Hughes's Views

"We love Quentin Tarantino," says Albert. "We loved Reservoir Dogs. But what'd that movie make? Like two or three million dollars? Nobody says shit, Quentin's the hottest motherfucker in town now, right? And he's a very talented person. But he didn't get the flak we did, and Reservoir Dogs was much more grotesque than Menace."

"He's gotta stop using that nigger shit," says Allen, referring to the scene in True Romance where Chris Walken kills Dennis Hopper because he implies that his ancestry may be impure. "That was straight-up racist. When that scene happened, I was amazed that the worst thing that guy could think of saying to the other guy was, 'Your mother fucked a nigger.' That is bullshit."

"The worst thing any character in your movie could say about another," I say, "is, 'You're acting like a bitch.'"

Dead fucking silence.

"C'mon," I urge them, "hit me with your best shot."

"Men call each other bitches now," Allen says.

"But they don't mean it nicely," I remind him.

"Yeah," agrees Albert, "they even call bitches bitches..." They laugh. "We fall prey to it, sometimes," continues Albert, "but with street hustlers, the worst thing they can be is a bitch..."

"A girl?" I ask.

"No," says Albert, "they mean a wimp, a punk. People take it too far. I mean, the real meaning of bitch is a female dog..."

"Ruff, ruff, ruff," I say. The Hughes Brothers fall over laughing.

"You are one sick motherfucker," says Allen.

"Thank you," I say.

"We combatted our bad characters with good ones," says Allen. "The Muslim, the father, the grandparents. But let me just say this one thing about Halle's comment about our films being black-sploitation: Goddamn, open your eyes. You can make a million movies that are white and violent, and nobody says 'whitesploitation!' White people can do anything they want to do. But when you're black, 'You can only do good movies with good families because we're in a state of emergency... and we can't show people this.' That's mother-fucking bullshit. They wanted us to tack on the riots to the end of our film! That would have been so fucking bad..."

"Were you guys in Los Angeles when the riots happened?" I ask.

"I was down there," Albert says with a smile. "I have to say, it was one of the funnest nights I've had in the last three years. It was the safest feeling in the world, like heaven on earth. Me and my buddy went down with my VW Bug, and I rolled down my windows and it was like an airstrip, everything was on fire. We got out, started running around, talking to people, and we went inside a store and helped looting. I'll tell you the truth, I got a box of condoms. But the truth was, you couldn't go into that neighborhood before and feel safe, but that night, everyone was going around like they knew each other forever, and putting their fist in the air, and laughing and drinking. There was not a fear in sight. The cops wouldn't hassle you, there was lawlessness, but it felt like the stress was gone. You knew black people weren't gonna fuck with you, you knew white people weren't going to fuck with you. As much damage as it caused, however fucked up it was, I'll say that for those three days, it was fun, man."

"I don't know what to say now..." I stammer.

"Hey Allen," says Albert, "we shut her up." They give each other a high-five.

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Martha Frankel

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