Telling a B.I.G. Story: Inside the Biggie Smalls Biopic "Notorious"

Having Lil Cease, Big's ubiquitous everything man from his group Junior Mafia, around certainly helped. "The funny thing about 'Cease, he remembers things vividly," Mackie explains. "He was [on set] giving pinpoint accurate details of everything that happened. "It seems like he was fucked up all the time, but he remembered all of it!"

Luke agrees: "Puff visited and told me to just tell the story that I think is true. He barely visited the set because it was so emotional," says the actor, who claims the hardest part of getting into character was wearing Diddy's then-trademark Versace shirts around a cast adorned in black timbs and hoodies. "But Cease, he knows some shit. He'd tell us stories about how Biggie would be, 'This nigga Puff always trying to take the shine!' But Big knew he had to bet on Puff cause Puff bet on him."

The gamble Biggie and Puff take on each other is overemphasized in the film. Early in the plot Luke tells Woolard, "To change the world, you got to change yourself first," which Woolard's Biggie later repeats to his boss before his shooting death. But cliched storytelling tricks aside, it's hard not to smile watching a story that only occurred 11 years ago and marvel at how much hip-hop has changed. Biggie and Faith's relationship practically played out on Hot 97's rotation and in the pages of VIBE. It'd be hard to imagine Jay-Z and Beyoncé ever being as candid as a couple. For all of Biggie's warts, however, Christopher Wallace the man possessed a charm that was as beautiful as a Notorious B.I.G. verse. And it's on full display on the big screen.

Mom was proud. "I just wanted to read Ms. Wallace's face," Woolard says of Big's mom reaction after her screening. "She was taking her glasses off, with a tissue and wiping her eyes. I felt like I won my victory, because I wanted her to feel like her son was next to her. And we hugged. We didn't have to say anymore after that."

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• 2008 Hot List: Hot Biopic, Notorious