Gateway Cinephiles

3-Minute Intro: Hustle & Flow

Screened: June 14, 2008
Format: DVD - Paramount (2006)
Selected By: Teresa

The verdict may still be out as to whether American writer-director Craig Brewer is a crass peddler of stereotypes or a fearless filmmaker who delves deep into crannies of the American soul that have too often been neglected and caricatured. Brewer was blessed with a middle class youth characterized by generous artistic encouragement from his parents. Initially, his interests lay in the theater, but after moving to Memphis in 1994, he began penning screenplays. His father’s sudden death left him with a small inheritance which he spent on his first feature film, The Poor and The Hungry, shot on digital video. The film was never distributed, but it proved to be a foot in the door for Brewer. Boyz n the Hood producer Stephanie Allain and director John Singleton became champions of Brewer’s next project, a hip-hop rags-to-not-quite-riches tale. Singleton’s enthusiasm was such that he actually mortgaged his house to help bring Hustle & Flow to the screen.

The film became a smash at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, where Brewer won the Audience Award for Drama. Significant buzz swirled around the lead performance by Terrence Howard, fresh from a breakout role in the ensemble drama Crash. Howard and the film’s signature song, Three 6 Mafia’s “It’s Hard Out There for a Pimp” were both nominated for Academy Awards, with Three 6 claiming a coup as the first hip hop artists to perform at the Oscars.

Hustle & Flow reflects Brewer’s enduring interest in capturing textured, affecting portraits of people in the meanest corners of society. His backdrop is often the dusty, sticky Tennessee that he grew to love in the 1990s. Yet Brewer has faced criticism for his lack of Southern credibility, and Hustle & Flow in particular engendered controversy with its arguable misogyny and glorification of the criminal life. Nonetheless, Brewer and his slate of remarkable performers discover a striking vision of human striving, ugly survival, and artistic ecstasy from a deceptively simple premise. Howard in particular offers a potent, nuanced portrayal. He convinces us that a lowlife pimp and drug dealer could posses dreams and talents that can make him into perhaps not a good man, but a better man.