|
|
Features
|
|
Show Me the Comeback
Cuba Gooding Jr. has made more than a dozen movies since the salad days of Jerry Maguire and As Good As It Gets. But only his latest made mom pray for forgiveness.
Monday, February 27, 2006
By Brent Simon
|
|
|
Steve Granitz/Wireimage.com
Photo
|
|
Gooding at last fall's AFI Fest
|
|
The help is hovering at a local Beverly Hills hotel, asking Cuba Gooding, Jr. if the heat lamp by the pool on this balmy February afternoon is too much, but he waves them away. “I like to sweat,” he insists.
He could, in some respects, also be talking about his career. Gooding’s innate likeability still shines through — his eyes spark and glimmer and he’ll reach forward unselfconsciously to tap your arm while making a point — but there’s also an undeniable tinge of sadness to his persona, and a bit of on-edge, rueful rumination that perhaps comes with the vague feeling of wider opportunity having slipped by.
A Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner for his role as boisterous wide receiver Rod Tidwell in Cameron Crowe’s 1996 dramedy Jerry Maguire, Gooding’s filmography in recent years has been studded with genre turkeys like Chill Factor and Boat Trip, which sniffed only brief theatrical engagements. This fact, combined with the chilly commercial reception for dramatic outings in prestige fare like Radio and Men of Honor, as well as 2003’s The Fighting Temptations, have made many in Hollywood question his choices, chatter that’s no doubt reached Gooding and is sure to have taken its toll.
|
|
Kevin Mazur/Wireimage.com
Photo
|
|
Co-star Clifton Collins Jr.
|
|
|
Ask him about his forthcoming projects and he’s candid, lowering his lids and labeling End Game — an action thriller with Angie Harmon and James Woods, directed by stuntman Andy Cheng — ‘the worst of the bunch.’ Apparently he’s not kidding; it’s just been booked for a direct-to-DVD debut from Sony Pictures on May 2nd.
Gooding is more upbeat, thankfully, about two other forthcoming projects, part of his seeming outreach program of cinematic reparation to work with young, independent filmmakers. In addition to Monster’s Ball producer Lee Daniels’ directorial debut, Shadowboxer (releasing May 12), in which he stars opposite Helen Mirren, Gooding has this winter’s Dirty, a rogue cop drama from writer-director Chris Fisher (18% rating on RottenTomatoes.com; $236,000 in limited release this past weekend).
While he sparked to the latter’s gritty story and feeling of substance — “I hadn’t read a script with such social relevance since Boyz N The Hood. It’s a cautionary tale, but it’s also a redemptive tale of accountability,” Gooding says — it was a heartfelt letter of accompaniment from Fisher that most won the actor over.
|
|
Michael Caufield/Wireimage.com
Photo
|
|
Writer-director Chris Fisher
|
|
|
“I just remember him detailing his frustrations with the jargon in the media from police officials and certain state officials on the war against gang violence — an us-against-them mentality: ‘We should hold the beachfront against this dissident faction in the community,’” relates Gooding to FilmStew. “And that’s fine and dandy if you identify an enemy that everyone agrees upon. But when you’re talking about inner cities where everybody’s the devil, that’s where part of the problem lies.”
The movie finds Gooding getting dirty as Salim Adel, a crooked cop who over the course of one rangy day on duty, finds himself increasingly at odds with his partner, Armando Sancho (Capote’s Clifton Collins, Jr.). Both are former gang-bangers who’ve developed a taste for the ultimate gang — one with a badge — but whereas Armando is developing a conscience and having second thoughts about working in a corrupt unit that acts in the service of its own interests as often as the law’s, the flamboyant Salim has a real taste for the power of his position and the entrepreneurial opportunities it might provide. When the pair gets involved in ferrying a shipment of dope to a local dealer, and then conducts a raid on his behalf to shut down a competitor, it sets off a chain of events that will test and irrevocably taint them both.
“Chris went on to say that in my past roles I’ve always been the good guy,” notes Gooding, “and there’s been this sympathetic quality about my characters that he felt was necessary to be the basis of Salim Adel’s character, because here’s a guy who was in a gang and completely reformed himself to the point where he became a police officer. But then he realized that his mentality was the minority, and to get with the program he had to revert back to the frame of mind to which he was accustomed.”
That frame of mind was an unethical and ruthlessly self-centered one, and it certainly upset some audience members upon first viewing. “I had one woman (at a Q&A session) after a screening stand up and say, ‘You’ve had positive images in the black community, now you’re doing a very negative role, using the N-word and swearing. What would make you decide to do this movie?’” recalls Gooding. “And my mom said the exact same thing when she saw the movie. It took her a day to pray about it and say, ‘We’re Christians, where are you coming from?’”
“I said, ‘Mom, you loved Boyz N The Hood. I was Tre in there, I was the guy who got out, the good guy. But what if I was Ice Cube? The movie still (makes) the same statement, except in this movie I’m Ice Cube.’”
| “It’s my job as an artist to ask the questions that no one wants to talk about,” Gooding continues. “It’s not my job to make a statement with my character. It’s the ultimate statement of the movie that (matters), I have to be real. The only way for us to find a solution to a social problem is for us to recognize the problem, and if I’m not completely true to my character, how are you going to understand his frame of mind? I have to mirror reality so that you can see the root of where all evil comes from.”
|
Being rooted in and inspired by the Rampart Division scandal of several years ago, one might figure Dirty would meet with some guardedness on the part of the Los Angeles Police Department. While empirical research wasn’t necessary, though, Gooding says there was still time for plenty of anecdotal exchange.
“Every day, we’d just sit and have police officers tell us stories while we were filming,” he recalls. “They’d see the scenes we were doing and they’d just open up and recount their experiences. Then it was about drawing your own conclusions as to how your character would react in the situation, and reacting and listening to your costars.”
| The film’s tight location schedule during December of 2004 and January of 2005 — his most freewheeling, seat-of-the-pants production since Boyz N The Hood, says Gooding — afforded no time for rehearsal, but it hardly mattered. “I loved it, because once I had the character locked in, it didn’t matter,” he relates. “We’d just go.” | |
|
|
|
|
|
 Email
|
 Print
|
|
|
|
|
|