Before Steve Bannon was whispering in President Trump's ear and founded Breitbart News, he was an aspiring filmmaker. One of his more interesting creations during that time was a screenplay for a rap musical about the 1992 LA riots, which no one has seen or heard beyond a few choice excerpts. But, thanks to NowThis discovering the abandoned screenplay, we can all get a glimpse of Bannon's '90s rap musical.
Bannon co-wrote the musical with Julia Jones, who used to be his writing partner and recently described herself as a “Bernie Sanders liberal” to The Daily Beast. It's a new take on Shakepeare’s Coriolanus, which adds a whole other layer of confusion.
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After discovering the full screenplay for Bannon's musical, The Thing I Am, NowThis put together a table reading with actors including Rob Corddry, Lucas Neff, Parvesh Cheena, Daniele Gaither, Gary Anthony Williams, Charlie Carver, and Cedric Yarborough, as well as hip hop artist A.J. Crew. The 20-minute table reading (which you can watch below) is full of cussing, the n-word, and mentions of crotch grabs.
"When I heard that NowThis had the Bannon script and was planning a stage reading, I got really excited about it and had to be involved. It’s one thing for NowThis to have been able to uncover the script, but to film it is another thing entirely," Corddry said in a NowThis statement shared with Refinery29. "It’s pretty eye-opening to imagine Steve Bannon writing this. People need to see it to believe it."
Corddry is right — imagining Bannon write these words might give you actual nightmares. But you should still watch it below. Why not, right?
Bannon's musical never made it to the stage. Maybe his rap musical idea was ahead of its time, as Hamilton is now a huge success — or maybe it was just truly terrible. You be the judge.