How I worked on making Boyz'n the Hood a Box Office and Oscar success through the Cannes presentation

Very dear memories from my days in Cannes launching Boyz'n The Hood fro Sony 

I had the immense privilege to run the marketing at Sony when i received (early 1991) a video tape from Boyz'n The Hood with the Studio suggesting to submit it to Cannes.

To our great surprised satisfaction, Gilles Jacob invited the film  (first feature by young John Singleton) into "Un Certain Regard".

I started a campaign which remains one of my best prides in marketing several hundreds of films over the years for Sony, Fox and UGC.

I asked Anne Lara our publicist to identify one journalist which would be an expert in "Black Cinema", he should become the first one to see our film and guide us. The journalist of Liberation Anne brought in,  left the screening in our meeting room in tears, deeply moved telling us "this guy is a new Orson Welles..." 

He became our first spokesperson, buzzing among journalists in Paris before the Cannes presentation, talking about it on a TV show where he was invited. We organized a few secret screenings in Paris so the film could arrive in Cannes with an aura.

We worked hard to build the house for the premiere (including black celebrities, see below, young kids from around town and bad neigbourhood) We created a specific environment for the film that would feel authentic, legitimate and ETHNIC.

Posters on the croisette were designed live (in front of Canal+ cameras) by graffitti artists, we organised a rap concert with Ice Cube performing...

John Singleton in good company at the debussy screening of his film (we turned some 500 people out whoc ould not fit the 1500 seats theater)

Roger Ebert declared Cannes was High Tide for Black new Wave in 1991 he wrote that year:

"The French New Wave was a rebirth of French films in the early 1960s, and the German new wave represented the same process in Germany in the 1970s. Now black American filmmakers are developing a new stylistic and personal vision that reached critical mass at this year's Cannes Film Festival. In May of 1991, here in the incongruous setting of the French Riviera, far from the urban settings of most of their films, the black new wave came of age."

Roger Ebert continued

"On one night, for example, there were two big post-screening parties in town, both for films by black Americans. In a nightclub up in town, rap artist Ice Cube performed in a disco jampacked with people celebrating the premiere "Boyz N the Hood," the extraordinary new film by 23-year old John Singleton. Down on the beach, there was a celebration for Bill Duke's "A Rage In Harlem," a romantic comedy based on one of the books of Harlem crime novelist Chester Himes.

At the "Boyz" party, I found myself sitting next to Frank Price, president of Columbia Pictures and the man who gave Singleton , then 22 and still in film school, the green light to write and direct the film. "When John came in and started to talk about his ideas," Price said " was reminded of another kid who walked into my office once--Steven Spielberg." Singleton wanted to make a film about a bright black kid who grows up in South Central Los Angeles, who lives in the middle of gang violence and the other usual ghetto problems, who is surrounded by ways to go wrong, but who is raised by a father who takes his responsibilities seriously. The movie, which played out of competition in a category called "Un Certain Regard," was by general agreement the most talked-about and well-liked film at Cannes this year, and Price seemed pleased with himself for having placed a wise bet on Singleton."

"A Director is born, it is such a rare moment."

I had set that party at Studio Circus (Paul Pacini had also been the owner of the Rock'nRoll Circus in Paris where Jim Morrison died in 1971)  

Ice Cube performed a great concert to a packed audience totally inexperimented in Rap Culture (lots of studio "suits").  To bridge that gap and put some warmth in the ambiance I had asked the infamous clown Django Edwards to break the ice. An easy task for him, a huge surprise to many (including the same Frank Price when Django exhibited a huge plastic toy)

The funniest moments?
The face expression of John Singleton when he discovered his hamburger at the Carlton (in the silver bowl tray, quite different from your McDonald's servings and his expectation) I remember this was his first trip anywhere outside South Central Los Angeles.

The weirdest moment?
Anne had organised a 52 minutes documentary show where John Singleton would meet a gang leader in Sarcelles (one of France's hard "Hoods")...Body guard 2 cars....quite an organisation, and a few risks taken for the Major....but John cancelled when he met the guy and told us "the guy is a flake".
 

But my best memory of all this work remains Frank Price telling me "Bruno I want to thank you and your team for a fantastic work for Boyz in Cannes, when i return to the office I will raise the domestic Box Office estimate from 30M$ to 50M$" (he was so right, with actual Box Office in excess of 54M$.) First time I was given an actual math about the power of festivals, in this case 40M£ Worldwide (worth the efforts and plane tickets...and a good memory of a warm handshake from Frank Price)

For me there was only one lesson: Cannes can work miracles for you, if you do the right thing with the right people.

Maybe another lesson from "If you build it they will come" But that s another story from a film I loved releasing...

Bruno Chatelin and friends