Ice Cube in "Are We Done Yet?"

APRIL 3, 2007—It’s not enough Ice Cube’s prized Lincoln Navigator was turned into scrap metal in Are We There Yet?

In Are We Done Yet?, Ice Cube’s Nick Persons endures even more bumps and bruises after discovering his dream house in the suburbs is nothing but a dilapidated money pit. Everything that can go wrong goes wrong as Nick sinks his life savings—and risks life and limb—into putting a roof over the heads of his pregnant wife (Nia Long) and his stepchildren (Aleisha Allen and Philip Daniel Bolden).

This sequel to Ice Cube’s 2005’s family-friendly road trip from hell was originally conceived as a remake of Cary Grant’s post-World War Two farce, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. During a recent trip to Miami, the rapper-turned-actor discussed retooling Mr. Blandings as Are We Done Yet? and shared his thoughts on:

Whether making a family film such as Are We Done Yet? means the founding member of gangsta rap group N.W.A. has lost his edge
Everybody’s got their own opinions of it. My thing is, there’s a time and a place for everything. No one’s harder than a bullet anyway, so how hard can you really be? I’m always being myself. I’ve never not been myself. I’ll leave it at that. I don’t worry about being hard. I’m not an image. I’m myself. I’m not trying to be an image. I’m just trying to be who I am. I’m cool with that. And if my critics don’t like it, so what?

Turning a Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House remake into a sequel to Are We There Yet?
They had approached me to do Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, and we was working on that script to get it right, and as we started looking at it, it was a guy with a wife and a kid, in a small apartment, moving to a house that kind of terrorizes him. Are We There Yet? had done so good, and Mr. Blandings, nobody in this generation knows about that movie…. We just felt it was smart. Why sit and write a sequel and have two movies that were similar? The guy with a new wife and kids, it just matched up so good to just flip the story. You’ll be so surprise how easy it was to convert that script into [Are We Done Yet?]. Adding little touches that you remember from the first movie. But for me, it was a no-brainer. It was perfect. More kids know about Are We There Yet? than they do about Mr. Blandings.

How to make a successful sequel
I never want to harp on the first movie. I never really want to mention the first movie too much when we’re doing the sequel. I always go at it that the movie I’m making has to stand on its own, whether you’ve seen any of the other ones. Whether you have seen the first Friday or the second Friday, Friday After Next still has to hold up as a movie by itself. And that’s how I always look it. We do Barbershop. Barbershop 2, regardless of whether you have seen Barbershop, you have to be able to sit there and not harp too much on the first movie. Just go out and make another movie.

Working for a fourth time with Nia Long following Boys n the Hood, Friday and Are We There Yet?
I like working with Nia Long. She’s not only a great actress, no matter how big or small the part is, she always brings her A game. She could play any kind of woman. I know if we give her a lot to do, she’s going to give us a lot. If we give her a little to do, she’s going to do a lot with that little. She never takes a day off, and nothing is too big or too small for her. People like to see in movies.

Whether animating the opening and closing credits of Are We Done Yet? has inspired Ice Cube make a full-length animated film
We would like to do animation. The animation process is crazier than making a movie. We’ve got to lock in on the project two or three years before it comes out. We just ain’t put any effort into that because we’re still trying to make the movies we want to make. Sooner or later, we’ll get into that. I want to do animation for the big screen. It will come.

Working in Hollywood
I don’t think I’ll ever feel comfortable out there. Each project, it seems like it takes a miracle to get made. Everybody in Hollywood’s got their own agenda. Sometimes you can show, “Y'all, we’ve been making money, you need to do this movie with us.” But they’ve got other movies they want to make. And there’s so much money in the kitty. So you never get to where whatever you drop on the desk, they say, “Cube, your last one worked, you’ve got it.” They always run you through the wringer, no matter what movie you’re doing. We’ve always got 14 or 15 projects in different states of development, and whichever looks like is going work, that’s the one we’re put our energy behind to get green lit. That’s the hardest thing to do, to get the studio to say, “OK, we’re going to do your movie,” sign on the line, checks start to roll. I don’t think I’ll ever get comfortable because the process is too unknown. It’s always, “We’re got this good script; let’s see who’s down to make it.” That’s always going to be the process.

Maintaining creative control over his film and music projects
I really try to keep as much control as possible. My music is really my show—I can do anything I want. I’ve never had anyone from a label tell me to do anything. I say I’m going to make a record, and I like it like that. Movies, it’s a team. You’ve got to be more of a team player. I delegate the duties and get people to step up to the plate, to do what they do best, to do what you hired them for. You can’t really do it all. I try to orchestrate the whole situation, and I really try to put my touch on it, especially if it’s a Cube Vision [Ice Cube’s production company] movie.

Choosing film projects
We’ve had more success with projects that we’ve been control of than we had success with just acting in or jumping on other people’s projects. We want to have as much control as they will give us as producers, because we feel we know what to do, at least for my audience. If we have script approval, if we definitively have a producing say in it, if they got the money I’m looking for, those are the things that really make me lean toward doing the film. Of course, the script’s got to be dope, but that goes without saying. But after the script’s is dope, the other things we try to get to. With Barbershop, that movie was brought to our company. We took it and we refined the script and produced it and made it into what you’ve seen. We were more involved with the second one.

His work ethic
I just have an unquenchable creative thirst. I’m never satisfied. When we’re done with a project, when we go to the premiere, I’m really done with it; I’m on to the next one. I never really sit on what’s been done. It’s always, what are we doing tomorrow? Creating a movie is the biggest canvas you can have. Being able to do what you can do in a movie, I just love to put them together. I love to create on that level. And I love to do music. I can say more from my heart with music just because with a movie, there are so many more people involved with the finished product.

His next film
We’re got this movie called First Sunday that hopefully I’ll be doing with Mike Epps. It’s about us robbing a church. We’re a little fed up with how the church is treating my grandmother. The church has sucked up from the community and hasn’t really given back and is planning to move to a bigger Evangelist-type thing, and we kind of fed up. We’re like, “Ya’ll been for all these years, you’ve sucked up all this from the community, the community really needs you and you’re doing nothing.” We redeem the church; they redeem us.

His favorite film roles and albums
I have a few favorites. I’ve got to say Boyz n the Hood; [The] Players Club, because it’s a movie I wrote and directed; Friday, because of what it’s turned out to be and how much fun it turned out to be. Albums, it would have to be Amerikkka's Most Wanted, Death Certificate, and the new one, Laugh Now, Cry Later.

One of his least favorite film roles, John Carpenter’sGhosts of Mars
If it was done in 1979, the movie would be great. But I was really mad about the special effects, and I felt like I just didn’t want to be part of the movie. I was really upset about that movie. We shot most of our parts without the special effects. They let you know that the special effects are going to be good, then you get it and it’s like some cheesy shit you’d seen in the 1970s. What the hell was this? That’s probably one of my worse films for me. But it’s a trip—some dudes who are into sci-fi stuff, they think that stuff is great. I look at them like they’re crazy. I just say, “Have you ever seen The Matrix?” Look at ours—come on please.

His failed bid to replace Vin Diesel in xXx: State of the Union
I really can’t out my finger on that one. All I know is, the studio really harped on the first one. They really didn’t want us to do any promotion. They thought the brand was strong enough to just [win over] the fans. I always felt it was a marketing mistake not to get me, Samuel L. Jackson, Willem Dafoe out there saying, you know, we have a better movie than the first. We didn’t get the chance to do, and I think the movie suffered at the box office for that. But you know, you can look at that in a couple of ways. I used to look at box office a lot; now I look at people’s reaction. When you sit and watch a movie, you don’t care how much money it made. You want to like it. You want to enjoy it as an individual, and whether it’s made $100 million or $100, that’s meaningless to the person who’s watching it at the time they are watching it. All I care about is people’s individual reaction—“I liked you in this, that one could have been better.” I let that hold more weight than looking at the box office.

Black, White, the Ice Cube-produced FX reality series about two families—one black, the other white—who traded races through make-up
I felt good about it. TV is new to us. We was going into it and really seeing what it was. We had dealt with cable a little bit with the Barbershop Showtime [series], which we were in control of like we were with the movie, but we did have a say in it. I wish we had had more of a say in it, but it is what it is. This is our second time dealing with cable, and how they flow. It was interesting little hook-up, and I would do it again. As far as coming up with another second, they got too much heat from the first one. I think [FX] got scared. They don’t want to go that political anymore. It was a good series to me, but I think it was a bit much for the network.

Barbershop’s criticism of Jesse Jackson, and the subsequent—but failed—boycott of the comedy by Jackson and Al Sharpton
Shit, man, we was light compared to a real barber’s shop. Shit, ours was an after-school special compared to what people in a real barber’s shop say. Jesse [Jackson] was lucky we did a movie because we was able to take it easy on him. If we went with a camera in a real barbershop’s and said, “Hey, what do you think of this one, and that one,” and you really get to feel their pains, his feelings would really have been hurt. People got to take it in stride. All these political figures—Jesse, Al [Sharpton], and all of them—they’re been in a barber’s shop. They know what’s going on. So that’s why I just look at them and go, “Ya’ll know. Ya’ll know. Y'all just trying to get some money out of [Barbershop distributor] MGM, but ya’ll know what the deal is. We weren’t on hard on you.”

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