| By Stephen B. Hunt The first thing you notice about André Benjamin, one half of the Grammy-winning, multi-million CD-selling, hip-hop group Outkast, when he walks into a conference room at the Century Plaza Hotel at 10 a.m. on a Sunday morning, is that he's kind of short for the best-dressed man in the world (Esquire magazine, 2004). The second thing you notice is that, for a sartorial and musical legend - today's outfit consists of straw hat; lime green shirt with short sleeves; a checkered tie; and baggy, pleated, wool trousers - Benjamin comes across as a pretty modest, polite, low-key guy. In his transformation from hip-hop icon to actor, 2005's Be Cool (co-starring the rhythmically inclined Monsieur Travolta) was only the first leg of an acting quintuple for Benjamin, who has plunged head-first into John Singleton's Four Brothers, Guy Ritchie's Revolver, David Zucker's Scary Movie 4 and the much-anticipated musical film Idlewild, directed by Bryan Barber, which co-stars his Outkast partner Big Boi. When asked about his rather abrupt transition from hip-hop icon to movie actor, Benjamin doesn't view it as abrupt at all. "It was natural for me to go into film," he says, "but the acting process [itself] is unnatural for me. I'm good on the screen, but terrible at auditions," he continues. "Having to prove myself, being in a small room with five producers and they just say, ‘Go' - that's so strange to me. But when I'm on film, just acting, just doin' it - just being - I'm fine. The more I do it, the more comfortable I get with being onscreen." Benjamin is hardly the first musician to make the transition to acting. Unfortunately - for a lot of musicians and moviegoers alike - the discount bins of your neighborhood video store are stocked with fiascos that made sense to some studio development exec at the time (when confronted with A-List recording stars, millions of swooning fans and the potential windfall of a lucrative soundtrack album à la 1977's Saturday Night Fever), but by the time the majority of these brilliant ideas made it onto the screen, they had somehow transformed from princesses to pumpkins: movies starring Michael Jackson (The Wiz, 1978); the "Undead" himself, Mick Jagger (Ned Kelly, 1970; The Man From Elysian Fields, 2001); Bob Dylan (Pat Garret and Billy the Kid, 1973); and Paul Simon (One Trick Pony, 1980). To paraphrase the late, great Agent 86, Maxwell Smart, would you believe Mariah Carey (Glitter, 2001), Britney Spears (Crossroads, 2002), Gwen Stefani (The Aviator, 2004), and, of course, Madonna (Swept Away, 2002 - and, while you're at it, sweep away the half-dozen other catastrophes she starred in after Desperately Seeking Susan, 1985)? How about Roger Daltrey (The Legacy, 1978), Debbie Harry (Videodrome, 1983), Adam Ant (Love Bites, 1993), Usher (In the Mix, 2005) David Bowie (The Hunger, 1983; The Labyrinth, 1986), Tom Waits (Down by Law, 1986; Dracula, 1992), INXS's Michael Hutchence (Dogs in Space, 1987; Frankenstein Unbound, 1990), Bush's Gavin Rossdale (Constantine, 2005), Sting (Dune, 1984; Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, 1998), Aaliyah (Queen of the Damned, 2002), Alice Cooper (Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, 1991), Busta Rhymes (Halloween: Resurrection, 2002; Narc, 2002), Courtney Love (The People vs. Larry Flynt, 1996; Trapped, 2002), Eminem (8 Mile, 2002), 50 Cent (Get Rich or Die Tryin', 2005), Grace Jones (Conan the Destroyer, 1984; Vamp, 1986), Jon Bon Jovi (Vampires: Los Muertos, 2002), Ice Cube (Are We There Yet?, 2005), Willie Nelson (Honeysuckle Rose, 1980), Meatloaf (BloodRayne, 2005; The Rocky Horror Picture Show, 1975) and Lyle Lovett (Prêt-à-Porter, 1994; Breast Men, 1997), too! What (we hope) makes André Benjamin different is that, in addition to being the World's Best Dressed Man, he's also funny. "I really don't think I'm funny," Benjamin says in response to a question about his comic gifts, "but if other people think I'm funny, I guess it works. I don't know anything about comedic timing but I've heard it [mentioned] a lot in interviews, so I guess it's working." Benjamin grew up an only child in Atlanta with a single mother who sent him to a school for the performing arts, but never really thought of himself as an artist. He started Outkast with his Atlanta pal Big Boi after watching a lot of bad rappers on TV. "We'd be watching videos, saying, ‘This sh-t is terrible," he told The Guardian in a 2005 interview. "Terrible. We can do terrible. Let's give it a try." They made records together, combining hip-hop with other kinds of music you'd least expect to turn up on a hip-hop album: psychedelia, heavy metal, pop and Kate Bush. It was the very best kind of American music, cutting and pasting from different genres and coming out totally original. Their singles - Miss Jackson and Hey Ya - are practically anthems. Furthermore, not only is Benjamin catchy in song but also to the media, who've designated him Sultan of All That is Cool - a designation Benjamin finds pretty flabbergasting. "That is the biggest misconception... I am such a nervous man... André 3000? He's a character I play. He's wild, whatever. But me? I am the most nervous man in the world." How did the character that is André 3000 morph into a movie actor? It started with F. Gary Gray, Be Cool's director, who also happened to have directed several Outkast videos, including "Assassins." "He (Gray) was looking at the video monitor and said, 'You're gonna have a great career in film if you ever go in that direction,'" Benjamin relates. "Then he sent me the Be Cool script, but I didn't like my character so I had to turn it down. I wanted to get it into film but I didn't wanna play a rapper; that was the obvious thing to do. But we talked about it, and he says, 'Think about it - you play a rapper, but against type. And besides that, it's a parody, way over the top: baggy pants down to your knees, two ways, all these platinum chains and stuff. Try it out. And on top of that, how in the hell can you turn down bein' in a movie with these people (Travolta et al)? That would be great for your career.' And I said, 'You're right. Let me try.'" And so a burgeoning acting career was born. So far, Benjamin has not had much luck with his film projects, but maybe that will change with Idlewild. For one thing, Idlewild represents all of Benjamin's best sides all brought together in a single production: He co-wrote it with Bryan Barber, it's got a lot of new Outkast music in it, and it's set in the 1930s. Benjamin plays a shy mortician who transforms his funeral home into an after-hours speakeasy, which undoubtedly will give Benjamin a lot of opportunities to wear really cool suits and hats. Having acted in five films, Benjamin is constantly asked whether this means the end of Outkast. But doesn't a question like that sort of miss the point? With André Benjamin, whether it's getting dressed in the morning, writing a song or acting in a film, it's all sort of the same to him - something utterly original. In his words: "I am a lover of all kinds of art." |
