‘All Dirt Roads Taste Of Salt’ Director Raven Jackson And Star Charleen McClure On The South’s Evocative Nature

All Dirt Roads Tastes of Salt wowed audiences when it debuted last year at Sundance. Director Raven Jackson said that she’s always excited to hear when people react to her work, who tell her that it feels like memories from their own lives.

“I really moves me when folks who are from the South know the South feel like, ‘I feel that I know this place,’ you know what I mean? ‘It feels like I’ve been in this living room,’ or ‘I’ve seen this street,’ because that’s what I was going for,” she said.

The film‘s love letter to growing up in the South is one that resonated with a lot of viewers, especially those who have distinct, fond memories of Southern living and some of the esoteric stuff that comes with it, such as the down-home practice of eating clay dirt. Experiences like those are hard to replicate, but Jackson accomplishes it by drawing from her own past.

“I was inspired for that scene by an electrical fire that happened when my mom was in her youth. … I just came across driving location scouting, a house that had already had a fire there and it just happened that we could use it for the scene to stage it,” she said. “Location scouting and casting are just top, top, top for me. And it was … very important to find those places that speak to a specific … place, but can be transformed for these different years that the film covers. … Even with the house Mack grows up in, it’s like, I knew I wanted wood-paneled walls, you know, I knew I have to have things like that.”

Even though the film is fictional, there are a ton of details that stem from real life.

“[It’s] first and foremost a fiction film, but there are certain details. That were jumping-off points or emotional truths or details like Mac [growing] up fishing. I grew up fishing, and in the early scene of her fishing at the water [we used] my father’s tackle,” Jackson said. “And in some of the scenes, some of the pictures from my grandma’s photo albums are on the walls. But again, it’s a fiction film, but there are details and emotional truths I’m using as inspiration in ways and fictionalizing. Even with the Grandma Betty scene where she’s speaking to Mack and Josie about clay dirt, some of those lines [are] from a conversation I had with my grandma around the eating of clay dirt. It’s fiction, but I’m threading certain truths and details within it [because] even when the work is fiction, I still like to feel very close to it. That’s important for me.”

The star of the film, Charleen McClure, plays Mack from her teenage years through adulthood. McClure and Jackson were already friends from the poetry scene; they met at Brooklyn-based Black poetry nonprofit Cave Canem. Jackson decided to cast McClure because of what she had learned about her as a friend.

“With Charleen, there’s just a raw vulnerability she has that I noticed as a friend, and when it came time to thinking about [casting, I thought], ‘Ooh, I see something here. Could Charleen potentially be the Mack I’m looking for?'” Jackson said.

“I also realized just practically, she has a face that carries many years. She could believably play late teens through early 30s, which is what the character needed because you see Mack at several stages of her life. And so that was a really big thing, and also that … her face can express a lot without needing to say words because the film doesn’t rely a lot on dialogue. And so all of those things really strongly spoke to me when thinking about Charleen,” she continued.

Reginald Helms, Jr., who plays Mack’s love interest, Wood, was also cast for showing vulnerability beyond his years.

“I was looking up musical artists from the South, and I came across his video “Southside Fade,” and once I saw it, I was really struck by how he expresses with his body and also his eyes,” she said. “He has such expressive eyes, and when we did a chemistry read with him and Charleen, it just became clear that there was a nice chemistry there between the two of them. And also, in a similar way to Charleen, Reggie has a vulnerability that, again, through his face, through his eyes, he’s able to express and he can express a lot through his body, through his movements without needing to say words again, which is a quality that pretty much across the board all the characters needed to have.”

“I’m someone who really trusts what moves me, and I was moved by both of these people, both individually when I met them, but also when I saw them working together,” she continued. “And I’m really grateful that I trusted that and that the folks I was working with trusted this too. And because, you know, I look at just the work they did in the film and I’m really grateful to have worked with them.”

McClure’s draw to the character had much to do with her friendship with Jackson, but her personal tie to the South was very strong as well.

“I grew up in Georgia — I wasn’t born in Georgia, but all my formative years were here. Because we didn’t have a lot of extended family. I spent a lot of time outside and we moved from a city to the South, so there were lots of trees and lots of that famous Georgia red clay and, again, because we didn’t have a lot of family, I was raised by this network of Southern women that my mother plugged into as she created a life for us here,” she said. “So, that propelled me to just honor the experience and honor the legacy of Black Southern [women], so I just kind of marinated in it on set. And we were in Jackson, Mississippi. I’d been in Mississippi before, but not to spend so much time, so just noticing all those new colors from a different angle, it was a very nurturing experience. I mean, challenging for sure. It’s work, there’s a schedule, there are demands, but it was a very nourishing experience to be part of the film.”

Working with Jackson in this way was different in the sense that they were creating a film, but McClure said that a lot of it still revolved around poetry.

“I’ve been reading Raven’s poems for almost a decade and talking to Raven through poems, and in this atmosphere, in a way, it was very familiar,” she said. “You know, for me it started with the script, it started with the language of the script, and it did feel like, OK, this is a line break. The background and the study of poetry allowed me to see the form, the way that the film was moving through its form as well as through its language.”

“It just made it very rich because … I’m used to the poems being on a page in words, and yeah, they were still; it was still a poem. I read the script the first time and I told Raven, ‘Okay, so you wrote a poem,’ you know?” she continued. “But now we have other materials, right? So working with the costume designer, she’s a poet, she’s thinking about it in materials, in the textiles and colors and shapes. The makeup artists the cinematographer, you know, everyone was. It felt like everyone was in the poem with different materials, so just made it more rich and textured in a different way. It was really amazing to come at it through poetry and have it expand.”

Jackson also talked about how the other professionals creating the film utilized poetry in their work.

“The cinematographer and I talked a lot about slant rhymes and how some of the shots of the hands and the embraces like, how are these moments slant rhymes with other moments that help to speak to the relationships and how these relationships are changing and how these characters are changing and their lives are changing,” she said. “And it was also in the edit. I mean, for me, there are cuts in the film that feel like a line break, you know? … Specifically, a poet that was in my mind a lot was Lucille. Clifton. There’s a spaciousness that I find as a reader in her poetry that I thought a lot about, and so I thought a lot about that as well. So yes, poetry was very close to me in the making of the film. … I call the scenes with Mack at different ages and experiences portraits, and in the same way, you know, a poet would order the poems and a poetry book and intentionally build an emotional arc to create an emotional experience for the reader. That’s what I’m doing with the edit.”

Some of the poetic moments of the film come from the church scenes, in which hands continue the film’s narrative refrain of hands being used as linking imagery. The church itself, Rose Hill Missionary Baptist Church in Meadville, Mississippi, has a long history within the community, adding to the film’s poetic weight.

“That church has a rich, rich history and, I mean, this film deals a lot with … what’s passed from generation to generation and stories, you know, and so it was very beautiful to shoot in a church with so much history,” Jackson said. “It was important to me to invite folks who either went to the church directly or were a part of the community of the church when it wasn’t in operation. … We have some folks who were a part of the community in that team, and in a film that deals so much with stories that’s passed orally, what’s passed from generation to generation, it felt really nice to thread other people’s stories and histories into that. … Rose Hill Church really is like one of the hearts of the film for me.”

One of the songs in the trailer, “Lord, I’m in Your Hand,” is sung by Marianne Amanda Gordon, one of the former pillars of the church when it was still in operation. Jackson said the song was one of the synchronicities that helped elevate the poetic nature of the film.

“The fact that that song speaks about hands and the film, these are things I couldn’t have planned for, you know what I mean?” she said. “Shooting that scene, I thought a lot about community and how we hold each other, and to your point, it’s mirroring to what’s happening outside of the church too. It felt very authentic to these characters and this film, too, that they would have this community that, especially in this moment, this wedding, celebrating them. But also this is a church where, when they’re in deep grief, there’s people. There’s a [funeral] scene at this church as well, and … when thinking about how are these people supported, how does their community show up for them? … Again, I thought it felt authentic to these characters that it would be involving a community of churchgoers as well.”

The film was supported and produced by Barry Jenkins and his production company, Pastel. Jackson said she first met Jenkins after he selected her as the winner of the Indie Memphis Black Filmmaker Residency.

She said she submitted for the residency at the last minute, not knowing Jenkins would be judging. Him picking her as the winner was how their paths first crossed. After the film made it further in its development, Jackson and her producing partner, Maria Altamirano, started pitching it to production companies, including Jenkins’ Pastel. She said they really wanted to bring it to Pastel because they felt it would be a fantastic fit.

“Once they read [it], they were excited about the project,” she said of Pastel execs Adele Romanski and Mark Ceryak. “And after we had a conversation, it was clear that these were the right people to move forward on the project with.”

“It excited me that they weren’t afraid of the risks that I or the film were [making],” she continued. “They were excited by it and there was a lot of trust in me and the process that I’m so grateful for. Barry was really a great collaborator on this film and he really made himself available and was really invested in the film and in being there for me. I’m really grateful for that.”

McClure also talked about Jenkins’ involvement in the film, saying how Jackson told her how kind and caring Jenkins was to her throughout the film production process.

“I’m a fan of Barry Jenkins’ work,” she said, adding that he was a “very warm, kind, welcoming individual in our brief encounter” and “gentle in talking with [Jackson] in the process.”

“[T]hat was also really beautiful to witness from the side, just hearing how he was really genuinely involved and compassionate and just a human,” she continued. “I mean I saw Moonlight three times in the movie theater. It was significant to have his support, his resources, his heart on the film as well.”

She also discussed how leading a film as a first-time actor was a challenge she made sure to rise to the occasion for.

“I did feel a responsibility because Raven is a dear friend. It’s her film, as well as the opportunity to tell this story [and] to illuminate these lives on the screen. I felt a great deal of responsibility, so I made sure I got a good night’s sleep and did what I needed to do to take care of myself to show up on set,” McClure said. “It was also [important] in allowing myself to make mistakes. Like, I’m not trained in acting, right? And I’m here with professional actors who are amazing … so I was a little intimidated. But, you know, to just allow myself to be in the process [was important]. … And with Raven, it was such a collaboration. This is someone I can talk to frequently, so also having that communication in that relationship also made it feel like I could just be present and show up and trust myself. … Another of the gifts that Raven offered was that she was just like, from the very beginning, ‘If we’re gonna do this, you have to trust yourself.’ So exercising all those things made it possible to drown out some of that noise of pressure.”

Jackson and McClure both have things coming soon for fans, but McClure said that while she has poetry in the works this September with BOA Editions, she’s on the lookout for a very specific film to take part in.

“I think All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt is spectacular, you know? I mean, this is me [not counting myself] in it, you know? But just as a fan of Raven’s work, a fan of the script, the film, everything that it was calling in, all of that tradition and legacy and experimentation is so engaging on so many levels,” McClure said. “I still think about … the film with questions, right? If I’ll be able to find a project similar to that. … I feel kind of picky now, so I don’t know. I’m open though. I am definitely open.”

“The other thing I would say is that it was, again, a collaboration with a friend. … I think that experience also would be kind of hard to replicate. So I’m not sure what that will look like as a film,” she continued. “There’s still a bit of a future in poetry. But yeah, I’m open [to more films]. I didn’t expect to make any film at all, so I’m open to whatever.”