Shared Darkness

Hip-hop artist, actor, mini-mogul-in-training — Bow Wow doesn’t
need anyone to throw him a bone. In honor of his 20th birthday, then, here’s a slightly redacted reposting of an interview done from the fall of 2005, on occasion of the theatrical release of Roll Bounce. To wit:

There used to be a day when actors wanted only to be actors.
That day is no more. There used to be a day when singers wanted only to be
singers. That day is no more. There used to be a day when actor-singers wanted
merely to be actor-singers. That day is no more.

And there used to be a day when performers who formerly, and
formally, had the designation “Lil’” in front of their name would be happy to
escape adolescence with a trust fund intact. That day, too, is no more. Yes, in an interview in advance of his new
period skate movie Roll Bounce, Bow
Wow is telling me that he wants to put Will Smith out of business. And he’s not
entirely kidding.

In breathless fashion, multimedia army-of-one Bow Wow
relates anecdotes about his recently completed music tour, his upcoming film
projects, various endorsement deals, the self-starring reality show he’d like
to launch on his own terms (“I think if I had mine it’d be crazy, you’d never
see nothing like this”) and, yes, plans for
his own clothing line. Probably one of the most preternaturally confident —
cocky? — of the under-drinking age set in Hollywood
today, Bow Wow is a relentless talker and self-promoter, and unnervingly on
point. (If none of his entertainment ventures stick, he could in a decade segue
into politics, where his cult of personality would find welcome reception.)

Yet Bow Wow has a unique
combination of experience and basic insight that could serve him well, and
together give him just as much of a puncher’s chance as anyone else looking to
rapaciously climb the Hollywood ladder. Ask him why rappers today feel the need
to brand themselves with such a wide variety of lifestyle accoutrements, and
he’ll launch into a soliloquy about the genre’s high relatability amongst
today’s kids and how fans therefore want to also feel like they own a piece of
their favorite hip-hop stars — or even athletes — outside of music or off the
court. It’s a bit broad strokes but nonetheless perceptive. Bow Wow is no dum
dum, in other words.

Bow Wow first came to fame as the preteen protégé of
rapper-producer Jermaine Dupri, who continues to serve as his musical mentor. His
debut album, Beware of Dog, sold over
three million copies and spawned the hit “Bounce With Me,” which touched number
one on both the rap and R&B charts. He then made his feature film debut in Like Mike, and was most recently seen
opposite Cedric the Entertainer in Johnson
Family Vacation.

Setting one’s sights on Will Smith, though, requires a bit
broader palette, and so Bow Wow began looking for something with a bit more
heft to it. It was then that he heard of Roll
Bounce, a script by television writer Norman Vance (Beauty Shop) that Malcolm Lee (Undercover
Brother, The Best Man) had
expressed an interest in directing. “What attracted me to the film was the
storyline,” says Bow Wow, “and especially that is was something completely
different than anything I’ve done before. I really wanted to broaden my career
as an actor, and this role was a great way to take it further.”

The film’s story, set in a music-cued 1970s, centers around
Xavier “X” Smith (Bow Wow). At a time when rollerskating was a way of life, X
and his pals ruled supreme. When their local rink closes, however, it sends
these decidedly downtown kids into terra
unfamilia — an uptown rink known as Sweetwater — where they face off
against a collection of flamboyant over-the-top skaters. Along the way, there’s
a budding romance with the sweet Naomi (Meagan Good) and a therapeutic healing
in X’s relationship with his father Curtis (Chi McBride).

“I’ve been skating for years so this wasn’t really anything
new to me,” says Bow Wow. “I’ve been skating since I was around six years old.
I used to waste my mother’s money all the time, just playing games at the
arcade. And then she was like, ‘Nah, get on out there.’ So it was cool, it
brought back some memories.”

“The routines and the choreography were really the only
thing that I had to learn,” Bow Wow continues. “That took a few weeks. A lot of
us, we’re not dancers, a lot of us don’t have rhythm, so it was cool to get
everybody together and just try to do it. People were falling, some folks
couldn’t get it, some could. But we had to wait, and work together, because we
were a team and we had to move as a unit.”

While the nostalgic underpinnings and familial drama of Roll Bounce make it almost as much of a
“glance-back” movie for adults as a funky comedy of choreographed good times, the
assortment of supporting player cameos (Nick Cannon, Charlie Murphy, Mike Epps,
DMX, Wayne Brady) adds further color and flair. Bow Wow also asserts that young
and old can appreciate the artistic showmanship of rollerskating. He acknowledges
the ascendancy of rollerblades, but points out the existence of Los Angeles’ World
on Wheels and other local skating rinks, saying there’s still a healthy
underground appetite for the type of “jam skating” on display in Roll Bounce. “Rollerblades are
definitely used for exercise and things like that,” says Bow Wow. “But when
it’s time for you to skate and really show off what you’ve got, then it’s four
wheels.”

Bow Wow will soon get a chance to get to know other types of
four-wheel modes of transportation as well, as he and Lucas Black (Sling Blade, Friday Night Lights) are set to co-star in the third installment of the Fast and the Furious franchise,
set in Tokyo. Shooting commences on
location in October — “I’ve never been [to Japan], so that’ll be all new,
different,” he says — and though Bow Wow is as of yet uncertain as to what, if
any, sort of driving school training he’ll have, don’t be too surprised if you soon
see his endorsement of an auto body professional. Or a tire company, or a rim
specialist…

Jim Carrey is nothing if not dogged in his pursuit of well-roundedness.
While plenty of actors have been only too happy to trade on the
well-fed contentedness of their big screen personalities, and merely
flip their careers into cruise control (a certain Dreamgirls Oscar nominee comes to mind), Carrey has for more than a decade shown a penchant for
dancing on the razor’s edge. Broad comedies are his forte, but he
clearly yearns for embrace — commercially as much as critically — in
dramatic fare as well, as The Truman Show, The Majestic, Man on the Moon and now his choice to headline the recent The Number 23 all illustrate.

“I really have always thought of myself as somebody who lives in the
middle of the wheel, and is able to go to the extreme, to the outside
of the wheel, in any direction,” says Carrey. “The best case scenario for me is to
be able to be centered and then go out. You can be zany
and funny or you can do something that really has some depth to it and
is serious …I would
hate to get trapped in one little thing. I always feel like funny is an
appendage, but it is not my whole body.” For the full feature interview, from FilmStew, click here.