Wild Style

Legendary New York graffiti artist Lee Quinones plays the part of Zoro, the city's hottest and most elusive graffiti writer. The actual story of the movie concerns the tension between Zoro's passion for his art and his personal life, particularly his strained relationship with fellow artist Rose.

Director Charlie Ahearn was approached by graffiti artist Fred Braithwaite, later known as Fab 5 Freddy, who wanted to make a film about hip-hop (as a broad culture encompassing emceeing, DJing, graffiti and break-dancing) and graffiti as an art form. Braithwaite was an acquaintance of Lee Quiñones, whom Ahearn had long-wanted to film and whose murals he has always admired. Braithwaite brought Quiñones in to meet Ahearn and the three began discussions about creating a hip-hop movie.

As a film, this movie is pretty lacking -- the plot is weak, and the acting is completely awful. But that was never the point. With most of the characters ad libbing their lines and actually being real life hip hop and graffiti artists, this almost serves as a pseudo-documentary. Probably no other film better captures the rise of hip hop than "Wild Style".