More movie billboards for the new 50 Cent movie Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ have been taken down after complaints from community groups. This is either a) a terrible thing to happen to 50 Cent, b) more movie publicity than he could have ever hoped for.
But if all this 50 Cent billboard hoo-ha isn’t enough to convince the public to go and watch Get Rich Or Die Tryin’, the film’s star and director have been hitting the more conventional hyperbolic promotional stage, with the movie’s director Jim Sheridan giving the unlikely statement "To me, 50 Cent is a black gangsta Jesus with the wounds to prove it."
The movie billboards for the forthcoming 50 Cent (CDs) movie Get Rich Or
Die Tryin’ have been courting controversy ever since they were first
displayed. A giant image of 50 Cent’s outstretched arms holding a
gun in one hand and a microphone in the other, the billboards have been
accused of promoting everything from gun crime to anti-community spirit by angry local residents.
Campaigners in LA have already made Paramount Pictures remove some of the 50
Cent billboards, and now a similar group in Philadelphia – Men United
for a Better Philadelphia – have successfully negotiated the removal of
a further 21 billboards.
Jim Sheridan, the director of Get Rich Or Die Tryin’, says that understands the complaints:
"The
poster thing surprised me. People were complaining about a gun when
nearly every American film is promoted with guns. It feels kind of
crazy to be talking about cardboard guns when there are so many real
ones. It’s OK. I’m conscious of why people are worried. We don’t want
to be promoting the idea that you just get a gun and that solves your
life."
So it’s sorted, then. 50 Cent doesn’t glamorise or play up to
his image as a gun-wielding gangsta, and he certainly won’t talk about
it to the press to help boost the box office performance of his movie.
Yeah, right. Talking to the Chicago Sun Times, 50 Cent said:
"The blood was flowing out of my stomach, out of my leg and out of my left cheek, where I was shot in the face. I remember I was on
that gurney being wheeled into an operating room. I was strapped down
and I couldn’t move. That’s what I remember about the day when I was
really shot… It was very emotional
for me to act out the scene where I’m shot and left for dead. But at least it wasn’t a hard acting exercise. I’m someone who
knows what it’s like to lay in the middle of the street in a pool of
blood. I know what it’s like to be shot in the face. I know."
Did we mention that 50 Cent once got shot?
Read more:
Dodging A Bullet: 50 Cent – Chicago Sun Times
More 50 Cent gun posters removed – BBC
[story by Stuart Heritage]