John Singleton

• 1. Introduction

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  John Daniel Singleton walked into the Cannes Film Festival in 1991 as a 23-year-old first-time director, his debut feature Boyz n the Hood already drawing the world's attention to a neighborhood most of Hollywood preferred to ignore. A year later, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would nominate him for Best Director, making him, at age 24, the youngest person and the first African American ever to receive that distinction. Two nominations in one night, for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, from a film he had written and directed straight out of USC's film program. What kind of life and what kind of city produced a filmmaker capable of that? And what happened in the nearly three decades that followed, as Singleton moved from South Central to Cannes and back again, always insisting that black stories deserved to be told by the people who lived them?

• 2. South Central Roots

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  Singleton was born on the 6th of January 1968 in Los Angeles, the son of Shelia Ward-Johnson, a pharmaceutical company sales executive, and Danny Singleton, a real estate agent, mortgage broker, and financial planner. His parents were not together, and he grew up navigating a neighborhood where drugs and street life were constant presences. In a 1993 interview with DIRT magazine, he told journalist Veronica Chambers: "When I was growing up, comic books, video games and movies were my buffer against all the drugs, the partying and shit. I never grew up with a whole lot of white people. I grew up in a black neighborhood."

  He attended Eisenhower High School, then Blair High School, then Pasadena City College before arriving at the USC School of Cinema-Television. There, he joined the Beta Omega chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi as a spring 1987 initiate. He had considered computer science, but enrolled instead in USC's Filmic Writing program under Margaret Mehring. The program was built around a direct pipeline into Hollywood, training students to enter the industry as writer-directors rather than film theorists. He graduated in 1990. A year after graduating, his debut film was at Cannes.

• 3. Boyz n the Hood

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  Boyz n the Hood brought together a cast that reads now like a roster of future icons: Cuba Gooding Jr., Ice Cube, Nia Long, Morris Chestnut, Angela Bassett, Regina King, and Laurence Fishburne. The story followed three childhood friends growing up in crime-ridden South Central Los Angeles, and it was both a critical and commercial success. In 2002, the United States Library of Congress declared it "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry, a recognition typically reserved for films that have already earned their place in the culture.

  The film's success opened doors and created expectations simultaneously. Singleton immediately followed it in 1992 by directing the special-effects-heavy "Remember the Time" music video for Michael Jackson, a production that featured Eddie Murphy, Iman, and Magic Johnson. It was a striking demonstration of range from a filmmaker who had just spent his feature debut on an intimate neighborhood drama.

• 4. The Hip-Hop Generation

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  Poetic Justice, released in 1993, starred Janet Jackson in her film debut as a young woman named Justice who writes poetry to cope with losing her boyfriend to gun violence. Tupac Shakur played the postal worker who draws her out of depression. Jackson received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Original Song for "Again", which reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Critics were more divided about the film itself, and that mixed reception would become a recurring pattern across Singleton's mid-career work.

  Higher Learning followed in 1995, examining racial and social tension on a university campus. That same year, Singleton spoke at length about his relationship to hip-hop culture. "I see myself as the first filmmaker from the hip-hop generation," he said. "I've grown up with hip-hop music. The films I make have a hip-hop aesthetic. It may not have rap in it, but there's a whole culture and politics that go with the music. It's young, black culture, that's what I deal with in my films."

  His fourth feature, Rosewood, arrived in 1997 and took on the 1923 Rosewood massacre in Florida. The historical drama received generally positive reviews and was entered into the 47th Berlin International Film Festival, where it competed for the Golden Bear.

• 5. Box Office and Independence

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  Shaft, released in 2000, starred Samuel L. Jackson as John Shaft Jr., a relative of the character Richard Roundtree had played in the original 1971 film. Singleton co-wrote, co-produced, and directed the sequel-remake, which grossed over $107 million worldwide. A year later, Baby Boy gave Tyrese Gibson his breakthrough dramatic role as Jody Summers, a 20-year-old father of two who still lives with his own mother. Taraji P. Henson appeared in the film alongside him. Critics largely considered it a return to the South Central territory that had made Boyz n the Hood so distinctive.

  In 2003, Singleton received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. That same year, 2 Fast 2 Furious grossed over $236 million worldwide, making it both the highest-grossing film in the Fast and Furious franchise at that point and the highest-grossing film of Singleton's entire career.

  In 2005, when most major backers would not finance the independent film Hustle and Flow, Singleton stepped in with writer-director Craig Brewer to finance and produce it. Terrence Howard starred as a Memphis hustler and pimp trying to become a rapper; Anthony Anderson and Taraji P. Henson appeared in supporting roles. The film won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and received a Best Actor nomination for Howard. That same year, Four Brothers grossed $92 million worldwide despite mixed reviews.

• 6. Television and Snowfall

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  After the critically dismissed action thriller Abduction in 2011, Singleton shifted his primary focus to television. He directed episodes of Empire and The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story, the latter earning him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series, Movie, or Dramatic Special. He also served as executive producer and director on the BET crime drama Rebel, which centered on an Oakland police officer named Rebecca Knight who becomes a private investigator after her brother is killed by police.

  Snowfall, which premiered on FX on the 5th of July 2017, became his most sustained television achievement. Singleton co-created the series with Eric Amadio and Dave Andron, co-wrote the screenplays for the first two episodes, and directed the finales of the first two seasons. Damson Idris starred as Franklin Saint, a young drug dealer from South Central who gets pulled into the 1980s crack epidemic. The series also depicted CIA involvement in trafficking the drug. Singleton worked on Snowfall until his death.

• 7. Influences and Advocacy

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  Singleton met Spike Lee in 1986, at a screening of Lee's film She's Gotta Have It, two weeks before Singleton enrolled at USC. The two became friends, and Lee remained an influence on his work alongside George Lucas, whose original Star Wars film Singleton cited as one of his strongest influences, and Steven Spielberg. August Wilson, the playwright, was also among those he named.

  On the 19th of March 2014, Singleton spoke to students at Loyola Marymount University and directed pointed criticism at major studios. "They ain't letting the black people tell the stories," he told the audience. He pushed further: "They want black people to be who they want them to be, as opposed to what they are. When you try to make it homogenized, when you try to make it appeal to everybody, then you don't have anything that's special."

  A planned Tupac Shakur biopic, announced in 2013, collapsed after creative differences with Morgan Creek Productions. Singleton stepped down as director; the project was eventually released in 2017 as All Eyez on Me, a film that Singleton himself criticized. He had spoken of making a competing Tupac film, but it never materialized.

• 8. Final Days

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  On the 17th of April 2019, Singleton suffered a stroke and was placed in intensive care at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He had reportedly begun to experience weakness in his legs after returning from a trip to Costa Rica. Reports on the 25th of April described him as being in a coma, though his daughter disputed that characterization publicly.

  On the 28th of April 2019, Singleton was removed from life support and died at the age of 51. The official cause of death was listed as acute ischemic stroke, intracerebral hemorrhage, and hypertension.

  Ice Cube, who had appeared in both Boyz n the Hood and Higher Learning, released a statement: "There are no words to express how sad I am to lose my brother, friend and mentor. He loved to bring the Black experience to the world." A private funeral was held on the 6th of May 2019 in Los Angeles. Singleton was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills. Snowfall, the series he had co-created and helped shape from its first episode, continued after his death, carrying forward his portrait of South Central through the crack years.