Bet You Didn’t Know: Secrets Behind the Making of “Love Jones”

What did Love Jones do for Spoken Word?

You may have noticed that after the film hit the scene, everybody and their momma thought they were a poet. And not just a poet, a spoken word artist. Clubs across the country started featuring spoken word events. Russell Simmons even capitalized off the culture with his HBO series, “Def Poetry.” While some would say this was a good thing. Others argued that the movie brought this underground culture to the mainstream thereby cheapening it a little bit. In an interview with theUrbanDaily Witcher, said this:

It’s the same thing as digging a rock band that no one else knows about other than you.  Then when they became a hit, people say they’re a sellout because they’re a success.  It’s the same phenomenon.  People find a corner of a universe and once it expands, they don’t like it.  My concern was more for the actual spoken word poets who wouldn’t think the poetry featured in the movie wasn’t good.  If you lived in Brooklyn and going to Brooklyn Moon, that was the authentic ground zero Isht. The spoken word in Love Jones would seem like a Hollywood version.  I knew that, but I had to make it more accessible to a mass audience.