Exclusive: Director Mario Van Peebles Talks ‘New Jack City’ 30 Years Later

Thirty years ago today, ‘New Jack City’ was released in theaters after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival months earlier.

Directed by Mario Van Peebles, who was making his directorial debut, the film starred Wesley Snipes, Allen Payne, Ice-T, Judd Nelson, Vanessa Williams, Bill Nunn, Chris Rock, Michael Michele, Russell Wong, Christopher Williams, Anthony DeSando, and Tracy Camilla Johns.

The film was based upon an original story and screenplay by Thomas Lee Wright and Barry Michael Cooper, the film was produced by Doug McHenry and George Jackson.

Snipes starred as Nino Brown, a rising drug dealer and crime lord in New York City during the crack epidemic. Ice-T plays a detective who vows to stop Nino’s criminal activity by going undercover to work for Nino’s gang, known as the CMB (Cash Money Brothers) crew. Among that crew were Gee-Money (Payne), the Duh Duh Duh Man (Nunn), Keisha (Williams) and Kareem Akbar (Williams).

Produced with an estimated $8 million dollars budget, and with some positive reviews, the movie — released Feb. 8, 1991 — became the highest grossing independent film of 1992, grossing a total of $47.6 million domestically.

For Van Peebles, who has continued to work as an actor and director, New Jack City as well as his father, Melvin Van Peebles taught him a lot of the business and how to stay in the game. It can be fun, but it also requires patience and hard work. He recently directed the Salt-N-Pepa story for Lifetime and will be directing episodes of The Wu-Tang Clan Saga for Hulu.

BlackFilmandTV.com recently caught up with Van Peebles as he talked about New Jack City and his experience making it.

It’s been 30 years since its release and folks are still talking about the film. How does that make you feel?

Mario Van Peebles: I knew when we were making this film, that we had something that was powerful. Whether it would become a gangsta classic, whether folks would remember or refer to it that we didn't know. I knew it was powerful. As it was written like a black Scarface. I wanted to make it more like a multi-cultural Untouchables because I realized that crack is is a killer in communities of color now. Then if you wanted folks to say no, you had to provide all models to say yes to and that was real. So if I said, "Okay, we're going to have some new jack gangsta with some new jack cops on the other side of the scale. In most gangster films, you emotionally connect with the gangster. But in New Jack City, not only do you connect with Nino, and hopefully the cops but you also connect with the victim.

That's not the case when you watch The Godfather. You watch two and a half hours of a cat who's got family values, but he does some gnarly stuff that affects the community. Once we decided, "Okay, let's put a face on the victim," then I knew we would be in a more interesting place because we showed the film and we had folks watching it. Some kids stood up in the front row when Pookie, played by Chris Rock, was getting addicted to crack and said, just say no more fucker. So that kind of visceral reaction to, you know, be on the other side of the drug thing and being against and be against what, you know, the drug dealers business model was about was key.

You had such an incredible cast. Can you break down how did you get Wesley Snipes to play Nino Brown?

Mario Van Peebles: Well, I had three producers, Doug McHenry, George Jackson, and Preston Holmes. And we all put we all do this together. So it's not just my show, it was all of us together, honestly. Wesley wanted to play the cop and Ice-T wasn't feeling that kind of way about playing a cop. He wanted to play the gangster. The trick was to get them to switch roles. So okay, let's see if Ice-T can bring all that street credibility to the part of the cop and if Wesley can bring all his acting talents and training to playing the playing the gangster. And that was the trick was to make both sides of the tennis match, equally ferocious, equally strong, so that everyone had their own their own truth. And even if those truths were diametrically opposed, you understood where it was coming from. You understood where Wesley was coming from. Part of the strength of the movie was not just playing as we want it to be, but playing it as it is. Part of it was casting. Getting folks in who could really kill it, do our thing and let them go. A big part of what I did was not having an ego about it, and knowing when to get the hell out of the way. And let these very talented actors, and some of new actors do their thing.

Each of the women (Vanessa Williams, Michael Michele, Tracy Camilla Johns, Phyllis Stickney) in the film provided something different.

Mario Van Peebles: That was cool. It was great to see all of our flavors, all of our colors. Anyone who's in this movie touches crack eventually perishes. At that time, if you were a black actor in Hollywood, and actually in the 90s, you typically play the police commissioner. And you said stuff like, “Do it by the book." When I went home and thought about it, and the producer said, "Mario, now we have the clout and you can cast the white actor, and they do it by the book." I went home and laughed. When I looked at my family tree, and we've got everyone in my family.  We got black, brown, white, straight, gay, and I said, "You know what. That's just get even filmmaking that's not getting better. That's just doing on to them as they've done on us." I'm not going do that. That's giving that negative stuff too much power.

So I went back and said, "Nah, man, for the new jack cops, we're going to get Russell Wong, a cool looking Asian brother, Judd Nelson, a cool Jewish brother, get Ice-T to play a cop and not against it. I'll play the police commissioner and say, “do it by the book or I'll have your ass." And then we got a nice, smart, dark skinned sister (Phyllis Yvonne Stickney) to be the prosecutors that take Nino Brown down. So just in the very casting of it, it was revolutionary. Part of the message was that it takes all of us to figure this out. 

Then there’s the soundtrack and the singers/ actors in the film from Christopher Williams to Keith Sweat. 

Mario Van Peebles: Yes. Keith Sweat and the scene outside the big wedding. It was our way to tipping our hat to the Godfather. 

You recently directed the Salt-N-Pepa film. What have you seen in three decades that's been the biggest change in the industry?

Mario Van Peebles: Clint Eastwood said something to me when I when I did Heartbreak Ridge as an actor. He said, “No one gets to be flavor of the month for 30 years." It means you got to be doing something right to get invited back to the cinematic picnic. It also means that you have to have some people skills to navigate it all. A lot of people can flame out and burnout. They can become whoever you are. This business will magnify if you're okay with yourself, and magnify that if you're not okay with yourself. It'll magnify that too. I've seen a lot and I've learned a lot. It's not just from my perspective. In 1971, my dad did Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, which became a top grossing independent hit of that year. Then 20 years later, I got to make New Jack City inside the studio system. So I was a kid on the set working on my dad's films, and he had said to me, “We're taught as people of color, how to play ball, we're not always taught how to own the team. Look, I'll teach you how to own the team. I'll teach you not just how to be an actor and be in front of the camera, but how to produce and direct and last 30 years.” Right now I'm directing the second season of the Wu Tang clan saga. And it's a dope show working with Rza and all those guys on that show.

I've been able to do it for 30 years, but I didn't just do it as an actor. I became a writer, a director, a producer, and I'm fun to work with. You got to be talented. Absolutely. But you also have to be easy and fun to work with people that want to hang out with you. Ultimately, there are three loves in life, love what you do, love who you do it with, and love what you say with your work. So one of the things that I've seen is people of color get offered all kinds of roles now, which is beautiful. My son Mandela is in Wu Tang, and then he’s playing the villain in the first episode. He was in Salt-N-Pepa. He's an actor, and he's getting auditions for stuff I didn't get back in the day. So that's a beautiful thing to see that kind of change. I think we're seeing. Just look at commercials; you're seeing mixed race, couples and TV commercials and gay couples and TV commercials. Americans are going through this little step right now where we got hit with Colonel marmalade, Donald Trump, and that whole racism that comes along with some of that. America is going more towards a place, at least in cinema, of inclusivity. We're seeing more women directing, which is important. We need to see more Native American brothers and sisters, as filmmakers, because that story has not been told. It doesn't always mean that I love the quality. It doesn't always mean I agree with each different filmmakers point of view. But what is happening is there's more and more material. And that's a beautiful thing. There's more and more folks, not just in front of the camera, but behind the camera, making sure that it's not just his story, it's our story. That’s important.