Did playing DJay change you as an actor or as a person?
“Every role you play is literally – and I’ve said this before – every single role that you play, the only way you can connect to that character is because that was a piece of you that was scattered around that yard, almost like we got caught up in some whirlwind. As a child our dreams got scattered all about and all our future prospects got scattered to so many places, and we spend our lives trying to find the little pieces that make up our lives and make up the dreams that we had as a child that got blown away in the windstorm.
Finally, as an actor, I get to pick up these little pieces in these characters. I saw DJay’s unwillingness to relent and to give up. He would never give up. He would never, ever give up and he would never allow himself to be broken by the things that had tried to break him. He was a pimp but he never loved it and never allowed himself to enjoy it. You never saw him smile from that. He smiled from communicating and telling everybody, ‘Look – we’re all struggling together.’
He was a hustler. He was a coyote up in Los Angeles right now that has no other choice but to go and attack other dogs. He was turned cannibal because of his lack of food and environment. And you know, you can’t hate the coyotes, man. They can’t even get water. You tried living in Memphis? You know how hot it is in Memphis? And how thirsty someone can get there? That was DJay’s life. Can you hate him for that? No.”
Do you delve into each character as much as you did with DJay? Did this guy get under your skin more than anyone else you’ve played?
“Well, no, I don’t. If you’ve got time… I had two and a half years to work with DJay. I had two and a half years to talk with him and get to know what he was about, and that inner dialog that most actors have in the mirror. You think they’re being vain, but they’re looking for the character inside themselves.”
Did your opinion of DJay change dramatically from when you picked up the script two and a half years ago to when you actually played the role?
“No. He was always right on the page. It was like a letter from a dear friend. It was a letter from a dear friend that said, ‘Oh…,” and then I had to go and find what he was talking about because I had no common frame of reference for him. Because this friend had been in a place that I had never been to. So going to find a reference was… You know how somebody writes you a letter from Prague and you have no references? They’re your buddy but you don’t know what they’re talking about. But then you have to take a trip there. And you take that letter along with you and say, ‘Oh wow, this is what he was talking about.’”
You did a tremendous amount of research and talked to a lot of pimps in order to prepare for this role...
“Yeah, well, you’ve got two and a half years to try it again and again and again. You want to be right. You want to have it right. I just had to be prepared because we never knew when we were going to be able to make this movie. We never knew when they were going to be able to afford it, but we were all dedicated to making it. And so for two and a half years we would all talk to each other literally on a weekly basis - strategizing. ‘What’s next? What else do we have to do?’”
Was there ever a point during that long wait when, even though you loved the script and the character, you considered giving up on it?
“I never felt like that. I never felt like that. Craig [Brewer, the writer/director] never felt like that. Stephanie [Allain, producer] never felt like that. I was afraid that I was gonna fail them. I called Stephanie many times and said, ‘Look, I can’t do this. I can’t do this.’ Not the waiting. It’s like the deeper I learned - the more I learned about him, I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can pull all of these things into these scenes.’
Say you have a 60 minute [lecture]. You prepare to talk for 60 minutes and all of a sudden you’re told you’re only gonna have 30 minutes to talk when all these points are poignant. How are you going to get each and every one of them out? Half the time people don’t plan it out. So I planned. I did as much planning as I possibly to find out what would work and the stream of thought. And then Craig or whatever editor - I’m so sorry that I don’t know the editor’s name right off hand [it’s Billy Fox] - but the editor was fabulous. Amy Vincent shot it in such a magnificent way – she was so passionate. And you cared because she cared.”
It sounds like it was a passion project.
“That’s what it is: a passion project.”
Page 3: Terrence Howard on the World of "Hustle & Flow" and Writer/Director Craig Brewer
