Love him or hate him, Kanye West is one of the most influential figures in modern music. Now he’s spreading his influence to movies.
The controversial, outspoken, rapper is taking his assumption that George Bush hates black people to the big screen, courtesy of a deal with New Line Cinema and Anonymous Content. He’ll produce a feature film for them, inspired by his own music. The Hollywood Reporter describes the movie as a portrait of the United States as seen through Kanye West’s eyes. Expect a lot of racial intolerance, police brutality, and uncomfortable shots of Mike Meyers.
To write the film, they’re hiring a half dozen writers to script short stories, which will presumably then be shoehorned into a single movie. Broadway director George C. Wolfe will have a hand in overseeing the creative side of the film, riding herd on all their short story screenwriters. Kanye will of course, provide the movie’s music.
Personally, I like Kanye. I may not always agree with what he says, but at least he’s saying something, which is more than you can say for most of his rapper peers. But frankly, the film sound pretty bad. Short stories crammed together in a feature film almost never work. It’s kind of a shame that Kanye has chosen something like this as his first filmmaking foray, but with movies like Madea making money hand over fist the film will probably do well whether or not it’s any good.
