Customer Reviews

Poetic Justice: Filmmaking South Central Style

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The soundtrack had Usher's debut on it, even though it failed to feature Janet Jackson's single "Again" which was played in the movie. It was a time for debuts and this film had great casting, Janet as Justice and Tupac as Lucky. And don't forget the strong showing of Regina King, then a very young lady, now an actress respected by all the world, especially for her more recent parts such as the spurned backup singer in RAY, the Ray Charles Story and she was Will Smith's wife in ENEMY OF THE STATE. She shines in Poetic Justice as Iesha, the concerned friend of Justice with a boyfriend who can't get it up and boy is she annoyed! But the best debut of all was made by the young writer Veronica Chambers who wrote this backstage, warts and all gossip bok full of the inspirational activities of young John Singleton, the director of POETIC JUSTICE.

Chambers had access where no others dared to go. She was an editor at PREMIERE magazine and I guess as one of the few black editors in 1992 she got picked to go to the shoot and hang out with Singleton, Tupac, Janet and even august old Maya Angelou (who wrote the poems that Janet's character is supposed to be writing and reciting). Chambers later, of course, became one of our best loved writers of children's books, young adult novels, and even books for adults, but this must have been one of her favorites because, well, it was like her first baby. When you read this book now it's sad of course, for Tupac is dead, Janet is in entertainment limbo thanks to white America's outrage over her Super Bowl Show, and Singleton, well, some say he has wasted away his talent making inferior movies. As Veronica Chambers reminds us, he was the youngest director (not just the youngest black director, the youngest director of any race) ever to be nominated for an Oscar.

Spike Lee writes an affectionate foreword to Chambers' book and as a kind of bonus you get the whole screenplay Singleton wrote. He was trying to balance out the "male world" of his previous effort BOYZ N THE HOOD with a "female-centered" movie that would revolve all around a young woman who has lost everything but her will to live again.