Black is back Men In Black, Columbia's likeable "sci-fi adventure comedy" to be released on August 1st, is set to become the blockbuster of the season. In the US, it is already the fastest grossing non-sequel ever, taking ticket sales of $90 million in its first two weeks. Even if the agenda is strictly comic book (Ghostbusters meets The X- Files, but lacking the logic of either), with Stephen Spielberg as executive producer and Barry Sonnenfield (Get Shorty and The Addams Family) directing, its entertainment pedigree is unassailable. Not since the John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd hit the road as the Blues Brothers in the early 1980s have black suits and Raybans been so cool. And thanks to the welcome presence of Will Smith, familiar to every TV viewer under 24 as the Fresh Prince Of Bel Air, it is equally cool to be black.
Now in its sixth season, this highly successful teen sitcom was built round Smith, now aged 28. As half of a Grammy-winning rap duo known as DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Will Smith came to the attention of jazz legend-turned-TV-producer, Quincy Jones. Jones recognised that as an ambassador for black youth, Smith's brand of laidback self-deprecating humour was just what was needed as an antidote to the the sort of negative aggression groups such as NWA (Niggers With Attitude), who in the late 1980s were giving rap a bad name. Cool, cocky yet vulnerable, Will Smith as The Fresh Prince was as unthreatening and yummy as hot buttered toast. Finally Hollywood had what it wanted, an Afro-American boy-next-door. Men In Black, in which Will Smith co-stars with Tommy Lee Jones as black-suited alien-busters, is Smith's fifth movie. The Los Angeles sitcom year runs from August to February to give six months free for other things, and Smith first hit the big screen in 1993 with Six Degrees Of Separation, directed by Fred Schlepsi from the stage play by John Guare. His performance as a street kid who, through cunning and charm, inveigles his way into the apartment and lives of two rich New Yorkers, was superb: beautifully paced, effortlessly convincing, Smith easily holding his own against the class acts of Stockard Channing and Donald Sutherland. His character's claim that he was the son of Sydney Poitier was as plausible to us as it was to them.
Kudos is fine, but box office is better and no actor, particularly no young black actor, can live by art house movies alone. ("I want to be able to afford my house.") Since then Will Smith's screen credits have seen blockbuster follow blockbuster: Bad Boys, Independence Day and now Men In Black - the film that will make him a household name here - in the role of Agent J, an innocent with a heart of gold who joins a secret government agency devoted to "protecting the earth from the scum of the universe", namely some rather effective aliens that are, Smith is the first to agree, the real stars of the movie.
Men In Black has ransacked the full box of cinematographic tricks - puppets, prosthetics, animation plus real animals and insects (next to "animal trainer" the film credits include "bug wrangler" ) to achieve its kaleidoscopic range of aliens: not too scary for children (Men in Black is rated PG) and yet witty and jokey enough for grownups. Unlike Independence Day which treated an alien invasion with a degree of seriousness, the artistic genesis of the creatures the Men In Black have to wrestle with lies closer to The Muppets, I would suggest, than Hieronymous Bosch.
"The thing with special effects movies," explains Smith, "is they're not about individuals. They're more an ensemble thing, and there's something exciting about that. On Men In Black there was ILM [Industrial Light and Magic], George Lucas's company, and Rick Baker [make-up effects artist] and Stephen Spielberg.
"You sit the best people in the world at what they do around a table and just say - what can we do? And they can do just about anything. It's exciting being part of a team like that. Whereas in a film like Six Degrees, it's strictly about the acting and the performance.
"Obviously I'm interested in doing more films like that, it's just finding the role, but there's 150,000 special effects and action movies; you can always find those. Right now the only thing that comes close is the Mohammed Ali story, but all there is so far is the concept that was presented to me, there's no script. But that is something I would have to commit to in a big way," and he brings his fists in front of his face, jabs and parries. His tall slim frame is more bantam weight, I suggest, than heavyweight. He laughs, a great easy laugh that knocks the stuffing out of the plush hotel suite in London's Park Lane. He reminds me that he was born and raised in Philadelphia, blue-collar heart of black America. "Joe Frazier was from Philadelphia and when Joe Frazier knocked out Mohammed Ali, that was like a huge thing, and everyone wanted to box at that time."
Once again, it will be down to the script as to whether he finally does it. "I get maybe one script a year where the writing is to the level of Six Degrees. But then John Guare doctored every word of the script over seven years." If Guare's script for Six Degrees was sacrosanct, the script for Men In Black was anything but. It's one of the pluses of doing comedy, Smith explains. "Most scripts I get given are written for white characters, so I'm always injecting that ethnic flavour to make the language my own." In Independence Day it was the odd line. But in Men In Black he had much more scope.
"First you do what's is in the script, then we'd go for other takes. We'd do a Will take, a Tommy take. You'd go with the script in order to get a sense of where you're going, then we'd shoot it and get it solid. After that you can allow all of the other ideas in that are going to spark it, to find a character, to get a more specific twist on the lines. Tommy and I would come in every day with what we'd thought about the scene, and while we were shooting the main segment Barry would be thinking about how he could incorporate the things we had presented. Because both Tommy Lee and I had really specific ideas about our characters." Although he can't be precise about how often the "options" were used rather than the original script, he says "probably most".
What Men In Black has given Will Smith is the opportunity to get back to rapping with the promo video for the movie. "I haven't made any records in four years, and it was good to get back in the studio. I sing two songs on the soundtrack and I'm in the middle of recording my own album to be released in October. Making music is really the most personal form of entertainment that I do. I write all the lyrics and it's really about me, it's about what I think and what I feel. Whereas with movies you're adapting someone else's vision. You're more of a tool." Will Smith's creative energies are currently engaged on honing his first film script, Love For Hire, which he co-wrote with his wife, Jana Pinkett, who starred with Eddie Murphy in the recent remake of The Nutty Professor.
It's a romantic comedy. No aliens. No hardware. No special effects. And just for him. "We don't want to act in the same films just yet. Making movies is really stressful, so we try not to work at the same time. When I'm working she looks after me and vice versa. I keep her slippers nice and toasty while she's working. Much as you don't want to, you take that stuff home. And that's hard." Particularly if it's slime-a-dozen aliens.
Men In Black will be released nationwide on August 1st