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Hustle and Flow Craig Brewer on Memphis Hip-hop, Art and Circumstance Written by [ Lee Shoquist ] There's a stinging moment midway into Craig Brewer's audacious Hustle and Flow, where a two-bit Memphis pimp and his youthful best girl and "business partner" confront each other on the dynamics of their strained working arrangement. Up to this point, they've been scraping out a living in trade on each other's backs. She cries out for a different life. The boss listens closely. What does she want, he asks? The tangled child-woman replies, "Something else." It's precisely this hustle that drives Flow, the Sundance winner and character rich drama masquerading as a slick urban rap flick that shakes us up and dares us to look with open eyes and hearts at its motley family of prostitutes, pimps and wannabe rappers with a big dreams of "something else" and a few ideas how to get there. But something deeper is at work here. In this sweaty, late-night cruise, hand-to-mouth milieu, writer-director Brewer has captured the complex essence of an artist and his life, and how they are inextricably linked. We see, and believe-so rare in movies-that we are experiencing a birthing of musical artistry and the process of creation-hip-hop, no less-and it unfolds with moving urgency. It's a neat trick offering career-topping performances from Terrence Howard, Anthony Anderson, Taraji P. Henson and memorably, Taryn Manning as that hot young thing too smart for her own good. I caught up with Craig Brewer recently to chat about why Hustle and Flow feels so authentically Memphis, the dynamics of mounting such offbeat characters for the mainstream, and why hip-hop music is the most exciting art form he's ever seen. And yes, you read that right. Lee Shoquist, ChicagoFilm.com: It's rare that a movie uses its location so memorably. This is a real Memphis story, it reeks of atmosphere for a 'scene' that I assume exists there. Are you from there? Craig Brewer: Well, no. LS: I should have read the press notes more carefully! CB: I've been living there for about eleven years now but my whole family is from Memphis. My dad and mother got married and they quickly tried to leave Memphis. But my sister and I always knew that we were from Tennessee, and we would spend our summers back in Tennessee. You never quite leave the south. Eventually you always need to come home. You can't help but say, 'I'm from this area.' A lot of my life I lived in California, where my dad was stationed with his work. I just kind of moved around a lot after that. But I've been living back 'home' for eleven years. I think because I was away that I got to see what I always found beautiful about Memphis and the south, and exciting. My dad always kept music as our touchstone to home when I was growing up. I was really raised on a lot of Stax Records, a lot of Sam and Dave and a lot of Otis Redding. When I got into high school, I started really getting into blues. I used to tell people, this is kind of weird, I always felt like some of my gay friends in high school-because I was in theater-I really loved the blues. I bought a lot of blues albums in high school and yet I was afraid to tell people about this. So you have this strange thing where you don't feel like you should be ashamed of something, and yet you're really quiet about something because you feel like it makes you very odd. I remember my junior year in high school I went back to Memphis for the summer, and I went down on Beale Street, and Beale Street wasn't this Disneyland like it is now, and I bought this shirt that said 'Blues, Memphis, Tennessee.' I think I just wore that shirt out because it was like my way of 'coming out.' I'd go to parties and I'd want to put on Muddy Waters. I'd want to put on Sunhouse Records. That was the time when INXS was really big. LS: There's a particularly poignant idea in the film about wanting to get somewhere but not knowing quite how. You have these dreams that seem so far away. CB: Yes! There's this shot that I always think about, after DJay has kicked out Lexus, and it's really hard. There's this moment where he's at the river underneath the old bridge in Memphis, and there's something about the Mississippi River to me that has always been hypnotic. Just staring at this lake (Michigan), there's something that's still and feels like it's contained, where the Mississippi River feels like if you get caught in it you're gone. It's moving so fast. I really think of the Delta as this Mesopotamia of modern music where all this pain and passion collided into this musical form that eventually started eking out and it went to the areas in the Mississippi. When they came up to Memphis, a lot of these blues men realized that they could hustle their music. Like B.B. King-he didn't come up to Beale Street to get famous-he came up there to eat. There's something about that Mississippi River and it takes a lot for people to hop that. It takes more than a bridge. It's hard to let go of where you are and ultimately go into this big unknown. I think that's one reason why I was very distrustful about anybody making the movie other than me. There were studios that wanted to make it without me. It had nothing to do with bringing in somebody who would be better. It was about bringing in a Black filmmaker. For me I didn't think it was a Black story as much as I felt it was a Memphis story, because Memphis has this history of makeshift studios and taking your limitations and turning them into something. I could tell you stories that are very similar between Ike Turner and Al Capone, who is the rapper who wrote two of the songs in the movie. There are comparisons. There is a direct line between not having something and turning that into something, and ultimately that is what makes you unique. I just felt when I was hanging out with these rappers, I was seeing something that I connected to as an independent filmmaker making movies on video and cutting them. LS: I'm curious about the ad campaign for the film so far. When you mention that the studios had reservations, it would seem that one of the posters I've seen depicts this film more sensationally than it is-it looks like an urban thriller targeted for a specific audience. The film isn't that, at all. It's a character study. CB: I am inspired by the movies of the Blackspoitation era, but it's usually in a musical sense. I know why Isaac Hayes wrote the music to Shaft. Isaac Hayes' music, and a lot of these cats that roll around, sound and act and look like a Blaxploitation movie. They do today. That's why DJay, with his curled and pressed hair and that lingo that he speaks is not a cliché where I live. You see that just driving into work. Even though it is a character study, the one thing (producer) John Singleton kept on pressing me on, and he was right to do it, was 'don't be afraid to embrace exploitation elements.' Don't be afraid to make Nola look hot. Don't be afraid to film the car as if it's the best car in the world. Of course I was going to be doing that. That's something that was very important to me. But it does help having a prominent African-American filmmaker tell you, 'Don't let any of this bullshit stop you from making a movie that ultimately I know I would want go see,' meaning Singleton and a Black audience, and every audience. You can do as much as you can in terms of making these characters rich, but movies are still are movies. That really spoke to me because I'm a guy who grew up on 80s movies. LS: Me too. CB: I look back on them and even though they're cheesy at times, I was really influenced by Footloose. I was really influenced by Purple Rain. LS: I have them all on DVD. I look at them now and the magic is gone… almost. But sometimes I just want to lock myself in on Friday night and watch them. I even eat food I ate in the 80s. I think it's because it was an innocent time, or someplace I like to go back to. CB: Do you hear, like, "Maniac" from Flashdance… LS: Of course! Michael Sembello! CB: You're like, 'whoa!' I can't remember the last time I saw a movie where I wanted to go get the soundtrack and relive that movie through listening to that music over and over. LS: I wore mine out. I'm sure you did too. Over and over. CB: I get them on CD now. LS: "Let's Hear it for the Boy"-Denice Williams! CB: "Let's Hear it for the Boy!" Yeah, but those movies… The Outsiders. Then you grew up a little bit and you got into Rumble Fish, you know? Really, if you look at Hustle and Flow and you know about those influences, I made it essentially for men in their 30s. The movie is about men in their 30s. That's why there are references in there like the Fat Boys. There's young rap kids in my audience (who) don't even know what the hell I just said! They know about Purple Rain. But people in their 30s are just like, 'I just made sure "Purple Rain" got played for the ladies!' You remember that "Purple Rain" was the dance song that in junior high, and you actually got to get close and had to be careful not to get a boner. But "Purple Rain" was the song that all of the girls wanted to slow dance with and they needed a guy for that. So there is this certain mythological element to Hustle that is totally in the tradition of a Flashdance or a Footloose. I'm not too ashamed of that. It's something I am actually rather proud that we accomplished! LS: Terrence Howard is off the chart in the film, but honestly, the women really affected me. Every one of the supporting characters is complex enough to have her own film. Taryn Manning is amazing. She reminded me a bit of Bijou Phillips here. CB: Yes. When I was thinking of Nola, Bijou was brought up to me as well. Here's what's interesting. Not many people know this, but I started putting together what I called 'The Look Book.' I started clipping pictures out of magazines and putting them into a folder. There was this one picture that I had of this young, blonde, freckle-faced girl with sunglasses, standing in front of a trailer, like in a trailer park. I cut that out and put it in the book, and when we started making the movie, somebody said, 'Wow, you've got a picture of Taryn.' I said, 'What do you mean?' She said, 'That's Taryn Manning.' Then Taryn came in, not to audition, but just to meet. She came in and sat down and started talking to me. I never read Taryn. I started looking at here and knowing that I've always been in love with this girl to be Nola. I already cut out her picture, but then she came in and started talking, and her voice, and she had the freckles across the nose, I was like, this is Jodie Foster out of Taxi Driver. LS: How about the scene where she has to get the microphone? What she says and the way he reacts, there's really something interesting going on between them. She really is critical to his success in many ways. He looks at her in that moment and he really listens and hears her for the first time. CB: Yes. Because he's only three steps away from being that himself. That's the one thing that I really wanted to do with this movie as opposed to other pimp movies. This was not going to be a movie where he was going to be rolling around with a jewel-encrusted goblet filled with Cristal. He wasn't going to be in silks or anything like that. These guys that I know are like chauffeurs. They will bring girls from shake joint to shake joint. The lowest of the low are these guys that are really walking the track with their girls, three steps behind them, a car rolls up, they'll call them out and make the negotiations right there. They are not dressed up. They don't have any jewels on. They're gonna get rolled. DJay and Nola-that relationship is very important to me. Of the guys and girls that I've known, it is more of a partnership. Are there pimps who control and intimidate their women? Absolutely, and it's kind of horrible how they do it where they basically keep them hooked on some element, whether it's drugs or whether it's just paying rent or money or making sure their kids are fed. But still, DJay never is having sex with any of these women. He's not even thinking about sex. Through the whole movie, I find it very interesting that he is never, ever like, 'Damn, look at that hot girl.' He's never in that element, ever. And it's because he and Nola and Lexus, they all work in that element. People always ask me, 'Why do you have pimps, strippers and hookers in your movie?' I think that when my wife worked as a dancer for about two years in Memphis, there was a time when we experienced people who operated in these kinds of jobs. They were jobs. They were tedious, like 'God, I can't wait until this shift is over. My feet hurt. If I have to talk to these motherf$$$ers again…' It always interests me. My favorite image in the film is DJay and Lexus just walking out to the car at the end of her shift. I remember those times, where everybody is leaving. They are tired. They are hungry. You eat at 4AM, so you usually eat poorly. You go to places that are open like CK, and it's this interesting nightlife where being a stripper or a hustler or a pot dealer is this tedious thing, where if you had a choice to do something else, you would definitely do it. That's what I wanted to show more than anything. The first twenty minutes of the movie takes an adjustment period for people. Once the music kicks in, you're really into it. Until that time you're just kind of sitting in the car with DJay and Nola while tricks roll by. LS: There's a lot accomplished in the way you go into that sweaty flophouse. There are a lot of personal dynamics in that 'family.' Especially with that character of Shug once she starts singing and sort of comes into her own. CB: Taraji (P. Henson) started hanging out with some of the girls on the block and when she came in dressed as Shug, she had baby powder on her chest. I don't know if you noticed that or not. She's got visible baby powder you can see on her chest. That's a tiny detail from my city that I've seen a lot. What it is, is that girls in the summertime, where there's no air conditioning in their houses, put baby powder on their chest so the sweat won't roll down and make their shirt wet in between their breasts. When she came in, it was like I was so glad I had actors are working on this movie instead of stars who would see a detail like that but would say they don't want that on their chest. Yet what happens is Shug completely steals people's hearts in this movie. LS: Talk a little bit about the creation of that great song. We see many biopics of artists in the movies, but this little film really gets into the heart of the artistic process. By that I mean that it really shows what motivates an artist, how is work is borne from his life, and actually how the art gets produced. It's complete. And it seems so interesting to see that strange sort of family putting it all together. CB: I have often thought that the people who don't get Hustle and Flow will probably never get rap or hip-hop. I hate it when people don't think of it as an art form. Because I know rappers and I see how they do it, and I think to myself that it's the most exciting art form I've ever seen. When we started creating the music I met with Al Capone, whom I've known for a long time. He's not a big famous rapper. He's a lot like DJay-hustling. I started asking him about his process. He said, 'I just get in a zone, however I get there. I start thinking of something, like a hook. I start thinking of something that I could repeat over and over again.' He started figuring out this tune in front of me, in his head. He said, 'Wait a minute, it needs this type of a high-hat.' He goes over to his MPC and he already puts in that high-hat. T-T-T-T-T, it's happening. Then he starts putting in the bottom kick. He doesn't even have the beat down, he's figuring out this hook, and the first thing he realizes is that a really good hook just came to him. He's also apologetic to me, like, 'Craig, I'm so sorry. I'm gonna lose it.' He calls his own voice mail and starts rapping into his phone, because he's on this high, this rant of what I will call creativity. You know when something just hits you, and it's like you're taking dictation? That's what he was doing right in front of me. You can say that it's miles away from Van Gough, but I can say probably not. If you want to call it noise you could, but that's really dismissing the fact that of all the things this guy could do with his time, he decided to do something creative. When I started watching him do it I said this was the one thing that no one has done in movie yet. And what is shown is this frustrating, collaborative process where there is no spotlight on them. Nobody is asking DJay and any of his crew to make music. They're just making music. They're deciding to do it. It's not like there's a big concert somewhere where they are performing. It's the frustrations of locking yourself in this room creating some shit, and then eventually something really good comes out of that. People are always saying that they love those sequences. To me, it was always the core of the movie. Every studio I took it to was doing this thing called running numbers, where they want you to come up with a movie that your movie is like. That's when I really began to see the compartmentalized- I would never call it racism, but it is a profiling where if you have more than a certain amount of Black characters, then your movie must be this or that in order for a studio or financier to know how to make its money back. A movie like Crash, which has a multi- a lot of White people and a lot of Black people, then they can say, 'We did a great job. Look how many people it reached.' But when it's Hustle and Flow, the only movies they could compare it to were Menace to Society and Boyz in the Hood, which are nothing like Hustle and Flow. They said, 'You can't give us a name of a movie that it is like.' I said, 'I can give you the name of one that it is exactly like: The Commitments, by Alan Parker.' It's about these nobody Irish kids trying to make soul music, and you really are rooting for them as well. You're experiencing them rehearsing in an old warehouse, you see them on the road getting better, and then you see them being great. They said, 'You can't use The Commitments for us to run numbers on. There are no Black people in it.' That's when my heart started getting broken with Hollywood. LS: You're playing with some interesting angles here with Ludacris. Did you have to explain to him that this was not him, but rather, a character? CB: Oh, yeah. That's the only reason Ludacris played the role. Skinny Black is kind of the anti-Ludacris. He's a guy that as soon as he got paid, he left. Ludacris is touring the south all the time. He lives right there in Atlanta. He is a gracious, wonderful human being. Not to mention he's a stellar actor. He shows up professional, ready to rehearse. We said to him, 'We want you to be an asshole. This is about all of those guys who are giving you demo tapes. The villain in this movie needs to be this guy who is an absolute asshole.' So we put this platinum grill in his mouth and he did the whole do-rag, sunglasses type of thing. I think he's great in it. LS: What's the secret to taking characters on the fringe of what we normally expect to see in movies, outsiders if you will, who are not necessarily immediately likeable, and humanizing them like this? A good example of this also would be Gus Van Sant's Drugstore Cowboy. CB: I think there's a certain three-act structure to it that happens. You can do it with Scorsese or Cassavetes movies too, and Gus Van Sant. You can look at the characters and go, 'Whew, well those aren't me. They aren't anything like me. So now I'm just gonna see what these guys are all about.' Just shedding that connection or immediate, perceived connection, you now are watching the movie and experiencing these people. Then something happens and you realize they do have things in common with you. You've released that preconception of them and you've been walking down this narrative with them and you're now invested in their lives. And when they say, 'I'm scared,' or 'I need to change something in myself,' or 'I love her,' you're right there with them. And you come to the end of this process and you're like, 'Man, I can't believe I feel exactly like Michael Corleone. I can't believe I'm as naïve as Joe Buck, but there I am with my arm around Ratso Rizzo.' And we as an audience are weeping. Because halfway through that movie we became Ratso Rizzo or Joe Buck. It's a beautiful thing. I don't know why we don't do it so much anymore. We've had such a great time doing it throughout our narrative history. No one is Macbeth. No one is Richard III. No one is these kings. Yet we find out halfway through, we are. When it comes to working class people or complicated characters like hoods, there's always this element in the moviegoing machine that's like, 'Well, let's not go too far in that direction. We don't want to lop off a big chunk of the audience.' LS: There's a great scene in Crash where TV producer Tony Danza takes, coincidentally, Terrence aside and instructs him on such things and the danger of backing off from stereotypes. Too challenging for people. Let's switch gears here and talk about Anthony Anderson, who hits a career high here. Seems to me that you saw something else in him that no one else has up to this point. CB: Early on when we were trying to cast the movie, they said, 'If you could have anybody, who would you have?' I said, 'I'd like to have Anthony Anderson.' I saw Anthony in this one movie called Kingdom Come, that I didn't think was a great movie but there was a scene with Anthony and L.L. Cool J. I think they're talking in a clubhouse garage. Anthony started acting. He was in this scene and he was subtle. He wasn't playing the big comedy or anything like that. I was like, the only way the audience is going to ultimately embrace DJay and his girls is if they feel there is somebody who is their representative in this world, that represents their morality, their economics; even having a wife. Someone like Anthony that America had already become comfortable with then he gives them something different-just being a person in the room who is not a performer. I think he's outstanding. If there's something that I hope happens over the next couple years, it's just that there is more opportunity for actors to do things that aren't in their comfort zone. Look at what incredible things you get. LS: What happens to these characters after this film? CB: You know, I'll give you a scoop. I don't think I've told anybody this. I was on a plane last week and I fell asleep right when it took off from L.A. going to New York. I had been up all night the night before and slept the whole plane trip. It was like five hours I was out. People must have been climbing over me. When I landed - I remember - you know that, when you're asleep and it's kind of like, 'Oh, shit! What the hell was that?' Then you wake up. I dreamt this whole sequel of Hustle and Flow. LS: And? CB: It was pretty good. It was pretty interesting. So I know what happens to these characters. Whether or not I'll let everyone else know, I don't know! LS: Not going to be happily ever after, though. CB: No. Nothing in music ever really is happily ever after. LS: Will Nola be really successful? Will it be more her story this time? CB: I know this-no matter what, it needs to take place on the Chitlin circuit. It needs to take place on buses. It's all these gangstas out on the road that are also rappers themselves, and hustling for the same territory, which is like space on radios, deejays and clubs. It's not famous. It's that (gestures with finger and thumb) famous. Still fighting. LS: Almost famous, you could say. We'll be there. That's a movie we'd like to see. CB: Me too. Written by [ Lee Shoquist ] [ Home ] |
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