The majority of the film was shot in my old neighborhood, View Park, which is adjacent to the Baldwin Hills Shopping center. We were able to use the houses of three childhood friends of mine and the library scenes were shot at Morningside High School. The first day of shooting got off to a great start…well, kinda. It took place at Yvette McNally's aunt's house. A side note - Yvette and I went to middle school together and she's a Scorpio so I had a natural level of comfort around her. It turned out that she and my producer Mary Glynn were also friends. You know all black folks seem to know each other, right? Anyway, we started off with a fairly tough scene - Mario's crew dunking Ernie into the toilet after a confrontation at the front door of Sheila's place. There was an energy in the air. Appropriately, it reminded me of the excitement my friends and I used to feel back in high school after downing a 40 in preparation of a night full of ill sh_t. I remember thinking to myself "Hmm, now when do I yell "Action?" Is it after 'sound speed' or 'camera set?'" We spent a good deal of time getting ready for this first shot - in fact, too much time. But this first shot had to set the tone and professional level of the low budget production we were going for. Unfortunately, by the fourth set up it was well past midnight and we'd started around 4pm the previous day. One of our crewmembers began to get very fidgety. They were determined to leave at exactly the end of the "work day" regardless of what shots were left.

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