A Quote by F. Gary Gray
I remember where I was when I first heard 'Boyz N The Hood' - 126th Street and Normandy, South Central, Los Angeles. I remember that I was on my porch. What they described in that song was so vivid and so clear to me because it was the kind of life I was used to witnessing and partly experiencing in my neighborhood.
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As of late, 'Boyz n the Hood' really impacted me because I grew up in that same neighborhood. It was the first time I saw a true reflection of me, my neighborhood and my surroundings.
My formative years would be in South Central Los Angeles. It was a really volatile environment, but, I always say, when you're living in the hood, you don't live this life where you're crying every day, downtrodden every day.
In the neighborhood where my studio is, in South Central Los Angeles, there are a lot of immigrant-owned businesses. I'm constantly amazed at the level of work they do. It's above anything. For me, I think I pattern myself on that work ethic.
When I did 'Boyz N The Hood', I never thought how we grew up in South Central was interesting enough for a movie.
If somebody says, 'Do you remember the first time you heard a Rolling Stones song?' if you say you do, you're crazy. You've just always heard them. You might remember the first time it impacted you, but the first time you heard one, you were in a cradle.
This is going to sound ridiculous, but I remember watching 'Boyz n the Hood,' and there is a scene where Cuba Gooding, Jr. gets pressed against a car by a police officer, and he starts crying because it's so humiliating. I remember thinking in that moment that I could totally identify with him, and I'm a little white kid from Canada.
Los Angeles is Hollywood and Hollywood is Hollywood Blvd. It's the first thing you want to see. It's the only thing really that you know about as far as Los Angeles is concerned. And so you go and you look at Joan Crawford's hands and feet and the whole history of American filmmaking is encapsulated in that one little area on that one street. That street, to me, has always been the street of dream.
God, Atlantis was only yesterday. Let alone Los Angeles. Remember that incarnation in Los Angeles?
Nobody in my family or in my neighborhood used the language that they used at the University of Chicago. I remember the first time I heard the word "value" repeated again and again by my professor. Value to me was the price of a frying pan.
I started in dance classes when I was, like, seven years old. And the arts in general, it kept me not only off the street, I grew up in South Central Los Angeles, so it kept my mind focused. It kept me passionate about something. So I wasn't easily distracted.
I stumbled upon Charles White purely by chance while looking through a book 'Great Negroes, Past and Present' in the library at Forty-Ninth Street Elementary School in South-Central Los Angeles. I was in the fifth grade.
There is no pedestrian culture [in South Central Los Angeles].
I grew up in South Central Los Angeles, where people are in cars.
At heart, I'm a dude from South Central Los Angeles. We roll the way we roll because we had survival tactics; we had to learn how to adapt. That's just me.
I don't remember things initially when listening to music. Like, I don't remember where I first heard a song, I don't have nostalgic attachment to a song in that it reminds me of such and such a time or place. I think I probably did experience that somewhat when I was not a full-time, professional musician, but I don't think music works that way for people who are in it constantly.
If you grow up in the South Bronx today or in south-central Los Angeles or Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, you quickly come to understand that you have been set apart and that there's no will in this society to bring you back into the mainstream.
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