Hustle & Flow
May. 28th, 2006 10:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat[Ugh my muse has forsaken me this morning - at least as far as my novel is concerned. The last few paragraphs just don't work somehow. Course the difficulty is I'm trying to recreate something that was stolen from me or rather happened to be in something that was stolen so as a result got lost, which is always hard. To prevent a reoccurrence, backed everything I've written over the past few weeks up on CD again. Bloody hard backing things up on CD (if you don't do it right, the CD will tell it's read only and you can't update and you have to get a new one), I miss zip drives. Canticle for Leibowitz - had a nice little chapter on losing one's art, which was oddly comforting. ]
Last night watched the flick Hustle and Flow directed by Craig Brewer and produced by John Singleton. It was the film that oscar winning song - "It's Hard Out There For A Pimp" originated from. And after seeing the movie, the song has a completely different resonance. The lyrics, which are about trying to make it by doing stuff you hate, with a dream in your head and the loss of that dream to circumstance. It's another instance of something not being quite what it seems.
Hustle and Flow may be one of the best films I've seen in a while. I considered saying about the music world or making music, but that would be limiting it.
On its face, the film is about a pimp who cuts a record with two friends. A pimp who does not want to be a pimp, who is sick of it. And wishes for something else. It's about the hustle and flow of creating art and getting someone to take it seriously, so you can be heard. The film also, like all good films, takes the viewer for a brief slice of time into another world, another language, another perspective that is most likely foreign to the viewer. The words are street, harsh, painful, like the streets. Razor sharp and in your face, testing you. If I wrote them down for you, you'd cringe. They are not words polite society would ever use and if we did, our friends would look at us in horror, but in this world, they are said frequently and they do not always have the same meaning we might attach to them. "Shit" for instance can mean many things: That's the shit! (meaning fantastic, best thing ever.) That's shit! (worst thing ever, stupid, wrong), Don't give me shit. (back-talk, stupidity). Shit. (curse word). Same with the word "Bitch" - and there's a by-play between three characters regarding the use of the word and why it can be seen as offensive to others, but is not intended that way. One character sums it up like this: "Most of the bitches I know are male." "But," states another character, "other people don't see it that way." The Double-entendre or meaning of words is a nightmare for a translator and is why words must be taken in context of how they are used. Something a rap musician is aware of - because rap unlike other styles of music is about the rhythm of words, harsh painful words. Guttural. The type of words you'd scream at someone who hurt you. It's about, as one character, Shelby, a skinny guy, states, "the blues, but more painful."
Where Hustle and Flow is different from recent films about the music industry, such as Walk the Line and Ray is that it shows how incredibly difficult it is to get your work seen and heard. What you have to do in order to have it happen, the choices you make. And how life doesn't quite work the way we want it to. Not everyone can walk into a recording studio and get a hit single made, just like that, or jump up on a stage and wow an audience with rap.
The film starts out somewhat slow, with Terrence Howard who plays DJay sitting in an old beaten down cadiallac, with a white girl with blond corn braids sitting alongside him. His hair is in curlers. And they are sitting next to a deserted train track, waiting. His fingers tapping against the dash. After a while a white guy with a beard comes along and Djay tells Nola to go explain to him, up close and personal what she can offer. To do the hustle. The next scene is Djay and Nola in church listening to a woman sing gospel - it's a brief scene. Later, we see Djay in his house with his whores. And he's miserable. He enters his kitchen and pulls out a small electronic keyboard and well...I don't want to spoil it.
I am not a rap fan. The music is too raw and angry for me usually, and often just gives me a headache. That said, I liked the songs in this movie - I was able to hear the words, understand them. There are three songs - which we see created from first word to end word - and being a person who finds the process of creation far more interesting than the final product, I appreciated this. The first is It's Hard Out There FOR A Pimp (which made this year's Oscar telecast a little less dull than usual), the second Whomp That Trick, and the third - Hustle and Flow.
The film made me appreciate rap, it's shadings and colors and rhythms. Not that I didn't always appreciate it to some extent - rap to me is the street version of a cappella. It's using one's voice to create rhythm. Jazz uses a similar concept. But rap is much rawer. And through visuals, got me inside the heads of the characters. It makes you care about the pimp and his whores, see them as more than just those words. Too often, I think, we see the words and not the people or rather the category and not the object we've placed in it. This movie challengs that a little.
In the Commentary that follows the film, which like most commentary tends to be a little on the self-congratulatory side, the filmmakers describe how difficult and frustrating it was to get this film made. No one would give them money for it. Singleton paid for it out of his own pocket. The star of the film, Terrence Howard, who was also nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in it, turned it down for a year and refused to read it - because he wanted to get away from pimp and drug-dealer roles - roles he'd built his career on but were getting him nowhere. He finally read the script and agreed immediately - the film ironically echoed his own frustrations. DJ Quallis who plays Shelby states during the commentary, that it blew his mind that a studio would pay 200 million for some film that had nothing to it but special effects, and would not give them a measley 1 million. I blame us for that - the audience, who shucks out ten bucks to see Mission Impossible III or the Da Vinci Code but not for Hustle and Flow, I include myself in this and trust me, the fact that I plan to see X-Men III this afternoon only underlines this.
While, it can be argued that film glosses over what a "pimp" really does, the focus of the film is not on that - but rather on how difficult it is to accomplish one's dream. And how painful life can seem in the process of working towards it. Raw at times, glossy at others, the film does a good job of capturing a world where people work at jobs they hate and in their off time, attempt to make something lasting - which gives voice to who they really are, whether that voice is appreciated or heard by others is another question. And if you do happen to accomplish it by some luck or chance, then what?
Hustle and Flow - highly recommend.
Last night watched the flick Hustle and Flow directed by Craig Brewer and produced by John Singleton. It was the film that oscar winning song - "It's Hard Out There For A Pimp" originated from. And after seeing the movie, the song has a completely different resonance. The lyrics, which are about trying to make it by doing stuff you hate, with a dream in your head and the loss of that dream to circumstance. It's another instance of something not being quite what it seems.
Hustle and Flow may be one of the best films I've seen in a while. I considered saying about the music world or making music, but that would be limiting it.
On its face, the film is about a pimp who cuts a record with two friends. A pimp who does not want to be a pimp, who is sick of it. And wishes for something else. It's about the hustle and flow of creating art and getting someone to take it seriously, so you can be heard. The film also, like all good films, takes the viewer for a brief slice of time into another world, another language, another perspective that is most likely foreign to the viewer. The words are street, harsh, painful, like the streets. Razor sharp and in your face, testing you. If I wrote them down for you, you'd cringe. They are not words polite society would ever use and if we did, our friends would look at us in horror, but in this world, they are said frequently and they do not always have the same meaning we might attach to them. "Shit" for instance can mean many things: That's the shit! (meaning fantastic, best thing ever.) That's shit! (worst thing ever, stupid, wrong), Don't give me shit. (back-talk, stupidity). Shit. (curse word). Same with the word "Bitch" - and there's a by-play between three characters regarding the use of the word and why it can be seen as offensive to others, but is not intended that way. One character sums it up like this: "Most of the bitches I know are male." "But," states another character, "other people don't see it that way." The Double-entendre or meaning of words is a nightmare for a translator and is why words must be taken in context of how they are used. Something a rap musician is aware of - because rap unlike other styles of music is about the rhythm of words, harsh painful words. Guttural. The type of words you'd scream at someone who hurt you. It's about, as one character, Shelby, a skinny guy, states, "the blues, but more painful."
Where Hustle and Flow is different from recent films about the music industry, such as Walk the Line and Ray is that it shows how incredibly difficult it is to get your work seen and heard. What you have to do in order to have it happen, the choices you make. And how life doesn't quite work the way we want it to. Not everyone can walk into a recording studio and get a hit single made, just like that, or jump up on a stage and wow an audience with rap.
The film starts out somewhat slow, with Terrence Howard who plays DJay sitting in an old beaten down cadiallac, with a white girl with blond corn braids sitting alongside him. His hair is in curlers. And they are sitting next to a deserted train track, waiting. His fingers tapping against the dash. After a while a white guy with a beard comes along and Djay tells Nola to go explain to him, up close and personal what she can offer. To do the hustle. The next scene is Djay and Nola in church listening to a woman sing gospel - it's a brief scene. Later, we see Djay in his house with his whores. And he's miserable. He enters his kitchen and pulls out a small electronic keyboard and well...I don't want to spoil it.
I am not a rap fan. The music is too raw and angry for me usually, and often just gives me a headache. That said, I liked the songs in this movie - I was able to hear the words, understand them. There are three songs - which we see created from first word to end word - and being a person who finds the process of creation far more interesting than the final product, I appreciated this. The first is It's Hard Out There FOR A Pimp (which made this year's Oscar telecast a little less dull than usual), the second Whomp That Trick, and the third - Hustle and Flow.
The film made me appreciate rap, it's shadings and colors and rhythms. Not that I didn't always appreciate it to some extent - rap to me is the street version of a cappella. It's using one's voice to create rhythm. Jazz uses a similar concept. But rap is much rawer. And through visuals, got me inside the heads of the characters. It makes you care about the pimp and his whores, see them as more than just those words. Too often, I think, we see the words and not the people or rather the category and not the object we've placed in it. This movie challengs that a little.
In the Commentary that follows the film, which like most commentary tends to be a little on the self-congratulatory side, the filmmakers describe how difficult and frustrating it was to get this film made. No one would give them money for it. Singleton paid for it out of his own pocket. The star of the film, Terrence Howard, who was also nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in it, turned it down for a year and refused to read it - because he wanted to get away from pimp and drug-dealer roles - roles he'd built his career on but were getting him nowhere. He finally read the script and agreed immediately - the film ironically echoed his own frustrations. DJ Quallis who plays Shelby states during the commentary, that it blew his mind that a studio would pay 200 million for some film that had nothing to it but special effects, and would not give them a measley 1 million. I blame us for that - the audience, who shucks out ten bucks to see Mission Impossible III or the Da Vinci Code but not for Hustle and Flow, I include myself in this and trust me, the fact that I plan to see X-Men III this afternoon only underlines this.
While, it can be argued that film glosses over what a "pimp" really does, the focus of the film is not on that - but rather on how difficult it is to accomplish one's dream. And how painful life can seem in the process of working towards it. Raw at times, glossy at others, the film does a good job of capturing a world where people work at jobs they hate and in their off time, attempt to make something lasting - which gives voice to who they really are, whether that voice is appreciated or heard by others is another question. And if you do happen to accomplish it by some luck or chance, then what?
Hustle and Flow - highly recommend.