*This article may contain spoilers.
They Cloned Tyrone film producer Stephen “Dr” Love describes himself on his Instagram page as a “country boy humble, big city hustle,” who is “moved by faith and not by plight.” A native of rural South Carolina, he contends with survivor remorse in making his dreams a reality, unlike some of his friends and neighbors from his hometown. Love expressed how some of the people he knew were smarter and more talented than him; the idea of a dream deferred is an underlying theme in his Afro-surrealistic meets Blaxploitation film.
Some members of the online peanut gallery have denounced the film for exploiting Black American trauma. However, Love believes the opposite; while the storyline is especially triggering and anxiety-inducing to some viewers, the real intent of the mind-bending narrative is for the Black community to remain cognizant of the invisible hand attempting to eradicate them by any means necessary by keeping them: uneducated, unhealthy, and in a perpetual cycle of constant homicide, conditioning them to remain hopeless and never consider escaping their impoverished circumstances, brainwashed by destructive music to aid in self-immolation. He wants Black audience members, both in the bourgeoisie and inner cities, to make a concerted effort to survive and thrive beyond diabolical orchestrated factors.
Urban culture pundit, Ricardo A. Hazell Sr., points out, “Black neighborhoods remain downtrodden by repeatedly cloning several archetypes; the drug dealer, the pimp, the shady pastor, and a racially ambiguous Black man, to maintain a [controlled] setting called “the trap.” He continues, “It was a perfect way to speak about the growing push to deemphasize the Black experience in all manner of American society while simultaneously chastising us to forget exactly how we got here. [It is a] brilliant movie that is well-written and wonderfully acted.”
Audiences concurred and made They Cloned Tyrone ranked in the top ten in 17 countries when it debuted on July 21, 2023, on Netflix.
Yolanda Baruch: How did you come across the They Cloned Tyrone project?
Love: The writer and director Juel Taylor and his co-writer, Tony Rettenmaier, we all went to grad school at USC for film school (the University of Southern California). Juel told me about this idea in 2017 as a logline. He didn’t have anything other than the main idea that it was three people in a neighborhood [who] realized the government was doing mind-controlled experiments, and they had to peel the onion back; that was the high concept. From there, I told him, “You got to let me produce that for you.” The following year, we pitched it around Hollywood, and every studio was bidding on it. Macro was one of the places we talked to; we had a good relationship with them, and honestly, they gave us more creative control than other places. Then, in 2019, we took the script out, and a bidding war ensued all over again with every studio, which is a blessing, and then we sold to Netflix.
Baruch: The film shows various nefarious forces that target the Black community. The food and the church are compromised; the music brainwashes us and keeps us hypnotic. The residents and neighborhoods like The Glen need more opportunities. While the story is fictional, its elements pull from truthful, actual events that affect the Black populace. With all these issues, where can people go to find solace?
Love: Great question; if I had the answer to where we could find solace, I wouldn’t have found a need to help make the movie. The only place you can find solace is with each other and with conversations, and that’s not one ethnicity or another; it’s more about finding like-minded people that understand our plight and then say, “Okay, what can we do about it together?” It’s not always about punching upward towards some force the way the movie depicts it; it’s more about collectively on a city-by-city town-by-town basis. What can we do to change our plight and change our situation? In the movie, the cavalry comes to save the day, led by Jamie Foxx, but there is no cavalry in real life, so coming together to find a solution is a place that I find solace.
Baruch: How do we even fight against these factors? We now have to contend with lab-created meat, Bow Wow said at the 2023 BET Awards; the state of hip hop is trash, and hair relaxers tailored for Black women have been linked to uterine cancer. There are numerous issues in the film that resonate with people. How do we even fight against these factors?
Love: Creating our own is the only way, as it relates to food; at this point, we should know what a food desert is and what that means. I grew up in a place that could be considered a food desert, where there’s a lot of fast food joints, but there might not be as many farmers markets or fresh, fresh vegetables available. For us, it meant getting vegetables and fruits from other farmers, whether it be my own family or other families nearby. We’re headed to a place where the only way you know that something is completely clean and non-harmful for the most part is if you grew it yourself or somebody you trust grew it, and that’s food. To your point, cosmetology products, in the market right now, you’re seeing a wave of natural products coming forth. Then, at the same time, you see an uproar when those companies sell to a bigger company. I’m torn about that because, in some sense, we want all of our people creating natural products for hair, skin, or food products to remain as clean and natural as possible. I don’t believe that selling to a bigger company and cashing out necessarily means those products [will no longer] be natural. But it’s tough because the perception is, “You let the force that we were trying to run away from you let the system buy you out.” I’m torn about that because, as a business mind, I know that is the mission of business: to build something that is investable and sellable and then hope to support your family, create a legacy, and make changes to the community if you have the right intention with the money you made from the conglomerate. So it’s a catch-22, and the truth is the only way you can fight any of those things is to create your own and be careful about what you consume.
Baruch: Some aspects of the film borrow Black American stereotypes, but the film flips it; Fontaine, a pharmaceutical distributor, Yo-Yo, a courtesan, and Slick Charles, a souteneur, all show high levels of intelligence, awareness, and resilience as novice detectives. These characteristics are not usually given to these types of characters. Many people have overlooked that there’s a tremendous amount of genius in the hood, which offers such a rich way to tell the story. Why was it necessary to show this kind of dichotomy?
Love: I love this question; this is one of the many things that when Juel, the director, first told me about this idea, I immediately connected to it without him even saying a word. Where I grew up, there were plenty of people who were smarter than me. [It] doesn’t mean that they got better grades because I was competitive in that way. But there are plenty of people where I grew up who are way smarter than me, who had a genius level [intelligence] not taught; it’s instinctive, it’s God-given. But because of their environment and its nature versus nurture, the lack of a support system inside of that environment didn’t allow them to blossom into their full potential. To this day, some of those people, when I reconnect, I see it still, like they still have that, but life has beaten them down. There are people in our neighborhoods who, if given different nurturing environments, would be running a Fortune 500 company. They would be on the cover of Forbes magazine as the top 100 executives if they had a different nurturing environment. There are plenty of entrepreneurs in the hood. We might be selling something we’re not supposed to be selling, but it’s entrepreneurs nonetheless. The mind it takes to do those things [can be] applicable in other spaces. I call that displace brilliance.
They Cloned Tyrone is streaming now on Netflix.
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