Broomfield takes the rap

Nick Broomfield is good on the phone. He holds his cool and doesn't take no for an answer. But in his latest documentary he has a problem. He's trying to set up an interview with Suge Knight, boss of Death Row Records and the man he has spent the past hour and a half persuading us was responsible for the murders of rappers Tupac Shakur in September 1996 and Biggie Smalls six months later.

But the gatekeeper to Suge isn't buying it. He's seen Broomfield's documentary about the Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss and he doesn't like guys who produce slick movies by making others look stupid.

Alas, cult status breeds cult problems. Broomfield is always a player in his own movies, with his diffident arrogance and thrusting boom mike poking its Pinocchio nose into other people's lies, and he is starting to reap what he has sown. The more hip his subjects, the more savvy the quarry, and the story of Biggie and Tupac, the East Coast rappers who walked the talk of their streetlife and ended up like Sonny Corleone at the freeway pay booth, is as hip as it comes.

So were their deaths really the result of gang warfare or something more conspiratorial? It takes a lot of boom mikes in a lot of faces to unpeel the layers of this particular onion. Official investigation has stalled, but Broomfield's evidence is both shocking and - shockingly - not that surprising.

According to his version of events, the guys who pulled the triggers were almost certainly cops, moonlighting from the corrupt LAPD in the pay of Suge, with behind-thescenes support from the FBI. The Bureau had bought the Dan Quayle line that rap was the devil's work and was keen to spread dissent in its ranks. With this number of bullets flying even Broomfield gets a little nervous. It's one thing to have your documentary subjects such as

Courtney Love after you, another to be on the wanted list of the kind of guys who study the Godfather for tips on working method.

While Broomfield's tenacity is, as always, impressive, his technique is no longer quite as original as it used to be. To be fair, this isn't his fault. The device of the deadpan inter-viewer who trades on the vanity/stupidity of interviewees to let them disembowel themselves has become mainstream entertainment. Ali G and Louis Theroux (both smart boys playing stupid) owe Broomfield in various ways. But repetition can get boring. What was riveting 10 years ago with his film vivisection of South African racist Terreblanche now feels a little more tame.

Still, there are some great moments. While the boys do the violence, the real hard ass is Biggie's schoolteacher mother, who keeps her son's ashes on the sideboard, ticks off Broomfield for rudeness and manages to pull in interviews that the film-maker can't arrange. Rappers may be tough sons-of-bitches but they still love their mothers.

When Broomfield finally gets his interview with Suge, the man is sucking a big cigar in a high-security prison - though he's out next month, so everyone's being really polite to him. He agrees to be filmed and then delivers a homily on how street kids shouldn't try to emulate rappers because the police won't buy it. Broomfield shows the man so much respect that he doesn't even challenge him.

Which leaves him with a slightly soggy end. So he goes back to Mama cooking up a beef soup for the film crew ("Biggie just luuved my soups") and talking about how much her son adored her. I suspect tough-guy Broomfield was playing for irony. In the event it rings a little sentimental. Or maybe under that diffident exterior lurks a film-maker who really loves his mother.

Biggie And Tupac
Cert: 15