(An Excerpt from) The Book of Albert and Allen Hughes

And on the morning of the last day of post-production, shortly before the sound mix and color correction is locked for the Warner Bros. post-apocalyptic Biblical epic, The Book of Eli, Allen Hughes, one of the film’s directors, calls this writer and asks, “Is this some kind of fuckin’ joke?”

And at first, this writer is not entirely sure what he means. “I mean your name,” he continues. “Your name’s Eli; our  movie is The Book of Eli. It just seems a little set up.” It’s not, this writer assures him. Purely coincidence. But Allen has given this writer a great opening for the article. For you see, this writer is a Hughes Brothers fan, and considers their first film, Menace II Society an inspiration for his future artistic pursuits, ever since the day he february 2010and a childhood friend watched it in secrecy after their parents forbade it, due to it’s raw, unbridled violence and thuggish honesty. It was a starkly different vision of the real world of South Central Los Angeles than what the young, white, privileged writer-to-be knew from his upbringing on the west side of Austin, Texas. And it felt good and different, shaking him to his core. When he told his parents of this feeling, however, he was subsequently grounded for seeing the film and dishonoring their wishes.

And in the nearly two decades since, Allen and Albert Hughes — the young twin prophets who directed the film, which rattled awake the young writer and much of the rest of the nation — seemed to lose their way. They were, as Allen Hughes puts it, “young, angry, and black in the mid-’90s. We were twins; we had started off with a hit film and we were a story for the press.”

And their follow-up was Dead Presidents, a soulful Vietnam War bank-robbery epic, which had a brilliant film buried somewhere within it. The prophets were said to be “difficult,” and the film did not fare well in the eyes of those up on high. And so the young twin prophets, in response to those up on high, took to the streets again, directing the documentary, American Pimp, about real pimps in the ‘hood, their ho’s, and the love, money, and life behind pimping for a living. It returned the twin prophets to their starkly honest style and tone — unflinching, as they revealed this world for what it really is, and the people within it for who they really are.

And when the brothers premiered American Pimp — strangely, at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, with the now-teenaged writer-to-be crammed into the far back of the auditorium to hear the prophets speak — someone stood up and asked them a question that changed how they thought about their films.

Says Albert, “Someone asked us how we felt about our body of work, and I thought, ‘Body of work? What is our body of work?’ And then it clicked for me that we had made three urban, black films. That that’s what we were. So we’ve started taking to calling our first three films our ‘Negro trilogy.’”

And it seems the twin prophets were bothered by this realization. They wanted to be known as storytellers and filmmakers, not as simply black directors making films for a specific audience. So they did something different, something counterintuitive, something no one would see coming.

And it was From Hell, a tale of Jack the Ripper set in London, which few people saw, beyond the most fervent admirers of Johnny Depp and a handful of die-hard Hughes Brothers fans who remembered their brilliance — including the young reporter-to-be at college in the Northeast. The film quickly faded into obscurity, as did the two young prophets from the feature-film world, for much of the next decade. Allen took to directing national commercials for major advertising campaigns. Albert moved to Prague, made short films, and lived life all over Europe. They still worked together trying to find their next feature, passing scripts back and forth between continents, but couldn’t find inspiration in any of the studio pictures they were offered, nor could they secure the proper financing for their independent projects.

And then, nearly three years ago, appeared The Book of Eli, rising out of the misty screenplay slush pile like a vision, and the young prophets suddenly found their spark again. And Warner Bros., Alcon Entertainment, and Denzel Washington made it so. And they all worked together, and it was good.

And when the writer meets the Hughes Brothers that evening in a Studio City Italian restaurant, the two prophets are physically exhausted and a little bleary-eyed, yet mentally energized after three years of tireless work. They are revelatory about their careers thus far, with their passion clearly renewed for their filmmaking, and their uncanny ability to truly speak to the people. And they sat and drank wine, and ate meatballs and pasta and salads with “shitloads of anchovies,” and spoke freely about their work, blessing their pasts and their future.

Venice: So it’s been eight years since you guys directed From Hell. Where have you been?

Allen Hughes: We’ve been working, but we just haven’t been doing features. It’s tough to get a good film off the ground.

Albert Hughes: We were also 29, 30 years old when we did From Hell. And for our entire lives before that we were virtually inseparable, so it was inevitable that we were going to go our own ways and have our own lives. That was just in the cards, but for years it wasn’t in the cards. Some people thought it was because there was a split or a friction between us —

Allen: Of course there was friction; there has always been friction between us. We’re twin brothers!

Albert: On Menace it was a kind of friction that would essentially take days to get over and there would be nasty fights. Now we’re over it in a couple minutes, most of the time. [They share a grin.]

Allen: We were also looking for the right project.

Albert: There was that and then there was me and my interests and him [Albert] and his interests, whether it be fishing, or he had his son move in, or one of us wanted to travel. I wanted to move to Prague and do my own short films, and Albert had more of a stomach for commercials. Personally, I didn’t have a stomach for that or those people. We could both be fulfilled doing our own thing. I feel more satisfaction in doing stuff that I love because there is no one looking over my shoulder; there is no money involved.

What was the moment when you first really thought you could be filmmakers?

Albert: We started off doing this as a hobby when we were in high school, you know, and then we saw Robert Townsend’s Hollywood Shuffle. See it, see it, you have to —

Allen: You have to see it.

Albert: That film knocked us out. Then we saw She’s Gotta Have It, which we passed by in the video store and we initially didn’t want to watch because it was in black and white. But then after seeing Hollywood Shuffle, we decided we should check it out. We realized it was artistic, and then we realized the directors were black and, hey, maybe we could do that.

Allen: Yeah, but by 16 we didn’t think we could seriously do it. We were those guys in high school who were a bit rebellious and spoke our minds, were front and center politically or socially. Mostly people knew us for making little movies, but more than anything else, we had three public-access cable shows where we did all our own original stuff. People gravitated towards us because of all that or they totally hated us. There was no in-between. I look back now and I hate us.

How do you feel now about making some of the statements you made about contemporary black filmmakers like Spike Lee and John Singleton when you guys first broke with Menace II Society?

Albert: I look back on when we were younger as anyone would look back on themselves when they were younger: “Aw, I shouldn’t have said that or done that.” But you’ve got to understand we were acting out because we wanted to separate ourselves from the already-established black filmmakers out there.

I don’t regret saying those things; I regret how we said it, though, because it wasn’t respectful at the end of the day. The statements we were making about other filmmakers who were above us, our peers, were just us acting out as young kids who were out of their element. We don’t have a good editing system but we’ve gotten better at editing ourselves.

Allen: Point is this: we came up with a mother who indulged us with the right things, as far as the arts and politics, who stimulated us socially and didn’t spoil us superficially. By the time we made Menace II Society we were 19, but we couldn’t appreciate the anomaly. We appreciated the moment, but not the big picture of what we had accomplished.

So when people asked us about Singleton and Spike Lee, it wasn’t an insult for us to judge them, because where we came from and where we were brought up, we wanted to be judged as filmmakers, not black filmmakers.

I always say when Oprah is laid to rest that she [should be remembered as] the best daytime talk show host ever, not the best black daytime talk show host ever. So we were trying to establish that when we said those things. But youth is wasted on the young.

Albert: There’s also this perception of us, because of who we are and the films we’ve made. We get into this discussion a lot, as to the difference between the press and Hollywood’s perception of us. Hollywood rolled out the red carpet for us and asked us what we wanted. There was no color in their eyes, because we were making people money when this first started. There was no color after the first movie.

Allen: The press saw color, because we were a story. Young, black, twin directors making films about angry black youth. Color was hot at the time when we made our first film. Angry and black always sells.

What drew you to The Book of Eli, as you were looking for the right project to work on together again?

Allen: When I read Book of Eli, I got to page 42, and there’s a line: “It’s not just a book, it’s a weapon.” I had a hair-on-the-back-of-my-neck moment. If the writer could keep it going … I felt it in my gut. This story had all the popcorn elements you needed to make the movie sell, but it was saying something. Conflict starts stirring within you. Hold on, I’m gonna out us real quick. [pointing to Albert] He’s an atheist—

Albert: I thought we were gonna keep that quiet.

[A brief discussion ensues between the brothers about not telling the press about their religious views]

Albert: He’s agnostic.

Allen: I am not.

Albert: You were last year. Look, I had an interview recently where they asked me what I believe and I basically told him it didn’t matter. What you believe is what you’re going to read into The Book of Eli, so you can see it a lot of different ways.

Allen: Bottom line is we choose projects based on our gut.

Albert: Well, honestly, I didn’t see this one at first. I read it and told Allen, “I don’t feel this one, man.” And he was disappointed and he asked me to sleep on it and read it again. And that night I had this dream, an eight-hour dream about the script with Nine Inch Nails’ “Zero Sum” playing the whole time, because he had been playing it in the background when we were talking about the script. And I woke up the next morning and called Allen immediately and told him, “Let’s do it.”

So I was in Prague at the time and wrote it up into a Word document and put a book together about the project and became very passionate about it. We had tried tent-pole projects before and it hadn’t worked out because it just wasn’t us. But then this came along and we were suddenly like, “Oh shit! This is us.” Finally.

So we pushed it with Warner Bros. and tried to get it going and it basically died after a year.

It died and then came back?

Allen: We’ve been on this thing for three years. Let me be politically correct, Hollywood politically correct and otherwise, and at the same time, none at all.

Joel Silver had it and Warners wanted to make it, but didn’t want to do it above a certain price. Alcon has a distribution deal through Warner Bros. and they came in and fully financed it, paid Denzel what they agreed to pay him, and now Warners has gotten behind the film to market and distribute it in the right way.

But it was a year and a half, almost two years, back and forth, trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

Albert: Because that’s one of the main things we realized through this process, is that we can function within a studio world, but we didn’t really know it until now. I hate to say it.

Allen: The last two years, it’s changed tremendously.

Albert: We had experience with it before, with New Line and Disney on Dead Presidents.

Allen: We had a contract for that film; no one could even look at us from the studio. We had final say over everything, which at that time was a mistake.

Albert: We needed resistance on that movie, actually, and we didn’t have it. But most times there’s too much resistance. I don’t want to name names here, but the problem is, much like in the ad world, there are a lot of people who are there who need to basically justify their jobs. Everyone wants to put their hands in the pot, everyone needs to piss on the same tree. Everyone wants to say something about this scene and that scene. You can’t make a movie by committee.

Allen: There is no executive in Hollywood, and this applies to all the studios, who will watch your film and say that it is perfect. It doesn’t matter if it’s Lawrence of Arabia, they will always tell you to change something. If they go to their boss and tell them the film is perfect, they will probably be fired. And that’s the inherent problem right there. Their job is to never stop talking shit about your movie.

Albert: But at the same time I feel for these executives now, because their job is to be a buffer and run interference and always leave that latitude and never give you a solid answer. You look at the situation we were in at New Line back in the ’90s. We dealt with three people, Bob Shaye in particular, who would sit and think and make decisions, and we could make great movies. You go to other studios and there are all these different opinions from five or six people who are trying to please their boss and appease the homogenized 14- year-old American audience.

Allen: But with this film we got to go to Alcon, who has this young, refreshing attitude about filmmaking, that they’re actually excited to make films and aren’t so worried about the business of filmmaking. The buck stops with their creative decision-making, not with a bunch of other executives. That’s how a film should be made.

Albert: But Alcon also knows what works and what they like and what doesn’t. They’ve been open for ten years and have a lot of experience. And what’s better is that they’re film fans and they have business savvy. Best of both worlds.

You both share directing duties, but you take on different roles. Why are you better with actors, Allen, and you better with the technical side, Albert?

Albert: It’s a left brain, right brain thing. Allen is a bit more social and a people person, and I’m a bit more introverted, but I like toys and getting down to the nuts and bolts of getting that visual shot. It’s not that Allen isn’t visual, he just doesn’t want to break it down that way. I’m sure he could and I could as well, but we’re better at different aspects of it.

Allen: Actually, when we started doing this when we were 12 years old, it was the opposite, which is odd. I started on the technical side and Albert started with the acting, actually on camera performing, and a little way through we realized our personalities served the other side better.

It’s kind of like the Van Halen brothers. Eddie started on the drums and Alex started on guitar, and halfway through they realized they were on the wrong instruments and switched.

Any performers you couldn’t deal with?

Allen: No. There’s no performer I have met that is too much of a problem. I like dealing with social problems. With Albert, he doesn’t want to deal with all the personal shit. He knows what he wants off the bat. Meanwhile, I don’t like dealing with all the zeroes and ones. I know what I want, performance-wise.

Now there have been actors I have had issues with and sometimes you have to work with them with editing, ADR, and looping, but I am always studying human beings, cracking that code up to figure out what makes that person tick. What is that performance cocktail? I will do whatever it takes to get them in that mode. I like that challenge.

Where was The Book of Eli shot? It looked like Mars at times.

Albert: Yeah, the locations were pretty extreme. We shot The Book of Eli in Alamogordo, White Sands, all over New Mexico. We hit dust storms in that movie that were totally insane. All the wind in that movie was totally natural. We had a fan but we left it on standby.

There’s this one scene when Eli first kills some guys on the road in a tunnel. There’s a shot where the wind hits and silhouettes Denzel as he kneels. That was actually an accidental take that made the film. It was the fourth take and wind blew perfectly, blowing dust past him, kneeling in silhouette, and Denzel just holds it and no one yelled cut until after it was over. Once we did, Denzel looks at us and says, “God wanted to be in that take.”

Allen: And then it turned into a full-on fuckin’ dust storm and we had to stop shooting for the rest of the day. There were a couple days where that happened.

How was it working with Denzel Washington?

Allen: What can you say? I love working with Denzel Washington. For me, I think I learned more from him than any other individual in this business. From script to industry, and obviously about acting, but also just nuanced stuff on set. Just to see those intangibles that he does. Outside of Johnny [Depp], who we worked with on From Hell, the man is the last of a dying breed. There aren’t many men around who have those types of acting chops.

Albert: Gary Oldman.

Allen: Amazing. That man is also one of the greatest actors of his generation. We’re huge Gary Oldman fans, so it was exciting to work with him on this as well.

This film will premiere shortly after The Road, which has similar themes and settings. Did you read The Road for inspiration, by any chance?

Albert: Nope. We didn’t read The Road. We didn’t use any of that for reference. We wanted to come in fresh. However, if you read the posts on YouTube about the trailer for The Book of Eli, there are a legion of people that think we ripped off certain books or video games when we made this film. Finally, there was a guy who posted something that put it all into perspective, who said: “Look there’s something called the post-apocalyptic genre, which they are referencing.”

Sure, some things are like other things in a post-apocalyptic world, much like some things are like other things in a zombie world. Children of Men is another good example of this, as we have long, ongoing takes during intense action scenes throughout this film. I told Allen I’m not even going to watch it, because I don’t want to be influenced.

You say there are still misconceptions of you in Hollywood. What types of misconceptions?

Allen: We’d like to knock down the misconception that we don’t like to work. We love to work, if people will shoot straight with us. We would love to work with straight shooters. When we do, we’re not a problem, we’re not a headache.

This misconception comes from people who don’t like to hear what’s on our mind. The problems come in when people are being fake, or have other agendas or motives with us and what we are working on. And if we find out about that, we’re going to say something about it. People don’t want to tell us what they think directly; they want to go around us all the time. We suffer fools harshly.

We would love to keep making films from the great scripts out there that are different. Not all have to be popcorn, but not all have to be important. They just have to be films that we enjoy and that are different from the films we have made before.

Albert: I think we’re allergic to bullshit.

Allen: I break out in rashes on my ass.

Albert: Yeah, it comes from dealing with people who don’t know what they’re talking about for too long.

Allen: Look, I don’t want to go on a cliché tangent about how fucked up studios are. It’s been said a million times. There are incredibly brilliant people at studios who make incredible films and I’m not trying to be political now.

Albert: I stand by what I said. I meant it. There are some problems with the studio system.

Menace II Society was, without a doubt, the most socially relevant film you guys have ever made, in my opinion. What are your thoughts on making more films like that?

Allen: Honestly, The Book of Eli was the first script I’d read since Menace where I felt like we were making something socially relevant and about humanity. The emotion of what was being said overwhelmed me when making this film. That said, I don’t want the audience to be overwhelmed by the bells and whistles and action. There’s a lot of nuance in this film. That’s what it shares in common with our first film. It feels like we’ve come full circle.

Genuinely, I have to say that we did a test screening in Dallas, mostly white, about 800 people, 30-percent black and Latino. When the lights went up, people just sat there, lumps in their throats. There were a lot of conflicting emotions in the theater. It’s a challenging film, as it makes you think about yourself and your own views about religion.

I feel like this is the first film we’ve done since our first one where people sat there, just shook. The bad guys had dimension too, which is important to any film with depth.

Albert: Personally, I think the social message is exactly what I have been missing from our films. We don’t try to say something, we don’t try to move people, and sometimes I think you need to do that. So when the studio calls up and asks what we want to do next, we want to do something that means something, not just something of popcorn value. ▼