Finally,
the moment I’ve been anticipating for so many years, Breakin’ 2:
Electric Boogaloo, one of my favorite films (if not THE favorite) is being
released on Blu-Ray in all it’s widescreen high-definition glory. Today, April
21, 2015, the fantastic Shout! Factory (responsible for the release of the Freaks
and Geeks box set and countless horror classics via their Scream Factory
imprint) releases both Breakin’ films as a double feature on what is
the 31st anniversary of both films. Strange to think kids today who may
see these now viewing them the same way I saw movies from the 1950s, as it
still feels like only yesterday my Dad was taking me to the theater to see Breakin’
2 when we lived in West Virginia. After that trip to the local cinema the
film stayed with me ever since, and really my love for it has only become
stronger. A lot of has to do with my love for music from the 80s which I
believe is one of the strongest decades for music (contrary to popular
opinion) – and the Electric Boogaloo soundtrack is no exception. What
always stuck with me the most about Breakin’ 2 (and yes, I view it in
much higher regard than the original film which was released only seven
months prior to the sequel, in the spring of 1984) was the complete joy that
radiates from every frame. The music, the dancing, the bright LA setting, the
Dayglo costumes, and even though the storyline has been done plenty of times
before and since, the positive message of good winning over greed. It’s just so
hard in my opinion to find even another musical that is filled with so much
optimistic energy and that is – more than anything else – completely sincere.
Of course there are plenty of films out there which are more technically
accomplished, and I would obviously have to say are “better” films. Really,
there’s no mistaking it. But I always find myself coming back to Breakin’ 2
when people ask me what my favorite film is. It may not be perfect in its
execution, but where its heart lies couldn’t be more clearer, which is a lot
more than can be said about movies both then and now.
It
was a true pleasure having the opportunity to interview – to celebrate the
Blu-Ray release – one of the stars, Adolfo ‘Shabba-Doo’ Quiñones (who portrays
Ozone in both films) and the film’s director, Sam Firstenberg. Both
couldn’t have been nicer, and even kinder to take time out of their busy
schedules to take part.
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The
end credits of Breakin’ mentioned a sequel called Electric Boogaloo
was in the works. Was a sequel always part of the plan or was that included in
case the first was a hit and a sequel was then financially warranted by Cannon?
Sam
Firstenberg: I
was never aware of that fact but I am not surprised. From the beginning Cannon
was a company of sequels, Death Wish 2, 3, & 4 with Charles Bronson
is just one example. I presume that you are right and the plan was that if Breakin’
would be successful they would produce a sequel.
Adolfo
Quiñones: A sequel wasn’t in
the works, during production of Breakin’ it was planned due to the
enormous success of the film. I was not contracted for the sequel. After tough
negotiations we entered into an agreement to star in the second film.
Sam,
how did you become involved as director? Was it your history with Cannon Films,
or a specific vision you had for the sequel?
SF: The director
of Breakin’ was
Joel Silbert and as far as I know he was supposed to direct the sequel. I don’t
know why he did not, and I never asked, but at some point after the release of
the movie Ninja III: The Domination that I directed with the same
actress of Breakin’, Lucinda Dickey (Kelly), I was asked by the head of
Cannon Films, Menahem Golan, to take over the directing of Breakin’ 2:
Electric Boogaloo. At that point I did not have any vision for the movie,
it was developed later.
Michael ‘Boogaloo Shrimp’ Chambers, Lucinda Dickey, Adolfo ‘Shabba-Doo’
Quiñones
Your
history at that point as a director was mostly ninja films (‘Return of the
Ninja’, ‘Ninja III: The Domination’). Was the transition to a musical
challenging or did that background actually help in some way?
SF: As a matter
of fact my background as
an action director helped a lot when it came to directing a dance movie. By
that point I had gained vast knowledge and experience in directing and creating
sophisticated action sequences such as fights and chase scenes. When it came to
directing dance sequences I discovered that there is no big difference between
the two. It is all about deconstructing the certain piece of action or dance to
its elements on the set, in a way that later, in the editing room using the cinematic
language, it could be reconstructed in the most effective way, to enhance it to
the delight of the potential audience.
Menahem
Golan had his own history with musicals, having directed 1980’s The Apple
for example. He seemed to have an affinity for the genre. How was it working
with him, his partner Yoram Globus, and the notorious Cannon team?
AQ: I personally found
working with Menahem and Yoram to be both tough and rewarding.
Initially I was tapped to choreograph the film before being cast as Ozone.
SF: This is true, in addition to The Apple, Menahem Golan also
directed the musical Kazablan and he did love that genre of films. As a
result it was actually very creative and fruitful working with him on that
movie. I remember that every weekend we met in his house to discuss the script
and potential additions and changes to it. He was engaged in watching the
dailies every night and always had suggestions for improvements and additional
dance numbers. Yoram Globus was not involved in the creative side of making the
movies. During production the entire Cannon team was very supportive. As an
in-house director, since I was also part of that team, everyone there was also
a friend.
On the set of Breakin’
2 with Adolfo
Quiñones, Lucinda Dickey, director Sam Firstenberg
The
film’s plot has been criticized for being standard background filler, but it’s
actually said to be based on a real life story. If true, what is that story?
SF: If the plot
of Electric Boogaloo
is based on a true life story then I am not aware of it and don’t know much
about it. But it is really a familiar story anyway, the story of the small guy
taking on the powerful authorities for a cause that will benefit the community.
Many classical films have tackled that subject so many times, so yes it is
standard story but one that people love to be told again and again.
AQ: Actually, my
character Ozone and my
side kick Turbo were both patterned after our real life personas. I must add, Breakin’
was based on a project I managed to get produced and financed by Topper
Carew for Rainbow Productions, Breakin’ and Entering, a documentary
based on the west coast street-dance scene in Los Angeles. I eventually
headlined and served as the choreographer and talent coordinator for the
production.
The
look of the film is very bright and optimistic with its neon and Dayglo pastel
colors, a bit of a contrast from the first film. What was the thinking in that?
Was it simply a result of street fashion at the time or was it a feeling you
wanted to get across?
AQ:
Well, a little of
both to be honest. I personally felt they were going in the wrong direction. I
was told they wanted to bring a brightness and a sense of fun and optimism to
the sequel.
SF:
The “look” of the film is a result of the talks I conducted with the production
designer during the pre-production period. Yes it was the fashion of the time
among the hip-hop crowd but it was also our intention to exaggerate it to a
point of saturation to create excitement, youthfulness and hope.
The
late producer Menahem Golan, of Cannon Films, on the
set with the Breakin’ 2 cast
Lucinda
had a dancing school background, while Michael and Adolfo’s were said to come
more from street performing. What was the experience like working with leads
who had such different backgrounds?
SF: The differences
of their style of
dancing had been all resolved in the original Breakin’ movie so I did
not have to deal with it. Besides, this is usually the area of the dance
choreographer and all the other dance experts and not the director’s.
AQ: It had it’s
pros and cons. On one hand
it was great but on the other there were moments of frustration,
but I believe we were able to eventually overcome our differences.
For the record, I was never a street-performer per se, and neither was
Michael ‘Boogaloo Shrimp’ Chambers (Turbo) who was a current member of my dance
crew – he along with other featured dancers in the films.
Was
the cast of dancers drawn from the Los Angeles and southern California area or
did you search throughout the country to get the best of the best?
AQ: Yes, I had tremendous casting
input, and played a major part in casting the street-dancers and choreographers
of the film. Namely, Jaime Rogers and Billy Goodson.
SF: The three lead dancers, Lucinda, Boogaloo Shrimp, and Shabba-Doo, were
a given. For all the rest we conducted open call auditions. Dancers come from
all over the Los Angeles metropolitan and probably from other cities as well.
Casting the vast number of dancers was not my responsibility but the
choreographer and his assistants. I was only involved when it came to casting
principal dancers important to the story. In addition, at the time Shabba-Doo
was very much involved in the hip-hop and break-dance scene in Los Angeles and
other cities so he brought in some of his friends and co-dancers to participate
in the movie.
The George Kranz track ‘Din Daa Daa’ seems to be the heart, and almost a
source of energy for the film, including it being used during two different
scenes. How were songs chosen for the film, and were the song choices decided
before anything else since nearly every scene is centered around specific
songs?
SF: The producing
of the music went hand
in hand with the pre-production of the movie. The PolyGram records label
partnered with Cannon films to produce and then distribute the songs for the
movie, at a very early stage. A representative of the company commissioned
Ollie Brown from Ollie & Jerry to scout and choose some existing songs and
then produce and record some other songs. They worked together with the
choreographer Billie Godson in finalizing the selection to fit certain dance
numbers written in the script. The process was a collaboration of many talented
people including Cannon’s music department. Later on during the editing of the
movie (editor Marcus Manton) we realized that some songs or musical themes of
those songs would fit certain situations in the story, so we decided to use
them accordingly, either as repetitive theme or as echoing and mirroring
effects.
AQ: You’re
right in part, regarding
‘Din Da Da’. However, many of the songs were chosen after the point and
added later, matching tempo, etc.
What
inspired the music from Ollie & Jerry being featured so predominantly
throughout the soundtrack? What songs from the soundtrack, if any, were you
into on a personal level; or enjoy dancing to the most during the production?
AQ: Interesting,
Ollie and I had this
conversation some time ago. He told me he would watch my dailies from the film
and get ideas from what I said and did, being the leader of the crew both
on and off camera. My favorite song to dance to during filming was ‘Reckless’,
performed by Ice-T and produced by Chris ‘The Glove’ Taylor.
The
scene of Turbo dancing on the ceiling is said to be a shout out to classic
musicals like Fred Astaire’s Royal Wedding. What is the story of how
that was done and what the inspiration was. How difficult was that to pull off?
SF: The idea to
add a scene of Turbo
dancing on the ceiling was Menahem’s. It was indeed inspired by a similar scene
of Fred Astaire in the movie Royal Wedding. The way a tricky dance like
this is done is by building a room that can be rotated a full circle upside
down all the way. The camera is anchored to the floor and goes up when the
ceiling comes down and the dancer on it. In the final shot it looks like the
dancer is on the ceiling dancing upside down. The only difficult part is that
everything in the windows and all the lighting setup has to rotate with the
rotating room. The dancer also faces a challenge in reorienting himself every
second to the revolving reality around him.
AQ: Yes, it was
created as an homage to
Fred Astaire’s Royal Wedding, using the gimbal room. The way they
did it, if I remember correctly, all the furniture and so forth were all
nailed down, and the gimbal room was placed in the middle of a rotating barrel.
The cameraman was strapped to a board, I think, along with his camera,
which allowed him to rotate with the room. The idea came from Menahem and the
film’s director, Sam Firstenberg.
What
was your favorite scene to film, and what made it so special for you?
AQ: My favorite
scene in Breakin’
was the initial battle in Radiotron, which really showed off our dancing. In Breakin’
2, it was the scene where I lead a horde of kids to march on city hall
against gentrification. That scene was particularly special to me as
it showed how we felt about ourselves and our community.
A
recent article stated the film’s final production was rushed because
distributor Tri-Star wanted it out to distract from the disastrous release of Supergirl
the month prior. Cannon on the other hand was well-known for rushing all their
releases with the “quantity over quality” concept. In different hands and a
different situation, do you think this would have been a different film, or was
the final product what you had envisioned and hoped for?
SF: The distribution
company Tri-Star
asked for about two thousand prints of the finished movie two or three weeks
after the end of photography; not to distract from a disastrous box-office results
of Supergirl but to replace the movie in all the theaters they
commissioned for its release and recover some of the financial loses it
suffered. Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo opened as a result in about two
thousand theaters in North America and was received enthusiastically and did
well in box-office. Not all of Cannon’s films were rushed product, they were
low budget but not necessarily rushed. In some of the Ninja movies I
directed there was plenty of time in production and in post production, and so
was the shooting schedule of Electric Boogaloo. But the editing of it
was a rush job indeed. We worked with seven editors and numerous sound editors
24 hours around the clock for several weeks. The movie obviously did not suffer
in terms of energy and vitality because of the short editing period but it
could have been different if the overall budget was bigger. With more money it
could have looked bigger, more polished, and maybe some famous “name” actors
could have been hired to play guest parts, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a
more successful movie. The vision could have been enhanced but it definitely
was not compromised.
AQ: I’m
not aware of their reasons
for rushing to get the film out, I suspect it had a lot to do with money.
Again, I wasn’t particularly pleased with the film’s direction in the
second Breakin’ film.
Some
may not realize the level of work that was put into Breakin’ 2 – no
matter their opinion of the final product – especially with the dance scenes
which usually included dozens if not hundreds of dancers and extras. What was
the most challenging part of the production process, be it pre, post, or
filming?
AQ: Filming was by far the most challenging
part of production. Long days during an exceptionally hot summer. It was
grueling.
SF: Filming such a “big” movie is always a technical and organizational
challenge but coming from action packed movies it is not something I had not
encountered before. The biggest challenge was organizing and executing the
final show scene, with about four thousand extras in the crowd, multiple dance
and song numbers, with various dance groups and individual dancers and singers.
In addition there is security, crowd control, communication between multiple
camera units, coordination of location and timing and much, much, more.
Upon
its release, reviews were actually good – they seemed to “get it” – from
Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, to Roger Ebert who gave it a
three-and-a-half star review. The final box office tally however was considered
a disappointment compared to the first Breakin’. Did the release come
too soon after the original, or did the winter release hinder its performance
perhaps, as it’s more of a summer film?
SF: It is true that
the movie was not a
summer release, but on the other hand it came out in the holiday season which
is also a very good time for a release of a youth oriented film. Since I am not
a distribution expert and have no knowledge in that field I am not qualified to
comment on box-office matters. But as you mentioned Breakin’ 2 got some
good reviews and in the final analysis, over the long period of time since it
was made, it has proven to be a cultural iconic classic with great longevity
and influence even today, and to the best of my knowledge also made tons of
money worldwide.
AQ: I agree,
on one hand the core of
the story/plot was a good one, however, it faltered in the execution. The
dance sequences seemed to work but wasn’t well thought out, and as a result, it
came across kind of hokey and uneven. I remember cringing at some of the
hospital scenes where Turbo was supposedly injured, and miraculously being
healed within hours. I’m still shaking my head on that one. Lol.
Obviously
the film’s Electric Boogaloo subtitle created a humorous cultural
impact, but what positive cultural impact do you think the film had at the time
and in the years since? Did it distract from, or drawn attention to the film
and it’s positive message and feeling?
AQ: On one hand it brought a lot of
attention to the popping art form, but on the other hand it felt forced and
contrived. I believe the positive message managed to remain intact despite the
title and overall left the audiences with a good feeling that resonates to this
very day, some 30 plus years later.
SF: It is hard to tell what was the impact of the phrase “Electric
Boogaloo” on the movie’s success at the time of its release, but today, 30
years later, it definitely draws attention to this cultural phenomenon, and is
a major factor in the film’s longevity and popularity with young new audiences
of today. The phrase by itself became synonymous with the 80s and a substitute
for the word “sequel”. I just read the following sentence somewhere on the
internet; “we are waiting for a sequel to the bible that will be called Bible 2
– Electric Boogaloo”.
For
the hardcore fans, could we get clarification on two things? Why does Turbo’s girlfriend
randomly appear from a locker in his room during the big hospital scene? What
is the song used during the scene where the bulldozers are turned away, and how
can we get it?
SF: For the hardcore
fans (and I am so
glad that they exist) the answer to the first question is that the rough cut
edit version of the movie was too long and we had to cut out some scenes to
shorten it. One of them was a scene of the girlfriend sneeking into the
hospital and in order to avoid being discovered by the big, fat head nurse, she
hides in the closet or locker. If the scene was not cut out her appearance
would not appear to be random. To answer the second question, if I am not wrong
the piece of music you are mentioning is not really a song – it has no lyrics –
but it is rather a composition to accompany the scene and therefore it is not
on the Electric Boogaloo soundtrack CD. But today with the enormous
amount of information on the web I am certain that there is a way to find it.
AQ: Ha ha, there’s
a lot of unexplained
‘random’ occurrences in Breakin’ 2. The track playing during the
bulldozer scene was basically a filler track, and therefore, doesn’t have a
title. It is virtually impossible to find.
What does the film
now mean to you personally, over 30 years later?
AQ:
The Breakin’
films serve as a source of personal and professional pride, and an iconic
landmark for the hip hop culture. I must add, I am eternally grateful
to have been a part of both productions. I am particularly happy to know
my characterization of Ozone has and continues to have such a positive impact
and inspiration for millions of dancers and dance enthusiasts both young and
old all over the world. I think it’s time for “A Breakin’ Uprising”! Yes, let’s
do it one more time!
SF: To me the film
Breakin’ 2: Electric
Boogaloo does not have a “meaning” per se but it is a source of great
memories and satisfaction from knowing that it still resonates with some
audiences bringing them delight, and the fact that it become an iconic film
that symbolizes the colorful 80s.
