Hell Raisers

Twin directors Albert and Allen Hughes powered their way onto the Hollywood map in 1993 with their explosive debut, Menace II Society. That bloody, angry urban film-as well as its follow-up, Dead Presidents-earned the wrath of the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings board, for what it considered excessive violence. Given that, the idea of the Hughes brothers making From Hell, a drama about the real-life prostitute-killer Jack the Ripper, seemed like an audacious, if potentially problematic, next step. But even as Hollywood was wondering what new ratings battles the 29-year-old pair would face with such subject matter, insulting questions circulated as to whether they were capable of handling a movie set in Victorian England. "It was a smack in the face," Albert says. "They were doubting us from the start." The project was plagued by delays; it was put into turnaround twice (by Disney and New Line) before Fox committed to making it. During the three years the Hughes brothers spent developing it, they found themselves financially stretched. "There were times when we panicked," Albert says, "when money got low, when we thought, 'We've got to do something.' We knew we could always go back to music videos or do a commercial, but we weren't really into selling out." Instead, they passed some of this time directing the documentary American Pimp, which, by its refusal to condemn its subjects, didn't exactly endear them to the establishment. At long last, they found themselves, in the summer of 2000, shooting From Hell in Prague, with Johnny Depp as the opium-smoking inspector investigating the case and Heather Graham as one of the Ripper's targets. "It's violent, but it's not like our last films," Allen says, as the brothers put the final touches on their movie a year later, in August. "We were tired of doing movies that didn't challenge us culturally." PREMIERE: Why do you think people are still fascinated by Jack the Ripper?Albert: It's mysterious, it's dark, it's like Dracula-it's mythical. It's not solved. Some woman even said to us, "It's sexy." Allen: Which is sick. Albert: You can go to any neighborhood in America, and everybody knows the name. Like Adolf Hitler or Attila the Hun. Allen: He went pop. Like Jennifer Lopez's ass, he went pop, man. What were the challenges for you?
Albert: Several things. Do we want to make films, or do we want to make so-called "black movies"? We answered that one. The other thing was the violence. Can we deal with it in an indirect way and still get the impact we want? Thirdly, and most importantly, is the fact that Spielberg can do E.T. and nobody will ask if he went to space. Coppola can do The Godfather, but he never hung around with the Mafia. Those guys never get questioned about what they know or who they know or were they raised that way. But black filmmakers do: "You guys must have lived in the hood, you guys must have done this or that." When you're black and you do a white movie, they go, "How would you know about that?"