the inside Story Of How the last word “Bye, Felicia” received In “Straight Outta Compton”
F. Gary gray, director of Friday and Straight Outta Compton, explains the phenomenon of “Bye, Felicia” and the moment it hit its pinnacle.
August 12, 2015
It’s the very best dismissal. It’s an evergreen burn. It’s a formal refusal to have interaction with somebody who’s beneath contempt. by some means, “Bye, Felicia,” a minuscule line from the movie Friday, became imbued with a sticky staying power which is resonated for twenty years. Now it’s about to rocket to new zeitgeisty heights. When the eminently memeable insult makes a cameo in Straight Outta Compton, it’s a masterstroke of accident, legacy-building, and fourth-wall breakage that requires a ton of unpacking.
but first, this phrase fabricated from parting phrases needs some introductory ones.
To the uninitiated, “Bye, Felicia” is a freeform kiss-off directed towards the individual, situation, or factor of your selecting. Any concept that’s tedious and unworthy of additional consideration may also be Felicia, and to that end can also be invited to move hibernate inside of a far off shantytown. seem to be on Twitter’s search container at the moment, and within the closing hour, a few individuals have bid their own non-public Felicias adieu. now not all of those Felicia-evictors, though, may just notice that the namesake comes from the film, Friday. the unique character Felicia was once a nasty mooch who will get lightly however conclusively discharged from Ice dice’s stoop. in keeping with the film’s director, F. Gary grey, it was once simply every other line within the film earlier than inciting a catchphrase.
“it’s been standard for the reason that film got here out, nevertheless it ebbs and flows,” gray says, agreeing that the road is presently in heavy float. “It pops up and it goes away and that i have no idea why. it can be any such easy line, it simply caught fireplace and twenty years later persons are still referencing that moment from the film, despite the fact that some of those folks do not know what Friday is.”
Friday used to be the first film F. Gary grey directed, but he recently reteamed with its writer and celebrity, Ice dice, to helm Straight Outta Compton, the origin story of cube’s firebrand supergroup, N.W.A. (look for Co.Create’s in-depth interview with grey about Compton in the coming days.) so as to preserve a non-spoiler experience for individuals who plan on seeing the brand new movie this weekend, it should suffice to say that there is a scene wherein the younger Ice cube personality briskly brushes off a young lady named you-be aware of-what in a method that comes throughout as a hazy-eyed wink at the target market.
“The lady’s name used to be Felicia in the script, she’s written as Felicia and it was just a coincidence,” grey says. “It used to be like 4 o’clock within the morning and it was once just like the 23rd take or something like that of this one shot. And at the end, O’Shea Jackson Jr. [the actor portraying Ice Cube] says, ‘What if I said “bye Felicia?” would not that be funny?’ And all of us busted up laughing, and i said, ‘clutch the cameras, grasp the cameras, let’s do this one more time.’ And so we brought this little additional coincidental shaggy dog story.”
‘Coincidental’ would not even scratch the surface. considering that O’Shea Jackson Jr. is the real son of Ice dice, taking part in Ice cube, ‘cosmically fated’ is more correct. There are Shakespeare plays with fewer threads of magnitude than this funny story.
“We shot it again with O’Shea saying the line and the crew went loopy, the solid went nuts and everybody just laughed at how unusual it was once to have dice’s son say what dice mentioned in the first film that his father wrote and the first film that I directed,” gray says. “It was once just this weird kind of parallel universe, again to the longer term moment that we all shared and i believe that is part of the it’s because it can be funny on quite a lot of levels.”
it appears, additionally it is striking viewers as funny too.
“The audience goes loopy at ‘Bye, Felicia'” gray says. Co.Create can ascertain that the applause in at least one screening was large. “That second will get one of the crucial loudest laughs and cheers.”
somebody doubting that it’s imaginable to make a broad, self-mindful, present shaggy dog story in the course of an incessantly-severe duration movie—without taking viewers out of the movie—well, will we even have to say it again?
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