The groundbreaking filmmaker, who died on April 29, transformed how black lives are portrayed on screen.
When John Singleton snagged two Oscar nominations in 1992 for writing and directing his debut feature Boyz n the Hood, he made history twice over. At 24, he was the youngest nominee in Oscar history. And for the first time in its 64 years, the Academy had finally nominated an African-American filmmaker for Best Director.
But Singleton — who died April 29 at age 51, almost two weeks after suffering a debilitating stroke — was no flash in the pan. And though he rose to early fame, in the 27 years following his historic nominations, the director, writer, and producer went on to do something even more significant: He kept making good movies.
And with his films, he endeavored to do something that was radical in Hollywood then, and still radical in Hollywood now: Telling black stories to America.
A native of South Central Los Angeles, Singleton burst onto the scene with Boyz n the Hood in 1991. The film starred Ice Cube, Morris Chestnut, Laurence Fishburne, Nia Long, Regina King, Angela Bassett, and Cuba Gooding Jr. in his first major role.
Boyz n the Hood is the story of a group of teenagers in South Central, centering on Tre (Gooding) — whose father (Fishburne) and girlfriend (Long) are keeping him on the straight and narrow — and two of his friends (Cube and Chestnut), who are drawn toward the neighborhood’s gangs.
The idea for the screenplay came from an idea Singleton proposed when applying to film school at USC, and Singleton was still a recent graduate when he got the go-ahead to make it. “I was a smartass film student who thought he knew everything about movies,” he said in 2016. “When it got green-lit is when I got scared.”
Reportedly, Singleton was offered $100,000 by the studio to walk away from directing the film and hand it over to someone more experienced.
