When I was recently invited to cover the LA premiere of “Moses the Black,” I initially wavered at the offer: my comfort zone is smaller than Vatican City and certainly doesn’t extend to interviewing celebrities on the red carpet.
An intriguing mixture of gangster and faith film from director/writer Yelena Popovic and producer (and 2000s rap legend) Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, “Moses the Black” (out in theaters Jan. 30) follows Malik (Omar Epps), a gang leader recently released from prison who intends to pick up right where he left off. A quick succession of deaths however puts his mind to grander things, and his mother’s prayer card to Moses the Black (venerated as a saint in Orthodox Christianity), himself a reformed gang leader, lets him wonder for the first time if redemption is possible. He either imagines or flashes back to Moses (Chukwudi Iwuji), his struggles weirdly mirroring his own.
I was eventually persuaded by a friend who predicted two possible outcomes: It would go swimmingly and I’d join 50 Cent’s inner circle, or it’d go terribly and I’d at least get some stories out of it.
I walked into the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood at ill-ease, twice attempting to loosen my tie only to twice discover I wasn’t wearing one. I found my breath when I saw I was stationed on the carpet next to a nun: Sister Nancy Usselmann of Pauline Media. I always find nuns a steadying presence, but in this environment, I took secret relief in finding one person here less worldly than me.
The invisible tie constricted once more as she proceeded to professionally eat my lunch. She recorded whole interviews by the time I figured out how to turn on my mic, talked to rappers and movie stars like they were normal people (which, as it turns out, they are).
She was not the only professed religious present — the whole affair was permeated by a Fellini-esque clash of the spiritual and profane: Orthodox priests in their cassocks and beards are rubbing shoulders with Instagram starlets. Fluttering about running interference are cool Los Feliz PR managers, fluttering about in pajamas that cost more than my security deposit. I spot Troy Polamalu maneuvering through the crowd incognito and unperturbed, his famous hair coiled in a braid.
Sister Nancy and I are at the tail end of the carpet, which means the celebrities that make the pilgrimage down to us have already answered every prompt a dozen times over. I try to shake things up a little and, inspired by “Moses the Black,” ask the stars what they would be the patron saint of if given the choice.
Omar Epps seems delighted at the concept and answers Jamaican food. “Jerk chicken?” I offer.
He shakes his head and laughs. “More like some kind of fish.”
While it’s clear I have failed some inscrutable test, he’s in a forgiving mood. It proves a common sentiment; I was prepared for mercurial stars with little patience for peons, but you sense this project was a labor of love for all involved and the spirit of generosity extends even to swagless white boys such as myself.
Deontay Wilder, former heavyweight champion of the world and perhaps the hardest puncher in the history of the bloodsport, is an absolute sweetheart to me. I ask him the patron saint question but he is pulled away as the movie begins. Three hours later I stand outside waiting for the valet and he runs over to say he’s been looking for me, and that he’s concluded he’d be the patron saint of chicken and rice. I knew there was a reason I liked him: as a poor freelancer, I will need his intercession around dinner time.
Here comes Yelena Popovich, our auteur. It’s a fascinating dynamic that this movie with an all-black cast in black vernacular is helmed by a lithe blonde Serbian woman. What’s more fascinating is that it doesn’t matter in the slightest. Before she makes her way to me, I spy warm hugs from Wiz Khalifa and Skilla Baby, and in her speech before the movie she throws out an “on God” in a Balkan accent that the audience roars back in full sincerity. In the parlance of the times, she’s clearly been invited to the cookout.
I’m a quarter Croatian and intend to impress her with some Serbo-Croatian. I let Sister Nancy in on my plan, and she tells me what a coincidence, she’s half Croatian. There is nothing this woman will not upstage me in.
“Dobro veče!” I greet Popovic, and there’s an awkward pause as she realizes I’ve exhausted my extent. I nod along as she thoughtfully and thoroughly answers about the need to make Christian films that inspire more than lecture, and how updating these stories to contemporary audiences makes the message more relevant. All the while I’m wondering how it’s possible for me to own more Croatian soccer jerseys than know Croatian words.
The afterparty is held at a Japanese restaurant on Sunset and, like most writers, I am grateful and greedy for the free protein. Sitting in a small side bar, a sushi roll in both hands like some decadent shogun, I look down to see 50 Cent holding court not 10 feet away, flanked by a formation of guys who looked exactly like me and were all laughing a little too loudly at his jokes. There isn’t a gap in phalanx for me to join, so I instead decide they’re all toadies and sycophants and that my eavesdropping is a principled stand.
A little while later he goes to leave and my resolve crumbles. As he passes by I stuff a sushi roll in my mouth to free my hand for a shake, which he takes. I want to tell him that I enjoyed the movie; that his music opened worlds to me at CYO dances growing up; that every birthday I have indeed partied like it’s my birthday.
What came out instead was something guttural wedged between wasabi and bluefin tuna. “50” smiles and says he appreciates it, and somehow he actually means it. It seems both fates have come true, the timelines intertwine: I leave the evening with stories too plentiful and colorful to fit here, and have also found myself in 50 Cent’s inner circle: I just learned that it’s less of a circle than a globe.
