WHAT WENT WRONG - Boyz n the Hood (Part 2)

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 1 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 What Went Wrong. This is the second half of our coverage of John Singleton's Boys in the Hood. If you miss part one, give it a listen and then circle back for part two. And without further ado, I give you Boys in the Hood. If you're going to make a movie about South Central, John Singleton was insistent. We have to shoot the movie in South Central. So there were three major consequences to this decision.

First of all, they were going to shoot in relatively, uncontrolled environments. They ended up using both the LAPD and the Fruit of Islam as security. And if you guys remember, Spike Lee used Fruit of Islam for security on do the right thing. And they are the like security side of Muslim Brotherhood. They would be shooting next to basically many of the homes of the cast and crew members. And I think John, you guys talked about like Nia Long had a comment like she could have walked to set, but she didn't walk home from set like one or two times on the film. Right. Here's the real benefit though. Who do you not want to come to set when you're shooting a movie?

The studio. The studio. They're not going to show up. Yeah. So the studio just never came. Where is it? Oh, nice. Good for you guys.

Yeah. We had meetings. We have a couple of meetings. Yeah. We've blocked out our calendars for the next 38 days. But we will see you guys at the rap party. Oh, no. It's going to be down there, too?

Okay. So they have a 38-day shoot. and we've talked about this before, they're going to shoot it chronologically, so that Singleton can just focus on telling the story in order across the movie. So we'll start with them as kids. We'll do the middle act when Do Boy comes back,

and then we'll build to all the action so we can shoot all the action last, basically, at the very end of the movie. And Singleton himself said, the audience should be able to feel the movie grow stronger from a technical perspective as it goes on because he was improving as a director as he was shooting the film.

He was basically learning how to direct as he was shooting the movie. Although you guys talk about the first shot in this movie is great. And the stop sign, like the slow pushing on the stop sign with the airplane going overhead. And it is a great first shot. And I was like, did they shoot that first or did he like pick that up later? You know what I mean? When he learned more of what he was doing. Now, John Singleton was very confident, but he was nervous.

And one piece of evidence that he was nervous, apparently he just was shooting one take per setup. at the beginning of the shoot because he was so scared that they were going to go over. So, like, they would just do the setup. He would roll it. Cut, we're moving on. Oh, God.

And the producer was like, oh, okay, like, I guess we got it. And then he did it three times. And Steve Nicklades went up to him and he was like, you know, you're allowed to do more than one take just so you're aware. And then he calmed down a little bit.

Apparently, he also sent the script to John Hughes to read and give feedback. I don't know what feedback he gave, but he was a big fan of John Hughes movies. And he was like, this is a teen movie. Can you give me some feedback? Also interesting, given what we learned about John Hughes and his early background as a screenwriter

in our episode on The Breakfast Club, check that out. Now, Singleton wasn't the only one learning while they were shooting. Fishburn was the veteran actor on set that many of the young cast looked up to. Although, how many years older do you guys think he was than his on-screen son, Cuba Gooding Jr.? Eight, tops, nine. John? Oh, yeah, let me think.

well, yeah, because Cuba's probably like 23, Fishburn, maybe seven? Six years. Yeah, it's pretty tight. And I think Angela Bassett's five. I can't be sure. They do that. They do that. Like in the preacher's wife, I feel like there's like a grandma and like her age,

and like she's supposed to be the mother to Whitney Houston, and their age difference is like five years. Yeah, there's a number of those. I mean, even if you look at like Indiana Jones last crusades, I think Sean Connery and Harrison Ford are about 10 years apart in that movie. What are you going to do? I also think it makes sense here because they start when the parents are young. Yes.

Because like you said, it's not 10 minutes of them as kids. No, it's a lot. It's a full 35 minutes of them as kids. So you have to cast with both of those in mind. Also, Lawrence Fishburn, who's extremely handsome, also looks a little older than 29 in this movie. He does. He definitely looks older than 29. And he has the gravitas of an older man as well.

Yes, absolutely. I will say one of the only things about this movie, I initially had a bit of a hard time, like, buying, was that Cuba Gooding Jr. could be a teenager. And I understand he wasn't even that much older. It's just that he does look a lot older. And the way that he carried himself, too, I was confused for a minute because I was like, wait, are they in their 20s?

And then it was like, no, they're 14. There was a little bit of that, like, hello, fellow kids. vibe when he first shows up at the house party. I agree. Yeah, you're like 17? Really? Okay. Like a couple years ago?

But yeah. Because, yeah, because Moritz just that does like, oh, he's like a senior high school football player. Like, I could believe that. Especially because he's a football player. Like, because he's an athlete, you're like, okay, they like, they're bigger or whatever. Even Ice Cube, I could buy as being like, you know, 18, 19. Yeah.

But yeah, that's the only one. Yeah. Well, whatever. Most of the way there. It's not like Greece. No, they're not 45 in high school. Yeah. Yeah.

Grease, goodness. Well, it is funny you talk about Cuba Gooding Jr. looking older because apparently Morris Chestnut was very nervous and was like, Cuba Gooden Jr.'s done a pilot. I need to like get all the advice from this guy on how to act in this movie. Apparently he badgered him so much that according to Chestnut, quote, one day he came out of his trailer and I happened to be coming out of my trailer, and he pretended like he had to go back into his trailer to get something just to avoid me. Oh, no.

So the shoot was relatively smooth. It did run into a few snags. So tensions did run high between the production and some members of the community, including some gang members who threatened to bring violence to the set. Cuban Giddy Jr. did describe... So there's that scene where they're running on top of the wall. You guys remember in the third act? They're like cutting behind the houses to get the alley.

Those dogs were uncontrolled. So the dogs that are jumping up, I believe they were just, those were just dogs that lived there. And so Cuba was like, if we had fell in a trip, they would have fucking chewed us up, me and Morris. And then, of course, even though John Singleton never specifically name checks the Bloods of the Crips in the movie, there are red and blue vibes to the two different gangs. And things came to a head when Steve Nicklady's got a word that, quote, a guy named Bone who runs the Bloods in an area they call the John. jungle, which was right across the street from where they were going to do a scene where Ice Cube shoots, it's where he takes revenge on the three guys that killed Ricky. Yeah, it's like the burger parking lot.

Exactly. So that was going to be a shot in a different location. So Nicolades meets with Bones. Bones says, I hear your movie is dissing the bloods. And he's like, we're not dissing anyone, which, by the way, John Singleton's whole point of the movie is there's no good guys or bad guys. The whole point is to show that the system's causing this cycle of violence. But Bones is like, look, I hear Ice Cube's going to be wearing a blue Detroit Tiger's hat,

and the bad guy's got a red Chicago Bulls hat on and drives a red car. And that sounds like dissing to me. And then he left him with an implicit threat. He said, I can't stop some 14-year-old walking up with a 9-millimeter and shooting Ice Cube in the back of the head if you're going to shoot right across the street from me. So Nicolades goes to Singleton, and Singleton's like, he's not. going to do anything. Like, this guy's no one.

Like, he's not going to do anything. And Ice Cube's like, hold on a second. My life is on the line. He said shoot me in the back of the head. Yes, Ice Cube's like, he might shoot something. And Ice Cube's like, I'm about to be the most famous rapper on the planet. I'm not trying to get shot right now. So they changed the location.

And that location that they shot at in the end is the Eat a Burger at the Crenshaw Mall, which is a couple miles away. They had no problems shooting there. They ran over production a couple days. Apparently that house party, the welcome home, or the street party scene turned into an actual block party. That's the one where they pull out the Mac 11 at the end and fire in the air.

The production, though, wrapped on budget. And actually, Dailies had generated such a buzz that some production executives from the corporate offices had finally ventured south of Culver City during the final week of production to visit the set. So some of the publicity folks were like, I hear it's going very well, and they showed up. And apparently Peter Goober, our big friend up at Sony, who didn't get the script at the beginning,

was starting to insist on getting a producer credit on the movie because he heard it was great. Sounds about right. But according to editor Bruce Gannon, who would cut all of John Singleton's movies, we had a lot of freedom. It almost felt like an indie film. Sometimes studios can come in with a billion notes and take away the heart of a movie and milk it down, but that didn't happen on boys, and that made it a special film. Are we going to talk about the score?

It's weird. That's my only bone to pick. Well, it's very late 80s, early 90s. And it's jazzy. It's jazzy. Lizzie's mentioning the score. And it's jazzy for a reason because Stanley Clark is a very famous bassist and jazz musician.

And he was hired for a very specific reason. And it's because John Singleton met him on the set of Pee Wee's Playhouse. There we go. So. Man, good for him, man. John Singleton. Good for him. Loyal, dude.

Apparently, he actually crossed past with him twice. So Stanley Clark, his first composing credit was for an episode of Pee Wee's Playhouse. And so that's where he first met Singleton. And then he was playing on the Arsenio Hall show as a jazz musician. And he meets John Singleton backstage. And John Singleton says, quote, you're going to do my movie one day. And I said, sure, kid, less than a year later, I got a call to meet this guy at his office. I remember John was sitting on his couch playing something that looked like a Game Boy.

and he said, remember me. And so that's when he knew he was scoring his film. Remember me? Yeah, he was working this thing from every angle. So he edits the movie, him and his editor, Bruce Gannon, and then they have to test the movie. And it's different when you're testing a movie like this than a typical, you know, Columbia flat movie

because they were like, we have to test it for the white executives and make sure they like it. And then we have to test it for a white. audience, and then we have to also test it for a black audience. And we have to see if this movie, it has to play in all three in order for them to support the movie after the fact. So Singleton first screens the movie for 10 executives at the DeMille Theater on the Sony lot. They're all like 50 years and older, all white. The next test screening is for an audience from South

Central that they got bust up to Sony. So first screening Sony executives, huge success. Half of them are crying at the end. They're just like, this movie's great. We've never seen anything like it. This is going to be amazing. They then bring the audience up from South Central. They bring them up at 3 p.m. The screening's not until 5 p.m. They don't let them into the theater for two hours. It's cold. It's raining. As producer Steve Nicolades later recounted, quote, they finally filled up the theater with a fairly pissed off audience and the guy who ran the test programs got up and said, good evening, this is an unfinished work when you see a white leader with squiggly lines,

that indicates dissolved to. The sound is not perfect. A guy in the balcony said, shut the fuck up and start the fucking movie. But once it began, the excitement was so intense. It was like being at a Bruce Springsteen concert in the 1970s. It was amazing. So we knew.

And apparently, coming out of the theater, so many of the audience members just went up to Singleton and were like, we didn't know you could do this. Right. Like, we didn't know this could be a movie. We didn't know this was a thing. I've never seen anything like this. Actually, the quote that came up again and again was mostly it was black men with their girlfriends

and the girlfriend had to do the talking because the black men couldn't, they were too emotional and they couldn't speak. Yeah, if they started talking about the movie, they would have cried. They would have cried, exactly. So it's like the girlfriend had to be like, I need to tell you how much this movie means to my boyfriend who can't talk right now. And like that was the conversation. He's literally holding in tears.

Yeah. Yeah. Apparently, though, there was one individual who was not won over by the first screening. And that was Ice Cube. As he later said on the Bill Simmons podcast, we did that movie, and it was my first movie, first movie ever. And John showed me the movie before it was done. And if you ever see a movie before it's finished, you will say, this is garbage. It's unfinished, unpolished.

It's like seeing a room right after they built it, but they don't put furniture in it or paint it. You're just like, what is this shit? That's kind of how I looked at it. I was so mad. I left, called my manager and said, I shouldn't have done this. I shouldn't have done this. She said, was it that bad?

I said, it didn't have no music. There wasn't no sounds. It felt flat. You got to put all these sound effects in a movie. When a guy puts a cup down, you actually have to put that sound in or you won't hear it. You'll see it, but you won't hear it.

So I was just disappointed. And I didn't want to have nothing to do with boys in the hood. I was like, damn, mistake, mistake, mistake. And John just kept saying, let me finish it will you let me finish it I said okay all right all right I just I love the full circle of him

convincing him to do the movie the other thing about like it's funny when you don't know movies well like one of the things I say all the time sometimes people walk out of movie and they're like that movie was bad but they don't know why it was bad they just know it was bad and they don't real like so if you see a movie

that's unfinished like the edit isn't done there's no music in it you don't realize that music is making a movie until it's not there. And then you're like, why do I not care about this? Oh, because there's no music swell that's happening right now. Yeah, exactly. There's no sound effects. It had nothing. I mean, it was just like dry scene after dry scene. Yeah, I'm sure like the tempo was off. And all like the slow mo at the end with like there were probably no gunshots. There were probably, there was just like nothing, you know, in this movie. So Frank Price in Columbia, they're like, we have a movie that's going to resonate with

black audiences, we know it'll resonate with white audiences. How do we get white audiences to see this movie? So this is like going back to the marketing question. Okay, the solution is to take it to the whitest place, the Cannes Film Festival. So in 1991, they decide we're going to take Boys in the Hood from South Central to the Cannes Film Festival. And they rented billboards in Nice, and they covered them with graffiti, creating intrigue and buzz at the festival for this movie that no one had heard of with a cast that no one had heard of, written and directed by a filmmaker, no one had heard of. And so, for the first time in his life, John Singleton left Los Angeles to go to the Cannes Film Festival. Wow. First time in his life.

He described the ride from the airport in France to Vanity Fair, quote, Cube, this Ice Cube, and I'm not Cuba Gooding, Jr. Apparently his nickname was also Cube, and Ice Cube was just like, no, it's not. So, yeah, he got Cuba. Quote, Cuba and I motioned to stop the car. We jump out, all excited, taking pictures in front of the posters. Then we turned and looked at the beach. And there is wall-to-wall women, topless. There were various degrees of wannabe models flashing the best and worst European plastic surgery.

I looked at Cube and he looked at me. We just got back into the car and went to the Carlton. The execs were at the Hotel Duccapp. When I was there, Schwarzenegger was holding court. Malcolm McDowell was telling Jokes poolside. And Belinda Carlisle from the go-go. was walking around Topless. So to add to all of this,

the film's screening is attended by, like, Hollywood's Black royalty, Wesley Snipes, Denzel Washington, Quincy Jones, Eddie Murphy, and of course, Spike Lee, are all in attendance for the premiere of the film. And Ice Cube was terrified, because the last time he saw it,

it was terrible. And so here's this quote, I didn't see it again until we went to the Canfield Festival. I'm like, we're going to show this to a French audience. I went because as a career move, you go. But I'm like, we're going to show this to a French audience, man.

For one thing, the subject matter, they're not going to get what the hell of 64 is and go, go get the 40 in all this. And the movie is flat. But when I saw it, it was completed and it just blew me away. It had subtitles, though, because it was for the French. I'm like, I love this movie, but these people probably hate this. And then they gave it a standing ovation at the end. They jumped up and clapped.

Eddie Murphy was there. And Quincy Jones, I was like, this is, going to blow up, this was like the best thing I ever did. And I just love the highs and lows of Ice Cube on this movie. This is the worst career move I have ever made. This is the best career move I've ever made. Yep. So the movie debuted in the Uncertain Regard category. And it was actually a white critic who was kind of responsible for opening the film up to white audiences. And of course, that's Roger Ebert, who was there with his fiance, Chas Hamill Smith, who was black. And he was blown away by the movie.

He said it's one of the best American films of recent years. The movie is a thoughtful, realistic look at a young man's coming of age and also a human drama of rare power Academy Award material. Singleton is a director who brings together two attributes not always found in the same film. He has a subject and he has style. The film is not only important, but also a joy to watch. Because his camera is so confident and he wins such natural performances from his actors. By the end of Boys in the Hood, I realized I had not simply seen a brilliant directorial debut

but an American film of enormous importance. And so that kind of kicked off the awards buzz for Boys in the Hood. The public screening at Cannes sold out. They had to turn away hundreds of people trying to get in, and Columbia Pictures smartly realized, we cannot go cheap on promoting this movie. So they set a July 12th NationRide release date, 850 theaters, and they spent $8 million.

on promotion and advertising for the film. So they spent more than the film's budget on promoting it, which is great, and it was a smart move. Boys in the Hood premiered in Los Angeles on July 2nd, 1991. It opened wide across the United States 10 days later on July 12, 1991, and that weekend, the Columbia Pictures executives were actually on a retreat in Santa Barbara. They're at this fancy hotel, according to Stephanie Elaine. We had some retreats that day.

We were getting the numbers. They were really good. and everybody was happy. In fact, we did a little caravan where we drove out to some movie theaters in areas of Santa Barbara. They were packed. And we're like, oh, my God, it worked, it worked, it worked.

The implication being if people in Santa Barbara are seeing the movie, it's resonating with white audiences. Sure, the whitest place in the world, yes. Right. Yeah. The excitement was short-lived. Again, Stephanie Elaine. Quote, that night, just as I was dozing off to sleep,

Amy called me from her room and said, people are hurt, people are dying, and I literally went into shock. I was just so upset and because the entire time and even during the whole campaign, we just kept reiterating that the movie was made to increase the piece. The reason the movie was made was because we wanted to make a statement about kids in these situations and through Trey's journey making the right choice. Now, what Elaine is alluding to is that there were a small number of breakouts of violence

surrounding the film's release, including 33 injuries and one death outside theaters across the country during the opening weekend of the film. And it was reported on, much in the same way, if you remember our episode on Do the Right Thing, as this foregone conclusion... Yeah, that it would incite riots. That a movie that included violence and young black men would incite violence

amongst young black men. Sure. Of course, John Singleton pointed out, a man was murdered at a screening of Godfather 3 during its release, presumably, because somebody hated the movie that much, so they just killed somebody else. So apparently,

John Singleton started getting a bunch of heat with all of these mostly white pundits saying, well, what do you expect? You know, you've shown black violence on screen, and now you're going to incite people in the streets to, you know, perform this violence on one another. And ironically, they're not talking about Terminator 2 in which I think, like 65 people...

killed and was released the same weekend as Boys in the Hood. Right. So New Jack City had been released, I guess, a few months prior. Again, there was like a fatal shooting outside of one of those theaters. So these fears seemed very fresh. But to quote my old professor, Dr. Todd Boyd, this is a very old thought that goes back basically 100 years. So as he said, this racist notion that black people would be unruly if they saw someone

shot in a movie dates back to the days of boxer. Jack Johnson in the early 1900s. People perpetuated the fear that if black people saw footage of Johnson beating white people, it would lead to black people slugging white people in the streets. The sense of how this movie is going to cause a riot, when you look at the history of that, it's rooted in a sense that black people are really dumb and childlike and can't distinguish between fact and fiction. So the movie is going to start a riot, and chaos is just going to transpire because

these people don't know this as a movie, and that was all just racist conjecture. Listen to more on our episode of Do the Right Thing for how that plagued Spike Lee's release of his film as well. Now, of course, Columbia Pictures had a decision to make, which was basically a lot of white pundits were saying you should pull the movie. And like police were saying you should pull the movie from theaters. They said no. And they said they were going to stand by the film. They said individual theater owners could, of course, decide if they wanted to screen the film or not. but we are just going to stand by our movie and we're not going to pull it.

And financially, they certainly made the right decision. So Boys in the Hood opened first weekend $10 million on a $6.5 million budget. It made $22 million in its first two weeks. As you mentioned in your podcast, John, it beat out the per screen average of Terminator 2. It ended its domestic run at $57.5 million. That's again on a budget of $6.5 million. It was the most profitable movie of 1991. Yeah.

This is a rated R film. Rated R film with not only with no white cast and no name cast. No name. Yeah. John Singleton was 23 years old. Boys in the Hood was the first film about South Los Angeles with an all-black cast written and directed by a black filmmaker and bankrolled by a major Hollywood studio. Six months later, John Singleton was nominated for Best Director. He was the first black man ever nominated for Best Director.

Wow. He was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay. He remains the youngest person ever nominated for Best Director. Do you guys know who the second youngest person ever nominated for Best Director is? No. Orson Wells for Citizen King. Wow. Singleton was three years younger.

He was 24 years old and 44 days. Wow. He lost Best Director to Lizzie, 91, movie we covered. I have no idea. The Silence of the Lans. I was going to guess that. Jonathan Demi, I should have gone for it. He did, and he lost screenplay to Thelma and Luis.

Boys was not nominated for Best Picture. As you guys discussed on your podcast, John, Best Picture was Silence of the Lambs, which won Beauty and the Beast, Bugsy, JFK, and the Prince of Tides. And no one has seen the Prince of Tides since 1991. This is apparently more common than I realized for a director to be nominated, but not their film. Actually, that same year, Ridley Scott was nominated for Best Director for Thelma and Louise, but the film was not nominated for Best Picture.

That's a crazy good year between Thelma and Louise Boys in the Hood and Silence of the Lambs. Yeah. And JFK's fine. I wouldn't watch Bugsy again at this point. I think, though, that the big snub was casting. Like the cast got no recognition for this movie. It's wild. That's crazy.

Just to give you an example, two nominations for actor in a supporting role went to Bugsy cast members, Harvey Cattell and Ben Kingsley. And I'm just like, come on, we didn't have anything for Lawrence Fishburn here or Ice Cube. Yeah. Ice Cube should have gotten it.

So Boys in the Hood was shut out of all other categories. I do wonder about Ice Cube, like why, because this does stand out in terms of his credits as like this is a much more serious role than he seemed to pursue far beyond this. I mean, I know there's a couple others, but I just wonder why he didn't push farther in that direction. He is really, really good. So he talked about in a couple interviews that I read how he was pretty uncomfortable with the emotional aspects of the story. So he had, he didn't, like when he had to cry on camera, that was a pretty big deal for him, apparently. And, you know,

a pretty big struggle and I'm not sure if he enjoyed it or not. What's interesting is, have you seen higher learning? John Singleton? So, like, he's in that and that's a more serious role as well. And I don't know, maybe it was just like the financial success of Friday and stuff and it fit in easier with his like rap persona and whatnot. And he started producing those too. Yeah.

Yeah. That's true. So, I mean, I think it's, I think it's the control perspective too. Like if you're producing, you know what I mean? And like, whereas if you have to act in like a role like this, you're really giving yourself up to the control of the director, you know, at the end of the day. And it seems like he likes to do his own thing, maybe. I think that's right. Okay.

So obviously, Boys in the Hood, despite being snubbed, did serve as a pretty big career launch pad for a lot of the people involved. So the movie is credited somewhat infamously for spawning the quote hood film subgenre. So it was followed by Menace to Society, South Central. Strap's Tales from the Hood, fresh, and then, of course, Clockers was Spike Lee kind of trying to end the subgenre, and then the Wayans Brothers killed it with Don't Be a Menace to South Central while drinking your juice in the hood. Yeah, because there's a lot of others, like juice, yeah, Jason's lyric paid in full, I mean, there's just a lot, yeah.

And I think in a way, when I first saw Boys in the Hood, I didn't understand that it was the movie that was first, if that makes sense. Like I had, I saw it as like, oh, it's one of these movies, right? And then you don't understand that actually wasn't, that's not why it was made. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's not what it's saying, et cetera. Right. And it's important to understand the context that it was made in.

For John Singleton, this movie that at first seemed to be just the extremely promising beginning to a meteoric career would unfortunately become the apex of his career and represent a high. that he would never quite reach again, neither commercially nor critically. From this film, and again, Singleton's 24-25 when this is happening. He goes on to make poetic justice with Janet Jackson and Tupac Shakur, and that's trying to tell a female story, like a female South Central story. It wasn't a flop, but it was not super successful, mixed reviews. It was not the incendiary, like, you know, oh, my God, look at this movie, that Boys in the Hood was. It's like a slower, more thoughtful film. It's like much more

sensitive. It's obviously far less like masculine in its energy. I don't know if people knew exactly what to think about it at the time. And then obviously he did higher learning, which we talked about. And that touches on like white supremacy very directly and Nazism. And again, like it was financially successful, not to the level of Boys in the Hood, but mixed critical reviews, not quite the same level. And then in 1997, he did Rosewood. And that was a historical drama inspired by the Rosewood Massacre in Florida in 1923, basically a mob of white people, just murdered a bunch of black people and destroyed their town. John Voight, it was his best received movie critically since Boys in the Hood, but then it just flopped at the box office. And so it like was kind of this 90s. And again,

by the end of this decade, he's like 30 years old. Yeah. And the other thing to know is, is that even when something like Rosewood does well critically, it's not doing well in the awards circuit. That's right. And like, because a lot of these, like, auteur directors, outside of, like, Stephen Spielberg, like, a lot of them make movies that don't make money. Like, they're not hits, but they're supported by, like,

well, they're getting nominated for Oscars, and they're, like, considered, like, prestige. and like studios want to work with them. At times it's even a badge of honor if it's not making money in a perverse way. Yeah. And it's like, well, they, you know, one for them and one for us.

And it's like we get to make the other, you know. And it's interesting. It's like you don't get the same level of criticism. Like John Singleton is like making movies about the things that he knows and there are different movies. But it's like people are like, well, we've already seen that. And it's like, okay, how many Scorsese are, movies are about the Italian mafia.

But you can make that into eternity. Like he's literally still making it. And like, people are like, well, I mean, we got to see. We got to see it. You know. Gotta see the Irishman. Yeah. Three hours.

And I'm not trying to like, I'm not saying like I obviously love a lot of those movies, but it's just like, it's just one of those things where, you know, there is a, there is a stark difference. And when you don't have that support and you're trying to be a black arture filmmaker, it's pretty difficult because you're not getting the awards and you're not getting the box office success, you know? So, yeah. It's such a good point, too, that what you just made, that there's, like, the variety of stories is not

accepted in the same way. That it's almost like there's one story that is expected and pictured, and that once you've done that, you don't get to explore nuances in the same way that we see a lot of these, white directors and writers able to do. And I feel like, I feel like we're almost just starting to see that happening where there are more nuances allowed. There are more experiences allowed to be shown. And it's, it's amazing, but also just insane that we haven't seen that before. And that's something I think that Boys in the Hood did that I was just blown away by is it doesn't show, like, it shows such a wide variety of experiences and lives just within that one community. And I think

that's kind of what makes it such an incredible movie. Yeah. Yeah, on those points, like one person, who, by the way, I think is like an incredibly talented director, but a great example of what you're saying, John, is Damien Chazel, where like, First Man in Babylon, look, I enjoyed those movies. I think he's an amazing director. Those movies hemorrhaged money. And, but we're absolutely supported by the academy, you know, and by the Hollywood sort

of prestige circuit, you would say. And then, Lizzie, to your point, I think with boys in the hood, it's like, in a weird way, white people hadn't seen it before, but I think it was also close enough. Like you're saying, John, it's like you have colors. And then so white people kind of are like, ooh, maybe there's something here. And then they see boys in the hood and they're like, oh, my God, like, this is crazy, blah, blah, blah. And then you followed up with like poetic justice. And they're like, I saw that. I saw those movies.

So what's interesting is then Singleton goes back to Blacksploitation in 2000. And he does Shaft. He does the reboot of Shaft. And then he does Baby Boy in 2001, which is kind of like a spiritual successor to Boys in the Hood in a lot of ways. It almost feels like it's telling the story of Furious styles like 20 years before, you know what I mean, when he's first having a kid. And then you do Too Fast, Too Furious. He's like on a big franchise, makes a bunch of money there. He finances and produces.

his hustle and flow. And so, like, it's definitely, like, kind of an upswing in his career. He does four brothers, which is a really weird movie, but very successful. Fun. Yeah, fun movie, like Marky Mark and Tyrus Gibson and Chetal Ijifor playing a really cool bad guy. That's right. Yeah. And a big crush on Garrett Headland, so I saw that one in the theaters. Yeah, he's a cute guy. But then his film career kind of gets basically put on ice. with this really weird moment where he directs 2011's Taylor-Lotner

Action Vehicle Abduction which I've never seen I don't think a lot of people saw it. I have seen that though I honestly cannot tell you anything about it Yeah Other than I definitely saw it

Oh, Taylor It is technically written by an Academy Award-winning writer. I didn't know that he's directed that that's hilarious Yeah, so So Sean Christensen, who won the Oscar for a short film called Curfew, wrote the script. I think it was a spec script.

It was designed as a vehicle for Taylor Lautner. Taylor Lautner's dad was a producer on the movie, and John Singleton directed it. I could not find very much information on what drew him to the project. You know what I mean? He didn't say much about it positively or negatively. But it was the last movie he ever directed. Wow. He apparently was the first choice to direct straight out of Compton, which makes sense.

Yeah. However, that job went to F. Gary Gray. He then was attached to direct a Tupac biopic. Again, he worked with Tupac on Poetic Justice, and Baby Boy was supposed to be Tupac before he died. And then it was Tyree Skipson after that. But that movie fell apart. And so then he went to direct TV, and he was directing billions. and then he co-created Snowfall on FX.

And Empire, I think, right? I think he was affiliated with Empire as well. He was, yeah. He directed at least one episode in the first season, but he was not involved in the creation of the show, I don't believe. But Snowfall was the last big thing that he did. And it was kind of almost his biggest success since Boys in the Hood in some ways because it went six seasons and after a rocky first season kind of had universal acclaim,

but it ended in the spring of 2023. So it's like a really unusual run over the last decade. And then, of course, on April 17th, 2019, John Singleton suffered a stroke. He was placed in intensive care, taken off life support. On April 28, 2019, he was only 51 years old. Oh, man. And if you think about, you know, Scorsese is still directing at 82 or however old he is now, Clint Eastwood at 179, it's, you know, you do.

do think about the number of movies he could you think about this person at 23 directing boys in the hood you know what i mean yeah yeah but like you know just like like just going over it again it's like there wasn't you know and even spike has had a hard time obviously like making films he he's he's obviously been able to have a comeback in certain levels but like yeah man it's it's it's tough because it's like The 90s, like I said, was like a time where they were making a lot of black films, but they were for black audiences. And even though he was, even though he was nominated, the academy for the most part was like, you know, and, and like when you have that and like, you're not doing huge box office success, it's just like, where do you go? What do you do? And that's

why you don't have a lot of black arture directors until very recently, you know, like, you have directors that who work maybe consistently, like a Tim story, you know, but like. Yeah, you got like Antoine Fuqua, like F. Gary Gray, but those are, they're not writer directors. They're not, like you're saying, they're not the autour guy. Yeah. And that's not to say anything about their skill level. I'm just like in terms of like how people perceive you, you know. And like, it's that's what you know it's it's unfortunate that that's what it is but it is because i even think about spike like you know like he made malcolm x and it's like you you get barely any nominations for that film and you're just like i don't know at a certain point you go like well i don't know and

you know we we talk all the time about how much awards matter but they do matter when it comes to getting money to make movies and like you can only sell finance for so long. No, I mean, Spike Lee had to self-finance slash crowdfund the blood of Jesus, right? This is someone two decades into a remarkable career, and he's scrounging it together, like you're saying. And we will cover Malcolm X at some point because it's an amazing movie, and it's like, that's a crazy Oscars snub. And I just want to end on this note, Boys in the Hood was inducted into the Library of Congress in 2001. Spike Lee, in a missive memorializing Singleton wrote of that first time they met, quote,

over the many years people have told me, I'm going to be a filmmaker. When John said to me the first time we met, when John said that to me the first time we met, I believed him right away. It was no surprise. End quote. And with that, we're going to end our coverage

of boys in the hood. Well, here on this podcast, Jonathan, we do always like to wrap it out with a what went right. And I feel like we've got to touch on that. with everybody. So maybe if it's okay, we'll start with you. What went right for you on this movie? I mean, so much. I think it's just an incredible film and obviously helped like super launch careers of, you know, some of the most famous and greatest black actors like Lawrence Fishman,

Anza Bassett and, you know, Morris Chestnut and like every like Cuba Getting Junior, all these people are like incredible Ice Cube, obviously. And it showed, I think, the thing that Boys and the Hood did, like, similarly to do the right thing was, like, show black directors and actors and writers that, like, hey, you can make, you, there's a place for us here, and, like, you can do stuff, and it's very inspirational. Yeah. All right. Totally. Yeah. Showing the possibility is such a huge benefit. I got, I got to go with Ice Cube. I just, like, I, I took mine. I'm sorry. I. I knew he was very funny.

I knew he was fun to watch. I had no idea he could do this. And I really just, I just couldn't look away from him. I think he was incredible. And I would love to see more. Then I will switch mine to Stephanie Elaine, who, you know, she's the one who brought this script up the chain at Columbia. And it seems like, and she's an incredible producer.

She's extremely successful now. I'm pretty sure she has an overall deal with Endeavour content. and has had a wonderful career. So kudos to her. She also is one of the people responsible for discovering Robert Rodriguez. She'll show up in some of her other projects as well. Thank you so much for joining us for this.

This was really fun. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. Of course. John, anything you want to plug? Of course, our podcast, Black Man Can't Jump in Hollywood, if you like movies. We talk about movies of leading black actors.

And it's fun. It's not all serious. It's also comedic. We're a comedian, so can help ourselves. Yeah, and you could follow me, John Braylock, I guess. I do shows every now and then. That's it. Follow him.

Listen to him. You know him. You love him. Go check out more. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks so much for joining us, John. Thank you.

Check out Boys in the Hood on Netflix. Yes. Got to watch it. Check out Black Men Can't Jump in Hollywood. All right, guys. As always, we need to give a shout out to our full stop supporters. We got to give a shout out to Ellen's single. Jewish Reese Samant,

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