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Boyz N the Hood

Shifting Hollywood Terrain

by Joi Carr (Author)
©2018 Textbook 442 Pages
Series: Framing Film, Volume 20

Summary

In 1991, Boyz N the Hood made history as an important film text and the impetus for a critical national conversation about American urban life in African American communities, especially for young urban black males. Boyz N the Hood: Shifting Hollywood Terrain is an interdisciplinary examination of this iconic film and its impact in cinematic history and American culture. This interdisciplinary approach provides an in-depth critical perspective of Boyz N the Hood as the embodiment of the blues: how Boyz intimates a world beyond the symbolic world Singleton posits, how its fictive stance pivots to a constituent truth in the real world. Boyz speaks from the first person perspective on the state of being "invisible." Through a subjective narrative point of view, Singleton interrogates the veracity of this claim regarding invisibility and provides deep insight into this social reality. This book is as much about the filmmaker as it is about the film. It explores John Singleton’s cinematic voice and helps explicate his propensity for a type of folk element in his work (the oral tradition and lore). In addition, this text features critical perspectives from the filmmaker himself and other central figures attached to the production, including a first-hand account of production behind the scenes by Steve Nicolaides, Boyz ’s producer. The text includes Singleton’s original screenplay and a range of critical articles and initial movie reviews.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the author
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Contents
  • List of Credits
  • Acknowledgments
  • Foreword: “Singleton Changed My Life” by Stephanie Allain
  • Preface
  • Introduction. Shifting Hollywood Terrain: The Iconic Status of Boyz N the Hood xxiii
  • PART I
  • Prologue. “I Am an Invisible Man”: Boyz and the Literary and Cinematic Imagination
  • Boyz Getting Behind Language: Invisibility and the Literary and Cinematic Imagination
  • Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952): Mediating Self-Knowledge Through Messianic Language
  • Van Peebles’s Sweetback (1971): Invisible Man’s Cinematic Appearance
  • Boyz in Context: The Streets of the Southland and Invisibility
  • 1. Singleton’s Cinematic Voice
  • 2. Boyz N the Hood: Shifting the Terrain of Urban Cinema
  • 3. A “Soulful” Director: An Interview with John Singleton
  • 4. Launching Singleton’s Career: An Interview with Steve Nicolaides, Producer
  • 5. Principal Cast and Crew: Reflective Perspectives on Boyz
  • Featured Interviews
  • An Actor’s Actor: Close up on Boyz with Tyra Ferrell
  • Spotlight on Laurence Fishburne: The Treatment with Elvis Mitchell
  • PART II
  • 6. Original Boyz Press Kit
  • 7. Original Screenplay: Boyz N the Hood by John Singleton
  • PART III
  • 8. Critical Perspectives on Boyz N the Hood
  • Between Apocalypse and Redemption: John Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood, by Michael Eric Dyson
  • Mapping the Hood: The Genealogy of City Space in Boyz N the Hood and Menace II Society, by Paula J. Massood
  • Two Takes on Boyz N the Hood, by Thomas Doherty and Jacquie Jones
  • “A Gritty Boyz N the Hood Ushers in a New Phase of Cinema,” by Kenneth Turan
  • “A Chance to Confound Fate,” by Janet Maslin
  • “Boyz N the Hood (R),” by Desson Howe
  • “Boyz N the Hood (R),” by Rita Kempley
  • Epilogue. Boyz and the Blues: A Legacy of Resistance and Hope
  • Celebrating the Legacy of John Singleton: A Conversation with Shelia Morgan Ward and Steve Nicolaides
  • Index

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Credits

Figure F.1: Stephanie Allain and John Singleton at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, “Black Snake Moan” Premiere. Courtesy of Stephanie Allain private collection. All rights reserved.

Figure F.2: Stephanie Allain and John Singleton on the set of Hustle & Flow. Courtesy of Stephanie Allain private collection. All rights reserved.

Figures P.1–P.2 and E.1: “Emerging Man,” Harlem, New York, 1952. Courtesy of The Gordon Parks Foundation. Copyright © The Gordon Parks Foundation. All rights reserved. Reprint by permission.

Figure 1.1: Portrait of John Singleton. Publicity still portrait of American film director John Singleton, 1995. Courtesy of Getty Images (Photo by John D. Kisch/Separate Cinema Archive/Getty Images).

Figure 1.2: Directors John Singleton and Spike Lee attending the New York premiere of Boyz N the Hood on July 8, 1991 at Loews Astor Plaza Theater in New York City, New York. Courtesy of Getty Images (Photo by Ron Galella, Ltd./ WireImage).

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Figure 1.3: John Singleton and Laurence Fishburne on Boyz set. Lobby Card. Courtesy of Getty Images. All rights reserved.

Figure 2.1: Writer and Director John Singleton and young actors in 1991. Courtesy of Getty Images (Photo by Aaron Rappaport/Corbis via Getty Images).

Figure 2.2: Ice Cube as Darin “Dough Boy” Baker. Courtesy of Steve Nicolaides.

Figure 2.3: One sheet movie poster, Boyz N the Hood. Columbia Pictures. Courtesy of Getty Images (Photo by John D. Kisch/Separate Cinema Archive/Getty Images).

Figure 2.4: Laurence Fishburne (Furious Styles), Desi Arnez Hines II (Tre Styles), Angela Bassett (Reva Devereaux). Courtesy of Columbia Pictures.

Figure 3.1: Director John Singleton honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Courtesy of Getty Images (Photo by Gregg DeGuire/ WireImage).

Figure 3.2: Director John Singleton and Laurence Fishburne; Singleton honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Courtesy of Getty Images (Photo by Gregg DeGuire/WireImage).

Figure 3.3: Director John Singleton celebrating with audience, honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Courtesy of Getty Images (Photo by Gregg DeGuire/WireImage).

Figure 3.4: 69th Annual Directors Guild of America Awards—arrivals. Beverly Hills, CA. Courtesy of Getty Images (Photo by David Crotty/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images).

Figure 3.5: One sheet movie poster advertises Poetic Justice (Columbia Pictures), directed by John Singleton and starring Janet Jackson and Tupac Shakur, Los Angeles, California, 1993. Courtesy of Getty Images (Photo by John D. Kisch/Separate Cinema Archive/Getty Images).

Figure 3.6: Portrait of film director John Singleton, taken on the Columbia Studios lot in Los Angeles, California, 1994. Courtesy of Getty Images (Photo by Anthony Barboza/Getty Images). Reprint by permission. All rights reserved.

←x |
 xi→

Figure 4.1: Steve Nicolaides and John Singleton at Austin Film Festival. Courtesy of Steve Nicolaides.

Figure 4.2: Cuba Gooding Jr. and John Singleton. Boyz In The Hood Press Conference—January 9, 1992. Courtesy of Getty Images (Photo by Ron Galella, Ltd./WireImage). Reprint by permission. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.3: 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival. (L-R) Elvis Mitchell, producer Steve Nicolaides, director John Singleton, actor Cuba Gooding Jr. and producer Stephanie Allain speak at the ‘Boyz N the Hood’ 20th anniversary screening Q&A. Regal Cinemas L.A. LIVE on June 23, 2011 in Los Angeles, California. Courtesy of Getty Images. Reprint by permission. All rights reserved.

Figure 5.1: From left, Tyra Ferrell (as Wanda Jenkins) and Valerie Harper (as Liz Gianni), in the television comedy City. Image dated January 1, 1990. Courtesy of Getty Images (CBS via Getty Images).

Figure 5.2: Actress Tyra Ferrell attends the VH1 Big in 2015 with Entertainment Weekly Awards at Pacific Design Center on November 15, 2015 in West Hollywood, California. Courtesy of Getty Images (Photo by Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic). Reprint by permission. All rights reserved.

Figures 6.1–6.20: Original Press Kit. Courtesy of Columbia Pictures. Copyright © Columbia Pictures. Reprint by permission. All rights reserved.

Figure P.3: One sheet movie poster, Boyz N the Hood. Columbia Pictures. Courtesy of Getty Images (Photo by John D. Kisch/Separate Cinema Archive/ Getty Images).

Figure E.2: Shelia Morgan Ward (Chief Executive/Business Manager, New Deal Productions) with son, John Singleton, attending a post-inauguration party in Washington DC on January 20, 1993 for Maya Angelou. This event took place in the evening after Angelou’s public recitation of her poem “On the Pulse of Morning,” featured in the 1993 Presidential Inauguration of William Jefferson Clinton as President of the United States. Courtesy of Shelia Morgan Ward. All rights reserved.

←xi |
 xii→

“Between Apocalypse and Redemption: John Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood,” by Michael Eric Dyson, was previously published in Cultural Critique, No. 21 (Spring, 1992), pp. 121–141. Copyright © University of Minnesota Press.

“Mapping the Hood: The Genealogy of City Space in Boyz N the Hood and Menace II Society, by Paula J. Massood, was previously published in Cinema Journal, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Winter, 1996), pp. 85–97. Copyright © University of Texas Press.

“Two Takes on Boyz N the Hood,” by Thomas Doherty and Jacquie Jones, was previously published in Cineaste, Vol. 18, Issue 4 (December 1991), pp. 16–19. Copyright © Cineaste.

“A Gritty Boyz N the Hood Ushers in a New Phase of Cinema,” by Kenneth Turan, was previously published in The Los Angeles Times, July 12, 1991. © The Los Angeles Times. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

“A Chance to Confound Fate,” by Janet Maslin, was previously published in The New York Times, July 12, 1991. © The New York Times. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Boyz N the Hood (R),” by Desson Howe, was previously published in The Washington Post, July 12, 1991. © The Washington Post. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Boyz N the Hood (R),” by Rita Kempley, was previously published in The Washington Post, July 12, 1991. © The Washington Post. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

←xii | xiii→

Acknowledgments

There are several people I owe a debt of gratitude. I could not have completed this text without your generosity of heart. I am grateful indeed.

Special thanks to—

John Singleton: Thank you for being so generous with your time and granting me access to your heart and creative spirit. You inspire me!

Shelia Morgan Ward: I am so appreciative of you. First, for facilitating the opportunity to connect with John and supporting the central focus of the book. Second, for being so beautiful! Thank you for gifting me with a glimpse into the strength, power and encouragement John spoke so openly about and fondly of.

Stephanie Allain: Thank you for your kind and immediate response to this invitation. No one is more fitting! I’m so honored. You are a staunch supporter of independent filmmakers. Thank you for all the things you do and this grace gift too.

Dr. Cornel West: Thank you for your critical work that stretches me and keeps me in touch with my head and heart. I am grateful to you for taking the time to encourage me. Incredible!

Dr. Donald Bogle: I have been steeped in your work for nearly two decades now. I could not do any of the work I do without including your scholarship as a framing ←xiii | xiv→resource. Thank you for being so kind and supportive, for literally cheering me on toward completion. I really needed your thoughtful words of encouragement.

Tyra Ferrell: What a precious gift you are! Thank you for sharing your journey with me and making me feel like family. I learned so much from your thoughtful reflection. Your story is arresting.

Steve Nicolaides: One word: wow! I cannot begin to tell you how much fun I had speaking with you. Your clarity, reflection, joy, humor, advocacy, and passion for storytelling leaps off the page. Thank you for accepting this invitation.

Gordon Parks Foundation: I am honored and humbled by the opportunity to include these amazing images in the book. Thank you.

Dr. Jennifer Reid: Thank you for your thoughtful support and proofing.

For the images and critical resources, a special thanks to—

Columbia Pictures

Margarita Diaz and Gilbert Emralino, Sony Pictures Entertainment

Cassie Blake, Academy of Motion Pictures of Arts and Sciences Film Archive

Maria Barrera

Getty Images

KCRW

Cineaste, Cinema Journal, Cultural Critique, and Journal of Black Studies

The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post

Special thanks to Pepperdine University colleagues

Undergraduate Research Assistants: Olivia Robinson and Brittany New Professor Sally Bryant: Thank you for being an invaluable resource.

Vice Provost, Dr. Lee Kats and Provost, Rick Marrs

Assistant Provost for Research, Katy Carr

Seaver Research Council Grant (SRC)

Office of Research and Strategic Initiatives

Academic Year Undergraduate Research Initiative (AYURI)

Payson Library, Pepperdine University

←xiv | xv→

Foreword John Singleton Changed My Life

Figure F.1: Stephanie Allain and John Singleton at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, “Black Snake Moan” Premiere. Courtesy of Stephanie Allain private collection. All rights reserved.

 

 

John Singleton changed my life. I had a vague notion of working in the film business, of making movies. But when he showed up in my office to discuss working as a reader, and eventually shared the screenplay he just finished for Boyz N the Hood, I discovered a profound sense of purpose.

As a black man who grew up in LA, he channeled his experience, his reaction to what was happening in the streets into cinematic language. He did it without pretention, without fronting, but instead with honest emotion and learned technique from his years at USC. He made it clear that it was okay to not buckle ←xv | xvi→to peer pressure and to listen to the wisdom of his mother and of his father’s words: to simply get out of the car, to walk away from violence and vengeance.

When we sat through the first test screenings, a crowd of boisterous young men jeered at Tre (Boyz central character) for heeding that call, John was confused. He was embarrassed that doing the right thing was publicly lambasted by the kids in the theater. And yet they came. And the culture changed. Kids stopped killing kids from the cowardice of their vehicles. Youth peer criminal violence plummeted. He was nominated for two Academy Awards and his future was his for the taking.

I think he lost some of that innocence in the work that followed. I think he wanted to be seen as tough and not soft. I think his heart hardened just a little bit to protect what he considered black manhood, which the world mythologized into something it’s not.

Figure F.2: Stephanie Allain and John Singleton at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, “Black Snake Moan” Premiere. Courtesy of Stephanie Allain private collection. All rights reserved.

Thankfully the work remains as a testament to his prodigious talent and equally large heart. Not only did Boyz N the Hood change Hollywood, it saved ←xvi | xvii→lives. And as for me, it created a path to dedicate my life’s work to amplifying underrepresented voices.

And for that I’m forever grateful.

Thanks to Dr. Carr for this book that illuminates and further preserves John’s legacy.

Stephanie Allain

Homegrown Pictures

Executive Producer, Producer

Former Senior Vice President of Production Columbia Pictures

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 xviii→

Filmography

72nd Emmy Awards

Nominee, Outstanding Variety Special (Live), 2020

Stephanie Allain, Produced by The Oscars, ABC

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Leimert Park (TV Series) (2021)

Really Love (executive producer) (2020)

Women in Film Presents: Make it Work! (TV Special) (2020)

The Oscars (TV Special) (2020)

Dear White People (TV Series) (2017–2019)

Juanita (2019)

Life- Size 2 (TV Movie) (2018)

The Weekend (2018)

Burning Sands (2017)

Crushed (TV Movie) (2016)

French Dirty (2015)

Beyond the Lights (2014)

Dear White People (2014)

Una Y Otra Y Otra Vez (Short) (2013)

40 (Short) (2002)

Peeples (2013)

Granny on Family, Bobby on Art (Short) (2010)

Hurricane Season (2009)

Black Snake Moan: Something New (2006)

Biker Boyz (2003)

Hustle & Flow (2005)

Good Boy (2003)

Rat (2000)

The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland (1999)

Muppets from Space (1999)

Buddy (1997)

←xviii | xix→

Preface

I am a native Angelino and have an affinity for my town, Los Angeles. I am one of those native born that cannot imagine living anywhere else in the world—not because I have not been anywhere else, because I have, but because I love this town. Its crooked palm trees that lean from the repeated heavy evening breezes, the oh-so-delightful 70° weather even in our “winters,” the vibrant citrus fruit available every month of the year, the salty air that wreaks havoc on the exterior of buildings casting a slightly dilapidated air of coastal living, and now, even the dearth of water, as we exit our fifth year of drought, that makes rainy days all the more grace-filled—these all speak of home to me. LA has a certain je ne sais quoi. Its richness of cultural diversity and artsy landscape resonates with who I am and who I am becoming.

Ironically, I did not quite understand the profundity of this resolute spirit until I experienced Crash (2004). I knew it in my head, but discovered it as a deep abiding presence in my heart. Some films I watch, but this one I experienced. After screening it, I wept bitterly—all the way out of the theater to my car as I gestured goodbye to my friend who was eager to discuss my response, but I could not. I cried all the way home as I drove through the canyon to Los Angeles from the valley. Initially, after I settled down, I thought perhaps I was disturbed that ←xix | xx→Peter (Larenz Tate), a young black male, dies senselessly at the end of the film to prove a disturbing point, compounded by the fact that the actor Larenz Tate who “dies” is a dear childhood friend. His brothers, Larron and Lahmard Tate, were like family to me; he was the youngest amongst us. We all had the same theatrical agent and manager at the time. I knew it was not that simple, but I could not articulate what I was feeling for some time.

It took me over a year to figure out why the film affected me so deeply. I realized I had a hard time coming to terms with the reality that my Los Angeles was depicted as being so bitterly divided and wrestling with racism, sexism, and classism in such a destructive—dehumanizing—way. I thought, “After all, Los Angeles was not Spike Lee’s Brooklyn in Do the Right Thing (1989) whose mise-en-scène radiated sweltering heat to evoke the seething underbelly of racial tension in that cloistered community.” Or, was it? I was confounded. “Surely Lee’s disruptive Brechtian montage of racial epitaphs in the middle of the film, after Mookie and Pino argue about the definition of what black is and ain’t, does not pertain to me.” In the end, I realized I needed to come to terms with this capricious Los Angeles Crash posits as broken and listless from its lack of capacity to love. My guttural moaning was about the disturbing depiction of Tate’s fictive demise at the end of the narrative and admittedly, my close connection with him and his family from childhood. It was an unsettling thing to witness and of which to understand the import of. Peter, the character, was a beautiful, articulate, yet misguided young man who had a future ahead of him and a family who loved him. He was murdered by a naïve and skittish officer of the law who intended to do Peter a favor by giving him a ride to his next destination (and in this case, death).

This ironic and epiphanic moment with Crash about Los Angeles was pivotal for me. I had to contend with the fictive space I created about this beautifully diverse-cool-quirky-fresh-breakfast egg-white-omelet with spinach-town I love.

After Crash, I discovered Boyz, literally and figuratively. I knew of the devastating reality of gang violence and the terror that became a blight on the city in the 1980s, but never spent any deep reflective time wrestling with the impact of this reality on all the lives involved, including my own.

When John Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood (1991) was released, I was too oblivious, far too distant from the narrative as an artsy eclectic loner to even think to go see the film, too distant to understand Singleton’s deep love for his community and desire to see profound change regarding young adults, especially young men. I initially screened Boyz about a decade after its 1991 release and found it gripping, but when I taught the film in an upper division film class to undergraduates, after my described reality check in 2004 by Crash, I came to understand ←xx | xxi→it viscerally. Coupled with the heady institutional/sociocultural academic “stuff” in my consciousness, with my whimsical notions of Los Angeles in check, I truly understood the funk that Boyz signifies and signifies on (through both its use of classical cinematic language and its black socio-political and historical frame). It caused me to touch upon deep-rooted communal and ancestral emotional stuff. When I consciously connected the reality in Boyz with my own, the blues came down on me like the heavy marine layer that situates itself over the Los Angeles skyline during what we call “June Gloom”—the kind of cloudy midst that the sun at high noon in SoCal cannot burn away. I liken this experience with Boyz to what Dr. Cornel West calls the “embodiment of the blues lyrically expressed.” I could hear what Singleton hoped to evoke through cinematic language with melodious precision. Singleton’s pitch-perfect filmic plaintive provocation is what poet Langston Hughes describes in his iconic poem, “The Weary Blues” as “Sweet blues! Coming from a black man’s soul. / O Blues!” Singleton “with his ebony hands on each ivory key / He made that poor piano [Boyz] moan with melody. O Blues!”

Details

Pages
442
Year
2018
ISBN (PDF)
9781433146381
ISBN (ePUB)
9781433146398
ISBN (Hardcover)
9781433146374
DOI
10.3726/b11480
Language
English
Publication date
2018 (April)
Keywords
film studies urban cinema black masculinity John Singleton African American Culture African American Cinema black aesthetic tradition cultural studies Boyz N the Hood Joi Carr
Published
New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Oxford, Wien, 2018. XXVI, 442 pp., 35 color ill., 5 b/w ill.

Biographical notes

Joi Carr (Author)

Joi Carr is a Professor of English and Film Studies at Pepperdine University, Seaver College, currently serving as the Director of Film Studies and Creative/Program Director of the Multicultural Theatre Project (an interdisciplinary art-based critical pedagogy). She received her PhD from Claremont Graduate University.

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