Will Smith loved that dramatic Fresh Prince trailer so much, he interviewed the guy who made it
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One of the things people always bring up when talking about Will Smith’s breakout acting role, The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, was its occasional willingness to get real. Sure, the NBC sitcom sometimes veered too far into Very Special territory—there’s a bit of “Jessie Spano hepped up on caffeine pills” to that episode where Carlton ended up overdosing on Will’s secret speed stash, to be sure—but if you don’t get a little lump in your throat at “How come he don’t want me?” well, you’ve got fewer televisual daddy issues than us.
All of which made the show something of a rich vein when filmmaker Morgan Cooper went mining for angst with his recent dramatic re-imagining of the series, “Bel-Air.” Rather than the million or so “Hey, what if Bert from Sesame Street was actually a murderer?” videos that have been popping up on the internet since, roughly, 1875, Cooper’s trailer takes its premise entirely seriously, diving into why a West Philly mother might send her son out of the city and into the sternly welcoming arms of her relatives in one of Los Angeles’ most affluent neighborhoods. Uploaded to YouTube last month, the video has earned itself a number of fans for its 2019 TV look at a very 1990 idea—including the Fresh Prince himself, as it turns out.
Smith announced his appreciation for Cooper’s work in the most direct way possible: Flying out to visit and interview him for his YouTube channel, including placing a full version of the trailer itself in front of his 5 million subscribers. The interview itself is pretty boilerplate stuff—although Smith does, briefly, get into the way his fictional counterpart’s life mimics his own, noting all the friends he grew up with who died young on the Philadelphia streets—but his delight at the whole thing is pretty obvious and infectious.
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♪♩ Now this is a story all about how
My life got flipped turned upside down
And I’d like to take a minute, just sit right there
I’ll tell you how I got interviewed by the prince of a town called Bel-Air ♪♩
I know Will Smith has fallen out of favor for some for all the typical, unfortunate zealot-based reasons of our times, but he’s always seemed like a pretty alright dude to me.And isn’t it about time for Fresh Prince to show up on one of these streaming services?
for all the typical, unfortunate zealot-based reasons of our timesYou mean his shitty movies for the last decade+?
Keanu Reeves makes a lot of shitty movies, and people seem to like him just fine.
I judge him based on the spoiled brat/fame hungry jokes his kids have grown into. That seems like a lazy self-righteous reason, rather than zealot-based reason.
Oh yea, definitely spoiled brat/fame hungry jokes
The headline of the article had me worrying Smith had optioned this for one of his kids to star in. :shudder:
The Scientology thing isn’t something I can forgive easily, even if they’re no longer a part of it.
It was on Netflix a few years ago, not sure why it’s not around anymore. Holds up better than one might think.
What’s next a dramatic Cheers about a guy who blew his chance to be a pro athlete and is now stuck trying to make ends meet as a bartender to a bunch of alcoholics?
Wow they made a movie where the Fresh Prince fights Will Smith awesome
For Will Smith to make this work, all the constraints of production
will need to be removed and prevented from restraining the real story.
Netflix, CBS All Access, BBC and ITV are where this should be shopped.
The only thing I don’t like about the dramatic reboot is the repeated portrayal of Carlton as trying to be white. It’s thematically unnecessary and doesn’t really give him much in the way of dramatic motivation. A better idea is that he’s cut off from mainstream black cultural identifiers and is mostly concerned with getting good grades so he can get into Princeton like his father, and he worries that Will’s constant troublemaking will be reflected on him and threaten his ability to get good marks and recommendations (in that respect maybe he’s more aware than Will of what it means to be black in an overwhelmingly white environment). He can look and act like a square without being a heavy-handed parody of someone trying to escape his own blackness.
I hope they keep the same Aunt Viv the whole series.
God I love how nuanced the trailer version of Will’s backstory is. It’s not JUST gangs, or guns, or his character specifics, or even the cops—it’s all of it leading to one fateful moment. Cooper is a fucking excellent director to convey all of that in a few shots.
I’d love for this specific project to go further, but even if it doesn’t–I hope we see a lot more from Cooper and his team.
I’m one of those annoying people who say “ I don’t watch TV!” But it really is true. My ‘coming up’ was pre-internet and, therefore, so DAMN busy with other stuff: Reading, studying like crazy, studying/playing/performing music and being there for other musicians, memorizing Dante, Virginia Woolf, and Henry James (no internet). Reading, reading, reading. Learning.We had a TV. But gotta say it: TV WAS SHIT. It was ALL shit (it was bullshit). I loved the Muppets.
Cool.
Wow I hate you.
cool.
Oh…you’re that broke cool kid at the coffee shop?
“I’m one of those annoying people who say…”If you feel like you need this as a preface, whatever random rant that is about to follow should just be kept to yourself.
Get off my lawn! I mean seriously, I just reseeded and fertilized.
Stop talking like that. Now I want to go out a buy a goat. And I’m too lazy to plant a garden.I’ve always wanted a goat 🙂
This on the same week-end Sigourney Weaver attends the “Alien” high school play.Seriously, kudos to both of them for their extremely warm and sincere gestures.And also a curse on them both for emboldening future generations of youtubers and rip-off artists with their lame, hacky re-imaginings of pop culture staples. It won’t happen for you, put down the video camera!
Yeah, as feel-good as these two stories are, it’s STILL just another level of 80s nostalgia.
‘79, but yeah.
And Fresh Prince started in 90, yes yes. But most of us probably saw Alien in the 80s (or later), and FPoBA is really a continuation of “Parents Just Don’t Understand”.
I’m being pedantic, but I agree with your overall point. It is just more shameless strip-mining of old pop culture that almost always sets my teeth on edge.
My teenage son’s primary form of entertainment seems to be watching videos where someone has taken a previously popular YouTube video and inserted an old song into it. “Why are you singing that old song?” “Because it’s a meme!” Original content is dead.
You’re a terrible parent. But I feel you.
At least he hasn’t adopted the choppy, repetitious speech pattern of a YouTube Poop, like his cousin has.
You’re a terrible aunt/uncle!
You’re a terrible aunt/uncle!
The interview itself is pretty boilerplate stuffWhat video were you watching? That was more of a pitch meeting than a standard interview. Smith asked about and discussed format potential, there were several copies of the treatment on the table, and he even had one of the original writers of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air come in to discuss. We didn’t see the whole talk, of course, but that was very exciting to see. Based on what was shown, I think if I were Morgan Cooper, I would have walked out of that hotel room thinking “Holy shit, Will Smith wants to back my Fresh Prince reboot!”
Yo, that s is dope!
I hope Big Willie funds this as a YouTube series. It looks great. But does it look like the Will character is hooking up with his cousin Hilary to anyone else?