Lisa Buser
Craig Brewer
To tell Craig Brewer’s story is to start with his grandfather, Marvelous Marv Throneberry. That’s right, the fan favorite baseball player who gained fame with the Yankees and the Mets, known for his spectacularly good and bad playing. You might suppose that Brewer would be destined for a major league career but, unfortunately, “I was never good at anything athletic.”
So that’s the prologue — and here’s where Act 1 begins: Brewer was, however, destined for major success in Hollywood, and that is thanks in large part to his father, Walter D. Brewer. All through school, Craig loved theater and movies and threw himself into singing and dancing and plays. Out of high school, he wanted to direct and produce plays he’d written.
Enter Mr. Brewer: “My dad, a businessman in the shipping industry, was where he shined. He loved to break down what exactly it would take to produce a play. So how much would the theater cost? That means I’ve got to sell this many tickets to get this much money to make what the theater costs. Then it was, no, actually there’s more costs because we’ve got to build a set. We’ve got to get a light designer.”
So the businessman who had never been in professional theater partnered with his son who was grounded in community theater. “Suddenly we were trying to make money — or at least break even — so we could produce a play,” he says, “and we did two plays that way.”
His father’s support was more than practical. It was inspirational. When the younger Brewer decided to get into filmmaking, the road was bumpy. A first effort failed dismally. That led to introspection and visits to Midtown’s P & H Café, where he was enamored with the people and, well, the entire mise en scène.
From that came 2000’s The Poor & Hungry, which would launch the young filmmaker’s career. But putting it together, Brewer was still unsure and reached out to his father.
“I sent the script off to my dad and he called me, really excited about it,” Brewer says. “He inspired me on a business level, first of all, saying he was worried that I’d overproduce it and spend too much money on that when really the movie is about people who don’t have any money. He said I should try to make the movie feel like that and then just keep costs down.” It was a time when digital technology was taking off and Brewer knew he could edit it. That conversation with his father had clarified so much for him and he was pumped and eager to continue.
“I have a very specific process where I start writing a script. You need to dream a little bit. You need to figure out a way to make it quick and functional so you don’t just live in that dream space forever, but you start seeing ideas.”
“But later in the day I got a phone call from his work that he’d suffered a heart attack and died. The last thing my dad and I ever talked about was him inspiring me to go out and make this movie.”
It was shattering, but Brewer couldn’t possibly set the project aside. “I kept his business mindset in my head when I was making it, about keeping costs down and really putting the work up on the screen. I always felt like my dad was making it with me.”
The Poor & Hungry was recognized at the Hollywood Film Festival, which led to the making of Hustle & Flow. That film earned a spate of awards and allowed Brewer to do his next project, Black Snake Moan.
Brewer’s continuing successes included directing on television, documentary work, and last year’s release of Dolemite is My Name with Eddie Murphy. This year will see the release of another Murphy project, Coming 2 America.
But he couldn’t do any of it without his cards. That’s right, the big-time director, deft at handling big egos, skilled at making elevator pitches, savvy about the peculiarities of Hollywood — he’s nothing without his note cards, clear tacks, and two cork boards.
“Everything I have to tackle in my life, I try to tackle it on those cards,” Brewer says. “I have gone into so many different Office Maxes around this country because I have to fix something or come up with an idea or figure it out.”
It is a lesson for any potential entrepreneur who struggles with getting organized.
“I have a very specific process where I start writing a script. You need to dream a little bit. You need to figure out a way to make it quick and functional so you don’t just live in that dream space forever, but you start seeing ideas.”
He breaks down his script story using those cards, but it’s also an exercise for other movies. “I’ll say we’re going to watch Get Out and I’m going to card it. You kind of see other ways that people attacked the narrative or tried to get your attention.”
And what is the best advice Brewer’s ever been given? It came from director John Singleton, who produced Hustle & Flow.
“He said, ‘Shoot the meat,’ meaning get to a scene, make that first wide shot so good that if lightning struck the cameras and you couldn’t shoot any more, it would still work. In other words get into the hard stuff right up top.”
And, as the saying goes, That’s Entertainment.
