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Even before the Oscar nominations were announced, Singleton had begun sampling the heady rewards of having a big-time hit. He moved into a spacious six-bedroom house in the southern part of Los Angeles, which he shares with two cats, White Boy and Mulatto, and three people: his fiance and, at least temporarily, the production manager for his new film and a childhood friend who was recently discharged from the Army. He treated himself to a Pathfinder, three personal computers and thousands of dollars' worth of videodiscs ("the best way to see movies at home," he insists).
But, keeping his head, Singleton reminds himself that the movie industry is notorious for plumping up its young with praise and then turning around and eating them. He is convinced that the only way he will survive in the business is on his terms. "My attitude is that this can all go in a day," he says of his success. "But I'm still going to be me."
Singleton comes by this determined sense of self -- which sometimes borders on cockiness -- naturally. "The confidence is in the genes," declares his father Danny Singleton, the model for the compassionate father in Boyz. Says his mother Sheila Ward: "John takes pride in who he is."
Like Tre, the lead character in the film, Singleton is the child of teenage parents who never married and who took turns raising their son in separate households. He moved in with his father just before his 12th birthday. Both parents eventually put themselves through college. Ward, now 42, is a sales representative for a pharmaceutical company; Singleton, 41, is a real estate broker.
Both parents worried about the temptations of the street when young John was growing up. But Singleton, bolstered by the companionship of the two friends who would serve as models for the characters Doughboy and Ricky in the film, steered clear of gangs. Acquaintances of his were hurt in gang fights, and one was killed in an alley near his house, but the closest Singleton ever came to committing a violent act was in seventh grade, when a bully tried to take his money. He took a box cutter to school and threatened to cut the boy's throat if the harassment didn't stop. "He never tried to ask for money again," Singleton says proudly.
A shy, precocious child, young John learned to read during the long weekends he spent at the library with his mother as she studied for a medical- technology degree. Quickly graduating from picture books to adult books, he whipped through The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Anne Moody's Coming of Age in Mississippi while still in elementary school.
When he was nine, his father took him to see Star Wars. Like many thousands of youngsters, he went back as often as he could scrape up the money for another ticket. But while other kids fantasized about becoming Luke Skywalker or Princess Leia, Singleton's hero was director George Lucas. He soon began drawing scenes on sheets of paper and flipping the pages to create crudely animated "movies." During his senior year in high school, inspired by an English teacher with a passion for good writing, he decided on an alternate route to filmmaking: screenwriting. He enrolled in the Filmic Writing Program at the University of Southern California. "Any fool can figure where to point the camera," he says. "But you have to have a story to tell."