It’s not so hard to find them now. But nearly 10 years ago, when they appeared in “Medicine for Melancholy,” the first film by “Moonlight” director Barry Jenkins, characters like Micah and Jo’ — young, black, financially overdrawn but rolling in polished pop culture references — were, if not exactly unicorns, a protected species, rare enough to be worthy of tapping the person next to you and spreading the word.
Aimless and anxious 20-somethings in popular culture were nothing new, of course. But they tended to be monochromatic, as if early-onset ennui and the shallow comforts of art snobbery were the exclusive inventions of white people.
So cinephiles at the time took note when, seemingly out of nowhere, came a convincing counternarrative in the form of “Medicine.” It followed Micah and Jo’, a would-be couple whose one-night stand stretched fitfully into two, as they walked and biked around an artfully desaturated San Francisco, waxing on about indie rock and Barbara Loden in one breath, and black identity, the politics of interracial relationships and gentrification in the next.
Relatively few saw the movie when it was released by IFC in 2009. Shot in just 15 days for $15,000 with a two-person cast — a then-unknown Wyatt Cenac as Micah and Tracey Heggins as Jo’ — “Medicine” had only a brief run in theaters. (It debuted at South by Southwest and eventually garnered a handful of nominations at the Independent Spirit Awards).
But many who did find it would go on to make stylish movies and television shows of their own. And some of them say “Medicine” was the prototype. Jenkins’ film, they told me, helped unleash a new wave of auteur-driven, idiosyncratic black filmmaking — seven years before his landmark follow-up, “Moonlight,” finally crashed onto shore.
With Jenkins’ third film, “If Beale Street Could Talk,” due next month, the people who made “Medicine” as well as prominent admirers — including Lena Waithe (“Master of None,” “The Chi”), Justin Simien (“Dear White People”) and Terence Nance (“Random Acts of Flyness”) — discussed its outsize legacy and quiet influence.
These are edited excerpts from those conversations.
JUSTIN SIMIEN “Medicine” was proof of the concept.
LENA WAITHE Ava DuVernay literally handed me a DVD of it, like it was Nas’ first mixtape or something.
TERENCE NANCE I had never seen anything depicting that world, that pocket of black life. It startled me in a way.
WYATT CENAC I always assumed that there was an audience out there, a big audience. It’s just that people weren’t marketing movies to that audience at the time.
TRACEY HEGGINS I remember when I read the script I was amazed, because you didn’t see characters like Jo’. I’d see her all the time in my regular life, and in some ways I was her, but I couldn’t ever find her on the big screen.
BARRY JENKINS I didn’t think anybody would be checking for it. I thought I was just this weird black guy making this weird black movie over in the corner.
SIMIEN He didn’t really seem like anybody else who had come before him, but in a way it felt like he was resurrecting the legacy of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s — Robert Townsend, Spike Lee, John Singleton, that kind of black independent energy.
NANCE “Love Jones” had it a little bit.
HEGGINS I loved “The Women of Brewster Place” and “Eve’s Bayou.” I watched “The Color Purple” for a whole summer when it came out. But it didn’t feel like there was anything reflecting our generation.
CENAC The black movies that were really successful back then were either broad comedies like Martin Lawrence or movies with maybe a little more respectability in their politics, like Tyler Perry.
SIMIEN It was a very Tyler Perry world, which wasn’t really Tyler’s fault.
JENKINS I’d seen all of these white guys making mumblecore movies with no budget and getting them into South by Southwest. It almost seemed like only the lives of 20-something white kids were deemed to be interesting, and like our lives were not as interesting or not on the same wavelength. I was like “No, that’s bull — in my experience, there are black people in these scenes, too.” But they weren’t showing up in the films.
CHERIE SAULTER (co-producer of “Medicine for Melancholy”) It’s a little different than the mumblecore films in terms of bringing up issues like gentrification and identity very explicitly. But I think mumblecore sort of gave us a way to connect to film festivals and a broader audience.
NAT SANDERS (editor) It’s funny because he’d never actually watched the mumblecore stuff. I remember during shooting I went and watched Aaron Katz’s “Quiet City,” and maybe a (Joe) Swanberg film, because Barry had mentioned it. But later when I asked him something about it he goes, “I’ve never seen any of those movies.” He had just been aware that something was happening out there.
JAMES LAXTON (cinematographer) It was a time when young filmmakers had opportunities that didn’t exist before.
JUSTIN BARBER (co-producer) I met Barry when we were both at (Florida State University), and his film school work was just so strong that I could not possibly pass up a chance to help him make his movie.
SANDERS He was kind of like the golden child in film school. We had been telling him for years to write scripts and to think about making something because we all knew he was so talented.
SAULTER I was a few years after those guys. But Barry was one of those people that everyone still talked about years and years after they’d left.
JENKINS I had worked at Harpo Films (Oprah Winfrey’s studio) for a couple years before moving to San Francisco, and so I met a few people in Hollywood where I tried to do that thing you read about in film school where you make a business plan and shop your script. But I hadn’t gotten any traction.
I was working at the Banana Republic on Grant Avenue when I met with Justin at a bar and told him what I wanted to do. He wrote a number on a napkin and said, “Can you do it for this?”
BARBER My main source of revenue was doing motion graphics work. And I took all the money I made from that and put it in the movie.
SANDERS I think it’s OK to say this, but I know we didn’t have permits to shoot any of the stuff we shot on the street. We never would have been able to afford it.
NANCE I remember being in awe of the aesthetics, the fact that it was nearly black and white, and had this French New Wave vibe to it. But formally, there’s not much to the movie. It’s just two people and a camera, essentially.
LAXTON I had this Panasonic HVX200 that I was using for my day job shooting travel shows. It was one of the newer pro-sumer cameras that were coming out at that time, and you could get an adapter and these really cinematic lenses on eBay for like $300.
HEGGINS They had no budget, but we were rich in vigor. CENAC I was broke and they were offering me, I think, $1,000 and a place to stay for a month. I was like, “Yeah, I need to pay my rent and this seems like a cool way to do it.”
BARBER James Laxton was the only member of the crew actually from San Francisco, so we leaned on him and his mom a lot. She was like the matriarch of the project, giving us encouragement but also a place to crash.
JENKINS I had wanted to make a movie about the aftermath of a one-night stand, like Claire Denis’ “Friday Night,” but all of these things about my life in San Francisco just started to aggressively insert themselves into the narrative. My first functional interracial relationship had just ended, and I was feeling a bit stranded in the city.
LAXTON He was clearly exercising ideas that he had had in his mind for a while.
SANDERS The conversation between Micah and Jo’ was a conversation he was having with himself.
SIMIEN You see black men like Micah a lot more these days: Smart but awkward and vulnerable and sensitive. But back then it was as if they always had to be presented in a certain way, either strong and aggressive, or crazy and ignorant.
NANCE I knew what it was like to be a scruffy dude crushing on black girls who only dated white boys. But you also can’t argue with Jo’ being like, “If I can’t date a person that brings me joy because they happen to be white, then white supremacy wins.”
HEGGINS I could identify with both of their perspectives. Sometimes you wake up in the morning and you want to believe that race doesn’t even matter. But then the next day you walk into a meeting and someone says, “What’s up, home girl?” And you’re just like, “Really?”
SIMIEN It was the sort of thing that you would always talk about, but behind closed doors.
WAITHE Barry didn’t come up (in the school of thought that) you always had to write black people in a positive light. He was speaking to the kind of writing that I wanted to do, which is to just show us in the sunlight — not positive light, not dark light, just the light of day.
JENKINS So much of that movie is just a guy who needs to shout. And, with Micah, I was just shouting. I was angry in a certain way, and I was trying to understand why and at what.
SAULTER Something I think all of Barry’s films touch on is that, for a lot of people, and black people specifically, the political is personal and can’t be separated from everyday experiences.
SANDERSWhen everything with “Moonlight” happened (it was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won three, including best picture and best adapted screenplay in 2017), it felt so vindicating because we had all been waiting and hoping that the world would feel what we felt the first time with “Medicine.”
SIMIEN Honestly, (“Medicine”) made me get off of my ass and get back to writing my script.
NANCE I remember walking out of the theater and literally saying out loud to myself, “OK, I can do this.”
JENKINS I think if “Medicine for Melancholy” didn’t exist, all these people would’ve still gone on to do the same things that they did. But, when I take a step back, I think I also understand that because “Medicine” existed, it gave them just a little bit more confidence that when they did what they were going to do, there would be a place for it.
