Director John Singleton, who was significant in Memphis as well as Hollywood, is dead at 51

With "Boyz N the Hood," his 1991 feature debut, John Singleton made history as both the first black filmmaker and youngest filmmaker to earn a Best Director Academy Award nomination.

But Singleton — who died Monday in Los Angeles at 51, after being removed from life support following an April 17 stroke — made arguably a more significant contribution to cinema by becoming a tireless champion of other young filmmakers.

No moviemaker benefited from Singleton's sponsorship more directly than Memphis' Craig Brewer. "I have a career because of John Singleton, not just through the inspiration of his work but because he took a risk on me," Brewer, 47, said Monday.

That risk was not just artistic: Singleton used his Los Angeles home as collateral to secure the loan that enabled him to personally finance the $2.8 million production budget of "Hustle & Flow," the 2005 made-in-Memphis movie that launched writer-director Brewer's professional career. (The risk paid off when "Hustle" sold to Paramount /MTV Films at the Sundance Film Festival in what was a then-record $16 million deal.)

"I needed him right when he showed up, and it's a real tragedy he had to go so young," said Brewer, who said Singleton's function as a "mentor" helped fill the void left by the death of his father, Walter Brewer, who died of a heart attack in 1998 at age 49.

As a result of this "real tragedy," Wednesday night's already scheduled 7 p.m. screening of "Hustle & Flow" at the Malco Paradiso will become a tribute to and de facto memorial service for Singleton. Joined by Memphis hip-hop artist Al Kapone (whose contributions to the "Hustle" soundtrack include "Whoop That Trick"), Brewer will host the event and participate in a post-screening question-and-answer session.

"All I want to do is talk about how John got this movie made," Brewer said. "Not only got the movie made but got Al Kapone and Three 6 Mafia involved" (Singleton previously had worked with Memphis rap artists on his 2001 movie, "Baby Boy"). The Three 6 connection proved to be one of "Hustle's" strongest selling points and most enduring legacies, when "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" won the Best Original Song Oscar.

Kapone — who also wrote the movie's title track, "Hustle & Flow (It Ain't Over") — said he last talked to Singleton about two months ago. He said the filmmaker personally selected "Whoop That Trick" for "Hustle & Flow" after he first heard it at Cotton Row studio during a visit to Memphis. "For someone on that level to show me that kind of respect, that's the kind of guy he was," Kapone said.

A Los Angeles-born University of Southern California graduate who grew up in what he called the "volatile environment" of South Central, Singleton was 24 when he shot "Boyz N the Hood," which earned him a Best Original Screenplay as well as a Best Director nomination at the 64th Academy Awards.

He followed "Boyz" with six films as a director — "Poetic Justice," "Higher Learning," "Rosewood," "Shaft," "Bad Boy" and "2 Fast 2 Furious" — by the time he was on set daily in Memphis as a producer of  "Hustle & Flow," which began shooting on July 9, 2004.

The day was not without its fashion faux pas: Brewer and Singleton each showed up on set wearing a T-shirt featuring the logo of the Bo-Keys, the Memphis soul-funk band that teams Stax veterans with younger musicians. The band is led by Scott Bomar, who made his debut as a movie score composer with "Hustle."

"I really owe John my career," said Bomar, 44, whose latest score is for Brewer's upcoming Netflix film with Eddie Murphy, "Dolemite Is My Name." "Craig kind of found me, but John ultimately is the one who hired me."

Bomar said he won Singleton over during their first meeting, when "I happened to have a CD in my pocket that the engineer had recorded" of the previous evening's Bo-Keys' show in Philadelphia. The band had included guitarist Charles "Skip" Pitts and drummer Willie Hall, both veterans of Isaac Hayes' 1971 "Shaft" score, and Singleton "was totally obsessed with 'Shaft,'" Bomar said. "When I played him that recording he started freaking out, and he was like, 'Oh yeah, you guys would be perfect for this...'

"He loved Memphis, he understood Memphis on a deep level, more so than a lot of people who come here to do projects," Bomar said. "He had a lot of respect for the musicians. It was like working on something with a fellow fan."

Singleton became involved in "Hustle" due to the involvement of producer Stephanie Allain, who had brought Singleton and "Boyz N the Hood" to Columbia when she was a production executive at the studio. Allain — also instrumental in boosting the career of director Robert Rodriguez — had been impressed with Brewer's debut feature, the no-budget Memphis-made "The Poor & Hungry," which never earned theatrical distribution but received movie-industry exposure at the 2000 Hollywood Film Festival; when she Brewer's "Hustle" script to Singleton, the older filmmaker was hooked.

For three years, Singleton, Allain and Brewer hustled to secure financing for "Hustle," but studios and investors balked, wary of the subject matter (a sympathetic pimp), the filmmakers' insistence on shooting in Memphis, and Brewer's race. "John was like, 'We're not making a black movie, we're not making a white movie. We're making a Memphis movie,'" Brewer said in a 2004 story in The Commercial Appeal. 

In that same story, Singleton — who said he wanted to be a "father" to Brewer's career — added: "As one of the predominant black filmmakers in the country, I wouldn't be putting my strength and my energy and my money behind this if I didn't think Craig had something important to say."

Ultimately, Singleton decided to bankroll the movie himself, rather than compromise.

"Craig has a really unique Southern voice," Singleton told The Commercial Appeal. "It's not the Old South, it's the new, multi-ethnic South, and I know he's going to take the country by storm.

"Martin Scorsese has New York, I do Los Angeles, Robert Rodriguez has Austin, Texas, but Craig Brewer is the guy from Memphis. His filmic identity is linked with the city."

In addition to championing Memphis as a shooting location, Singleton actively promoted the production, employing his celebrity status when necessary and meeting with then-mayors Willie W. Herenton and A C Wharton to ensure that "Hustle" would receive as much cooperation as possible.

Singleton and Allain also were producers on Brewer's follow-up feature, "Black Snake Moan" (2007), also shot locally, with Samuel L. Jackson and Christina Ricci. "It's as rural as 'Hustle & Flow' was city," said Singleton, during a 2005 interview on the project's Stanton, Tennessee, set. "This movie will show you a type of Americana that you don't usually see in a film," he said — probably an understatement, considering that the film is about a blues guitarist who chains a nyphomaniac to a radiator. 

Although Brewer and Singleton didn't work together again (and occasionally were at odds, at least in court documents involving "Hustle" proceeds), Brewer continued to seek Singleton's input. He said he invited Singleton to the cast screening of "Dolemite Is My Name," "and it was the best thing because John was typically enthusiastic, and I got emotional hearing him applaud and hearing him laugh." 

In recent years, Singleton worked mainly on television projects, directing episodes of "Billions," "The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story," "Snowfall" (an FX drama he co-created) and "Empire" (the series that has reunited producer/director/writer Brewer with his "Hustle" stars, Terrence Howard and Taraji P. Henson). 

After experiencing health problems a couple of weeks ago, Singleton checked himself into the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. There, he suffered a stroke, and had been in a coma since April 17. Singleton's family decided to remove the filmmaker from life support Monday, and issued this statement: "This was an agonizing decision, one that our family made, over a number of days, with the careful counsel of John's doctors."

News of Singleton's illness last week and death Monday engendered an outpouring of emotion from fans and movie professionals, with many artists citing him as a supporter and mentor as well as an artistic influence. Among those who posted praise for Singleton on social media were Ava DuVernay, Samuel L. Jackson, Ice Cube and Jordan Peele.

"John was a true lover of cinema," Brewer said. "He could have an exciting conversation about Truffaut and Hitchcock, and with that same enthusiasm he could talk to you about 'Penitentiary,'" a 1979 film with Leon Isaac Kennedy. "Nowadays, everyone's a critic. John was never that way. He would find something positive about every movie."