While biopics on N.W.A. and Tupac have been talked about for a while now, and seem to be stuck in development, it looks like a movie about one of their contemporaries is not only moving forward, but has made a brilliant and bold casting choice: Michael K. Williams (aka Omar from “The Wire“) will be playing Ol’ Dirty Bastard in “Dirty White Boy.” Fucking yes.
Back in 2009, RZA was talking up a biopic and cautioned that the rapper’s “estate is kind of confused on what to do, and all the rights and all that shit” but it appears everything has been worked out. Penned by Brent Hoff, the film will be the directorial debut of Joaquin Baca-Asay, the cinematographer behind James Gray‘s “Two Lovers,” “We Own The Night” and Mike Mills‘ “Thumbsucker.” He’s also a commerical and music video director who was the DOP behind Mark Romanek‘s now-iconic video for Jay-Z‘s “99 Problems.”
In the works for a few years and described as a “a time capsule, black comedy and love poem,” the film will tell the story of ODB through the eyes of Jarred Weisfeld, a VH1 intern who became the rapper’s manager (the writer Hoff berfriended them both when he too worked at VH1). Troublingly described as a cross between “Risky Business” and “8 Mile,” there is a danger here of taking too light a touch with the story of ODB’s life so we hope a proper tone is struck.
Describing the persona of ODB as a “character” played by Russell Tyrone Jones, there is no doubt he embraced some very real troubles, including legal battles over the child support for this 13 children, battling drug addiction, enduring numerous brushes with the law, and surviving a shooting as the result of an argument with another rapper. So there is some very real drama here that we hope isn’t trivialized. That being said….
Michael K. Williams as the lead role is fucking awesome. A great stroke of casting and no matter how this turns out we’ll be there to see him take on the role. Shimmy shimmy ya…. [Deadline]