Film profiles famed Philadelphia graffiti artist "Cornbread"
JULIE STOIBER
The Philadelphia Inquirer
PHILADELPHIA - Thirty years after his brush with Hollywood, when fame felt so close he could taste it, Darryl A. "Cornbread" McCray still boils with anguish as he tells about the movie of his life that never got made.

"That would have been my ticket out of the ghetto life," he said.

When he was ditched by the studio - undone by his own audacity - "I sat there and cried," he said. "I was robbed. "

But with his penchant for redemption, McCray, 52, an in-and-out father of 10 who has worked to reconcile with his children, the self-proclaimed king of graffiti who scrubbed clean the very Philadelphia walls he so notoriously defaced, may yet see his story on the screen.

In a documentary scheduled to be released this fall, filmmaker Sean McKnight, 37, of Ridley Park, will tell the tale of a troubled middle child from a God-fearing Brewerytown family who got the attention he craved on the streets.

McCray accomplished it by spraying his tag - CORNBREAD, with a swoosh at the end and a crown over the B - along every bus, trolley and subway route in the city and, in one of his most daring feats, on the flank of an elephant at the zoo.

The film is called Cry of the City: The Legend of Cornbread.

"In his day, he was notorious," McKnight said. "His fame is not exaggerated. "

And not just in Philadelphia. The authors of a new book on the graffiti movement identify Cornbread as "the first 'bomber,' the earliest example of a person going out on the streets with no other purpose than to write his name on everything. "

McKnight, whose one-man Cinema Alliance has a single feature-length film to its credit, began shooting the documentary in October, interviewing more than 40 people, including graffiti writers, a black historian, a news anchor, and former Mayor W. Wilson Goode Sr.

"I was pleased to participate because Cornbread became an inspiration for many of the young people about why they should not write on walls," said Goode, now director of Amachi, a national mentoring program for children of prisoners. "The number-one problem in the city when I ran for mayor was graffiti. "

The pol and the vandal met in 1984. McCray swaggered up to Goode at City Hall, a scrapbook of news clips under his arm, and told the mayor that his anti-graffiti campaign had no chance - unless he gave Cornbread a job. Goode not only hired him, McCray said, he showed him off at a news conference.

"If you mention his name, people will say, 'Cornbread?' Then they'll just start talking about him," McKnight said.

One day in a North Philadelphia high-rise, McKnight said, he was making small talk with two women as he rode the elevator to McCray's apartment for a shoot. They asked about his equipment, and when he explained what he was doing, "they freaked out. 'Cornbread?! Cornbread lives in this building?! 'He's a celebrity. They knew exactly who he was."

For all his admirers - and there are many, McKnight said - McCray is also reviled for the untold destruction he visited on his hometown: He once tagged the top floor of a skyscraper under construction near City Hall. He stood in different depots different nights and hit every bus, trolley and train in sight.

"The documentary presents both sides of the coin," McKnight said. "We talk about the damage."

At the outset, McKnight said, he told McCray the ground rules: "It's the good, the bad and the ugly."

"He's done drugs. He's been arrested some outrageous amount of times," McKnight said. "I've asked him questions about his life, like, 'You're not being a great father if you're strung out on heroin, are you?' He's got a dark side, and he's willing to explore it."

McCray, who described himself as "buck wild" as a teenager, ended up in reform school. There, he missed Grandma's cornbread so much he badgered the head cook to make some for him. Fed up one day, the man grabbed McCray and warned his counselor, "Keep this Cornbread out of my kitchen. "

Soon, McCray was writing his new nickname on the jailhouse walls. When he got out, he fell for a girl named Cynthia - McKnight tracked her down for the documentary - and wrote "Cornbread Loves Cynthia" on the chalkboards in her classrooms and on the route she took from school.

After her parents moved her away, he went back to "Cornbread" in black or silver.

What really got the city's notice was a flurry of stunts McCray staged in the early 1970s after local media publicized his death, mistaking him for a young man nicknamed "Corn" who was murdered in West Philadelphia.

"I thought, 'All I got to do is start doing bizarre stuff and my reputation will rise again,'" he said.

That's when he hit the zoo and the skyscraper, and paid a friend to stage a fake crime so he could tag the police cars and wagons that responded.

"I was no stranger to danger," he said.

What caught Hollywood's eye was the Jackson 5 jet. McCray planted himself among a crowd of autograph seekers who mobbed the band when it deplaned at Philadelphia International Airport. Amid the chaos, McCray claims, he dashed up and sprayed the plane; his name was still there when the jet returned to California.

It wasn't long before a studio representative tracked him down and offered to make a movie about his life, McCray said. When he demanded his own lawyer, the studio balked, he said.

He lost his oldest son to a street killing a decade ago. Desperate to find the shooters, he put on rags and pushed a shopping cart around a drug neighborhood, a homeless persona that allowed him to pick up information about the men responsible. Police made an arrest. Had they not, McCray said, "I was going to hold court in the street. "

With his rich voice, expressive face and preppy ball cap, McCray acknowledges that all his bravado - his middle initial stands for "Alexander the Great"; every one of his eight grandchildren looks just like him - didn't really get him where he wanted to go.

"I wrote on walls because that was my escape from ghetto life," he said.

He has had personal satisfaction, working for the Anti-Graffiti Network, helping delinquents attain high school equivalency degrees, counseling addicts. But he has yet to achieve the kind of bust-out exposure he envisioned.

He lives in a so-so neighborhood, makes his living selling cut-rate DVDs and CDs. His drug addiction, he said, cost him a shot at a deal to market a cornbread mix.

With the documentary comes renewed hope. Raphael Paris, a local funk and blues musician who idolized Cornbread as a kid, is doing the narration and the soundtrack. His band: Cornbread. His top song: "Cornbread."

"I pray to God, 'Let this be a success,'" McCray said. "This is the beginning of a new start."