FILE – This July 13, 1991 file photo shows filmmaker John Singleton, who made the movie “Boyz N The Hood,” in Los Angeles. Oscar-nominated filmmaker John Singleton has died at 51, according to statement from his family, Monday, April 29, 2019. He died Monday after suffering a stroke almost two weeks ago. (AP Photo/Bob Galbraith, File)
NEW YORK (AP) – Director John Singleton, who made one of Hollywood’s most memorable debuts with the Oscar-nominated “Boyz N the Hood” and continued over the following decades to probe the lives of black communities in his native Los Angeles and beyond, has died. He was 51.
Singleton’s family said Monday that he died in Los Angeles, surrounded by family and friends, after being taken off life support. Earlier this month, the director suffered a major stroke.
Singleton was in his early 20s, just out of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, when he wrote, directed and produced “Boyz N the Hood.” Based on Singleton’s upbringing and shot in his old neighborhood, the low-budget production starred Cuba Gooding Jr. and Ice Cube and centered on three friends in South Central Los Angeles, where college aspirations competed with the pressures of gang life. “Boyz N the Hood” was a critical and commercial hit, given a 20-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival and praised as a groundbreaking extension of rap to the big screen, a realistic and compassionate take on race, class, peer pressure and family. Singleton would later call it a “rap album on film.”
FILE – This July 20, 2005 file photo shows John Singleton, left, a producer for the film “Hustle & Flow,” with actress Regina King at the premiere of the film in Los Angeles. Oscar-nominated filmmaker John Singleton has died at 51, according to statement from his family, Monday, April 29, 2019. He died Monday after suffering a stroke almost two weeks ago. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)
For many, the 1991 release captured the explosive mood in Los Angeles in the months following the videotaped police beating of Rodney King. “Boyz N the Hood” also came out at a time when, thanks to the efforts to Spike Lee and others, black films were starting to get made by Hollywood after a long absence.
Singleton became the first black director to receive an Academy Award nomination, an honor he would say was compensation for the academy’s snubbing Lee and “Do the Right Thing” two years earlier, and was nominated for best screenplay. (“Thelma & Louise” won instead.) At 24, he was also the youngest director nominee in Oscar history.