genre a genre. you don't hear a great blues song and go, "Oh. There is that same blues progression again!" No dude, THAT'S the blues! But with movies, certain scenes are akin to these core progressions, you want to find a new way of hitting them. You want to say something different, but core progressions are pretty much what they are.
Rob: Yes! Definitely agree. And, let's be fair, most critics don't have any idea what they are talking about, so, there is that.
Adam: Especially when it comes to horror. (Laughs)
Rob: So personally, I enjoyed the hell out of "Bones", which was in my opinion a fun love letter to "Blaxploitation" horror like "Blacula", but with an edge. How did that story come to be?
Adam: Wow, that's a funny one because I think the movie's okay, but it was a great script. It was a great concept that we wanted to do, and it was more than what
it turned out in the movie. I mean, I think it's okay, but it comes about in a funny way. I actually had the same agent as Snoop Dogg, and he was at his peak, just off of that first great album of his.
Rob: So, it was at the point that he wasn't the household name he is now? (Laughs)
Adam: Oh no! He was very fresh and he had a new voice, he was great! Snoop actually has a true love of horror movies, and his agent had asked him, "What would you like to do?" And he said, "Horror movies!" So he came onboard, and we tried to cater to what kind of person he was, utilizing his sensibilities, and I said, "Okay. Let me just go home and think about it." And, a couple of things happened. One was that I grew up on the south side of Chicago, which was a very tough area in one of the few truly integrated areas left, one that was a bit of a University neighborhood but was in the vicinity of the roughest ghettos. We wanted a place with a lot of
lore around it, and as a kid that was obsessed with horror movies at the time, you also had fear of that "urban reality". And it mixed with your love for the fantastic. I had a chance to utilize kind of the Italian style, things like Mario Bava, "Black Sabbath" and "Black Sunday", and what we now call "Blaxploitation" that I went to see at the Hyde Park movie theater with my dad and my brother. You know, movies like "Across 110th Street", and "Superfly" and "Troubleman" (Chuckles). That was the plan, really. Can we get away with crossbreeding these, and again, this was the first big wave of urban music and black music and hip hop, being able for them to be mainstream.
Rob: Being able to market hip hop performers? Place them in a different scenario against the norm for them in film, basically?
Adam: Yeah. But also using the "Blaxploitation" scenario as the backstory for a very contemporary story, and thinking about what kind of
music these modern kids were making as opposed to the legend of "Jimmy Bones". And "Jimmy Bones" was based on reality, where the lore of the movie blends the quote unquote legend of the "notorious gangsta", you know, like "Stagger Lee", and mixing that with a haunted house story. So, it was alot of fun, and it had humor and it had scares, we had a good time making it.