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Features
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Talking Shop
Our sit-down with the stars and director of Beauty Shop is pretty much in keeping with the general swing of their Atlanta salon. Nitty, gritty and plenty of highlights.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
By Anderson Jones
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Lester Cohen/Wireimage.com
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Latifah at the recent Grammy Awards
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Here’s what you need to know about Beauty Shop, the spin-off from MGM's terrifically successful Barbershop franchise: Queen Latifah, Alfre Woodard and co. affectionately dubbed their male co-star Djimon Hounsou ‘Sexy International Chocolate’; their version of boot camp preparation was the Golden Touch Salon in Inglewood, CA, where the cast learnt how to fry, dry and press; and Queen Latifah doesn’t want to do this forever, because she’s planning on having kids some day soon.
“This is my third film [as an actor-producer], but only the second that we've taken from A to Z and been in the decision-making process for the entire film” explains Latifah during a recent interview with FilmStew. “Eventually, I want to stop and have some kids and I can't be in front of the camera."
Beauty Shop’s screenwriters - yes, it took more than one - updated Latifah's character, Gina, by making her a widow with a young, gifted daughter who gets accepted to an exclusive music school down south. That's the easy part. Kind of.
To support herself and her daughter, Latifah finds a job at a chi chi salon owned and run by Jorge (Kevin Bacon - don't ask). He's a mean racist with a questionable Austrian accent and even worse highlights (think early Ryan Seacrest by way of American Idol).
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Jeffrey Mayer/Wireimage.com
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Co-star Alfre Woodard
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Anyhow, Latifah doesn't stay there long and opens her own - wait for it - Beauty Shop in a rough Atlanta neighborhood. There the comedy takes off and in 90 or so minutes, Latifah and company (Alicia Silverstone, Keisha Knight Pulliam, Golden Brooks, Sherri Shepherd, Alfre Woodard) kibitz not only about hair on both white and black women, but every pressing issue on the modern black women's minds.
As such, Beauty Shop has something of its own identity crisis: is it an all out comedy or a serious drama? Okay, it doesn't really matter. But where the men in Barbershop dissected politics and African-American heroes (or anti-heroes), the girls rap about plastic surgery, gold diggers, metrosexuals, dating, cheating, racism in the workplace, redlining bank loans, entrepreneurial black women, black children named after luxury goods, cappuccino, booties, sex, hair crack (again, don't ask), piano lessons, city official corruption, more booties, more sex, interracial dating, rap videos that exploit women, booties that shake and the carb and fat content in homemade collard greens. I know. Whew!
Co-writer Norman Vance Jr., who kept the conversation real in the salon, says it was right on. "My mom owns a shop in San Diego,” he asserts. So says co-star Keisha Knight Pulliam (The Cosby Show's Rudy), whose mother also owned a salon near her childhood home in New Jersey.
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MGM
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Director Bille Woodruff
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“The beauty shop is the female version of the [boys] locker room," observes co-writer Liz Hunter. "The stylist is your therapist. You let your hair down. People are pretty honest."
That honesty among the women who play stylists was definitely cultivated at the aforementioned Golden Touch Salon, where the cast spent three intense 40-hour weeks learning the ins and outs of their on-screen specialties. Brooks was best with the finger wave; Shepherd mastered the hot comb; Latifah will cut, uh, your hair.
On the other hand, co-star Alicia Silverstone admits she still has no proficiency with hair at all. "I think I had ADD," she says. "I'm really good with head massages. But no one taught me that." She thinks for a moment, then adds: "I really learned that I don't like doing hair."
Working with real clients in Inglewood also no doubt fueled the cast's tendency for non-stop ad libs and Improv. Of course, that's to be expected, considering the group included three - count 'em - three stand-up comics (Laura Hayes, Adele Givens, Sheryl Underwood). Basically, director Bille Woodruff (Honey) begged for one take from the screenplay, then got out of the way.
"I wasn't trying to stop them," he laughs. "I was trying to keep it real."
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Jeffrey Mayer/Wireimage.com
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Strip club celebrity Siverstone
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Woodruff went after verisimilitude by making sure his cast had a multicultural, multi-generational feel. Only a cynic would argue that this approach also guarantees that his movie will have broad demographic appeal. For example, Andie MacDowell and Mena Suvari play two of Latifah's devoted clients from the other side of the tracks, which means they skipped the bonding at Golden Touch. MacDowell says she could sense the separation.
"[Blacks] have a culture that I really don't belong to," she opines, frankly. "My son plays basketball with his friends and the black kids have a sense of themselves that I can't touch.”
“I'm white,” she continues. “Black culture has been very popular with kids. It's a lot less black and white for new generations. It's a different kind of energy. Kind of sexy. And people want to be a part of it because it's good." She shrugs. "I can't all of sudden say, 'I'm your sister, too.' That's what I was really jealous of."
As the young white hairstylist who learns to style women's hair to any color and skin tone, Silverstone says she became enormously comfortable not only among her cinematic ‘sisters,’ but with Queen Latifah’s father as well. "Me and the brothers," she smiles. "We get along."
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Steve Granitz/Wireimage.com
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From In America to in Atlanta
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Away from the set, co-star Pulliam introduced Silverstone to a bawdy, shady side of strip capital Atlanta via a trip to the infamous nudie joint Strokers. "I've been to strip clubs all over the world," reveals Silverstone, trying not to hyperventilate. "It's sort of my thing. But I will never go back to another strip club. I don't know if they've gotten worse or if I've become more of a prude. I don't think it's even legal to discuss what was going on in there."
At one point, Silverstone was recognized in the Strokers restroom by a throng of naked black women wearing nothing but high heels. ‘You're the girl from Clueless!’ they exclaimed. ‘And you're here with Rudy!’
Meanwhile, Alfre Woodard's Miss Josephine is the grand dame, Maya Angelou-spouting earth mother of Gina's salon. An Oscar-nominated actor for 1983’s Cross Creek, she's an interesting and daring choice. So how exactly did she end up in this Beauty Shop?
"Latifah asked for me," she replies, acknowledging that she was not MGM’s first choice. "I think [the studio] was expecting something more serious from me. They were nervous about what I was doing; I improvised most of my character."
Including, apparently, most of the movie's political commentary, which - to Woodard’s great chagrin – was essentially cut from the final print. "It looks like they had nothing on their mind but sex!" she shouts out. Gone are Woodard's jokes about updating Condoleezza Rice's hair (‘In 2005? Excuse me?!’).
Ditto for gags about airport security and Republicans, particularly Colin Powell (‘Now, that's a Republican tree I'd climp any day’). Woodard sighs, explaining that the writers ultimately had to stick with the narrative of Latifah’s character. “This really is a film about when you're down on your butt,” she suggests. “That's when you're closest to realizing dreams."
Adds Woodruff: "I knew that a lot of people didn't think [Alfre] was funny. But I've seen her do idiosyncratic characters." And the thirtysomething director admits the actress was probably the one who challenged him most. "She’s intimidating to do anything with."
Meanwhile, Beauty Shop's rather intimidating male eye candy was provided by the traffic-stopping Djimon Hounsou, who plays the shop's upstairs repairman and Latifah's love interest, alongside the equally arresting R&B artist-producer Bryce Wilson (Groove Theory), who joins the salon as a misunderstood braiding specialist. Woodruff shoehorned even younger male energy into his movie by asking the writers to create a video camera-toting character for pre-teen Little J.J.
| Hounsou, a.k.a. ‘Sexy International Chocolate,’ says he found the all-women atmosphere overwhelming. "I was one of only two males in the shop!” he says. “And it's the only film I've ever worked on where I looked forward to being on the set. It was difficult to fathom that we were making a movie."
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Remarkably, Hounsou - who's been acting for 15-odd years and will next be seen in Michael Bay's The Island with Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson - shares his very first onscreen kiss with Latifah. He grins: "She's a great kisser." Says Latifah: "At least he starts at the top, right? I was very gentle with him."
Initially, MGM wanted a more aggressive Latifah - an in-your-face, over-the-top character, more like her rap persona of the mid-90s. But of course, no one ever said that to her face.
"Studio executives don't have the balls to speak to me like that," she says. "We made her softer," adds co-writer Vance Jr., because Woodruff wanted a more vulnerable, sympathetic woman, not unlike the heroine of Tyler Perry's Diary of a Mad Black Woman, which, as it happens, hit number one at the box office its opening weekend and appealed to scores of African-American women.
| At the time of the interviews, Beauty Shop had already tested well. But Latifah, her producer cap firmly in place, says, "I don't put expectations on things like that. You can't control what people are going to do. I don't believe in statistics and focus groups."
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At least not until they can hold test screenings at the neighborhood barbershop.
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