Interview: Neil Drumming — Part 1

Neil Drumming is a filmmaker, screenwriter, and journalist. He is a former staff writer and editor at Entertainment Weekly, and his work has appeared in Wired, The Washington Post, Vibe, Rolling Stone, Essence, and Vanity Fair. He wrote and directed his first film Big Words, which the New York Times describes as “weaving race, class, sexual orientation and politics — as well as the evolution of rap music — into a wistful tapestry of male disaffection.”

Recently I had the opportunity to interview Neil. In Part 1, we discuss his background and how he wound his way to directing Big Words:

Scott: You’re described as a filmmaker, journalist, a pop culture critic. You were a staff writer and editor at “Entertainment Weekly.” Your work has appeared in “Wired,” the “Washington Post,” “Rolling Stone.” How did you get into journalism?

Neil: I was living in DC. I’d got out of college. I actually went to film school. When I got out of film school…I went to USC in southern California. I didn’t actually have a way into film, I was sort of intimidated by film, so I came back to the East Coast. But my parents had moved to Florida, so I spent a little time in Florida, which I hated. Then, my sister lived in DC and she told me…I’ll never forget it. She’s like, “There are a lot of opportunities for young black men in DC,” so I moved to DC. She was right about that, but those were mostly FBI/Government jobs. The only thing I could find that suited me at all was a job at a newspaper.

I worked at the DC City Paper under David Carr. I started doing event listings, like parties and stuff and what shows were happening. Those things come with blurbs and stuff, so I started writing little blurbs on shows, and then that went to reviews. I did a fairly good job at that, and then got recruited back to New York to work at some magazines.

Scott: Where did your interest in writing develop?

Neil: When I was in film school, I was a screenwriting major. I wasn’t into production or directing. It was purely writing. I’ve always wanted to be writer since I was in the first grade. It was always the one thing I wanted.

Scott: Were you always a movie fan?

Neil: You know what? I don’t think I was a huge movie fan as a kid. I liked the stuff I really liked, but when I think about what I was obsessed with, I didn’t go to the movies a lot. My dad was very much against cable and MTV and anything like that, so I watched a lot of stuff on TV, and it all blended together. I was big into cartoons. Anytime The Wiz would come on or Willie Wonka. It’s a bunch of things together. I wouldn’t say I was a die‑hard movie fan.

Scott: How did you hit on the idea, “Hey, I want to go to USC film school and major in screenwriting”?

Neil: I was really into storytelling. In high school you start dating and start going to more movies. Movies just seemed like the most exciting way to tell stories. USC film school at the time had a really amazing brochure. It was these two very conservative‑looking gentlemen in tuxedos. One of them was an orchestra leader or something, and the other one was a professor. You opened the brochure, and on the inside it was the same two austere‑looking men, but they’re wearing Trojan football jerseys. It just seemed like a fun place. Also, I was really having a lot of trouble with my dad and I wanted to go as far away from New York as possible. USC was 3,000 miles away.

Scott: Apart from the education, one of the things I’ve heard from people who attend SC film school is that a major benefit is your classmates, how they become the basis of your network group. Has that been the case for you?

Neil: The almost exact opposite happened to me. I’m very much in touch with a lot of people that I went to school with, but I did not connect well with the film school. I don’t know what it was about my personality. Maybe it was just a difference in background. I fell in more with the radio crowd and the hip‑hop heads, so I didn’t make those valuable connections. I made one connection that turned out to be extremely valuable, but other than that I never really made friends in the cinema school. When we were doing our projects, you would recruit other people from your class to help you, and then you would help them in turn. That never happened to me.

I usually recruited my actual friends, who were all high and completely unreliable because they smoked weed all day, so I never really got the full benefit of the community. But I did get to know Ben Queen, who went on to create Drive and wrote Cars 2. We never actually became really good friends, but later in life, I came back in contact with him. Ben put me in touch with this guy, Matt Smith, who eventually became my producer on Big Words. That’s the one good connection I made.

Scott: Let’s talk about that hip hop thing. Did you get into it in high school, or was that something that emerged when you were at SC?

Neil: My brother is a little older than me, and he and my sisters would bring home super rapping, like the first vinyl that was ever printed up. I was always around it. My brother was really into it. I didn’t connect to hip hop on a really personal level. A lot of it frightened me, especially like Public Enemy. But when I heard De La Soul, it really changed the way I thought of the music, and the way it created a lane for me personally. It felt like who I was or who I wanted to be or who I aspired to be at the time.

That would be in high school. That was really my personal connection to it, then I started making it. My brother made beats, and so I started making beats. Then I rhymed, so I could try to rap over his beats. Then by college, I just figured I was a rapper, you know? My college roommates were rappers.

Scott: You got into screenwriting when you were at SC. How about directing? I know you said you weren’t into production that much in college, but you did a great job directing Big Words. How did you learn those chops?

Neil: I never wanted to direct. I was in the film writing program because I didn’t want to direct. The entirety of my life, I’ve spent not wanting to a direct a movie. What happened was when I wrote the first draft of Big Words, it was optioned at one point. While I liked the people who optioned it, it didn’t go the direction I wanted it to, and the option lapsed. Later, a director was attached, and that relationship didn’t work out. One of the things that director said to me was, “You want too much control over this project. It’s too personal for you. You should probably direct it yourself,” which was not something I wanted to hear.

But eventually, that comment spawned me thinking about it, and Matt Smith, who had really just been a friend who had read all my scripts and was an aspiring producer, he got behind that notion and pushed me in that direction. I directed a couple of shorts beforehand to try to get comfortable with the notion of directing, and then I got into Big Words.

Tomorrow in Part 2, Neil talks about the genesis of the idea for Big Words and his take on the three male leads in the movie.

You can follow Neil on Twitter: @neildrumming.