Latest Rap Act to Go Big Screen: Missy Elliott
Contributed by Brent Simon
Thursday, 30 March 2006

For her next project, dance flick Take the Lead screenwriter Dianne Houston is switching tunes. Instead of ballroom and tango, she'll turn her attention to hip-hop, telling the life story of outsize rap personality Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott.

"We're in development right now," says Houston, a writer-director Oscar-nominated for her short film "Tuesday Morning Ride," and with additional significant episodic television credits to her name. "Jane Rosenthal is producing, and I'm writing and directing. What's compelling about [the story] is that Missy is a survivor of some of the most horrific abuse that you can imagine. Not just a survivor in terms of having lived through it, but do you know how in her videos she's so completely on another planet? That began as a child; Missy had to create other realities in order to survive what she was going through. In a lesser person, she would have become a victim or bitter, but instead it fueled this creative spark and this amazing art in her."

While extremely close to closing a financing and distribution deal on the already penned project with an as-yet-unnamed studio, Houston isn't worried about the chilly reception given rapper 50 Cent's autobiographical Get Rich or Die Tryin'. "When you think of hip-hop movies, you think of gangsters," Houston admits. But, "this movie is much more akin to Shine than any of the other genre movies. It's an anti-genre movie. We're taking it from her life."

"The fact that she emerges as a hip-hop artist is not the core of the story," Houston continues. "When you look back to What's Love Got to Do With It, we all knew the end of the story, we all knew that she became Tina Turner. But what was compelling about it was her survival through all of that. Take that and flip it back and have it be an 8-year-old. That's why I compare it to Shine. It's like, it became about the adults, but it's also about that incredible kid."

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