Biggie & Tupac

Since I wrote Rebel for the Hell of It, my 1997 study of Tupac Shakur's art-life, a media cult has sprouted from the late rapper's grave. Yet at the time of Tupac's death many publishers were afraid the subject had no commercial potential; some complained that sales in department store chains would suffer the story's lack of "family values." Surprisingly, that 90s shibboleth (a catchphrase of conservatives' disdain and publishers' fear) is the best thing documentary-maker Nick Broomfield uncovers in Biggie & Tupac.

Broomfield starts from a radically different (because noncynical) perspective, refuting the recent proliferation of books and tv specials that focus on the tabloid sensationalism of Tupac's killing in Las Vegas in 1996 and the Notorious B.I.G.'s killing in Los Angeles exactly six months later. Unlike the misguided Tupac hagiographies designed to profit from hiphop's bad rep, Broomfield's movie offers some evidence to the contrary. Doing so required a refocusing away from the controversy?essentially looking through it toward the people on the sidelines. As Broomfield's title emphasizing Biggie over Tupac suggests: this nudging, gadfly documentarian goes in the right, nonexploitative direction.

Like pop star assassins, critics often take potshots at Broomfield because his approach to making documentaries is neither solemn nor trendily sarcastic. They ridicule his onscreen involvement (he always enters the scenes wearing headphones and carrying a boom mic), distrusting the lack of formality he maintains toward his subjects. I think this is part of Broomfield's unconventional honesty. (My favorite of his films, Driving Me Crazy, followed a disastrous production of a musical.) He's an impious documentarian, unafraid to mix it up with his subjects, and that gives him an advantage over most hiphop "reporting." Biggie & Tupac has none of the false insiderness of regular hiphop coverage (which is usually inseparable from promotion). Most remarkably, despite investigating what "officially" are two still-unsolved killings, this movie lacks the usual ghetto-news prurience. (It's reasonable to consider the recent L.A. Times article alleging Biggie paid for the hit on Tupac as part of the usual stigmatizing media-cult.) No doubt it took Broomfield's British outsider perspective to avoid the cultural-racial prejudices that infect American hiphop journalism.

Proof of Broomfield's rough integrity (like his stubbly beard and the shaggy hairs on the back of his neck) is the way he frames and narrates Biggie & Tupac?looking for irony as well as tragedy. He begins saying, "It's the story of two great friends who had a misunderstanding, a falling out." It prepares our deeper understanding. "Biggie called Tupac Dude. Tupac called him Christopher." How the rappers' enmity escalated into an East Coast/West Coast conflict, with Biggie and Tupac acting out the rivalry between Bad Boy Records' Sean "Puffy" Combs and Death Row Records' Marion "Suge" Knight (and the whole mess hyped by Vibe magazine), is thus made human, rather than just another street saga. Those personal, brotherly addresses between Biggie and Tupac reverberate when Broomfield interviews Biggie's mother, Voletta Wallace. She provides him access to friends and associates who will only participate in the documentary if "Ms. Wallace" approves. The sense of family protectiveness and community; the comfortable, conventional Wallace home Broomfield photographs; the deference Biggie's best friend, rapper Lil Cease, shows in that home (as well as an interview with Tupac's biological father Billy Garland, dignified and remorseful in his own home) all attest to Broomfield's respect for them as people, not hood stereotypes. These are amazing, informative examples of verite. Given the unholy contrivances behind materialistic documentary programs like MTV's Cribs (a show people watch with envy and gullibility), Broomfield's interest in the home life of his interview subjects is impressive. It's true to the best documentarian principles.

Better than Biggie & Tupac's sensationalist topic are the individual stories Broomfield encounters. He centers his search around Russell Poole, an ex-Los Angeles police detective who was forced to resign when, as a member of the robbery and homicide division, he accused fellow officers of being involved in Biggie's killing?he's a reliable outsider, like Broomfield. By omitting the LAPD's response to Poole's allegations and not questioning the feds (especially after Ms. Wallace asks why ongoing FBI surveillance of Biggie stopped only on the night he was killed), Broomfield's investigation of the facts loses balance. That's a serious flaw; Broomfield's no Joe Friday, and he obviously lacks a muckraking reporter's instincts. Yet he's good at catching the evidence of personality when people are in crisis?the human-interest story within the raked-up muck.

Not settling for talking-heads convention, Broomfield's choice of old and new footage is revealing: Biggie and Tupac are seen in convivial moments. At a convulsive Source magazine awards show Suge gets thuggish, Puffy takes the slick high road and Snoop Doggy Dogg confronts the raucous audience. Meanwhile Broomfield, incisively, shows Faith Evans (Biggie's wife) looking scared, Dr. Dre looking bored. This material is anti-stereotypical, implying the range of skepticism in black responses to hiphop's chaos. Broomfield directs attention away from cultural cliche?he knows it's the source of hiphop myth and the biggest obstacle to understanding it. Ms. Wallace's grief and candor about her son's art adds perspective. ("Was it filth? Yes, it was filth. But it was a filthy story.") Putting Poole, the white whistleblower and Elvis fan, into this mix makes Biggie & Tupac a richer film. There's a startling photo of young Poole, an apple-cheeked white kid wearing a football uniform, that connects to another school-days photo of a smiling young Christopher Wallace in his private school uniform. Together these images?so unexpected, yet so similar?announce the real wonder and range of American youth culture. It's terrible that death is the occasion that juxtaposes those experiences, but it took Broomfield's special outsider sensitivity to do it.

Hiphopping his way through the morass of ostracized cops, crooked cops, then a prison yard and cell block to interview Suge Knight serving time for his parole violation, even touring Baltimore's alleys and Brooklyn streets, lawyers' offices, suburban homes and city apartments, Broomfield tells an All-American story in unostentatious pieces. Even after a Death Row exec taunts him about the slant of his previous Heidi Fleiss documentary, he proceeds unfazed. He's so used to scrutinizing America's licentious freedom that he even gets a sharp cultural revelation from a stripper who knew two L.A. cops at the heart of the coverup. ("They shared you?" Broomfield asks about the orgy. "No, I shared them," she corrects him.) Broomfield never underestimates the scope of this story. His investigation builds conspiracy-paranoia, still he pays attention to cultural detail. Driving through gang-infested L.A. neighborhoods, he assesses "the genocide of a generation," saying it plain. Hipsters who enjoy hiphop don't understand that but Biggie & Tupac shows Broomfield knows this story's importance, that it simply means more than Kurt & Courtney.

I salute Broomfield's decision to take Biggie & Tupac's story in a different direction. The emphasis on Biggie and Ms. Wallace may result from Afeni Shakur's (Tupac's mother) marketing alliance with Death Row, holding on to her own version of the tale. So we're spared more thoughtless Tupac heroizing (a few shots of Tupac acting out, spitting at cameramen, and Broomfield's observation that "Suge enflamed Tupac" says enough). As a benefit, there's early footage of young Christopher Wallace becoming Biggie ("It was part of his alter ego" his mother explains), the big kid freestyling on the corner or at an MC competition. These are priceless scenes of a youth engaging his culture and his talent, reflected in the smiles of other kids around him, recognizing his skill, recognizing themselves. (This is worth a dozen Hoop Dreams.) It's tragic that more people know the rumors surrounding Biggie's and Tupac's deaths than know the delight of great songs like Tupac's "California Love" or Biggie's "Hypnotize." The latter graces Broomfield's soundtrack; its sunbursts of distorted guitar and Biggie's virtuoso celebration of self and culture feel immortal. Such artistry deserves an ex-cop's devotion, and is worthy of an upstart filmmaker's dedication.