Bringing People Together And Providing Appreciation: Mustafa Shaikh On 36 Cinema
36 Cinema is a new platform from the folks at 36 Chambers, a lifestyle company co-founded by Mustafa Shaikh and Wu-Tang’s RZA. Their proprietary platform creates a unique experience for film enthusiasts everywhere by marrying live-streaming movies with real-time commentary from directors, actors, film experts, and super fans. Their hope is that the live commentary will give viewers a deeper understanding and appreciation of the movies they love.
Their latest event will focus on the legendary Rudy Ray Moore’s delightfully bonkers blaxploitation comedy, Petey Wheatstraw, and will feature live commentary provided by acclaimed actor, comedian, and podcaster Donnell Rawlings and chief Film Critic for WBAI RADIO Mike Sargent. Don’t miss The Devil’s Son-in-Law in action! Snag your ticket here!
After being murdered by his rivals, Petey Wheatstraw (Rudy Ray Moore) is resurrected, in exchange for marrying the devil's daughter, the world's ugliest woman.
We had the opportunity to chat with Mustafa about 36 Cinema, the kind of experience the platform provides, working with Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA, and much much more!
36 Cinema is offshoot of your company 36 Chambers, which you co-founded with Wu-Tang’s RZA. Can you tell us a bit about your company and what 36 Cinema is?
Yeah! So, 36 Chambers has been called a lifestyle company, so we have a few different aspects. We say it all falls into music, fashion, art, if you will. So we have a record label component, we have a product component, and in the beginning of May, we decided to launch 36 Cinema.
36 Cinema is basically a new streaming platform built on a proprietary platform that we developed where in real-time we can live-stream a movie and then have commentators provide commentary on the movie, while also taking audience questions. And there’s also a whole ticketing layer to it as well. It’s actually the first time that anyone has been able to do that and do it legally, which is nice because we can pay the rights holders. We’re also able to provide people with such a valuable and enriching experience by giving them a deeper appreciation for a film that they would never be able to have — or maybe they would have overlooked that film altogether.
We’re hoping to give audiences a deeper appreciation of the movies that we love through the viewings on 36 Cinema.
How did you guys go about selecting the films that would be a part of this series?
36 Chambers definitely has a good Wu-Tang following, you could say, and RZA wanted to bring some of those films that he had sampled or had provided inspiration to Wu-Tang Clan in its early, formative years. So we started with Shaolin Vs. Wu-Tang, then we went to Shogun Assassin, and then Mystery of Chessboxing. But we’ve always envisioned the platform being larger than Wu-Tang, larger than RZA, and larger than any one genre, so we’re really excited about having Petey Wheatstraw this Friday with Donnell Rawlings and Mike Sargent on. We have some other great films lined up in the future, as well as other hosts, and we really hope to cover a lot of different genres.
Most of the films that we’ll be highlighting will be independent films, so they’re carried by independent distributors. We’re also picking films based on the host. So, it’s finding a host that is passionate or has a deep knowledge of certain genre of film, and then finding out from them what are films or a film that has inspired their work. And we’re really trying to draw the inspiration of like, all right, cool this film has inspired you, and therefore it’s relevant to you, and it’s had this affect on your personal life. That way, when we’re having these screenings at 36 Cinema, they’re sharing these stories about the film is intertwined with their life. I think people who are fans of that particular talent are especially appreciative of that.
Absolutely! We’re very stoked to see Donnell talk about Petey Wheatstraw. Rudy Ray Moore is this legendary figure within black culture and the blaxploitation genre in particular. Do you have any personal connection to Moore’s work?
Petey Wheatstraw is a film that RZA loves, and so RZA and Donnell were talking. RZA wanted to have him come on the platform to do Petey Wheatstraw because Donnell loves Rudy Ray Moore.
The cool thing for me personally is that I’m learning a lot about film. None of these movies I’ve ever watched before; I’ve never seen any of them.
Before we created 36 Chambers together, I was working for another company, Boombotix, and RZA and I had just started working together. I was trying to understand what were all these old kung-fu films that RZA and Wu-Tang Clan were such big fans of. I grew up on Jackie Chan and Jet Li, and so seeing some of the clips from these old movies is like, where are they, 1600 A.D. China in this weird fairyland?
Since we were working together, I picked up a couple of DVDs just to learn a bit more before we really started to get engaged on our collaboration — Boombotix was a portable speaker company, and we were rolling out a Wu-Tang Clan speaker. So I got two DVDs, popped in The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter, and watched it… and I was just bored. I really did not enjoy the film, didn’t get it at all. I was even seeing a girl at the time, and we were watching it. We hooked up like three times during that movie; it was just that unengaging.
The next movie I had was Five Deadly Venoms, and I watched that later in the week. Its DVD had the option to watch with commentary. So, I turned that on, and then the whole movie and the Shaw Brothers thing made sense. I get how it effected kung-fu. The commentary was able to explain Shaw Brothers and how they were able to do their own studio. They were able to explain how Five Deadly Venoms had an effect on Kill Bill and Quentin Tarantino, and I was able to get an appreciation for a film, I would never have otherwise gotten.
That’s really the genesis for why we created 36 Cinema, that there’s all these films that have a lot of value and have an effect on our culture, it’s just that the younger generation, which I’d say I’m a part of, don’t get them. It takes someone walking me through that film for me to be able to fully appreciate it. So, that’s why we wanted to show these films.
Before we have the screenings, I watch the films ahead of time and make notes on it, so I have a basic understanding of it. It also helps me know when to bring in audience questions, so that way I’m not talking at any big, important times. But, for me, personally, I really enjoy just learning about these films and gaining a deeper appreciation I would never otherwise watch just because I’m watching movies in HD — because I mean if I have the option to watch a movie in HD or not HD, I’m choosing the one in HD. So I think this is a great opportunity to be able to go back through these old catalogues and appreciate these films that effected the films we see today. Especially if we bring those hosts with deep knowledge of these films, we’re able to see those threads and how they connect to films still coming out.
I really like the epiphany that you had clicking on the commentary track. Is that something you did, noticed the difference, and then brought the idea to RZA because you felt you were on to something?
That moment was back in 2014.
Okay, wow, so it’s been a long work in progress then?
Actually, no, not really. I guess all ideas sometimes gestate, but I didn’t have any idea at that point; that was just an experience I had.
In late March of this year, RZA came up with the idea to host kung-fu movies on our platform. At first, I was like, ehhhh, I don’t know, I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I mean you can just pay $10 and have a Netflix account, and, you know, there’s 30 kung-fu movies on there. Why is anyone going to come to 36Chambers.com to watch a kung-fu film?
After 7-10 days, I was trying to figure out how to make it more interesting, and talking to someone else about doing Instagram Live after or maybe a Reddit Q&A. But at the same time, it’s just hard to do because you have a rental and now you’re telling people to go to two different platforms. Then I had the epiphany: what if we were able to bring it all to the same platform, and rather than being a rental, creating something that was more of a live event. Especially right now because of quarantine, we have so few live events.
So, I think it’s just a good lesson about how all these experiences can lead to ideas further down the line. Fortunately, I had the experience of watching Five Deadly Venoms and gaining a deeper appreciation for it, which that experience, combined with RZA prompting me, led to this new idea.
In a way, it was a 5-6 year process [laughs] to get to 36 Cinema, but fortunately, once we had the idea, we were able to build it out in about a month.
How did quarantine and COVID-19 impact the launch, in a good way or a bad way?
Unfortunately, it’s done well, and what I mean by that is that is while 36 Cinema is doing well, we still understand all the pain and suffering that’s going on, both health-wise and financially to business and individuals. But people have really really appreciated it because it’s a live event. It’s something that’s given people a lot of value. There’s actually a quote I’d like to share from someone who sent us some feedback:
“My dad and I have shared a love for film since I was a little girl and watching movies was our way of bonding. Now as an adult, we live across the country and haven’t been able to share our love for film as often. 36 Cinema has allowed my dad and I to watch a movie together at the same time without being with each other, almost like a virtual drive-in. Thank you for letting my dad and I share our passion for film together, even though we’re so far apart.”
That’s amazing how y’all are able to bring people together and change lives.
Yeah! It’s a great experience for us to provide. That type of feedback just inspires us to work harder to build out this platform to get more movies. We thought we’d maybe do it once a month, but by mid-July, we should be in a spot where we’re doing it once a week.
That’s awesome! It’s been about bi-weekly currently?
Yeah, it’s been bi-weekly. It does take time to get rights, line up the host, and find films that connect with them, so it is a bit of a process, but we’re starting to build up relationships with distributors.
Shaolin Vs. Wu-Tang came from Dan Halsted’s personal collection and was digitized by Alamo Drafthouse, so there were even more pieces that y’all had to line up for that one. Is it like that for every film in the series?
No. The cool thing about Shaolin Vs. Wu-Tang and Mystery of Chessboxing is that we used a 35mm print. Usually, we’re just going to be using digital files, but we decided to use 35mm print just because there’s something nice about film, like you can see the imperfections in it. You can tell that it’s been used a few times. There’s something that just makes it organic and fun and rich that you don’t get from a digital experience.
You talked earlier about how you’d click HD over anything else if you had a choice. Has that 35mm experience swayed you over to the ways of celluloid?
[laughs] I’ve always enjoyed 35mm prints — at least since college, I’d say. I guess the thing I should specify more is that whenever a film is made, they’re made by real humans, they’re written by real human, they’re directed by real humans. Those humans live in a certain age, in a certain period of time, and therefore the films are influenced by that time and that period, and they have a certain meaning. When you look at Five Deadly Venoms, right now, a lot of it doesn’t look like anything special, but at the time it was revolutionary. All those guys were doing their own stunts. They didn’t have a separate stunt team. They didn’t have CGI. When you look back at the stuff they were doing then, it’s easy to think, Oh, this is just commonplace, when really it should be more like, Whoah, how are these guys able to pull this off?!
If you just pop that film into a random selection of films, most viewers wouldn’t be able to appreciate those moments or the time period that it came from. That’s why I think 36 Cinema offers a very unique perspective for people to realize how unique these films are and how special they were within that time period.
Don’t miss The Devil’s Son-in-Law in action! Snag your ticket by clicking here!
What do you think? We want to know. Share your thoughts and feelings in the comments section below, and as always, remember to viddy well!