Instead, how about the recent Netflix documentary, The Disciple: A Wu-Tang Fable? That seems like it could legitimately be worth a look. And it's not just some random licensed flick hosted on their service; it's a Netflix original. Let's do it!
So, the titular disciple in question is Cilvaringz, a name I definitely... recognize, yeah. He's one of those later generation Wu affiliates who has a bunch of songs with the OGs. I remember a song he had that I liked called "In the Name of Allah" or something with Shabazz the Disciple, Method Man, RZA and Killah Priest on it. Or maybe RZA just produced it. Or RZA has a short verse and Cilva produced it? It was a long time ago; but the fact that I don't remember if Cilvaringz even raps on my favorite Cilvaringz song is kind of the point. I'm not even saying that's because he sucks or anything. But I clearly need a refresher, and if Netflix's on the money, so do some of you.
Cilva's biggest thing is that he's largely behind the Once Upon a Time In Shaolin, that Wu-Tang Clan album they made a big deal of only making one copy of and selling for two million dollars, rather than the traditional business model of making affordable copies of your albums and selling it to a wide number of fans. So, this doc is as much a story about that album than Cilva himself. You may recall it sold to a scummy pharmaceutical millionaire who went to jail for making life saving medicine to expensive to afford for most people (so, essentially the same model). Or technically, I suppose he went to jail for securities fraud and running some kind of ponzi scheme. Pricing people out of their vital medicine was just a legal and despicable thing he did.
I was never too invested in the buzz around this album, personally. It got a ton of press, but by 2015, you had to be pretty naive to expect 36 Chambers magic to strike another collective Clan album, and I assumed it was mostly guest verse scraps pasted together with junior members' work. This doc reminded me of an interview Meth gave saying he didn't know he was recording his verse for an actual Wu album, and maybe he would've taken his contribution more seriously if he had. So, you know, it's not exactly keeping me up nights worrying if the world will ever get to hear this record. To this day, I still haven't sat down and listened to the full Dreddy Kruger Presents...Think Differently Music: Wu-Tang Meets The Indie Culture all the way through either. It's probably alright.
Anyway, let's get into the movie already. First off, it's a little unfocused. It spends a lot of time explaining who the Wu-Tang Clan are (does anybody who would watch this movie need to hear this?) and talking to an actual "kung-fu master." And we get Cilva's personal origin story, which hey, was all news to me. Apparently he's Dutch, became a fan as a teenager and traveled to America to try to get put on. Honestly, it's kinda wild that worked.
Unfortunately, the filmmakers didn't get an incredible amount of access. They're talking to Cilva, sure, but pretty much all the insight we hear from the core Wu members is sourced from second hand footage you could already find online. The way they had RZA on the cover and this being a Netflix original had me thinking the guys might be participating, but not really. RZA did, at least briefly (he has maybe 1 minute of original footage), plus they got Cappadonna. And Shabazz. But otherwise it's pretty much just Cilva and his buddies talking to the camera.
Honestly, I wasn't expecting to be this bored. This movie had one job: make me care about Cilvaringz, and it could not have failed harder. The director has won Oscars and Emmys, but here it feels like she's cashing an easy check, mixing a handful of brief sit-down interviews with old Youtube music clips. So much of this movie is just recycled video, and them trying various techniques (show it really small on the screen, make it black & white, put various filters and graphics over the image) to hide how low res it is.
Things suddenly get interesting in the last half hour, though, when there's actually a little drama. There's a clip of Meth dissing Cilvaringz, followed by Cilva talking about how nobody from school wanted to go to his birthday parties when he was a kid. Then he mentions "the sexual abuse" and "maybe I'm a sociopath." Just right out of the blue! This movie didn't have anything to say about anything, except the most dull material about the design of the Once Upon a Time album cover or how he got to travel with the Wu, and then all of a sudden, an hour and fifteen minutes in, it comes alive!
Unfortunately, just as quickly, it's over. They never deal with the abuse or anything. The last half hour is basically all about the scandal around what happened with the Once Upon a Time buyer going to prison. That stuff's probably more exciting if you didn't already know the whole story, and these details came as a surprise to you. But it's kinda interesting. In the end, it all feels a bit silly, just because of how much they keep overly hyping it up as a great work of art that the people desperately need to hear, when it's probably pretty mediocre. They play fifteen seconds of it, and it does sound pretty decent; but I'm gonna need more than a fifteen second soundbite to sucker me in. Although they did get me to watch this...
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