wild style 1982 Full Documentary

Wild Style was shot on location in and around the Bronx, featuring real-life graffiti artists, breakdancers, and rappers, many of whom are either playing variations of themselves or, simply, themselves. Made for very little money, it embodies the DIY aesthetic of its milieu, a do-it-all world where vibrant murals coexist with seemingly bombastic buildings. Brathwaite (who helped conceive the story, co-produced, co-starred and oversaw the music) saw hip-hop as belonging to the other New York subcultures of the 1970s, punk and new wave, which represented much more than music and seemed to have emerged from the city's own geography. Wild Style drifts from a rap-battle-cum-pick-up-basketball game to an impromptu performance by the legendary Rock Steady Crew dancers to a performance by old school rap legend Busy Bee to a Grandmaster Flash record clinic, often with the most tenuous of narrative motivations.

wild style 1982 Full Documentary

All of this is probably why Wild Style often feels more like a documentary than a fictional drama. (As many have noted, you could cut about 15 or 20 minutes out of it and you'd end up with a literal documentary.) The story at times feels like a series of familiar setups without much follow-through. Our protagonist Ray (played by Lee Quiñones, himself one of the city's most legendary subway artists and, along with Ahearn and Brathwaite, one of the main conspirators behind the film's conceptualization), a talented graffiti artist who covers entire train cars under the mysterious name of "Zoro," pines for his ex-girlfriend Rose (Sandra "Lady Pink" Fabara), a beautiful fellow artist who's started working with a slightly more legitimate group calling itself the Union. With the encouragement of local impresario Phade (played with buckets of charm by Brathwaite himself), Ray is approached by a Village Voice reporter (actress and gallery owner Patti Astor, looking like a Debbie Harry look-alike, whom the filmmakers initially tried to cast) working on a big story about graffiti. Taking Phade and Ray to an upscale cocktail party on the Upper East Side, she introduces them to arrogant art world types in the film's only detour into social satire. Meanwhile, Phade hires Ray to do a large mural for a rap convention he's hosting in an abandoned amphitheater on the Lower East Side.

wild style (1982 Full Documentary)

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None of these various subplots escalate dramatically: Ray and Rose get back together fairly quickly, and the Union is never heard from again; Ray's sojourn into the cocktail world ends with his host (art collector Niva Kislac, essentially playing herself) seducing him, and not much else; the rap convention goes off pretty much without a hitch; Phade seems at times to be an oily opportunist, but he ultimately does everyone good. Ray's brother, briefly back from the army, criticizes his penchant for graffiti, but there's little mention of the city's ongoing war against subway writers; that it's a valid art form is generally accepted as fact by the film. Any other film would stretch these various subplots, extracting them for narrative tension and moral messaging. Dreams would be dashed, plans would be thwarted, friendships would be betrayed, romances broken. Someone would be arrested, or killed, or at least shot. And of course, the cursed and decaying backdrop of the Bronx would somehow scuttle everyone's dreams and desires. But nothing like that happens in Wild Style. Ordinary people go on and live their lives and do their best to make their spaces beautiful with art, music, movement. The world drifts like a Zen dream. And therein lies the artistry of the film.

Wild style 1982 Trailer

There is a warmth and inclusiveness to Wild Style that makes you want to enter this world. It would have been easy - and probably much more commercial - for Ahearn and Brathwaite to make it one of those downbeat protagonist pictures and show Ray rising above his surroundings, using his talents to get out of this urban hell. . But their communal ethos runs counter to this idea. Yes, Ray is unique, and yes, he's a bit of a loner, but he's not looking for a ticket out; he's looking to express himself. And so, too, is everyone else. When Astor's reporter, arriving in the neighborhood for the first time, announces to a large group of curious kids gathered around her that she is looking for a graffiti artist, they respond, cheerfully: "We're all graffiti artists! Rap, dance, writing, scratching, everything seems to exist in an egalitarian continuum. The guys with the microphones don't rhyme from a front stage, but in the middle of the crowd (although the film's climactic performance, taking place on a massive stage, strikes a poetic and prophetic note about how all these art forms are about to explode). It's a world where anything seems possible, which seems quite invigorating given how downtown, especially in New York, was represented in the early 1980s.

Ahearn isn't the kind of refined, savvy director who does camera tricks or tries to make a $5 budget look like a $5 million budget. His close-ups are a bit too close, and his screen direction is sometimes a mess, but it also gives the image an irresistible immediacy and authenticity; it looks like something that emerged from this world, shot on the fly and full of stolen moments. But it's this highly aesthetic approach that makes the film so captivating and unique. In one of Wild Style's most notable scenes, the Cold Crush Brothers and the Fantastic Freaks, two rival crews, engage in a rap battle, which then expands to a basketball game, with members clashing with rhymes while dribbling, shooting, passing . If the scene were more refined, it would look ridiculous - like a tacky attempt to update West Side Story. But Ahearn's rough, portable, improvisational style sells us the paradox: the beef is both huge and not serious, an impromptu ritual.

Wild Style is considered the first hip-hop film, but it did not introduce rap or hip-hop culture or even the idea that graffiti could be art. There had already been major gallery shows featuring graffiti artists in 1981, and by the time Wild Style was released in late 1983, larger productions capitalizing on the rap and break-dance craze were already underway. (Beat Street and Breakin' came out in 1984.) Wild Style came early, but it wasn't so much ahead of the curve as simply well positioned to drive it. Plus, Ahearn was smart enough to use guerrilla tactics to promote his feature, paying high school students to hand out flyers in their schools. When it opened on 47th Street - just steps away from the grindhouses that showed the Bruce Lee films Ahearn loved so much - Wild Style was, for a time, the second highest-grossing release in New York, behind Terms of Endearment.

It arguably had a greater impact overseas: the film actually premiered in Japan before its New York opening, and the cast and crew were treated like rock stars during a tour of the country. After it aired on German television in the 1980s, Wild Style became a phenomenon among German youth on both sides of the Berlin Wall, especially the children of Turkish immigrants. (Years later, when the cast and crew reunited for a tour of Germany, they proudly pointed out that sections of the wall had been cleverly enhanced with Wild Style graffiti.) Something similar happened in the UK and throughout Scandinavia. A savvy West Indian entrepreneur reportedly bought a 35mm print of the film and sailed it around the islands, showing it to adoring crowds. Whether broadcast or pirated, Wild Style served as an introduction for children around the world to a thriving and vibrant new American counterculture.

And it continued to be a cult film of sorts for decades, its legacy kept alive with references and samples from Nas, the Beastie Boys, Cypress Hill and others. After a restoration and re-release in 2007, the film would become more widely known and available. Today, of course, it can be enjoyed in part as a nostalgic trip, a time capsule of a pivotal period in New York and hip-hop history, just before everything went stratospheric. But that might be underestimating what makes it so special. Ahearn and Brathwaite's decision to downplay the drama and focus on an honest, ground-level portrait of that world and how it saw itself means Wild Style isn't really dated. It's as fresh today as it was then, an essential look at what drives us to create and dream.