If you’re a creative individual from a marginalized community with a passion for movies, filmmakers Malcolm Spellman, Jimmy Chris and Emil Pinnock have set up a mechanism for getting your work out to an audience.
The three recently founded the incubator pipeline organization Genius in the Hood to provide opportunities through education and mentorship for exceptionally gifted individuals — or geniuses — from marginalized communities, i.e. “the hood,” thus the name.
‘THE HOOD’
While “the hood” is often considered a place marked by limitations, barriers, ceilings and lack of opportunity, growing up in such an atmosphere can also cultivate originality and authenticity that when one takes a professional hunger and a survival attitude and couples it with creative genius, that can produce an alchemy needed to not only succeed but thrive in Hollywood.
Spellman, Chris and Pinnock are successful examples of what’s produced from the hood if only given the opportunity.
Chris’ work in entertainment started out in the music business — hip hop specifically — before transitioning to television, where he served as executive producer of the acclaimed FX series “Hip Hop Uncovered.”
Pinnock has been involved in entertainment since childhood, starting out on the public television show “Reading Rainbow” and moving on to act in other shows like “Sixth Man,” “Beloved” and “Gridiron Gang.” He also developed the TV series “Up North” and owns the production company Unleashing Giants.
Spellman is also a longtime showbusiness pro on the writing side, with his most recent works including FX’s “Empire” along with Marvel’s “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” series on Disney+ and the movie “Captain America: Brave New World.”
While many programs seek to address the lack of diversity, equity and inclusion in Hollywood by creating pathways for identity as well as gender and ethnic representation, Genius in the Hood aggressively mines, recruits and trains people that would be unconventional, exceptionally talented and gifted storytellers from the literal and figurative hood with no respect to class, formal education or access.
LESSONS FROM INCARCERATION
A major point to consider is all three founders have a history of being incarcerated.
Chris grew up in Compton, Calif., U.S.A. and has been a friend of Spellman’s for more than 30 years. Chris was in and out of jail multiple times but not convicted as a youth, but as a young adult, he was convicted on drug charges and spent six years in federal prison.
“I did wrong, got caught,” he says, adding: “I learned my lesson that one time, been out ever since and the rest is the past and the future is all I live for now.”
Spellman also grew up in California and spent time in jail on drug-related offenses when he was younger, but the main conviction he still has on his record was for possession and intent to sell marijuana. With unemployment rates being very low when Spellman was growing up, selling drugs was one of the only ways he was financially able to survive.
“I didn’t know how to survive without adding hustle to it,” according to Spellman. “And that’s how I got in trouble, but let me be clear, I did not do like years in prison or things like that. I did a few weeks in jail until my case was arraigned, bailed out, and then got to deal with my case from the streets.”
For Pinnock, who grew up in New York, U.S.A., his brush with incarceration came about on his 19th birthday. He and his friends were driving home when they were pulled over by police. After the police questioned them, Pinnock and his friends were allowed to drive on, but minutes later they saw the same police car behind them. When it followed them into a dark, barely lit part of the neighborhood, the car’s siren started to wail.
I didn’t know how to survive without adding hustle to it.
“My instincts immediately told me, don’t stop until we get to a main street, because we don’t want to be stuck here in the dark with these officers,” Pinnock says. “So if their sirens have to be on for a minute or two, so be it. And so we just continued, even though their sirens were on, until we got to a place, but they end up cutting us off, drawing guns, taking us out the car and immediately put us in handcuffs.”
Pinnock and his friends were in the police precinct for several hours before realizing they were being charged with possession of two firearms, which they did not have.
“Guns that we did not have and guns that the police said that we did not have the first time by letting us go when they searched the car and searched us,” he says. Nevertheless, they were sent to Queens Detention Center and Rikers Island until their case was heard, and with bail set at a very high level, none of their families could afford to get them out.
JAIL ‘CHANGES YOU’
When their case went to a grand jury, Pinnock and his friends were acquitted on all charges.
Being in jail, though, “changes you,” he says. “It changes your mentality on how you view people.”
“You go into a place that is very violent,” he adds. “Not only from the inmates, but from the guards. You have to defend yourself. You have to be forced to become either predator or prey.”
Pinnock notes that while people might not think of the “Hunger Games” movie franchise as something that represents the community that they come from, when he and friends saw the film, “we immediately started crying because we were like, this is what they’ve been doing to us our whole life. I guess now that you put a different culture inside of it and people can have some type of different sympathy, but this is what they’ve been doing to us. They put us in the projects or put us in the prison. And whoever makes it out wins. And that’s pretty much where Rikers Island and Queens Detention Center was for us. I’m thankful to have made it out alive, really.”
‘HIP HOP UNCOVERED’
For Chris, his experience in prison was one of the inspirations for his collaboration with Spellman on the FX docuseries “Hip Hop Uncovered,” which, according to the show’s description, “takes a deep dive into the paradox of America’s criminalization of the genre and its fascination with the street culture that created it and still exists within it.”
The series reveals the untold story of how that street culture helped shape hip-hop “from an expression of survival and defiance into one of music’s most dominant genres.”
They put us in the projects or put us in the prison. And whoever makes it out wins.
Chris says the show was originally called “U Turn,” and “pretty much based on guys behind the scenes [of the hip-hop movement], guys that turned their life around.”
One of Chris’ inspirations to get into the music business was musician and rapper Jai Hassan-Jamal Robles, who in 1995 was gunned down in Atlanta, Ga., U.S.A., an incident that served as the main catalyst for a feud between rappers in New York and Los Angeles.
Chris says Robles’ killing caused him to step away from the music business and “start going more towards film. And that was what made me want to do ‘Hip Hop Uncovered’ with Malcolm Spellman.”
INSPIRATION
For Pinnock, Chris is an inspiration for those who have been incarcerated, released and want to stay out of jail long-term.
“There’s a model of that second chance that we want to offer the geniuses in the hood that [Chris] proves that that’s a possibility,” Pinnock says. “He comes out of six years of federal time and is able not only to not re-enter the [prison] system, but also at the same time, he’s able to go back to his community.”
In addition to his involvement with music and film, Chris also worked in the maintenance department of Compton College, rising to a supervisory position before retiring recently.
Pinnock admires Chris’ work at the school.
While Compton was a “rough” one, Pinnock says Chris “went back there to work in that community, had a lot of other opportunities to work other places, but wanted to make sure that he served in a place that he was from and make some impact there.”
“I got a second chance,” Chris says, “a third chance, really, to kind of keep my life straight and turn my life around.”
ROLE MODELS
He adds that kids nowadays look up to him as an example of how not to make the mistakes he did.
“So as much opportunity as I can give to them that’s been given to me and others, I try to return that back 10 times and more to people around me that haven’t had a second chance or some of the opportunities that I’ve had,” Chris says. “As many doors I can open to provide to somebody else, I’m always trying to do that.”
Given the three founders’ backgrounds, Genius in the Hood has been focused mostly on getting aspiring filmmakers into the movie and television industry.
Pinnock says as Genius in the Hood enters into its first year, they’re going to start with filmmakers and storytellers.
So as much opportunity as I can give to them that’s been given to me and others, I try to return that back 10 times and more.
“However, we’ve already begun from the inception of the organization to start to think about how do we incorporate music,” he adds. “We have a lot of relationships there.”
That said, “you can’t tackle everything at the same time,” according to Pinnock. “So we’re hoping that the success with the film [side] that opens up other doors to do that. So, no in the immediate, but yes in the long term.”
Another inspiration the trio have used in their own endeavor is the Sundance Institute’s Labs, Grants and Fellowships programs, which according to the organization provides “dynamic support at every step of the creative journey for individuals with distinct voices in film and episodic storytelling.”
For Spellman, “the No. 1 thing that may sound hella simple or obvious to y’all that very few people do that we do, that we sort of took from Sundance is, if we elect to work with you, the way we’ve done this with each other coming up, we are with you until you are on.”
MINING FOR TALENT
Pinnock echoes that sentiment, noting that he doesn’t even have a high school diploma. When they mine for talent, they aren’t necessarily looking for people that don’t have college degrees.
We’ve already begun from the inception of the organization to start to think about how do we incorporate music.
“We’re looking for the dude in the local barbershop,” Pinnock says. “The barbershop is one of the most important places of the community who has everybody laughing to the point where you got guys who go to the barbershop and storytell and people go sit there when they don’t even get a haircut, right? ‘Cause they would rather listen to this dude storytell more than watch the most popular show on television. We want that guy [or gal] to get an opportunity.”
PERSONAL GOALS
Chris’ personal goals for Genius in the Hood is to reach, teach and mentor as many people as they can from their community “to get a program that could change lives.”
For Spellman, the ultimate goal is to build a program that is formed under the model “that we — me, Emil, Jimmy — have now, which is direct handholding, not just like a program, but it is direct handholding through the indoctrination of a career. And once this program has taken hold in film and television, using this model to franchise into other arenas like tech, real estate, whatever.”
If we elect to work with you, the way we’ve done this with each other coming up, we are with you until you are on.
The trio want to take their experiences coming from similar circumstances, “and the fact that we’re not scared to trust it when we see it, and to connect with those people, whether or not they have the experience or the vocabulary or all the things that everyone has, that checklist that people go, ‘Are you worthy of that?'” Pinnock adds. “We’ve thrown that out and we’re using our instincts and our experience to actually mine for talent. I think that’s the thing that we’re most excited about.”
The three have a goal to produce 50 geniuses out of the program this year, according to Pinnock, with an additional goal of doubling that number every year for the next five years.
Additionally, they have a goal to raising US$1 million for Genius in the Hood and Unleashing Giants’ “Lights, Camera, Future” kids program.
Part of the reason for the fundraising is the wildfires that ravaged the Los Angeles area at the beginning of 2025.
“All of our premieres are in Altadena and Pasadena,” Pinnock says, adding that several of the schools that “Lights, Camera, Future” was operating at no longer even exist.
“We had 24 programs running last year,” he adds. “I have zero programs right now because of the wildfires, right? And I want to get that back.”
The trio has a website, geniusinthehood.org, where people can get more information. They also have a relationship with the Mockingbird Nonprofit Incubator Program, which provides a mechanism for people to make tax-exempt donations.
