The headline for this story doesn’t overstate: House Party features the best dance-off in cinema history.
The scene happens about 44 minutes into the film and features stars Kid (Chris Reid) and Play (Chris Martin) opposite their on-screen love interests, played by Tisha Campbell and A.J. Johnson. But singling out that achievement undersells how great, even historic, is the rest of writer-director Reginald Hudlin’s feature debut. Inspired by Animal House and Risky Business as well as seminal Black films like Cooley High, Hudlin wanted to create a raucous teen comedy for, and focused on, people of color. It went on to earn $25 million in theaters, launch a franchise, and catapult Kid and Play to movie stardom.
“I think the reason why the movie is and was as successful as it is because it’s so relatable to people,” Martin tells Screen Rant. “They could relate to different characters that they knew around the way in their neighborhoods.”
House Party’s enduring popularity led not only to four sequels and a 2023 remake, but its appointment to one of physical media’s most prestigious film libraries: the Criterion Collection. “You can catch on social media, young people, recreating it to this day,” Reid says of that famous dancefloor showdown. “Which is a testament not only of the movie as a whole, but that scene in particular that continues to resonate to this day.”
Screen Rant spoke with Reid, Martin and Reginald Hudlin as House Party debuts on 4K from Criterion Jan. 26. In addition to resolving the competing accounts of the film’s origins — including the casting of Kid and Play over up-and-coming hip-hop stars (and then-recent Grammy winners) DJ Jazzy Jeff & Fresh Prince — the trio discussed how the dynamic between the fictional Kid and Play coalesced out of their real-life relationship, and finally, they broke down every detail in that showstopping dance-off.
These interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.
To get started, I want to dispel a rumor, or disagreement, about this movie. According to various accounts, including on this disc, the film was conceived at times for Groove B Chill, for Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, and then of course, for Kid ‘n Play. Who came first in that sequence of potential stars?
Chris “Kid” Reid: House Party came about initially for us from me continuing to run into Reggie at clubs in New York City. I was a night owl at the time, and I would consistently run into Reggie who would approach me about doing stuff with Kid & Play.
Reginald Hudlin: I had done the short film in college, and I was writing the feature of this draft on spec. We met Andre Harrell, who was starting this new label, Uptown Records. He had an anthology record that had a song from each of the groups he had signed to the label, and there was going to be a big party song that featured everybody all in one song. So we had a rehearsal [for the music video for it were were going to direct], and only one group is on time: Groove B Chill. So we go, “They’re the guys who show up.” And they’re great, they’re funny, they’re smart, amazing dancers. And at the time, I didn’t know how I was going to get the money to make this movie. I was planning on making it independently, so I said, “Why not these guys? I can’t afford anybody else.” But when [Spike Lee’s debut feature] She’s Got to Have It came out, suddenly there was windows of opportunity. I had a script and I had a short film, but almost every studio passed until New Line [said], “Yeah, we’re interested. But we need stars. We like those Groove B Chill guys, but they’re not big enough.”
Reid: At that particular time, [Reginald] was talking about music videos, and he wanted to work with us in terms of doing our music videos. But we had a guy at that time that we were very satisfied with, so that never really worked out. And then one time he approached, and he was talking about a movie. I let Play know, I let [our producer and manager] Hurby “Luv Bug” Azor know, and that’s when we received the first script that I read. At the time, I didn’t think it was 100%, but I thought that Play and I could bring it the rest of the way. As I recall at the time, Play wasn’t in agreement at first.
Martin: I remember being approached and not thinking much of it, but I think that was about self-doubt. In regards to how well we were doing with our music, I thought I’d never be able to do this. At the time too, there was a group out there that was unstoppable and they made a movie that a lot of people don’t remember, and that group was Run DMC with Tougher Than Leather. That movie didn’t fare too well, so in my mind was that, if Run DMC can’t pull a movie off, who is Kid & Play to think we can do something like that? But we had an arrangement amongst the three of us, Kid, myself and Hurby Luv Bug that if you’re outvoted, you’re outvoted. So they outvoted me on the project, and that’s one bet I’m glad that I was outvoted on.
Hudlin: So we say [to New Line], “What about Kid ‘n Play?” Because I watched their videos, they had a great look. So we brought them in and I say, “They’ve got gold and platinum records.” I did not know if that was the case, but I just said it. They came in and they were charming and the guys [at the studio] were like, “I just don’t know if you have a big enough fan base.” So as they’re saying that, they’re leaving the building and it happened to be school was letting out. So all these high school kids were like, “Oh, my God, it’s Kid ‘n Play.” And it was like, “And we’re done.”
So there was no chance that Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince were being considered, even though they had already won a Grammy?
Hudlin: No, but here’s the in-between part. Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince did a record called “A Nightmare on My Street.” They sample audio from A Nightmare on Elm Street. They did not clear it. New Line sued them and won. As part of the settlement, they had to do a movie for New Line. So they said, “Look, you got a hip-hop movie, these are hip-hop stars. Why don’t you use them in the movie?” So I went to their manager at the time, Russell Simmons, and I said, “Russell, we got this movie,” and Russell looked at me, this kid from the Midwest who went to Harvard, and he was like, “We’ve got a big Hollywood project. You’re just too small-time.” So I went back and I said, “Hey, that was a hard pass. So again, how about these other guys?”
Re-watching the movie now, Play is kind of a selfish jerk. Obviously in real life these guys had tremendous chemistry, but how did you develop the relationship between them on screen?
Hudlin: I kind of based it on my own life, which is that whether it was the friends in the neighborhood or friends at school, I was definitely not cool, but I was cool enough to hang out with cool people. And I didn’t know this, but Kid always thought Play was so cool. When they formed their partnership, it was like, “Can I get the cool guy to work with me?” So it actually fit pretty comfortably for everybody.
Reid: Yeah, that already existed, that kind of energy, because it mimicked how we really interacted in real life. When we first met each other in the neighborhood, I was new to the neighborhood, and trying to make friends and seeing what the ecosystem was like, if you will. Play was one of the people I identified as someone to watch, maybe somebody to get to know. He certainly schooled me to some of the dos and don’ts of our particular neighborhood.
Martin: I hope I’m not totally that character in real life that I was in the film, but it was definitely relatable. It would definitely be somebody I could name in Kid and I’s hood when we grew up. So I didn’t really think that deeply on it. I know after the movie was made, a lot of people thought I was really that guy, especially with my last phrase in the movie about how to treat a girl if she gets pregnant. People didn’t take too kindly to that. But it also didn’t stop a lot of girls from still wanting to be with me. So it was very Twilight Zone-ish.
Reid: That part was on brand though, at the time.
Martin: Kid and I was doing a bit of an unknowing trade-off, so to speak. He thought a certain way about me as far as my swagger, my position in the streets or whatever. But what I thought so highly about him was his knowledge when he came to academia. I didn’t do well at all, and was kicked out of different high schools. So there was a time where I let him know I was going to trust a lane that I know he was good in. And here he is reading this script and he felt it was good.
Reid: We were already a package with a bow on it, if you will.
Martin: The chemistry was authentic. Kid and I weren’t strangers to each other. A lot of friendship was put into that for all those moments. Reggie was wise enough to pick up on that. And I think audiences picked up on that, because it wasn’t anything that was forced, at all. There was a time, and maybe still today, where Kid could finish my sentence and I could finish his.
What’s really lovely about this film is how wholesome it is for the most part, but it doesn’t at all feel like the edges were sanded off of something sharper. Why was it important for you to mostly exclude alcohol and sex and things like that, that might be more symptomatic of a more grown-up party?
Hudlin: Well, a couple of things. One is that this movie is sort of the end of, but celebrates, what I call the “happy rap” era. People just made fun records about going to a party and meeting a girl, so the movie reflects that ethos, number one. Number two was that I was really influenced by Animal House and Risky Business and those kind of movies. And I just thought, “Well, why can’t we have that movie?” And those movies, again, are mischievous, but they’re not like, “Oh, this is dark and edgy and bad.” And again, that script was a product of me collecting notes over the years, so it felt honest to me, because that was just my life. Again, I wasn’t the coolest guy, so I didn’t do the coolest things. I just witnessed them.
Were there teen movie tropes that you particularly wanted to show how they would be handled differently by Black characters?
Hudlin: I was stealing more from the Coen brothers. When I saw Raising Arizona, I was like, “Oh my God, this is the best thing ever.” So the shameless lift was when Kid is being chased and he runs through the house, where there’s a party in the front and a wake in the back and someone making out in the middle. And I just thought, “Here’s a bunch of visual gags.” I think Raising Arizona just inspired a whole generation because not enough comedy movies have visual style, and they had so much style.
Kid and Play, what was your frame of reference for the kind of movie that you wanted to be a part of?
Martin: Well, definitely for me, the first one would be Cooley High. Glynn Turman and Lawrence Hilton Jacobs. And then right behind that would definitely be Uptown Saturday Night, those classic buddy films. But definitely Cooley High. It had a party in it, the rent party, and the relationship between Cochise and the Lawrence Hilton Jacob characters and their friends, all that.
Reid: There’s definitely a slice of those within House Party.
I want to ask about the dance-off. During the cast reunion on the disc, A.J. said that she suggested it, but it wasn’t previously in the script. Is that true?
Hudlin: They all now make these claims. But I sincerely don’t remember! I think there was the bare bones of a dance number, but I’m not a choreographer and all of them are spectacular dancers. So they took an idea and did the absolute best possible version of that idea. So I give them full credit for literally one of the best days of my life, not even best days filming. We shot that number in the first half of one day, and I was like, “I just want to keep shooting. Do we have to stop?”
Was there an “arc” or a story that you wanted to tell there? Because you could start any movie and put that in and it’s the greatest scene in any movie that it’s in.
Hudlin: Well, if you’re making a movie about a house party, you better have some partying in it — partying meaning dancing. There’s so many amazing moments I’ve had as a kid and as a young adult on a dance floor, so it would be malpractice not to have those moments. So whether it’s the DJ calling out “switch,” whether someone’s bumping the turntable, all these things were things I’d never seen in a movie, but I’d seen that a million times in real life. Or just dancing with someone who can outdance you and you’re like, “I need to step it up.”
Reid: There were parts in the [script] where it was just a line, like “dance battle,” or “rap in jail.”
Hudlin: Obviously there are showstopping moments at a party. My dad was a Lindy Hopper, and he would be at a club in New York, and literally the whole thing is how many circles can you make? Meaning how many times can your dancing be so good everyone stops dancing and circles around you and watches? So that ethos from Lindy Hopping to hip-hop, you get the same thing. So I wanted it to be that moment.
Was there a dance-off in another film that gave you inspiration on how to film it?
Hudlin: Nothing specifically about the dance-off, beyond Gene Kelly musicals. But I’ve got to say, the movie that made me want to go into movies was actually Tommy, by Ken Russell, based on The Who. I saw that movie and was like, “What? Movies could be that?” And my goal, which is still a goal, is I wanted to make a movie like Tommy using the cosmology of George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic.
Wow.
Hudlin: I’m still dragging that dream around. I’m not done yet.
Kid and Play, obviously you relied on a lot of the choreography that you had done as stage performers for the dance-off. How much discussion do you remember there being between the two of you, and then A.J. and Tisha, about how different their dancing was going to be than yours?
Martin: What I choose to describe in our process is, I call it, “copy and paste.” Because the stuff we were doing in the movie was what we were doing out in our live concerts and touring. So when that was in the script, it was like, “Hey, let’s just do what we do here and do it there.”
Reid: The phrase copy and paste would definitely be accurate. We knew once we specified what amount of time was going to be utilized, then we said, “All right, this will go here.” And then, we were not really sweating what Tisha and A.J. were going to do, because we knew they were going to come up with something that would rival us.
Martin: Tisha’s crazy talented, a triple threat and then some, and A.J. was a professional choreographer. So when they found out what they needed to do, it was just a matter of getting together in someone’s hotel room and putting that together. I got to see it during the filming, of course. But that was the first time I saw it.
Reid: If we’re dope and they’re dope, then the scene is dope. But when you’re doing it, you don’t really get the perspective on it.
Hudlin: You want to see that these are real dancers. I hate it when you’re faking dance, like faking kung fu. Just get people who know what they’re doing, so we can see it’s real and you know where you are spatially. At the same time, there are certain moments you have to feel the impact. When the girls do each move, you need to feel them, even though they’re doing it to those guys, also they’re doing it to the audience. And when there’s the drop split spin, we need to be there. We had a great Steadicam operator, Kurt Gardner, and he was the fifth dancer in that number. We had to be wherever we needed to be at any given time, no matter what lens size, where we were positioned. We just needed to cover the hell out of this thing in a half day.
Martin: What was brilliant was giving credit to [fellow musical artist] Full Force, and Reggie knowing how to place a particular part in that record with those horns. It was like everybody’s gifts and superpowers coming together to create that moment that [stands out] still to this day.
Were there any feelings about the idea of you guys dancing to a Full Force song as opposed to one of your own?
Martin: One of the things for me is we’re making a movie, so there was a lot of awe to that — not really wanting to rock the boat. If the music was wack, Kid and I are more than able to be vocal about it, and maybe pull Full Force to the side and let’s work on something. But I felt it delivered. But that opening to that song, “Ain’t My Type of Hype,” them horns, it was like “bam!”
Hudlin: What I love about the number is that the girls are doing feminine dancing. It’s sexy, it’s hot, but it’s girl moves, and guys wouldn’t necessarily make those moves. And the way Kid ‘n Play is dancing, that’s men dancing. The elbow pop and the slide, and that’s what’s so great, like, “We are women who can dance our asses off. We are guys who can dance our ass off.” And that’s what makes it so much fun, is you can feel the masculine, the feminine in each. And that’s what I love about Gene Kelly, because Gene Kelly is a guy’s guy, and he can just dance his ass off. And we got that magic, which is at the core of it. And that’s what makes it beautiful and romantic and all those things.
You mentioned your Steadicam operator, but Peter Deming, of course, is one of the greatest cinematographers who’s ever worked. What made the director of photography for Evil Dead II the right guy to partner with for this teen comedy?
Hudlin: So my brother and I are in Times Square and we’re meeting somebody, and we’re standing outside of a movie theater. That was back in the day when they would put a 13-inch television outside the movie theater playing the trailer on a loop. So they’re running the promo for Evil Dead II and I’m looking at it, I’m like, “This is the most incredible thing.” And I’m watching this promo sell tickets because that last shot, they’re running through the woods, they run through the house, they run in the backyard, and they run into his mouth. Boom, Evil Dead II. And people would be walking through Times Square, they’d slow down, they’d watch the promo. And by the time they saw the end of the promo, they would just immediately go buy a ticket. So I watched this promo sell tickets and I’m like, “I need that guy.” So it was a no-brainer. And we had so much fun. Whenever we get together now [with Peter], we keep telling jokes from 35 years ago because we had so much fun.
Reginald, this led obviously to Boomerang and this incredible career that you’ve been able to develop. But despite the increase in representation behind the camera, there also seemed to be some competition at that time between filmmakers of color. Did you feel a sense of camaraderie in the moment with Spike Lee or these other filmmakers? Or was there a sense at all between you that Hollywood might not quote, unquote “let too many Black filmmakers work at the same time”?
Hudlin: It was very much linked arms. In fact, I remember very clearly there was a photo shoot we did for The Source magazine and all of us were there, Mario Van Peebles and Spike and myself. We all took this photo and then Mario said, “We never get together. Why don’t we just go over to my house?” And we went over to his house and we were there until 6:00 in the morning. It was incredible because we just talked and talked and talked and there were some legends there like [Bustin’ Loose director Oz Scott]. We said, “We should do this more often,” so the next one was over at my house. We were all acutely aware of the fact that each success predicated the next person’s success — that I’m Gonna Git You Sucka overperforming greenlit House Party. House Party overperforming greenlit New Jack City. And the first movie to disappoint got a lot of movies taken off the schedule. So we knew we had to work, that our fates were tied. So, yes, there would be, “Ah, I don’t like this person” or whatever, but overall, it was a great moment. That part was actually one of the best parts of that era of Black cinema.
Kid and Play, this film really did create a mini empire for you guys in terms of doing more films, doing animated stuff, doing comic books. Are there any other projects that followed that you feel like either lived up to or recaptured the energy that you guys experienced here?
Reid: Because House Party was the first film that we did, it will always stand apart, but between the three House Partys we made and Class Act, over the years, people have come to find joy in some of our other works as well. But House Party was ground zero for us in terms of taking us to another level in any entertainment biz. It’ll be the first girl we brought to the dance, but it wasn’t the last.
Martin: There’s this thing on YouTube with people, kids who weren’t even born at the time. And they find out about our music videos, and they film themselves with their first reaction to it, like, “Wow, we didn’t know didn’t Kid and them got down like that.” They’re really surprised by the music, and it’s just interesting to see people find out that still to this day that there’s more to us than what they’ve always known us to be.
Thinking about it now, what is the most valuable lesson that you recall from this movie — even if it’s directing the NAACP Image Awards as you have for many years, you learned that lesson back in 1990 and continue to apply it?
Hudlin: Well, fundamentally, it was my first feature film, so we were going and it felt like we were doing a good job. And I said, “What if I’m completely wrong and this doesn’t work?” But it did. So every time I make my next movie, I always try to continue to challenge myself. There’s that same element of risk and fear that gets you up and edgy, and I’m like, “I really could be wrong.” That feeling is still there. But you just remember, “Yeah, but it worked out last time — so just keep going.”
