The Wood | |
---|---|
Directed by | Rick Famuyiwa |
Written by | Rick Famuyiwa Todd Boyd |
Produced by | Albert Berger David Gale Douglas Curtis Momita Sengupta Ron Yerxa Todd Boyd Van Toffler |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Steven Bernstein |
Edited by | John Carter |
Music by | Robert Hurst |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 106 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $6 million [1] |
Box office | $25 million [1] |
The Wood is a 1999 American coming-of-age comedy drama film directed by Rick Famuyiwa and starring Omar Epps, Richard T. Jones and Taye Diggs. It was written by Famuyiwa and Todd Boyd.
Roland is getting married and is currently missing. Slim, who scoffs at the idea of marriage, is furious at Roland for disappearing. The story flashes back to Mike as a youth when he first encounters Roland and Slim, his first real crush on a girl named Alicia, and the three young men's misadventures as teenagers growing up in 1980s Inglewood, California (aka "the Wood").
Shy and awkward, Mike is quickly befriended by Slim and Roland. On a dare from Slim and Roland, Mike reluctantly grabs Alicia's butt, leading to a physical altercation with her older brother and Blood gang member, Stacey. While he is beaten up, Mike earns Stacey's private respect for having courage to fight back.
Meanwhile, in present day, Mike and Slim get a call from Tanya, Roland's ex, saying that Roland is at her house, extremely drunk. When they arrive, they argue with Roland for putting his relationship at risk, as the wedding is just hours away.
Flashing back to the 1980s, the boys are on their way to the first dance of the year, stopping at a convenience store that gets robbed by Stacey. Stacey recognizes the boys and offers them a ride to the dance. The group is nearly arrested after being pulled over for a broken tail light. Mike's quick thinking prevents one of the cops from finding Stacey's gun. They let them go when the cops respond to a call about the stick-up Stacey pulled earlier from him and his friend.
Impressed, Stacey begins a new friendship with Mike by apologizing for their prior run-in. However, he explains that he was protecting his sister and seeing how much Mike likes her, gives him advice on how to win her over. When they arrive at the dance, it is almost over, and Mike is able to secure a dance with Alicia and also get her number. Later, Mike and Alicia date for a time before breaking up and remaining friends.
In the present day, while reminiscing, Roland becomes sick and accidentally vomits on Slim and Mike. Now, the men only have an hour left before the wedding and they have to get cleaned up, so they take their clothes to the cleaners.
Mike, returning to their memories when they were juniors in high school, remembers them thinking about sex, ways to get it and making a lot of bets as to who has it first. Mike has a girlfriend and Alicia has a boyfriend. Despite both of them already being in a relationship with somebody else, one day Mike and Alicia walk to her house from the library talking about the homecoming dance.
They listen to "If This World Were Mine" on the radio, the song to which they had the first dance. Alicia and Mike begin getting intimate, but Alicia stops him and tells Mike to retrieve a condom from Stacey's room. Mike finds a condom in Stacey's room. Before leaving, he has to hide under his bed, so as not to get caught when Stacey and his girlfriend come home. After they leave, Mike goes back to Alicia's room and they have sex. Mike wins the bet, but he doesn't tell Roland and Slim out of respect for Alicia.
It is revealed in the present that after high school, Alicia and Mike went their separate ways with Alicia going to attend Columbia University in New York while Mike decided to stay home and attend The University of Southern California even though Roland reveals that Mike could have followed her as he did get accepted into New York University. The boys finally make it to the wedding and Roland apologizes to a furious Lisa for leaving her worried. Before the ceremony begins, Mike has a fond exchange with a now-grown Alicia while Roland and Lisa get married. Mike reminisces on the homecoming dance, declaring that he, Roland and Slim will be the boys from "the Wood".
The film holds a 61% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 56 reviews, with the critical consensus: "A charming piece of work with believable characters." [2] Reviewing for the Chicago Sun-Times in July 1999, Roger Ebert called it "a sweet, lighthearted comedy" and applauded Famuyiwa for capturing members of the cinematically marginalized African-American middle class. "The movie feels a little uncertain, as if it's moving from present to past under the demands of a screenplay rather than because it really feels that way", Ebert wrote in conclusion. "But the growing-up stuff is kind of wonderful." [3]
2001 ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards
A soundtrack was released on July 13, 1999, by Jive Records featuring rap and R&B music. The soundtrack found great success, peaking at number 16 on the Billboard 200 and 2 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. The album was certified gold by the RIAA on August 25, 1999.
In August 2021, Showtime gave a pilot order to a television series adaptation of the film. The project was set to be produced by Paramount Television Studios, with Justin Hillian writing and Famuyiwa directing the pilot. [6] In April 2023, Showtime announced the network would not be moving forward with the series. [7]
Adam Spiegel, known professionally as Spike Jonze, is an American filmmaker, actor and photographer. His work includes films, commercials, music videos, skateboard videos and television.
Lisa Valerie Kudrow is an American actress. She rose to international fame for her role as Phoebe Buffay in the American television sitcom Friends, which aired from 1994 to 2004. The series earned her Primetime Emmy, Screen Actors Guild, Satellite, American Comedy and TV Guide awards. Phoebe has since been named one of the greatest television characters of all time and is considered to be Kudrow's breakout role, spawning her successful film career.
Ed Wood is a 1994 American biographical comedy-drama film directed and produced by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp as Ed Wood, the eponymous cult filmmaker. The film concerns the period in Wood's life when he made his best-known films as well as his relationship with actor Bela Lugosi, played by Martin Landau. Sarah Jessica Parker, Patricia Arquette, Jeffrey Jones, Lisa Marie, and Bill Murray are among the supporting cast.
Omar Hashim Epps is an American actor, rapper, and producer. Epps's film roles include Juice, Higher Learning, The Wood, In Too Deep, and Love & Basketball. His television work includes the role of Dr. Dennis Gant on the medical drama series ER, J. Martin Bellamy in Resurrection, Dr. Eric Foreman on the Fox medical drama series House from 2004 to 2012, and Isaac Johnson in the TV series Shooter from 2016 to 2018. He has been awarded nine NAACP Image Awards, two Teen Choice Awards, one MTV Movie Award, one Black Reel Award, and one Screen Actors Guild Award.
Bad Boys is a 1995 American action comedy film directed by Michael Bay in his feature directorial debut and produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. The film stars Martin Lawrence and Will Smith as Marcus Burnett and Mike Lowrey, two Miami narcotics detectives who are investigating the $100 million stolen packs of heroin and must order to protect a murder witness from an international drug dealer.
Scott Leo "Taye" Diggs is an American actor. He is known for his roles in the Broadway musicals Rent and Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the TV series Private Practice (2007–2013), Murder in the First (2014–2016), and All American (2018–2023), and the films How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998), Brown Sugar, Chicago, Malibu's Most Wanted (2003), Dylan Dog: Dead of Night (2011), and The Best Man (1999) and its sequel, The Best Man Holiday (2013).
Bachelor Party is a 1984 American sex comedy film directed by Neal Israel, written by Israel and Pat Proft, and starring Tom Hanks, Adrian Zmed, William Tepper, and Tawny Kitaen. The film revolves around a bachelor party that a group of men throw for their friend Rick Gassko (Hanks) on the eve of his wedding and whether he can remain faithful to his fiancée Debbie (Kitaen).
Talk To Her is a 2002 Spanish psychological melodrama film, written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar. It stars: Javier Cámara, Darío Grandinetti, Leonor Watling, Geraldine Chaplin, and Rosário Flores. The film follows two men who form an unlikely friendship, as they care for two women who are both in comas.
How Stella Got Her Groove Back is a 1998 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Kevin Rodney Sullivan, adapted from Terry McMillan's best-selling 1996 novel of the same title. The film stars Angela Bassett, Taye Diggs, Whoopi Goldberg, and Regina King. The original music score was composed by Michel Colombier.
Brown Sugar is a 2002 American romantic comedy film written by Michael Elliott and Rick Famuyiwa, directed by Famuyiwa, and starring Taye Diggs and Sanaa Lathan. The film is a story of lifelong friends, A&R Andre and Editor-in-Chief Sidney. The two can attribute their friendship and the launch of their careers to a single, seminal childhood moment – the day they discovered hip-hop on a New York street corner. Now some 15 years later, as they lay down the tracks toward their futures, hip-hop isn't the only thing that keeps them coming back to that moment on the corner.
The Best Man is a 1999 American comedy drama film written and directed by Malcolm D. Lee in his directorial debut. It was produced by 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, with Lee's cousin, Spike Lee, serving as producer. The film stars an ensemble cast led by Taye Diggs and Nia Long, with the debut of Regina Hall.
Can't Buy Me Love is a 1987 American teen romantic comedy film directed by Steve Rash, starring Patrick Dempsey and Amanda Peterson in a story about a nerd at a high school in Tucson, Arizona, who gives a cheerleader $1,000 to pretend to be his girlfriend for a month. The film takes its title from a Beatles song of the same title.
Richard Timothy Jones is an American actor. He has worked extensively in both film and television productions since the early 1990s. His television roles include Ally McBeal (1997), Judging Amy (1998–2005), CSI: Miami (2006), Girlfriends (2007), Grey's Anatomy (2010), Hawaii Five-0 (2011–2014), Narcos (2015), and Criminal Minds (2017). Since 2018, he has played Police Sergeant Wade Grey on the ABC police drama The Rookie.
Rick Famuyiwa is an American filmmaker and television director. He is best known for the films The Wood (1999), Brown Sugar (2002), and Dope (2015), as well for his work on the television series The Mandalorian, for which he directed five episodes and served as an executive producer for the third season. His films have been nominated for or won multiple awards, including in 2008, when he received an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Writing in a Motion Picture for the film Talk To Me (2007).
Malinda Williams is an American actress and producer. She began her career on television, before appearing in films A Thin Line Between Love and Hate (1996), High School High (1996), and The Wood (1999).
Our Family Wedding is a 2010 American romantic comedy film directed by Rick Famuyiwa. It stars Forest Whitaker, America Ferrera, Carlos Mencia, Diana-Maria Riva, Lance Gross, Charlie Murphy and Regina King. The story is about an African-American man and a Mexican-American woman getting married and their respective fathers causing hijinks with one another towards their special day. The film was theatrically released in North America by Fox Searchlight Pictures on March 12, 2010, receiving negative reviews from critics but grossed $21.4 million worldwide.
Hall Pass is a 2011 American comedy film produced and directed by the Farrelly brothers and co-written by them along with Pete Jones, the writer/director of Stolen Summer. It stars Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis.
Tomboy is a 2011 French drama film written and directed by Céline Sciamma. The story follows a 10-year-old gender non-conforming child, who moves to a new neighborhood during the summer holiday and experiments with their gender presentation, adopting the name Mickaël. The film opened to positive reviews, with critics praising the directing and the performers, particularly Zoé Héran as the lead.
Dope is a 2015 American coming-of-age comedy-drama film written and directed by Rick Famuyiwa and produced by Forest Whitaker and Nina Yang Bongiovi. It stars Shameik Moore, Tony Revolori, Kiersey Clemons, Kimberly Elise, Chanel Iman, Tyga, Blake Anderson, Zoë Kravitz, ASAP Rocky and Vince Staples. The film was also executive produced by Pharrell Williams and co-executive produced by Sean Combs.