Gridlock'd is a 1997 American black comedycrime film written and directed by Vondie Curtis-Hall, and starring Tupac Shakur, Tim Roth, Lucy Liu and Thandiwe Newton. It was the directorial debut of Curtis-Hall, who also has a small role in the film. The film's opening was relatively low, despite critical acclaim; its opening weekend netted only $2,678,372 and it finished with a little over $5.5 million.[1] Shakur died four months before the film's release.
The film focuses on two heroin addicts who decide to kick the habit, following the overdose of their bandmate. They must face encounters with the police and local criminals, while bureaucracy prevents them from entering a drug rehabilitation program.
Set in Detroit, Gridlock'd centers around heroin addicts Spoon, Stretch and Cookie. They are in a band – in the spoken word genre – called Eight Mile Road, with Cookie on lead vocals, Spoon on bass guitar and Stretch on piano. Spoon and Stretch decide to kick their habit after Cookie overdoses on her first hit. Throughout a disastrous day, the two addicts dodge police and local criminals while struggling with an apathetic government bureaucracy that thwarts their entrance to a drug rehabilitation program.
In addition, Bokeem Woodbine appears repeatedly – though uncredited – as drug dealer Mud, while D Reper is played by the film's writer and director, Vondie Curtis-Hall; Kasi Lemmons and Henry Hunter Hall, Curtis-Hall's wife and then-baby, respectively, appear briefly as the Madonna and Child.
Production
Development
Curtis-Hall drew from some of his own experiences growing up in Detroit to make the film. During his teenage years, Curtis-Hall was a guitarist and vocalist in Detroit's punk rock scene. During this time, he and his peers began using heroin, with Curtis-Hall recounting the drug "was really a competitive thing we did, to be accepted. In order to compete, we thought, we figured we needed the tools to compete with others that were pushing the edge, to play faster, write better songs and sing better. That meant using smack".[2]
Curtis-Hall had kicked the drug by the time he graduated high school in 1974,[2] saying,
"One day my best friend, the bassist, and I were sitting around and decided that maybe we could actually play better if we weren't stoned all the time."[3] In the attempt to get clean, Curtis-Hall said that he and his friend sought assistance from public detoxification programs, but were constantly confronted with red tape. He said, "I was living at home and I didn’t want [my parents] to know about it. Because of that I had no address to list on the forms. My friend didn't have a Social Security card. We were like these two homeless kids, running through this maze. You have a small window of time, or you’ll never kick."[2][3]
Casting and financing
Curtis-Hall said it wasn't easy to get the film financed because of its taboo subject of heroin, "and people were expecting it to be a real depressing movie about a couple of dope fiends."[3] He took the project to Live Entertainment, PolyGram Films and Def Pictures, a subsidiary of PolyGram.[2] At the time, PolyGram had just released Trainspotting and told Curtis-Hall, "'We can't do two movies about heroin'...Then Tupac's record company came up with the money and PolyGram turned around and said, 'Hey, we always liked this movie' [laughs]."[3]
Tim Roth requested to be in the film upon reading the script after the filming of Rob Roy.[2] Tupac was cast after Laurence Fishburne, the director's first choice, was not available.[2] The rapper was recommended to Curtis-Hall by Preston Holmes, the president of Def Pictures.[2] Said Curtis-Hall, "Pac had just gotten out of jail [after a 1995 sexual abuse conviction in New York] and no one wanted to touch him. But Preston, who had known Tupac since he was a child, said that he was a professional, and nothing like the perception Hollywood had of him. I met him, liked him, hooked him up with Tim, and there was immediate chemistry."[2][3]
Gridlock'd premiered on January 31, 1997, finishing at #10 at the box office in the United States and Canada for its opening weekend, and went on to a total gross of $5.6million during its domestic run.[1] The film was released in the United Kingdom on May 30, 1997.[4]
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 88% of 34 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.7/10.[5]The New York Times editor Janet Maslin praised Shakur's performance: "He played this part with an appealing mix of presence, confidence and humor".[6] Desson Howe, for the Washington Post, wrote, "Shakur and Roth, who seem born for these roles, are allowed to take charge – and have fun doing it".[7]USA Today gave the film three out of four stars and felt that Hall had not "latched onto a particularly original notion of city blight. But he knows how to mine the humor in such desperation".[8] Similarly, Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times that Roth and Shakur "illuminate" a "movie of despair and desperation" with "gritty, goofy comic spirit". He gave the film three out of four stars and said, "This is grim material, but surprisingly entertaining, and it is more cause to mourn the recent death of Shakur, who gives his best performance".[9]
Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B" rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, "Gridlock'd doesn't have the imaginative vision of a movie like Trainspotting, yet it's more literally true to the haphazard torpor of the junkie life than anything we've seen on screen since Drugstore Cowboy ... Curtis-Hall has caught the bottom-feeder enervation of heroin addiction."[10]
