The classic 1991 movie Ice Cube hated at first sight: “This is garbage”
You never get a second chance to make a first impression, they say, but thankfully, that’s not a catch-all phrase when it comes to movies; in fact, it’s why they have test screenings, and if Ice Cube hadn’t given his most famous film another go around, he might well have just walked off the set.
It was 1990, and the director John Singleton was putting together a cast for his debut feature film, Boyz n the Hood, a tale of crime and coming of age in Los Angeles, co-starring Cuba Gooding Jr and Laurence Fishburne. Singleton had written a character called Doughboy specifically for Ice Cube, whom he had met while interning on a TV show.
In fact, the film was named after a song by Cube’s NWA bandmate Eazy-E released a few years earlier called ‘The Boyz-n-the-hood’, which Cube had written himself. It was his first movie, and while he was used to the limelight thanks to the success of NWA, the movie studio had no idea he was in a rap group.
When Cube first read the script for the film, he didn’t think it was serious, that someone would actually make a mainstream movie about how he and his friends grew up. The film follows Gooding Jr’s character, who is sent to live with his father in South Central LA, resulting in his being sucked into the gang culture all around him.
As a complete stranger to the art of movie making, Cube was hugely concerned when he saw the rushes of the film, recalling the process to the Bill Simmons Podcast and saying, “It was my first movie ever. And John [Singleton] showed me the movie before it was done, and if you ever see a movie before it’s finished, you will say, ‘This is garbage’. You’re just like, ‘What is this shit?’ That’s kind of how I looked at it. I was so mad.”
Cube almost quit the film entirely, not understanding that audio still had to be dubbed in and several more cuts would be made, adding, “I was just disappointed. And I didn’t want to have nothing to do with Boyz n the Hood. I was like, ‘Damn. Mistake, mistake, mistake’. And John kept saying, ‘Let me finish it. Will you let me finish it?’ I said, ‘OK, alright, alright’.”
It turned out to be a wise decision. Boyz n the Hood was a massive hit at the box office, earning back ten times what it cost to make, and winning Singleton Academy Award nominations for ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Screenplay’.
It also led to all the major players becoming stars; Gooding Jr would win an Oscar within five years, and the film would also spawn countless movies in the same genre over the next 30 years, including Training Day, 8 Mile, Moonlight and Straight Outta Compton.
Meanwhile, Cube seems to have recovered from his disastrous War of the Worlds remake in 2025, firstly to go on tour and then to go back to some of his more successful movie franchises. He’ll star in a third Ride Along movie with Kevin Hart, and he’s also down to make Last Friday, the fourth film in that series with Chris Tucker that seemed to have come to an end back in 2002.
