Director Allen Hughes on His Epic Doc Series ‘The Defiant Ones’

Awards Daily TV’s Jalal Haddad talks to director Allen Hughes about his 4-part HBO music documentary series, The Defiant Ones.

Last summer, HBO’s 4-part documentary The Defiant Ones series premiered on HBO. The epic series follows the interconnecting lives of music giants Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine documenting every major step in their careers beginning and ending with their massive deal with Apple. After premiering to strong reviews, The Defiant Ones has gone on to receive major recognition with nominations at the Grammys, the ACE Eddie Awards, a Critics Choice nomination, and even winning an IDA Documentary Award.

Director Allen Hughes is best known for his directorial partnerships with his brother on Hollywood hits like Menace II Society, From Hell, and The Book of Eli. In addition to his history in Hollywood, Hughes worked closely with Dr. Dre directing music videos, turning to that friendship to tackle a true story that resonated so strongly with him. Allen Hughes spoke with Awards Daily TV about why the partnership between Dre & Iovine is striking a chord with audiences and what it’s like tackling such a massive documentary project.

What first inspired you to begin working on The Defiant Ones?

My relationship with Dr. Dre who I’ve  known for 22 years. My idea was to initially make a documentary focused on him and he was very open to it. Dre is a fascinating figure in our culture.

How did you come up with the idea to simultaneously tell both Dre and Jimmy’s story side by side?

The idea came up in the first pitch I made to HBO, which was the only company I pitched the documentary to. They loved my initial pitch but brought up one problem which was that they had just greenlight an Interscope documentary with Jimmy. That’s when a light bulb went off in my head.

One of my favorite documentaries of all time is The Battle Over Citizen Kane. The story of two child prodigies both doted on by their mothers, William Randolph Hearst and Orson Welles, and how the film destroyed them both. I looked at Dre and Jimmy in a similar way but instead of destroying each other they made each other. That documentary was my inspiration for me.

What did you see in Dre & Jimmy that made you know they would be so captivating to audience?

Looking back now I can tell you it was something subconscious. Jimmy and Dre represented what’s best in me. I’m bi-racial. When it comes to music I love both hip-hop and rock. I love being able to express yourself whether it’s John Lennon or Tupac. Being defiant and becoming your own artist. Inherently I didn’t realize baked into both of their stories was me.  What I see about culture. How I see things. All of this was innately in that journey so I related to it.

How did you decide to structure their story as a four-part series?

It was supposed to be one feature length documentary but pretty early on we knew it would have to be four or five parts. Jimmy and Dre though thought that would be arrogant and self-indulgent. I had to prove to them that not only was it not self-indulgent but also impossible to fit their entire stories into two hours.

Initially the project was only supposed to take a year but I ended up asking HBO for more time and they were great. Overall it took a little more than three and a half years to complete. I began shooting in early 2014 and began conducting research and interviews simultaneously.

What was it like working so closely with Jimmy and Dre? Did they have any creative control in the series?  

They’re both so different. They both completely respected the process and allowed me to have my vision. But were there disagreements? Yeah. It reminded of that film The Agony and The Ecstasy (Carol Reed, 1965) and that’s what it was. Sometimes it was painful but most of the time it was wonderful. That was all part of the give and take, the push and pull. As Jimmy said we weren’t working on a Bat Mitvah video. We were doing something that was emotionally innovative that was pushing the medium. We were achieving a level of honesty. This wasn’t a tribute film. It was all of it; the good, the bad, and the ugly.

They were down with that but there were times where it became challenging where they didn’t want certain things in there. In the end cooler heads always prevailed because both of them are extremely intelligent and creative. It’s hilarious now but Dre was very sensitive to his early DJ-ing career with World Class Wreckin’ Cru. He thought it was corny but I knew it was important to include because we all go through those stages. In the end he was OK with it because he wanted to support my vision of his story.

What was the process like finding the perfect archival footage? With the scope of the series I imagine the footage you sorted through was nearly endless.

We did go through what seemed like an endless amount of archival footage. The way we chose what to use was to let the narrative dictate what you are seeing whether it was on a music video set with Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks or in Central Park with John Lennon. There were things we really wanted to include but it felt forced unless it followed our rule about the narrative.

Was there any footage you had a hard time finding that you really wanted to include in the documentary?

My approach to the film was what I called a decanting process. The wine was iconic moments in pop culture and the decanter was the film. I was always trying to find these iconic videos and images and then show the audience the moment before or after that to really captivate fans. I had the most difficult time finding the raw outtakes of the California Love video and in the end was never able to locate them. They were lost in the whole Dre leaving Death Row/Suge Selling Death Row saga. People were raiding the library and possibly burying it in the desert. There was a lot of urban myth behind it. It killed me that we couldn’t find any of it.

Throughout the documentary you interview an extraordinary amount of people from Stevie Nicks to Eminem to Snoop Dogg. How many people did you actually speak with?

Hmm, that’s a good question. I was just reading something today and no one seems to be able to put a number on it. At least dozens.  At some point everyone revealed something unexpected and that’s what made the film remarkable. There was always something unexpected that made the film richer and ultimately better.

Let me be clear, every interview was incredibly special to me making it hard to choose favorites. Sitting down with someone like Jon Landau [Bruce Springsteen’s producer and manager] was like sitting down with Obi-Wan Kenobi. It’s mind-blowing to sit down with such an intelligent beautiful writer. But ultimately whether you are interviewing Bruce Springsteen, Trent Reznor, Dre, or Jimmy it’s all amazing. Personally my favorite to talk to was Snoop Dogg. Whenever we needed to cut to someone to make a moment special we always cut to Snoop. We had a rule in The Defiant Ones where we wouldn’t introduce someone to the story that wasn’t actually there at the time. Everyone had to wait their turn until their story came up but our one exception was Snoop Dogg. He’s such an insightful character.

You knew both Dre and Jimmy years before you ever began working on The Defiant Ones. Was there anything you learned throughout the process that surprised you?

There was a bible of information I had no idea about prior to working on the film. Most of it had to do with how they operate in their creativity and their business. What most people would be amazed at is that while both of them have a staff they mostly do everything themselves. I’m not saying they don’t have support but they are very direct. They deal with everything directly and right away. If there is any bullshit or noise they don’t pay attention to it. They only pay attention to what they are creating. They taught me how to focus because they don’t listen to anything that has nothing to do with their business.

I’ve grown accustomed to their bond over the years but what I found so fascinating is that they celebrate each other and don’t become jealous. They just really appreciate one another and celebrate each other’s differences which is unusual.

Some of the most interesting elements of the film are small moments throughout your interviews where we see their business-centered minds take control. The scene that stands out the most is Jimmy, with no sense of what is happening around him, picks up the phone and starts working leaving the scene with an unexpected silence. Were you expecting moments like that to happen?

That’s actually one of my favorite moments. These are not elements you would normally put in the film. At one point I was so frustrated. Jimmy is a crafty mother fucker and beautifully cunning. I adore Jimmy and that moment where he’s on his phone and he gets up but we stay with the chair, I didn’t know what he was doing. All off a sudden he comes back and just looks in the camera and smiles. It’s moments like that that make the film so special.

Do you have any other favorite moment from the series?

Most of my favorite scenes are moments like that. One of my favorite scenes is not the most obvious but it’s in “Part Four” where Dre goes into the studio to lay vocals for “Talking to My Diary” and I spent the whole night with him. We didn’t really talk. It’s a moment where he’s purging all his past, his emotions, everything with Suge. I just thought it was special to see someone take pain out of chaos and their history and to purge it all out.

My proudest moment was with Dee Barnes. Her being able to speak her truth, not just about the incident but also how she felt about the music and the time and how initially glorious it was. She was just special and it doesn’t get better than that for me.

Was there anything you were really attached to but in the end couldn’t fit into the final cut of the documentary?

Dozens of things. I can’t speak specifically because there was so much especially in Part Three when we get to Death Row Records. That entire episode is some of my proudest work in my 25 year career. I had to make a lot of decisions and in the end there was so much I had to cut. Dre was getting ready to leave. What happened once Dre was getting ready to leave? What happened when Tupac was bailed out of prison? What was Suge doing and how was everyone reacting? That’s what we decided to focus on because at the end of the day you could make 10 films on that era alone and we needed to focus it. All of those epic Shakespearean stories came from Death Row.

Overall why do you think the story of Jimmy and Dre resonated so strongly with audience?

They both came from the bottom. One white, one black. One from Red Hook Broolyn and one from Compton. No one handed them anything, they didn’t know anyone, they weren’t well connected, and they weren’t born into it. They weren’t particularly well educated and both hated high school. The reason why people are connected to both of these guys is that they show them that anything is possible. People initially misunderstood them and they misunderstood themselves.

Subtextually what is going on is that people are seeing a black and a white guy getting down and creating amazing things together. That’s the dream, all of us creating great things together. I can’t think of another partnership like them that has created so much. They should be a model for us all.

How did you come up with the title The Defiant Ones?

The Defiant Ones was a 1958 film directed by Stanley Kramer starring Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis. It was about two escaped convicts who were handcuffed to each other, one black one white, and didn’t even like each other but the only way they were going to survive and win was to stick together.

You’ve worked as a documentary filmmaker before but since then you have become most known for your collaborations with your brother on blockbuster action films. What inspired you to come back to documentary filmmaking?

The subject matter really inspired me. I had a lot to prove and as a filmmaker I was frustrated and felt disenfranchised. I looked at Jimmy and Dre and knew they had my back and so did HBO. I felt I had a lot to prove and wanted to challenge myself as a filmmaker so I rolled my sleeves up got to work.

The Defiant Ones is currently available on HBO and HBO Go.