Original "Straight Outta Compton" script included Dr. Dre's assault of Dee Barnes

The director said the scene was omitted for narrative reasons

Published August 20, 2015 2:58PM (EDT)

  (Universal Pictures)
(Universal Pictures)

Recently, there has been flurry of discussion over the decision to exclude Dr. Dre’s history of violence against women from the N.W.A. biopic Compton, with hip-hop journalist Dee Barnes penning an essay for Gawker about being assaulted by Dre back in 1991 and criticizing the film’s "revisionist history."

But according an early copy of the script obtained by the L.A. Times, the assault scene was originally part of the film. As the Times writes:

In the scene, the fictional Dre, “eyes glazed, drunk, with an edge of nastiness, contempt” (per noted from the script) spots Barnes at the party and approaches her.
“Saw that [expletive] you did with Cube. Really had you under his spell, huh? Ate up everything he said. Let him diss us. Sell us out.”

“I just let him tell his story,” Barnes’ character retorts, “That’s what I do. It’s my job.”

“I thought we were cool, you and me,” Dre fires back. “But you don’t give a [expletive]. You just wanna laugh at N.W.A, make us all look like fools.”

The conversation escalates, Barnes throws her drink in Dre’s face before he attacks her “flinging her around like a rag-doll, while she screams, cries, begs for him to stop.”

Defending his choice not to include the scene in the film at a Q&A a few days ago, director F. Gary Gray said they "couldn't fit everything into the movie” and he wanted to focus on stories that "served the narrative.” Whether Dr. Dre’s producer credit also helped impact the direction of the narrative is, at this point, merely a source of speculation.


By Anna Silman

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Related Topics ------------------------------------------

Assault Dee Barnes Dr. Dre Straight Outta Compton