Crooklyn
Short description
Crooklyn is a comedy-drama set in Brooklyn during the 1970s, centered on the Carmichael family. Carolyn is a schoolteacher holding the household together, while her husband Woody, a jazz musician, refuses to compromise his style for what audiences currently want, leaving him without steady work. Their five children fill their days with television, snacks and the trouble they get into together. Told partly through the eyes of ten-year-old Troy, the film follows a middle-class Black family through ordinary joys and recurring stresses, with humor as the way of coping. It draws on Spike Lee's own childhood and his large family in Brooklyn.
Lee directed and produced the film, and wrote the screenplay with Joie Lee and Cinqué Lee. It was his seventh feature as director, arriving between Malcolm X and Clockers. Alfre Woodard plays Carolyn and Delroy Lindo plays Woody, with Zelda Harris as Troy and David Patrick Kelly among the supporting cast; 59 cast members and 61 crew are credited. Made for about 14 million USD, it took roughly the same amount worldwide.
On IMDb the film holds a rating of 6.8 from 34 reviews, and on TMDB it also sits at 6.8, from 167 votes, so critics and audiences are closely aligned.
What's left behind the scenes
- The original title could be translated as "Brooklyn Is for Scammers".
- A loose adaptation of the life story of director Spike Lee and his children Joie and Cinque, who helped him write the screenplay.
- Cinque Lee and Joie Lee initially wrote the screenplay for a pilot episode of one of Nickelodeon’s projects, but the children didn't like the result at the preview, and Lee reworked it into a comedy screenplay.
- According to Delroy Lindo, he was a little apprehensive about working on a project with children, as he had never worked with them before and didn't have any of his own at the time.
- None of the children involved in the filming had any idea how to play the street games their characters were fond of. Spike Lee himself had to explain everything to them, what was what and in which game.
- After the long and complex filming of the drama "Malcolm X" (1992), Spike Lee wanted to shoot something simpler, resulting in this film.
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