Okay, so it’s not quite like hearing that Ingmar Bergman will emerge from retirement to shoot the new Pacman movie. Yet few can have failed to tilt their heads in confusion upon learning of Jim Sheridan’s involvement in the 50 Cent movie. Huh? He’s attached to direct? He’s writing the screenplay? Really? Sounds like idle chatroom fiction to me.
Of course, respectable folks have ventured into rap-hagiography before, or at least Curtis Hanson did with Eminem deification vehicle 8 Mile. But while Hanson remains a promiscuous talent, refusing to settle on any particular genre or theme, Mr. Sheridan’s output has steadfastly and invariably negotiated with Irish experience.
Even watching the director’s forays abroad – to London for In The Name Of The Father, to New York for In America – it’s never as though one has strayed far from home.
Nor is it all that easy to picture the down to earth Dubliner pulling up a throne in the gold-leafed games room of some Cribs-worthy pad or cocking a pistol at a perfect right angle.
“Well, I think Bono knew I loved the rap music”, explains Jim improbably. “So he brought me to a party at (Interscope Records chairman) Jimmy Iovine’s house and Jimmy asked me to do the movie. When I got the script I didn’t think all that much of it but I loved the story of 50 Cent. It reminded me a lot of (writer) Mannix Flynn’s story. And as a director you spend a lot of time getting projects off the ground so that made it easier to say ‘yes’ too. I knew it would happen straight away. Of course, then I started rewriting it.
“But it was a very interesting culture to work in. I found it very non-confrontational. You only find out later if someone was annoyed about something. They never have rows like we have rows here. Because a lot of the time somebody can just go off and get a gun in those circumstances. So it’s very laid back. And 50 is a very sweet, funny guy and an extremely hard worker.”
That much is certainly beyond dispute. Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ charts the rapper’s rise from enterprising juvenile drug peddler to ghetto superstardom, via prison and the notorious assassination attempt of 2000 which saw 50 (nee Curtis Jackson) shot nine times.
In many respects, the film plays like a subversive American Dream fairytale. If young 50 can just keep flogging those crack deals, he can buy his dream sneakers and one day fashion an empire.
“That didn’t go down well”, recalls Jim, shaking his head. “When we played the film first we got an amazing reaction from the black audience. The white audiences too, but we knew already it wouldn’t get to play in mainstream white cinemas. We knew it would only get a run in urban theatres. There’s a difference between the music and film industries there. The film industry imagines it is above music and of course we had Sam Jackson complaining about 50, who just shrugged it off and said ‘Didn’t you used to be a junkie?’ But it only costs a few cents to make a CD so ultimately it’s easier for music to crossover. We knew we were up against it with a film. But people did find it a bit too edgy watching someone make it through drug dealing. We might have gotten away with that if it hadn’t been for the shooting scene when you see the contents of 50’s head.”
Indeed. 50’s career-making brush with death bookends the film but the impact of the bullets is rather less than the inevitable though extraordinary flashback sequence.
In the seconds when young Mr. Jackson lies dying, his life-as-montage yields little but flickers of bling (yes I know that word has been officially exorcised but try finding a decent synonym) and the MTV logo.
“That really got to people”, continues the director. “They didn’t like that his life amounted to bits of commercials. It seemed like a natural conclusion to make so I was surprised by the reaction.”
This was merely the first of a million kerfuffles surrounding the film’s US release. A shooting at a screening of Get Rich... in Pittsburgh led to calls for a ban as did recent murder plots against the Queens-raised star.
Even the the promotional poster – “Fiddy” in classic G-pose, gun down the back of his keks – raised further collective ire. While some critics dismissed this billboard controversy as ‘convenient’, Jim is inclined to disagree with the notion that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
“Those things did us a lot of damage,” he sighs.
Still, Mr. Sheridan enjoyed his time with the hiphoperati.
“It was a different world to what I had imagined. Everyone works really hard. It’s not the glamorous enterprise you might imagine. Tracks come in over the internet and someone raps over them. Dre is very quiet. He hardly says a word. He’s just intensely into what he’s creating. Those guys loved the movie. And we just hit it off. But I’m probably easy to get on with as a director. I’m not intense in that kind of self-absorbed way. I couldn’t be bothered shouting and screaming at people. I’m not obsessed with visuals or getting some shot. I’m interested in emotions. And I always look at the monitor and think to myself ‘In 50 years time, who’ll give a shit? We’ll all be dead.’ Giving people freedom limits what you can do as a director, but it makes it a more human experience.”
In addition to Mr. Sheridan’s personal flourishes, details have duly been altered, names changed to protect the innocent (and guilty – real-life drug kingpin Kenneth ‘Supreme’ McGriff is re-imagined by way of I’m Gonna Get You Sucka). So is this a biopic in the same sense as Gandhi or is it from the same fanciful mould as Mariah Carey’s ego-supernova Glitter?
“I was aware that 50 had a macho image,” explains Sheridan. “But he never interfered with anything I wanted to do. He was only interested in making the movie that I wanted to make. But I think the film is about 80 percent accurate as a biography.”
With the 50 behemoth kicking into gear, producing a soundtrack and the video game Bulletproof to coincide with the release of Get Rich Or Die Tryin’, was there pressure to sanitise the material?
“I think 50 is probably being oversold but I didn’t feel under any pressure making the film,” says Mr. Sheridan. “I think if you look at anyone’s life there’s lots of things you couldn’t put on screen without alienating an audience. I put the search for a father into the script even though 50 never cared about who his father was. But in a film the hero has to be on some kind of quest. Film naturally romanticises and bigs-up everything.”
That’s also certainly true in the world of hip-hop. Sheridan’s film presents a strange comic-book universe of fedora-adorned godfathers, gold-toothed droogs, greasy Colombians and iconography that might be borrowed from an updated Live And Let Die. It’s a heightened experience – sometimes ludicrously so – yet entirely in keeping with the noted self-mythologising of the entire scene.
“In the original script I was given 50 shot four guys,” recalls Jim. “I asked him straight ‘Did this ever happen?’ He said ‘No’. So why are we glorifying this then? So that was taken out. But I personally doubt 50 ever shot anyone. I could see it happening if he’s was under threat, if he was running away from a gang, but only in exceptional circumstances like that. He’s too nice a guy. I just don’t feel it off him at all. He would never say that in public though. The image has made him seem different.”
Sadly, the furore surrounding the movie has seen 50’s thespian efforts take a critical beating. Jim, however, detects a hint of racial stereotyping in much of the criticism aimed at both film and star.
“I took some shots of him reading the script with a camcorder early on. At the end of it I thought he was a very good actor. I still do. I’m mystified as to why people don’t like him in the movie. I think a lot of it is that white people are allowed to be strong and silent on film, but if black people are silent and strong then they’re being sullen. But something interesting is happening. Suddenly this disenfranchised black population is idolised all over the world. That has to have an impact. It’ll be interesting to see what it is.”