INTERVIEW | CHARLIE AHEARN ON THE MAKING AND MAGIC OF WILD STYLE

I got the won­der­ful chance to inter­view Wild Styles dir­ect­or Charlie Ahearn after its 4k world première at the BFI Lon­don Film Fest­iv­al. Here is our conversation.

I’m just say­ing that I sat with Lee Quiñones watch­ing the movie. The two of us were gig­gling the whole time, because we’re watch­ing Fred and how Fred enters the scene, like in the yard, and he goes “ZORO”. He goes “ZORO” like that. In oth­er words, his pres­ence is filled with a sense of, this is really a joke, we’re hav­ing a moment, and we’re pre­tend­ing to be film act­ors, and I’m fly­ing way above all this and enjoy­ing myself, and not at your expense, because actu­ally, I’m really enter­tain­ing. Peri­od. And the two of us were laugh­ing because Fred is really hold­ing up the film really like, in a way, his pres­ence gave the film a sense of style and soph­ist­ic­a­tion which it might not have had. And maybe there were some scenes that were like banal in cer­tain regards which he sort of elev­ated, you know, Scooby Doo, it’s like things like that, which were clearly not writ­ten on a script, if there was such a thing. So he was con­stantly impro­vising inter­est­ing little bits. Yes, Fred we love you, and we recog­nize your prom­in­ence in this movie, as someone bound for glory. Let’s put it that he was, you know. We know that Lee, in fact, was the star of this movie. 

 Because, yes­ter­day I heard you say that you haven’t watched Wild Style sit­ting next to each oth­er since it premiered (in 1982!)

Right, which is like 43 years ago.

That is insane.

Lee and I are good, close friends, but we don’t sit and watch the movie togeth­er. That’s just not what good close friends do. We’ve already done that. So it’s been really great and fun to hang out with Lee. And you know, if any­one is Wild Style, it’s Lee. Lee has always been the wild card in this movie. Is he going to show up? What’s he going to do? Do you know what I mean?

 Yeah, I do know what you mean. It’s really nice to talk to you about it, because hear­ing the exper­i­ence of you work­ing and mak­ing with these people, it has the same edge in my opin­ion, that theatre has. Will he/ won’t he turn up? How is this all going to work or end? It is true embodiment.

We were also drop­ping giggles watch­ing PINK and Lee togeth­er. First of all, it was crush­ing me. I just thought these two are really in love. It’s a Romeo and Juliet movie. These two are kids, espe­cially PINK. She was like 16 when I first met her. So the point is, Lee was talk­ing about that incred­ible hood of dark, lus­trous hair. 

How was yes­ter­day for you? 

It was very emo­tion­al for me. First of all, the place is gigant­ic (The BFI South­bank). There were 400 seats that were com­pletely sold out. And then from my own vant­age point, I was really almost moved to tears. I’m sorry to get all gooey, but the stoop rap scene, watch­ing Rod­ney and KK do the stoop rap scene, and the whole thing that they’re express­ing in that moment, acapella. They look like chil­dren to me. They look like chil­dren who are demand­ing their inde­pend­ence. They’re break­ing away from Sylvia Robin­son and the entrenched. The Sug­ar Hill Gang record com­pany. They’re break­ing up their crew. They’re talk­ing about real issues in their life and they’re mak­ing a pact of inde­pend­ence, lib­er­a­tion. They are kids and look what happened.

It’d be great to hear a bit more about you. When I first watched the film years ago, I assumed that you were all from the Bronx. When I spoke to FAB 5 Freddy yes­ter­day, he told me he grew up in Brook­lyn in Bed Stuy. I also remem­ber yes­ter­day, you also spoke about how Lee lived by the Brook­lyn Bridge. Where did you live?

I hap­pen to live right next to the Smith hous­ing pro­jects on Fulton Street, a block away from Lee. And to me, walk­ing into the Smith hous­ing pro­jects was mov­ing from a street corner into a world of unknown pos­sib­il­it­ies and dangers. In oth­er words, this Smith hous­ing pro­ject was the real deal. You don’t just walk into a hous­ing pro­ject and not know people. You got to know your way around. It took me about a year or two to estab­lish that I was mak­ing a kung fu movie in super 8 in the Smith hous­ing pro­ject with Nath­an, who was once Lee Quiñones teach­er of mar­tial arts. This is a real world of someone who had enorm­ous ideals about teach­ing chil­dren how to defend them­selves and prop­er ways to exist out­side of drugs and gangs and all of that oth­er stuff. So his ideal­ism and Lee’s ideal­ism were a good match, because I made the film called The Deadly Art of Sur­viv­al and showed it at the Times Square show, and I showed it in all the hous­ing pro­jects. And Nath­an Ingram’s school was called the Deadly Art of Sur­viv­al. And they would come, the whole school would show up when I would show the movie, and they would do all kinds of demon­stra­tions. The movie was just based on me watch­ing them do their own demon­stra­tions, and they would cre­ate all these little vign­ettes with mar­tial arts in them. I wrote everything down and put it all into the movie as if it were hap­pen­ing in real life. And in a way, that’s what Wild Style is, too. In oth­er words, it is not a doc­u­ment­ary. Clearly, it’s not a doc­u­ment­ary. Lee does not live in the Bronx. Fred Brath­waite lived in Bed Stuy. Lee lived down by the Brook­lyn Bridge.

We were about cre­at­ing an icon­o­graph­ic movie about what it means to be a sub­way graf­fiti artist. And Lee was the per­fect choice because he is the most respec­ted. He did the most whole cars with the most cre­ativ­ity. He was wanted by the police. From A to Z, or as they say in the movie, a to the k, A to the C. He was wanted by the police, and so he had developed this shad­owy exist­ence so that the police could­n’t catch him. And that’s the char­ac­ter that he plays.

I wanted to ask him yes­ter­day about embody­ing that. How easy or not it was to embody his own story on cam­era, right? Because Fab 5 Freddy for example is play­ing a char­ac­ter (PHADE)

Fred was not play­ing him­self. You know, the past two years, he was play­ing him­self in the future. He was play­ing the per­son who was con­nect­ing all these vari­ous parts and people and bring­ing them togeth­er and cre­at­ing some­thing new out of it, which is what I was see­ing him do with Blon­die, which was what I was see­ing him do with Glen O’Bri­en and the MTV Party show. It was what I was see­ing when he was organ­iz­ing our shows at the Mudd Club with Jean Michel Basqui­at and Keith Har­ing and all the oth­er street artists. He was someone who was an organ­izer. I mean, not entirely dif­fer­ent from how I see myself, in a sense, I mean, but I guess that’s interesting,

You def­in­itely organ­ize. Look at how you brought all the ele­ments togeth­er to make a film.

I had a three hour movie that was all so much! In 1981, I had made the movie that included so many ele­ments, and then, over the winter, I had to fol­low and check my head and look into the movie and say, What is this movie? And I basic­ally threw out everything. I said, I’m going to rebuild this movie with sev­en shots. The movie is going to open this time with Lee com­ing over the wall as Spider Man, or whatever you want to call him. ZORO. If you can have sev­en shots that are going to tell the story, what are they going to be? And of course, the char­ac­ter that comes over the wall is the lone out­law graf­fiti artist, right? And then he’s chased by the police, and he’s think­ing about his girl­friend and how they broke up, and then you go from that to estab­lish­ing his rela­tion­ship with PINK. And we had to shoot those scenes in the spring that cre­ated those sev­en pieces end­ing in the water­front. You know when he’s exposed by LADY PINK…

 I mean, she saves the day to be hon­est. 

“I know who you are. You’re that per­son. You’re ZORO.” He’s like, “Who told you?” and she says, “You know, that’s full of shit. You aren’t the reas­on we’re here. We’re here because of all of us are going to come down.” I’m try­ing to tell people there is a story here, but there’s also the Bronx and the birth of Hip Hop, which happened in the Bronx. And we’re going to bring all those rap­pers down here, and they’re going to per­form a show. That’s what she’s telling him. They’re the real stars of this thing, not you. And he looks at her, and this actu­ally happened because one night, I really wor­ry­ing about the movie, lying next to my wife, Jane Dix­on, and I was telling her how I was try­ing to fig­ure out a good end­ing for the movie. And she’s like,” ZORO, who cares about ZORO? It’s the rap­pers. That’s who’s going to come to watch the movie. They’re the stars of this thing.” And I looked at her, and I said, “You did it” because in my mind, all those pieces came togeth­er into a scene. While I was say­ing this to her, I’m writ­ing the scene because she had inspired this idea, which is really a point of anger, is it not? Isn’t there some anger on LADY PINK’s part? Isn’t she really telling him, you are wast­ing your time because you’re not really facing what’s really going on? So in a sense, I was like, You did it! So that’s what it’s like to make a movie that’s not a documentary! 

The encap­su­la­tion of the Bronx and try­ing to make a por­trait of the Bronx at that time was totally real and emo­tion­al to me. Rod­ney C’s neigh­bor­hood was in that movie. Rod­ney C’s friends were all in it. They’re the ones that are push­ing the car.

I love that scene. 

These are por­traits of a spe­cif­ic neigh­bor­hood, and it’s made into funny, crazy kind of scenes, but it’s also a por­trait of real poverty, and what it was like for this Patty Esth­er, who was known as Vir­gin­ia in the movie, driv­ing through the Bronx. She’s look­ing around and she’s mak­ing faces like, my god, what am I going to do with this? It’s so burnt out. What do you do with a neigh­bor­hood that’s so burnt out? It looks like no one could pos­sibly live there. I wanted that to be in the cen­ter of the movie, but we’re also not talk­ing about it. Yes, we are in it. 

I’ve got here with me Can­’t Stop, Won’t Stop by Jeff Chang. It says, 

‘Per­haps the most last­ing trib­ute of the spir­it of the 82 is a movie that Charlie Ahern, Fab 5 Freddy and Lee Quiñones gathered to talk about in an aban­doned mas­sage par­lor in Times Square. Wild Style, the movie cap­tured a sense of dis­cov­ery, a new thing in all its war and unpol­ished glory.’

I think it’s beau­ti­ful. Wild Style is def­in­itely a time cap­sule of early 80’s in the Bronx. 

It’s con­crete in the sense that what is there is people are rep­res­ent­ing them­selves, not as act­ors, but to the world.

Did you ima­gine it would have the glob­al impact that it has had? Did you always see it? It has been 43 years since it was first released.

I thought that this thing was going to be incred­ibly import­ant. I did­n’t think that I was going to be mak­ing a great movie. I thought, holy shit, you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing. You don’t know wheth­er this is a doc­u­ment­ary, or is this a movie, or what this is, you really don’t know, and you know what? Just keep going. And it was so bad, I’m telling you. It required tak­ing the thing and des­troy­ing it many times to make it work. A lot of the ori­gin­al things that were great in the ori­gin­al movie that I shot, like the bas­ket­ball scene, the stoop scene, they were per­fect, and they’re per­fect in there, but I took everything else out. You’re prob­ably wondering,did you keep all that? 

Yes!!!!!!!

No.

  Wow. And is there any part of you that feels like you should have kept some­thing? What if?

No no no.

 That’s bril­liant. I think my brain would forever be think­ing what if?

I wasn’t try­ing to hold on to some­thing, I was try­ing to find some­thing. That’s the only way you can find some­thing interesting.

You each played a role in shap­ing some­thing that changed the world. What would you want young artists and film­makers today’s take from Wild Style, about its cre­ativ­ity, its com­munity, its truth?

The main thing that I got when I watched the movie last night (I wasn’t actu­ally not look­ing at the 4k and try­ing to fig­ure out how fuck­ing bril­liant it looks). I was­n’t think­ing of that at all!  I was think­ing about how inno­cent every­body is in the movie, and how the inno­cence of this time and place is cap­tured by the movie. I feel so con­fid­ent that there is noth­ing there that’s not real. It does­n’t mat­ter who came up with the idea or who dir­ec­ted it. They are mak­ing. They’re express­ing them­selves in a really very dir­ect way. The bas­ket­ball scene encap­su­lates this best. It’s my favor­ite scene.

I was going to ask

I just like to see things like that, or the stoop raps scene where people are really express­ing them­selves. It’s not a script. These are not act­ors. There’s no act­ors in the movie. Patty Esther­’s an act­ress actu­ally.. But then look at what she did when she was mak­ing the movie. She star­ted Fun Gal­lery, which became the sort of club­house and the thing that really sup­por­ted Jean Michel and sup­por­ted Keith Har­ing, and so many oth­er artists that were in the Lower East Side that had shows there. She was really involved in art and involved in the com­munity, and you can see it in the char­ac­ter that she’s play­ing. But she is an act­ress. She was like the lead­ing lady act­ress of Down­town Under­ground Cinema in the East Vil­lage before I made Wild Style. She was in prob­ably 10 fea­ture, super 8 films that oth­er people made.

It’s been 40 plus years since the film was released. When you look at Hip Hop today, does it sur­prise you? Did you ever ima­gine that it would become this glob­al phenomenon?

I just want to emphas­ize that by the time I was done with the film, the whole world of Hip Hop had crashed. It morph­ed into a com­mer­cial world, very much around ¹⁹⁸³⁄₈₄ and then 85. It was sort of Run DMC and people that were really com­ing from the out­side. Up until that point, it was a fam­ily affair. Up until that point, it was some­thing nur­tured in the com­munit­ies by cous­ins. People were cous­ins. They were all related. They had all grown up togeth­er in a neigh­bor­hood. That was that neigh­bor­hood that you see. The DJ is also no longer the per­son call­ing the shots. Instead, it became a record com­pany. First it was Sug­ar Hill Records, but then it very quickly became who could come up with the next single? It was all about mak­ing a par­tic­u­lar record. You know, Run DMC comes to mind as the first stars of Hip Hop. We could point the fin­ger at Sylvia Robin­son at Sug­ar Hill and how Flash and the Furi­ous broke up over their dif­fer­ences, over Sylvia. Then the Funky 4+1, who were the oth­er super group, love Sha-Rock. Gotta love Sha-Rock. They were real groups that really defined what this cul­ture was. And then there’s groups like the Cold Crush Broth­ers. They nev­er really, ever got a record. They nev­er really got chosen to come for­ward. And then it became people that were much more savvy in terms of how to oper­ate in a career in a world like that. I won’t go into the red. I mean, it’s a really com­plic­ated ques­tion, How Hip Hop changed. It became some­thing very dif­fer­ent from what it was. Of course, there was an emphas­is on viol­ence in a lot of Hip Hop later on. So I don’t know. I don’t have a good answer,

I mean, thank you for answer­ing. It was so great to talk to you and con­grat­u­la­tions about yes­ter­day and your first solo show at Wood­bury House. Thank you.

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Valerie Ebuwa

Valer­ie “wing girl” Ebuwa is a freel­ance dance artist and yoga teach­er from East Lon­don. She is cur­rently dan­cing for 3 con­tem­por­ary dance com­pan­ies and is one of the found­ing mem­bers of Eclectics Dance and CEO of Hip Hop House.

Latest posts by Valerie Ebuwa (see all)

• INTER­VIEW | CHARLIE AHEARN ON THE MAK­ING AND MAGIC OF WILD STYLE — Octo­ber 20, 2025
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• REVIEW | THE POWER (OF) THE FRA­GILE : A MOV­ING DANCE PER­FORM­ANCE EXPLOR­ING FRA­GIL­ITY, DREAMS, AND BOUND­AR­IES — July 5, 2023