The Windy City
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BW: What actually happened was in 1988 I had a cousin who was seventeen years old. He was murdered in South Central Los Angeles due to gang violence. I was an active gang member myself at the time; had a lot of close calls, near death experiences, what have you. In 1992 I went to film school. After getting out of film school, after about six months I wrote his story. I made a movie about it; me and a friend of mine who used to gang bang - my partner now in Bill of Wrights Entertainment/Bowe Home Video, [producer] Will Conley. After we got the film [Dead Homiez] in the can we shopped distribution for awhile. We borrowed a lot of money to get the film made, but here we are sitting on something that we can't get out to the public at all. Once we started to get into various distribution deals we weren't happy with the way things were turning out. They wanted to change a lot of things. This was based on a true story and had a real strong message that needs to get out to everybody else involved in the Life. So we felt that it couldn't be tampered with and the message had to get sent across right, get to the right people. With no changes; had to be real and authentic. So we decided to market and distribute the film ourselves. It did pretty well. We got our first sale with Blockbuster, who bought deep. We got vendor status with all the major distributors and got Dead Homiez in all the other chains, and mom & pop operations nationally. We're moving into foreign [sales] right now; it's doing real well. After getting involved in marketing and distribution we picked up two other films. One is called Kin-Folk with Maia Campbel from the LL Cool J show "In The House". The other film is called The Windy City; it's a comedy based in Chicago.
JK: Let me back up. The first question is, where did you go to film school?
BW: I went to a program run by a studio; it's a six-month program. I learned a lot, there's a lot of hands-on stuff; but experience is the best teacher. So you have to get out there and get a film made; learn from that.
JK: When you were actually in production, what [format] did you use?
BW: We shot in 16mm.
JK: The editing, is that video editing?
BW: We edited in video on the AVID system. We've got a lot of original music. Most of the cast from Dead Homiez is made up of real gang members. It's half drama, half documentary. So we went out to various neighborhoods and interviewed these guys, talked to them about the way they felt, to make the message that more authentic. We went to a lot of neighborhoods we used to actually drive by and shoot in, places I wouldn't usually go when I was in the streets. It meant a lot of pain, brought back a lot of memories. Pretty dangerous. But it had to be done. Somebody had to do it.
JK: So when you were going out and finding people to interview, did you go through ex-gang contacts, did you go to neighborhood organizations; a combination?
BW: Yeah. Ex-gang contacts. Ex-enemies. We didn't go through any gang organizations. I'm not really satisfied with the way a lot of these gang organizations are handling this gang situation. They're not taking it as seriously as they should be. I mean there's kids killing kids out here and there's babies dying. Innocent bystanders all over the place. It seems like these organizations are just concerned with themselves. There are some exceptions out there. There are some people that are very sincere about it. But I feel like you have to live it. You have to come in contact with it to have a genuine concern for what's going on; to even actually know what's going on. Not have anything rumored, I mean, actually see it with your own eyes and live it. I've been both a perpetrator *and* a victim of gang violence. So I mean if you don't know it like that, if you haven't lived it, maybe you should try to get a little deeper. That's what this movie is about, showing gang life from the inside out. And teaching those who don't.
A lot of parents out here don't feel like they're involved with this thing, but they have to be. I mean these are your babies out here. If you sit down with your kid and watch Dead Homiez, that'll give you an education you can't get from anybody else. Obviously they'll try to hide it from you. You don't think they're in danger from you letting them wear baggy clothes, and wear these colors, and listen to rap music. You think it's harmless when all the time these are real life experiences these guys are rapping about. When they get inside your kids heads you don't see it as that; you see it as just music. But I know the effect that it has on children. It drives their curiosity; to the point where you don't really know what's going on out here. You're walking out blind - you want to dress like somebody, talk like somebody, walk like somebody, not realizing it can get you killed. There's a lot of parents out here feel that the streets will teach their kids a lesson. The only lesson to be learned is for you - how to outlive your child. That's very real, very real.
BW: Exactly, a completely different culture. You look at a [Hollywood] film like this and you say, it makes money. It makes a lot of money, the negativity of it. But we did something a little different. We took a positive approach towards gang violence. So even though it comes from ex gang members and people from the streets, people who lived it, it makes it that much more real, more worth watching. But they [at the companies] wanted to switch it around and make it all negative.
JK: They wanted to change the plot, the ending?
BW: They wanted to change the plot. Change the ending. Take out positive things that had to be said by ex gang members to try to steer youngsters away from [the Life].
JK: They wanted to take out the documentary elements and just make a straight story?
BW: We have some documentary elements in the story that have a negative take on certain things, but it's reality. What we did, knowing where a person is coming from, we took his negativity and showed it, and said, "This man is angry. His feelings are real." When you come across certain situations [in the film] you show how to keep a defense up: how to come at people, what not to wear, where not to go, when there are certain things going on. That way the film helps. It's coming from those guys who kill and are being killed. It comes from the horse's mouth per se. What better way to get the message across?
JK: When I was watching Dead Homiez two things struck me.... When I was younger and MTV was just coming out there was this obsession with the idea that the music video form was going to change how movies were made. There were a lot of music-video-type musicals made. People sort of took that too literally. Then when those musicals didn't make money [Hollywood] just stopped trying. Now the video effects that you still see in tv and movies are just for the sake of effects. Whereas in this movie it seemed like a real mature use of that kind of freeform that I'd seen in really good music videos. You have that use of music and images but it's not in your face just to be distracting. There's more of an overall point of view. There's more of a focus, even though there are all these different elements. From what I know of African-American culture, that's that whole concept of oral transfer of information and direct address modes and having different people presenting as is, instead of just picking one. That's instead of typical Hollywood, where you have all these supporting players but then you have just the one person you're supposed to identify with... You do have a nominal main character [in Dead Homiez], but then you have all these other people who come in, who have their own histories. Then you have outside of the fictional characters, these people who come up and start talking.
That was what struck me when there were cameras at the time of the [LA] riots... it was so completely different from the 1960s footage. They felt the need to go back and rerun all that old stuff from the 60s [on tv] from Newark and places like that. What struck me about the contrast was, in the 60s there was nobody around. There was just this camera taking pictures of some smoking thing. Then there would be this white guy in short sleeves, ducking. But he wouldn't duck far enough so you couldn't see him; you would see him duck on-camera!
BW: [laughs]
JK: When the Rodney King riots happened, it was more like people knew what the camera meant, they knew the opportunity was there. They came up and said, "Hi, guy, you're here and I'm gonna talk to you and you're putting this on national television." And for a while it actually happened; and the whole atmosphere of public debate just changed overnight. Of course that all collapsed once the news cameramen decided that wasn't news anymore. So [watching Dead Homiez I] sort of felt it was that time all over again, but now it's been taken advantage of by someone back home in the environment. Now you're coming out and using those tools, but your using it in your own way.
So thinking in those terms, when you had to go into business for yourself, who did you actually call on?
BW: We have two sets of African-American filmmakers out here, you have low-budget and you have your union filmmakers who make films for the screen. There's not a lot of African-American distribution companies out here. When stepped up to the plate and decided we wanted to be an African-American marketing and distribution company, we were able to go out and talk to these guys who make films for small amounts of money, compared to the 5-6 million dollar pictures out there. There's a lot of films people won't take. There are distribution companies that'll wait somebody out until they're ready to take the bare minimum. They finish the film and take it and make money on it for ten or twenty years, while this guy goes out and tries to borrow more money from other people to get other films made. Trying to get noticed so he can get into theatrical releases. What we want to do is, we want to continue to put films in distribution and help these filmmakers make money. A lot of people are discouraged about making films because they can't get distribution for them. If you want to invest your money in Black films you can, because there's distribution and a way to turn around and make money off them. Another company, Xenon Entertainment, who carries a lot of Black-themed product; there's not a lot of black people in their company. It's not black owned. We tried to go to them early on. They have no concern for the Black Experience. [They were] one of the companies who tried to turn Dead Homiez around and make it a whole negative thing.
Far as people we're working with now; [Bowe VP of Marketing and Sales] Thomas Andrews used to work for Xerox. I met Thomas in Atlanta - a real sharp guy. We struck up a conversation. I told him what I was into. He wanted to get involved! We have some strong messages that have to be passed across. There will be a lot more messages getting passed across as well. But we want to get the message out too that we can have our own distribution. As black filmmakers we can be black distributors as well, and get our own films made to pass our own messages. We can create jobs and careers for people. That's wonderful. There's only a few of us, but I want there to be a whole bunch of us. Like this convention here [ECVS at Atlantic City]; I want this to be filled with black distribution companies. We're independents; we want minority filmmakers in general to come and show off their stuff; show they've got stories to tell.
JK: So what you're in for right now, is you're going to have a standard now that you take properties and you're going to distribute them on video as opposed to trying to go theatrical...
BW: Video first.
JK: Then the filmmaker winds up being able to get a share in those profits rather than handing them all over to you.
BW: Right, and have a chance to experience the profits, hopefully make enough money to go out and make another film. We'll distribute that too! ...Bill of Wrights Entertainment, which is the production company, we want to make bigger films. We eventually want to get into the theaters, and keep Bowe Home Video going strong... do it all.
JK: I know Spike Lee's organization has an address where you can send proposals and stuff like that, films in the process of being made. Do you have anything like that set up? Do you go to colleges and scout out people?
BW: We go to colleges and we scout; different festivals, looking for various subjects, documentaries, whatever. ...My address is in Van Nuys. If you have a film that's incomplete, you have a film that's in the can, you have any ideas, send them on out. We'll do everything we can to get them made and get them distributed. Because that's what it's all about.
JK: So you don't go through agents to send you something? Do you have legal things that have to be filled out? You take things over the transom?
BW: Well, before we get involved in it we'll make sure it's straight legally...
JK: You have people to look over that...
BW: Yeah!
