(AllHipHop News) Today marks the 22 year anniversary of the classic Hip Hop drama Juice. In celebration of the flick that starred Tupac Shakur and Omar Epps, Myspace has provided first hand accounts about the film from those who helped make the picture come together in their article “Oral History: Tupac, Fist Fights and the Making of Juice.”
Cast members Epps, Khalil Kain, Jermaine “Huggy” Hopkins, Treach, and Fab 5 Freddy all shared their memories of Juice. The movie’s director and co-writer Ernest Dickerson, co-writer Gerard Brown, and co-producer Peter Frankfurt participated as well. Some of the people behind the Juice soundtrack like Big Daddy Kane, Hank Shocklee, and DJ Muggs also gave insight.
[ALSO READ: 10 Essential Hip-Hop Soundtracks You Need In Your Music Collection]
Some excerpts from the article:
Treach: So Pac went and read. I’m sitting outside, but I’m about to run up into the office because I think he’s fighting in the room. All I hear is, “Yo motherf**ker…you gotta die for this s**t!” So as I’m coming to the door Pac is walking out and I’m like, “Yo, what’s good?” And Pac goes, “Nah, I was just reading for them.” I just looked at him and said, “Yo, I know you got that role.”
Omar Epps: I remember the first day of shooting somebody got shot right outside the location…there was a dead body with a blanket over it. I knew the experience of filming Juice was incredible, but I also knew there were real life things happening around me every day.
Jermaine “Huggy” Hopkins: I never would have eaten those eggs, but at that time that’s what those characters would have been doing. Steel would have done something like that. What’s crazy though is that scene actually started a craze, man. People started putting beer in their eggs!
Ernest Dickerson: We were fortunate to get Queen Latifah because in the original script her character was actually Afrika Bambaataa. But he didn’t want to do the movie. And I had just met Latifah because I had just worked with her on Jungle Fever. She was a homegirl from my hometown of Newark, New Jersey. It was one of her first jobs in a movie.
Gerard Brown: I was not happy with the way Juice ended. It was our first film, so we had to acquiesce to a lot of crap. Originally, the way the script was written, at the end of the fight scene between Bishop and Q, I had Bishop and Q falling through the roof, but the producers said that’s too much money. So I had Bishop hanging over the ledge with Q pulling him up. But Bishop hears the police sirens and says to Q, “I’m not going to jail, man!” So in the script he breaks Q’s grip and he falls to his death.
Hank Shocklee: It had to be authentic. Otherwise, it wasn’t going to believable to the audience. So every aspect of the DJing in Juice had to be on point. The big battle scene in Juice was huge. There was a friend of mine, at the time, I knew named Cam-Ron. He was a good DJ that could also instruct. I put Omar in a room for a week with Cam. I said, “Yo, man…just give him the basics.”
Head over to Myspace to read the full article.