Ya’ke Smith based his short film “The Ohio, Texas Remix” on a confusing time in his childhood, when his parents battled for custody of him and his sister.
The film, playing at the Micheaux Film Festival this weekend, depicts a mother who breaks into her ex’s house to retrieve her son. Smith, out of love for both of his parents, refuses to point fingers or say which parent is right or wrong — both love their child, and do what they think is best. The film escalates with an unrelenting tension that keeps audiences deeply invested in the fates of the father, mother and son.
“The easy way to tell this story would have been to create heroes and villains: my dad the villain, my mom the hero. And there was indeed a draft of the script where that was the case, but that portrayal was not only uninteresting, it lacked nuance, complexity and truth,” Smith tells MovieMaker.
“My goal with the story was never to simplify the characters or paint them as black and white, but it was always to create characters that were flawed, desperate and unwavering in their pursuit of what they considered to be ‘the right thing.'”
In addition to being a filmmaker known for unflinching storytelling, Smith is a film professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was also the inaugural Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Moody College of Communication. His films, which include the short “Katrina’s Son,” the feature Wolf and the documentary Juneteenth: Faith & Freedom, have played and won awards at more than 150 film festivals.
We talked with Ya’Ke Smith about gray areas, teaching the next genration of filmmakers, and the aspects of a film that can never be compromised.
Ya’Ke Smith on ‘The Ohio, Texas Remix’
Ya’Ke Smith. Courtesy of Greg Schnabel.
MovieMaker: How did you become a filmmaker?
Ya’Ke Smith: I was an artist before I was anything else. I sang in the choir. Played in the band. Acted in church and local plays. And watched tons of movies. The connective tissue between all of these mediums was my love for telling stories and my desire to use those stories to impact people in meaningful and long-lasting ways.
Although all of these artistic forms could arrest people and expand their world views in unique and interesting ways, film for me felt like the singular way to reach the most people because more people participate in the communal act of watching cinema than any other creative medium. To that end, I saw Boyz N The Hood when I was 11 years old and it totally blew my mind. It was a revelation — seeing a story about a community and individuals I recognized portrayed with such humanity, empathy, and depth.
Tre, Ricky and Doughboy were my friends, cousins and God brothers. John Singleton saw them in ways that other filmmakers hadn’t. That was the moment I knew I would be a filmmaker, and was also the moment I set out to learn all I could about the craft. I made my first film when I was 15 and have been making films ever since.
MovieMaker: Can you talk about the true story behind “The Ohio, Texas Remix”?
Ya’Ke Smith: The first memory I have of my dad is him coming to Texas to pick my sister and I up for what was to be a summer, but turned into two years. What I didn’t realize at the time — I was seven or eight — was that my parents were still married and that my mom and dad were in the middle of a bitter custody battle. Because they were still married they both had parental rights, so no attorney would take my mom’s case or help her fight to get us back.
One attorney in particular had some off the record advice for her: Drive to Ohio, kidnap your children, bring them back to Texas. And once she did that, he could begin divorce proceedings. Although my mom didn’t have to do it (we eventually ended up being sent back) this story is a reinterpretation of that period in my life.
The story always felt like it was torn from the headlines, and so I wanted to exhume the true story, but sprinkle in genre elements to really make the experience resonate with audiences. It’s tragic, funny, suspenseful and ultimately a love letter to both of my parents.
“The Ohio, Texas Remix.” Courtesy of Ya’ke Smith.
MovieMaker: You do a beautiful job of making everyone in the film sympathetic — our allegiances shift a few times, but we ultimately end up wishing everyone could find a way through this painful situation. How did you make sure everyone’s perspective was reflected and respected?
Ya’ke Smith: As a child you’re only privy to the side of the story that you get from your parents, but as you become an adult yourself, your realize that truth is relative, that your parents aren’t perfect and that even at their worst times they did the best they knew how to do with what they had at any given season of their life.
Neither of my parents were “right” in this situation, and there’s a part of me deep down inside that feels like neither of them were “wrong.” My goal was to color between the lines and create not black and white characters, but characters that existed in the gray areas, because that’s where most of us exist; and most of the time, that’s where the truth exists. This gray, murky, messed up place is where the heart of human existence lies and it’s in this place that we must come to terms with whatever decisions we make. It was with this ethos that I rendered my characters.
MovieMaker: How did you cast your excellent actors?
Ya’Ke Smith: I always tell my students that audiences can forgive many things, but bad acting and heartless storytelling are two of the things that they can’t contend with. When thinking about the casting for this film, I knew that I needed performers who could color between the lines and find the humanity in their characters without judgement or surface level analysis.
I’d directed both Veronika Bozeman, who plays Cheryl, and Sean Nelson, who plays Dante, on television shows before, and really enjoyed the experience of working with both of them. I called them up to see if they’d be willing to come to Texas for a few days and work on the film, and they both graciously agreed.
The other actors are from Texas, some of whom I’d worked with before — like my wife, Mikala Gibson, who played the gun-toting best friend — while others were cast from local talent agencies and backstage. Each cast member brought something unique to the project, and the film wouldn’t be the same without their valuable contributions.
MovieMaker: You also do a really good job of ratcheting up the tension. How did you and your team keep making this more and more intense?
Ya’Ke Smith: When I pitched the film to my creative collaborators, I said it was the love child of Set It Off and Kramer vs Kramer, two films that I appreciate for very different reasons. Although those two movies couldn’t be more different, the thread that I kept pulling at when thinking through how I wanted to render the story of “The Ohio, Texas Remix” both visually and thematically, was the tension of desire versus reality.
In Set It Off, all the characters are looking for a better life, but their reality (and greed at times) keeps pulling them back into a world they so desperately want to escape. In Kramer vs Kramer, both parents selfishly want full custody of their son, but after battling it out in court, they realize that they may need to relinquish custody in order for their son to have a stable and uncomplicated life.
By harnessing the tension of both films and using them as my guiding light, I knew I had to find a way to marry the heist/thriller elements of Set It Off, and remix them in the family drama world of Kramer vs Kramer. In order to pull that off, my team and I talked a lot about how to keep the stakes constantly rising, yet grounded in reality.
One thing we decided is that the film’s visual language would not only put us in the emotional headspace of the main character, but that we would also use the camera as a tool of disorientation. We also discussed at length how critical it was that all the elements — visual and aural — kept the audience on the edge of their seats throughout the film, and how the pacing of the film should quite literally make us question everything we thought was true just moments before.
I have to give a lot of credit to the crew — mostly students by the way — for taking my vision and pushing it even further.
MovieMaker: What’s the biggest obstacle you had to overcome or problem you had to solve to make this film?
Ya’Ke Smith: Time and budget constraints were a major challenge for us. We filmed the project in just 2.5 days, and our budget was only half of what we really needed to make it happen. This called for some inventive problem-solving, long hours, and a crew that was incredibly dedicated and hardworking.
One story that highlights this is when I received a call on the second day of filming informing me that the young man responsible for watching over our location had to leave due to a family emergency. With $100,000 worth of equipment in the house, leaving it unsupervised wasn’t an option. Since I was across town handling other shoot-related issues, I called my producer, who was running on just a few hours of sleep, and asked him to rush over. He stepped up without hesitation.
Then there was the situation with our craft services person, who had her car broken into and needed to leave to deal with it. While she was gone, the rest of us jumped in to make sure everyone had what they needed to keep going. Overnight shoots can be grueling, so we made sure to keep the caffeine flowing. Surprisingly, she returned because she really valued the camaraderie we had built on set.
Of course, there were some disagreements along the way, but we worked through those and truly came together as a team to bring the project to life.
MovieMaker: Finally, you teach film at UT Austin — can you talk about how that’s helped you as a filmmaker? (I know this could be a book, apologies.) Has it been a drawback at all in terms of the time commitment of teaching?
Ya’Ke Smith: Teaching is both one of the most rewarding and demanding professions you can pursue. It not only consumes a significant amount of your time, but also requires immense energy to nurture the talents of emerging artists. But that challenge is also what makes it so fulfilling.
As I assist someone in figuring out their story problems, I often end up discovering things about my own work, too. Some of my students are incredibly sharp and have a natural talent for understanding story structure. When I share film cuts in class, their feedback often helps me break through creative blocks. The reciprocal nature of teaching in a creative field is like no other, because creativity is like an electrical current. As a professor I turn on the light, which in turn ignites the creative life force of my students.
Also, as I mentioned earlier, my students play an integral part in my creative work because they fill a lot of the crew roles in my films. So as challenging as it might be, being a professor is an occupation that has allowed me to create a steady catalogue of film work.
