Earlier this year, it was announced that Sony Pictures Animation was partnering with director Matthew A. Cherry to release his short film, Hair Love.
Co-directed by Cherry and Everett Downing, Hair Love raised $300,000 on Kickstarter back in 2017. That’s the most any short film, animated or not, has ever achieved on the funding platform.
Produced by Karen Toliver, Cherry, Stacey Newton and Monica A. Young, Hair Love also sees Frank Abney and Peter Ramsey, who served as a director on SPA’s Oscar-winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, as Executive Producers.
Hair Love, is a 5 minute animated short film that centers around the relationship between an African-American father, Stephen, his daughter, Zuri and her hair. Despite having long locks, Stephen has been used to his wife doing his daughter’s hair, so when she is unavailable right before a big event, Stephen will have to figure it out on his own. This sounds simple enough, but we soon come to find that Zuri’s hair has a mind of its own.
During the 2019 American Black Film Festival in Miami, Blackfilm.com spoke exclusively with Cherry and Ramsey on their collaboration to get Hair Love shown to the world.
“Hair Love” will be coming out through Sony Animation. Can you talk how the two of you got together to collaborate?
Matthew A. Cherry: Social media.
Peter Ramsey: Twitter, we’re Twitter pals.
Matthew A. Cherry: We’re Twitter buddies. I was I’ve been a big fan of Peter ever since Rise of the Guardians. Just seeing a brother do an animated feature, and he was the first to do a CG feature. I just wanted to follow his journey and see what he’s doing. When I had this idea for Hair Love, and it was really very important to put people around the project that had that experience. And if they were African American, even better. Peter was the first person I reached out to, and luckily, he said, yes, he was he was into and he was down. And it was before Spider-Verse had blew up, but I knew he was working on it. It’s just crazy how things have played out the last couple years.
Peter Ramsey: A friend of mine, a woman filmmaker named Melissa Fitzimons knew about Matt Cherry and his story of being an NFL player and doing independent features and working his way up. That was really inspiring. So I followed him on Twitter, and saw that he’s like the Mozart of gifs. So one day he asked me, “Hey, man, I had this idea for him for an animated film. You think the story would work?” He then pitched me the the idea of Hair Love. I thought it was fantastic.
Matthew, this is something new for you. You’ve produced projects and directed shorts and feature films, and you’ve seen the work Peter put in before he did his first feature. So, what challenge did you face entering the animation world?
Matthew A. Cherry: It was great. I mean, you know, it’s an amazing team. My manager, Monica A. Young is a producer in the project, and so is Karen Toliver. We have a couple great co-directors on a project, Bruce W. Smith and Everett Downing. So it’s just a really amazing team. We’re working with 6 Point Harness, our production studio. There’s just so many people around the project that Frank Abney is an EP as well. There’s just so many great people that have the experience, Peter said something that just really always has impacted me now. He just talks about the story. Storytelling is storytelling, no matter what genre it is. Animation obviously is different because you have to literally build the world from scratch, but you’re still trying to tell a story. You want certain emotional needs to hit and it’s still the same thing, but you’re just using a different paintbrush. You surround yourself with people that are better than you are that you can ask questions and trust that they know what they’re doing. You try to continue to tell that story.
So what’s the plan? Short film first and then a feature film?
Matthew A. Cherry: We’re looking at it as hopefully more of a TV series. I think certain things kind of lend themselves to certain other mediums. I think this probably would play better as a series. Obviously, in working with Bruce W. Smith, I’m being a big fan of his and what he did with the Proud Family. I think something more in that lane would make more sense for this particular story. I still I have a dream that one day do an animated feature as well, so may not be this one. But you know, definitely hoping to have life beyond the short film.
Has anything to the project happened since the book became a New York Times bestseller?
Matthew A. Cherry: I just think it helps create just more of an audience People are going to be familiar with this story in a different space, People will be familiar with the characters. That was always the plan, to build a world just beyond the animated short film. With anything, from social media, be that a project, it’s all about building an audience. Now that the book has come out and done really well, hopefully, when the short film drops, later this summer, it’ll just roll over into that same audience. As a filmmaker, I’m trying to get to where Peter is, to get on that big stage. Being an athlete, you try to set goals, and you want to be the best; you want to get recognized by your peers and do great things and just tell great stories. It’s just been an amazing journey, being able to get in front of these kids, and these parents and see them like the book. That’s the most rewarding part of the process.
Peter, why choose to work on this particular one and not anything previous? Or have you done anything else?
Peter Ramsey: Honestly, Matthew was, he was already an accomplished filmmaker. With him, the train was already moving. I was there when he was first germinating the idea and seeing if it was even possible. All he really needed to know from me was, “Hey, will this work in animation?” Of course. It’s a story, and you have a clear idea. It’s something you’re passionate about there. You can tell any story in animation. Like Brad Bird says, “It’s a medium. It’s not a genre.” So that’s all Matthew needed. That’s all him and he just like, took it and ran.
You won the Oscar for Spider-Verse. The question is, will there be a sequel?
Peter Ramsey: Oh, yeah, there’s definitely gonna be a sequel.
What’s next for you outside of that?
Peter Ramsey: Well, for me, there’s different animated projects that are in the very early stages. I can’t really talk about it but it’s super early. I’m hoping to still contribute to Miles Morales’ story going forward. That would be fantastic. There’s other stuff. Other projects, I originally came out of live action and filmmaking. So I’d like to get back into that and taking some baby steps back into that world. So it’s just just telling stories. I love animation. I love live action. I love filmmaking. Any venue for storytelling is what I want to explore.
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