A movie that Josh and I have both raved about,The Wackness, is all about recreating a New York City of the past using rap music and real locations. Now another movie is going to recreate New York, but it won't use the rap music-- it'll show how that music got created. Notorious, a biopic about rapper Notorious B.I.G., is currently shooting on location in Brooklyn, and we have a video from the set which shows how much dedication is going into staying true to the life of the man born as Christopher Wallace.
The second video diary from the set, available below, stars with Voletta Wallace, Christopher's mother, saying “Christopher was a New Yorker. Christopher was born in Brooklyn.” Director George Tillman, Jr. goes on to point out that the production has gone back to the streets where Wallace sold drugs in his youth, and even the same apartment building where he lived as a child.
But it's not just locations that are true to the era. The hairstyles, the fashions and the cars are all straight out of 1980s Brooklyn, all of them showed off proudly in the video. Even some of the people who lived in the neighborhood when Wallace did are included as part of the film, and of course Voletta is on board as an executive producer. It's remarkable just in this short video to see how proud she is of her son, 11 years after his death.
Fox Searchlight knows what its doing when it comes to marketing smaller movies, and while video diaries like this might not grab longtime fans of Notorious B.I.G., film nerds like me will appreciate the effort put into the production, and remember that the movie will tell an impressive story regardless of how much you know about rap music. It looks like old-school New York is coming back in style on the screen, and if The Wackness turns out to be a hit, Notorious will most definitely be one as well.
