‘House Party’ was filmed in LA, but is it an LA movie?

It may not have qualified for The Los Angeles Times’ new list of the 101 best L.A. movies, but as far as we’re concerned here at LAist, House Party is an L.A. movie.

Or maybe more accurately, we just really want to be able to claim the 1990 teen comedy starring hip-hop duo Kid ‘n Play as friends looking to throw the party of the year. Because while House Party isn’t set in Los Angeles, it’s also not set in any specified location in America. And since it was filmed here, can’t we call dibs?

LAist host Julia Paskin didn’t pose that question directly to House Party writer/director Reginald Hudlin (Boomerang, Marshall), but she did ask him why he chose to shoot in L.A. and about House Party’s legacy — in light of the film’s new 4K UHD and Blu-ray release through The Criterion Collection.

Below are some highlights from the conversation, and an extended version of the interview is available here.

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‘We very much avoided it looking like LA’

House Party centers on Kid ‘n Play, who were based in New York and played versions of themselves in the film, and the story is partially based on Hudlin's experiences growing up in Illinois. So why film in L.A.?

 ”We shot it in L.A. because it was basically a cheap, efficient way to make the movie,” Hudlin says. “But we very much avoided it looking like L.A. We wanted it to be ‘America.’”

The moment Hudlin says he knew he’d succeeded in hiding the L.A. filming locations was when a Queens newspaper was fooled.

For Hudlin, it showed that no matter where someone was from — Queens, Detroit, Atlanta or Oakland — ”you'll watch this movie and you will project your life, your childhood, onto this. I think that's one of the reasons why it resonates so well.”

‘This is everything people don’t want to see’

Even before the filming location was a question, just trying to get a feature-length version of House Party greenlit (Hudlin first made a short film, also titled House Party, as a Harvard undergrad) wasn’t easy.

“I remember one studio said, ‘There's two things that no one wants to see: a teen movie and a Black movie. You have a Black teen movie. This is everything people don't want to see.’”

And it’s the kind of disappointing feedback Hudlin says he’s had to work against continuously in his career.

But fortunately for House Party, after a woman of color who was a junior executive at New Line Cinema saw a screening of Hudlin’s short, she successfully made the case for the film to her bosses.

‘They blew us off’

After signing on with New Line, the studio suggested that Hudlin cast DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince (aka Will Smith) as the leads. Their argument? Because the studio had sued the duo for sampling a portion of Nightmare on Elm Street without permission and won, Smith owed them a film as part of the settlement.

Hudlin met with the duo’s manager, who at the time was Russell Simmons, and, “Russell was like, ‘Oh, no, no, no, no. We got big Hollywood projects. We're working with big Hollywood producers,’” Hudlin says. “So they blew us off.”

Hudlin only knew Kid ‘n Play from their music videos, but he talked to someone who worked at their management company and asked, “‘Are they hardworking? Do they show up on time?’ They're [like], ‘Oh yeah, yeah, those guys are great.’ So we met with them and offered them the movie.”