In an industry that feeds on its young, first-time moviemakers survive to make a second or third film. Shaft marks John Singleton's fifth outing, one that many are calling his return to form. The early buzz is that an innovative release of the Shaft trailer on the internet has executives rethinking film marketing; the studio's hope is that surging website hits and high-scoring test screenings will herald a summer blockbuster...

Singleton has had to do a lot of growing up in the nine years since Boyz N the Hood made him a household name and garnered him Oscar nominations for best original screenplay and best director. The media had crowned him Spike's heir apparent, and the boffo box office receipts endeared him to Hollywood's powerbrokers. But in the years and movies that followed, Poetic Justice (1993), Higher Learning (1994) and Rosewood (1996),

Singleton watched his box office momentum slow to a grinding halt. At the same time that many critics spoke to his artistic growth, his maturing film grammar and visual storytelling skills, he struggled to repeat his early success with audiences.

Regarding what Shaft means to John Singleton, a well-known Hollywood producer said recently, "To be well-reviewed is great, but baby, this is show business, not show art. Singleton needs a hit like a crackhead. Once you've had a taste, success is very addictive."

Shaft

John Singleton was in great spirits on the day of this interview. He'd just returned from a fishing trip after putting the finishing touches on his new movie. He was outspoken, candid, and brimming with the confidence of a moviemaker who believes he's got a surefire hit in the can.

Erich Leon Harris (MM): Every moviemaker who has met or worked with you seems to have plenty to say, but the consensus is that no one really knows you. Your enigmatic style has some calling you the Howard Hughes of film.

John Singleton (JS): I'm the Howard Hughes of film? [Laughs] I guess there's a similarity because I like to spend a lot of time traveling when I'm not making films. I'm in one state one day, another state the next, on the other side of the world next week. I was in the Bahamas last weekend. Fifty miles out in the middle of the ocean, fishing.

MM: Does fishing help you to get your head together?

JS: Yeah.

MM: Is your much-anticipated new movie, Shaft, a remake of the classic?

JS: It's not a remake. It's the next in the Shaft series.

MM: What drew you to the material?

JS: I really wanted to do something that was basically a fun movie, because I've gotten this punch of being a so-called controversial filmmaker. I really don't think that anything I do is controversial. I just think that I think differently from most people who make movies.

MM: How is your thought process or POV different?

JS: Well, I'm a young, virile black man [chuckles] you know what I'm saying? who is very much in tune with myself. I'm not trying to be anything other than who I am. That sets me apart from anybody who is not black, and it sets me apart from most other black men. There's nobody like me making films.

MM: I went to your web site, Shaft-themovie.com, and saw the trailer. The look of this film, judging by the trailer, is quite a bit slicker than your other work. Is that fair to say?

JS: Yeah, it is slicker in the sense that I've had more toys to play with on this film than I've ever had before. But I only use technology in the service of telling the story. I don't try to use equipment just for the sake of doing a fancy shot. I never try to do that.

MM: Never? You're never just flexing your muscles?

JS: If I'm flexing as a director, you as a viewer shouldn't be aware of it. I'm not one of those directors who says, "Look at this! This is going to be a fly shot!" Now everybody is going to be looking at how fly the shot is. No! People are going to be watching this movie and the fly shot just passes by. Because people are engrossed in the story. I call this "The Big Dick Director Theory."

MM: Please expand on your Big Dick theory.

JS: Some directors try to swing wide and show how fly a shot they can take, or how long a master shot they can make. Just to show off how big their dick is. But if the shot is not called for, you know that they've got a little dick. They're not using the technology in the service of telling a story. A fancy shot just for the sake of a fancy shot is nothing. But a fly shot in service of a story is the flyest thing a director can do.

Boyz N the Hood

MM: Tell us the story behind Shaft. What's it about?

JS: Basically it's like this: the movie's about a bad motherfucker that dresses well, kicks ass and gets all the women. That's what it's about. Of course, you get all that old plot shit about a murder case and a witness he needs to find to save because a rich white kid is trying to kill her, as are some Dominican drug dealers, but that's just plot shit.

MM: Sam Jackson plays Shaft's nephew, is that it?

JS: Yeah, Sam plays the new Shaft. He's his nephew, but Richard Roundtree plays Shaft.

MM: The role of Shaft was the most coveted in a long time. Were actors calling your house, calling your mother's house and slipping headshots in the pizza box, vying for your attention?

JS: Yeah, almost every black actor wanted to read for the role. Stars read for the role. Because they say if the movie is successful there's going to be a series.

MM: What were the factors in you choosing Sam?

JS: Because Sam's a bad motherfucker. He can talk shit, and everybody loves it.

MM: What does the success of this picture mean for you and your career? What are your hopes and expectations?

JS: Hopefully this film will be very successful commercially. Not to say that I haven't enjoyed box office successes before. Matter of fact, every picture that I've done, outside of Rosewood, has grossed way more than its cost.

MM: How important was it for you to come do something as commercially viable as Shaft on the heels of Rosewood?

JS: Very important. It adds to my longevity as a filmmaker. This business is all about the money.

MM: Are you all about the money?

JS: Not from my perspective. If that were true, I would never have made a Rosewood. But from the people who put up the money's perspective, it's all about money. The reason Shaft got made is that the studio thinks it's going make a hell of a lot of money; that everyone will want to see it.

MM: Did Rosewood disappoint you, in terms of its box office receipts or the critical reaction?

JS: I wasn't disappointed because of the box office. It came at a point in my career that I felt that I could make Rosewood and not care if it made money or not. That was the reason I made it. It was good to be able to make that movie and not be concerned about whether or not it was going to make money.

MM: When you look back to the start of your career, did you expect to come out the way you did with all of the hype that Boyz created?

JS: When I was in college, I always told people that I wanted to come out the way a first round draft choice would. That's what I set out to do. I wanted to come out hard, but in a film sense. I feel like I accomplished that. I was like Muhammed Ali, in terms of movies. I said I was going to come out and kick some ass, and now my thing is just to knock motherfuckers out with every movie.

MM: In the foreword of your book on Poetic Justice, Spike Lee basically warns you that the press blew you up, and now you had better get your skills together, because they're going to come after you.

JS: It didn't matter what I did after the success of Boyz N the Hood, they would come after me. But that doesn't concern me. I specifically began to make films because I had something to say to anyone who wanted to hear it. Basically, I felt that mine would be a predominantly black audience, so I speak in that voice. And anybody else who was cool and who was interested would go and see it. But the films were so successful that a lot of other people went to go see those films.

MM: Wasn't Spike Lee one of your mentors early on?

JS: Very much so. I knew Spike from the moment I went into film school. I met him when I was 18 and I stepped to him outside of a movie theater and told him that I was going to make movies, too, and I was going to come out hard. You know how LA guys are, we like to be on full, all the time. [laughs] I came at him like that.

MM: You got started as an intern at Columbia Pictures, right?

JS: Yeah. I went from being an intern to being a director in less than six months.

MM: Are you an anomaly or do you think anyone can do it?

JS: I don't think anyone can do it. When you're a filmmaker, you have to live, breathe, eat and shit movies; to be really involved in the process. If you want to be a filmmaker, that's what it takes. You have to do it at the expense of having a social life or anything else. You have to have the love of being a storyteller. That's what I honed in going to school, but I had it before I even went to film school.

MM: Nobody does it alone. Who were some of your early supporters?

JS: Basically my mother and father. My mother and father never married, but they both have been very supportive of me. My mother taught me how to sneak into movies. We'd go to the multiplex and we'd see three movies in a day. My father was very encouraging.

He would tell me that I could be whatever I wanted to be.

MM: At what point did you know that this is what you wanted to be doing?

JS: I knew from when I was a kid, because I would always make these little animated movies. Whenever I could get my hands on a camera I'd shoot stuff. I didn't even come from a middle class background. We lived in apartments for the first 15 years of my life.

MM: What part of LA did you grow up in?

JS: In the bottoms, over on Lawrence street in Inglewood, then on Vermont and 101st, in the "Hoovers," if you know what that means. So that's where I come from. In order to do this it had to be a Kamikaze mission. Everyone else around me wanted to play ball, if they had any ambition at all. It wasn't even about being a filmmaker. I had to lock myself down and stay focused. This is off the track a little, but it's funny how cats are flaunting their ghetto stripes now. Especially in the music business. They have all of this new money and are claiming how they love the ghetto and love living in the ghetto. Let me tell you something: Niggas from the ghettos don't want to be in the ghetto! That's why I can say I'm truly from the ghetto. Because when I was in the ghetto, all I wanted was to get the fuck out! But I couldn't get. All I could do was lock myself up in the library, or maybe catch the bus with my friends up to Westwood or Hollywood. Then I'd see a whole other world. People who know will really know.

MM: Your films speak to a generation of young black people, many of whom probably want to follow in your path. What advice do you have for the seeds trying to find the light?

JS: I tell them to learn how to write a script. It all starts on the page. And to make a commitment and live it. It takes a lot to write a movie and even more to direct. You'd better have discipline.

MM: It seems a young black moviemaker has to learn to write, direct,

produce and sometimes distribute his work and then it had better make money. Is that too much pressure?

JS: No. I think everybody has that pressure no matter what race they are. You could be a white boy from the valley and make a movie, but if it doesn't make any money, you won't get another job.

MM: You came out with a class of moviemakers that nobody hears from anymore. To what do you owe your growing longevity?

JS: My persistence, and I'm a ghetto brother that's made it in this business. I survived a whole other world, so Hollywood ain't shit to me.

MM: In this year two thousand, are you where you wanted to be?

JS: I have a career. I'm an established name now. I'm not the new kid on the block anymore. I'm not the Johnny-come-lately. I am a filmmaker and I still have a long way to go. In some ways, I think I've had it relatively easy, once I got my foot in the door.

MM: Easy in what respects?

JS: I really haven't had to go through the whole struggle of trying to get my foot in the door. I came out of USC, they gave me $6 million to make my movie and left me alone. I made it the way I wanted to make it without anyone fucking with me, and it came out good and made a lot of money. So that helped me do all of these other films.

MM: What are you most proud of?

JS: That I still have my soul.

MM: What's the biggest misconception about you?

JS: That I'm this fire-breathing black militant director. Actually,

I think that I'm quite humorous. I've got jokes for days.

MM: Could we explore a bit more of your process toward writing. Earlier, your attitude seemed almost cavalier, but we know that writing is one of your stronger skills.

JS: My approach to writing is such that I don't just sit down to write. I have to be inspired. I write in bursts. I never just sit down to do it, because I'll get bored. I have to just think of something, like while walking down the street and a great idea comes to me. Then I put it in my journal and I may not come back to it for six months before I put it in a script.

MM: You build from your main character first, or is it story?

JS: Character always. I let character dictate the story.

MM: You've never talked much about your Oscar

experience. It must have been the high point of an

18-month cycle that started after Boyz was released.

JS: Yeah, I guess you could call it that. It was cool. But the day after, I started rehearsals on Poetic Justice. I wasn't thinking on it all the next day. Like, ÔAw man, I didn't get an Oscar last night.' I was with Janet Jackson and Tupac, working on the next movie.

I wasn't even thinking about it.

MM: When he was nominated, Samuel L. Jackson told me, [See MM #21 ed.]"I'm not going to be a party to this ÔIt's just an honor to be nominated' bullshit. If I'm in a contest, then damn it, I want to win!" But you were relieved?

JS: [laughs] That's Sam. I was kind of relieved. Just think: Who wants to win an Oscar at 23 years old for his first movie, you know? Everything I did after that, they'd say, Ôwell he didn't get an Oscar for this, he didn't get nominated for that.' Hey, I didn't kiss anyone's ass to get recognized. I wasn't one of those cheese-eating Negroes, saying Ôplease recognize me.'

I was this kid from the ghetto and I had a take- Hollywood-by-storm attitude. Fuck all the old guard, I'm going to be the new rabble-rouser on the scene. Then I get nominated for two Oscars. The next year, my friend Janet Jackson gets nominated for best song. So in my first two movies, there are three Oscar nods. I feel good about that.

MM: Is this just ghetto bravado, or is there a more reflective side that you're down-playing?

JS: Maybe you should talk to the people around me who know me.

MM: I'm asking you. Presumably you're the one who knows you best.

JS: I'm not putting on a show for you. The way I talk to you is the way I am. If you talk to people around me who've known me for years, they'll tell you. I like to shake things up. I like to show people things they wouldn't believe they'd see in a movie. It's more interesting.

MM: How much does the public's opinion influence your work, if at all?

JS: I guess in the end it does, if I consider myself the public. Everyone would tell me, when they passed me in the street, that I should make another Boyz N the Hood. So for many years I tried to get away from doing something urban. I felt that I didn't want or need to do something set in the ghetto. But now I want to make the most ghetto movie that I ever made. Something filled with ghetto poetry, though. Soulful. The kind of ghetto I'm talking about is the feeling you get when you were six or seven years old and your mother would sing along with Marvin Gaye records while you were eating hot links. Only someone from the ghetto could know that feeling. You didn't have any money, but you were happy. I want to bring that feeling to the masses.

MM: You've explored moments of that ghetto poetry in Boyz, and you definitely were working at it in Poetic Justice. Why didn't you write those poems?

JS: I couldn't write it. I tried to, but I just couldn't get into that girl's head. I thought it would be interesting to use Dr. Angelou's poetry.

MM: Do you think that her poems made your scenario uneven?

JS: I don't know. The script wasn't perfect. I wrote it real quick. I had to get another fucking movie made.

MM: Why did you have to get a movie made?

JS: Because I didn't want to sit resting on my laurels. I didn't want to be that guy three years later talking about one movie.

MM: Was being around Spike and watching him release a movie every 18 months creating an urgency within you?

JS: No. I'm not trying to be like that. He really gets it out there.

For me, it doesn't matter if it's perfect, it's important to get the work done. Not every film is going to be perfect. It's funny, and who's to say it's right or wrong, but I elected to not have that film be too violent.

MM: Is that because you took some hits that Boyz was violent?

JS: Yeah, but Boyz wasn't that violent. In my films, at least up until now, I've never had violence that was gratuitous. It was always a character point when someone got their ass whipped or got killed.

MM: How does the violence play in Shaft?

JS: Oh, there's gratuitous violence in Shaft. [laughs] This is my biggest commercial film, so there's going to be gratuitous violence, and spontaneous ass-whippings. It's Shaft, and if he wants to kick some ass, there's going to be an ass-kicking.

MM: Many people think that you've experienced a fall from grace of sorts, since your box office receipts haven't equaled that of your first film.

JS: I don't think so. Boyz N the Hood was successful in a number of firsts, because it was a youth-oriented film, it became a crossover hit because people were interested in that world. I think that my work has been maturing since then instead of trying to make the same movie again and again.

MM: In what specific ways do you feel like you've grown?

JS: I've just grown as a filmmaker. Look at the way I tell a story, as opposed to the way I told a story 10 years ago.

MM: You say that after Boyz, the suits were telling you that you could do anything that you wanted to do. Did that change after Rosewood?

JS: No. I did Shaft.

MM: Shaft was no trouble to set up?

JS: No.

MM: So was your absence, or perceived absence, just bullshit?

JS: What absence?

MM: What year did Rosewood come out, 1996? Four years ago?

JS: Yeah, but Shaft was supposed to be made years ago at MGM, but MGM didn't have the money. I just took it over to Paramount and now it's coming out next month.

MM: A successful producer friend said that success is addictive, once you've had a taste, and John Singleton needs another hit like a crackhead might. True?

JS: [Laughs] If you look at my batting average, since this is about grosses of my films, Shaft could tank and I'd still be making another movie.

Of course, it won't tank. Shit, we're talking about Shaft.

MM: Could you have made Shaft on your second outing instead of your fifth?

JS: I think so. I'm all about stepping up to the plate. I've been doing this since I was 22. Now I'm 32 and I'm just now getting my steam up. I'm really going to kick ass in a few years.

MM: So what's next? When are you coming home?

JS: Soon. We'll be setting up offices off of Degnan Ave, but I was there last weekend. We played pool off of Crenshaw and then went down to the strip club in Gardena.

MM: How was the talent in Gardena?

JS: Extraordinary. Angels with baby faces and greasy booties! [laughs] I loved it! Be sure to print that part. MM