Bad Rapper: Port of Call New Orleans

His soul is still dancing.

I had the good fortune to see Werner Herzog’s maniacally fun take on Abel Ferarra’s classic Bad Lieutenant the same weekend I got a long anticipated DVD in the mail. It was the hotly contested critical darling doc The Carter, following Lil Wayne in the halcyon months surrounding the release of his greatest professional achievement to date: The Carter III. I knew I was in for a unique, trippy experience from the DVD menu alone, which is a snippet of Nina Simone’s “Misunderstood”, sampled for TC3’s grand finale. It’s a screwed watermarked loop of Simone moaning “Baby, you understand me now” as a music box melody plays sadly over and over again. And you certainly will come away more intimately familiar with Weezy, though I’m unsure the result is increased understanding, or if understanding an individual as far gone as Wayne is even possible.

Forgetting the specifics for a moment, The Carter is groundbreaking for its access into the artist’s creative process. This is an area I’ve been waiting to see Hip Hop media tap for a long time and The Carter delivers on a grand scale. For me Fade To Black was a Rap Triumph of the Will, our access is hardly unfettered as co-directors Pat Paulson and Michael John Warren seemed directed to be as protective of the Shawn Carter mystique as Jay-Z himself. Perhaps it’s a feature of just how fucking insane and interesting Wayne’s process is to simply watch, but Adam Bhala Lough’s best work in this film is showing us Wayne dutifully toting around a suitcase on rollers containing his own mini studio, unpacking amps and top of the line mics in the hotel rooms he lives out of, improvising mixtape verses on the fly and punching his own edits. (His verse on a recently released collaboration with Gudda Gudda over Jeezy’s “Get ya mind right” is a borderline classic and we get to watch him work his way through his verse on “Magic” from last Winter among other verses)

Demolition Part 1 (Ft. Gudda Gudda)

The film’s focus as well as much of the surrounding controversy has been unnecessarily placed on Wayne’s excess, a fact anyone familiar with his work has long been aware of as he talks about it openly in his music. For me it was interesting to watch his day to day, a similar pattern of habitual behavior: a constant background of ESPN, a disturbing addiction to getting inked and a clear workaholic, even at the heady heights we see Wayne at, on tour and celebrating a platinum album he’s tirelessly, obsessively tinkering with what will become largely obscure mixtape verses, listening to nothing but his own shit and explaining Boy Meets Girl references for the camera crew. He's clearly an individual damaged from a traumatic home life and a non-existent childhood, pretty transparently diving into any diversion that comes his way with all his being as a means of escape.

The film’s unsung hero is Wayne’s longtime friend and associate/manager Cortez Bryant. He’s the sober steady hand trying to keep human nitro glycerin from exploding, worrying about TC3s premature leak, delivering Wayne to photo shoots and interviews, threatening random shady characters hanging around backstage at shows, unable to be around Wayne because of his concern for Wayne’s syrup addiction. It’s through him that we most feel the consequences of Wayne’s abuse, how real the concern is in his circle and how powerless anyone is to do anything about it. Wayne is a force of nature operating largely on impulse and the moment’s whim.

Me & My Drank

Wayne’s magnetic rock star charisma is apparent on stage performing his verse off Shawty Lo’s “They Know (Remix)”, “Pussy Monster” and an electric performance of “A Milli” (featuring the wildest crowd response I've ever witnessed), in interviews where he gets off on torturing reporters, a particularly great moment comes in his dismissal of a Brit quickly caught trying to intellectualize Wayne's work and place it within a tradition of New Orleans music (his interactions with the press are reminiscent of the clueless British reporters Bob Dylan gets off on fucking with throughout Don’t Look Back) not to mention the general conversation in every room we see him in. The film’s most disturbing scene is Wayne lecturing a 15 year old for still being a virgin in front of what appears to be the boy’s bemused/horrified mother, telling an anecdote of getting blown at 11 that tip toes a line between funny and scary/depressing. Heath Ledger’s Joker stories concerning the origin of his scars come to mind as Wayne at times sounds less like he’s bragging than confessing on a therapist’s couch.

The Carter ends up operating on a logic not unlike Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, as a fever dream rewarding its likable anti-hero for his sins. Wayne spends the film high and slumped, screwing off and pissing off everyone around him to seemingly no consequence, his star continues to rise and burn even brighter and we’re shotgun for the gleefully nihilistic ride. Watching Wayne before he self destructs it’s even more apparent a timeless talent has spent the last decade captivating us, making music that will be the subject of a countless number of documentaries and similar tributes to come for generations. With his prison sentence looming and his music pushed to what feels like a logical conclusion, with little place to go but down it’s possible that his prime has passed. Even if this is so Lil Wayne changed Rap for the better, taken it to playful uncharted stylistic extremes and practiced forms previously unseen that have already had a tangible effect on the current Hip Hop landscape. He gave us a taste of what the great inebriated poets of the 60s and 70s did for their art forms. A Morrison, a Reed.

Wayne has changed rap, and his Young Money label of emerging minions currently owning New York radio following in his footsteps will assuredly be pushing the ball forward long after he’s fallen back, something that at the age of 27 I can’t imagine happening anytime soon regardless of how his work will be received. The sad/fantastic truth is Wayne needs Rap as bad if not more than Rap needs him. The Carter gives us a portrait of the artist at his very best, and it’s without a doubt the best documentary about Rap music I’ve ever seen (This doesn’t count), must see shit for anyone remotely interested in popular music.

Paid At Last

The original vision Charles Stone III had planned for his Harlem opus Paid In Full opened with the three protagonists, Mekhi Phifer as Rich Porter (Mitch), Wood Harris as Azie Faison (Ace) and Cameron Giles as Alberto "Alpo" Martinez (Rico) in Mitch’s apartment playing Monopoly with real money. According to Stone’s gaudy vision each player would choose the piece that best represented him. (the top hat standing in for glamour, the car representing speed and power, etc.) This concept was shot down by Executive Producer Dame Dash and what we end up with is a portrait of the young men at the peak of their power and most frivolous with their obscene fortune. It’s a contest between Mitch and Rico, Mitch challenged to sink a crumpled up Chinese take-out bag in a small garbage basket on the other side of the room for 5,000$.

The scene is filled with banter that instantly introduces and endears the audience to its three pivotal players and Stone’s accounting of the labor pains the scene underwent in its creation highlights a key feature that must be considered when discussing the best movie ever made about the intertwined Hip Hop/crack culture of the 80s and 90s: Made in 2002, Paid In Full brought a respectful, first hand journalistic approach to (based on) real life subject matter, detail rich with an insistent commitment to honesty; character driven in ways previously unseen within the black crime genre that to this point had never shown the appropriate amount of respect for its subject or audience. According to Stone this is thanks to Dame Dash, his on set "Reality Police" along with Azie Faison, who met with both Dash and Stone, assisted in the making of the film and serves as its protagonist.

In large ways as well as small the film wields a local’s memory and eye for detail which reverberate throughout the production lending the believable feel. It would be easy to deride Paid In Full for its production value but the film and naturalistic lighting may or may not be intended, and certainly achieves an authenticity of setting, it doesn’t look like a movie made in 2002. Touches like brick sized cell phones, Cam’s hair and the wardrobe are perfect, for set design Porter’s house had been photographed in the 80s and replicated to the smallest detail on a studio stage. Dame was instrumental in choosing the soundtrack, songs like Busy Bee’s “Suicide” and Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight”. According to Stone, Dame insisted on the songs inclusion where the Director might’ve sought out a period specific street oriented mood setter for a scene where the hood shows out in fashion, congregating outside Willies Burgers before hitting the club. The Top 40 adult contempo radio smash isn’t what a viewer might expect but was a huge song in Harlem in the late 80s. The voice of Brucie B, an actual friend and associate of the trio as these events were unfolding in the late 80s serves as the disembodied ghost of Hip Hop past. He plays Greek Chorus throughout the film at the Roof Top, a rollerskating rink/club which served as a popular Harlem haunt.

Dame wanted this film to serve as a document to the hood lore he grew up with, it had to be authentic enough to hold muster with his demographic, others who had grown up in Harlem with the legend of AZ, Alpo and Rich and knew it well. Stone wanted a parable, a dramatization that would appeal to a greater audience previously ignorant to the story. In essence, the Gang banging, drug dealing morality play we’ve had shoved down our throats since the early 90s. In its willingness to portray the hustler as a conflicted individual and even at times a sympathetic hero Paid In Full is groundbreaking. This film is not another cliché ridden, hand wringing tirade against drug culture, making its eventually earned indictment the most powerful to date. Paid in Full takes risks and relates the reality of difficult times in ways that heavy handed portrayals like the Hughes Brothers’, John Singleton’s, Spike Lee’s and Hype Williams’ (the very worst) didn’t believe or believe their audience was prepared to appreciate.

Paid In Full succeeds in keeping the scope small but not due to any lack of ambition. The rise of crack and its eventual devastating impact on the inner city is painted graphically. There’s a difficult exchange near the beginning involving Calvin, the proto dumb asshole hustler dating Ace’s sister. Calvin comes to the table at dinner waving drug money in a then powerless Ace’s home, his mother too poor to refuse the money and presence she resents. Here, socioeconomic status in the ghetto is alluded to but left at the edges, a realistic portrayal of life. While films like Menace to Society are an apologist’s sociology lecture, portraying it’s characters as mongrelized products of their harsh environment Paid In Full presents the struggle as a piece of the puzzle that’s taken for granted. The relentless poverty is an accepted Sisyphean boulder that goes undiscussed by the film’s characters but not unacknowledged by the film. This speaks to a greater respectful treatment on the Stone's behalf, hallmark moments go unexplained but hinted at, allowed to merely exist on the side and left for the viewer to decipher.

Then there are the performances, sensitive and nuanced from the stars down to the bit players. Stone’s greatest decision is the room he gives his actor’s to flesh out their characters and improvise. There’s Wood Harris’ fantastic, spasmodic, off kilter rhythm, perfect for humble, spotlight shy Ace. Ace is by design a quiet observer, being played upon by forces of human nature. He’s a consummate business man, the first to recognize the value in wholesaling and undercutting prices, making his money in volume rather than markup. He’s without greed and powerlust, able to separate legit customers from Feds and stickups kids. The embodiment of the respectful pursuit of peaceful prosperity

Mitch and Rico are the dual light and dark aspects of fame and power, the "spotlight". Mekhi plays the dealer with a heart of gold, representing the love and admiration the spotlight lends to its star. Mitch is obsessed with flash and appearance but is well colored, never rendered shallow. He’s above sweating and physical activity, the always immaculately composed and put together pretty boy. There’s one particularly effective, wordless scene in which he painstakingly lays out his jewelry bedside like some sort of sacred ritual before going to sleep, cherishing his status symbols and fearing the barbarians champing at the gate. His bravado clearly stands in for a difficult home life and upbringing. After a troubling run in with his junkie Uncle Ice his junkie mother left in charge of Mitch’s pivotal little brother Sonny, Mitch tells Ace he needs to go out to the Roof Top that evening. That he needs “some love”. That Dame and Stone never feel the need to chide Mitch, to draw explicit lines between his profession and his situation at home is a testament to restraint. By the end Mitch will pay the ultimate price for his transgressions, costing both he and Sonny their very lives, a judgment rendered powerfully and silently.

But of course, Giles steals the show, outshining his seasoned co-stars and it makes sense. Cam was the only Harlem product on camera and as Rico he is the outlandish but ultimately believable id driving the dark element at play in this ruthless business. Cam’s Rico is all frenetic energy, writhing, shifty eyed calculation, a lit fuse with shadowy intent and motivation. In almost every interaction he’s pledging completely unbelievable but insistent undying loyalty. He’s a needy sociopath, over eager in his transparent, over compensating insecurity, unrepentant, combative and antagonistic. He wears hand painted graffiti shirts advertising and asserting himself at all times, a robe in the club with a bottle of Champaign in one hand and a blunt in the other watching homemade violent porn on a big screen. He’s fueled by a love of war and refusal to play by the rules, to do anything beaides what he wants which is grab attention and fear. He trots to Ace with an unloyal dealer like a dog with a dead bird in his teeth, shooting him in the ass on the street in broad daylight. The scene in which he betrays Mitch is a fucking clinic, he’s still an asshole as he callously eats potato chips, half heartedly consoling Ace after he’s been shot and had his loved ones murdered.

Paid in Full is not without its shortcomings. It was written by two largely green screenwriters and at times it's painfully noticeable. It packs a lot, perhaps too much into 100 minutes and as a result plot moves at a breakneck pace without much time for development between stages. There’s Ace’s hand holding voice over along the way which could potentially be looked at as a lack of ability to write a cohesive script that moves of its own volition. We lull on three somewhat clichéd plateaus of Ace’s humble beginning, his rein atop Harlem and the grim aftermath, moving from stage to stage with little to no transition. The characters are perhaps a bit too well defined; one note and straight forward. Ace is always the smooth and cautious paternalistic arm of the operation, Mitch is all friendly competition, good-natured and ambitious but ultimately operates by a moral code and is deferential to Ace, Rico is the loose cannon, never a steady thought or sober moment. It’s all capped with a kind of pat, closure lending, bitter sweet finish. Young men and women in bandannas and puffy coats are throwing dollar bills into a fan in front of Willie’s Burgers as Ace looks on, a technical adviser. The Director calls action and the slate snaps, the film ends where the legend begins.

The most profound insight and greatest accomplishment Paid In Full achieves is contained in its running theme of the physical and metaphorical spotlight. Rico and Mitch are ensnared in a never ending quest for its attention, Ace runs from it. It’s attention, love, respect, fear, a moment in which an individual can be special and recognized within the community. Through this lens Paid In Full presents the argument that drug dealing at this point in the 80s when the streets ran green with cash was almost like an expression, akin to graffiti or Hip Hop. A self made identity, a standard of fabulousness that was a desperate grab for a different life in a disparate environment. Mitch was garish in his tracksuits, fish hats and gaudy cars but in audacious boasting of owning every fiend uptown between 1st and Riverside, getting more money than a rival dealer in the community with nicer kicks, a more expensive ride and a flyer bitch. Stone and Dash are drawing parallels to a Wildstyle on the side of the 4 train or a Biz Markie song, willed dope by conviction of the author and the receptive audience.

Ultimately they reveal the hollow gaze of the light, the dark element drugs bring out in its dealers and customers and in doing so Paid In Full is this generation’s Goodfellas. A lifting of the glorified veil revealing the dark, sad, deadly underbelly of the criminal mind and heart in New York’s inner city during the late 80s. It does this in a language wrought in humanity, the studied eye of a first person account conveying its message through real, believable action. It’s a love letter, a cautionary tale and a great movie.

Asian Horror: Coming to America In Orphan

So far this year I’ve loved four domestic films. They've all had the courage to play with convention and form, to be American in their parameters but daring, indulging in their urges to draw outside the lines. The first three were the Seth Rogan vehicle gone darkly awry, Observe and Report, the Romantic Comedy tweak/update 500 Days of Summer and the Iraq War procedural The Hurt Locker. The last and most surprising, which I’m writing on following a screening, at the only place to see a horror movie opening night, the UA Court Street Stadium 12, is Orphan.

Orphan has been undersold as a paint-by-the-numbers, toss-off horror meant to draw in the time honored inner city youth demographic opening weekend then retreat quietly into the primordial goo. It's helmed by a young director and virgin screenwriter, but Orphan is far more, a game changing horror that is willing to abide by the existing American rules, with melodrama piled upon melodrama, at times unnecessarily, and a boat load of cheap thrills, but delivers with a great cast, a killer premise complete with an unexpected twist and a gleefully fucked up sense of humor.

Orphan stars almost famous Peter Sarsgaard and The Departed’s Vera Farmiga in its marquee roles but the obvious standout is 12 year old Isabelle Fuhrman playing the title character. In a world where Little Miss Sunshine’s Abigail Breslin can get a nomination for being a goofball I’m fully confident that anyone whose seen this film will concur that if there was a just system that didn’t turn its nose at summer fare such as the unpretentious Orphan this kid would be in line. I can’t really delve into the greatness of this film without spoiling, suffice to say I wouldn’t be posting on it with an early Saturday morning alarm set without purpose, this is a movie to get excited about.

What it really signals is a maturation in American horror others would be wise to sit up and take notice of. With the market set to be overrun with remakes of mindless slasher staples Orphan is an original work that employs psychological warfare over easy supernatural chills. It takes pride in its heritage but is clearly interested in exploring new and previously taboo depths, unwilling to choke on the dust of our more adventurous Asian counterparts (See: The Japanese Audition, Korean Old Boy). In other words go see Orphan before you’re forced to lie about being on the bandwagon from the beginning in five years.