Searching for Soul:
Darren Grant and Diary of a Mad Black Woman

By KAREN MCCARTHY
Feb 23, 2005

Word Count: 800

An unexpected search for a story with soul led award winning music video director, Darren Grant to venture into feature films with the upcoming release of "Diary of a Mad Black Woman" -- a vibrant portrait of African-American life that he says will appeal to anyone who has felt betrayed and hurt by love.

The film, based on the popular play written by visionary urban playwright, Tyler Perry, tells the story of Helen McCarter (Kimberly Elise), a perfect wife living an opulent life with husband Charles (Steve Harris), a prominent Atlanta attorney. Unfortunately her lifestyle abruptly ends after 18 years when Charles announces he wants a divorce and evicts Helen to make room for the other woman.

Lost, disillusioned and transporting all her belongings in a van, Helen returns to her roots, where -- with the help of her pot-smoking, gun-toting grandmother Madea (Tyler Perry) -- she sees these tragic events become comical and finds the faith and strength go from heartbreak and vengefulness to recovery and renewal.

Choosing to direct these "hardcore dramatic scenes" was an unlikely choice for an urban director even for Grant whose innate ability to visualize emotion on screen has won him a Video Music Award, an NAACP Image Award and two Billboard Music Video Awards. He needed to learn new skills quickly.

"I had to rely on instinct to determine whether [the actors] got it or didn't," he says. "If you can feel it then you can tell if it's right or wrong. It's just in you."

It was certainly in Grant. With a laid-back nature that conceals emotional depth and a wry sense of humor that masks his dark and lonely side, Grant has a wealth of personal experience that correlates with Helen's predicament in unexpected ways, giving him an inherent understanding of the story's themes of loss and survival.

Grant grew up with inter-racial parents in the colorful melting pot of Seattle in the 1970s. His mother was a writer and filmmaker and hopeless romantic from a white middle-class family, who married a "fast-talking, street savvy, business cat" from southern country. It was a brave choice to make in the 60s but Grant admits that she wasn't prepared for the outside pressures and familial alienation that it caused.

"It took away her spirit a little," he says describing how she struggled alone through the next 13 years ­ probably staying for her son's sake ­ with a husband who spent time in prison and had two children with another woman. It changed abruptly when 10-year old Grant left them homeless by accidentally burning the house down, and inadvertently provided his mother with a reason to leave.

After the fire Grant lived in a van with his father, played at the slaughterhouse where he worked, and ate food they cooked over campfires. Eventually his father charmed a black-owned bank into lending him money to start a construction company and life was good for the next few years. But the bank over-extended their lending, and soon recalled all their loans, forcing Grant's father into bankruptcy.

"He's the smartest man I know but something went wrong along the way," says Grant remembering his father's inability to handle losing everything again. "He turned to drugs. He was missing half the time."

Left to his own devices, Grant was soon in trouble with the law. Fortunately, his mother who was teaching at San Diego State University intervened and got him into junior college. Grant promptly stripped the stolen car he was driving and pushed it over a cliff, then bought a bug and sped from an all-points bulletin into a promising future.

At SDSU, despite his low grade point average, Equal Opportunities Publications got him into to the film department to study film - his newly emerging passion ­ by finding a loophole that required he prove his creative talent. So in the aftermath of the Los Angeles riots, Grant took a Super 8 camera and filmed from Beverly Hills to Watts to contrast "the college boy and the victim of the ghetto." The project was lauded by the film department and marked the beginning of an academic career that ended with him being voted most likely to succeed by the black graduates. They were right. Within a few years he was directing videos for artists like Jay Z, Destiny's Child and Missy Eliot.

"That's a story of what a kid can do if you channel his energy," Grant says modestly.

Despite his success, Grant never forgets "how bad it can actually get" and remains grateful for the hustle learned from his father and the creativity inherited from his mother. Like the heroine of his first film, he remains close to his vibrant and colorful roots where he too learned the importance of family, faith and self-confidence in escaping a destructive path to launch towards a positive future.