Gridlock'd
| Gridlock'd | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Vondie Curtis-Hall |
| Produced by |
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| Written by | Vondie Curtis-Hall |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Stewart Copeland |
| Cinematography | Bill Pope |
| Edited by | Christopher Koefoed |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | Gramercy Pictures |
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Release date
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January 29, 1997 |
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Running time
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91 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $5 million |
| Box office | $5.6 million |
Gridlock'd is a 1997 American crime black comedy-drama film written and directed by Vondie Curtis-Hall and starring Tupac Shakur, Tim Roth, Lucy Liu, and Thandie Newton. It was the directorial debut of Curtis-Hall, who also has a small role in the film. The film's opening was relatively low, despite critical acclaim; its opening weekend netted only $2,678,372 and it finished with a little over $5.5 million.
The film paid tribute to star Tupac Shakur, who was murdered four months prior to the film's release.
Set in Detroit, Gridlock'd centers around heroin addicts Spoon (Tupac Shakur), Stretch (Tim Roth) and Cookie (Thandie Newton). They are in a band – in the spoken word genre – called Eight Mile Road, with Cookie on vocals, Spoon on bass guitar (plus secondary vocals) and Stretch on piano. Spoon and Stretch decide to kick their habit after Cookie overdoses on her first hit. Throughout a disastrous day, the two addicts dodge police and local criminals while struggling with an apathetic government bureaucracy that thwarts their entrance to a rehabilitation program.
"It's largely autobiographical, with a lot of it coming from the time when I was a teenager in Detroit, playing guitar and singing in bands. Everybody was doing drugs. That was the way we thought we could play faster guitar, write better songs… One day my best friend, the bassist, and I were sitting around and decided that maybe we could actually play better if we weren't stoned all the time. Next day, we went to try and get into rehab. We were doing a bit of everything and were both sixteen, living with our folks, so we couldn't give our address in case they got to know about what we were doing. So we ended up wandering around from place to place, no one giving us any help. I remembered that when it came to writing my first movie." – Vondie Curtis-Hall
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