Midweek Mention... Paid In Full

Paid In Full

Sidey: Paid in full.

Dan: Paid in full.

Sidey: this is two two 2002 joint, yeah.

Damon Dash and Rockefeller. Did you notice that at the start?

Cris: Sean Carter. Yeah.

Reegs: This was directed by Charles Stone ii, who was a music video director and creator of the What's Up

Cris: Yeah, the Bud Light or Budweiser Bud.

Dan: Maybe the Best Bud Advert that year.

Reegs: Yeah.

for a long time that is how people answered the phone.

Sidey: Yeah, it is. Yeah.

Dan: I suppose that means that it was a success even though it became really annoying,

Sidey: did only

Reegs: Only 'cause it was like pared

Dan: what's, yeah.

Reegs: and meaned into oblivion.

Dan: Yeah. Well,

Cris: But this is not really anything to do with that.

Reegs: Not

Sidey: really. No. We're gonna start off some sort of hip and happening sort of corner Yeah. Of Harlem there.

Reegs: corner outside Willie's burgers in fact. And it's Eric b and Raheem, the soundtrack paid in full.

It's like a big social gathering. There's like gambling and souped up

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: and there's an narrator and he's telling us this is the [00:01:00] stage. If you were here, you were definitely someone.

Sidey: wood Harris.

Reegs: right. We're told it's 1986 Harlem, and we meet the three kind of main guys at this. I didn't know whilst watching this, but this is based on the memoirs of a true story

Cris: Yes. Yeah.

Reegs: three gang bangers.

Basically, we meet Rico he's one of them. He's telling stories about being at someone's birthday party and he's all fucking front and he's not, he hasn't got a present and he mushed the cake in his face, all bullshit. And he's chatting with Ace, who's Wood Harris from Yeah.

Sidey: The Wire. Yeah. Yeah. And McKay Pfeiffer.

Reegs: Meki. Pfeiffer's, Mitch. Yeah. And they're shooting his shit on whether he is gonna be able to throw a

Sidey: you ever do that? Yeah. If, if I get this into the bin, I'll win a billion pounds.

Reegs: Yeah. But they're betting

Sidey: They're literally betting big stakes. Yeah.

Reegs: And it seems to be no problem to them. So they've got bundles of cash they're

Cris: yeah. And he's like, oh, I don't have it with me, but can you give me whatever? And he is like, oh, Keisha's gonna have the baby.

Sidey: Yeah. Ace freely gets is it Paige? I think he gets paged to say, you [00:02:00] know, 9 1 1 and

Reegs: Keisha

Sidey: his misses has gone into delivery.

Yeah.

Reegs: And we get to know like, quite a lot about each of the three characters in that like beginning scene.

You see that Ace is a bit more quiet and circumspect and Rico is kind of flash and brash

Cris: Well, yeah, because he is like, oh, he, he, they do the be what's his face? Mitch throws the thing in the 10 in the bin and then he's like, well, let me get my money double or nothing. Yeah. And you can see Mitch going, oh, I

Reegs: yeah. And Mitch has to look

Cris: lemme get my money.

What are you doing? And then Ace is like, well, I'll give you, and then Mitch wants to do double or nothing. And Ace is like, I only giving you the five grand. Everything else is between, I'm not sit sitting here and playing the silly game for $5,000 and then he goes into the ace, goes home. Opens the flat door and you can see him just being grabbed inside,

Reegs: Yeah, he's pulled inside and

Cris: then

Sidey: some violent, some violent noises. And then the next thing we see, he's on a gurney [00:03:00] and he's been beaten and fucking shot and stabbed and all the rest of it.

Reegs: like clearly clinging onto life and they say to him, who did this to you? And he, he sort of goes, oh, he did?

Cris: Is that what he says? I didn't really. And then you see the, the, almost like the hallucination that you see, the view from the cleaners mm-hmm.

Where there's money kind of raining money from outside. There's a view from inside the cleaners and then it goes back to a year. Be prior.

Sidey: Yeah. So all this has all happened in a year. Yeah. Is is just, just a. Ordinary guy, like knocks a bat with these guys who are hustlers. But he himself at this point just works in a laundry, a lat,

Reegs: And he's, he's kind of playing it straight. He's doing the job that he clearly hates, but he's being law abiding. He's a law abiding citizen. And he's got temptation around him.

His sister comes in with her boyfriend Calvin, who's like all flashing the money and clearly like selling drugs. He's like, thinks he's the king of Harlem, I think is the other guy.

Sidey: sort of dressed a bit pimpy, I thought. And the, the [00:04:00] fellow that runs the

Cris: Pip, Mr. Pip.

Sidey: Pip's, like the guy's a fucking idiot. Like he doesn't know what the fuck he is. Never done a day's work. He doesn't know what to do with that money. Guy's a fucking prick trying to, you know, tell him don't go down that path, you know?

Mm-hmm. Sure enough there'll be some temptation. Pretty soon he is told to go and do some deliveries of this laundry. At one of the buildings he goes into he gets sort of, he's doing a drop off and someone whistles at him from another apartment and says, oh, you. Take some stuff for me. And it's this guy Lulu.

Yeah. And he's like, that's a fucking weird name. Yeah. And this guy's flashed, but he sort of clocks his apartment and it's like, fucking hell.

Cris: hell. This is nice. Yeah.

Sidey: got some money. This guy. Yeah. Id yeah. Quite

Cris: and fresh. Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah. He's used to seeing the sort of brashness and vulgarity of money around him.

So when he sees like real

Sidey: he's a bit refined. This guy. Yeah. And he even

Reegs: it like straight away makes a big impression on him.

Sidey: Yeah. And he, he gives him a bag of laundry, but also then says, oh shit, these trousers. And he just drops tr over there and then, and just launches them at him to do those as well.

And [00:05:00] like when he gets to like wash them, it goes through the pockets. There's a big bag of cocaine in there. Yeah. Which is he's like, oh, that's where the, the money's coming

Cris: And

then you can see him going back home, meeting Calvin and his mom and his sister trying to have dinner. And

Reegs: Calvin Calvin's like giving his mom money for like loads of money for

Cris: Yeah. And he, he puts his tips from, he puts his tips from the laundre into a jar and he's like, I'll put all my tips what I made today into the, into the jar.

And Calvin just gives them like a hundred dollars or something. And then he's like, oh, can you tell your mom, we're not staying for dinner. We're going out for dinner.

Reegs: And there's like loads of temptation around him. Mitch is already in the game. He's got like a Rolex

Cris: or something.

Sidey: he first, first of all, he's, he takes his nephew, is it or his out to play basketball. And Mitch turns up there on a flash motorbike. Yeah. And then like the next day he's got some new wheels,

Reegs: a Rolex and then a new car.

Yeah. Was it a Saab? There was some gray

Cris: A Saab? Yeah. The, the first one is a Saab. Yeah.

Yeah. The black, black

Sidey: with the gold wheels [00:06:00] and all the rest of it. And it is super impressed. Was like, oh fuck, this is actually pretty tempting.

Reegs: So anyway, ACE gets the idea to return the Coke to Lulu, it's rightful owner. And he sort of gives it to him as a,

keep

Sidey: him the Yeah,

Cris: that's my, that's your tip kind of thing.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: them the spiel about how this is the proper stuff. It's not

Reegs: yeah, it's not that cut

Cris: Yeah. They don't put asset on, they put this, they put that, he's like, mine is pure whatever. If you ever want to get involved.

Reegs: Yeah. So when Calvin the sister's boyfriend gets Nobbled in the kinda next scene, it's not long before Ace has got the temptation of the drugs in his pocket, he knows he can sell it.

Cris: Well, he, he actually sells it. No.

Sidey: The first one's by mistake. He's just hanging around and the guy comes out to, to buy drugs from.

Reegs: It's at the club, isn't

Sidey: No, it's in,

Cris: it's in the hallway.

Reegs: Oh, it's in the

Sidey: stood in the hallway with a sign saying, no drug tea, no loitering.

Reegs: It's where Calvin was

Sidey: because

Reegs: isn't it though? Because he knew, that's why he was sort of loitering

Sidey: around. Yeah, the corner boys and the guy, this is his carbon's [00:07:00] turf, and the guy comes around to buy some drugs and he sees him.

He's like, well. And he goes, actually, yeah, I can, I can do that for you. And then that's his first drug deal. Yeah. And he's like, oh, that was easy money. Yeah. Fancy a bit more.

Reegs: He

Dan: starts, isn't it?

You know? Hook you in then.

Cris: It was funny though, because he had like a massive bag of it and the guy's like, have you not got any bottles? Because the, the way they sell it initially was in these glass bottles and the guy's like, have you not got, it's like all this for a hundred.

And he's like, yeah,

Reegs: yeah,

Cris: he is like, gimme the hundred. I don't care. I wanted to get rid of it. And he's like, oh, can just make a hundred just this easy. And then.

Sidey: That's what he is.

I think that's basically where he gets the idea from, doesn't it? So he goes back to Lulu gets

Reegs: well people start coming to ask him for it as well,

Sidey: That's his supply. And he comes up the idea that actually they're not going to they're gonna sort of undercut the price and sell good stuff. Yeah. So that all of the custom comes to them and fucks all the shit stuff off.

Dan: It's a, it's a savvy business plan really, because it means that they're [00:08:00] obviously gonna get all the custom, but they're gonna bring some of the heat as well

Sidey: well. Yeah. Other people aren't gonna be

too, too thrilled

Cris: but that's why he kind of, again, turns into the narrator and he is like, well, we cut the price. We, and we cut everyone in. Yeah. If you wanna sell, you come to us, we'll give you, you sell it. Everyone makes money. Everyone's happy.

Reegs: There was kind of a Robin Hood type vibe to it all wasn't there of like the whole community being in on this.

I mean, ACE is at the

Cris: and and we have to say, meanwhile, the Mitch goes to prison.

Reegs: Mitch, they go on a disastrous like, drug raid, don't they? And they're gonna get, they're gang banging for money and he, he ends up getting caught on murder charges and put away Yeah. This where he befriends Rico in prison.

Somebody comes to attack him, shive him in the cafeteria, don't they? And Rico defends.

Sidey: goes straight for the guy's

Reegs: Yeah. Stabs him right in the neck. Like Yeah.

Sidey: Doesn't ask any questions. Stab first questions later. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: Buddies like that in

Sidey: Yeah. Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah.

And then, and then the [00:09:00] stories get back to, it's really funny, the stories, well, it's not funny, but the stories get back to Ace and by the time they get there, it's like he says something like, the guy had 10 razors hidden up his ass and he was slashing motherfuckers left, right, and center.

Sidey: Yeah,

Cris: yeah. The, because it's all almost like the Chinese whispers where, where it goes from one to another to another to another, and and, and then it basically, this is kind of, it's not really, it is a bit of a montage where it just shows. How he goes to his friend's house, a thousand bottles in a box, and then they start filling up the bottles and More money.

More money, counting machines. And then you can see Ace

Reegs: cars. More

Cris: more cars. More cars, more cars, more money. More money.

Reegs: Audis and BMWs and

Dan: Montage. Yeah. Yeah.

Sidey: They've got bin liners full of cash, and then they're just piling them on top of, they've got no way to, basically,

Reegs: the whole like bathroom is just full, isn't it?

The bath is just full. Right, right up the wall. So, is this where Ace ends up going back to Lulu's apartment?

Cris: Yes.

Sidey: it does.

Reegs: When he goes there, he finds him dead. Yeah.

Sidey: It's not all he finds.

Reegs: [00:10:00] No, it's not all he finds. He finds a whole like, bag of diamonds, doesn't

Cris: And a lot of gear.

And, and then he goes to the restaurant where Lulu took him once. Yeah. And he goes with a bin bag or just a bag full of the gear and some of the

Reegs: Yeah. As we'll. Find out all of them. Yeah.

Cris: And goes and speaks to, I think, is there Cuban or Colombian or, anyway, some Hispanic, I don't remember if he says Cuban Lulu that he's Cuban.

But anyway, some Hispanic thing in he and the guy's like, oh, aren't you generous? Why do you wanna return all this? He's like, well, I was doing some business with Lulu and I thought I can do some business with you now. And he goes, okay, this is only fair.

Reegs: So a starts wholesaling. So pretty quickly, like you say, the whole movie is basically taking place within about a year.

Yeah. Because we'll come back to where we were at the beginning of the movie

Cris: and now

Reegs: but he's gone from se accidentally selling a hundred dollars worth of gear to like wholesaling

Cris: Yep. But Mitch comes out to prison. [00:11:00] There's a car waiting for him. There's, you know, he gives him the, the straight, the red.

Is it a rem red, BMW or

Reegs: just gives it to, he goes, oh, that car's great. And he's like, it's yours. He just gives him the keys, like 50 grand in cash or whatever. I

Cris: straight, straight into the, and he's like, okay, well you're gonna do

Dan: back in the eighties as well, I mean,

Reegs: is,

Dan: know, big money.

Sidey: big,

Cris: Then Rico gets involved as well. He's like, oh, they kind of meet each other and he is like, oh, I know your boy Mitch.

Anything you need let me know. I'll be a soldier for you, whatever.

Reegs: But Ace is always a little bit more circumspect. He does want them to downplay it a bit. He doesn't wanna be as flash as the rest of them, even though he does buy stuff and live to a bit more of a, like, flashier lifestyle.

It's not to the same excess as them, like, you know,

Sidey: it's a bit like you've not seen the wire, but he, he, so he plays the head of a sort of gang drug.

Dealing gang, and he's called Avon Dale. And he's similar in that he's not, he, [00:12:00] he under, they've obviously seen people come and go and how they've done it take, he's learned everything from how people have failed at it in the past and they've. Got their crew doing things in a certain very disciplined way, had to do things, and again, for like a very circumspect Yeah.

Reegs: Avon was a bit more like

Sidey: He was more dangerous, but, but he wasn't Flash

Reegs: more streetwise really,

Sidey: even than, uh Yeah,

Reegs: yeah.

Anyway,

Dan: conscientious a,

thought process behind what they're doing and

Cris: Well, for Ace, it was definitely the influence of Calvin When he is seen his sister's boyfriend acting and looking like a pimp and whatever, and then flashy being stupid, and he even says it a couple of times, he's like, I don't wanna be like that guy. And even when he, even when he narrates and they show them going to nightclubs and that he always kind of stays in the back.

And Mitch is the one that high fives everyone and

Reegs: like, when they're listening to Phil Collins wearing some of the biggest jackets I've ever [00:13:00] seen, do you see that?

They're outside Willie's Burger again. They're listening. Everybody's high fiving each other. Enormous jackets. And actually that's where we pick up the story. 'cause we meet Calvin there. He's al he went to prison. He's come back out, hasn't he? And he's looking to get back in the

Cris: in the game.

Back

Reegs: in the game, back in the game.

And it's gonna be the sort of way that this is handled is gonna f Propel the

Cris: It's also just a tiny, tiny bit in all this, in between all this montage, there is a an episode where there's two guys coming in when ACE is chilling with his mate in the car, and these two guys are like, oh, what's up man?

We, are you holding?

Sidey: up, governor?

Cris: Yeah,

Reegs: Oh yeah.

Cris: What are you holding? What are you doing? Can we have some of your good stuff? Whatever the language is. And he's just like,

Reegs: There's something,

a bit off

Cris: these

Sidey: 5 0 5. Oh,

Cris: what is going on with these? Like, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm just chilling with my boy here, whatever.

And then obviously Calvin comes into play and he gives him a corner and he's like, look, you don't have to be out in the, in the street for people to see you. You got a guy, [00:14:00] you handle him. You are gonna make money.

Reegs: Stay away.

Cris: Just stay away from, he's like, oh, what do you mean? And then he gets upset.

Reegs: Well, then, but he doesn't take that message to heart at all, does he? He starts being really ostentatious with the motorbike. They shake that guy down. Does he shoot him in the ass in the

Cris: Mitch shoots him in the

Reegs: Yeah. Mitch. So, I mean, it's starting to really sort of get a bit carried away with itself, hasn't it?

So anyway Calvin

Cris: is when we go full circle.

Reegs: Yeah. So Calvin gets this to quickly sum through it. Calvin gets given this job and he doesn't like it. So eventually plans this sort of to take the empty organization back. Effectively. He found the role he was given demeaning by,

Sidey: wants his own towers, doesn't

Reegs: wants his own patch that he can sell from, and he's not gonna be given it like that.

So he comes up with this disastrous plan to kidnap

Sidey: the kids. The family. The family. Yeah.

Reegs: yeah. Mitch's family, isn't it?

Cris: Yeah. Well, that, it shows at the end that that's not actually Calvin's plan. Calvin's plan is to [00:15:00] steal the money and the drugs from Ace. The, the kid is getting kidnapped by

Reegs: Oh, yeah.

No, no. Not that bit. Yeah. But the, the first bit where they go into, they take his parents, they go 'cause they wanna go and get oh, ace's

Cris: why, I mean, it's full circle. When Ace goes home after the pager, after they, they play the five grand betting on the, who puts the thing in the bin. Ace goes in and now you see how it actually

Reegs: the story connects.

Cris: going into hospital.

He gets pulled in, gets beaten up told to open the safe. His parents are in the house and he's told to open the safe. He's like, there's not even any money in the safe. And he gets shot in the head.

Yeah. Shot in the

Sidey: Yeah. How he's surviving. That is impressive.

Reegs: Mm-hmm.

Cris: And

the, then you see the, and he recognizes Calvin through the, the sock, like the stalking thing

Reegs: and his voice

Cris: and well, the voice and whatever.

And then he gets shot. And the two, the old boy, the, the family gets shot. Both of them get shot. Yeah. And [00:16:00] then he ends up in hospital. He comes out and then Mitch's bro, I think it's his brother. Gets kidnapped.

Reegs: and uncle, isn't it?

they

Cris: send whatever.

Reegs: yeah. So,

Cris: and then obviously Ace wants to get out of the games.

Like, look, I'm not getting involved. I'm not getting involved. That's it. I've got money. I've got a nice flat, I'm happy retire. I'm, I'm happy, I wanna retire. And then Mitch comes to him and he is like, look, they kidnap my little brother. They need 500.

Grand, I think. And he's like, well, I don't, we don't have that kind of money straight away in cash.

Let's get some product and sell it. We sell it wholesale and we put the money together and you give them the money. And then when the day when Mitch is meant to go and do the wholesale trade, he gets shot.

And that's where the noise comes back to Ace. And it's like, oh, what happened to Mitch?

And he goes home and his misses is crying and the mom and all that. And he is like, what happened? Did they [00:17:00] find the little boy? And they're like, no. They found Mitch. He's been shot in the head.

and

he kind of starts putting things together

Reegs: Yeah.

Cris: of what could have happened, what happened, where everything could have been.

And he's like, oh, he was meant to meet Rico that day. He said he was gonna go meet him

Reegs: Had we already seen that Rico had shot him? Because the No, we get, like the movie does play around with the structure. There's like flashes

Cris: No, it's when he's, when Ace is driving. Yeah. And he kind of starts, you can see him kind of thinking and he's like,

oh,

Reegs: is that when he is working it

Cris: Yeah. He's like, he was meant to go meet Rico that day.

Reegs: Yeah.

Cris: And, and throughout the whole film, when, since Mitch and Rico went out, came outta prison, they, the three of them were always in kind of all the shots.

Yeah.

They, they were kind of always together, always either at the nightclub, either at the house, either at, on the streets, either driving around.

They were rarely not the three of them together, or at least very rarely, Mitch and Rico not being together. And this, this kind of [00:18:00] period is pretty much. Ricoh's not in it at all. It's just Ace and Mitch and the little boy missing and all that. So it kind of tells you the, the thing seeing And That's how

he makes the connection. And then he goes to play basketball with the bandages on his head and all that.

Reegs: Yeah.

Cris: then Rico comes in and he is like, oh man, I would tell me who I need to shoot. They're going down. I'm gonna kill everyone, whatever, all that. And then Ace

Reegs: Ace, he, he, he says, he continues to say that he wants to stay out the game, and the other guy's like, you know, I have to stay in it, whatever.

So he gives him, he says, oh, give me the, address of your contact. So he does indeed offer that up to him. But it turns out to

Sidey: be the two guys,

Reegs: the two guys before they're caught. And like he goes, you just see him in go through the doors, don't you? And then there's just a load of shooting as he's arrested.

And it turns out to be those two guys that he had a ace, had a funny feeling about were

Sidey: Feds Yeah.

Cris: And they were FBI. Yeah,

Reegs: Yeah. So,

Sidey: that's, that's in dealt [00:19:00] with.

Reegs: gets taken

Sidey: down. Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah. And

Cris: and I

think just before the end, there's the scene with Rico in prison where he's like, I'm not ratting on anyone from

Reegs: Yeah. So he takes, they're like, it's gonna be a 25 year stretch.

And he's like, all right.

Sidey: I think he'd give up the Cubans or whoever. Yeah. But no one from Harlem. Yeah. Yeah.

Reegs: And then we get the reveal that the whole abduction and ransom subplot was orchestrated by

Cris: the

Reegs: ice. The Uncle Ice, the uncle, also felt sort of. Demeaned by the lack of money and power and respect given to him by Ace.

And how does it, I know exactly how it ends because we get the little reveal of him with the,

Sidey: he's got diamonds.

Reegs: got the diamond. So he's outside a crime scene, isn't he? No. Or stuff?

Cris: no. It's a, it's a music video.

Reegs: Oh, That's

right. It's a

Cris: shooting the video when they're throwing the money

Reegs: Oh, it's like the fake, fake ass life.

And they're filming it on the streets where he was and he's sort of looking No, they're throwing money in the wind as his vision was earlier. he sort of had, [00:20:00] you see the diamonds,

Sidey: didn't give him all back. No. Yeah. A

Reegs: Yeah. A

Dan: left over in

Cris: And then that's it.

Reegs: And that was it. Yeah.

So he got out the life with some diamonds and shit.

stay away

Dan: away for this whole thing, Chris?

Did you stay away for this whole thing? This over two hours? This

Sidey: No, it's not. This is, this is an hour, hour 90.

It's 90 minutes, an hour

Dan: An hour night.

Sidey: This was, I was trying to do some math minute, I think this is one hour, 37

Reegs: something like that. Yeah.

Cris: I stayed awake. I've, I've watched it before. Obviously I numbed this and I really liked this the first time I've seen it and I liked it this time as well. Obviously it's a 2002 film and it's there's a lot of n word, there's a lot of, you know, the, the kind of stereotypical black

Dan: of gold bling.

Reegs: The period detail is great.

Like all the clothes and the high top fades and like the hair and the cars and all that period. Detail is great and it's, you know, one of those pretty [00:21:00] typical sort of gangster things. Titles, yeah. I mean, 'cause it's a true story, I guess it makes it a little bit more interesting, but there's not a bit here that isn't covered, like more interestingly with some of the same actors in the wire.

that would just be my recommendation. I know you don't watch like long form storytelling, but if you like this, you would just go fucking nuts for the wire

Cris: Yeah. But when was the wire made?

Sidey: It?

during this,

Cris: I'm pretty sure it is done after 2002.

Reegs: What, what and what does that,

Dan: he won't watch

anything after 2002. That

Cris: No, it it, I'm just saying

Sidey: Well,

no, it just gets more time to explore the themes

Cris: stuff.

Ah, right. Okay.

It's

Reegs: the same, it's the same. It 2002, it's when it started. So obviously he, Ava wood Harris,

Sidey: was double doubling down. And

Dan: that character, he played that similar character.

Reegs: Yeah, I, it, I dare say it's, it would be the thing that would tempt you into watching more than one season of something.

Yeah,

Dan: Well, I've not [00:22:00] seen the wire. But, and this wouldn't necessarily tease me into seeing more of the Wire, to be

honest.

Sidey: is nothing alike. Right. This, to me, is like a music video in the, it's aesthetic and Yeah. The way that it, I think it all loads of people die and it does say that drugs are bad, but it still has a fairly glamorous sort of thing about the hustle and all that sort of shit.

You know? I think that's. The Jay-Z and Damon Dash. Yeah. The Rockefeller stuff, you know? And this sort of dubious morality about it being good for the neighborhood, if we all get into drug

Dan: Well, yeah.

Sidey: together, don't know.

Reegs: Yeah. But that is shown to be bullshit. I mean, that does all come crumbling

Dan: this kind of community feel? And this yeah,

Sidey: Yeah,

Dan: conscientious, we'll look after you, you look after us. We can all be

together.

Reegs: It definitely has the feel of like, 'cause he's the guy who wrote it, wood Harris's character.

A little bit of, look how fucking clever I was. I got away with it all a little

Sidey: I think some of the people from the true story [00:23:00] poo-pooed almost everything in this as well.

It took place over years and like six years and they, they distilled it down into 12 months in this and, and all that stuff. But, you know, everything takes a bit of artistic license. But I really like Wood Harris. He's

Reegs: He's great and he, and he does so much like acting with

Dan: So what, what, what, what's he done other than this

Sidey: He's plays quite a few drug dealers and he also plays Police Corps every now and then.

Right. Okay. He's just very good.

Dan: Has he, has he led any other stuff?

Sidey: film? He's tends to be part of an ensemble, I would say. He is not, he is not gonna sell a movie on his own. But if he's in it, you know, it's like he's gonna be good in it. He's a good supporting actor

with

Dan: Okay, well, strong recommend.

Sidey: That was such a weak ending.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: I'm gonna tell you some financial numbers about it because I have those and it was made for 3 million US dollars, which it's more than, it's more than two

Dan: these

Cris: Not bad.

I mean, to be fair, there was a few music videos that are way more

Sidey: expensive than that.

Yeah. St. Buster [00:24:00] Rhymes videos were like seven or 8 million. So, and at the box office it took.

Cris: four,

Sidey: 3 million US dollars.

Dan: Okay. Broke even

Sidey: even. Probably lost 'cause we had a bit marketing chuck in there. Yeah. As I

Dan: on the rental.

Sidey: was it Za, a IZ Zen Jr. The real life ace accused Damon Dash of massively altering and watering down the script.

He, it was supposed to be played out as a cautionary anti-drug tale and social commentary.

Reegs: Yeah, and it's not really quite

Sidey: and he felt that it was quite,

Cris: mean, look, at the same time the, the two of the three people die, Lulu dies. It's not,

Reegs: yeah,

Cris: I'm not defending it here,

Reegs: no, no.

Cris: it's not really success. It's not really like, oh my God, do this kids and you're gonna be, you know, and the kid dies and everybody goes to

Sidey: I did think it was quite amusing that they basically decided to become drug dealers after watching Scarface. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's just like, you wanna do that. Do

Cris: know why you say that? I've, I've listened to a few people in podcasts and all that, [00:25:00] and like older people and people that lived in New York and New Jersey and all that. And it's like everyone went mental as soon as Scarface came into because everyone was already kind of dealing or involved in this kind of, yeah.

Dealing Coke or whatever, and then Scarface came and he was dealing like coke and

Sidey: mountains of it, cutting

Cris: it with the hand on the table and that, and everybody wanted to be that.

Reegs: Mm-hmm.

Cris: That's just, you know, it is

Dan: it's the power, it's the, the, the kind of lifestyle that

Cris: and because in America, everyone has a gun and, and especially in the eighties,

Sidey: Yeah.

Cris: I, I don't find that, I don't,

I

I, I mean, I wouldn't watch a film and thinking that's what I want to do, but I dunno. I can understand where the influence comes

Sidey: Yeah. But it's a strong recommend.

Cris: Yeah.

Dan: Well

Reegs: yeah. I would probably listen to the soundtrack before movie again.

Sidey: Yeah. Just for it be

Dan: over the