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Why was
this film made? I understand that you
said this film was necessary, but do you
film the world needed to see another
pimp film?
John Singleton:
Huh. Another? When was the last time
you saw one.
Craig Brewer:
That’s something that we keep talking
about amongst ourselves. I mean that’s
the dead horse that everybody keeps
beating. Why are we seeing another one
of these? Do we really need to see
another pimp with a dream trying to do
rap. I can’t remember when there was the
last one. I’ve seen pimp movies where
there are some pimps that are parodied
and there’s some pageantry to it. I’ve
seen movies but I can’t think of
anything. I’m not saying that I’m right,
I’m just offering up to somebody as to
what that is. Cause you know, when I was
rolling around in Memphis, I saw this
characters. And what I felt is that I
hadn’t seen this character before.
Usually I see the guys with the kangols
and the silks and the ice and stuff. But
I haven’t really seen the guys like I’ve
shown you on some avenue walking behind
their girl five steps. Sitting in a
Chevy Caprice sweatin’ their ass off
with this one girl and moving this one
girl from shake joint to shake joint. I
know these guys and I wouldn’t
necessarily refer to them as pimps. I
mean, that is one of the things that
they did. But I thought of them more as
hustlers. I mean, they would sell me
anything. I felt that that was the story
that I was really interested in because
I got to meet those people because I was
making my little independent film on DV.
And if your gonna make a movie for know
money…I’m not even talking about the
movie that John helped me to make, I’m
talking about the movie I made before
John came along. When your making a
movie for no money and its on DV you
really do have to hustle kind of on a
street level. The shake joint that you
saw in hustle and flow died 2 days ago
and he was this old country guy that
would open up his shop on Sunday’s and
I’d go in there and film. And he’d ask
his girls to come in there and be my
extras. And that’s because I said well,
I’d like to invite you to the premiere,
I’ll put your one lead girl in this…so
I’m constantly having kind of do a, sort
of a street hustle, do kind of
ultimately do art. That was why that,
and why now there’s been a lot of
pastering with yeah I can be a rap star,
I can be this I can be that, but know
one has ever shown the kind of process
to it and know one has ever shown
ultimately how that parley’s into a
person’s mojo.
JS:
I think this film transcends DJ being a
pimp. He’s like a guy who basically has
not gotten to where he wants to go to in
life. And one thing we all talked about
during the making of this movie was, the
intriguing thing about this guy was
that, he does things that as a character
the audience doesn’t like, but he’s such
a likable guy. He’s this guy that you
like but you don’t like some of the
things that he does. And I think that
that’s what flips people out. And that’s
why it kept the movie from being made so
long, because all they saw was pimp and
they said oh, we don’t want to make
this. But the interesting thing is…this
is not the stereotype of the
glorification of a pimp. You know the
advertising of the bright colored suits
and the gators and stuff. This guy is a
chauffeur. You know, he’s a broke guy on
his last leg. I think he’s on his last
trying to hold these girls together to
get them to do what he wants to do.
That’s what makes it so interesting.
How you’d get
hooked to being the producer as oppose
to directing the film?
JS: Well, I met him (Craig
Brewer) and Stephanie Allan who helped
get my movie “Boyz N the Hood, she
brought me the script and I loved the
script and I saw Craig’s first movie,
“The Poor and Hungry” on DV and I felt
like, this guy, deserves to be making
movies. And so I got on.
Well, if the
dead horse is done, then the elephant in
this room is that you’re a white guy
making this movie. Should I leave that
alone or is there something that you
should say about that?
CB:
I understand the curiosity and the
question with that. And that’s kind of a
weird…I don’t really take an attitude
with that at all. I think that for a
long time, in Hollywood, when I was kind
of banging on the doors out there,
there’s a lot of curiosity about that
and more so, caution. And I have to be
the first to say that there needs to be
more caution. Because I learned a lot
about the Hollywood system when I tried
to make Hustle & Flow. And the funny
thing about that system is that, no one
would have a problem with making Hustle
& Flow if I just made it goofier. If I
made it funnier, or if I made it with a
little more action. I was told by no
uncertain terms by a couple of studios
that in terms of movies with
predominantly African American casts
that there are already set ways that
Hollywood already knows how to make
money off of them. And they didn’t want
to deviate from that. They didn’t want
to make a movie where you identified
with this guy. They wanted to make…
JS:
“ Malibu’s Most Wanted” version.
CB:
Yeah. They wanted to see movies where we
could laugh at him and where we could
laugh at the girls. And I’m not saying
that there isn’t moments that we do that
in Hustle & Flow, but I don’t think
that’ what the core of the movie is
about. And I don’t think there’s
excessive violence in the movie. I’m not
shooting 60 frames a second with DJay
flying to the left with 2 shiny 9’s
blazing. But that’s what they said it
was ok for me to do if I were to tell a
personal story. They were worried that
this would not be a star vehicle where a
major star would want to do it. So the
only way that they could publicize it
would be to say that this is a personal
story. Which it is…but I’m not really
allowed to do this and what’s even more
scary and this is why I completely
understand their position and their
point. Part of the iconography of cinema
that we’re exploring is kind of the 70s,
you know, hustler character who’s on his
last leg. That’s like falling out of a
stereotype tree and hitting every branch
on the way down. You got a black pimp, a
white hooker and he’s trying to make rap
music. It doesn’t change the fact that I
know black pimps, who have white hookers
and their all trying to rap music. I was
telling them that I don’t want to do an
urban movie. I wasn’t trying to do a
black film. And they would say Craig,
look at the context. I would say, I want
to make a Memphis movie. I was gonna
make this movie for like $5 Grand on DV.
That’s how I made my first movie. So I
was gonna make a Memphis movie. And I
really feel that Hustle & Flow is a
Memphis movie. I’m really glad that
America gets to see it. But I was
perfectly content with Memphis seeing
it.
JS:
We had people, the studio, turn us down
because Craig was white. I thought, this
was bullshit. You know me. You’ve
interviewed me in the past. And about
how adimate I am about people having a
social responsibility of making black
themed projects. But there is very few
people who’ve done it and done it well.
I always point out Norman Jilson as one
of them, because he takes the heart of
the story for what it is and just tells
the story. But this is a situation where
Craig, you know, he’s southern. Southern
in a way where he’s influenced by the
blues and the country and rock and crunk
hip hop. So, when you look at the
picture, it’s his vision. And I got
involved with this because I respect
this guys vision.
What was
it about his storytelling that made you
green light the movie yourself?
JS:
I thought that, and this goes on beyond
artistic merit. I thought this movie
could make money. He was telling a story
that was worth while. We had a good idea
of the cast that we wanted in the
picture. I’m tired of the bullshit of
the industry saying that only a certain
type of film can get made. I was
actually tired of going threw the
channels of getting a movie made so…this
is part of something that I always
wanted to try to do, which is finding a
way of getting films made out of the
system. With the success of Hustle &
Flow, I think that, if I have a film
which is in a certain budget range, I’ll
never go to a studio again. I’ll just go
ahead and make it. I won’t even go and
try and say hey and negotiate with them
or whatever. I just go and get the money
and do it now.
CB:
And I hope you all understand, and that
this is kind of something new to me and
I’m getting more involved with the
studio now and understanding exactly
what that means. If any of you liked
Terrence Howard; and thought that
Terrence Howard was really amazing in
this movie as I thought that he was,
well, that’s because John Singleton was
my studio. Every single studio that I
took it too…
JS:
No!
CB:
Was like…absolutely not. And even
worst…he’d be perfect. Absolutely not.
When Johns’ your studio, he can gage
what’ going to be your special effect in
the box office. And if you don’t have a
lot of money, and if you don’t have a
lot of time to shoot the movie, your
special effect is the performance. It’s
kind of what I learned on my first
movie, having no money. It’s not so much
what your shooting with, as much as what
your shooting at. And if were gonna have
a movie that’s gonna be this bold then
we would need someone like Terrence
Howard. And John would go of course you
need someone like that, even more so.
Where going to have Anthony Anderson,
he’s not going to be funny in this. You
know how many notes I would get, come
on. This is reality. This is really what
has been said to me. And because John
was the studio it had a more truthful
finish.
JS:
I just got to a point in my career where
I just made a film that made $230
Million dollars worldwide. It just did 5
million copies on dvd, which is another
$200 something million dollars. I was
like fuck it. I’m going to find a way to
make movies out of the system. We went
around the movie system with Craig and
they shook our hands and said hey we
don’t want to do it. It was a no brainer
with the team of me, Craig and
Stephanie. I just thought that we could
get it made. And now I know I can get a
film made, at a certain price, out of
the system. I talked to other
filmmakers. I talked to other talented
people. I can call up Halle Berry or
Chris Rock and say ‘hey you want to go
do a movie? Let’s go do one right now.’
That’s empowerment and that’s what I
plan to do.
How long did it
take you to write the script? What was
the process?
CB: This song came out of me
really quick. I was just writing a story
about the experience I went through with
the first movie. My father had died
unexpectedly, and on the day he died I
wasn’t…he was a healthy guy and he just
suddenly died of a heart attack. And I
had written a script called “The Poor
and the Hungry”. And he really loved it.
It was about car thieves in Memphis. I
was trying to shoot on film and we
didn’t have any money and me and my wife
were struggling for a long time to make
ends meet, much less make something like
a movie. And he told me that I should
just shoot it on DV and not apologize
for having few tools but almost
celebrate it. And so I started making
this movie. And after my dad died, I got
this $20 Grand inheritance. And lived
off of that for like a year and a half.
I bought equipment. I bought like an
editing system. I bought video cameras
from Circuit City. Digital 8. this movie
kind of rescued my wife and i. We were
building sets in our house. We were
trying to quiet down neighbors. We were
like filled with the sense that, if I’m
24 and my dad died at 49 then I’m almost
over. Throughout that whole process that
was a stressful time. And I had just
thought that was an interesting story.
The process and ultimately a person who
really feels that he does have one shot.
I have to get going now. So it really
came out of me in like a couple of
weeks. I had this experience with this
one pimp. And I had known pimps and
hustlers before. There was this gorgeous
iconic look. I mean, he rolled up in
this pieced together, Chevy Caprice on
dubs. He was this black pimp. He had
this white girl with microbraids. I was
like, what do they do when they clock
out? What do they do when they’re just
sitting there? What’s on their mind? and
that’s when I started to do the cross
reference of writing it down. It took
about 4 weeks to write the screenplay.
Which is pretty quick for me. I usually
take a longer time.
And the music?
Did you write that yourself?
CB: No. The music…you got to
remember. I thought I was going to be
making it myself, a feature length on DV.
And I thought I was going to mess with
some guys right in town that I knew like
Al Kapone. Who ended up writing some of
the music in the movie. I was going to
use Memphis rap artists. I mean, those
were the cats that I really felt their
music. And I went over to Al Kapone’s
house and he was making his tracks like
I was making my movie. He had his studio
set up in his kitchen. He had a
microphone running into his closet
filled with padding. And so , you know,
A.K.’s kid would be playing video games.
And he would go, “got to play outside.
I’m catching you on the mic.” And he’d
be recording in his home. And I thought
that was a uniquely Memphis story
because Memphis has this history or
make-shift studios. You got, you know,
Isaac Hayes and Odis Redding and Sam &
Dave recording in these abandoned movie
theatres for Staxx and you got Sam
Phillips turning like an old boarding
house into a tiny recording studio. I
was like wow, here is a product of that.
Here the tradition still remains. The
music was so important.
Were you
confident that this style of rap would
go over well?
CB: The thing about crunk
that I’ve always liked…and I felt that
it was just truly the south. And what I
mean by that is that you look at East
Coast Hip Hop. And I remember when I was
first staring off, you remember the East
Coast rapping that ultimately creating
the Break kind of dancing. And the big
baggy type of pants, that created the
lingo, which created the content, which
created the song, which created the
dance…and it was like this whole circle
of creativity. In the south, none of
these hard guys are going to want to
break dance in a club. They don’t want,
in their mind, to demean themselves by
getting down on the ground and spinning
around. Non of the cats I know in
Memphis would want to do that. But they
do want to be bouncing to a beat. What
it does is, it kind of creates this
thing in Memphis called The Gangsta
walk. And it’s this thing that Terrence
does called this bounce thing. You get
like 8 of your crew in there and your
just kind of like hearing this music
bumping up against each other. It’s very
sexual. Very violent. And very
empowering. You don’t know if some ones
going to fuck or fight. And the music
feeds that. It’s a very raw simple
music. A very solid based bottom to it
and a beat. And I feel that its that
simplicity in the music came from,
because you’ve got a lot of guys who
didn’t have many tools to make that kind
of music. And those became the mix tape
that ultimately started the dance.
Do you feel
Hustle & Flow is like this age’ Boyz N
the Hood, in the sense of copycats. What
is your take on that and what are you
planning to do?
CB:
I wouldn’t mind that at all. Only
because I know guys in Memphis who know
about what Compton is. And know about
Crenshaw. And they only know about it
through Boyz N the Hood.
JS:
I think it’s going to be hard to copy
this idium. Because the south man, is so
specific. They would really bastardize
if they tried to copy it. Unless they
find some people…cause it would be…the
irony of it would be for them to even
try because after all the things of
trying to get this movie made and they
wouldn’t make it and for them to try to
like…
CB:
Oh yeah. We’ve been hearing the
rumbling.
JS:
Yeah. Let’s do another Hustle & Flow.
They haven’t even seen it yet.
CB:
We love your movie. We hear its great.
Let’s copy it.
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