A PROMISING YOUNG father and upcoming college football
star is gunned down near his home. Another young man is shot
in the head at close range and falls over dead into his girlfriend's
lap. The Aryan Nation preys on college students at a peace rally,
beating and gunning them down. The people of an entire town
are lynched and their homes are burned to the ground. One man
signals the torching of each house, the murder of each person.
He is the mastermind behind every plot. Every shot of every
frame has his indelible mark.
The first inch of this footage began taking shape in 1986, in
the hands of high school senior John Singleton, at Pasadena
City College. This story probably sounds like it's about a monster
the caliber of Charles Manson. In truth it's about a young director
with a vivid imagination and a yearning to tell a good story.
To look at Singleton you see an attractive, unassuming, young
man peering from behind wire rimmed glasses. He seems like the
kind of person you've gone to school with forever. Attentive
and studious, always so quiet, the wallflower scholar. Right.
Look again. This wallflower is in full bloom.
| Singleton describes his PCC experience as…
"One hot minute" |
Singleton describes his PCC experience as, "One hot minute."
Get ready to dance, we must be on the face of the sun! "What
really changed my life was I took a cinematography course at PCC.
It was there that I really got a chance to get a hold of some
great equipment. For my first short film, I had access to editing
equipment and the cameras."
In 1985, a young Singleton enrolled in a PCC summer school biology
class. His college 'B' would become a high school 'N. He returned
to PCC in 1986 to try film making classes. Later, Singleton attended
San Bernardino City College taking chemistry, but it was at PCC
he found true chemistry: film making. Singleton took his first
cinematography class under PCC instructor Jack Akien, an alumnus
of University of Southern California, who recommended the high
schooler for admittance into his alma mater. There, Singleton
went on to earn a bachelor's degree in Film Writing. Singleton's
parents paid for classes at community college; however, he had
to pay his way through the screen writing program at USC with
student loans. His junior and senior years he paid for school
by winning the $17,000 Jack Nicholson Screen Writing Award. He
also won the prestigious Robert Riskin Memorial Screen Writing
Award. Through awards such as these and other accolades, Singleton
attracted the attention of Creative Artists Agency. The agency
signed Singleton as a college senior and negotiated a $6 million
budget from Tri-Star for his critically acclaimed film, "Boyz
N the Hood" (1991). TriStar's decision was based solely on
his writing. They never saw any of his student films.
His
topics may sound monstrous and vile, but Singleton has a unique
way of dealing with society's demons: head on. Any one of his
films could be the topic of a graduate thesis study of film as
literature and the classic struggle of good against evil. Challenging
ideas are central to his movies: "Boyz," "Poetic
Justice" (1993), "Higher Learning," (1995) and
"Rosewood," (1997). The violence in his work is in full
contact with reality, a reflection of the violence in the real
world. His character driven films often reflect a main theme of
human contact. His work is all about bridging gaps and overcoming
differences between people. He wants to acknowledge and embrace
humanity. Teaching people about violence by bringing it to them,
this is Singleton. He believes Hollywood has desensitized viewers
to violence. With the zeal of a sadist, Singleton wants to re-sensitize
us to the pain and hardship around us. By introducing us to characters,
seducing us into their lives and making us care, he hopes to make
a scorching impact on our senses as we witness their pain. He
reminds us that the violence he portrays is not for good box office
receipts. It's real. "There's not a lot of violence in my
films, but there's a lot of tension," said the young filmmaker.
"What makes people uncomfortable is I make you feel something
about violent acts. If somebody gets killed in one of my films,
or hurt, you feel something. It makes you care."
As a writer and director of films, Singleton encourages young
black men to get their acts together and take responsibility for
themselves and their children. Especially their sons.
In "American Screenwriter," Singleton referred to "Boyz
n the Hood" as, "a coming-of-consciousness, rite of
passage story." The film made him the youngest Academy Award
nominee for Best Director-unseating Orson Welles from his reign
of 50 years. He is also the only black director ever nominated.
The film also received a nomination for Best Screenplay. All this
happened before Singleton was a quarter of a century old. Perhaps
the young director's crowning achievement with the success of
"Boyz," was paying off his student loans within eight
months of graduation. What's next for this wunderkind? He directed
the rock video, "A Time to Remember," with Michael Jackson,
Magic Johnson and Eddie Murphy.
In Michael D'Orso's book, "Judgment Day: the Ruin and Redemption
of a Town Called Rosewood," Singleton wrote a 30 page as-told-to-essay
with Akosua Busia. A chapter length interview with Singleton can
be found in the 1993 book "American Screenwriter," by
Karl Schanzer and Thomas Lee Wright.
This summer Singleton's latest film, "Woo," starring
Jada Pinkett, will be released. Next year he will release his
latest directorial effort, a remake of the "blaxplotation"
film, "Shaft."
The writer/director continues to participate in education by guest
lecturing and teaching. Last Spring, he could be found giving
a guest lecture in a class called "Moving up the Hollywood
Food Chain," at UCLA's Continuing Education Program. The
class was taught by his agent, Jeremy Zimmer, of United Talent
Agency. Returning to USC, Singleton taught Advanced Directing
for Graduate students, last semester. Singleton highly recommends
college courses for high school students. "There's no way
to lose if you apply yourself," he said.
The
film is, at its heart, a basic coming-of-age story, but it had
what was a fresh perspective at the time. At the center is Tre
Styles (Cuba Gooding Jr.), a teen caught between the steady,
forceful guidance of his father, Furious (Laurence Fishburne,
still billed here as "Larry"); and the inescapable
violence of his South Central Los Angeles neighborhood. The
setting and story basics have become rather commonplace in cinema,
but Boyz is the original, paving the way for the entire
"gangsta"/"hood" genre.
But Boyz's triumph did and does not lie solely in its
setting and perspective. That aside, it is simply a brilliantly
crafted work, a film full of memorable individual moments of
power. The first moments that spring to mind when I think of
Boyz are two intense sequences that come at opposite
ends of the film: an early scene where an intruder breaks into
Furious and Tre's home, culminating in a bravura shot that starts
with a glimpse of Furious inside the house then pulls away through
a large bullet hole in the front door; and a late scene where
Tre seeks violent vengeance against an enemy as his father sits
stonefaced at home.
As striking as these and other individual moments in the film
are, even more indelible are their assembled impact. While a
modest film, Boyz tells an emotionally sweeping, true-to-life
story, which can undoubtedly be attributed to the fact that
much of the film derived from Singleton's real-life experiences.
He populates the film with sympathetic, recognizably human characters:
in addition to Tre and Furious, Tre's best friend Ricky (Morris
Chestnut), a high school football star; Ricky's gangsta brother
Doughboy (Ice Cube); Tre's girlfriend Brandi (Nia Long); and
Tre's successful mother Reva (Angela Bassett).
As one can see, Singleton displayed a keen casting instinct
right from the outset, assembling an ensemble whose members
mostly went on to bigger things. Bassett and the rechristened
"Laurence" Fishburne would re-team in 1993's What's
Love Got to Do with It and garner a matching pair of Academy
Award nominations in the process. Gooding won his Oscar category,
Best Supporting Actor, for his movie-stealing turn in 1996's
Jerry Maguire, in which he co-starred with another Boyz
cast member, Regina King, who currently has a thriving film
career herself. Ice Cube picked up a healthy film acting career
to go with his recording career following his debut in Boyz
(though he has yet to approach the heights of his performance
here). Long went on to co-star in two of 1997's best films,
the hit Soul Food and the underappreciated love jones.
Of course, the most notable career launched by Boyz
is Singleton's, and his work here earned him much-deserved Oscar
nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Director--becoming
the first African-American and the youngest person to be nominated
for the latter honor. While his subsequent efforts have not
approached the critical and popular acclaim of this landmark
debut, they are similar to Boyz in the sense that they
clearly reflect a distinctive cinematic voice that, while not
completely successful in every outing, never fails to be interesting.
After
his powerful debut, Boyz N the Hood, I eagerly anticipated
writer-director John Singleton's follow-up effort, Poetic
Justice. Although it had been surrounded by bad advance
word-of-mouth, most of which centered on Janet Jackson's lead
performance, the dramatic trailer of the film displayed the
emotional power and depth that had made Boyz so brilliant.
In short, I was expecting Poetic Justice to be a moving
drama with great emotional punch, which is not an outrageously
high request, given the enormous talent of its writer-director.
Sadly, I left the theatre underwhelmed and only slightly moved.
The film's first twenty minutes excellently set up the plight
of Justice (Jackson), a hairdresser who turns to writing poetry
to heal the pain left by the murder of her boyfriend. But all
emotional weight disappears and the film becomes lighter than
a feather when she goes on a journey from L.A. to Oakland with
her best friend Iesha (Regina King); Iesha's mailman boyfriend,
Chicago (Joe Torry); and his best friend, also a mailman, Lucky
(Tupac Shakur), aboard their mail truck. After an initial hatred,
Justice and Lucky begin to learn about each other, and Justice
finds the strength in her soul to allow herself to love again.
The central romance in Justice is the best aspect of
the film. Contrary to what other critics are saying, Jackson
proves to be the best of the recent crop of singers-turned-actresses,
more convincing and professional than Madonna and Whitney Houston
combined. Her inexperience as an actress only shows in one emotional
scene with Iesha where her tears look forced and phony. Jackson
and the charismatic Shakur make an appealing couple you root
for to get together.
The major flaw of the film is Singleton's screenplay. The characters
of Chicago and Iesha are totally unnecessary; their incessant
comic bickering is tiresome and serves only to take away valuable
screen time from the far more interesting relationship between
Justice and Lucky. The film would have been far more powerful
if it focused solely on the two main characters.
From a visual standpoint, Singleton the director is in top
form. Every scene is visually interesting, especially the striking
opening twenty minutes. But his storyline is a bit confused.
More attention seems to be paid to the relationship betwen Chicago
and Iesha than the dramatic relationship between Justice and
Lucky; a pivotal scene where Chicago hits Iesha is given more
emotional weight than one where Justice must confront her conflicting
feelings of love for Lucky and those of devotion to her dead
boyfriend.
Poetic Justice isn't nearly the disaster other critics
would leave you to believe, only a not-too-bad disappointment.
It is a quiet, personal story that should have been louder,
bolder, and even more personal, an interesting premise that
isn't given its full justice.
After
the critical and box office disappointment of Poetic Justice,
Singleton returned to more issue-minded cinema with 1995's Higher
Learning. The film follows a cross-section of students at
fictional Colombus University as they head down varied paths
during one tumultuous semester. The central characters are Malik
(Omar Epps), a freshman on a track scholarship; Kristen (Kristy
Swanson), a naive freshman out of Orange County, California;
and Remy (Michael Rapaport), also a freshman, whose alienation
leads him to join a group of Neo-Nazi skinheads. Kristen's storyline,
in which she is date raped and turns to the consoling arms of
Taryn (Jennifer Connelly), a lesbian, largely has little association
with the linked, racially-oriented ones of Malik and Remy, but
by film's end all three storylines converge in a dramatic fashion.
Thematically, though, all three main plot threads are consistently
linked in the sense they show how young people strive to find
their rightful niche in a university, much like they try to
find one in life in general, sometimes going down the wrong
path--as in the case of Remy, whose adopted ideology of hate
inevitably leads to violence. But it is with the skinheads that
Remy finds a sense of belonging and purpose, something he clearly
lacks in the film's opening stages. Kristen personifies young
people's natural fascination with the new and unexplored (in
her case, lesbianism). Malik, like so many young people, struggles
to find a sense of direction in general, not applying his best
efforts on the track, in the classroom, or anyone else, much
to the chagrin of his girlfriend Deja (Tyra Banks) and his political
science professor Mr. Phipps (Laurence Fishburne).
Higher Learning spoke a lot to me in its initial release,
which occurred during my first year at UCLA (which, coincidentally,
was where it was filmed). A film-minded student unable to attend
film school at the time, I also had difficulty trying to find
some sort of direction or meaning in my being there. (I never
did, but that's beside the point.) Even so, the film, while
good on the whole, was and still is a flawed endeavor. Higher
Learning has been chided as the preachiest of Singleton's
films, and it is; the explosive conclusion, while undeniably
effective, bludgeons the audience with its message of tolerance,
racial and otherwise. The idea of racial tolerance is obviously
the more prominent in Singleton's mind, and as such, Kristen's
storyline is not as clearly developed.
Nonetheless, Higher Learning is an entertaining and
thought-provoking film, bolstered by strong performances by
Epps (though one wonders what Singleton's original choice for
Malik, Tupac Shakur, would have done with the role), Swanson
(surprisingly), Rapaport, Connelly, Banks, and Singleton vets
Fishburne, Regina King (as Kristen's roommate), and Ice Cube
(as an Afrocentric student).
In
1923, the predominantly black town of Rosewood, Florida was
burned to ground, its population almost entirely wiped out,
by white men from the neighboring town of Sumner... all because
of a lie. This subject matter provides the basis of director
John Singleton's latest film, the absorbing and potent historical
drama Rosewood.
The event that triggers the massacre does not come until about
a half hour or so in, when one Fannie Taylor (Catherine Kellner),
a white housewife, claims that she was assaulted by a black
stranger (in actuality, she was assaulted by her lover, who
was also white). The exposition that precedes this incident,
which establishes everyday life in Rosewood, is slow going;
while it can easily be dismissed as a failure on the part of
Singleton and screenwriter Gregory Poirer, but it's actually
a smart move, for it eventually serves to highlight the human
toll of the ensuing massacre and serves as a counterpoint to
all the brutality that follows. Poirer's script believably shows
how this single claim sets off the whole horrific chain of events,
how a search for one man snowballs into an all-out hunt against
an entire race. There is also a great understanding of the mob
mentality, as we see the town's white sheriff (Michael Rooker)
join take part in all the killing even though he's never completely
convinced by Fannie's story.
Recently another Hollywood studio production, Ghosts of
Mississippi, documented an actual historical event and attempted
to address its impact on race relations in this country--only
to come off as glossy, self-important, uninvolving, and, most
of all, synthetic. Rosewood, on the other hand, does
feel authentic because it simply doesn't try too hard. Everything
on the film is done on a smaller scale--there are no superstars
on board to distract from the story, and Singleton, often criticized
for being overly preachy (a criticism that is not entirely undeserved),
lets the film's message be gleaned from the story itself instead
of bludgeoning the audience with it (which he did in his last
film, Higher Learning). He also doesn't smooth over the
material's rough edges; the killings aren't graphic to the point
of being exploitative, but they are graphic enough to convey
the sheer brutality and animal nature of the massacre.
Similarly subdued to equal effect are the actors. It goes without
saying that Ving Rhames, who plays Mann, the noble stranger
to town--who, with white shopkeeper John Wright (Jon Voight),
helps a number of women and children flee to safety--is a physically
commanding presence onscreen, and his brawn is well-suited to
the role. But there's real vulnerability and soul behind the
bulk, evident in his expressive eyes and in his warm scenes
with the charming Elise Neal, who plays Scrappie, a teen who
falls for Mann. Don Cheadle, as the vengeful Sylvester Carrier,
smartly doesn't overplay his character's rage--the controlled
fury he brings to the role is much more effective than any histrionics
would have been. The only actor who does resort to broad histrionics
is Kellner; while the woman who causes all the madness should
be shrill, she's shrill to the point of inducing a headache.
Singleton, who made such a memorable debut with 1991's Oscar-nominated
Boyz N the Hood, followed that effort with the disappointing
Poetic Justice and the mostly effective but underachieving
Higher Learning, leading some people to doubt his ability.
However, with his triumphant return to form with Rosewood,
his talent as a filmmaker should no longer be called into question.
Production notes from WB
http://www.movies.warnerbros.com/ROSEWOOD/cmp/prod.html
