"The reason I'm here is because Jordan Peele saw Kicks' and loved it, Tipping said during a phone interview. Around the time that was being released he had won an Academy Award (best original screenplay for Get Out) and had just started Monkeypaw Productions. He wanted to meet young filmmakers and wanted to meet me. So the seed was planted."
"Since he had participated in basketball, baseball, soccer and gymnastics while growing up in the East Bay, he instantly responded to the film's crazy sports-themed plot in which up-and-coming football player Cameron Cade (played by Tyriq Withers) goes on the mend and trains at veteran football icon Isaiah White's (Marlon Wayans) freaky Southwest desert sports compound after an attack by a deranged fan. Little does Cam know, he just stepped into a Dantean lair religious allusions and all."
"What also drew Tipping and Peele to the HIM was that it explored some of the same themes, including those pertaining to the concept masculinity, that Tipping had raised in Kicks, a personal film centered on a Richmond teen going to dangerous lengths to retrieve a pair of Air Jordans that had been violently stolen from him. (Tipping based Kicks, in part, on his own teen experience.)"
Justin Tipping, an El Cerrito native, credits his 2016 Oakland-set indie feature Kicks, starring Mahershala Ali, with opening career opportunities. Jordan Peele saw Kicks, had just started Monkeypaw Productions, and later connected with Tipping, creating a career pathway. Tipping spent nearly a decade working across streaming and television before directing and co-writing the provocative sport-horror film HIM (originally titled GOAT) for Peele's company. HIM follows rising football player Cameron Cade, who trains at veteran Isaiah White's eerie desert sports compound after an attack by a deranged fan. The film interrogates fame, sports culture, and concepts of masculinity that overlap with themes from Kicks.
Read at www.mercurynews.com
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