NOTORIOUS trailer

looks dope. heard some early reviews and its all been positive.




Biggie played by NYC mixtape rapper GRAVY. peep the interview below from www.newyorker.com

Plaxico Burress fans, fear not: there is life after humiliation by gunshot wound. Consider the case of Jamal Woolard, a.k.a. Gravy, an oversized, unheralded rapper from Brooklyn who was shot in the rear—possibly by a member of his own oversized entourage—outside the radio station Hot 97, two and a half years ago, and proceeded to give an interview on the air, while bleeding. Instead of sympathy, Gravy was met with skepticism and opprobrium, as many observers smelled a dangerous publicity stunt. Hot 97 announced a ban on playing his songs. His début album with Warner Music, “God Willing,” was shelved. In an interview with this magazine, shortly after the shooting, he rubbed his left pants leg (the bullet, he said, had gone “through the ass, through the thigh”) and mused, “You have to damn near die to be famous these days?”

With his rap career on hold, Woolard turned to acting, and was cast, from among ten thousand applicants, as the lead in “Notorious,” a bio-pic about the late rapper Notorious B.I.G., which opens next month. Not long ago, on the movie set, in Washington Heights, Woolard removed cotton balls from his mouth and rubbed his right cheek, which had just been slapped a dozen times by Angela Bassett. “She’s for real,” he said. “Can’t be faking that. It could affect sales.” Bassett plays Voletta Wallace, B.I.G.’s mother, and they’d been filming the scene in which she discovers her son’s drugs—at first, she mistakes them for mashed potatoes—and kicks him out of the house. (Wallace is a producer of the movie, and when she first saw Woolard come in to audition she said, “That’s my son.”)

Woolard declined an offer of ice for the cheek and took a lunch break, during which he referred to the Hot 97 fallout as “bygones,” and cited the wisdom of his character. “I mean, Big called it best,” Woolard said. “ ‘Mo money, mo problems.’ At that time, I was at the height of my career. I was the man. I tell you what: that day, I felt like I had Phil Jackson, Pat Riley—I had a ill team.” (He was referring to the Warner executives Kevin Liles and Lyor Cohen.) “And I got jammed up. But the blessing is, later it put me in a better position.”

That position had not come without hard work. Woolard spent five months in “Biggie boot camp,” taking acting lessons, studying choreography, and even receiving voice training at Juilliard. Woolard is diabetic, and the long days were physically draining. At one point, he lost his double chin, and had to eat his way back into the role. “Now I’m at three hundred and five,” he said, attacking a plate of chicken and rice like an offensive lineman at a training table. “Doing what I got to do.” He said that he was thinking about going on a diet after shooting wrapped, to create a “whole new identity” in time for his comeback. “So when the film comes out and I hit that red carpet, I’m all ‘Rocky’ and ripped up, and people just be, like, ‘What the fuck?’ ” he said. “Know what I’m saying?”

As it happened, the day’s filming schedule mirrored nicely the progression of Woolard’s life story: first, the slap in the face, and, then, a reconciliation (Scene 33) where Bassett gets to meet her grandchild. Woolard himself is the proud father of a newborn daughter, Jamaya, and was spending as much of his time in New Jersey, with his wife, Trina, as in Bed-Stuy. “Now we just chillin’,” he said. “It’s love and greatness.” ♦