WHAT WENT WRONG - Boyz n the Hood (Part 1)

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

What do Pee-wee's Playhouse, Stand By Me and Howard the Duck have in common? All played pivotal roles in the creation of John Singleton's Boyz n the Hood! This week Chris & Lizzie are joined by guest Jonathan Braylock for a deep dive on one of the greatest debut features of all time - from Ice Cube's bombed audition to John Singleton's insistence that he direct the film... one month out of film school. Make sure to check out Part 2 of this two part coverage!Go Ad-Free - Join Our Patreon!Check Out Our Merch!Follow Us on Instagram!What Movie's Next? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast, Full Stop, that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one. As always, I'm Chris Winterbauer. I'm here with Lizzie Bassett, and we are joined by a very special guest, Lizzie.

Do the honors. Yep, that's right. Today, our guest is Jonathan Braylock, who is an actor, comedian, writer, and producer. He has written for shows such as Grownish and The G-word with Adam Conover, and has acted in shows like Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Broad City as well as movies like How to Be Single

and The Amazing Spider-Man 2. He also co-hosts the podcast, Black Men Can't Jump in Hollywood. And they have done an episode on the movie that we are going to talk about today. So you're joining us as an expert. Okay, an expert. I love it. I've seen the movie before

and reviewed it before. Therefore, I'm an expert. You spoke about it for two hours on a podcast. You know more than anyone. That's right. We're talking about Boys in the Hood. I highly recommend listening to Black Men Can't Jump in Hollywood as well as the episode as like a tandem to this episode. It's really good and they cover a lot of different things that we won't because my experience is very different watching this movie.

Fair. Yeah. Also a quick reminder that we are covering Boys in the Hood as the result of a poll. That's right. You can vote on which movies we cover if you join our Patreon. Head to www. patreon.com slash what went wrong podcast, and you can vote on what film I cover next between diehard Ghostbusters, Predator, and The Terminator, Make Your Voice Heard for as Little as a Dollar.

Okay, so, John, you have seen the movie before. I have, and I just rewatched it again. I rewatch it right before this podcast, and I shouldn't have, because I'm very, I'm kind of sat. Oh, no. I was like, I was like, I, you know, I've seen the movie several times now, and I knew it was coming. And yet every time, like, the lead up to it while it's happening afterwards, I'm just like walking around the house screaming, Ricky. Lizzie, had you seen Boys in the Hood before?

I had not. I thought that I had, because I think I've seen like bits and pieces of it. I had never seen the whole thing all the way through, and I loved it. I'm so glad that I got to watch it for this. But yeah, I couldn't believe I hadn't seen this. Very good. Yeah, I saw it in, I saw it, I think freshman year of high school didn't appreciate it at the time. That didn't think a ton of it.

And then I saw it in film school at USC Todd Boyd, who's like a very well-known film scholar, especially on films that deal with black history and the intersection with black filmmakers and whatnot. He has like a whole class that he teaches there, and this was one of the films that we covered from the early 90s, and it was great. And then you learn about John Singleton and how old he was when he made it, et cetera.

And it just kind of everything about the movie starts to blow your mind, the more you learn about it. Yeah. And we're going to get into all of that today. So I was thrilled to watch it again. It's on Netflix. It's great. It's extremely, extremely sad.

Like you said, so get your tissues ready. Well, let's go through the basic detail. So Boys in the Hood, it's a 1991 coming of age, crime drama film, although I would really, very little of that. I think it's mostly just a coming of age movie. Yeah. Written and directed by John Singleton. It is his feature, directorial, and screenwriting debut. Insane.

A lot of people don't know that. The film stars Kubber Ging Jr., Morris Chestnut, Ice Cube, Neolithic. Tyra Farrell, Lawrence Fishburn, Regina King, and Angela Bassett. The film's title is, of course, a reference to the 1987 EasyE Song of the same name, which was written by Ice Cube. And as always, here is the IMDB logline for the film. Boys in the Hood follows the lives of three young men, males, living in the Crenshaw ghetto of Los Angeles,

dissecting questions of race, relationships, violence, and future prospects. Which is, like, I think a pretty vague logline, but we'll go with it. It feels very clinical. Yeah, it's like very IMDV. It's like, yes, technically that is accurate. That's always what they are. Three young males.

Yeah. Okay, so Boys in the Hood is widely acclaimed as a classic American coming of age film. It helped break out both its extremely precocious and gifted young writer-director and its young stars. Obviously, it was Ice Cube's acting debut, Morris Chestnut's feature film debut, Regina King's feature film debut.

Crazy. Right. Yeah, so really remarkable. Now, in the 1980s, it was just the whisper of an idea in the back of a high school student's mind. And that is John Daniel Singleton. Was it after he watched Stand By Me?

Because I was not expecting this to have, oh, all right. There's a lot of references to Stand By Me. They sure are. You guys talk about it in your podcast. and there are some actually even crazier, deeper connections that I found when researching it. It's very explicit, and then there are actual connections to the productions as well. Oh. Okay, so John Daniel Singleton, he was born on January 6th, 1968.

That's right. He was 23 when the movie came out. It's wild. Yeah. His mother was a pharmaceutical sales executive, and his father was a real estate agent, mortgage broker, and financial planner. So obviously, furious, very much based on his father. He was raised in South Central Los Angeles, including the cruncher area where Boys in the Hood was set and also filmed. Singleton was very smart and had a lot of attitude,

and he was also very short. So he's 5'6 and he was always kind of the small kid in his class. And he told Patrick Goldstein in 1991, quote, if a kid gave me trouble, I would simply inform him that the earth was spinning so close to the sun that they were about to collide and it was going to disqual. destroy the universe that usually did it. They would start screaming and go running off to the teacher. I didn't do anything stupid. I used my brain. I guess I was a lucky kid. If I did something bad, I never got caught. And if I did something good, everyone noticed. Although he did admit that he

carried a box cutter with him because he was so small that he just didn't want to get, you know, fucked with in the wrong way. But of course, he attributes his good fortune to avoiding violence and the police to his parents, something that would be the driving force and boys in the hood. he spoke about the effects of the LAPD presence in his neighborhood and the thinking of young men that he grew up with. And this, I think, is very much like, you know, obviously Ice Cube's speech, doughboy speech at the end of the movie. So this quote is, I've heard copters all my life.

It's an incredible kind of psychological violence. It makes you think not in terms of the future because who knows if you'll be around. So you say, not next year, not next week, I'm going to get mine now. The only reason I ever thought about the future was because my moms and my pops made me think about it. I didn't get involved with gangs like some of my friends. if I joined a gang, my pops would have kicked my ass. And then, of course, like the lead character, Trey Stiles, in Boys in the Hood,

Singleton grew up with his mom until he was 12, and then he moved in with his dad, Danny Singleton, who he called the Samurai of South Central. And again, I think it's like very much based on, you know, Furious is very much based on his dad. His dad said, you know, he taught me just what you hear Furious Stiles say in the movie, never respect someone who doesn't respect you back. and when you talk to someone, always looked them in the eye. So, again, pulling from personal experience. Now, you guys mentioned Stand By Me.

John Singleton's escape was entertainment. Any guesses to which movies he was obsessed with at a young age? He will obviously stand by me. Yep, that's an easy one. So this would have been 80s? Yep. So he lived with his mom in Inglewood for a while, and the apartment overlooked a drive-in theater.

So he couldn't hear the words, but he could watch the movies. And they would play B movies. So it was like the Texas Chainsaw Masker, Halloween, black exploitation films, horror films, kung fu movies. And then the quote is, you saw nudity sometimes. I always say that Pam Greer's kits inspired me to make movies. Which is kind of great. But he was obsessed with like mainstream blockbusters.

Like Steven Spielberg, loved E.T. Francis Ford Coppola. And then, of course, he, He's nine years old. He goes to the theaters with his dad. His dad, he's like, I want to watch Herbie, the new Herbie Disney movie. Sure, sure. Herbie the Love Bug.

Right. Herbie the Love Bug. And his dad's like... Star Wars? Yeah. His dad says, no, you've got to see this movie. Yeah. And they stood in line for an hour and it was Star Wars.

And it just blew his mind. Yeah, yeah. Changed everything. So he's like, I want to be a director. I'm going to do this. And then he realizes the only way in especially if I'm not a white guy that's already in Hollywood is if I write my own movie.

That's wild for him to know that. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. There was a story he told the Television Academy. He switched middle schools when he was 12 without telling his parents. So basically, like, he got in a fight with his shop teacher. His shop teacher took his Afro pick and, like, sawed it in half and threw it at him.

What? And then he said, like, fuck you. walked out of school, went to his friend Michael Winter's house, whose name in real life is Fat Back, and that's who Do Boy is based on. Goes to his buddy's house. He's like, I'm dropping out of school. He's in eighth grade. And his fat back's like, you're not dropping out of school. Come with us. Take the bus. We're going to go to this middle school in the valley. Shows up. All these kids have parents. He said he signed his own card. Like he changed schools himself. Shows up. And all these kids have parents that work in Hollywood. And all of a sudden he's

meeting people who actually know that, like, working in Hollywood can be a career. I just want to say, and apparently... For anyone who lives in L.A., that is a long bus ride. It's a long way up the 405. Yeah, it's like... He said he just, like, got on a bus, goes all the way up there, and all of a sudden, he realizes the film business is controlled by literary properties. That's the quote.

That's what he said. Like, that's like 13-year-old John Singleton is like, I need to write the material. And he said, from that moment on, he's just... working on becoming a better writer so that he can write his own movie. Eighth grade. Yeah. I'm so mad. In eighth grade, I was like busy trying to get girls to dance with me at the school dances. Yeah. I was like, oh, I got two girls to dance with me at the school dances. I'm doing great in life. You were doing great. I only got one girl to dance with me at the school dances. Okay, but one of the girls who danced with me was like seven and seven.

I was very short when I was young, and she was, like, so much taller than me. And then she looked over to her friend, and she was like, he's so short. And I was literally like, I'm literally dancing with you. Oh, no. Literally dance. Just the real-time insult. Now I'm realizing I may have inflicted some terror on some short men. It's like I totally did that.

Well, I had the opposite. I was very tall. I've been this height since I was like 12 years old. I have a vivid memory of at Catillion. because I grew up in the South, getting paired with a young man who was, like, maybe five foot two or three in a Hawaiian shirt. Oh, yeah, Hawaiian shirt's big. And, of course, it's just, like, boob height. Sure.

Yep. Just staring right at your boobs just straight ahead. So, you know, God bless him. Hope he's doing well. And John Singleton, Shark King. So mid-1980s roll around, and John Sincleton applies to the filmic writing program at the University of Southern California. So... Huge film school.

Huge film school. Like Spielberg, Lucas, David Lynch. Big town. So many people we've talked about. The application says you need to submit three story ideas that can be turned into movies. One of the story ideas is called The Summer of 84. And it's basically the bare bones of what would become Boys in the Hood. Submits, Singleton says,

I think I was living with this film before I ever thought about. making it growing up in my early teens. I batted around with three friends, Jimmy and Michael, and her other friend who was also named Michael. His nickname was Fat Back. He was heavyset. And in the movie, we called him Do-Boy. So, obviously, characters from his childhood. Summer of 1986 rolls around. You guys remember important movie to a young black filmmaker that came out in 1986? 1986. No, I can't think of it. All right. So he goes to Santa Monica to see Akira Kurosawa's ran the epic Japanese war movie and there's a trailer in front of it for a movie called

She's Gotta Have It by Spike Lee. Ah, okay. Spike's first movies. Spike Lee's first movie. The trailer's really weird. I'd never seen it before. You can see it on YouTube. In the trailer, Spike Lee is literally selling tube socks and turns to the camera and he's like, yo, go see my movie so I don't have to sell tube socks anymore. That's the trailer for She's Got to Have It? It's like 30 seconds of that and then it's a trailer that follows it. I love that. It's really, it's like something you'd see today.

It feels like it's like what Ryan Reynolds is trying to do with Deadpool. Yeah. Yeah. It's doing 30 years ago. Okay. Singleton comes back to Santa Monica a week later. So there's like mid-August, 1986. Spike Lee is at the theater, greeting attendees outside. Singleton goes up to him and goes, I'm going to film school at USC in two weeks.

Watch out for me. Wow. Amazing. Yeah. So the two of them had this amazing conversation. It's on the DGA's Directors Cut podcast. It's episode 150. They're talking about Black Klansmen.

It's really good. So Singleton shows up. University of Southern California. Fall of 1986. This is less than five miles from where he grew up in Crenshaw. Though the film school was considered one of the best, if not the best in the country. USC itself was still known as primarily being in athletics and party school. Big football school.

Oh, yeah. University of spoiled children. at the time. I like that. Tracks. And later, 30 Rock would call it the last bastion

of the rich incompetent, which was my personal favorite. I also went there, so tracks. So perhaps it's unsurprising that USC served as a means to an end for Singleton, as he said in 1991,

quote, USC was a cultural wasteland. Everybody wanted to get rich, but nobody wanted to work to get there. I wasn't into film to get money. I just wanted to make classic films about my people in a way no one had done before. He was apparently described by his classmates as singularly focused, off putting to some, quote, arrogant and too intense, but where most 18 and 19 year olds may have been more focused on finding themselves and having a good time, Singleton had a mission. And what was his mission?

To make movies. To make a fucking movie. Come on. You just gave a pause like we were in school. I know. I was like, and we were like, oh, what's the answer? To make To poison the hood

To be the best writer Like to be the best writer Sure possible, right? Oh my God Trying to get some audience in Jason here He wants to be the best writer in the program And he does it So he wins the Jack Nicholson Award for screenwriting

Two years in a row Wow You know also the thing of like of people responding to someone like that as, you know, too intense or like singularly focused, I get it because, again, I'm sure I was the asshole in college who was like, I'm just finding myself, man. But like, when you think back on it, those people were 15 steps ahead. And now I'm like, you know, I'm going to look at my child and be like, what do you want to do? Start doing it.

Now you're four. Start. You've got, you don't have enough time. Like, get ahead. Also just the amount of money you're putting into it. And again, I don't know. I think he saw this as a, it's a stepping stone. Like, his goal wasn't to be at USC.

His goal was to make a movie coming out of USC. Also, like, how could he not come in with that attitude? Like, that's the only way you get to where he got to. Yeah, sure. So he's at USC, he's crushing it with his scripts. He's doing work as a PA and an intern as well. And there are two really important shows that will tie in later that he works on. The first is as a security guard slash production assistant on the set of Peewee's Playhouse.

Oh my God. I love Peeway. And he's doing this while going to school. He's doing this while going to school. Yeah. Did he get a scholarship? How did he pay for this? I don't know.

But both of his parents... Oh, yeah. They were middle class, kind of, right? His mom was a pharmaceutical sales rep. His dad was a real estate agent, mortgage broker, and financial planner. So presumably more middle class. Right. So he's a PA slash security guard on Peewee's playhouse.

and he also does basically the same thing on the Arsenio Hall show. He shoots a few Super 8 short films on black and white, but he basically is just writing at this point. He's not making a feature film in undergrad or anything like that. He is, I need to get the right script. And he's right. He does need to get the right script,

but he also needs to find the right person to read that script. Right? Because in Hollywood, it's really just who you can get your script too. And right now, Singleton doesn't have the connections that a lot of his classmates do enter. So when you talked about on your podcast, John, Stephanie Elaine, Alan, Elaine, I believe it's Elaine. So much has been made of Columbia Pictures Studio Chief Frank Price's decision to Greenlight Boys in the Hood, which will get to you. But there's a very important figure in the story,

and she's missing in a lot of the interviews and articles that I read. And her name is Stephanie Elaine. And in the late 1980s, she's a young, black story analyst. She's coming up through CAA. She goes to work for 20th Century Fox and Warner Brothers, and then she finds herself at Columbia Pictures working as a script reader. She actually reported to Amy Pascal,

who would later become chairperson for Sony Pictures Entertainment Group. Yep, whose emails you can read. Yeah, whose emails were hacked, and she was fired. And also Don Steele, who would later become the first female president of Columbia Pictures. So, Stephanie was

one of a dozen readers at the studio, She was one of two black readers at the studio, and one of her interns was, according to the research I found, giving her a hard time about the quality of scripts he was being assigned to cover. And that was John Singleton, who was then a senior at USC, describing the screenplays as whack-ass and straight-up booty quotes. She determined that she was going to shut him up or prove that he could do better, so she asked to read some of his work. So he gave her two scripts, one of which was the Jack Nicholson Award winning Twilight Time, which is apparently a story about four sisters coming together at their mother's funeral. Elaine was impressed, so impressed, that she actually sent the script to her old friends at CAA. Singleton gets a phone call from an agent, Bradford Smith, the following Monday.

CAA wants to sign him. Wow. He plays it cool. And then he, like, goes to a gas station and starts screaming for joy. and the thing he was most excited about quote was, I knew I could talk more shit at film school. Yeah, I'll say. That is all you care about, you know, especially when you're young.

You're just like, who can I rub this in the face of who doubted me and I just get to be like in your face? Yeah, so he's a senior and he's already been signed by the biggest agency in the world at this point. Again, of his writing. Right. So proving that he had it right. Timeline gets a little bit murky here, but stick with me. So in the summer of 1989, another really important film comes out.

That's do the right thing. Do the right thing. Yeah. Yeah. So he sees it at a preview screening that summer, leaves and is like, what the fuck am I doing? I have to make my own movie. It's time. I can't wait on all of this.

That's what Spike's doing. Yep. So he's like, Spike's telling his New York. movie. I want to tell my South Central movie. So he sits down and he just fleshes out summer of 84 into a feature script. It's at the USC school library. Here's how Singleton described the writing process. Quote, I would write all night into the morning, sleep, and wobble my way through a couple of classes. I didn't have the money for everything. So I had to use the public computers at school to write. I sat two feet away from people writing their term papers and I would stand up periodically

and walk around and say, I'm writing the fucking best screenplay of my life. I'm writing the fucking best screenplay of my life. People were looking at me like I was crazy. I was so obsessed with what I was writing. That's hilarious. Yeah. So he apparently wrote it in three weeks, the first draft, at least, which is crazy. Wow. It's impressive. Yeah. And then meanwhile, he gets a little lucky boost. Columbia Pictures is struggling because of movies like Ishtar. Listen to our episode. Ooh. Yeah, they had a few flops. And so their parent company, Coca-Cola, decides to sell the studio to Sony. And so Sony picks it up, and there's a big shakeup at the top. Don Steele, the president of Columbia Pictures, leaves.

And then a former editor-slash-writer-turned executive Frank Price joins the company as chairman. And also Stephanie Elaine was promoted out of the story department. So another thing to note is that one of Columbia's small successes during this period was Spike Lee's second film, School Days. which they had actually picked up for like $5 million, and it made $15 million at the box office. And also featured Lawrence Fishburne, some of the other cast from this film. Okay, so sometime in early 1990,

Stephanie Elaine gets promoted, and she says, I want to replace myself with a person of color. So she brings John Singleton in to interview for the job. Remember, she knew his agent, et cetera. But John Singleton's more interested in talking about his new script, boys in the hood. He's like, this job's fine.

I just wrote the greatest screenplay of my life. You need to check it out. So she says, fine, send it to me. Two weeks later, she gets the script, she finishes it. She's in tears. She's determined to turn this into a movie. She calls his agent. Columbia wants to buy the script.

And Brad Smith says, that's fine, but John told me he wants to direct it. And she's like, what do you mean? And he's like, he wants to direct. And she's like, he's one month out of film school. And he's like, yeah, John said he's going to be the one that directs it. So Elaine says, fine. She takes the script back to Columbia and she's like, hey, I want to buy this script and also this guy wants to direct it.

And people are like, wait, what are you talking about? And apparently it just does, the script just doesn't get a great response initially. So Peter Goober and John Peters, Barbara Streisand's ex-hressor turned producer for those who don't know. What a path. Yeah. They had just been installed by Sony. and they were like, we don't get it.

We just, we don't get it. We don't understand. What is this hood you speak up? They did not get it. They're like, wait, something is below the 10? There's stuff down there. Why would anybody want to watch this? Because it's about black people.

He's like, I feel like the speech at the end explains why I don't need to see this movie. Yeah, it was, yeah, they really didn't get it. To her credit, Amy Pascal was supportive of the script. She thought the writing was great. And so basically it all came down to Frank Price, the new chairman of Columbia Pictures. And luckily, as you guys talked about on your podcast, John, he was a former writer as well.

And so he also was like, this is really, really well written. And he had also greenlit a bunch of movies that had kind of been risky at the time, Ghostbusters, which was considered risky, karate kid out of Africa. He'd also infamously greenlit Howard the Duck. Oops. Which we, yeah, we talk about that listen to our episode. So actually, that got him fired from his previous studio job before this one.

So Elaine gets him to read the script. He reads it and he goes, quote, it's fantastic. I think the script is great and we should do it. So they bring John Singleton in and they're like, John, we love the script. It's great. we will give you $100,000 for the script. And what? A bag of peanuts?

But just the scripts. Oh, okay. I thought you were saying to make the movie. I was like, what? Yeah, no, we'll give you $100,000. Yeah, give us the script. You can't direct it. You can't direct it.

Like, you're just the screen writer. Okay, okay, gotcha. We have white directors for that, sir. Right. Well, yeah, basically. Yeah, 100%. Just did colors. We could get him to do it.

So, Stephanie Elaine said, John said no. And then they said, what would you say if we, if we offered you more than $100,000. And then he said, I'd say this conversation is over. And so at 22 years old,

I mean, he's got to be broke. Come on, you know what I mean? He's 22. He's fresh out of film school. Turn down $100,000. Yeah, in the 80s. Which in today's dollars is like $400,000. You know what I mean?

Yeah. That's wild. But, of course, Singleton knew, John, what you're saying, which is, you said, quote, so many bad films had been made about black people and most of them had been done by people who weren't black.

I wasn't going to let some fool from Idaho or Encino direct a movie about living in my neighborhood. If they didn't want to do the movie with me directing, they didn't want to do the movie. Yeah. And so he actually, like, talks a lot about colors, which is that, have you guys seen it? Yes.

It's like a, yeah, the South Central cop drama. Sean Penn. Sean Penn and Robert Duvall. It's like a couple of brave white cops going through South Central. You know my feelings about Sean Penn. It's wild. It's something. But I will say at the time, this is like one of the only movies that even talks about the hood.

So there are people who were like people really liked it because they were like, well, like we're getting some kind of representation on the screen, you know. Yeah. Huh. But it's from the cop's perspective. It's from. 100% from the cop's perspective. Yeah. Yeah.

In retrospect, it was a lily pad step that Hollywood, I guess, needed to. take, but yeah, it was not the end result that Singleton was looking for. So, Singleton wins the execs over, and they give the budget a movie of $6.5 million, which was lower than, like, the studio average at the time, 15 to 20 million. But it is exactly what Spike Lee got for Do the Right Thing, his third movie. I was going to say, that's a little more than I expected, to be honest, for a first-time director at this point on this movie. And I, you know, I feel like if do the right thing hadn't happened and hadn't been a success, then this wouldn't have happened.

That's true. Yes. So there are, let's talk about that because there are some very, it's not just Columbia out of the goodness of their heart saying, we should really tell this black story right now because it's important. Certainly not. No, of course. They're seeing money. Okay.

So Frank Price later explained the risks. From the standpoint of a studio head, this kind of picture is the worst thing you can do because if it fails, there's nobody to blame but you. They look at it and they say, why make something with an unknown writer, unknown director, and unknown actors, that's how you lose everything. And I feel like what he would probably claim is like,

but it was so important we had to do it. But the truth is there were three other things working on his side here. One, he had taken risky projects that were controversial and turned them into big hits. Like Gandhi, Cry Freedom, Soldier Story, Tutsi, League of Their Own.

All of these movies were movies that like on paper, Hollywood would say like, I don't know, but he knew he could turn that into box office gold. Two, the company above him, Sony Pictures Entertainment, that was being formed, was a tirefire. So Peter Goober and John Peters had just been bought out for $200 million of their contract from Warner Brothers, which is an insane amount of money to give to producers at this time. And so Warner Brothers was suing Sony for a billion dollars for poaching them. And so no one cared about this tiny little movie that was getting made, you know what I mean, under Columbia Pictures.

Like they had total air support. They had a total distraction. And obviously the third thing is what you said, John, all of a sudden people are like, oh, wait, black film is profitable in a way that it had never been before. So there's this writer Karen Grigsby Bates. And in 1981, she wrote this article about this big cultural shifts around the number of black. stories being told, and it's crazy. So it's referred to as the Singleton thing back then, and basically it says all of these studios have all of a sudden got black stories being told by black filmmakers in their pipeline. And so by the end of 1991, 19 studio films with black stories were released. That many had been made in the previous decade. Yeah. So, why is the question, and the answer is money, of course. Right, but also, like, the surprise doesn't make any sense, you know?

The surprise that these things are hits, that these are successful, the surprise that there is an audience, it's like, yes, of course. Like, it just, it doesn't, it logically does not make sense. I understand that logic is not what's at play, but, you know. Yeah, okay, some interesting. So Reginald Hudlin and Warrington, Huddlin, they directed House Party. 1990, they said Hollywood has told their stories. They're tapped out.

How many sequels can you do? White America knows very little about us, and very few of our stories have been told. People want to see them. House Party was obviously made by New Line Cinema. One of the reasons New Line Cinema made House Party was because of how many black people went and saw Nightmare on Elm Street. Interesting.

So because New Line was built by horror, and all of a sudden they realized, wait, black Americans represent 12% of the population, 25% of our ticket buying population, we need to cater to this audience in a way that we hadn't before. Yeah, and they sure did. So there's this sea change, and all of a sudden, you know, there's money to be made here. And so Singleton kind of hits it right at the right moment, obviously, crazy talented. Yeah. And there's another thing that's happening in America during this time, which is the rise of rap,

which is also bringing black culture to white. audiences that previously hadn't necessarily experienced black people. And then there was also like this coolness factor that's going on with that, you know. And so like the 90s was like a kind of, it was like you had black exploitation in the 70s. And then the 80s were like, stop this black stuff. Like just all we want is white men. Cocaine, white men and cocaine. You know, rape culture in all of our movies.

It was basically just 10 years of Michael Douglas. Everything else. And then the 90s, it was like, yeah, this renaissance, this black renaissance. But it was, you know, and one of the things we talk about our podcast is like the studios were still looking. They were essentially realizing black people will come and see movies with black leads and black cast. So they were being catered to black people, which worked, you know, was successful. And then there was like a push for like crossover. And then in the early 2000s, they were like, okay, again, enough of this black stuff.

Let's stop doing this. And then, of course, we get to our 20, what, 15, 16 realization again, that diversity is maybe profitable. You get Black Panther and all that. It's fun, the ups and downs of Hollywood. I don't understand the dips. Like, it's not like it stopped making money. Well, what happens is that what happens is the market gets flooded

and then like basically it's just like every other thing. It's like, oh, these movies aren't making hits, but the lessons they learn are no, we shouldn't be doing these movies at all. And so it goes from, you know, zero to 100 back to zero, you know. Meanwhile, the other movies that are checking off the boxes,

like Chris was saying about like, well, you have no one to blame but yourself. And it's like, it's insane that that is a real thing in Hollywood. But like when a movie that's supposed to do well completely bombs and they spent $200 million on it and it makes like

you know 50 or whatever and they're like yeah but you know you had an A-list star you had IP you know it clicked all the boxes so nobody's going to blame you even though it was a huge loss I don't know that's how Hollywood works it's insane it is if you can

say well anybody would have made that call then you're not going to get fired well it's also like to your point what they're learning from these few movies that are failing doesn't make any sense because they're they're trying to cater to an audience without maybe understanding that audience and then the things that they make in that space don't do well they don't necessarily examine why they don't do well they just say let's go back to what was already working nobody wants this and it's like well are you listening to the

people who want it and are you putting them in positions of power to make it no and also like are you making good movies. Sometimes they're just like, you're just, you're following a formula, but you're not actually making a good movie. And audiences aren't, as much as I feel like we malign audiences sometimes, they're not that stupid. Like, they go and they're like, this is dumb. This is bad.

You know, I'm not watching. Yeah, there's a famous example of what you're talking about is this 1990 movie called To Sleep with Anger. It was written and directed by Charles Burnett. It starred Danny Glover, who was fresh off of lethal weapon, as Harry, an old friend visiting a black family that's moved from the south to L.A. And this visit causes a crisis in the family. It's a contained, mature drama film.

It won one of three main jury prizes at Sundance that year. But despite great reviews, the movie completely flopped. And Charles Burnett said at the time that the studio killed it through a, quote, lack of knowledge on how to market it. He said that they didn't spend money on promotion. They didn't contact the black print media until the 11th hour. and no one at the studio apparently understood, quote, how the black press worked. The VP of publicity at the studio countered and simply said, quote,

no one has been able to create a black art film audience. Or you did an insane marketing campaign. I'm looking at the poster and I don't know what that's about. This poster is wild. Yeah, tell the listeners what you're seeing. This is Danny Glover with like literally like the Grinch grin? Yes. Yes.

Holding up five photographs. that look like playing cards of other, of the other black actors in the cast. And you're just like, what does this mean? Is it the game, guess who? Is he going to kill them? Like, it looks like this reads, this reads as a horror film.

100%. Yes. And I'm, I am assuming it's not at all. That's a drama. Yeah. Great. So, yeah, totally that they don't want art house movies, of course.

They did not botch the marketing on this movie, which we will get to. They did a good job. So this is one that they didn't blow. Okay, boys in the hood, it's greenlit, $6.5 million. John Singleton, all five, six of him is so confident, but Columbia Pictures knows, no matter how confident he is, it's his first movie. So, like, we have to give this guy a good producer, and we have to give him a good producer

to help him make this movie. And the first person they apparently considered was music mogul Russell Simmons, who he would later work with. And so Russell Swimmons was doing film production, and he was trying to, transition into movie producing at the time. He read the script on a trip to Las Vegas. He loved it, but he also had concerns about Singleton's age and experience. So he basically said, I'll do it with John if he directs some music videos for me before we shoot the movie. Apparently, Frank Price and Columbia said, no. They said, we have a timeline for this movie when we want to release it, you know,

in the summer of 1991, and that would put us behind our schedule. And so we're going to keep moving. And apparently Simmons was really upset and felt that he had been shafted out of of the process. So at the same time, Stephanie Elaine, champion of the script, sends it to a friend of hers, Steve Nicolades. He had been working with Rob Reiner on all of his films in the 80s, including, of course, stand by me. So he had done The Princess Bride, when Harry met Sally. Steve loves the script, he reads the script, he loves it, calls Elaine and says, what do I need to do? I'm in. So Nicolades, he's almost 20 years. older than John Singleton, goes to his house, it's actually John Singleton's mother's house,

sits down, and basically it sounds like the scene with the recruiter in Boys in the Hood. We're like, he sits down with John, mom brings out the lemonade, they sit down, and John says, I have one condition, and I want as many black people working on this film as possible. And Nicolato says, I don't care if I'm the only white person on the set, but I have to ask if you're so determined to work with black crew, why do you want to work with me as your producer, as a white guy? And Sigleton says, quote, because you worked on my all-time favorite movie, stand by me.

Oh. So as Singleton later told Vice, quote, it was the last film I saw before I started college, and I loved everything Stephen King wrote. It's a very emotional coming-of-age, young male story, and I love it on the merits of that, end quote. Yeah. So, and obviously, John, as you guys talked about in your podcast,

there's tons of, like, references and homagees. in the movie, including the fade out at the end, and do you want to see a dead body and the train tracks and everything? And then I love this vice reporter. Follows up with this question where he's like, are you trying to make a contrast about, you know, the young black experience versus the idyllic white experience? And he just goes, no, I just really love that movie.

And I also loved a bunch of other movies that I referenced in this one. Like, not everything's about that. So basically, Nick Ladies gives him two pieces of advice. He says, don't hire a production designer when an art director will do, which you'll see there's no production designer on this movie. Second, don't hire name actors, which I'm sure the studio was thrilled about. Singleton agrees to both. Okay, so let's dive into casting.

It's probably the most fun part of this. So, John, in your podcast, you guys make reference to the show that Lawrence Fishburn was probably actually most known for at this point in time. Peewee's Playhouse. Bee Wee's Playhouse. And his character, Cowboy Curtis. So, basically, Trey and his father

were the characters that were supposed to be stunt cast. According to at least one source, Columbia Pictures was interested in a very specific high profile actor for that role. Lawrence Firstburn said the same thing. Neither of them named the actor, but I did read in a couple sources that it was Eddie Murphy.

Yeah. Totally possible. You mentioned Beverly Hills Cop. I mean, honestly, at this time, it could have only been Eddie or Denzel, right? Like, there's not really, like, what other high-profile black actors were there. Yeah. Unless there was like, well, maybe Morgan Freeman, I guess. It was like... Yeah, maybe Morgan, but more. Yeah. A little bit older for... Denzel would have been coming off of Glory in 89 and like the Oscar with that one. So, regardless,

Singleton says, I'm not interested because I've written this part for somebody else. As I mentioned, in 1988, he was working as a security guard slash PA on Pee Wee's Playhouse. That's the Paul Rubin's created children's show, ran from 1986 to 1990, and Singleton would tell everybody he met, I'm a student at USC, and I'm going to be directing my own movie soon. And I'm sure a lot of people just kind of brushed him off. Sure. You know, he's like a young PA. But there's one person who didn't brush him off on the set, and that is Lawrence Fishburn,

then going by Larry Fishburn, who played Cowboy Curtis. He was only 27 at the time, which is wild. How old was he an apocalypse now? Like 17? 15. 15. Yeah, he was a teenager. I remember that.

Yeah. So as Fishburn later recounted on late night with Conan O'Brien, John was the lowest of lowly PAs. He was working on the door, and his job was to stop people at the door and go, are you supposed to be here? Do you have the proper ID? So John Sigleton basically starts badgering Fishburn saying like, hey, you worked with Spike Lee on school days.

Tell me about it. Like, tell me about, I'm going to be a director. Tell me about Spike Lee. And so Fishburn said, okay, let me get you a cup of coffee. You want a cup of coffee? And they got some coffee together, and he told them about the experience. And at the end of it, Singleton said, I'm going to write a movie for you, and I'm going to direct you in it. And apparently, Singleton said later that Fishburn's reply was simply, go ahead, brother.

And two years later, Singleton fights for Fishburn to play Furious Styles. largely because he'd gotten Singleton a cup of coffee and sat with him and talked with him about the filmmaking process, which is just crazy. And it's not the only TV show connection here. The role of Do Boy was specifically written for Ice Cube, even though he was not an actor at the time. He is amazing. I know we will get to it, but holy shit. Like, that is, I knew he was good.

I have a hot take. All right. My hot take is that if I had watched this movie in 1991 and had to guess who was going to have the best, best acting career. I would have picked Ice Cube. Like, I think he's amazing in this movie. A hundred percent. Where is Ice Cube's Oscar? Anyway.

Right. Over, right. And then you think about everybody else in this movie and all, and obviously Ice Cube's had an amazing career. But my point is, like, he really stands out to me, just, you know, his persona, et cetera. So Singleton met him when he was working at the Arsenio Hall show. So Singleton was working security backstage. They wouldn't let Ice Cube in.

And Singleton's, like, do you not know who this is? This is Ice Cube from NWA. Let him in. And then he goes, yo, Ice Cube, I'm going to write a movie someday and direct you in it. Can you, can I have your phone number? And Ice Cube gives it to him. And then a few months later, he needed a ride in Hollywood called Ice Cube.

Ice Cube apparently picked him up. And Ice Cube played him some demos from what would become America's Most Wanted. And then less than a year later, Singleton sends Ice Cube the scripts for, Boys in the Hood to come in and audition for it and read for it. And he's never acted in anything before. Wow. And so, but Singleton's like, he's going to be amazing. He's going to be amazing.

So Ice Cube comes in and he reads. And the only problem is he was terrible, just like, apparently unwatchable. So, quote, when Ice Cube came in to read for the part, he had been on tour. He hadn't paid too much attention to this. So he sucked. Ice Cube later told Vanity Fair, I'm trying to be the best rapper in the world. I'm not thinking about acting. And my manager was like,

yo, somebody wants to put you in a movie. Here's the script. He apparently just threw the script in the back of his car, forgot about it, gets to the audition, realizes this is actually a real movie. Quote, oh shit, he was for real.

He wasn't lying. He's going to do a movie. This kid is no bullshit. Like, this is a 22-year-old kid telling him, you know, I'm going to make a movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Isn't he also like 20-21? Yeah, I think he's within a year or two.

Yeah, it's pretty young. So he fucks it up. He's like, I was terrible. Singleton says, go home, read my script. I'm going to give you one more shot because they don't want to hire you and I'm dying inside. I know you're good.

I know you can do it. So then Ice Cube went home and actually read the script for the first time. He had not read the script when he went into his audition and he has this epiphany. Quote, damn, they're actually going to make a movie about how we grew up.

I didn't know how we grew up was even interesting enough to be a movie, but the way John captured it, it was like cinematic beauty. comes back in and nails his second audition. Amazing. Then you got Trey and Ricky, according to John Siggleton. Quote, it's funny because when we were making it, I knew nothing about the process of casting.

So the first two people who came in to read for Trey were Morris Chestnut and then Kuber Goodyngo Jr. And then after those two came in, I said I was going to lunch. We had seven more people to see, but I just said, this guy's going to be Trey and the chocolate guy's going to be Ricky. I'm going to go eat. Goodbye. So, yeah, they, he knew. like from the first audition, it was those two. Although I did read that Cuba Gooding Jr. had to come in and screen tests like five times because the studio wanted a name actor in one of these roles.

Who is the, what name? Yeah, exactly. I don't know who would have. Cuba Götting Jr. was the most established outside of Lawrence Fishburn, but he wasn't very established. He'd done like guest TV roles. He'd done a pilot. He was Lionel Ritchie's backup dancer at the 1984 Olympics.

What? It's funny, he and Morris Chestnut, you guys talk about this on your podcast, John, where it's like, they were thespians. Like, Cuba Gooding Jr. was an drama guy. And Morris Chestnut went to Cal State Northridge and studied acting and finance. Like, people have to understand, I'm saying it flippantly and jokingly, but like truly, black actors were not being cast very much at all outside of like, you know, the gangster, the like the holdup dude, the pimp. Like, that literally what is what was happening in the 80s. You had Eddie Murphy movies. Eddie was casting people. But, like, if you weren't a part of Eddie's crew, and obviously Eddie could only carry so many people, you know.

And then once Spike started coming along, he had his own people, too, which included Denzel and Samuel Jackson. He kept putting in movies and stuff. But, like, if you weren't a part of one of these very, very small clicks, like, you weren't going to be a big name. And even the people who did get shots, they weren't giving you a second shot. Carl Weather, as everybody knew from Rocky, and he got to do Predator, and they gave him one movie at, like, Action Jackson, and it didn't do well,

and he was never leading again. Like, there were no black leads. That's what I'm, like, young, I'm trying to think, like, Lovar Burton. Like, who was, like, who were they, who would they even have been looking at? Honestly, like, maybe Wesley Snipes. Okay, yeah.

Someone that I'm trying to think of, like, that I was thinking of at the time, because New Jack City was right around this time, too. But no, there's not a lot of people. I mean, like, Ernie, they just did a whole profile on Ernie Hudson from Ghostbusters, and it's like, you look at his career, and it's the same sort of thing.

Oh, my goodness, yeah. And Ernie was old when he did Ghostbusters. Yeah. So Kubigini Jr. said, quote, I did four or five screen tests because they kept bringing me back. They wanted an established actor, but John insisted, he said, this is my guy.

And every fucking time I came back, I wore that gold and black Kavarichi shirt and with black Kavarichi pants that are on the poster to this day. So that outfit he had selected in his audition, which is an amazing. Like his intro is very, like, when Cuba Getting Jeter slides in to the movie at the house part, like at the barbecue, welcome back party, it, like, you're like, oh, like, you're such a dork. I love you.

Such a dork. Such a dork. It's so funny. And yeah, like Morris Chestnut, single credit to his name, TV. Freddy's Nightmares, a TV show based on Nightmare on Elm Street. He was apparently called Black Jesus on set. Neil Long later said, well, he does seem like a black Jesus. He's the quintessential black man, tall, dark, handsome and smart. And he is extremely handsome. So Neil Long had grown up in South Los Angeles,

and she actually initially wanted to turn down the role of Brandy, Trey's girlfriend. Why? Because she thought the director was going to be white. So, quote, when I first got the script, I immediately thought some white guy is going to try to make a movie about the life I've lived, and I don't want to have anything to do with it. I'm very protective of my culture and where I'm from, And they're like, no, no, no, he's black. But then I was like, well, where is he from? What part of town? And so she wanted to, like, verify that, you know,

he wasn't, like, you know, upper-class black guy making a story. Yeah. And then she accepted the role. And she had very nice things to say about John Singleton. Now, Angela Bassett, obviously, is great in this movie. And, John, you guys talk about one of the best scenes when they have dinner. And she kind of speaks the truth to Lawrence Fishburn. Put some of this place.

Yeah, and I have to think that the chemistry that they had in the film was what led to what's love got to do with it. 100%. That's all I could think about during that. Yep. And I think it was chemistry even before that. So according to an athletic article on the legacy of the film, it was Lawrence Fishburn who recommended Angela Bassett for the role.

Oh. So she was a Yale University graduate. Again, crazy Thespian. She was working on Broadway. He had seen her, Fishburn, doing a Broadway production of August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone, opposite Delroy Lindo at the time. Yeah. And, quote, I was absolutely blown away by her intelligence and her strength, her beauty, her acting.

I mean, all of it. She was the total package to see her live, if you've never seen her live, is really something, end quote. And so she had, again, guest starred in some TV shows, and she was the stewardess, a stewardess on kindergarten cop, apparently. I didn't even remember that. But this was like an enormous role compared to what she'd done. And obviously, she and Lawrence Fisperin were Ike and Tina Turner and what's love got to do with it. And then they also did fences together on stage later in their careers as well to bring things full circle.

And then you've got like Tyra Ferell. Also, she's basically just working in TV, although she had done school days with Spike Lee and Lawrence Fishburn. She actually wanted that role of Riva Stiles. She really wanted that role, but Angela Bassett already had it, and she didn't want the role of Brenda Baker, Ricky and Doe Boy's mother. She was,

she had to be convinced to take on the part. I think she didn't want it because she was worried it was going to play as like a stereotypically unsympathetic black mother role. And she's dynamite in this movie. It is a really tough role. And she's great.

And then obviously Regina King, Boys in the Hood. was her feature film debut. She'd been a series regular on 227, which was an NBC sitcom about the residence of a predominantly black apartment complex for four years.

She was thrilled by the script. She later told Entertainment Weekly, we were so excited to be telling a story about a world we knew. We had all never seen a movie like that. We'd never seen a TV show like that. John Singleton, with his cast and crew in place,

made the decision to shoot the film in the world in which it took place. So in part two of our coverage of Boyce's in the hood, we will dive into the production of the film in South Central Los Angeles. Go to give it a listen. Go to patreon.com slash what went wrong podcast to support what went wrong and check out our website at what went wrongpod.com. What went wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing and music by David Bowman.