Things seem to be looking rosy for Straight Outta Compton. The film opened to impressive box office numbers, raking in more than $60 million. The Hollywood Reporter has already mulled over whether it could be an Oscar contender. However, one woman wants you to know that there's more to the story than meets the eye.
Dee Barnes — who filed a lawsuit against Dr. Dre in 1991 for brutally attacking her — is calling attention to the fact that the movie completely ignores Dr. Dre's alleged violence against women. Barnes penned a Gawker piece on Tuesday, in which she recounts the attack. "Dr. Dre straddled me and beat me mercilessly on the floor of the women’s restroom at the Po Na Na Souk nightclub in 1991," she writes.
She also mentions other alleged victims of his, including singer Tairrie B and his former girlfriend Michel’le. "Like many of the women that knew and worked with N.W.A., I found myself a casualty of Straight Outta Compton’s revisionist history," she says.
Barnes also has a theory about why the violence was intentionally left out: The film's director, F. Gary Gray, would have had to explain his part in the incident between Barnes and Dr. Dre. According to Barnes, Gray was her cameraman when she hosted an interview with Ice Cube for the hip-hop show Pump It Up! The interview went awry, and it was supposedly the reason for Dr. Dre's attack on her — "as many of his groupmates attested," she says.
The movie may leave out a very telling part of Dr. Dre's past, but it won't be ignored completely if Barnes has anything to do with it. Head over to Gawker to read the entire essay.
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