Craig is a Tennessean who likes to spin tales set in modern Memphis. The Poor and Hungry was about a car thief who falls in love with a cellist who he’s victimized; Hustle and Flow is about a street hustler who wants words and music to form the pathway to his dreams.
“This is a Memphis story – a movie about making music by any means necessary,” says Brewer. “Music has been our common love and language. It’s our chance to take our pain, our struggle, our tools, and put it into something that has a beat, raw and unfiltered.”
It’s also a personal story. “My father had died, very unexpectedly; I was beginning to have thoughts of my own mortality,” he says. “I lost him to a sudden heart attack – he never smoked and never drank, but a blood clot ended his life at age 49. When you are the only son and your father dies at 49, you can’t help but think you’re on borrowed time after age 50. Being that I was 27, I couldn’t help but feel that I was past the halfway point.
“At the same time, I was location scouting in Memphis for another movie and this hustler rolled up on me. He was trying to sell me his woman, and his mumble, his hustle, his spin, was unrelenting – he even tried to sell me his car. He just would not let me go. So I just put the two together – I thought, ‘Man, if that guy had the same mid-life crisis that I had, and suddenly he started thinking about making something creative, what kind of story would that be?’ It seemed to me that his creative outlet would be music – in Memphis, that means hip-hop, crunk – and his hustle would translate into his flow.”
That chance meeting inspired Hustle and Flow’s central character, DJay, played powerfully by Terrence Howard.
“I think Craig is DJay,” says Howard. “He’s a hustler; he’s going to make it by any means necessary.”
“I’m exactly like DJay,” concurs Brewer. “There is a lot of hustling to making guerrilla, low-budget, independent films, and even when I came to Hollywood, I realized I had to do the same amount of talking and hustling. I felt like I was always hustling in order to flow.”
Brewer is white and DJay is black, but those who look at the skin color of the filmmaker and contrast it with the skin color of his lead character miss the point. “I knew people were going to ask about this,” Brewer says, “but this story is not about black and white; I’m writing about a world I know well. In creating the character of DJay, I tried to work against the stereotype, to make him a complex person. I didn’t want to glorify DJay’s lifestyle – I wanted the audience to see the humanity of this person without ignoring his flaws. What intrigues me about DJay is how his raw emotional and economic level affects his actions in these situations.”
Brewer wrote the screenplay in 2000. Producer Stephanie Allain knew it had to be made.“When I read the script, I was transported. I felt like I was in the hands of a master storyteller,” says Allain. “It was exciting. Craig isn’t afraid to put complex characters in desperate situations and then reveal their hearts.”
Allain was the executive who brought John Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood to Columbia Pictures. She gave the script to Singleton, who felt the same way she did.
“It was different from anything I’d read,” Singleton says. “I loved how audacious it is. Then I saw Craig’s first film, and I thought, ‘Wow, this guy can direct.’”
Singleton believed in the film so much he decided to finance it himself. “I thought, ‘Okay – I’ll greenlight the movie,” he says.
“John understood that I am a regional filmmaker,” says Brewer. “I’m trying to do in Memphis the same thing that he’s doing in South Central – and he believed that I was the guy to do it. We just bonded. We like to explore the same kinds of characters, the same types of complexities, and the same issues involving men and women, and they’re not always pretty. I think we both live in tangled places and that seeps into the character of everyday life.”
The 2005 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award – and numerous critical accolades – demonstrates that Brewer’s Tennessee tale resonates far beyond the Volunteer State. It’s a universal story that uses modern life and music to examine the timeless struggle of man to lift himself, and others, up through the power of expression and the nobility of dreams.
