The screenplay was written by Douglas Adams (along with Karey Kirkpatrick), adapting his own work. Hammer and Tongs would later make the charming Son Of Rambow in 2008 (to which we will return later) before going solo in 2012. The pair was responsible for some of the most inventive music videos of the 1990s and 2000s, including shorts for Pulp, Fatboy Slim, Blur, Supergrass, Beck and Vampire Weekend. Garth Jennings directed and Nick Goldsmith produced (they are better known as the collective Hammer and Tongs). It’s a strange story that makes more sense experienced than explained. And so off they go, hitchhikin’ across the galaxy, with much adventure along the way. Prefect (who has another, unpronounceable, name on his home planet of Betelgeuse) is an alien writing a new edition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. There, Dent learns that the Earth is about to be demolished by a construction firm to make room for a new hyperspace bypass, a project greenlit by the Vogon race. The story, as you likely know, is far too long to summarise snappily, but it essentially follows Arthur Dent (Freeman) as he is taken to the pub by Ford Prefect (Mos Def). The movie’s journey to screen was troubled. It was this performance that caught the eye of Jennings’s casting director Susie Figgis and ultimately won him the role of Ford Prefect in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy in 2005. In 2002, he played on Broadway in Top Dog/Underdog, which won playwright Suzan-Lori Parks the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was renamed the Nkiru Center for Education and Culture, and continues to promote literacy and multicultural awareness for people of colour. He even bought a Brooklyn bookstore with fellow rapper Talib Kweli (they rapped together under the name Black Star). He hosted Def Poetry Jam (2002-2007) on HBO: a showcase for spoken word poetry. His heartfelt, dexterous raps eloquently challenge American politics and race issues. Born in Brooklyn in 1973, he is regarded as one of the greatest emcees of all time. He doesn’t play a ‘tough guy’ or chase an American dream. In these three movies, Mos Def doesn’t play a rapper, he doesn’t contribute to the soundtrack, and he avoids all the clichés and stereotypes of what has gone before. When the role is comic, it’s against type and that is the source of much of the humour.īradley and DuBois stated in The Anthology Of Rap that “Mos has elevated the reputation of the much-maligned rapper/actor hybrid.” These three films, as well as his Black Reel Awards-winning supporting role in The Woodsman (Nicole Kassell, 2005), re-evaluated the public perception of the hip-hop actor, and unburdened some of its baggage. In fact, rap casting in contemporary films is interesting: Snoop Dogg in Starsky And Hutch (Todd Phillips, 2004), Busta Rhymes in Shaft (Tim Story, 2000) and Ice Cube in Are We There Yet? (Brian Levant, 2005) Eminem in 8 Mile (Curtis Hanson, 2002) or 50 Cent in Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ (Jim Sheridan, 2005) – all of these leads and cameos relied on the semantic (and fan) appeal of the rappers themselves. What’s more, his onscreen presence was unlike anything expected from a rapper. Mos Def represents an inversion of all three co-stars. His low-key style and soulful, cerebral sincerity made Mos Def an unusual foil to his three bread and butter, white male leads in each film: the bumbling, stressed Englishman (Martin Freeman), the weary American (Bruce Willis), and the comedy heavyweight (Jack Black).
Taken collectively as a Mos Def trilogy, they form a wonderfully eccentric chapter in cinematic history.
Mos def the ecstatic credits movie#
There was The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (Garth Jennings, 2005), 16 Blocks (Richard Donner, 2006) and Be Kind Rewind (Michel Gondry, 2008).Īll three were ambitious and problematic, offering lyrical takes on the sci-fi blockbuster, the chase thriller, and the buddy movie respectively. We’re referring to him as Mos Def throughout this piece, as that’s how he was credited on the movies) co-starred in three critically divisive two-handers. In a remarkable three-year period, the rapper Mos Def (now Yasiin Bey, but born Dante Terrell Smith. A salute to the movie work of Yasiin Bey (credited as Mos Def) from 2005 to 2008 and why it remains important.