Category Archives: The Making of Player Hating

I’m A Greezie One day while I was shooting in the projects, a fire broke out on the 11th Floor of Half’s building. Suddenly, black and white firemen, cops, ambulances and EMS workers, infiltrated this all black neighborhood. They worked for hours, as smoke, flames and water ravaged this woman’s apartment. When the fire was [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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, was smoking weed and drinking the entire five hours, his crew was in the hall, doing [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]