Chapter 1: What themes does Craig Brewer explore in his films?
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. My guest today is filmmaker Craig Brewer. He's built a career telling stories about people chasing dignity and purpose through music. He first broke out with Hustle & Flow, that was back in 2005, about a Memphis pimp trying to make it as a rapper. And since then, his work has moved across genres.
from Black Snake Moan and Footloose to Dolomite Is My Name and Coming to America, the sequel. His new film is called Song Song Blue, and it's based on the true story of Mike and Claire Sardina, a couple from Milwaukee who met in the late 80s and built a life around their Neil Diamond tribute act, Lightning and Thunder. They played bars, small venues, and over time became local celebrities.
Eddie Vedder even invited them to open for Pearl Jam. In the film, they're played by Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson. In this scene I'm about to play, we find them on their very first date, just getting to know each other. Jackman's character starts to open up about his sobriety, what he's learned along the way, and his long-held desire to perform.
I'm always going to be an alcoholic, but I've been sober 20 years. And the other day, it was, well, they call it a sober birthday. Happy belated sober birthday. Here's the thing. With sobriety, you've got to face up to certain truths. Way to go. Lightning, 20 years. All right, I'm not a songwriter, I'm not a sex symbol, but I just want to entertain people, and I want to make a living.
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Chapter 2: How did Craig Brewer's early life influence his storytelling?
I still believe that really good music producing is trying to find the spark of the moment. You're not trying to get too technical to tell somebody to hit a note here or there. You kind of want to just capture something really real and provide an environment where they can be that real. And so we were keeping Hugh in one isolation booth and Kate in another isolation booth.
And it just really wasn't working. So Scott and I, we put a couch out and we just put two microphones in front of the couch and we just sat them right next to each other on the couch. And it's so funny because it's so perfect because sometimes people have asked me like, hey, if I'm having like relationship trouble, what should I do?
And I go, I know this sounds odd, but go out to dinner, but just sit at the bar. I go, there's something about facing each other. That is this confrontational act to some extent. But if you're side by side, you can kind of just – two people kind of dealing with their own things. But there's a closeness that happens that is different than facing each other at dinner.
And I think the same thing happened with you and Kate. We didn't do any rehearsals. We had one read-through. And then we sat them down and threw them right into the mix of having to figure out their harmonies and like when they're going to come in. And by the end of the day – and you got to remember, these are two actors that really didn't know each other and met on this day.
Oh, they had never met in person or at all before this.
We had done some phone calls and a Zoom call at one point. But no, no.
How did you know that they'd have chemistry? Was that a fear at all?
Oh, it's a fear. It doesn't matter how charismatic your actors are. There's still that
alchemy that happens of like two people coming together and how are they going to respond to each other but my fears went away at the end of that day recording because they started really just they they felt married suddenly I mean it was kind of like you know she'd be like no you didn't really get that note you could do we could do that one more time Craig one more you know and it's just like
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Chapter 3: What is the story behind Craig Brewer's film 'Song Sung Blue'?
And we threw on the song that you just heard, like Cherry Cherry. And they started singing along to it. And I turned around and I could just see the whole crew just stop what they were doing. And this grin on all their face and just watching them on the monitors. And they're like, oh, there they are. It's like, there's the couple I didn't know I needed to see.
And to me, it was kind of cool because you have Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson who both kind of popped in the 90s, more than 20 years ago. and now we're seeing them and they're older, and yet they still have the spark, and it just felt real. It felt grounded and lovely.
The crew's response, it makes me think about something else I've heard you say, that men on your crew were actually getting emotional watching Hugh telling you he reminded them of their fathers or themselves when he was performing. Like, the anthems of the things that they couldn't say. What were you seeing in those moments?
Yeah, I mean, it was definitely in the music, but definitely in more of the moments where he had to be a dad. And I found it so fascinating because I would actually go around to some of my crew members. I mean, these are like tough grips and electricians and everything, but they would get emotional watching them. And I was like, what's going on here? Like, what's happening?
And we started having conversations about like, well, what are the movies that men cry in? I'm being general here. I cry every movie I see. But why is it that Field of Dreams just unashamedly makes men cry? It's like, okay, you're dealing with father themes. You're dealing with themes of am I able to like honor my family? Like am I able to take care of my family and do they –
Does anybody know perhaps even though I'm kind of quiet that I am suffering with it? And I think that there's been a lot of – probably justifiably and understandably there's, there's, there has been a lot of criticism for towards masculinity.
Um, and I think that, that the interesting thing that I've heard in some of the test audiences is some women saying it's nice to see positive masculinity, you know, uh, an era of men that like if something's not exactly, uh, The way everybody would want it, they're still making it work. They're just patching themselves up and in silence moving forward.
And it was a nice way to see that or celebrate that in a character. And there is something happening there.
I'm going to spoil one thing from the film to tell everyone that you make us wait for sweet Caroline. How did you think about withholding the thing that everyone expects?
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Chapter 4: How does Craig Brewer connect his work to the music industry?
Later that day. Yeah. It's, um, it, you know, I, I think I've been thinking about it a little bit more now because I'm, I'm now exactly five years older than my father ever was. And it is a strange thing. I'm sure for anybody out there that's had that happen, um,
when you kind of lap your parent uh especially when they died unexpectedly early because you you've looked at all these pictures and everything and you think oh yeah he's just so much older than i was so much more of a grown-up but now i'm looking at pictures and i'm doing the math and i'm like wait a minute i think he was 43 in this picture you know and then i think back on my own 43 year old like oh wow was he kind of dealing with that and so i think what i think of it more is just as um
now I'm a parent with a 24 year old son and a 17 year old daughter and Am I saying the right things to them? Am I trying to give them some encouragement? It's such a tough time when you're a young adult and you want to be something so badly. You want to be anything. Maybe you're even searching for it. And there's so many moments where you can feel like a failure.
And I think he just – as I tell people, as a dad, he stuck the landing. I mean like the last thing he told me was – Just look at what you have and try not to apologize for it and try to move the dream to your reality and don't try to do it the other way. And I think that's ultimately what helped me find perhaps my voice a little bit more was to think about like, well, what are the real –
basic rudiments of this story? And am I maybe – do I have the danger of getting in the way of it by just trying to make it larger than it should be when it should probably be simple or even more effective that way?
And so I think that maybe it was just because he was very much into kind of like corporate planning that he just – it's like, well, what do we have and what can we do and what do we want and what's the ultimate goal? and I think I just couldn't see the forest for the trees a little bit.
My guest today is filmmaker Craig Brewer. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley, and I'm continuing our conversation with filmmaker Craig Brewer. He came out of Memphis in 2005 with Hustle & Flow, a character-driven film that reshaped his career and established many of the themes that continue to define his work.
Ambition, reinvention, and the complicated role music plays in people's lives. Hustle & Flow won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for It's Hard Out Here for Pimp. And since then, Brewer has moved between independent films and studio projects, often returning to stories about performers and outsiders, including Black Snake Moan, Dolomite Is My Name, and now his new film, Song Sung Blue.
The Poor and the Hungry, you took that $20,000 inheritance that your dad left for you and you made this film. It's a love story between a car thief and a cellist whose car he stole. But really, it's about people living on the margins and trying to find something honorable or clean in the middle of the hustle. And I want to play...
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Chapter 5: What challenges did Craig Brewer face while making 'Hustle & Flow'?
Got a couple working on the changes for me. But I gotta keep my game tight like Kobe on game. I like taking from a...
That was It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp by Three 6 Mafia, the first rap group to win an Oscar. And Craig, I heard that the song was written, negotiated, and put to bed in about five hours. Is that right? It's a pretty crazy story. And then you guys went to the club or something like that. Yeah.
So John Singleton, I learned a lot about the, the, the hustle with John. I really did because he was making it with his own money, but he was a real fan of Southern rap, like way before everybody else was. So when we were, we were, John was going to be flying into Memphis and Terrence, Terrence Howard and Taraji Henson were over at three, six mafia studio recording a song.
John was coming in because he wanted another song. He wanted what he – we were all saying we need a pimp song. And I was supposed to take him over to the studio. But I pulled him into this other studio where my friend Al Capone was doing a song, Whoop That Trick.
And so John bought Whoop That Trick that's featured in the movie and now has kind of like become an anthem at sports arenas around the country. But he then was very empowered to go in and negotiate with Juicy J of Three 6 Mafia who wanted more money. Or probably the fair amount of money. So we go to the studio and Juicy J goes, so I hear you're messing with another rapper.
You're going to hire Al Capone to maybe do that pimp song. And John's like, hey, man, you know it's business. And Juicy said, okay, that's too bad because I got this. And he hit the space bar on his laptop and the beat of Heart Out Here for a Pimp began to play. And it was amazing.
And then Juicy pulls out like a napkin, like it was like from a Neely's barbecue, local barbecue joint, where he had scribbled out the lyrics of, you know, it's hard out here for a pimp. Like he had written it out on this napkin and said, this is what Taraji would say. And I'm seeing John just kind of like go crazy, like he's loving it.
And then Juicy's like, but you got to get down in the pocket, got to get down to the sock, John. You got to give me a little bit more bread on this. So John pushes me into this other room with a Frasier boy and he said, you tell him what the movie is about while he writes the lyrics and I'm going to negotiate with Juicy. And so I'm in there while Frasier boy is –
rolling a blunt and writing an Academy Award winning song. And I went outside and I noticed that John and Juicy were on either side of the room, but they had their lawyers on their sidekicks. They're like blueberries.
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Chapter 6: How did the collaboration with Three 6 Mafia impact 'Hustle & Flow'?
He was in these light beer commercials for – where he would – He was at the end of – there was a gang called the Light Beer Gang, and they argued whether light beer tastes great or was less filling. And he was at the end of every commercial. His name was Marvelous Marvin Throneberry. And he would just look at the camera and go, I still don't know why they asked me to do this commercial.
So there was a sports expectation, I think, to some extent in my family, but I just wasn't interested or good at it. And so – by going to the Vallejo Children's Theater and putting on production after production, I just had the fear beat out of me. And to also just be in that world where I was discovering music. And I have to say, especially in the 80s, there was kind of this call to blackness.
Black artistry was the culture. Tina Turner was on the radio with new artists. Tina has been around. You know what I mean? And now here she is like chart-topping with Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson and – and then I always have a hard time explaining to young people just what Eddie Murphy was. Like you're never going to understand – How supernova that presence was globally.
Just we all fell in love with Eddie. And then the Fat Boys came out. Oh, the Fat Boys. Oh, let me tell you.
Wait, were you beatboxing?
Not successfully. Not effectively. But yes. Yes. I mean – and the thing about – like I mean to be in a car with my friends being picked up from school and having like Slick Rick and Dougie Fresh come on and just saying like, mom, you got to turn this up. and to hear the show, to hear what Doug E. Fresh was doing. And it was so outrageous. It was just so new and yet somewhat taboo.
I knew people that went to church with me or kids that went to church with me that would have to come over to my house so they could listen to the Fat Boys. They would come over to my house so they could listen to Prince because their parents wouldn't let them.
There's something that comedian Kevin Hart, he's called you a real one, which in black culture is just another way of saying you're invited to the cookout. And I mean, I was just thinking about how like audiences in general. You know, we're incredibly sensitive to what feels true and what feels false, especially in the small choices.
And so I've always wondered with you where your understanding, not just of Black stories comes from, but your understanding of Black interior life. And it sounds like your childhood was an element of giving you that foundation.
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Chapter 7: What unique experiences did Craig Brewer have at the Oscars?
Me and my wife sat down because he's from Memphis. He lives down in Mississippi, but we've met a few times, and he knows I'm from Memphis, and we have that connection. And so, yeah, I sat there with Morgan Freeman and watched Sheila E. and met Prince on the night that my movie won 3-6 Mafia an Academy Award for a song called It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp. It was a surreal night.
What a night. What a night.
Yeah.
This has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time and thank you for your work.
Oh, thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate that.
Craig Brewer's new film, Song Sung Blue, opens in theaters on Christmas Day. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, actor Will Arnett. He stars in the new film, Is This Thing On?, about a man going through a divorce who finds himself on stage doing stand-up. Arnett co-wrote the movie, which is directed by Bradley Cooper. We talk about the film, his extensive voiceover career, and his popular Smart List podcast.
I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Staniszewski. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Anna Bauman, and Nico Gonzalez-Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Susan Yakundi directed today's show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.
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