I don't do much Monday-morning box-offiice opinion on this blog because too many others do it far better and far more obsessively than I'd ever be able to. That said, I'm pretty surprised that in its second week Hustle and Flow, which is our cover story this month in Filmmaker, fell out of the top ten with an estimated 50% drop to $4 million from its only okay opening of $8 million last weekend. Honestly, I had Hustle pegged as a crossover mainstream hit, and when I hung out a couple weeks ago with a studio exec friend, we made an informal bet on its prospects. He had it at $40 million, and I had it at $60 million. Now it looks like it will wind up around $20 million. That's not bad for an equity-financed indie move that cost less than $3 million -- when we do our annual Sundance Box-Office Grosses chart, its budget/box-office ratio will probably be the highest of last year's Competition -- but it has to be considered a disappointment for Paramount, which paid $10 million for the film and allocated it a hefty marketing campaign of at least $15 million plus lots of synergistic in-kind promotion on MTV.

What happened? When I saw the film at Sundance, the crowd went wild for it -- and I was at a press screening. The word from the public screenings was also through the roof, and while a number of influential critics dissed it, it didn't seem like the kind of movie that was dependent on their word anyway. Indeed, Paramount's confident and stylish campaign seemed centered on the breakout performance of Terrence Howard and a kind of burnished street cred, forgoing the expected "big head" one-sheet for a poster that referenced rap CD cover design and 70s blaxploitation against a somewhat melancholy image of Howard looking down at the ground.

The thin air at Sundance may have had something to do with it, however. I'm not talking about the Sundance factor leading to an overestimation of the quality of the film, which I still think is pretty great, but rather, an underestimation of its marketing challenge. You see, at Sundance, buzz builds quickly and intensely, and what a movie is actually about has very little to do with one's decision to go see it. At Sundance, Hustle and Flow was the "Craig Brewer film," "the film John Singleton personally paid for," and, finally, "the film Paramount bought for $10 million." One thing it wasn't was "a film about a pimp."

"I don't know why they let that word into their marketing materials," a 40-something publicist friend said to me last week. "But the film is about a pimp," I countered. "Doesn't matter," she said. "It's a film about a guy with a dream. Let other people say it's about a pimp, but don't say it yourself."

I thought about her comments when I heard back from two friends, both directors in their twenties, who caught the film on the opening weekend. Both thought Howard was fantastic, thought the film was incredibly well-made... but ultimately couldn't recommend it. Because it was about a pimp. One of my friends really wrestled with his thoughts and felt somewhat old-fashioned about his issues with the film. But ultimately, he just couldn't go there, couldn't root for Howard's DJay because of his morally compromised profession.

This point of view is summarized by "nudel" over at The Hot Blog: "At the end of the day, I didn't WANT to see DJay succeed. Regardless of the whole 'rise above' theme/marketing campaign & the "everybody got to have a dream' stuff, he's still a pimp who sells drugs, beats one of his hos, makes another one blow a guy so he can get a nice microphone, and beats & almost kills someone else who doesn't give him what he wants. My guess is that these actions are a big turn-off, not only to 'middle America,' but to a large segment of 'indie' filmgoers. Clearly, we're supposed to sympathize with and cheer for D-Jay, but personally, I found it very hard to do so."

And another of my publicist friend's comments were echoed by another Hot Blogger, "Stella's Boy": "how do i convince my (white) friends to see hustle and flow? none of them want to see it because it looks like another generic urban film to them." The publicist (who is white) told me she felt that none of the marketing materials were aimed at her and made her feel that it was a film she should go and see.

And then there's the "authenticity" rap, the charge by some that the film doesn't feel "real" in its depiction of the Memphis underclass. (To this I say that the film is not so much trying to be "authentic" as it is presenting a fable of authenticy, a kind of essay on the role of the criminal experience in our contemporary popular culture.)

The feel of the marketing probably has something to do with the film's failure to cross over, but I think the pimp thing may have more to do with it. And here's where my reaction differed from my friends. At Sundance I cheered the film as it ramped up DJay's Memphis rap scene rise. But, I wasn't cheering the character of DJay specifically. I admired the film's ability to present DJay as a morally flawed, egotistic, and not really that talented rapper and still draw us into his "star is born" storyline. In fact, what was most interesting for me was the film's depiction of how others realized their own dreams of being part of a cultural moment by projecting them through the lens of DJay and his pimp life. My favorite scene was that tiny moment at the end when the DJ Qualls character hears his song while stocking a vending machine. You just know that he's never going to make a dime off that song, that five years later he'll still be stocking that vending machine, but it doesn't matter.

In his Filmmaker interview, Brewer referenced Purple Rain and Prince's fucked-up behavior to Appolonia. I'd throw in New York, New York, another movie about a misogynist musician getting tangled up between women and his dreams. As with those films, we go into Hustle and Flow thinking that its characters can be read as simply as its song lyrics. That winds up not being the case, and I guess the complications at the heart of what reads like a music-driven crowdpleaser make it not quite the crossover success I expected.
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# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/01/2005 01:43:00 AM

Comments (7)

 
"My favorite scene was that tiny moment at the end when the DJ Qualls character hears his song while stocking a vending machine. You just know that he's never going to make a dime off that song, that five years later he'll still be stocking that vending machine, but it doesn't matter."

It's a keen scene... issues of class and exploitation made metaphor, expressed in an unexpected way... instead of merely presented, represented. What did the German aphorist Karl Kraus write way back in the teens of the 20th century? "Satires which can be understood by the censor are justly forbidden"?
# posted by  Ray Pride @ 8/01/2005 3:57 AM  

 
The trailers for this film that they showed on television for this film were awful. Now that I've read this I'll probably go see it.
# posted by  Anonymous @ 8/01/2005 3:38 PM  

 
It's far more simple than all this. The "urban tragedy with rap star cameo" film is dead as a viable genre. It's most likely audience, hip-hop fans, "urban" youth, feel like it's been done to death. Had this been released around the time of say, NEW JACK CITY, the film probably would have done well, as that audience does spend a lot of money at theaters. The film would have had to have been great, and a bit more glossy, to grab any attention from that audience, an audience that would likely have given the studios another 20 or 30 mil.
# posted by  mmays @ 8/10/2005 11:54 AM  

 
Maybe it's because it's a bad movie that hovers between aiming for PC multicultural indie politesse, and failing, and wanting to have the juice of a 70s blaxploitation flic, and failing. The plot is a threadbare 1930s cliche, updated with a twist, dressed up with some rap and populated by characters that are caricatures at best. So it's not, say, Harold Pinter we're talking here.
For the rest of us, it promises sex, violence and suspense, and hardly delivers. No fun, no art.
Then there's that long, long first act.
And, yeah, y'know the pimp with the heart of gold? C'mon. The movie hinges on your accepting that some dealer that sells women for $20 in the front and $40 in the back is just another guy with heart and a big, big dream. Maybe hookers with hearts of gold are easier to accept because they somehow are seen as victims, but a pimp will always seem a victimizer, and a low one at that. "Stomp that ho".
Finally -- maybe it's easier for the kind of audience at Sundance to identify with a pimp than it is for the rest of us.
# posted by  Tim Roessler @ 8/14/2005 1:58 PM  

 
This is a great movie. I urge anybody who has empathy for the morass of poor black people, and with a broad interest in music, to see it. Terrence Howard stands alongside Poitier and Denzel Washington. It will be a disgrace if the Academy shuns Howard because of the content.
# posted by  kobester @ 8/30/2005 8:16 PM  

 
Without a doubt the movie has its flaws. The portrayal of the Memphis underculture as well as the unconvincing accents (specifically from DJay) left much to be desired, but I found the movie enjoyable in a gritty, voyeuristic way. Ignore the hype and leave your hangups at the door, and I think you might enjoy this. Unfortunately, I don't expect Howard to win the Oscar due to the subject matter, but he deserves it even if his accent made him sound more white than black.
# posted by  Anonymous @ 1/31/2006 12:45 PM  

 
Sweet Daddy Love Says that this was a HOT DAM movie.Pure love ,rap,
street,and game.This is the under-world that everyday people don't want to know or here.Like in the city ain't all silver and gold with rainbows and sunny skies.
Selling woman have been around since the beginning of time and will be here untill the end of time.Some people can't handle the truth!!!!!! Woman have the power and their body will sell!!!!
# posted by  Anonymous @ 3/20/2008 11:07 AM  

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