Maggie Hadleigh-West
Film Fatale, Inc.
Filmmaker • Producer • Public Speaker • Activist
maggie@yomaggie.com / 718 230.0885
info@yomaggie.com
Maggie is an Alpha Omicron Pi Alumna.
The Making of Player Hating A Love Story
Way Backstory*
Some people might wonder why a white, “feminist” filmmaker would even consider making a movie about a bunch of young thugs from Brooklyn. So I thought it might be interesting to share the beginning of what I think of as me pulling my head and heart out of acculturated, racist fear, and getting real. With real people.
It truly began in my family, but for the purposes of this blog, I’ll begin in the late 80’s when I was working in the art department of the American Booksellers Association in Manhattan. There was a wonderful guy who worked there in the mailroom. read more
The Making of Player Hating A Love Story
Way Backstory (continued)
After James died, I spent a lot of time in the mailroom talking to Kevin and Louie. It was really the only place that I could talk about James that felt safe and empathetic. My office administration had moved away from the death pretty quickly and had rejected my idea to hang a picture of James in the office.
My feeling was that the idea of memorializing a black man who’d been murdered didn’t reflect well on the company. And maybe that’s so, but for me we had lost a well-loved office colleague to a tragedy that he had very little to do with.
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Day 1 of Shooting
For years after James’s death my hearing was heightened about what was happening in poor black neighborhoods in New York. I’d hear stories in the news, and it was as if I could smell the racism that was inherent in the style in which they were relayed to the viewing public. And because I’d gotten a sense of what life was like in the projects, the news felt like peoples lives were being misrepresented, maligned and then negated when it came to death. The media’s thirst for violent crime, based on what I believe is a misguided sense of what audiences want to see and hear, seemed insatiable.
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The Mother Fucking Saga Continues… (line from film)
Definition: Player Hating- Someone else is about to shine, and you’ll do anything to keep that bastard from getting his cheese — it can be as subtle as negative flow (lyrics) or as extreme as trying to clap (shoot) him. – Trent Bond, Half’s Manager and former NYPD Detective.
read moreThe Making of Player Hating A Love Story
Life in the PJ’s
We set up my first interview with Half in the stairwell of his building in the Albany Projects, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. This interview became the backbone of the film. While I was interviewing Half, who was smoking weed and drinking the entire five hours, his crew was in the hall, doing the same, with the exception of his security that sat above and behind him at all times. At one point, my female PA got smart ass with one of the guys in the hall and I had to remind her that we were in a circumstance where she could get her butt shot off because she had attitude.
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Car Jacked!!! (DVD Extra)
For me, bringing my white chick feminist self into the projects was really an act of faith in the Universe, in Half and in Racism. I assumed that by virtue of my skin color, my gender and the fact that I was a filmmaker, that I was somewhat less likely to be shot at than the guys I was working with. And that assumption had been somewhat confirmed when we were robbed in Brownsville and my white cinematographer survived the 9mm pressed to his temple.
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Buy Me An Ocean
Half is a talented rapper, and the plan was that his first album was going to be the vehicle that took him and his crew out of poverty. They didn’t necessarily all want out of the projects, because this is where they “kept it real” and if you lose the streets, you lose your credibility. But the whole crew for sure wanted to blow up and get rich. At one point in the Stairwell Interview, I asked Half what he was going to do if he got rich. He said that he would be responsible, invest his money so he’s make even more, and then he might go out and buy himself an ocean, and then he laughed. I loved that.
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Gangsta Gift
I’d been shooting Half for a couple of weeks when I first met Blood Sport. We were shooting in a radio station in Crown Heights with DJ Extra Strength, when this guy walked in and my heart jump with confusion and fear. He was in his early twenties, medium brown, wearing a waist length black mink coat, tight black leather pants, with red beads swinging well below his crotch and a black scull cap which highlighted the four inch scar that ran from his eye to just above his jaw line. I asked Spank, Half’s security, who the hell that guy was, and when he responded Blood Sport. I said, Well, if his name is Blood Sport, my name is Chicken Shit. And I meant it.
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