WORDS PHIL DE SEMLYENHow Tarantino helped shape the
new indie rap hitTHERE’S ALWAYS TALK of ‘Sundance
breakouts’, but a whole lot less about the films
that break in to Utah’s high-altitude indie haven.
Geremy Jasper, the debut writer-director of Patti
Cake$, wants to set that straight. He credits his
time at Sundance’s Lab Program in 2014 with
carving his hazy early ideas into the rap underdog
tale that eventually sold at the festival for $9.5
million. “It makes you dig into yourself and tell
your story,” he notes of the finishing school that
also helped birth Beasts Of The Southern Wild,
Hard Eight and Reservoir Dogs. “I’m not a film
school guy, so this was all new to me.”
Paying those benefits forward, Quentin
Tarantino was one of the New Jersey filmmaker’s
screenwriting tutors. “He was very enthusiastic
about the first half of the script, but he asked me
if the second half was just one giant dream
sequence,” laughs Jasper. “He told me I had a lot
of work to do on it, but that only I could make
this movie. That meant the world to me.” His
other advisor, Patty Jenkins, was no slouch
either. “[She] is just an incredibly cool human
being,” he enthuses. “I remember drinking a lot
of Bloody Marys with her.”
Gradually, over 10 iterations and two years,
his “shitty” early drafts gave way to something
battle-ready. Authenticity was key. While Patti
Cake$ sees aspiring rapper Patricia Dombrowski
(Aussie break-out star Danielle Macdonald),
trying to make it from her New Jersey bedroom
to the big leagues, it’s from Jasper’s own Jersey
bedroom that the character emerged. “It’s
interesting — my mother brought me bags full ofnotebooks a few weeks ago, and they were full of
lyrics or bad poetry from back when I was
tending bars or working in catering,” he says.
“They were all about, ‘How do I get out of here
and how do I make music?’ That’s the core of
what the film taps into.”
Finally screen-ready, Patti Cake$ shot over
28 adrenaline-fuelled days around the gritty
neighbourhoods Jasper grew up in. The result is
a freewheeling rap fairy tale, though Jasper is
modest in the face of comparisons to a certain
rap classic. “It’s the Citizen Kane of rap movies,”
he says of 8 Mile. “For a while we were calling
[our film] ‘8½ Mile’,” he jokes, “as it has more of
a surreal, fantastical quality.” Well, his old
Sundance tutor will surely forgive him the odd
dream sequence.PATTI CAKE$ IS IN CINEMAS FROM 14 SEPTEMBERLAB R APS
Fionn Whitehead,
photographed exclusively for
Empire at the Savoy hotel,
London, on 26 March 2017.
Determined rapper Patti (Danielle Macdonald).
Middle: Patti with MC Jheri (Siddharth Dhananjay).
Below: Patti loses herself in the music.