Bone: from the streets to the slammer to a growing force on both sides of the camera, it's been a long, wild journey for Cle Shiheed Sloan

Interview, March, 2003 by Fab 5 Freddy

A longtime, though inactive, member of Los Angeles's notorious Bloods gang, Cle Shiheed Sloan, a.k.a. Bone, spent his younger days shuffling back and forth between the street and prison. Then, with a little help from football legend and actor Jim Brown, he got into the film business, working his way up to an acting career and parts in three films by Antoine Fuqua, including Training Day and this month's Tears of the Sun, in which he plays a rebel Nigerian soldier on the trail of Bruce Willis's band of Navy SEALS. Along the way Bone has been making a film of his own--a documentary, Bastards of the Party: The De-Evoluiion of Bangin, that looks into the history of the gang warfare that has held the Bloods and their nemeses, the Crips, in its grip for decades.

FAB 5 FREDDY: What's going on, Bone?

BONE: Not much, baby. How you doing?

F5F: Everything's cool. So, listen: I turned on the TV the other day and saw you and the sexy rap singer Eve sitting on the beach, wrapped up real lovey-dovey, money! What's going on?

B: That video ["Gangsta Lovin"] just came out of nowhere. I was shooting Tears of the Sun in Hawaii, and I got a call about doing a video, which I ignored.

F5F: Thinking they probably just wanted you to play another thug.

B: Yeah, though I got no problem with that if I can get some paper for it. I talked to the casting lady, and we got all the numbers right, so I said I'd do it, figuring I'd play the thug who rivals Eve's boyfriend or something. When I got there, though, it was, like, this beautiful set. I thought they had the wrong guy--this was a little too smooth for me. I'm expecting Puffy to come dancing out the sliding glass doors at any moment. [both laugh] Then I read the treatment, and there were all of these setups: "Eve and her boyfriend" here, "Eve and her boyfriend on the couch, hugging," etc. I was like, "Where am I?" [both laugh] The assistant director was like, "Stupid, you're the boyfriend."

F5F: The video looked really cool. What was that like for you?

B: I had never been in every setup all day long. I usually pop in and pop out. So I had to be on my square. It was pretty challenging.

F5F: You had a pretty pivotal scene in Training Day [in which Bone plays a gang member]. Tell me about your friendship with Antoine Fuqua.

B: A few years ago, when I was a camera assistant making my way around Hollywood, 1 met Antoine. I started working behind the scenes for him, and one job was a kind of street commercial [for Miller Genuine Draft]. Real urban stuff. Antoine wasn't happy with the guy that was in it, so he just threw me out there and said, "Man, you do it." From there he got The Replacement Killers [1998], with Chow Yun-Fat. There was a standoff between some gangsters and Chow, and Antoine gave me a gangster part.

F5F: You had a standoff with Chow Yun-Fat, the master of gun-fu? You were definitely friends with the director! [laughs]

B: Then Antoine got Bait [2000] and I went back to jail. I came out, and then he got the script for Training Day. From the first day we started putting more edge to it. He measures realness by being around the stuff that I was exposed to.

F5F: Because you had taken him pretty close to the front row of what was going on. Training Day was very timely.

B: Yeah. The Rampart [police corruption] scandal had just broken.

F5F: Over the years when we'd speak, you'd often mention that there were a lot of cops who have set up brothers on the street.

B: Coming up in Los Angeles, one of the most regular things we deal with is crooked pigs: taking your money, taking you to Crip neighborhoods and dropping you off, or the other way around, trying to get you to do each other. So when I read the script it wasn't a far leap.

F5F: Tell me about working with Denzel Washington. I remember you took him into your 'hood the way you took Antoine.

B: He was familiar with the neighborhood, because he does a lot of work in the community. But what I was able to do was tell him about some of these cops, and the dirt they have under their fingernails. They run a gang, the same way that we run ours. When they get into it with someone, what do they do? Get a tattoo. First time we smoke a motherfucker, what do we do? Get a tattoo.

F5F: Did it hit you during filming that Denzel's work would be Oscar-worthy?

B: The first day of shooting I looked at the scene where Ethan Hawke and Denzel are sitting in the [Chevrolet] Monte Carlo, and Ethan asks where the office is, and Denzel says something like, "You're in the office," and then he hits the hydraulics, and suddenly the Monte Carlo locks up and punches out into the street. From that point right there I knew for sure that Denzel would get nominated. I said to Antoine, "Don't worry, this one's in the bag, homey."

F5F: There was another film done in L.A. that I'm a big fan of: Heat [1995]. I remember that you have an interesting story about meeting two of the major actors on that film.

B: Yeah. Phil Parmet, a cinematographer I know, told me that he had mentioned the documentary I was working on to Robert De Niro, and that he could possibly be one of the distributors when we finished. So Phil gives me a call and says, "I just pitched the film to De Niro, but I can't do it the way you can. Won't you come on over?" And I'm like, "Damn, are you serious?" [Freddy laughs] So I drive over to the Hilton down on Century, where they were shooting the major climax scene. I had a few problems [at the hotel] up front. I'm telling the front desk that I'm here to see Robert De Niro, and they're like, "Get out of here." [both laugh] I finally make it in, and there's Bobby De Niro in full character. Phil introduces us, and I start spitting about the film, and as I'm spitting, Al Pacino, out of nowhere, just walks over, like, "I've been watching you guys out of my trailer talking for 45 minutes! What are you guys talking about?" Then De Niro explains about the documentary. It was just so surreal, money. I'm sitting there with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro talking about my film. Good thing that I was high, cause I never would have gotten through it.