Robert Fitzgerald Diggs, aka RZA, musician, composer, actor, filmmaker, record producer and mastermind of hip hop’s Wu-Tang Clan, has a rich career but says film ties it all together as his latest is set to world premiere at the Tribeca Festival on Sunday.
He wrote and directed the action thriller One Spoon Of Chocolate starring Shameik Moore (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Dope), RJ Cyler (The Harder They Fall), Harry Goodwins (The Gentlemen), Johnell Young (Wu-Tang: An American Saga, GZA), Michael Harney (The Iron Claw), Rockmond Dunbar (9-1-1, Prison Break), E’myri Crutchfield (Dark Harvest, Fargo), Blair Underwood (Origin) and Grammy winning country star Jason Isbell (Killers Of The Flower Moon).
Moore’s former military convict Unique arrives in a seemingly quiet Midwestern town (shot in Atlanta as a stand-in for Ohio) after serving his country and his prison sentence for an assault he never committed to restart his life with his only surviving relative, Ramsey (Cyler). Turns out the town’s racist sheriff and his violent posse share a gruesome secret about missing young Black men. When they set their sights on Unique, the former soldier has no choice but to bring the fight to them. A Spoonful Of Sugar this is not.
Talking with Deadline ahead of the premiere, RZA said he started the screenplay in 2012 after his period martial arts adventure The Man with the Iron Fists from Universal. He directed, starred with Russell Crowe and Lucy Liu and co-wrote the film with Eli Roth.
“I wanted to continue with the action. But I also wanted to play with substance. I got stuck with writer’s block on it. I probably had 40 pages. Then a few years later, another 20 pages. During [Wu-Tang Clan’s] New York State of Mind tour, as I was traveling on the back of a tour bus for a few months, everything just came, the whole story, fully evolved. I think as an artist we are instruments, you’ve got to let the muse blow through you. And that’s what happened.”
For him, One Spoon Of Chocolate asks, “How do we recognize when we need to change ourselves? How do we recognize that we need to change our community? Change all the stereotypes?”
RZA’s other features include musical drama Love Beats Rhymes (2017) and heist film Cut Throat City (2020). He executive produced three seasons of Hulu original series Wu-Tang: An American Saga. He composed the score to Jim Jarmusch’s 1999 Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai and Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill 1 and 2. He scored One Spoon Of Chocolate with Tyler Bates. Film and TV acting roles range from American Gangster to Californication.
He calls filmmaking the most satisfying for its collaborative process and ‘how many forms of art come together.”
“The costumes and the design, the colors, the cinematography, the action — film is the perfect medium. Music, of course, is personal. As an artist, it’s nothing like being around a community of artists. So, I think if I had a choice of what to do for my life, I would choose filmmaking because it actually fulfills every other art form that’s in me.”.
During Covid, he said, he organized massive watch parties though a platform he launched called 36 Cinema, livestreaming films and sharing comments with as many as 2,000 people. But that was then. “I feel pretty strongly about theatrical. The theater is the best place to experience films. When you play with cameras and different aspect ratios that you’re creating, with these emotions that you’re putting into these stories, they are best served on a big screen. Of course you can look at them on your phone. You can look at them on your home TV. But if you want the full experience of the original, creative tension, theaters are better.”
One Spoon Of Chocolate was produced by RZA Productions, 36 Cinema, and Xen Diagram Media alongside Paul Hall (White Men Can’t Jump, Shaft). Executive producers include Talani Diggs, Mitchell Divine Diggs, and Joe Genier (Bigger).
