'Paris Is Burning': Diddy 'borrows' title from documentary on NYC LGBT culture

theGRIO REPORT - 'Paris is Burning', the original Jennie Livingston-directed film, chronicled the 'ball' culture in New York City's disenfranchised and neglected black, Latino, and queer communities...

TheGrio Staff

Apr 17, 2012

Rapper turned business mogul Sean “P. Diddy” Combs has never been shy about his affinity for opulence. He’s been bragging about his bank roll for years (in songs like Notorious B.I.G.’s “Mo Money Mo Problems”), and he even named his latest attempt at the next best thing in music Dirty Money. So it’s no surprise that the trend continues with his latest creative project, Paris Is Burning, a short documentary film about extravagance.

Diddy released the first trailer yesterday, shot by French director Julien Bachelet. The 1 minute clip follows the Ciroc owner through a maze of screaming paparazzi as he hops in and out of his limo to attend a fashion show, shop for Rolex watches, and simply enjoy the life his wealth affords him.

As he shops, he muses to the camera, “I’m fresh out the store, you see how we do it… collecting Rollies…. I’m a have over 100 Rollies within the next month.”

WATCH DIDDY in ‘PARIS IS BURNING’ (2012) TRAILER:[youtubevid http://youtube.com/watch?v=bGQXGK4IksY]

Is Diddy aware that his lavish short film goes by the same name as the documentary from 1990 about marginalized, gay, and trans people of color emerging from the New York City “ball” scene?

Paris Is Burning, the original Jennie Livingston-directed film, chronicled the ball culture in New York City’s disenfranchised and neglected black, Latino, and queer communities during the 1980s. Madonna learned to “vogue” here, and America discovered what “throwing shade” was for the first time.

Octavia Saint Laurent, an aspiring trans model and drag queen, was just one of the many “characters” Livingston spotlights in her anthropological film. Like many of the gay and transgendered performers who came out of the ball scene, St. Laurent suffered from AIDS, and she deeply affected her proceeding generation of admirers when she died of cancer in 2009.

OCTAVIA SAINT LAURENT OF ‘PARIS IS BURNING” (1990):
[youtubevid http://youtube.com/watch?v=UJe0RMnf4vk]

Regardless of whether or not Diddy has appropriated Paris Is Burning from the original — named after one of the balls it features in the film — do you want to see his continued display of materialism branch over from music and television into film?

Follow Briana Lopes on Twitter at @briananikohl