A Director’s Spin on Hip-Hop Deejays

Documentary director Doug Pray stood in the middle of Amoeba Music in Hollywood and surveyed the warehouse-like vastness of albums and music paraphernalia around him. “I don’t even know where to begin,” he said.

It was Thursday night and Pray wore baggy nylon pants, athletic shoes and a zippered jacket, an outfit that belies his age (41) but not his profession. He is the director of “Scratch,” a new documentary that explores the origins and culture of hip-hop deejaying. It’s an art form, Pray said, that is often overshadowed by the rap artist.

Pray headed for the hip-hop section of the store, an aisle populated by several young men in baggy clothes and baseball caps. His fingers worked over the CDs, landing on DJ Swamp. This guy, Pray said, has been known to smash a record onto his turntable and then use it to cut himself until he bleeds. “He reminds me of old-school punk rock,” Pray said.

He found other favorites: the Beat Junkies, DJ Qbert, Rob Swift and the X-Ecutioners. DJ Babu is “a little godlike,” he said. Mix Master Mike is “this quiet genius who started it all.” Gangstarr are “the kings of underground hip-hop” who always feature their deejay on their album covers.

Then Pray found a CD by a deejay who didn’t make it into the documentary: DJ Prince Paul. “If I could’ve interviewed him, I would have died and gone to heaven,” he said. A young man standing nearby nodded his approval. “Prince Paul is dope,” he said.

Pray knew very little about the genre when he started filming “Scratch” three years ago. He was a rock music fan from Madison, Wis., who got his start directing music videos and earned fame in 1995 for directing “Hype!,” an irreverent history of grunge. In 1999, he was noticed for his editing on “American Pimp,” a documentary about the men who drive prostitution.

Producers Brad Blondheim and Ernest Meza talked Pray into directing “Scratch.” Soon after, Pray was knee-deep in hip-hop records. These days, he speaks with reverence when he refers to the masters of craft. “I think people have a real limited idea of what hip-hop deejaying is,” Pray said. “It’s an incredible skill. It’s like being a librarian and knowing every passage in every book.”

Then he wandered off to do some more digging.

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Leonardo Portraits

On a recent night at the UCLA Hammer Museum in Westwood, patrons picked at breadsticks artfully displayed on tables alongside grass and concrete building blocks. Deejay Nmandi Moweta was spinning Afrobeat tunes as guests bobbed their heads knowingly to the music.

Upstairs, in the Vault Gallery, visitors studied a familiar face: Leonardo DiCaprio.

Artist Amy Adler, 35, drew six pastel portraits of the actor from photos shot when he visited her London apartment last year, an unreal experience, she said.

“The enormity of his fame,” she said, “made him the perfect character for the project.”

Adler often makes portraits of actors and musicians, usually working from magazine photos and publicity stills to comment on celebrity, identity and mass communication. Her session with DiCaprio was her first use of a “live” celebrity--a moment of “manufactured” intimacy, as well as a dream come true. It’s difficult to imagine a celebrity like DiCaprio would drop by for a chat, said Adler. “It’s a great analysand fantasy.”

Claudine Ise, an assistant curator at the Hammer, explained that Adler’s work revolves around the notion of absence versus presence. As part of the project, Adler said, she destroyed all her original sketches and photos from the session with DiCaprio, thereby further removing the viewer from the encounter and making the “mega celebrity” even more remote.

Appropriately, DiCaprio was absent from the reception. His likeness, though, was omnipresent.

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Writing Awards

Even among his peers at the Writers Guild of America’s annual awards dinner Saturday, Aaron Sorkin wasn’t spared from several rounds of ribbing.

Comic Jeffrey Ross, emceeing the show, quipped during his opening remarks that in the wake of Sept. 11, “Security is at an all-time high--and so is Aaron Sorkin, nominated for ‘best score’”--a reference to “The West Wing” auteur’s much-publicized drug problems, which included his arrest at Burbank Airport last year.

Later, veteran comic Hal Kantor noted that because Sorkin writes virtually every episode of his NBC show, “some freelancers regard him as a brilliant, greedy pig.” Kantor did go on to laud Sorkin, however, for a recently published interview in which he said the media has in essence given a free pass to President Bush.

Sorkin, who attended the event, was a nominee in the dramatic series category but lost to an episode of HBO’s “The Sopranos.”

Peter Casey, a co-creator of “Frasier,” accepted an award at the Beverly Hilton Hotel ceremony on behalf of his former partner, the late David Angell, who was on one of the two planes that crashed into the World Trade Center. “The only thing that would make us happier” than receiving the honor for Angell, Casey said, “is if he were here to accept it himself.”

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Clinton in Hollywood

Never one to shun the spotlight, President Clinton will once again return to Hollywood. This time, he is set to be the keynote speaker at the Natural Resources Defense Council’s fund-raiser May 10 at the Wadsworth Theatre in Brentwood. Tom Hanks is scheduled to emcee and Steve Martin is set to deliver a rare stand-up performance. The NRDC hopes to raise more than $1 million with the event.

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Sightings

Juliette Lewis taking in “The Faint” at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles on Thursday night ... Jillian Barberie at the Doughboys restaurant on 3rd Street in Los Angeles.