LAFF 2014 - John Singleton & Negritude Filmmaking Debate - FuTurXTV & HHBMedia.com - 8-25-2014

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“When John Singleton was a junior in USC’s School of Cinema/Television, he

stood up in fr ont of 500 fel low students after a screening of Colors and let its

producer, Robert Solo, know what he thought of the film’s attempt to portray life

in South Central Lo s Angeles…“I told him he had no right to make a movie

about this ‘cause he knew nothing about the culture, and he was marketing it asa film about gangs when actually it was a film about two white cops”, recalls

Singleton. “He said, ‘Well, Ice-T wrote the music’, and I said, ‘Well, Ice- T didn’t

write the fuckin’ script.’ And everybody clapped.”…Not exactly the deferential

pose one might have expect f rom someone who hoped to break into Holl ywood.

Bu t Singleton knew a better way to in tegrate himself wi th the town’s power elite:

write a killer script. So while classmates “moaned and groaned” about why they

couldn’t pen their 120 pages, the South- Central LA native was chillin’ with

crack-deali ng homeboys a few blocks away, researching the characters for hi s

semi autobiographical Boyz N’ the Hood”….Premiere…August 1991

“The hardest thing to do is to shock black folk,” he says one day. “But thi s movie

[Baby Boy] is going to be strong.” As he says that last word, he mimes a punch to

the stomach…‘Somebody at the studio said this movie is misogynistic. I know the

black bourgeoisie are going to hate it. But I’ m not celebrating i gnorance, li ke

rappers bragging about not knowing how to read. I’m ust being honest—I’m not

wrapping up things in an easy package. For me, this movie is li ke watching the

soul of a black man on screen. It may be dysfunctional, but its real.”…Patrick

Goldstein…Los Angeles Times…2-27-2001

LAFF 2014 ARTICLE – JOHN SINGLETON &“NEGRITUDE” FILMMAKING DEBATE - 8-25-2014

8-25-2014 - Written By: David L. $Money Train$ Watts – Journalist/Film ReviewerFuTurXTV & HHBMedia.com - David Velo Stewart – Editor – HHBMedia.com

David L. $Money Train$ Watts • FuTurXTV • HHBMedia.com • [email protected] • www.hhbmedia.com • David Velo Stewart

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.hhbmedia.com/





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On Day 3 (Saturday) of the Los Angeles Film Festival I woke up early to see some excellent

student short films at the Future Filmmaker Shorts 1 in Regal Cinemas L.A. Live 9. The

funny thing is that even if all the shorts I saw were made by high school students they were

shot so well or professionally I could tell which students had a career making docs, big

budget features, sitcoms, indies or cable dramas. The talent level displayed was on par with

even shorts I have seen from college graduates and seasoned filmmakers. I have to give bigprops to the smart and passionate LAFF 2014 Shorts Programmer & Latin America

Programmer for selecting some impressive shorts and even greater film students to admire.

High school students of Future Filmmakers & Hebe Tabachnik, LAFF Shorts & Latin America Programmer

When I left the Regal I grabbed a Coke from the ticket office on the LAFF parking garage

roof and then proceeded over with HHBMedia.com’s David Velo Stewart to go to the

Conga Room. We quickly headed over to the Conga Room to attend an all-day event of

Diversity Speaks Forums. The first speaker of the day John Singleton who is a great Black

filmmaker — highly talented filmmaker/writer period and one of my very close USC School

of Cinema-Television friends. The reason I put the first John quote of him giving hell to

Color’s producer Robert Solo was because I was there in the audience at Norris Theater.

And the second quote from John about Baby Boy more than a decade later is pure John as

well. I was at the 2001 Acapulco Black Film Festival at a premiere screening of Baby Boy to

honor John’s tenth anniversary in Hollywood. John again gave one of the most memorable

John Singleton quotes during the Q&A following the Baby Boy ABFF screening when he

loudly and proudly said to a packed theater audience of 100% Black ABFF attendees:

“I Wanted Baby Boy To Be The Greatest Nigga Film Of All Time!”

This LAFF article unfortunately will not go into all the fascinating and interesting reasons

why John thought or proclaimed that Baby Boy was going to be the “The Greatest Nigga

Film Of All Time”. Nope I have that whole ABFF 2001 Baby Boy Premiere Screening Q&A

filmed and one day I will post it on YouTube with running commentary. I only wanted to

mention that inflammatory, powerful and controversial quote from John Singleton to make

one understand that when I was at this LAFF 2014 sponsored Diversity Speaks Forum with

John--I wasn’t surprised at all to hear later on much more similar inflammatory, powerful

and controversial and always highly memorable “Pro-Black Hollywood” quotes from him.








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Before John said what he thought about “so-called” diversity in Hollywood he was

introduced by Stephanie Allain, who by herself is a living symbol of Hollywood diversity

because she will always have the unique cinematic distinction of being the one that

“discovered John Singleton”; was a highly productive Senior Vice President of Production

at Columbia Pictures (Boyz n the Hood , Poetic Justice & H igher Learning ) and then smartly

transitioned into a successful independent producer with titles like Hustle & F low, Black

Snake Moan and Beyond The L ights . And Elvis Mitchel, who was doing the one on one

interview with John, is also no stranger to Hollywood diversity as a widely respected filmcritic and behind-the-scene Black entertainment mover and shaker. The main high points

of John’s sit down with Elvis was that he was fully committed to making a Tupac Biopic

before the year was out. John proudly said he was going to cast all unknowns or new actors

instead of Hollywood’s top young Black actors. John has so many personal and unique

stories about Tupac that he is actually the best choice to direct a Tupac flick. You literally

can go to any studio or major production company and ask about making a Tupac film and

someone will have to say that they already have a script, took a pitch meeting or know

where the latest Tupac film is filming. Yes, Tupac films are like documentary footage of

baby Unicorns being born under a rainbow--everyone in Hollywood wants to have one or

see one or just hope it miraculously happens. I was at AFM 2013 and was hanging with aBlack producer and writer of another similar Tupac biopic that he was as certain going to

happen as John is certain his Tupac biopic is going to happen. But I really wonder if any

Tupac film can be made unless one gets Tupac’s music rights from Universal Music? And

then will Universal Music want multiple Tupac projects using their music or just John ’s

Tupac biopic? Only time will tell. John also gave everyone a spoiler that he was in talks

with Showtime about developing a dramatic TV series called “Snowfall” about the early

days of cocaine sales in the 80’s that lead to the crack epidemic in the 90’s. John said he

wanted “Snowfall” to be based in Los Angeles and have a Hispanic male lead. “Snowfall”

sounds highly promising. And at various times Elvis tried to spice up his conversation with

John by trying to use all his lofty cinema knowledge and film reviewer prose to elevate the

meaning of John’s writing and directorial skills. And at times John just laughed and said

that Elvis was talking over his head with his many film metaphors and allegorical examples

of how John has been a transformative modern realist filmmaker chronicling his many

urban/Hip-Hop/Afro-centric experiences. Now even that sounds like a mouthful. Anyway,

John was having too much fun leaving Elvis speechless as he dropped bombs of real talk:








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“They [Black Filmmakers] tuck their balls up under their ass to be accepted,

you know what I mean?”…“Everyone’s gonna copy our s – t anyway. I made the

blackest Fast and Furious, I made Paul Walker say ‘cuz’ in the movie. I elevatedit,” Singleton said. “You can’t front that [black films] don’t make money. I

haven’t lost anybody money. People said, ‘12 Years a Slave,’ I don’t want to feelbad, oh, that’s a hard sell— $178 mil li on, so what the f – k is commercial , you

know?’”…He added, “A lot of people were afraid to take that Jamie Foxx part in Django Unchained, but it’s Quentin’s most profitable movie, $425 million. It hasnegritude in it.”…Stanley Crouch introduced him to the concept of “negritude,”a li terary and ideological movement developed by black intellectuals and ar tists

from the Harlem Renaissance …Deron Dalton…EURWeb.com..6/18/2014

Now some (Mainly Stuck Up Buppies) could easily take offense at John just saying the

word “Negritude” let alone say it is the “secret sauce” to defeating racism in Hollywood to

a large gathering of impressionable, young and predominately Black filmmakers, students,producers, actors, writers and reporters at LAFF 2014’s timely Diversity Speaks Forum.

But I would not be one of those “Negritude Haters” because I have known John Singleton

for 25 plus years and John has always been John. He is the same scrappy and feisty student

at USC film school. He is the same smart and “ghetto/urban devoted visionary” who myself

and screenwriter Joe Doughrity were hanging with at his private bungalow in Acapulco.

And he is the same good old friend that happily jumped out of his seat to shake my hand

before he answered my question during the brief Q&A session after Elvis and John’s talk.

John Singleton & David L. “Money Train” Watts, FuTurXTV & Raymond C. Reed, Global Media Village

But the question I asked John goes back to a time when were both upcoming Black film

students at USC. I personally knew that John Singleton might never have become the

famous Boyz n the Hood director that Stephanie Allain discovered and Elvis Mitchel got to

interview on at the Conga Room for LAFF. I asked John could he really been as successfulas he has been in Hollywood if he had dropped out of school his junior year at USC to be a

production intern for Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing . I can clearly remember discussing

with John at USC many times in the late Spring and early summer of 1988 about how John

wanted to forgo or delay his film school education to work side by side with his cinematic

idol Spike Lee. This was a serious opportunity and John’s very special dream fantasy job.








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John Singleton & Bill Straus, producer of Straight Outa Compton and distributor with his sales agency BGP.

John eagerly applied to be a production intern on Spike’s Do the Right Thing which was

slated to begin filming in early Fall 1988. John had recently reconnected with Spike again

at a recent LA book singing hosted by Reggie and Warrington Hudlin’s Black Filmmaker

Foundation (BFF). And after that signing for Spike’s She Gotta Have It: Inside Guerilla

Filmmaking and Uplift the Race: Construction of School Daze production diary books

John was determined that he was dropping out of USC film school, which was not that easy

to get in at all back then. John even quit being my African-American Film Association

(AFFA) Vice-President, I was AFFA’s president and co-founder. He thought he’d finish his

college education later. John’s whole life would have been different if he had just dropped

out of USC. I seriously doubt that John gets signed with CAA for winning back-to-back

Jack Nicholas Screenwriting contests. John probably does not meet Stephanie Allain, Ice

Cube or Lawrence Fishburne who was on Pee Wee’s Playhouse. And most likely John’s

historic and groundbreaking Boy n the Hood never gets written while for awhile or even

greenlit if John goes and works on Do the Right Thing . Maybe John would have made

Juice ? But do you even get a Juice or a Menace I I Society and many other Boyz clones if

Boyz n the Hood doesn’t happen in 1991. Now John had a sly smile as he thought about my

question that put a hush over the whole audience. John then answered and instead of meeasily retelling it I will let The Hollywood Reporter, an extremely important and influential

Industry press describe in accurate details what happened next between myself and John.

“ Taking questions fr om the audience, Singleton laughed when a fr iend of his

from USC Film School razzed him about almost dropping out of coll ege to work

on [Spike Lee 's ] Do the Right Thing …" We joke about it now, because Monty

Ross , Spike's right-hand dude, wouldn' t accept my call s in summer ' 88. Now I

tell them, 'Thank God you motherf -----s didn' t hi re me! ' I met Spike when Boyz

N the Hood and Jungle Fever were at Cannes, and we sat on the water of

Southern F rance and made a pact, no matter what the media tri ed to do putti ngus up against each other, we were gonna support each other as fi lmmakers and

as men." …Singleton's USC pal said, " I remember when you wore a Jher i cur l ."

Replied Singleton, " I had a Jheri cur l too. I cut mine before coll ege,

though." …Tim Appelo…The Hollywood Reporter…6/14/2014








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Well, I could simply let this The Hollywood Reporter exchange be the official record of

what happened except that it was actually John who jokingly asked me about me having a

Jheri curl back at USC. And, yes, I had a Jheri curl back then and John has never had one

as far as I know. But I will sure to send John a text about The Hollywood Reporter Jheri

curl mix-up. And another genuine John Singleton moment during the Q&A was when an

excited brotha asked John if he was at al influenced as a writer and director by CooleyHigh , which is another historic Black cinematic masterpiece and very much the Boyz n the

Hood coming-of-age film of the mid-70’s. John relaxed a bit and revealed, and I very much

believe for the first time, that he thinks he was “unconsciously” inspired to have Ricky

(Morris Chestnut), a star high school athlete with a bright future, killed at the end of Boyz

n the Hood just like Cochise (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs) died at the end of Cooley H igh .

When John left the stage he was mobbed by many of his new and old fans of his films. I

couldn’t resist wondering if we get the bland, predictable and stereotypical studio Black

films we see now because so many of our young and upcoming Black filmmakers are trying

to focus too much on how to “out hustle” Hollywood before racism in Hollywood blocks,

distracts or derails their cinema dreams and aspirations. While the mainly all white and

Asian high school film students I saw a few hours earlier at the LAFF Future Filmmakers

Shorts program never get or need to get “Negritude” encouragement speeches to inspire

them to make award winning shorts or indie films. I am certain John’s words at the LAAF

Diversity Speaks Forum would entertain the white film students and maybe even enlighten

them to future racial issues in the entertainment biz. But I had a nagging feeling that those

talented students are on a faster and more realistic path to being successful in Hollywood

on their own terms than the vast majority of new Black filmmakers who will realize that

there are few Black, white or green writer/producer/directors like John Singleton. It took

talent plus his abundant “Negritude Attitude” to get John through a competitive USC film

school and overcome real obstacles to make Boy n the Hood a cinema classic. And I’m sure

“Negritude” is fueling his passion to bring his Tupac biopic to the screen. John has always

been John and I am sure he has more great films to make in Hollywood if given the chance.

And let the record state that many successful Blacks in the eighties/nighties had Jheri curls.






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LAFF 2014 - John Singleton & Negritude Filmmaking Debate - FuTurXTV & HHBMedia.com - 8-25-2014