Interview: Neil Drumming — Part 2

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

Scott: Was there a specific moment where you said, “I’m doing this journalism thing, but I really want to make movies,” or was it something that just evolved over time?

Neil: When I was at Entertainment Weekly, I did a lot of music coverage to start with, because that’s really where my background was. Then I got into the movie department, and I remember my particular beat was Fox. I was going on a lot of Fox visits and met a lot of people. Brett Ratner, Will Smith, Richard Donner. I did a lot of interviews. I remember feeling like, “Man, this is not necessarily something I want to talk about, but something I want to do.” While I was at EW, I wrote maybe two or three screenplays to get back into it because I really hadn’t written a screenplay since college.

I had to figure out if I felt I could do it again, so I started and I had a little flirtation with a William Morris agent, who hip pocketed me and got me really excited, only to make me a lot less excited. But by that point, I had caught the bug anyway, so I had a big sit down with my wife. She was like you should probably just quit.

I did, then I started writing. I wrote for several years. I stopped working at EW in 2008, did a little of journalism to bring in money, but mostly what I was trying to do was write screenplays. I had a development thing with a big Hollywood exec, and that didn’t happen, and wrote a couple more things.

Then I was working with a pretty big Hollywood producer on a romantic comedy I had written. I thought it was a very commercial script when I first finished it. Then the rewrites just continued to get more and more commercial, it just felt like what I was doing to try to make something that was contrary to the way I write. Almost as a reaction to that, I wanted to write something really personal. That was the first draft of Big Words.

Scott: Let’s talk about Big Words. Here is a description of the plot: “Members of a once promising hip hop group, now in their late 30s, struggle with regret, disappointment, and change on election night 2008.” In articles, I’ve seen you mention a few movies as inspiration including High Fidelity, The Big Chill, and Diner. Could you talk about why those three films?

Neil: Yeah, and also Sideways, maybe even more so than Diner because there was this long, storied tradition of self absorbed white men. [laughs] It’s become a catch phrase about Big Words, but I just felt like I related to those stories, even if I didn’t relate to the specifics of them. Like, I’m not a wine aficionado, but I still love Sideways. I’m not a baby boomer or whatever generation The Big Chill speaks to. Maybe High Fidelity is a little closer to me because of the music, but obviously those characters are older than I am. Still I related to those movies, their subjects, and thematically. As I was crossing into my mid-30s, those stories became especially relevant and poignant to me.

When I was thinking about writing something personal, I had to deal with some of those themes. But the backdrop that came naturally was obviously hip hop, and the fortunate thing, the upshot of that, is that no one had done it yet.

I felt an urge to tell that kind of story about growing up, about growing older, about being a man. The setting that was obvious and most natural to me, a love/hate relationship with hip hop.

Scott: Let’s talk about the three male leads. There’s John / Big Words. He’s played by Dorian Missick. And James / Jayvee Da Mac, played by Gbenga Akinnagbe. And DJ Malik, played Darien Sills‑Evans. Great cast. Each is distinct, and yet they share a common dynamic, a sense of nostalgia, even regret about the past. Could you talk about the differences between John, James, and Malik in terms of their respective connections to the past, the time they shared a hip hop group?

Neil: Malik is more obvious in the sense that for him, it never should have gone away. He wants it to be the way it was when they were younger. He had hoped that that would become famous, that that would give them purpose, and that that’s who they would be. They would be this great rap group. Sometimes when I describe Big Words, I say it’s like if Tribe Called Quest had never become famous. He wants to be Tribe Called Quest, and he always thought that they had the talent and the ability to do so. He’s having trouble reconciling it with the fact that A, that has not happened, and B, it will never happen. In fact, I’m not even sure he admits to B.

He’s the more straightforward of them in the sense of nostalgia. I think James realizes that he loved that time. I think he is very enamored of the past, and I think he’s very nostalgic as well. But he has moved on. He has the concerns of his real life. James has obviously come out of the closet, so the concerns of his real life have eclipsed that nostalgia.

When I say concerns, the fact that he’s a homosexual pales in comparison to the fact that he’s a man in a long term relationship that is questioning that relationship and having other desires. I think that’s a universal idea, regardless of his sexuality. That’s James.

Then John has basically just walled off any attachment that he had to the past. He has basically decided I’m not going to be nostalgic, I am not going to think about it, and I’m just going to close myself off. The reason I think he’s like that is because he probably suffered the most disappointment.

I know people like this who are very close to me. When I wrote John, it was with this notion that if you had a calling, the thing that you would have been greatest at, that might have been the thing that would have made you, and for whatever reason, you had to abandon it or you stopped or it abandoned you, that’s always been the motivation behind the John character.

Tomorrow in Part 3, Neil digs into a key relationship between John and a female character, homosexuality in hip hop culture, and how Neil wrote the rap lyrics in Big Words.

For Part 1, go here.

You can follow Neil on Twitter: @neildrumming.