\n<\/p>\n
Barry Michael Cooper, who was one of the first journalists to explore the crack epidemic of the 1980s before turning to Hollywood, where he made his mark with screenplays for gritty films like \u201cNew Jack City,\u201d died on Jan. 21 in Baltimore. He was 66.<\/p>\n
His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his son, Matthew Cooper, who did not cite a cause.<\/p>\n
As a screenwriter, Mr. Cooper, who was raised in Harlem, was perhaps best known for the three films often called his Harlem Trilogy. The first, \u201cNew Jack City\u201d<\/a> (1991), about a ruthless uptown drug lord (Wesley Snipes), presaged a wave of films from Black directors and screenwriters that touched on gang life in the 1990s.<\/p>\n The trilogy also included two films from 1994: \u201cSugar Hill,\u201d<\/a> another drug-hustling drama starring Mr. Snipes, and \u201cAbove the Rim,\u201d<\/a> a basketball drama starring Tupac Shakur as a dealer, which Mr. Cooper wrote with Benny Medina and the film\u2019s director, Jeff Pollack.<\/p>\n Whatever the medium, Mr. Cooper blended a rich literary sensibility with a deep knowledge of the language and status symbols of the ghetto. \u201cHe was very aware of everything from Hemingway to Dostoyevsky,\u201d the author, critic and filmmaker Nelson George, who worked with Mr. Cooper at The Village Voice, said in an interview. \u201cAt the same time, he was very, very connected to the slang of the streets.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Cooper captured the glitter as well as the bloodshed of a new generation of 1980s and \u201990s hustlers who flashed thick gold ropes and hockey-puck-sized rolls of cash while upending communities in pursuit of overnight fortune.<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted to detail their voices \u2014 the way the hustlers talked,\u201d Mr. Cooper said in a 2007 interview<\/a> with Stop Smiling, an arts and culture magazine. \u201cI wanted to put it in a literary context like \u2018The Great Gatsby.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n His goal, he added, was to \u201ctake Harlem and the Renaissance and put it in a modern context.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In 1986, he published an early in-depth examination of the crack boom for Spin, the music and culture magazine. \u201cSinewy arms<\/a> folded across their chests laden with gold medallions,\u201d he wrote in the article, \u201ca silent roar creasing their lips in the guise of a sneer, the young lions usher their prey in and out of video parlors and misty hallways.\u201d<\/p>\n A year later, he won the award for best magazine feature from the National Association of Black Journalists for his Spin article \u201cIn Cold Blood: The Baltimore Teen Murders,\u201d<\/a> about the eruption of gun violence among teenagers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n His 1987 Village Voice cover article \u201c<\/em><\/a>Kids Killing Kids: New Jack City Eats Its Young<\/a>\u201d chronicled the exploding drug trade in Detroit, including the young street-level dealers who \u201cwere making like $2,000 a day<\/a>,\u201d Mr. Cooper said in a 1991 interview with Terry Gross of the NPR program \u201cFresh Air.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThese were new examples of the privileged underclass, so to speak,\u201d he said. \u201cThe ones who carried beepers and cellular phones, and drove Jeeps and went out to the malls in Michigan and spent $10,000 at a drop at Gucci\u2019s and Fendi\u2019s. I had never seen that before.\u201d<\/p>\n The article was a showcase for a street term \u2014 \u201cnew jack\u201d \u2014 that Mr. Cooper made his own, albeit with a twist. \u201cMy brother used the term a lot,\u201d he told Stop Smiling. \u201cHe used to say, \u2018Yeah, that kid is a new jack,\u2019\u201d meaning \u201csomeone who\u2019s new to the game and frontin.\u2019 It\u2019s almost a derogatory term \u2014 almost like a rookie.\u201d<\/p>\n He added: \u201cThen I heard a song by Grandmaster Caz, and he used a line about this guy who was \u2018a new jack clown.\u2019 I took the phrase and wanted to flip it. It rang strong, new jack.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Cooper again invoked the term in 1988 with \u201cTeddy Riley\u2019s New Jack Swing,\u201d<\/a> an article in The Voice in which he gave a name to the blend of hip-hop, dance-pop and R&B<\/a> pioneered by Mr. Riley, a prominent record producer and songwriter, as epitomized by artists like Keith Sweat and Bobby Brown.<\/p>\n By that point, \u201cKids Killing Kids\u201d had already opened the door to Hollywood. Two weeks after the article was published, Mr. Cooper said in a 2007 interview<\/a> with The Voice, \u201cI was on a first-class flight to Hollywood to meet with Quincy Jones<\/a>. My head was huge.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Cooper was hired to retool a script by the screenwriter Thomas Lee Wright based on the story of Nicky Barnes<\/a>, the heroin lord of Harlem in the 1960s and \u201970s. He updated it for the crack era, focusing on a fictional kingpin, Nino Brown, in what became \u201cNew Jack City.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Directed by Mario Van Peebles, the film featured breakout performances by Chris Rock and the rapper-turned-actor Ice-T. It eventually earned nearly $50 million and was released at \u201ca pivotal time<\/a>,\u201d Sha Be Allah<\/a> wrote in an appraisal for The Source magazine last year.<\/p>\n In 1991, he wrote, \u201cthe blaxploitation film genre had been defunct for over a decade, leaving a gaping hole in \u2018Black Hollywood.\u2019 \u2018New Jack City\u2019 was a harbinger of the resurgence of Black actors, writers and filmmakers in Hollywood, as well as the crystallization of Hip Hop\u2019s synergistic capabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n Barry Michael Cooper was born on June 12, 1958, in Harlem, the elder of two sons of Lafayette and Josephine Cooper. He spent his formative years in Esplanade Gardens<\/a>, a cooperative high-rise complex. \u201cYou had all levels of society in there,\u201d he later said, \u201cfrom millionaires to people on welfare.\u201d<\/p>\n He recalled spending Saturdays at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, reading Harlem Renaissance writers like Langston Hughes<\/a> and Wallace Thurman. After high school, he spent a year at North Carolina Central University, in Durham, N.C., before transferring to Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn. Along the way, he fell in love with the narrative nonfiction of Gay Talese, Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe and others associated with the New Journalism movement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In 1980, Mr. Cooper embarked on a journalism career of his own with a piece for The Voice, \u201cThe Gospel According to Parliament,\u201d about the funk titan George Clinton\u2019s celebrated ensemble. His career as a reporter thrived in the 1980s, but he largely abandoned print for Hollywood after \u201cNew Jack City\u201d became a hit.<\/p>\n Success, he admitted, went to his head. \u201cI got so high on myself that I turned down jobs<\/a>,\u201d he told The Voice in 2007.<\/p>\n He eventually found himself in a tangled relationship with a woman that resulted in his arrest on charges of assault in 1997, according to The Voice. The terms of his plea deal required him to leave Los Angeles for a year; when he returned, he found that opportunities had evaporated.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Cooper tried to jump-start his career in 2005 with a semiautobiographical web series, \u201cBlood on the Wall$,\u201d<\/a> about a television producer who attempts to pull out of a tailspin by working as an investigative reporter. He was a producer of the 2017-19 Netflix series \u201cShe\u2019s Gotta Have It,\u201d<\/a> based on Spike Lee\u2019s 1986 breakout film<\/a>, and wrote three episodes.<\/p>\n Mr. Cooper\u2019s son is his only immediate survivor. Another son, Timothy Michael Cooper, died in 2020; his wife, Charmaine (Lynn) Cooper, died in 2022. He lived in Baltimore.<\/p>\n Although his run in the film business was brief, Mr. Cooper was proud of his legacy.<\/p>\n \u201cIf there was no \u2018New Jack,\u2019 there would be no \u2018Boyz \u2018n the Hood,\u2019\u201d<\/a> he told Stop Smiling. \u201cThere would be no \u2018Menace II Society,\u2019<\/a> because it let the public know, and more importantly let the suits in the studios know, that these movies make money.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n