It's not every day you talk to RZA about Russell Crowe and anal beads.
In this case, the Wu-Tang Clan leader is talking about his debut as a feature film director, The Man With The Iron Fists, and the surprising influence his late friend Ol' Dirty Bastard had on the production.
“There's a lot of Ol' Dirty inspiration in there,” RZA confirms, particularly when it comes to Crowe's character, Jack Knife, an opium addicted British soldier. “You know the scene where (Russell's) got the beads in his mouth?”
Of course I know the scene, I tell him. Nobody who's seen the film could forget the scene.
“That's not in the script. That's me standing on the set and saying, 'today, Russell, you're goin' Ol' Dirty, buddy'. 'We goin' Ol' Dirty, Bobby?' 'Yeah, we goin' Ol' Dirty on 'em. Okay. She's gonna be screamin' like a fuckin' bitch, you're gonna have your head in there, you're gonna come out with these fuckin' beads, and the audience is gonna go crazy.' That's Ol' Dirty shit, you know what I mean?”
At this point, you might ask why Russell Crowe — Oscar winner, BAFTA winner, Golden Globe winner, and owner of a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame — is appearing in a kung fu film directed by a member of the Wu-Tang Clan at all, let alone emerging from a prostitute's nether regions clutching a sex toy between his teeth. Of course, it all comes down to trust.
“You know, I'll use his words,” RZA says, explaining his relationship with the actor he first worked with in American Gangster. “He said he trusted me as an artist. He said that in one of his interviews. That's what it was. We're buddies, you know? We definitely had built a brotherhood up. But he's an artist, and he's seen me do artistic things. He's seen me come through and do shit. He's seen me at work. He recognised the artist in me, and he trusted that.”
So Russell Crowe trusts RZA's directorial skills. But does RZA trust Russell Crowe's taste in hip hop?
“He loves Wu Tang! That's a good start, right?” RZA laughs. “Nah, listen. Man, listen. Russell's got the East Coast and the West Coast. One night, I'm in New York on my own business, doing what I do, hanging out. He's in New York on his own business. He gives me a call, he says, 'Bobby, do you wanna come join me for a drink?' I say yeah, because I'm in the city chilling out. He says, 'well, come chill out over here'.
“I go over to hang out with Russell, and he's there with fuckin' Snoop Dogg! I'm like, 'oh shit, what's up, Snoop?' So Russell loves the music, you know what I mean? He loves the music.”
Russell's not the only one. In fact, the genesis of The Man With The Iron Fists goes back to another of RZA's famous fans — Quentin Tarantino. The Pulp Fiction director hired RZA to provide the score for his Kill Bill films, knowing the hip hop producer was a lifelong kung fu geek, and eventually introduced him to his Iron Fists co-writer, Eli Roth.
“I met Eli at Quentin's house, actually. He shows movies at his house and invites other directors to come over and watch them. All elite guys. Edgar Wright, Robert Rodriguez, Stephen Chow… he invites them all over and we watch movies together. Eli was there.
“But we winded up bonding on a trip we took to Iceland. We just became buddies. I told him the Iron Fists story, and he said, 'I want to see that movie'. He was into it. He said if he had a chance to help get it made, he would. Eventually he came to me and said, 'yo, I wanna make that movie with you'. So we did it, and we did it properly.
“Eli's a good writer, you know? Point blank. Martial arts films, I'm a master of that. But structure? I don't know about structure. I'm a lyricist, I can write stories all day, but structure was something I actually didn't have. I didn't understand the proper way a screenplay should be written. He did. And he was able to help me flesh out ideas and build upon them. You know, when I finished my first screenplay, it was only about 90 pages. But when we got together and re-wrote it, it went to 130 pages, and it had more life to it. More detail. Because the whole trick, and I learnt this from experience, is that a screenplay is a map. It's a map that anybody has to be able to read, not just you. I was writing a map that only I could read.”
In a way, then, The Man With The Iron Fists is the culmination of an experience that started on the set of Kill Bill over a decade ago. But in truth, it goes back a lot further than that.
“It started off at movie theatres,” RZA remembers, “when I was 13, 14, 15 years old. You'd always find me on 42nd Street of Manhattan, watching kung fu movies when I should have been at school. I actually became addicted to them. There couldn't be one film that was good that I didn't have. You know what I mean? And one thing people don't know about me is this: I used to travel to every borough, to every obscure video store, trying to find every kung fu movie. If there was one I didn't have, and I heard somebody in Queens had it, I would go to Queens to get it.
"Even to the level that in 1991, I tried to open my own video store... that was a tough experience. We actually set everything up, but it was only open for one week. The business didn't do so well!”
The Man With The Iron Fists is doing a little better, and if RZA has his way, it won't be his only directorial credit. He's considering his options at the moment, but it's safe to say he'll be back with another film in a similar vein.
“To me, movies should definitely be fun,” he says. “Especially on Friday and Saturday nights. I think I'll be the guy that'll make your Friday and Saturday night movies, you know what I mean? It's Saturday night. Come hang with the RZA.”
