With tomorrow (April 20) marking the 20th anniversary of the release of the cult classic Friday, New Line Cinema will screen an extended director’s cut of the movie in theaters around the country on the unofficial stoner holiday 4/20.
Speaking with Conan O’Brien late last week, Ice Cube opened up about the impact of the movie twenty years later.
“Friday, it’s like one of those little movies that just—we did it, we was like, ‘Cool people are gonna like this movie and everybody else aren’t gonna understand it,'” he said. “But it’s like it’s so many cool people in the world ’cause everybody loved the movie.”
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Cube went on to speak about specific lines and characters from the script that have taken on a second life in Hip Hop and popular culture.
“I mean, ‘Bye Felicia’ right now, that is the phrase to get anybody out your face that’s saying something stupid,” he said. “Just, ‘Bye Felicia.’…All of the lines of Friday movies. There’s a basketball player named Zach Randolph, they call him Z-Bo. D-Bo was the bully in the movie. [Randolph] has a bully game. So this movie has kind of got into people’s hearts. That’s why we having this screening. Everybody come out, I know you guys know the movie, come out yell at the screen. We having some fun on Monday.”
In addition to the 4/20 screening, the soundtrack to Friday, which peaked at #1 on the Billboard charts upon release, will receive a 20th anniversary vinyl reissue. Speaking with Buzzfeed News last month, Ice Cube touched on the significance of the soundtrack to the movie’s success.
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“I remember picking these songs and thinking, ‘No one’s used ‘Mary Jane’ by Rick James in a movie? This is going to be perfect,’” Ice Cube said. “You usually don’t get the Isley Brothers and a fresh Dr. Dre song. It was a really special labor of love.”
