John Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood After Thirty Years

John Singleton’s feature film debut, Boyz N the Hood, was released 30 years ago, July 12, 1991. I was working in a movie theatre in Santa Cruz the summer it was released, and I remember watching it at least four or five times. I found it incredibly compelling. Everything seemed to just click: a great story, great casting & acting, smart photography, great dialogue. The film was produced in the wake of the cross-over commercial success of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989), when Hollywood finally realized it make a buck on Black films that didn’t star an “Eddie Murphy-type personality.” In addition to Boyz ‘N the Hood, there was also the Hudlin brothers’ House Party (1990), Mario Van Peebles’s New Jack City (1991), the Hughes brothers’ Menace II Society (1993), and of course Lee’s own Mo’ Better Blues (1990) and Jungle Fever (1991). It was a turning point in Hollywood and in Black American cinema.

The film grew on me, not least because I ended up going to study film as a graduate student at USC, where Singleton got his MFA in Filmic Writing (1990). Boyz N the Hood was his thesis screenplay.

New York Times reporter Lawrence Ware reflects back on the importance of the late John Singleton’s film, and you can read the article here.