‘Scarface’ echoes mightily with hip-hop artists
Brian De Palma’s Scarface blasted onto theater screens 20 years ago and made a lot of critics and moviegoers skittish over its brutal violence and lurid drug scenes.
But with time, the sweeping tale of Cuban refugee Tony Montana’s meteoric rise and crashing fall in the Miami cocaine trade has become an influential cultural icon รณ especially among hip-hop artists.
This story of the American dream is being reintroduced with a 10-city theatrical run starting Friday to promote the DVD release Sept. 30.
A 20-minute documentary on the movie’s influence on rap music will accompany the DVD, and the 16-track Def Jam Recordings Presents Music Inspired by Scarface is out this week. The deluxe $60 version of the DVD (basic version is $27) includes the 1932 Scarface, starring Paul Muni.
“It’s just amazing to see how a classic film like Scarface has not only retained its original audience, but how it has impacted a whole new generation of fans,” says Craig Kornblau, president of Universal Studios Home Video.
The film’s influence can be seen in the numerous catchphrases it introduced to the popular lexicon. (“Say ‘ello to my little friend,” Montana says, wielding a machine gun.) Comedian George Lopez did a Montana impersonation at this year’s Latin Grammy Awards, and basketball star Shaquille O’Neal’s clothing line is dubbed The World Is Mine after Montana’s sentiment. But nowhere is the influence felt more keenly than in urban communities.
Def Jam president Kevin Liles, who says he has seen the movie more than 100 times, says, “Everybody could relate to the struggle that Tony went through and the point that when you do it that way, you always end up in jail or dead.”
Liles says Def Jam had proposed rescoring the movie with hip-hop music, but the Giorgio Moroder score was left intact. Instead, Def Jam compiled songs such as the Notorious B.I.G.’s 10 Crack Commandments, Grandmaster Flash’s White Lines, the Lox’s Money, Power, Respect and Mobb Deep’s It’s Mine, interspersing them with movie dialogue.
The 20-minute documentary, Def Jam Presents: Origins of a Hip-Hop Classic, is packed with interviews with such hip-hop stars as P. Diddy, Snoop Dogg and Eve, who talk about the movie. P. Diddy says the film “scared me straight.”
Jadakiss says the movie “made you want to go out and do what you were doing to the best of your capability.
“You see when he killed (best friend) Manolo (Steven Bauer) how everything went downhill after that,” he says. “It keeps you grounded with your crew.”
Houston rapper Scarface, who is in the documentary, says: “Me and (Montana) went through the same stuff, going from nothing to something. I’m just not dead. For years to come, that movie will be relevant because it’s the truth.”
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