John Singleton Changed How Hollywood Sees Black America
When the 22-year-old director John Singleton was reportedly offered $100,000 to back away from directing his 1991 feature film, Boyz n the Hood, the newly minted film-school graduate balked in the Columbia Pictures office. “I said, ‘Well, we have to end this meeting right now because I’m doing this movie,’” Singleton recalled in a 2003 documentary about the film, Friendly Fire: Making an Urban Legend. “This is the movie that I was born to make.”
The director, who at the age of 51, stunned studio executives and audiences alike with the nuanced was one of precious few cinematic representations directed by someone with a personal knowledge of—and investment in—the wrenching material on-screen. For others watching, the film was both emotionally gripping and explanatory without being didactic.
