John Singleton changed the world with Boyz n the Hood
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John Singleton changed the world with Boyz n the Hood
When John Singleton snagged two Oscar nominations in 1992 for writing and directing his debut feature Boyz n the Hood, he made history twice over. At 24, he was the youngest nominee in Oscar history. And for the first time in its 64 years, the Academy had finally nominated an African-American filmmaker for Best Director.
But
Singleton — who died April 29 at age 51, almost two weeks after suffering a
debilitating stroke — was no flash in the pan. And though he rose to early
fame, in the 27 years following his historic nominations, the director, writer,
and producer went on to do something even more significant: He kept making good
movies.
And
with his films, he endeavored to do something that was radical in Hollywood
then, and still radical in Hollywood now: Telling black stories to America.
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Singleton shifted American cinema from the start of his career
Boyz n the Hood is the story of a group of teenagers in
South Central, centering on Tre (Gooding) — whose father (Fishburne) and
girlfriend (Long) are keeping him on the straight and narrow — and two of his
friends (Cube and Chestnut), who are drawn toward the neighborhood’s gangs.
The
the idea for the screenplay came from an idea Singleton proposed when applying to
film school at USC and Singleton was still a recent graduate when he got the
go-ahead to make it. “I was a smartass film student who thought he knew
everything about movies,” he said in 2016.
“When it got green-lit is when I got scared.”
Reportedly, Singleton was offered
$100,000 by the studio to walk away from directing the film
and hand it over to someone more experienced. But he refused. “I was not going
to have somebody from Idaho or Encino direct this movie,” Singleton said.
The
the movie screened in the prestigious Un Certain Regard section at the 1991 Cannes
Film Festival and premiered in July, almost a year before the widespread unrest
in LA around the Rodney King verdict. It cracked open a way of seeing black
life in a place like South Central that would have ripple effects for decades,
showing not just family and street life, but the death of a young black man in
the midst of a story of promise.
“Singleton
showed us how our West Coast cousins were living,” writes the critic Eisa
Nefertari Ulen, in the wake of Singleton’s death. “And, in a
stunning cinematic montage, he also showed us how they were dying.”
One
of the most memorable scenes in Boyz n the Hood comes when Doughboy (played by Ice Cube)
looks for coverage of his friend’s death on the news, and discovers it hasn’t
even registered as news:
“Turned
on the TV this morning,” Doughboy says. “... Either they don’t know...don’t
show...or don’t care about what’s goin’ on in the ‘hood.” Young black men die,
but it’s not headline fodder.
Doughboy’s statement felt prophetic in the early ‘90s, and still does decades later. And
Singleton never backed down from showing black American life in his subsequent
work, from 1993’s Poetic Justice (which starred Janet Jackson and Tupac), 1995’s Higher Learning, and 1997’s Rosewood to action films like 2000’s Shaft and 2003’s 2 Fast 2
Furious. In 1992, he directed
the nine-minute music video for Michael Jackson’s “Remember the Time,” which was marketed as a
“short film” and imagined a story about Jackson (as a
magician) and the ancient Egyptian queen Nefertiti. Chance the Rapper tweeted that
the video “literally changed my life.”
More
recently, Singleton also directed episodes of the TV shows Empire and Billions, and he was nominated for an award by the
Directors Guild of America for helming the episode of FX’s Emmy-winning The People Vs.
OJ Simpson: American Crime Story entitled “The Race Card.” He also developed, wrote, and
produced the FX crime drama Snowfall, about the crack epidemic in LA in 1983,
which is currently shooting its third season.
Singleton
was often critical of Hollywood’s tendency to favor white directors to tell
black stories, writing blisteringly in
2013 that “even when there are black directors or writers
involved, some of the films made today seem like they are sifted of soul. It is
as if the studios are saying, ‘‘We want it black, just not that black.’”
a year later, addressing students at Loyola Marymount University, Singleton said that
Hollywood “want[s] black people to be who [Hollywood wants] them to be, as
opposed to what they are. The black films now — so-called black films now —
they are great. They’re great films. But they’re just product. They’re not
moving the bar forward creatively.”
“When
you try to make it homogenized when you try to make it appeal to everybody and
anybody, then you don’t have anything that’s special,” he continued.
The outpouring of tributes
following news of Singleton’s death has made it clear that
he, at least, lived up to his own standard. “John Singleton was an innovator -
he came with drive & a creative vision when people of color didn’t have the
same visibility we do now,” tweeted Halle Berry.
“He not only made me a movie star he made me a filmmaker also,” wrote Ice Cube.
And Jordan Peele,
a pioneering filmmaker of black stories in his own right, added: “John
was a brave artist and a true inspiration. His vision changed everything.”
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