Of Mics and Men

[Drunk Monk]

This is a 4-part Showtime doc on Wu-Tang Clan. Each ep is an hour. It's quite good - lots of vintage footage and recent interviews of the Wu together and alone. A lot of info I didn't know. Their rise is an incredible story on many levels. I'm almost done with ep 3. Ep 2 had Sophia Chang, an old friend who married Shi Yanming, one of the first Shaolin monks to defect. They hired me to live with them for a week and produce two cover stories, one for KFTC and another for Inside Kung-Fu. It really put me on the map as a writer, but probably would've killed my career if I didn't get the job afterwards because martial arts mags are really hurt by mutual covers like that. On that trip, I hung out with Rosie Perez, Michelle Forbes and of course, RZA. Later, in '99, I travelled with RZA to Wudang. There was a documentary shot of that trip, but it was never finished, shelved due to some contractual issue. I asked RZA about it the last time we had lunch for Man with the Iron Fist. He said he lost $10K on that project.

It's been many years since I've seen RZA. I've had to RM my way into Wu shows - no more backstage passes. Last time, at SLA, I wound up hanging with Daniel Wu.

[Drunk Monk]

E3 was ODB.

Such a tragic tale. It reminds me of Peter Tosh in that he was the bad boy of the group, and things just got worse for him, although much of it wasn't directly his doing, rather the result of his oppression, which lay at the core of what their music was about.

One more ep tonight. Tomorrow we lose Showtime. We only got it again for Homeland.

[Greg]

BINGE!

[Drunk Monk]

4 is a lot of RZA and it goes into OUATiS and Shkreli. There's a tiny shout out to RZA's Wudang trip but it's overshadowed by pace effects. And that's the end of the doc series.

The premiere is the most interesting. The other three eps have their points to make but they tend to be a little longwinded. Somewhere in the hour, my mind wanders from the Wu.

No sword fights, but there's a lot of sword sounds. Recommended only for WUDOOM