’t want to be a bad time, but then it’s also such an uncomfortable vibe and you’re getting casually disrespected maybe, or maybe it’s all just jokes and you should laugh. And it’s just this very uncomfortable space that you’re constantly trying to navigate. Because you’re like, “I just want to graduate. I just want to make a couple of friends graduate with my life and move on.” And like it’s getting so hard.
Geri Cole: Can I graduate with my life please, Jesus. I mean, that’s honestly where we’re at, which is horrifying, but yeah, that’s the thing that, especially in this film, it’s like the navigating white spaces because you’re saying it’s like are they being wildly disrespectful or is it fine?
Mariama Diallo: Right, right. Do they do this to each other? What’s going on?
Geri Cole: Oh my goodness. Let’s also talk a little bit about your process. So you’re talking about in Random Acts that you guys… Which is a wonderful and beautiful thing to just start with sharing, start with meditation. Do you have any rituals and when you sit down to write that you feel comfortable sharing?
Mariama Diallo: Yeah. I mean, my rituals are simpler than that, but I like to write in the morning. When I was younger, I actually had a great period of productivity when I was in my post-college years. I just had days stretching before me. And I was teaching at an after school, like three hours a day. And then the rest of the day I could do whatever I wanted. And I would sometimes be up at 1:00 AM and just write until 6:00 in the morning. But that’s over. I can’t live like that anymore.
So I try to go to bed at a reasonable hour and wake up. But for me, I like writing first thing more or less. I like to go for a jog, so I’m feeling all refreshed and invigorated. And then I just try to write before I get into the rest of my day, because I find if I put it off, it’s harder and my mind isn’t as fresh. So I try to write early. And when I’m writing a first draft, I don’t edit as I go. That was something that I’m sure for a lot of writers, they might do the same. But for me, I realized as part of my process that in some of the first scripts that I was writing, I would go about 10 pages and then go back and look at it and work on it.
And it was very discouraging because I’m a real hater to myself as I would go back and read my work and be like, “This is garbage. Just stop right now. You thought it was going to be good.” So what I realized I couldn’t let that editing voice enter in until I had got in to the end, because then I thought, okay, you can hate it, but you have it. I’d rather be unsatisfied or displeased with something that actually exists then have this wonderful idea that just exists in my mind. So those are my two things, maybe three things like run first thing, then write and don’t edit on the first draft.
Geri Cole: You can hate it, but you’ll have it is I feel like a good take away everyone to remember. You can hate it, but you’re going to have it. This was your first time writing and directing a feature. You’ve written and directed shorts. And actually I do want to ask you also about the shorts because I do feel like shorts are an underappreciated form because the short got you to Sundance and connected to these producers. And-
Mariama Diallo: Totally.
Geri Cole: So I guess, are there any hard won lessons that you understand now that you wish you understood at the beginning of the process of making Master?
Mariama Diallo: I mean one of them, and this is not so much at the beginning of the process of making Master, but at the beginning of the process of trying to figure out how to become a filmmaker. I think that I was probably just on the other side of this paradigm, from what I can understand before you could write a script on spec, even as a newcomer and hope perhaps to sell it just off of your brilliant words, but from what I can tell now that’s really, really hard. It seems like the more proven path into a career is to have a short film that you can use. I guess that’s particularly as a writer director, but that you can have this proof of concept of you as a creator, anything else. And I tried to avoid that for the longest time because writing is like my first love.
I love it. You can do it alone and it’s just so much more independent and making a short is expensive and exhausting and you have to figure out all of this other stuff, getting a crew. If you’re not a director, who’s going to be your director and all of that. So it’s complicated. But I think that it’s not to be understated how much I found that to be helpful ultimately in being able to make my feature. So I think one of the lessons that I had was you might have to do that Kickstarter and harass your friends and family and hound them until they empty a little bit of their pockets and then you make the short film. And I thought that was the hard part was raising the money and making the short. But then it’s like to all the festivals, getting a ton of rejections, but just trying to keep your spirits up and look for that place that’ll be a good home and that will see you and help you.
One of them for me was BlackStar Film Festival. And then another one was the African Film Fest that’s at Lincoln Center. And both of those were festivals that really helped me meet other people. And just they really nurtured me and they were earlier than a lot of other places where like, okay, I see what you’re doing and I want to try to help you. So that was brilliant. And what better time than Black History Month to shout out those two amazing places, but truly another one is ABFF, the American Black Film Festival that has a really, really great short film competition.
And even if you don’t win, which Hair Wolf did not, it still felt great because they take you out to Miami. They treat you so nicely. Yeah. And then at the end, I think all the shorts were offered a licensing with HBO. So our shorts-
Geri Cole: Wow.
Mariama Diallo: Played on HBO. Yeah. Winner and losers all. So it definitely felt like a win-win scenario.
Geri Cole: Wow.
Mariama Diallo: So that was great. Yeah. So I think the short film space, like you were saying is just so important and really helped me step onto that feature field.
Geri Cole: That’s amazing advice to take advantage of those festivals and places that are going to help you develop as an artist. I also agree about writing where it’s always accessible. That’s the thing that I love about writing is that it just takes me, I can always do it and I can always get better. The more I do it, the better I get and I can always do it.
Mariama Diallo: Exactly.
Geri Cole: So also speaking of getting better, one of the questions that I love to ask everyone who is a guest on the podcast is about the idea of success, because I feel like success is just such a elusive and hilarious state where you’re constantly striving for it. And it’s like, am I in it? I don’t… It’s like a destination that you never arrive to.
Mariama Diallo: You never reach. Yeah.
Geri Cole: Yeah. And so I’m curious about how you define success for yourself as a creative professional and how that may have evolved over time.
Mariama Diallo: Well when I graduated from college, I thought success was immediately make a film that goes all over the world and breaks box office records or does whatever else. Now I think I would say that for me, success is being able to just continue to create and on my terms, and if I can just have a career that I can sustain, where I’m able to write original ideas and then direct them and not feel thwarted or have too much time in between, then that is hugely successful.
Geri Cole: I agree. Yeah. At this point, it’s just like, can just keep making stuff, can that be… Can that be the thing and have a secure lifestyle.
Mariama Diallo: Right.
Geri Cole: Okay. So I do want to scoot to some of the questions from the Q and A. So yeah. I’m going to combine these two questions. So how long did it take to shoot the Master and what was the budget for the film?
Mariama Diallo: So we actually started shooting in 2020. Our shoot, we still started in February 2020.
Geri Cole: Oh.
Mariama Diallo: Originally… I know. Yeah. With a six week shoot and I was so in it and just so focused on the film that I was catching headlines here and there, but I wasn’t really paying very close attention to the news. So I was caught completely by surprise when things started to escalate so rapidly in early March when we started seeing… I remember, I think we were on week two when South by Southwest got canceled and yeah, I remember thinking, ah, damn, that’s sad but I’m going to finish this film. Yeah, nothing to do with me over here. And then the NBA maybe canceled their season, but I was just so focused and I was thinking we only have three weeks to go.
And so we were almost… Yeah. Didn’t make it. We were a day short of our halfway point when everything shut down and we went on pause. And so we were on pause until January 2021, nearly a year, basically. So we had all of that time in between down. And as we’re trying to get our actors back, get our crew back, find a time that works for everybody. It was a lot. And so that was an added year of making it. So I think that if we’re talking about how long did it take to make Master? It depends on what somebody would consider the start point, but in terms of shooting, because you could go all the way back to 2016 when I first-
Geri Cole: A year break.
Mariama Diallo: First started writing. Yeah. Then there’s the year break, but from shooting wise or production wise through post production, just shy of two years, because then after we wrapped production in March, 2021 and then went into post and did post basically up to Sundance.
Geri Cole: Okay. Wow.
Mariama Diallo: Yeah.
Geri Cole: Wow. And so another question is who made the choice of casting Regina Hall, who is known as a comedic actress?
Mariama Diallo: Yeah, so I knew that Regina had also been doing… She’s primarily known for her amazing comedic chops, but I knew that she was somebody who did drama and she was in Support the Girls, which I thought that she was so good in. And it was really another facet of her many faceted talents as a performer. And I knew that she was also just like, she always wants to try new things. She’s a real risk taker. And so I was really excited about working with her. My producers were really excited. Amazon was psyched. We all wanted Regina. So the question was just, is she going to take this? Is she going to be weirded out? Is she going to get it? What is she going to think? So it was just really fortunate and amazing that she got it. But yeah, I’ve known Regina Hall as a performer for decades. I saw the first Scary Movie in theaters so that’s how long she’s kind of been in my mind. Yeah. So it was amazing to meet her and work with her. And it was just very lucky.
Geri Cole: Wow. So also I want to ask about, because you are a writer and director, and I know this is a writing podcast, but I do want to ask a little bit about directing. Do you feel like you have to switch hats or are you always writing as you’re directing or directing as you’re writing?
Mariama Diallo: I did discover that it’s necessary to switch hats. My first short film that I did, I didn’t really realize that. And I was basically a writer the whole way through, which was funny. And there were a pitfalls that I only saw in retrospect where I was like, “Oh, okay. That’s what happened.” I remember for instance, just the smallest of things, there’s this part in a scene where [As Riddum 00:36:05] the character comes up the street and enters into a bar. And the DP was asking me like, “Well, how do you want to shoot this or what does it look like?” And I was like, “I don’t know, what are you talking about? He walks into a bar. What do you mean?
And my writer head was like, come on, what? I wasn’t really thinking in terms of these visual chunks and how do you imagine the sequence of images? Because it’s kind of like at least for me in my writer brain, there’s so much that you fill in, you fill in the blanks yourself and it’s kind of fluid and it can change and it’s really like your mind is connecting dots. And it’ll come forward and rush back but it’s less, at least for me fixed of okay, yes. See his legs and then you look at the… Looking at the whole thing. So for my next short which was Hair Wolf I did think, okay, well, you’ve got to have a moment where you switch and it’s not necessarily that I leave the writer brain behind, but it’s just also bringing in the director brain and thinking in terms of this more concrete, visual language.
Geri Cole: Absolutely. Because I feel like it’s funny to like show legs. I don’t know, because all of those choices communicate something, which you’re not necessarily thinking about out as you’re writing, you’re just sort of trying to get… And, or the other way that I feel like is then when you get to set and the actors are rehearsing or whatever, and you’re like, “This isn’t working.” Rather than trying to stay true to whatever’s on the page, in the fly having to…
Mariama Diallo: Yeah.
Geri Cole: Adjust rather. So if anyone has any more questions, feel free to throw them in. So Jasmine is from the suburbs of Washington. Oh yeah, which when she said Tacoma, I was like, “DC girl, go home.” There’s a Tacoma Park in DC. Jasmine is from the suburbs of Washington, which is like a 3% black population. Whoa. This is someone very specific [inaudible 00:38:00] and the suburbs are undoubtedly incredibly white. Why was her transition from one predominantly white location to another so devastating.
Mariama Diallo: Right. Thank you. I think that’s a really good question. And it’s a big part of the story of Jasmine and the understanding of the space that she grew up in and how it for her, felt deceptively familiar to the space that she entered. For me, Jasmine’s clearly had some unprocessed trauma from her own suburban upbringing. But what I would imagine is that it’s a different kind of paradigm being in a university space and that kind of understanding of race. And I think it’s almost like an opposite problem of being one of the few black girls in the suburbs where they just erase your race and you’re life and I think that she grew up feeling at least on the surface just like part of the gang, but obviously there’s a whole aspect of herself and her identity that is going ignored and going unseen.
Then she’s thrown into the opposite issue where it’s a school that’s hyper cognizant of race and is trying to live true to some liberal ideal, but is instead engaging with race in very pointed and occasionally hostile and just confused and clunky ways. And so she lived on either side of a traumatic divide and neither of them I think were ultimately very good for her, but I think that what was shocking for her when she got to Ancaster, because I think she felt like she could understand a predominantly white space, but there’s a lot of different ways to be traumatized in a predominantly white space and that’s something that she came to discover.
Geri Cole: It’s also the truth. That’s the actual truth. I think that anyone who’s grown up or spent time in a predominantly white space is definitely appreciating that nuance. So another question we have is where did you shoot the movie?
Mariama Diallo: So we shot the movie in and around New York City. Our exterior campus location was Vassar, which is Poughkeepsie. So we shot a lot of what you see of the quad and the library and a lot of the outdoor campus spaces were shot there besides Bellville, the dorm building where Jasmine lives, the exterior and some of the interiors for that building. It’s actually this quite creepy now abandoned a college that’s also slightly upstate in New York. Yeah. So it’s this abandoned… It was creepy. It was early 1900s it was originally called Mrs. Dow’s School for Girls or for Women. And there was a portrait of Mrs. Dow hanging up, there’s a Wikipedia page, you can look. Eventually it became like a SUNY school, an outpost of a SUNY school or something, but it also shut down maybe five or 10 years ago. And so it’s just sitting there slowly decaying. So we had to do some work to bring the building, all the way back up to code, but it was freezing inside and it was a creepy ghost space, but it was very helpful for-
Geri Cole: Was it haunted?
Mariama Diallo: I mean, I have to believe yeah. It just like, I was not wandering around any of those upper floors alone ever. No, I was like, “I’m going to stay with people. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know.”
Geri Cole: Oh my. Please, please, if you’re here, I don’t want to know.
Mariama Diallo: Yeah.
Geri Cole: Man shooting a horror film in a possibly haunted school that takes a lot of bravery. I would be like, “Nope, nevermind, take the money back, I don’t care.”
Mariama Diallo: It was creepy.
Geri Cole: So how did you manage to make the white spaces just as scary as the witch, scary.
Mariama Diallo: Well, thank you of feeling that. I had a fair amount of experience, I guess, that I could just really try to draw from it. And with Charlotte Hornsby, who’s the DP. We did have a lot of conversations about how to, in terms of the camera, make those white spaces feel very menacing and feel very cold and feel really hostile to Gail or to Jasmine. And so it’s kind of this way of picturing it, where it feels claustrophobic, but also isolating and just trying to bring out all of those themes.
Geri Cole: And I think we have time for one more question, which is, can you talk about the dedication, the end card said at the end of the movie, that this is for Ruby Hall. So just curious if this is someone who informed any of these characters.
Mariama Diallo: So Ruby Hall is Regina’s mother, Regina Hall’s mother, and is a hugely important part of Regina’s life. And they were super, super close and she unfortunately passed away while we were shooting. And so as such a towering figure in Regina’s life and somebody who nurtured her and made her the beautiful, kind, generous person who she is, I feel so much gratitude to her and it felt immediately really right for me to dedicate the film to a black mother. My mom is so important to me, she’s the person who made me love books and stories. And I just know what an important person Ruby is for Regina and is for me. So that’s why we decided to die the film to her.
Geri Cole: And I feel like also, ultimately that was a message that I took away at the end of the film also was we have to support each other.
Mariama Diallo: Yeah.
Geri Cole: Gail went back to try and it was too late and it’s like, that’s the importance of generationally supporting one another.
Mariama Diallo: Completely. And it’s one of the things that because of Jasmine’s own personality and her pride and wanting to be good and seem like I’m fine. Everything’s good. You might sense over the course of the film, it’s kind of like, why is she not reaching out to her mother? Why is she not reaching out to her family? Where is that, and this lack of the motherly presence, because of everything that she’s going through and trying to hide is also I think what contributes to everything else that happens to her. And so what gets you through it are the mothers. That’s what allows you to go through and that’s what Gail could have been for Jasmine, but in the moment when Jasmine needed that, Gail is on a different part of her journey and doesn’t give her that motherly support in the way that Jasmine actually needed. So yeah, mothers and especially Ruby.
Geri Cole: But that is also so true about the black experience. And certainly especially for black women where it is… Because there is a point with Jasmine you’re like, “Girl, call your mother, go home.” But then I get and I have been in that position where you’re like, I’m good. I can get through it. I think this is about me getting through it and not giving yourself the grace and kindness and love that you deserve and that you need in those moments. Whew. Yeah.
Mariama Diallo: Yeah. I know.
Geri Cole: Really. So, so good. Thank you so much for joining us today to talk about this incredible film. Everyone, please remember it is coming out on March 18th in select theaters and on Amazon Prime. Go see it, Master. It’s incredible. It’s very scary. So if you’re a scaredy cat like me, bring someone to squeeze their hand.
Mariama Diallo: Yes, exactly.
Geri Cole: Thank you for joining.
Mariama Diallo: Thanks Geri. Thank you, Mark. Rashidi, Samaya, this has been so much fun. Thank you guys for having me. Thank you, viewers.
Geri Cole: That’s it for this episode. OnWriting is a production of the Writers Guild of America, East and is hosted by me, Geri Cole. This series was created and is produced by Jason Gordon. Tech production and original music by Taylor Bradshaw and Stockboy Creative. Our associate producer and designer is Molly Beer. You can learn more about the Writers Guild of America, East online at WGAEast.org. And you can follow the Guild on all social media platforms at WGAEast. If you liked this podcast, please subscribe and rate us. Thank you for listening and write on.
Host Geri Cole talks to writer-director Mariama Diallo about the uncanny—and all-too-real—experience of navigating predominately white spaces as a Black woman, the complexities of identity, the importance and necessity of your community, and more.