Parallel Film Collective's Mark Jason Welch sits down with director Neil Drumming in Washington DC to talk about his debut hip-hop comedy BIG WORDS.

MJW: So, tell me how the film came about?

ND: The origin of Big Words, well it comes from a few things. It is like my own personal experiences. Initially, I just wanted to write this movie about like, turning a certain age and kind of dealing with your past. I was in my mid-30's at the time and I was thinking a lot about like my regrets and growing up and what my future might be and stuff like that and I sort of needed a back drop for that and so the most obvious thing was what I actually grew up on. My own experience which is being a participant and a fan and I guess a journalist as far as hip hop is concerned because I had written a lot of stories about rappers and I had met a bunch of rappers. And I had gotten close to what I felt was an understanding of that culture and I participated in it. I rapped when I was in college and high school and I made beats my whole life. And my brother made beats and all my friends made beats. My roommate was a rapper and I was in a group, so I sort of came up in that culture and I wanted to tell a story about growing up. It seemed like the obvious thing to put those two things together so that's really where it came from. I acquired a lot of stories from writing about the music business.

MJW: Is the film based on any characters in your real life?

ND: I mean, yeah sort of. I drew a lot from people. I drew from my brother who was an amazing producer at a young age but he didn't have the right mentality to stick it out in the music business. My roommate in college was also a rapper. Some of the women in the movie are drawn from women I know so yeah, I pulled things from people but nobody represented anyone on a one to one basis. That's just an easy way to get sued.

MJW: Tell me a little about your film school experience and how it informed your filmmaking process?

ND: I went to USC film school'92-'96 and at the time, the film school was divided into separate tracks; film writing and the other track was production which incorporated all of the directors and producers. I was in the writing track, so when I graduated I thought that I would write and I would immediately form some sort of connection with someone in the producer's track-someone who wanted to direct and people who wanted to make movies. But, I guess I was naive because what happened was all the producers and directors just wrote their own movies. It wasn't like they were seeking out people in the writing program to join forces with. I guess I was naive about that but what bothered me about that was at the time and I'm much older now, but what it felt like was: I had trained four years to write and a lot of these directors and producers were trained to direct and produce. And I felt like our skill sets would compliment each other but I felt like they took it for granted that they could also write. I'm a little touchous as far as writers go because I just believe it's a skill set and you gotta work hard at it. I don't think everybody's great at it but I don't want to sound like I got a chip on my shoulder about it. It's just, at the time it was certainly a concern to me.


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