Family members and friends of Michael Booth sat dejected on a porch outside the beige and brown wooden house where he grew up on the Far South Side of Chicago.
They talked about his life in the crime-plagued Roseland neighborhood and how he avoided trouble until he went to see the movie ”Boyz N the Hood”
Friday night.
Nationwide, the movie about a group of black youths growing up in a Los Angeles neighborhood has generated controversy and isolated incidents of gang- related violence. For the Booths, it brought tragedy.
”I think it is because of that movie that my brother got killed,” said Regina Booth, the victim`s younger sister, as she rocked her baby. ”He (the killer) got the wrong message from the movie.”
Ironically, ”Boyz N the Hood” writer and director John Singleton wanted to send a message to ”increase the peace” in inner-city neighborhoods, but for some the message got distorted.
On the film`s opening night, Booth, 23, a security guard, went with his girlfriend, Tonia Gray, and their 1-year-old daughter, DeShantee, to the Halsted Twin Outdoor Theater in south suburban Riverdale.
The drive-in was packed with cars and people that night. When the movie ended, family members said Booth tried to leave, but was stalled by the traffic. According to family members, that is when an unidentified man walked up to Booth`s dark blue Pontiac 2000 and asked for a light. Booth, they said, told him to move on. Instead, they said, the man shot Booth. He died moments later.
Police have not charged anyone in Booth`s killing.
Besides the incident at the Halsted, there was violence at 20 of the more than 800 theaters showing the film across the country, according to the distributor, Columbia Pictures.
The violence forced eight movie theaters, including three in the Chicago area, to temporarily withdraw the movie, according to Columbia.
On Monday, several of the theaters, including the Halsted, decided to resume showing the film. The Halsted, however, started the movie at 8:45 p.m. instead of midnight as before. There were no incidents.
But the management of the Cinema 12 in Waukegan said they have no plans now to show the film, even though it sold out both shows Friday night and has received telephone calls from people asking them to restore it.
”We decided not to show it due to the best interest of the theater and the community,” said David Hicks, the assistant manager.
The Friday night violence, however, has not discouraged people from going to see the movie. Large crowds are still showing up at many of the 30 theaters showing the movie in the Chicago area.
Monday night, Halsted officials and local police took precautions to ensure that the violence was not repeated. Uniformed police checked cars entering the theater, peering inside for weapons and drugs, and plainclothes officers patrolled the grounds, a theater employee said.
But tensions were high. An officer checking cars commented that a vehicle approaching the theater full of young black men ”already looked suspicious.” Most patrons thought the extra security was a good idea, although many left the movie wondering what the controversy was about.
”I don`t see why the picture would cause a murder or violence,” said Phyllis Landrum, 22, of the South Side. ”It wasn`t nearly as bad (as I had heard). It was a nice picture.”
Tanya Spann, 21, of Calumet City, said: ”I don`t think (the movie)
started it. Kids on the street started it.”
”I wanted to see what makes these people go crazy like this,” said Spann`s aunt Toni, 30. ”Anything`s possible, but if a person`s going to do something, they`re going to do it anyway. Critics make a big thing out of movies and to me they put a lot of things into kids` heads.”
Monday night, the movie elicited an emotion clearly unwanted by the film`s creators. After a scene in the movie in which friends avenge a youth killed earlier by gang, many in the audience cheered and applauded the retaliatory killing.
