Ice Cube Dishes on ‘Straight Outta Compton’s’ Global Reach…

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…+ “Black Films Don’t Travel” Myth…

By Tambay A. Obenson | Shadow and Act

“It was the hardest movie. And I’ve been producing movies since 1995 [“Friday”]. Not just because of so many dynamic personalities – so many different stories, so many different legal problems. Outside threats. Seeing it about to fall apart at many different times. That was our biggest thing, using all of our powers to keep it together because it just wanted to unravel in so many different areas.” – Ice Cube.

Cube was of course talking about “Straight Outta Compton,” in a much longer comprehensive conversation, produced by The Hollywood Reporter, with five other awards season producers: Scott Cooper (“Black Mass”), Steve Golin (“The Revenant” and “Spotlight”), Simon Kinberg (“The Martian”), Stacey Sher (“The Hateful Eight”) and Christine Vachon (“Carol”). They roundtable discussion included topics like their most difficult career moments and the pitfalls of their profession.

The Hollywood Reporter hasn’t made the the entire conversation available to watch online yet; just teases like the one below, featuring Ice Cube speaking on having to be relentless in his insistence that the studio (Universal) push the film (“Straight Outta Compton”) as hard and as wide as he felt it could reach: “They say a black movie doesn’t [travel]. Well are you promoting? Well that’s probably why it doesn’t travel,” Cube says in the clip.

Watch (by the way, the movie has grossed over $200 million worldwide, although 80% of that figure was earned domestically).

 

Tags: Ice Cube