Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
“Jason’s Lyric” is a wild movie if you really think about it. Jason (Allen Payne), a troubled young man whose aspirations aren’t that lofty (largely due to his own demons) meets Lyric (Jada Pinkett), a woman who one might call flighty and perhaps a bit unstable, and because of her, he nearly kills his brother … who ends up dead anyway. There’s some other stuff that happens and a bunch of actors from New York attempt Houston accents and fail miserably. I doubt that’s the movie synopsis on IMDb, but I’m also not wrong.
“Jason’s Lyric” came out in September 1994, and I remember going to the movies to see it. This was back when your parents would take you to see an R-rated movie because they didn’t really know what to expect either. To this day, I still don’t know how or why I was allowed to see “Coming to America” as a kid, but it came out in 1988 when I was 9 and I definitely saw it in the 1980s.
Anywho, my absolute favorite scene in this movie is the one that I’m pretty sure features the most quoted line from this film. Let me set the scene and then explain some things. Lyric has agreed to go on a date with Jason after he has basically stalked her to her neighborhood. He quite smoothly says that he just wants to see her again. He even drops major game when he says that if she goes to church, he wants to be in the back pew because he just wants to see her. If she tells him where she’ll be, he’ll be there. So she says, “Come to this condemned structure that might kill you.” (A bridge somewhere in Houston). He is skeptical but is also like, “Bet.” When the sun next leaves footprints across the sky is the time she sets. Like Jason, I, too, was confused. Lyric is a poet, guys. All the deep women were poets in the ’90s.
Anywho, Jason meets her at the bridge — and…
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