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Select theaters are now open across the country, with more expected to reopen in the coming weeks. While certain protocols are in place to try to keep patrons safe during the pandemic, who can blame someone for not being ready to head back to a movie theater? Even though attendance is at a low and likely will be for quite some time, that isn’t stopping some new releases from pursuing a theatrical release, like The RZA’s latest, Cut Throat City.

Cut Throat City was scheduled to premiere with some serious fanfare at SXSW back in March. When the even was canceled, the film wound up with an April release date. But, of course, it was pulled from the calendar due to the pandemic. Then it was rescheduled and rescheduled again before landing on it’s final April 21st theatrical debut date. During our chat, I asked The RZA how he kept his chin up through all of that. Here's what he said:

“Oh, my chin went down. I almost gave up. I think it was in May/June, look, I almost gave up on the year, you know? It was getting dismal out there. And I’ve got a good producer, Michael Mendelsohn. We started calling streamers. Forget the theaters and all that.”

The RZA stressed that calling a streaming service home would have been fine, but then he and Mendelsohn took the time to think about it and realized there could be a good reason to hold tight to getting a big screen release.

“During the quarantine, I had launched this platform called 36 Cinema. It’s a virtual cinema where we do commentary on film while we watch it. And maybe like five to 6,000 people would buy a ticket and we’d do it with them. And what happened was, I learned that all the independent theaters were suffering. When I did this, I had a chance to get a list of all these theaters; it was over 300 theaters that were really suffering to whereas, even if they would have made $1,000 that week, it would have helped. And so I allowed them to sell tickets through their independent theaters and they were so grateful. And I was like, ‘Man, we can’t stop this.’ Theater is part of our culture.” 

Even with his drive to support independent theaters, The RZA is still well aware that health must come first and that many out there might not be ready to step foot back in a movie theater. But even then, he still sees lasting value in putting Cut Throat City on the big screen:

“And I know we’re all going through a pandemic and we’ve gotta be safe and that’s first and foremost. Health over wealth. Over anything is health or there's nothing, right? But still, it’s part of our culture and then I talked to Michael Mendelsohn. I said, ‘You know what? Even if it’s just to put the flag there so that people know it exists, let’s put the flag there.’ And that’s kind of what we’re doing. We know that it’s not easy to go to movie theaters right now, but some cities are open, some theaters are there, some people do have jobs that they need to protect themselves and protect their family; that’s what they do. And hopefully our film could be something that adds on to that.”

If you’d like to hear more from The RZA on his experience learning from Quentin Tarantino and Jim Jarmusch, which Man with the Iron Fists actor challenged him most on set, and why he knew Shameik Moore was the perfect person to cast as his lead in Cut Throat City, click here for his full episode of Collider Connected.