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An absolute classic! This movie has an amazing story and an equally amazing soundtrack featuring some of the most important artists of the 90s including Ice Cube, MC Eiht and many others.
Trailer: Boyz n the Hood (1991) Follows the lives of three young males living in the Crenshaw ghetto of Los Angeles, dissecting questions of race, relationships, violence and future prospects. Where you can watch movies online completely free. No download, no surveys and only instant streaming of movies. The latest movies and highest. Watch Boyz N The Hood online, free. Boyz N The Hood film is about a group of childhood, who are raised from the slum of Los Angeles. Watch online movies for free.
More about Boyz ‘N The Hood:
Director John Singleton’s debut chronicles the trials and tribulations of three young African-American males growing up in South Central Los Angeles. When young Tre (Cuba Gooding Jr.), a bright underachiever, begins to show signs of trouble, his struggling professional mother (Angela Basset) sends him to live with his father (Lawrence Fishburne), a hard-nosed, no-nonsense disciplinarian. There he befriends Ricky (Morris Chestnut), a burgeoning football star, and Doughboy (Ice Cube, in a standout performance), a would-be gang banger. Over the years, each chooses his own path: Tre seems bound for college; Ricky is a blue-chip running back with his pick of schools; Doughboy is a dope dealer and bona fide gangster who drifts in and out of the county juvenile facility. All is well until, without warning, a rival gang chases down Tre and Ricky with tragic results. Doughboy immediately prepares for revenge, forcing Tre to decide whether to jeopardize his future and, perhaps, his life for the price of revenge and self-respect. Sometimes riveting, Boyz’N the Hood is not without its problems. The film tries to cram every single issue facing the black community into an hour and a half of screen time, making the film seem at times forced. The symbolism seems forced as well, and the film is often unbearably heavy-handed. Also, the characterization often relies on cardboard cut-outs; every white character in the film is a one-dimensional bigot, and the black police officer with whom Tre and his father deal is even worse than his Caucasian counterparts. Still, the unevenness of the film is redeemed by some moments of true brilliance.
Director John Singleton’s debut chronicles the trials and tribulations of three young African-American males growing up in South Central Los Angeles. When young Tre (Cuba Gooding Jr.), a bright underachiever, begins to show signs of trouble, his struggling professional mother (Angela Basset) sends him to live with his father (Lawrence Fishburne), a hard-nosed, no-nonsense disciplinarian. There he befriends Ricky (Morris Chestnut), a burgeoning football star, and Doughboy (Ice Cube, in a standout performance), a would-be gang banger. Over the years, each chooses his own path: Tre seems bound for college; Ricky is a blue-chip running back with his pick of schools; Doughboy is a dope dealer and bona fide gangster who drifts in and out of the county juvenile facility. All is well until, without warning, a rival gang chases down Tre and Ricky with tragic results. Doughboy immediately prepares for revenge, forcing Tre to decide whether to jeopardize his future and, perhaps, his life for the price of revenge and self-respect. Sometimes riveting, Boyz’N the Hood is not without its problems. The film tries to cram every single issue facing the black community into an hour and a half of screen time, making the film seem at times forced. The symbolism seems forced as well, and the film is often unbearably heavy-handed. Also, the characterization often relies on cardboard cut-outs; every white character in the film is a one-dimensional bigot, and the black police officer with whom Tre and his father deal is even worse than his Caucasian counterparts. Still, the unevenness of the film is redeemed by some moments of true brilliance.
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‘Didn’t you read my script?” John Singleton asked rapper Ice Cube in1990. Singleton, then a 22-year-old fresh out of the U.S.C. filmprogram, had set his heart on Cube to play Doughboy, a character basedon one of Singleton’s boyhood friends—but Cube was blowing theaudition.
Over a late breakfast at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, JohnSingleton and Ice Cube began to tell how Boyz N the Hood—thegroundbreaking movie that put a human face on the gangsta-style killingsthat were then infesting South-Central Los Angeles—came to be made.
Singleton ordered a full meal (salmon, lamb sausage, tomatoes, buffalomozzarella, orange juice) while Cube stuck to a couple of applemartinis. “He’s more a man of refined tastes than a former gangstarapper,” Singleton said about his friend. Cube wore a Detroit Tigerscap and sunglasses; Singleton looked like he had dressed for the golfcourse.
Cube, one of the founding fathers of gangsta rap, described how he hadshown up at an office in South-Central Los Angeles to audition, but hejust wasn’t taking it very seriously. “I’m trying to be the best rapperin 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.’ ” Cubethrew the script into the backseat of his car. When he got to theaudition, he realized, “Oh, shit. He was for real. He wasn’t lying.He’s going to do a movie. This kid is no bullshit.” But, he admitted,“I was terrible.”
“Go home and read my script,” Singleton told Cube. “I’m going to giveyou one more shot, because they don’t want to hire you, and I’m dyinginside. I know you’re good. I know you can do it.” Cube went home andread the script, and he had an epiphany: “Damn, they’re actually goingto make a movie about how we grew up. I didn’t know how we grew up waseven interesting enough to be a movie. But the way John captured it, itwas like cinematic beauty.”
So when Cube went back to audition again, he felt he had everything heneeded. “I know these characters back and forth. I can play any ofthese guys. I could have played the Cuba part [good guy Tre Styles,played by Cuba Gooding Jr.]. I could have played Ricky [Doughboy’shalf-brother, on the cusp of a football career]. I could have playedany of them, you know what I mean? Because they were all people I grewup with and knew.”
Singleton and Cube had first met in 1989, when Singleton was a directingintern on The Arsenio Hall Show. Cube had come to the show to hang out,but Security was giving him a hard time. Singleton jumped in and said,“Man, don’t you know who this is? This is Ice Cube! He’s with [therap group] N.W.A [Niggaz with Attitude]!” Singleton was thrilledto meet one of his heroes, “because what they were doing in music wasgiving voice to everything I had seen growing up.” He had even takenhis script’s title from a song by Cube that had been recorded byEazy-E—but only after paying Eazy $50,000 for the rights.
“You know, I just felt this dude was a little delusional,” Cuberecalled thinking when Singleton first approached him to be in hismovie. “It’s just a pipe dream—that’s what I was thinking.” ByJanuary of 1990, Cube had left N.W.A to work with Public Enemy and wasgiving a concert at the Palace in Hollywood. After the concert Singletonagain approached him. The two men stood talking in the empty parkinglot. “I’m a director now,” Singleton said, “and I’m going to get thismovie done, and you’re perfect for it.” But in the next breath, heended up having to ask Cube for a ride back to his U.S.C. dorm.
Cube recalls, “Now, I never do this. I don’t even give my boys rides.I’m like, man, get your own goddamned ride! But John was so cool—therewas his energy and his passion, and I was like, ‘I’ll give you a ridenow.’ ”
“Wait. I like this part,” Singleton said, picking up the story. “Sowe’re riding in Cube’s Suzuki Samurai . . . ” “No, a SuzukiSidekick, a two-seater,” Cube interrupted. Singleton continued, “We’regoing down the Harbor Freeway, but once we’re on the freeway, we’re downinto the hood. Cube popped in the beats from his first solo album[AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted]—he’s still writing the lyrics.” Hestarted cycling through the beats, telling what he was going to do withthe songs, while Singleton described his vision for the movie: “We’rejust two kids talking about our dreams at this point. There’s noguarantee that any of this stuff is going to happen. So that’s January1990. By the summer, I was able to call him up and say, ‘This is real.Come in.’ ”
Cube nailed the second audition. “He just starts doing the scene, andit’s magic,” Singleton recalled. “As a storyteller, when you seesomebody who is the character you envisioned, you feel this energy inthe room. On that audition, you saw a star being born.”
The Story
It begins with Tre Styles, a bright young adolescent being raised by hismother, Reva Styles (Angela Bassett), a hardworking, upwardly mobileprofessional who is very protective of her only son. She realizes thatTre needs a father figure in his life, so she sends him to stay withTre’s father, Jason “Furious” Styles (Laurence Fishburne), a mortgagebroker and Vietnam veteran leery of gentrification, and aware of thedangers for young boys growing up in the hood. Singleton based FuriousStyles on his own father. “All the kids looked up to my father becausehe was known to be that dude who knocks people out,” said Singleton.“I wasn’t [affiliated with gangs] because I really didn’t have tobe.”
“I WEPT WHEN I READ THE SCRIPT,” SAID LAURENCE FISHBURNE.
Furious is tough but loving, and he keeps a sharp eye out for Tre,especially since one of his son’s close friends is Doughboy (Cube), atough gangsta-in-the-making, in stark contrast to Doughboy’shalf-brother, Ricky Baker (Morris Chestnut), an athlete who is offered afootball scholarship to U.S.C. When Ricky is shot and killed by a gangmember, Doughboy seeks revenge, and Tre has to decide which directionhis life will take. Everything hinges on the murder of Ricky Baker.
Laurence Fishburne was deeply moved by Ricky’s death scene: “The momentwhere Ricky realizes he’s about to get shot, everything goes into slowmotion, the sound drops out, and he starts running. He is so beautifuland so innocent—and he’s the fucking Goody Two-Shoes! He’s notsupposed to get killed! I wept when I read the script. I think about myown kids. I think about kids everywhere.” Ricky’s lifeless body iscarried into the house, and his mother, Mrs. Baker (Tyra Ferrell),attacks Doughboy, as if it’s all his fault, as if they’d killed thewrong son. Steven Spielberg would later tell Singleton that moment wasone of the most powerful he’d ever seen on film.
Doughboy and his crew know they have to avenge Ricky’s murder, alife-and-death decision on the shoulders of teenage boys about to becomemen. “You had to feel for the boys in the hood,” Ice Cube said. “Youhad to finally have a feeling other than ‘they’re hoodlums, they’regangbangers, they get what they deserve.’ These are kids, these areyoungsters, these are boys.”
Ultimately, Tre decides not to seek revenge. “Tre broke that chain ofviolence,” said Bruce Cannon, a longtime friend of Singleton’s who wasthe film editor on Boyz. “He has the option—he may kill or he maynot. Maybe he’s thinking of his father. It’s implied in the way weedited it. And he makes the decision not to. That message still needs tobe heard.” Cannon pointed out that Singleton made a Hitchcock-likecameo, showing up briefly as a mailman. “I found it interesting that hewas the mailman, delivering the news.”
Doughboy, the emotional heart of the movie, is based on Singleton’schildhood friend Michael Winters, called “Fatbacc.” “That’s what hecalled himself,” explained Singleton. “He used to be really heavyset.He is one of those black men who can talk a mile a minute—very poetic.He was part of my original crew growing up, but he was the only dudethat was really affiliated with gangs.” What’s especially moving aboutDoughboy is that he truly has the heart of a warrior. In an early scene,when he’s just about 10 years old, Doughboy bravely confronts a group ofmenacing, young men in the hood. There’s no way he can take them on, buthis courage to stand up to them is breathtaking. In another culture, hewould grow up to be Achilles; in this one, he’ll be dead, unsung, beforehe turns 30.
![Hood Hood](https://img.yts.am/assets/images/movies/Boyz_n_the_Hood_1991/large-screenshot1.jpg)
Singleton worked with casting director Jaki Brown to fill out the cast,including a guy from the hood, Redge Green, who had rolled up to theoffice in a wheelchair, saying, “I actually got shot in my legs. Yougot to put me in this movie.” Singleton thought, “I didn’t even knowif this dude could act, but he got shot in his legs, so, ‘O.K., you’rein the movie.’ ” And Dooky (Dedrick D. Gobert), “the dude with thepacifier in his mouth, he was a kid that grew up in the avenues, on theoutskirts of Inglewood. He had such a personality I said, ‘We’ve got tohave him in the movie.’ It played so well because they were all fromsimilar backgrounds.”
Cuba Gooding Jr. auditioned several times to play Tre Styles. “I didfour or five screen tests, because they kept bringing me back,” herecalled. “They wanted an established actor, but John insisted. Hesaid, ‘This is my guy.’ And every fucking time I came back, I wore thatgold-and-black Cavaricci shirt with black Cavaricci pants that are onthe poster to this day.”
Gooding’s acting career had been launched in a production of the musicalLi’l Abner, at North Hollywood High School. “I was Pappy, and I waskilling it!” he recalled. Gooding (whose nickname growing up was“Cube,” which caused some confusion on the set, especially with IceCube’s entourage: “Not you, motherfucker!”) said that to develop therole of Tre he thought of actors like Spencer Tracy, Clint Eastwood, andDenzel Washington. “There’s always this masculine, heroic stance thatthese guys take. That’s why Tre holds himself a certain way. I alwayssaw Tre as presidential.”
Laurence Fishburne (Furious Styles) explained how he came of age as anactor on the set of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 classic, Apocalypse Now,which he worked on when he was 14 years old. In a remarkable show ofrange, he went from playing a cocky gunner’s mate in Apocalypse Now toplaying Cowboy Curtis in the television series Pee-wee’s Playhouse.That’s when he was known as Larry Fishburne, and when he first met JohnSingleton.
In his late 20s, married, with a son, Fishburne initially thoughtSingleton was just hanging around to hear his stories about working withSpike Lee in School Daze. But then he approached Fishburne, saying, “‘I have a script I’m developing, and I really want you for one of theparts.’ I said, ‘Slow down, stop, hold on. How old are you?’ And he waslike, ‘I’m 18.’ ”
Three years later, Fishburne received a copy of the screenplay. “I readit, and when I turned the last page, I was in tears,” Fishburnerecalled.
On Apocalypse Now, Fishburne had absorbed Coppola’s approach of havingthe actors improvise before filming a scene. He had done four movieswith Coppola by then, so on the set of Boyz, he became the de factoacting coach for this crew of mostly novices, raising everyone else’sgame.
Menace To Society
Singleton said he was acting, too—he was acting like he knew what hewas doing. But in fact he was scared to death: “I can’t fuck this shitup, because my whole life I’ve been trying to do this.”
Morris Chestnut, who plays the doomed Ricky, was teasingly called“Black Jesus” on the set. Nia Long, who plays Tre’s girlfriend,Brandi, recalled, “Well, he does seem like a black Jesus. He’s thequintessential black man—dark, tall, handsome, smart.” Chestnut gothis SAG card after appearing in Freddy’s Nightmares, a TV show based onA Nightmare on Elm Street. Like everyone else, he was surprised at howyoung Singleton was. Ricky’s story resonated with Chestnut because “Iwas also a high-school football player, and I’m black, and I hadaspirations of playing at the next level. U.S.C. was my favorite team.”
Nia Long grew up in South-Central L.A., though her mother had twomaster’s degrees. “I didn’t want to be there [auditioning]. Ibarely believed that I would make it as an actress, so when JohnSingleton saw me in that hallway [before the audition], that was themoment that changed my life. When I saw the script that said Boyz N theHood, my attitude came from protecting what I knew I was a part of. Ifyou’re going to show this, it better be right, because even though it’sa world of less—a world of drugs, violence, poverty—it was still myworld.”
For Long, her love scene with Cuba Gooding was a rite of passage.“Cuba’s kind and happy and wanted to get it right,” she recalled. “Hecame from a different experience from the rest of us. His father was inthe jazz world.” (Cuba Gooding Sr. was the lead singer of the soulgroup the Main Ingredient, perhaps best known for their 1972 pop hit,“Everybody Plays the Fool.”) Long was uncomfortable doing her firstlove scene, “because I had never done that before. It felt like aviolation to have somebody touch my boobs,” she said. But she laterrealized “it was part of the business. But Cuba—he de-virginized myboobs!”
Angela Bassett (Reva Styles) described how she was trying to transitionfrom being a TV actress to appearing in films. “One day I got a call togo meet this young director for this movie, Boyz N the Hood. I was like,Boyz with a z? I still remember going down to Leimert Park, thatneighborhood off of Crenshaw. You just didn’t go down to Crenshaw. Itwas like, you know, you take your life in your hands.” Having grown upin the projects, where it was usually the women who looked out for thekids in the neighborhood, she knew the Reva Styles character. She alsoknew how rare good roles were for African-American women. When she firstmoved to Hollywood, she noticed how “they cast the white male, thenthey cast his partner who is also male, and then his lady, and by thetime they get down to the role where they cast me, you know, all themoney is gone.”
Tyra Ferrell had played “ghetto moms with bad mouths” a couple oftimes and wanted to read for Reva Styles, said Steve Nicolaides, thefilm’s producer, but that part was already cast, so she ended up playingMrs. Baker. “You can’t do better than her in that role,” he said,especially in the heartbreaking scene when they carry Ricky’s body intothe house. “She steals the movie.”
Roots
John Singleton was born in 1968, one of the most volatile years inAmerican history. Two things shaped him: movies and the Black ArtsMovement. “When I was small, in the early 70s, my mother took me to seeCooley High. At the end of the movie, Cochise gets killed by two dudes,knocked up against the L train, and he doesn’t get up. And my motherstarts crying. I’m like seven years old. I looked at my mother and Isaid, ‘Why are you crying?,’ and she said, ‘Because it’s such a goodmovie.’ So I start thinking, when I get to make a movie, I got to makepeople cry. I got to make them feel something.”
His mother’s apartment, in Inglewood, off of Century Boulevard, near LosAngeles airport, overlooked a drive-in theater called the CenturyDrive-In, which showed mostly B movies. “I would watch thesemovies—but silent, on a drive-in screen. There would be blaxploitationfilms, horror movies--The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,Halloween—whatever was the slashy movie at the moment, and then kungfu movies,” Singleton recalled. “You saw nudity sometimes. I alwayssay that Pam Grier’s tits inspired me to make movies.”
Singleton was a big fan of Rob Reiner’s Stand by Me, and of HectorBabenco’s Pixote, the 1980 Brazilian movie about a homeless boy who isturned into a criminal by corrupt adults. He also loved FrançoisTruffaut’s The 400 Blows—”having the little kids’ faces seeing theills of the adult world, but you’ve never seen that with black faces.”
“The cinema saved me from being a delinquent,” Singleton believed. “Icould have been, but I didn’t get caught up. I never was going to getarrested or anything.” He was accepted into U.S.C.’s film-studiesprogram in screenwriting, “pretty much the only black student” among24 freshmen.
The other big influence in his life was the Black Arts Movement of the1970s, and one of the most important people he met at that time was therapper Tupac Shakur. He later wrote his film Baby Boy with Tupac in mindto play the lead, but the rapper was murdered, in 1996, in Las Vegas,before they got a chance to do it. “That’s how Tupac and I got close,because we grew up in that movement. It’s what gave us a sense ofself—there was always this emphasis on being black and proud. And ifyou grow up poor and black in this country, you have nothing else.”
It was Stephanie Allain who got the ball rolling. She was working as areader for Amy Pascal and Dawn Steel, two powerful executives atColumbia Pictures, and was about to be promoted. She made it known that,as she moved up, she wanted to be replaced by another person of color.“The next thing I know,” she recalled, “this sort of nerdy-looking,bespectacled, skinny guy shows up in my office, ostensibly to interviewfor the job.” As soon as he got in the door, though, John beganpitching his screenplay for Boyz. He didn’t get the job, but he piquedAllain’s interest—she got hold of his script and read it for herself.“I just locked myself in the room and read it right away,” sherecalled, “and I was sobbing when I closed the last page.” She calledSingleton’s agent, Brad Smith at CAA, saying, “I’ve got to have this,”only to be told that John Singleton was determined to direct his movie,though he had never directed anything before.
Dawn Steel had just resigned as president of Columbia Pictures, acasualty of Sony buying the studio from Coca-Cola, and she had beenreplaced by Jon Peters and Peter Guber. Their responses were middling.“This was before the big 90s black-film renaissance,” Allainexplained, “so people just did not get it. I didn’t get it either. Ijust knew that the story moved me profoundly.” Allain was shocked athow little support there was for taking on Boyz. “Everyone who had sortof implied allegiance really didn’t show up for me,” she remembered,“except Amy Pascal, who was adamant about how good the writing was.”At a meeting to decide on upcoming projects, Allain found herself out ona limb as they went around the table until Frank Price—just hired byJon Peters and Peter Guber to head Columbia Pictures—got on board. Hewas one of the few Hollywood executives to come from a writingbackground, having worked on scripts for television Westerns, and he hadgreen-lighted hugely successful films, including Kramer vs. Kramer,Ghostbusters, and The Karate Kid.
“We finally got to Frank, who just said, ‘I think it’s fantastic. Ithink the script’s great, and we should do it.’ And that was it,”recalled Allain.
She informed Price that Singleton had to be made director or theycouldn’t do the film. There was pushback—they offered to buy thescript for something like $100,000 but not have him direct. “At thispoint, John had no money. I mean, $100,000 is a lot of money” for a22-year-old with student debt, says Allain, but Singleton held out.Price realized that Boyz had been “tagged as a ‘dark ghetto picture,’which was tough to get audiences for.” But he gave Singleton thego-ahead to audition some of the actors he had in mind.
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When Singleton came back with Ice Cube’s and Cuba Gooding’s auditiontapes, Price was blown away. They “just jumped off the screen,” herecalled, and that satisfied him that Singleton “had good taste inactors.” Still, he knew he was taking a gamble. “From the standpointof 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 itand say, ‘Why make something with an unknown writer, unknown director,and unknown actors?’ That’s how you lose everything.” But Price hadoften taken a chance on risky stories, and was especially drawn to talesof race and gender. He’d been responsible for such films as Gandhi, CryFreedom, A Soldier’s Story, Tootsie, Out of Africa, and A League ofTheir Own—all successful films, but each one a risk in its day.
Now the search was on for a really good, experienced producer. Musicmogul Russell Simmons was sent a copy of the script, as he was thentransitioning from producing music to producing films. Reading thescreenplay during a trip to Las Vegas, Simmons knew right away that hewanted to make the movie, but he, too, had his reservations aboutallowing a 22-year-old novice to direct the film. “Russell reallywanted John to go do some music videos for him,” Allain recalled, “toget comfortable behind the camera.” But Price knew that would delayfilming, so he passed on hiring Simmons, who felt that he was unfairlycut out of the process. “I was in Hawaii hanging out with Jon Peters,”Simmons recalled. “I said we’ve got to make this movie. He said, ‘Noproblem.’ ” But Columbia went ahead and did the project without him.“Basically I just got shafted,” Simmons recalled.
Allain remembered a good friend, Steve Nicolaides, who had been workingon big commercial movies, including the Rob Reiner films Stand by Me,The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally . . . , and Misery, so shesent him the script. “He read it and said, ‘What do I need to do? I’min this!’ ” Nicolaides went over to Singleton’s house and met him andhis mom. “She had a big lemon tree in her backyard,” he recalled,“and she made homemade lemonade.”
Singleton told Nicolaides that he wanted to work with as many black crewmembers as possible. “I don’t care if I’m the only white person on theset,” Nicolaides told him. He asked Singleton why he was even beingconsidered to produce Boyz. “Because you worked on my all-time-favoritemovie, Stand by Me,” Singleton replied. The 1986 film was also acoming-of-age story, involving a group of boys who set out to find adead body, which also occurs early in Boyz, as an homage to Reiner’sfilm.
‘So we’re out there shooting, and it feels like a Crenshaw night,”recalled Cube. “It’s one of those streets that just had a vibe. All daypeople went to hang, and it felt fun, but it also felt dangerous.” Onenight on the set, the tension was just burning after a gang memberthreatened to come back with his gun. So when they filmed a shooting andthe cast and crew heard the sound of the gun going off, their reactionwas all too real—they were running for their lives. “It was funnyafterwards, but goddamn, man, I was running!” recalled Cube.
Cuba Gooding described another scene “where we’re running along a wall,and there are dogs chomping at our legs. . . . They just got some wilddogs in the yard and we ran. If we fell and tripped, they would havefucking chewed us up, me and Morris!”
Gooding said that an earlier experience had prepared him for the scenein which he’s thrown against a police car by a black cop. “I was abreak-dancer at the 1984 Olympics,” he recalled, “with a crew of otheryoung kids, and at the same time, hanging out in the streets dressed asa break-dancer. But every once in a while, police officers wouldmisinterpret us as being gang members, so they would put us up againstthe wall and they would damn near strip-search us and throw us to theground and say very abusive things to us. So when we did that scene inBoyz, and [a cop] throws me on that hood, it brought me right backto that day. It was a well that I could pull from. I knew it was God’swill that I was supposed to do that role.”
Nicolaides was aware of the potential for real violence. One night,after a long day of shooting, he got a phone call from a friend. He’dheard from “a guy named Bone, who runs the Bloods in an area they call‘the Jungle’—which was right across the street from where we weregoing to do the scene where Ice Cube shoots the [gang members] whokilled Ricky,” recalled Nicolaides. So Nicolaides met with Bone, whohad a huge guy sitting next to him. Over dinner, Bone said, “ ‘Word onthe street is that this little movie is dissing the Bloods.’ And I said,‘No, nobody is affiliated to anyone.’ ”
“But Ice Cube’s wearing a blue Detroit Tigers hat, and the bad guy’sgot a red [and black] Chicago Bulls hat on. They drive a redHyundai—that’s dissing to me,” Bone said. “I don’t care about yourlittle movie. I run a business here, and the profits that I make, I takethe kids in my world to the ocean, I take them out fishing, but I can’tprevent some 14-year-old walking up with a 9-mm. and shooting Ice Cubein the back of the head if you’re going to shoot right across the streetfrom me.”
So the next day Nicolaides went to the set and said, “John, you told methat colors didn’t matter, and now the hood thinks that Boyz N the Hoodis dissing the Bloods, and we’re scheduled in three days to have IceCube kill the murderers at a burger stand right across the street fromthe Jungle.” But Singleton didn’t want to make any changes; it fell toNicolaides and Ice Cube to persuade him to change the location to Eat aBurger in the Crenshaw mall. “We shot there, had no problem,” saidNicolaides.
Because it was Singleton’s first film, and considered a small movie forSony, Bruce Cannon recalled, “we had a lot of freedom. It almost feltlike an indie film. Sometimes studios can come in with a billion notesand take away the heart of a movie and milk it down. But that didn’thappen on Boyz, and that made it a special film.” In fact, Nicolaidessaw that the only white people from the studio who came to theset—just a short drive from Culver City—were the publicity people.And even then, he said, “they came only in the last week because theystarted to hear the buzz” about the movie. “All of a sudden, everyonewanted a piece of the action”—eventually Jon Peters wanted aproducer’s credit—”but it was already done.”
The Response
‘The first time we showed the film to a test audience it was a cold dayin April or May, and they recruited an audience from South-Central tocome to the Sony studio,” Nicolaides explained. The bus pulled up atthree in the afternoon for a five o’clock screening, “and they madeeverybody stand outside the studio in the cold. They finally filled upthe theater with a fairly pissed-off audience, and the guy who ran thetest programs got up and said, ‘Good evening, this is an unfinishedwork. When you see a white leader with squiggly lines, that indicates“dissolve to,” the sound is not perfect.’ A black guy in the balconysaid, ‘Shut up and start the fucking movie!’ ” But once it began, theexcitement was so intense it was “like being at a Bruce Springsteenconcert in the 70s. It was amazing. So we knew.”
Cannon, who was at the screening, realized that “blacks hadn’t reallyseen themselves like this on film before.” A shot of a familiar bodegaor a street got cheers and applause. “That really hit me, that theirworld had not been portrayed. It made me think of the scene where IceCube says about Ricky’s murder, They don’t show it on TV because no onecares. It’s not their neighborhood.”
Frank Price realized he had to find a way for white audiences to knowthat “this picture is for them, too.” So he and his team worked out astrategy: they would take Boyz N the Hood to Cannes. They rented anumber of billboards and just put graffiti up. “Nobody in Cannes knewwhat the hell it was,” remembered Price. It was an afternoon screening,and “all of black Hollywood royalty was there—Wesley Snipes, SpikeLee, Denzel—they were all there,” recalled Nicolaides. Quincy Joneshad flown in with Eddie Murphy from the Montreux Jazz Festival. ForSingleton, it was his first time out of Los Angeles. When he arrived inNice, he noticed a lot of press at the baggage claim, swarming overForest Whitaker, who’d won best actor in Cannes a few years earlier, forClint Eastwood’s Bird. On the way from the airport, Singleton wasknocked out by all the billboards for the Boyz N the Hood premiere.“Cube and I motion to stop the car,” Singleton recalled. “We jump outall excited taking pictures in front of the posters . . . Then weturned and looked at the beach, and there is wall-to-wallwomen—topless! There were various degrees of wannabe models flashingthe best and worst European plastic surgery. I looked at Cube and helooked at me. We just got back into the car and went to the Carlton. Theexecs were at the [Hôtel] du Cap. When I had lunch there,Schwarzenegger was holding court, Malcolm McDowell was telling jokespoolside, and Belinda Carlisle from the Go-Go’s was walking aroundtopless.”
A bit overwhelmed, he hid behind his camera—the very thing thatbrought him to Cannes in the first place—as a way to protect himself.“You have to look at this,” Singleton explained, “from theperspective of, I’m a kid who’d never left the country. I couldn’t eatanything but steak frites and scrambled eggs, and now I’m hanging outwith Madonna in the South of France as she goes jogging in the morningsin a Boyz N the Hood T-shirt.”
Critic Roger Ebert saw the movie at Cannes and “wrote a love letter ofa review that was just essential for us,” recalled Price. Ebert was inthe audience for a press screening with his African-American fiancée,Chaz Hammel Smith, and by the end of the film he was crying. His reviewbroke open the film to a crossover audience. Describing it as not just a“brilliant directorial debut, but an American film of enormousimportance,” Ebert saw that the need to prove one’s manhood, in aneighborhood awash with guns, doomed young lives. As we learn from thetext that flashes on-screen at the beginning of the film, “one out ofevery 21 black American males will be murdered in their lifetime.”
By the time the public screening of Boyz took place in Cannes, they hadto turn away hundreds of people trying to get into the 700-seat theater.
Back in the U.S., the film had a tailwind from Cannes, but after aterrific opening Columbia had trouble getting bookings in theatersbecause there had been some shootings at showings of New Jack City, thedrug-and-gang drama directed by Mario Van Peebles that opened fourmonths before Boyz.
But despite some bad publicity involving fears of gang violence, thefilm was a financial success, earning $69 million on a $6 millioninvestment. John Singleton received Oscar nominations for best directorand best screenplay. Nicolaides said, “It did incredible business, andit only got released in 811 theaters. Columbia never went broader thanthat.”
‘It’s such an important movie,” said Russell Simmons, who wishes he hadbeen the one to produce it. “It’s a tragedy that’s still going on tothis day. It’s insightful in the way that rap music is insightful. Thisstory plays out everywhere, all over the country now—even the rest ofMiddle America is interested because it’s not that foreign tothem. . . . It’s unfortunate we have to tell it so many times, and itwill be told even more now, it seems.”
Nia Long agreed. “We could have made Boyz N the Hood yesterday. I grewup 10 blocks away from where we shot the movie. It was as if JohnSingleton cut a hole in the wall and filmed my own life. . . . We’vebeen having the same conversation about race for 40 years. It hurts mysoul that we are still having these conversations.”
“I think about my kids,” Fishburne said. “I think about kidseverywhere, mostly young black males, because we don’t initiate youngmen. The Jews have Bar Mitzvahs to initiate boys into men, but for theboys in the hood, their Bar Mitzvah is guns, drugs, prison. Young menwill initiate themselves because we don’t do it for them, and the waythey do it is gang initiation, or some negative, shadow aspect ofmasculinity.”
Even after the explosion of black films in the 1990s on the heels ofBoyz—and the stellar careers of Ice Cube, Laurence Fishburne, CubaGooding Jr., Angela Bassett, Regina King, Nia Long, and MorrisChestnut—little has changed in Hollywood, especially when it comes tohonoring black films, actors, writers, directors, and producers.Singleton still believes that Hollywood “doesn’t want black films aboutthe way blacks really live.”
The 2016 Academy Awards created a backlash of anger when it failed tonominate Straight Outta Compton and ignored director Ryan Coogler forCreed and actor Idris Elba for Beasts of No Nation. #OscarsSoWhitecalled for a boycott of the Academy Awards, and the controversy was thesubject of much of comedian Chris Rock’s jokes in his role as host ofthe annual awards presentation.
Nia Long asked, “So, do I boycott the Oscars because nobody black wasnominated? I think that’s ridiculous. But it’s equally ridiculous thatnobody was nominated, because I think Straight Outta Comptonshould havebeen. Those actors—those kids—were amazing. It’s the same thing theydid to Boyz—none of the actors were nominated . . . Hollywood is acountry club. It’s a boys’ club. It’s restricted, absolutely. I feellike I have a visitor’s pass.” (It should be noted that, in June, theAcademy expanded its membership, pledging to double the number of womenand minorities eligible to vote for the Oscars.)
Ice Cube said, “I think you got Boyz, and then everything else fellapart. You have a movie like Menace II Society, which might hit on thegangster stuff but misses on the heart. I think once people realizedthey couldn’t top Boyz N the Hood, they just stopped trying. They juststopped trying.”
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Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer (Screenland 1958)
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Photo: From the Screenland Archive/Library of Congress.Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer (Screenland 1958)
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