Tales From Development Hell: Live 2 Tell
- cepmurphywrites
- Sep 23
- 9 min read
By Ryan Fleming.
Musicians dabbling in acting was nothing new by the 1990s. Sometimes the musician didn’t even need to have any acting ability whatsoever and the roles would be written around them, as was the case for almost all of Elvis Presley’s film career. Other times, acting can become a bona fide second career to where subsequent generations might become more familiar with the star via acting than music, like Kris Kristofferson. Sometimes they become identified far more as an actor than a musician, like Will Smith.
Then there’s the careers cut short in both acting and music, like Tupac Shakur. At the time of his murder in 1996, he had recently written his first script: Live 2 Tell.
Shakur was no stranger to acting by the time he wrote Live 2 Tell. He had appeared in multiple films by that point. Sometimes in little more than cameos, sometimes as a lead, sometimes the subject of controversy.
His first film appearance may be his oddest: a cameo as part of Digital Underground in Dan Aykroyd’s directorial debut, the horror comedy Nothing but Trouble (1991) starring Chevy Chase. The sight of Shakur and the rest of Digital Underground looking on approving as Chase’s character is wed to John Candy in drag, presided over by Aykroyd’s phallus-nosed judge, is undoubtedly memorable but for all the wrong reasons.
His next few appearances were more prominent and nowhere near as surreal. In Ernest R. Dickerson’s coming-of-age crime drama Juice (1992), opposite Janet Jackson in John Singleton’s romance film Poetic Justice (1993), and as a gangster in Jeff Pollack’s sports drama Above the Rim (1994). Other roles were elusive. A fight with director Allen Hughes on the set of Menace II Society (1993) saw Shakur fired from that film. He was also fired by Singleton from Higher Learning (1995) following his arrest for sodomy and illegal possession of a firearm. Though acquitted of those charges, Shakur would be convicted for two counts of sexual abuse in the same case, eventually interred at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York.
It would be whilst incarcerated that he would write Live 2 Tell. It also became something of a cause celebre with Shakur being supported by friends such as Jada Pinkett, establishing correspondence with the likes of Jim Carrey and Tony Danza, and Al Shaprton personally visiting the prison to help get Shakur released from solitary. Several of these would wind up on the prospective cast list for Live 2 Tell. He also released his third album, Me Against the World, whilst incarcerated.
In October 1995 he bonded out of Dannemora whilst appealing the conviction. The bond was set at $1.4m, down from the $3m bail that was set at the time of his conviction. His fourth album, All Eyez on Me, was released in February 1996. He also immediately resumed his acting career, filming Bullet (1996) opposite Mickey Rourke. Other roles were filmed, more music was recorded, and future projects proceeding apace as 1996 wore down. Live 2 Tell was occasionally brought up in interviews, the first page of his hand annotated script included a cast list. Immediately beneath “CAST” on that page was typed “(God Willing)”.
Live 2 Tell would have told the story of Scott Solomon, a role Shakur intended for himself. Following the suicide of his father and subsequent disintegration of his family, Solomon would be taken under the mentorship of a local gangster, Duane “Dee” Jones. Following Dee’s murder at the hands of a rival, Solomon takes over his criminal empire. Solomon proves himself adept at the game but always has his sights set on escaping it. With murders continuing and another conflict with Dee’s old rivals seemingly inevitable, Solomon seeks to retire on top but finds the path complicated by his past actions.
The script seems in the school of crime films about young men from working class backgrounds getting caught up in the rackets and seeing major success before becoming a victim of that same success. Films like Little Caesar (1931), The Public Enemy (1931), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), Black Caesar (1973), Once Upon a Time in America (1984), or Goodfellas (1990). Between Shakur’s fame as an actor and musician, along with his high profile during and following his incarceration, the script likely stood a good chance of being made.
In September of 1996, Shukar was murdered in a drive-by shooting just outside Las Vegas. He was shot four times and died six days afterwards from his injuries. He was twenty-five years old. No charge was brought for the murder for twenty-seven years, when Duane “Keefe D” Davis was arrested. His trial is still pending at the time of writing, delayed until February 2026.
Shakur had already recorded a fifth album at the time of his murder. It was released two months after his death. The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory was recorded under the stage name Makaveli and received critical acclaim. Three film performances were also released posthumously: the aforementioned Bullet, the comedic Gridlock’d (1997), and the action crime film Gang Related (1997). There were also several more roles Shakur was being considered or was auditioning for at the time of his death, but more on those later. There were a further seven posthumous albums released consisting of archival productions.
Shakur’s fame and impact were if anything magnified by his death, being seen by some as a martyr. His influence and tributes from fans and fellow artists alike continue almost three decades after his murder. Lauren Lazin’s documentary Tupac: Resurrection (2003) was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It would be one of the producers of that documentary, Preston Holmes, who would make the only attempt to produce Live 2 Tell, but despite Shakur’s lasting fame it would never come to fruition.
Holmes and partners in NStar Studios were set to produce the film, with Shakur’s mother, Afeni, who had previously collaborated with Holmes on Resurrection, set to be an executive producer. It was announced in May of 2011 with a budget of $11m and production set to begin in 2012. However, a Kickstarter campaign was launched in 2011 with the intention of raising $250,000 needed for development and pre-production expenses. Amongst these were legal fees and hiring a writer to develop the script. When the Kickstarter funding was not raised, no further news of the script being developed was forthcoming.
The script itself can still be found online, as NStar released it as part of their efforts to make the film. Notes before the script begins proper state that the intention in polishing it was to trim the narration and shorten it by around 20 pages. The deck also contains information on filming locations, marketing, budget projections, release strategies, and prospective directors and stars. Ernest R. Dickerson, who directed Shakur in Juice, is the only director listed as an option.
Amongst the proposed cast for the Scott Solomon role, Michal Ealy, Nate Parker, and Columbus Short are listed prominently. To reiterate, this was the role that Shakur wrote for himself. It perhaps indicates why the film found financing difficult even directly from fans. As much as Shakur’s fans might have been interested in seeing him lead in a film that he wrote himself, seeing someone else in the role is akin to someone else recording one of his unproduced songs. The issue with star vehicles, especially one written by the star in question, is that not only the lead role but the entire script is based around them and what they want (or others want for them) from the work. As described in an earlier article in this series, the spec script Simon Says that became a star vehicle for Brandon Lee went through many versions and retoolings before it became Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995). It’s difficult to imagine Brandon Lee in that version of the film, much as it is difficult to imagine Bruce Willis in a role tailored to Brandon Lee. Similarly, it is difficult to imagine anyone else in a role Tupac Shakur wrote and tailored to himself.
Live 2 Tell is unlikely to ever be filmed. If it does, chances are it may only bear a slight resemblance to the version Shakur imagined whilst writing in Dannemora. But what if it had been made?
The question of “what if Live 2 Tell was made” is really the question of “what if Tupac Shakur was never murdered”. That question feels far more one of impact on music than on film, but there are some immediate impacts to the latter.
We don’t even have an indication of when Live 2 Tell might have entered production had Shakur lived. For the sake of our speculation let us assume that it would have been produced in 1997 and released either that year or in 1998. Ernest Dickerson is perhaps still a likely choice as director. John Singleton is another possibility since neither seemed to bear the other ill-will over Shakur’s firing from Higher Learning. Singleton would be attached at one point to a biopic about Shakur that eventually became the negatively received All Eyez on Me (2017) after Singleton had left the project. Shakur had listed Ella Joyce, Jada Pinkett, Freddie Foxxx, and Jasmine Guy in other prominent roles. Many of those listed he considered friends so it is highly likely they would have done the film if asked. The potential bumps in the road are if another experienced screenwriter is brought on board to polish the script (more than likely); or creative differences between the star/writer and director. It is not outside the realm of possibility for a filmed version of Live 2 Tell to be the subject of its own development hell as much as the unmade version.
How the film would be received is another matter of pure speculation. Would it be a commercial and critical success like 8 Mile (2002) with Eminem? Or would it be negatively received and barely make back its budget like Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (2005) with 50 Cent? The answer probably lies, as it usually does, somewhere in the middle. Perhaps the only thing we might say with certainty is that, as with the two aforementioned vehicles for rappers, the soundtrack will likely perform comparatively better and have a more lasting impact than the film itself, regardless of how it was received. It is worth noting that Shakur was a much more experienced actor than either Eminem or 50 Cent, including several starring roles. If the film fails or succeeds it probably won’t be down solely to the acting ability of its lead. How viewers feel about the film might be directly related to how they feel about Shakur’s music. It is easy to imagine posters for Live 2 Tell, which in our own history would have been posters of Shakur himself, adorning walls next to posters of Scarface (1983).
Shakur’s survival also means he might likely land some roles he never had a chance to play. Singleton had intended to cast Shakur in the lead of his coming-of-age film Baby Boy (2001), a role that would eventually be taken by Tyrese Gibson. There are also reports that Shakur was intending to audition for a role in George Lucas’s first prequel to Star Wars (1977). The role for which Shakur was allegedly intended to audition was ultimately played by Samuel L. Jackson, who had acted with Shakur in Juice. Of all the possibilities form Shakur’s survival, the notion that he might have played Jedi Master Mace Windu and would eventually melt Ian MacDiarmid’s face in Revenge of the Sith (2005) is an amusing one.
These are only a handful of roles that it is known, or presumed that, Shakur was in consideration to play. His filmography during his final year and prior to his incarceration does suggest he would have taken acting roles with more regularity than many of his fellow rappers who have dabbled in acting. Whether he would have been an Elvis, a Kristofferson, or a Fresh Prince in juggling music and movies is another matter on which we can only speculate. Especially when in the short run the greater impact of his survival is on the music industry.
The Live 2 Tell script, comments by Shakur on it in interviews, and hand-written annotations from a physical copy auctioned in 2021 are the only indicators we have as to how Live 2 Tell might have turned out. If this series has shown anything is that there are just as many what ifs between a screenplay being written and a film being released as there are if someone was not murdered. That murder either failing or not occurring has major impact beyond a film perhaps being made.
There are artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers that can cross over into medias other than the one that made him famous. Tupac Shakur might have been one of them, but that will only ever be speculation.
Ryan Fleming is the author of SLP's Reid in Braid and various short stories for the anthologies, as well as editing The Scottish Anthology.
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