{"id":212007,"date":"2019-04-29T23:27:16","date_gmt":"2019-04-30T03:27:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=212007"},"modified":"2019-04-29T23:27:16","modified_gmt":"2019-04-30T03:27:16","slug":"john-singleton-maker-of-boyz-n-the-hood-dies-at-51","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/04\/29\/john-singleton-maker-of-boyz-n-the-hood-dies-at-51\/","title":{"rendered":"John Singleton, maker of ‘Boyz N the Hood,’ dies at 51"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Singleton’s family said Monday that he died in Los Angeles, surrounded by family and friends, after being taken off life support. Earlier this month, the director suffered a major stroke. (File Photo<\/a>: @johnsingleton\/Instagram<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NEW YORK \u2013 Director John Singleton, who made one of Hollywood’s most memorable debuts with the Oscar-nominated \u201cBoyz N the Hood\u201d and continued over the following decades to probe the lives of black communities in his native Los Angeles and beyond, has died. He was 51.<\/p>\n

Singleton’s family said Monday that he died in Los Angeles, surrounded by family and friends, after being taken off life support. Earlier this month, the director suffered a major stroke.<\/p>\n

Singleton was in his early 20s, just out of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, when he wrote, directed and produced \u201cBoyz N the Hood.\u201d Based on Singleton’s upbringing and shot in his old neighbourhood, the low-budget production starred Cuba Gooding Jr. and Ice Cube and centred on three friends in South Central Los Angeles, where college aspirations competed with the pressures of gang life. \u201cBoyz N the Hood\u201d was a critical and commercial hit, given a 20-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival and praised as a groundbreaking extension of rap to the big screen, a realistic and compassionate take on race, class, peer pressure and family. Singleton would later call it a \u201crap album on film.\u201d<\/p>\n

For many, the 1991 release captured the explosive mood in Los Angeles in the months following the videotaped police beating of Rodney King. \u201cBoyz N the Hood\u201d also came out at a time when, thanks to the efforts to Spike Lee and others, black films were starting to get made by Hollywood after a long absence.<\/p>\n

Singleton became the first black director to receive an Academy Award nomination, an honour he would say was compensation for the academy’s snubbing Lee and \u201cDo the Right Thing\u201d two years earlier, and was nominated for best screenplay. (\u201cThelma & Louise\u201d won instead.) At 24, he was also the youngest director nominee in Oscar history.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I was living this film before I ever thought about making it,\u201d Singleton told Vice in 2016. \u201cAs I started to think about what I wanted to do with my life, and cinema became an option, it was just natural that this was probably gonna be my first film. In fact, when I applied to USC film school they had a thing that asked you to write three ideas for films. And one of them was called ‘Summer of ’84,’ which was about growing up in South Central LA.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2002, \u201cBoyz N the Hood\u201d was added to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, which called it \u201can innovative look at life and the tough choices present for kids growing up in South Central Los Angeles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Singleton’s death Monday followed a turbulent week during which his family members made opposing court filings regarding his health. Singleton had been in intensive care in a Los Angeles hospital since he had a stroke on April 17. A court filing last week by his mother, Shelia Ward, requested she be appointed Singleton’s temporary conservator to make medical and financial decisions while he was incapacitated.<\/p>\n

Ward’s filing said that Singleton was in a coma. But on Friday, Singleton’s daughter Cleopatra Singleton, 19, filed a declaration disputing that account. She maintained that her father was not in a coma and that doctors did not \u201chave a concrete diagnosis.\u201d She opposed her grandmother becoming conservator, or guardian.<\/p>\n

Singleton’s passing prompted widespread praise for a filmmaker who, as his \u201cShaft\u201d star Samuel L. Jackson said, \u201cblazed the trail for many young film makers,\u201d while \u201calways remaining true to who he was and where he came from.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ava DuVernay called him \u201ca giant among us.\u201d Spike Lee said, \u201cWe’ll miss you but your films will live on.\u201d Jordan Peele, the Oscar-winning \u201cGet Out\u201d and \u201cUs\u201d filmmaker, called him \u201ca brave artist and a true inspiration.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYour love for the black experience was contagious and I would never be the man I am without knowing you,\u201d Ice Cube said in a statement.<\/p>\n

None of Singleton’s subsequent movies received the acclaim of \u201cBoyz N the Hood\u201d and he was criticized at times for turning characters into mouthpieces for political and social messages. But he attracted talent ranging from Tupac Shakur to Don Cheadle and explored themes of creative expression (\u201cPoetic Justice\u201d), identity (\u201cHigher Learning\u201d) and the country’s racist past, notably in \u201cRosewood,\u201d based on a murderous white rampage against a black community in Florida in 1923.<\/p>\n

He also made the coming-of-age story \u201cBaby Boy,\u201d a remake of the action film \u201cShaft\u201d and an installment in the \u201cFast and Furious\u201d franchise, \u201c2 Fast 2 Furious.\u201d More recent projects included the FX crime drama \u201cSnowfall,\u201d which he helped create. Starring Damson Idris, \u201cSnowfall\u201d returned Singleton to the Los Angeles of his youth and the destructive effects of the rise of crack cocaine.<\/p>\n

\u201cDrugs devastated a generation. It gave me something to write about, but I had to survive it first,\u201d Singleton told the Guardian in 2017. \u201cIt made me a very angry young man. I didn’t understand why I was so angry, but I wasn’t someone who took my anger and applied it inward. I turned it into being a storyteller. I was on a kamikaze mission to really tell stories from my perspective \u2013 an authentic black perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Singleton was married twice, and had five children. Besides his career in movies, Singleton also directed the memorable, Egyptian-themed video for Michael Jackson’s \u201cRemember the Time,\u201d which included Eddie Murphy and Magic Johnson. He cast hip-hop artists and other musicians in many of his films, including Ice Cube in \u201cBoyz N the Hood,\u201d Janet Jackson and Shakur in \u201cPoetic Justice\u201d and Tyrese Gibson in \u201cBaby Boy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Singleton’s early success didn’t shield him from creative conflicts or frustration with Hollywood studios. He blamed the commercial failure of \u201cRosewood\u201d on lack of support from Warner Bros. He fought with producer Scott Rudin during the making of \u201cShaft\u201d and was furious when Rudin brought in author\/screenwriter Richard Price to revise the script. He had planned to direct a biopic about Shakur, but quit after clashing with Morgan Creek Productions. In 2014, he chastised the industry for \u201crefusing to let African-Americans direct black-themed films,\u201d but Singleton was pleased in recent years by the emergence of Ava DuVernay, Barry Jenkins, Jordan Peele and others.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are these stacks of (films by non-black filmmakers) where black people have had to say, ‘OK, at least they tried,\u201d’ he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2018, adding that now blacks were making the films themselves. \u201cWhat’s interesting when you see ‘Black Panther’ is you realize it couldn’t have been directed by anybody else but Ryan Coogler. It’s a great adventure movie and it works on all those different levels as\u00a0entertainment, but it has this kind of cultural through-line that is so specific that it makes it universal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most recently, Singleton, who regretted turning down the chance to direct on the first season of \u201cThe Wire,\u201d turned his focus largely to television. He directed episodes of \u201cThe People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story\u201d (for which he was nominated for an Emmy), \u201cEmpire\u201d and \u201cBillions.\u201d He co-created and executive produced \u201cSnowfall,\u201d directing three episodes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s hardly any precedent for a guy like me to have the career that I’ve had,\u201d Singleton told Variety in 2017. \u201cBecause I grew up the way I grew up, I’m an in-your-face kind of guy. I developed that as a defence mechanism to survive in the streets. I do that in Hollywood in the service of my passion.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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