Seeing rapper Tupac Shakur’s life, death and music through ‘All Eyez’ biopic
The filmmakers of the biopic “All Eyez on Me” hope the movie gives audiences a better idea of the genius of Tupac Shakur while telling a bit of a cautionary tale. “The world feels Tupac contradicted himself over and over again,” says “Eyez” producer L.T. Hutton, who had been a friend of the rapper and has been working on bringing the story to the screen for nearly a decade. “We give Tupac a chance to explain himself.”
The film, which hit screens Friday on what would have been the rapper’s 46th birthday, doesn’t try to solve his murder. Shakur was killed in 1996 in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas while in a car with record mogul Suge Knight.
“The goal was to tell the events that led to Pac being in the car the night he was killed,” says director Benny Boom, who was an aspiring rapper himself before moving to film.
Lest we forget, Shakur was only 25 when he died. His mother, who raised him, and his father were members of the Black Panther Party, and he was named after a Peruvian revolutionary.
The rapper lived in New York City before moving to Baltimore as a teen and attending a public arts school with Jada Pinkett (pre-smith), whom he stayed friends with throughout his life. Uprooted before he graduated, his family moved to the Bay Area, and he soon became involved in the Oakland rap scene, where he got his first break.
His career took off in 1991. More than 75 million of his records have been sold over the years. Shakur’s lyrics often reflected concerns of the black community while making social-justice ideas accessible.
“He was always writing poems and stories,” notes Demetrius Shipp Jr., the 28-year-old unknown who plays Shakur in “Eyez.” “There was so much creativeness flowing from him at all times.”
The first thing audiences will notice about Shipp in the role is his uncanny resemblance to the rapper. Even as a kid in Carson, his friends call him Pac. His father was a record producer who worked on one of Shakur’s last songs.
At a friend’s urging, the actor made an audition tape in 2011 for the role, which included rapping and performing a speech that Shakur had made to reporters.
Though the filmmakers were interested, they weren’t ready yet and neither was Shipp. “I was 22 then and not necessarily aware of the magnitude of what was needed to tackle the role.”
It wouldn’t be until late 2015 when Shipp was officially cast.
“The thing about having an unknown actor is that there is no baggage,” says Boom, whose real name is Douglas. (He took the stage name during his rap days.) “Demetrius is so fresh that it helps the audience to really connect. It’s like having Tupac for ‘Juice,’ which is a great performance because it was so raw. That’s what Demetrius was for this movie.”
The 1992 film “Juice,” being rereleased on DVD, was Shakur’s first starring role. Directed by Ernest R. Dickerson, it focused on four Harlem youths dealing with poverty and police harassment while drifting into a life of crime.
He would star in John Singleton’s “Poetic Justice” the next year, but six arrests beginning in 1993 would derail his film career. Most damning was a sexual-abuse charge for which Shakur would serve nine months in prison.
The rapper, who was recovering from gunshot wounds at the time of the sentencing, both apologized to his victim, saying he had lost “focus,” and said that he hadn’t committed a crime.
“Eyez” doesn’t gloss over any of this. “We just wanted to make sure the film was always from Tupac’s point of view,” says Boom.
The film does draw from others accounts of what happened at the time, including things Pinkett Smith (played by Kat Graham) and Snoop Dogg (Jarrett Ellis) said, but Hutton didn’t want to re-interview people remembering through the haze of time; instead the filmmakers relied on research for the script.
“Aside from Tupac and Biggie, almost everyone else is still alive, including the young lady who accused him of rape. So we were careful with the way we told the stories.”
Biggie Smalls (Jamal Woolard), the rapper Christopher Wallace, was also known as The Notorious B.I.G. Considered a rival of Tupac, Wallace died in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles a little more than six months after Shakur was killed.
The director says there was more than ego and competition in the pair’s relationship. “Tupac and Biggie did have a real friendship. It wasn’t just a rivalry. So we wanted to make sure you got a glimpse of that.”
Boom is aware that people who were around at the time are going to put their spin on events, and some people have weighed in. He mentions how one person took pains to recount a different version of one event, but the director’s reaction was, “But Tupac couldn’t have seen that.”
Hutton says part of why it took so long to get “Eyez” made was securing the rights to songs and financing — “a $38 million investment.”
“When I put it out there 2008, there is no ‘Notorious’ or ‘Straight Out of Compton” — nothing to gauge a film like this at all on.”
The biggest reason, though, was getting the story right. Part of the movie is framed with a reporter interviewing Shakur in prison and challenging the rapper with questions about topics like misogyny and his notion of so-called Thug Life, eventually calling him a “walking contradiction.”
The interviewer represents the questions that everyone wants to know about Shakur, says Hutton. “That’s when he says I’m not a contradiction. I’m complex.”
His tempestuous public persona as a rapper, though, often overshadowed the introspection and inner struggles found in Shakur’s writings, including poems that only became public after his death.
Hutton sees “Eyez” as “edutainment — education and entertainment,” something he saw in Shakur’s music.
“If a teacher doesn’t make it interesting, you’ll lose focus and won’t receive the message,” he said. “Tupac had a strategy like that.”
He and Boom both call the film a cautionary tale.
“I remember thinking when I was in my 20s, ‘This dude is good. Why can’t he stay out of trouble?’ “says Boom, who is about the same age as Shakur would be. “He accomplished so much by 25. He could galvanize people by just talking to them. At 45 or 50, who knows what he could have become?”
The filmmakers also hope young people watch the film and learn from the rapper’s mistakes.
“Take the hope and the courage of using your voice for the good,” says Hutton. “Because you never know how long you have, so use your platform.”