‘It’s been called the greatest hip-hop film ever’: how we made cult graffiti classic Wild Style

Frederick Brathwaite AKA Fab 5 Freddy, concept, actor, musical director

I was part of the New York graffiti artists the Fabulous 5, who were primarily known for painting whole subway cars on the Lexington Avenue line. Lee Quiñones was the group’s Michelangelo. I’d been running with Jean-Michel Basquiat and wanted to take graffiti art into art spaces . I thought that an underground independent film could tell our story in the way we wanted.

At an art show in Times Square I met Charlie Ahearn, who’d made an underground kung fu film, The Deadly Art of Survival, on Super 8. Charlie loved the movie idea and I explained that we could tell the story of an emerging new culture: graffiti art, breakdancing and rap. We wanted a movie with a narrative but a documentary feel, so alongside real ra