Dope, which came out in 2015, is a comedy-drama about three geeky teenagers who are coming of age and their crazy adventures.
The movie was written and directed by Rick Famuyiwa. Forest Whitaker and Nina Yang Bongiovi were in charge of making it. Shameik Moore plays Malcolm Adekanbi, and Tony Revolori and Kiersey Clemons play his nerdy friends Jib and Diggy. They aren’t the most popular kids in school, but they are very unique in every way. They love hip-hop music and even have their own punk band. The main character of the story is Malcolm, who wants to go to Harvard but ends up with a bag full of drugs by accident one day.
The movie takes place in Inglewood, California, and shows how hard it is to live in a tough neighborhood, but not in the way you might think. The movie doesn’t try to get you to feel sorry for or agree with a black teen. Instead, it shows the real life of a black teen with a bit of comedy thrown in. People who have lived in the same or similar neighborhoods are curious to know if the story is based on real events because of how real the movie’s events are. Let’s find out!
Is the story in Dope real?
No, “Dope” isn’t based on a real story, but it was inspired by things that happened in real life. The story was written by director Rick Famuyiwa, who has worked on movies like “Brown Sugar” and “The Wood,” which was set in Inglewood and came out in 1999. Dope is a movie that was made in only 25 days with a cast that isn’t well-known. It shows events that viewers not only found real but also could relate to. Famuyiwa told the New York Post that he grew up in Inglewood. “Dope” is like a “what if” simulation of how different his life would have been if things had gone differently. He put parts of his own life into the story, and it’s easy to see how this coming-of-age movie feels very real in many places.
“Dope” could have been a typical movie about the problems black teens from bad neighborhoods face, but Malcolm, Jib, and Diggy aren’t your average teens. Even though they live in a neighborhood with a lot of crime, they are different because they are interested in life. They are kids who grew up in the digital age and are optimistic about the future no matter what their environment is like. Famuyiwa told Wired’s director in an interview, “I wanted to try to change what we call mainstream. So much of what we call “mainstream” is actually white, upper-middle-class suburbia. And anything else is considered to be a niche.” He also said, “I didn’t want it to seem like we were just putting black characters everywhere. I really wanted it to be clear. They face a lot of problems that most people don’t have to deal with. I wanted to be honest about that, but I also think that just because it’s not exactly what you’ve been through doesn’t mean you can’t relate to it.
He said more about where the idea for the movie came from by saying, “A lot of it came from the fact that we live in a world where anything is possible. When I was growing up, it wasn’t that long ago, but it seems like a long time ago that you had to go to the library to get a World Book Encyclopedia. But what does it mean for your view of the world when you can get everything right away? So that’s what made me think about these characters and their world.”
Famuyiwa wanted “Dope” to feel real in every way, from how the story was told to how the characters interacted with technology. He said more about this in an interview with Wired. He said, “You can’t choose where you’re born, and when you’re growing up, you’re just living your life until you’ve seen something else. These kids don’t even realize that they live in a bad or terrible place. It’s a generation that feels like they can do anything. Malcolm feels like he could go to Harvard and Ivy League schools because he knows a lot of the kids who go there. It makes a lot of things possible, but it also shows us what we still have trouble with. I think Malcolm and his friends are handling all of that.”
Famuyiwa told the New York Post that the scene in Malcolm where he meets a drug dealer is based on a true story from his own life. “The real dealer was standing on the corner and asked me to come over,” he said. He said, “There’s a cute girl over there, and I want you to say “hi” for me,” just like in the movie. I thought about the moment and all the different ways it could have gone. As Famuyiwa says, “I was always this weird kid who didn’t fit in,” it’s clear that Malcolm, the main character, is based on him. The high school nerd who wants to go to Harvard, loves ’90s hip hop, and lives in a dangerous neighborhood called The Bottoms is based on the author’s own experiences as a first-generation American with Nigerian parents.
Famuyiwa wanted to tell the story of a black teenager who lives in a very dangerous neighborhood and faces problems on his way to achieving his dream of going to Harvard. Many people wanted to know if the story was based on real events because of how it was written, how it was told, where it was set, and how young the teens were. Even though the characters and story are made up, their journey is based on real things that a black teenager from Inglewood goes through, which Famuyiwa does a great job of showing in “Dope.” The problems that Malcolm has to deal with are based on things that happened to Famuyiwa in real life.