Joseph Kahn on ‘Bodied’ his offensive and funny film on battle rappers

(L-R) Calum Worthy and Jackie Long in
“Bodied.”
Neon/YouTube

• Joseph Kahn, known for his music videos for the likes of
  Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga, is releasing his latest feature film,
  “Bodied,” on Friday.
• It is a hilariously un-PC look at the world of battle
  rapping, where you win by destroying your opponent with the
  crudest (and often most racist) lyrics you can think of.
• Kahn told Business Insider why a movie like this is perfect
  for the woke-sensitive world we live in today, and why he
  self-financed the movie with $2 million of his own money.

Joseph Kahn is known best for his highly stylized music videos
that he’s been making since the 1990s for the likes of Snoop
Dogg, Destiny’s Child, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Eminem, and
Taylor Swift.

And through that time he’s been trying to figure out how to make
a movie about the art of battle rapping — where two highly
skilled lyricists face off in front of an audience, and use only
their words to completely decimate each other. In battle rap,
nothing is off limits. You can talk about the person’s race,
looks, medical condition, sexual preference, their dead mom.
Nothing is taboo.

“Bodied” (opening in theaters Friday and available on YouTube
November 28) is basically “8 Mile” if it wasn’t made in
Hollywood. We follow Adam (Calum Worthy), a white graduate
student who is fascinated by the art of battle rapping and
befriends one of Oakland’s best, Behn Grynn (Jackie Long), to be
his guide in the battle rap culture so he can write a thesis
paper on it. But it turns out Adam has some skills, and quickly
finds himself on the circuit with Behn battle rapping. Eventually
Adam gets so engrossed in the rush of the culture that he’s
willing to alienate his family, friends, and even Behn to rise in
the battle rap ranks.

The movie, which Eminem is a producer on, isn’t just a satirical
exploration of woke culture and the echo chamber that is social
media. Kahn uses his talents to tell two stories: one through the
vocal storytelling of the raps (penned masterfully by real battle
rapper Kid Twist) and the other visually, as Kahn scatters the
movie with special effects to heighten the prose.

Business Insider sat down with Kahn in New York City to talk
about why the only way he could make the movie was to
self-finance it, passing on a major Hollywood blockbuster to make
“Bodied,” putting the actors through battle rap boot camp, and
why the movie makes you feel less racist because it’s so racist.

Jason Guerrasio: Would this have been made
without you self-financing it?

Joseph Kahn: Absolutely not. Can you imagine
taking this script with two hours of racist, misogynist,
homophobic jokes?

Guerrasio: It would be watered down to the point
of being unwatchable. 

“Bodied” director Joseph Kahn.
Getty

Kahn: Right. And here’s the thing, battle rap
does exist in the popular culture in things like roasts and “Drop
the Mic” and all that stuff, but that’s not really battle rap.
That’s saying someone who gets into a pity-pat slap fight is
boxing. No, in boxing you’re supposed to get hurt. The entire
agenda is that your opponent is knocked out. In battle rap,
you’re supposed to hurt the opponent to the point they are
dead. 

Guerrasio: In the early days, did you ever think
that someone out there might get what you wanted to do and write
you a check instead of you using your own money?

Kahn: The story behind this is I made this short
“Power/Rangers,” which is this thing I put online
that I made in secret for a year. I wanted to make a commentary
on grim, dark superheroes and how Hollywood markets the stuff.
Doing a satire by making the most serious version of the silliest
kids property. After that came out literally every studio knocked
at my door. And I looked at every project floating around and I
couldn’t find one property I was interested in doing. 

Guerrasio: You were even being offered the major
IPs?

Kahn: They were there and I had the opportunity
and nothing interested me. So I was talking to Adi Shankar, my
producing partner on “Power/Rangers” and he said, “What do you
want to do next?” And I said, “Well, I have choice one, which is
this big property, or choice two is I want to make a battle rap
movie.” And he said, “Do choice two.” 

“Bodied.”
Neon

Guerrasio: So what kind of check did you have to
write yourself for this?

Kahn: I did it for under $2 million.

Guerrasio: It looks amazing for what you put in.

Kahn: That includes soundtrack, by the way. And
we shot it over 23 days with a SAG crew. If anyone knows anything
about film business, that’s extraordinarily hard what we
did. Which shows me that if I ever wanted to do one of these
big Hollywood films, I’ll know how to do it. 

Guerrasio: But the thing is you won’t be able to
do it your way. You’ll have to collaborate with the executives.

Kahn: And by the way, I’m not opposed to that. I
just need to make sure I’m in a position where I believe in the
project. I mean, I do Lexus commercials, I think I can work with
others. 

Guerrasio: Here’s the irony of what you did with
“Bodied.” You self-finance the movie, do it how you want to, but
now you have to sell it to a distributor or streaming service so
audiences can see it. You have to play the game. Before going
into that process, did you consider self-distribution?

Kahn: It was a serious thought at one point. And
I’ll tell you exactly when it was, it was when I was submitting
to film festivals and getting turned down by every one of them.
Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca, New York Film Festival. 

Guerrasio: Then Sundance showed it this
year. 

Kahn: Yeah, the year after I submitted it. What
happened was everyone was very uncomfortable with the film
because it didn’t fall into a very specific category. I do feel
that the films that are on the indie film circuit, and I’m a
liberal person, these are just films that have liberals clapping
themselves on the back. Like showing, “I’m so woke.” This
movie says murder is bad. Well, of course murder is bad.
This movie had this amazing message that slavery is bad.
Yes, it’s bad. What exactly are you saying that you don’t already
know? I find these weak, quite frankly. Something like “Bodied”
is a morality tale, but a satiric morality tale. With satire you
don’t have to state your moral. You can criticize a moral without
having an answer, and that’s what we did. We are criticizing
today’s world. I don’t think filmmakers should be giving answers,
because who are these guys and girls? Just because they were able
to finance a movie they suddenly are philosopher kings that have
all the answers to life? This is a ridiculous thing. 

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Guerrasio: What made you not go the
self-distribution route?

Kahn: The last major film festival we did,
Toronto. We were in the Midnight section and from what I
understand we were right on the fence. Specifically the young
people, the millennials, were like, “This is so racist you can’t
program this,” and they voted against the movie being in the
festival. The young people voted against this movie! Which is
crazy! But it played at Toronto and won the Midnight audience
award. Then it played at AFI and it won the audience award and at
Fantastic Fest it won the audience award. It turns out people are
not offended by this movie, people are enjoying themselves. This
whole concept that woke culture has of the completely not-racist
person that sees no stereotypes that lives a perfectly amazing
life, this person does not exist. The reality is differences in
people are funny. It’s a movie that makes you feel less racist by
being more racist. 

Guerrasio: You should put that on the poster.

Kahn: [laughs] And the movie changes
depending on what the national politics are at that point. Look
what’s happened this week, bombs being sent out to the left, a
synagogue being shot up, and then we have Megyn Kelly being fired
over blackface comments. This is the context of how this movie is
being released this week. 

Guerrasio: Who knows what will happen two weeks
from now.

Kahn: It might be some completely different
context. 

Adam (Calum
Worthy) reaching for racist lyrics during a battle rap. One of
the many visual effects used in “Bodied” that director Joseph
Kahn calls “inter-subjective camera work.”
Neon/YouTube

Guerrasio: What’s great about this movie is the
camera work. The cutaways you do to show reaction shots of battle
rap lyrics is as funny as the lyrics themselves. The creative
over-the-shoulder shots. The visual effects that pop up in the
middle of raps. Were all of these things in your head for a while
and “Bodied” was the vessel to use them?

Kahn: In my off time I often think on a quantum
mechanical level of how films work. I’m not talking about just
story or act structure, I’m talking about how to edit work. I
have really been getting into subjective filmmaking, how to
isolate the camera to go into someone’s perspective for
subjectivity. So the visual effects are inter-subjective camera
work where you’re blending in watching the person and
experiencing what that person is saying, all at once. 

Guerrasio: Outside of the visuals, there are the
performances. How did you get these actors to give a naturalistic
feel of being battle rapers?

Kahn: There was a huge rehearsal beforehand.
They went to battle rap school. There’s this battle rapper
Rone who taught Adam to be more racist, to put
it frankly. Like the line about cutting the bonsai tree, he told
him, “But say it with an Asian accent.” [laughs] So
there was a two month battle rap school they went to and that was
still happening on set. It was so critical that they get all the
lines exactly right. It was, no joke, like Shakespeare. Most
films you can screw up the lines, with this, for the structure to
work, you must hit exactly the word at the point you’re supposed
to hit it. 

Guerrasio: What did Eminem think of the “8 Mile”
insults in the movie?

Kahn: He loved it. He watched it and was into
it. His whole camp was like, “This is stuff we hear every day, so
we love this.” This is the thing about Eminem, he’s incredibly
self deprecating. He knows who he is, he knows how he plays in
the culture. The reason why he’s successful as opposed to other
white rappers is that he gets it. He’s always referencing himself
as a fraud or fake Elvis and I think the self deprecation serves
him well.

Guerrasio: I’m curious, do music video directors
root for one another when you guys go out and make a feature?
Like, did you drop Director X a line and wish him luck on

the release of “Superfly”?

Kahn: I am the worst person to ask about this
because I am the most antisocial person. It’s surprising that I
have a healthy career in music videos because I am the last
person that should be hanging out with any celebrity. On my daily
basis when I’m not shooting I’m literally just surfing the
internet or reading a book. That’s all I do. 

Guerrasio: So it’s not like the music video
director community hang out a lot.

Kahn: I really don’t know any other filmmakers.
I just don’t hang out. 

Guerrasio: Is this breaking news to you that a
music video director made “Superfly.”

Kahn: I actually didn’t even know there was a
movie called “Superfly.” 

Guerrasio: [laughs] You should see
it. 

Kahn: And here is the other thing, it’s very
hard to get me in a movie theater. For me it’s not a financial
issue, though for most it is. I think that’s why most go see a
Marvel movie because it’s a safe bet. It’s a low risk. 

Guerrasio: You’re not doing a good job selling
“Bodied” right now. 

Kahn: [laughs] I would like people to
picture “Bodied” as Amazon back in 1998. We are a $5 stock. We
seem risky as hell, but I feel if you invest in us we’ll rock
your world.