MURDER RAP NICK BROOMFIELD TRIES TO UNTANGLE TALE OF TWO KILLINGS IN 'BIGGIE & TUPAC'.

Byline: Fred Shuster Staff Writer

The murders of rappers Tupac Shakur and Christopher (Notorious B.I.G.) Wallace detailed in Nick Broomfield's forthcoming ``Biggie & Tupac'' guerrilla documentary have sparked enough innuendo to rival ``Amadeus,'' the play and movie that spun off the long-held rumor that composer Antonio Salieri had a hand in the death of the more talented Wolfgang Mozart.

Broomfield has his own classical view: that the superstar rappers were embroiled in private jealousies, shadowy intrigue and a very public feud that thundered into view with the force of twin shotgun blasts.

It's hardly the only conspiracy theory. On one hand, as reported in the national media, the Shakur hit was said to be ordered by Wallace after Tupac rapped about infidelity on the part of the East Coast rapper's wife, among other insults. At one point, before they became deadly enemies, the rappers were said to be friends.

Following a scuffle at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas where the Mike Tyson/Bruce Seldon fight took place, Shakur was shot and fatally wounded in a car driven by Death Row Records mogul Marion (Suge) Knight on Sept. 8, 1996. Shakur died five days after the drive-by shooting in which Knight was grazed by a bullet.

Wallace, whose debut album ``Ready to Die'' became a million-seller after its 1994 release, was shot and killed in the Wilshire District of Los Angeles after a party at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles on March 9, 1997. Both murders remain unsolved.

Now stepping into the controversy is Broomfield, whose ``Kurt & Courtney'' suggested the Nirvana star wasn't actually a suicide at all but the victim of a carefully orchestrated murder plot masterminded by those close to him.

Broomfield tries much the same sensationalistic approach in his Shakur and Wallace project, suggesting that Shakur was rubbed out by employees of his own record company in order to sell more posthumous albums.

Broomfield also tries to rope in a crooked cop connection by hinting that Los Angeles police officers linked to the Rampart Division scandal also played a part in the Wallace killing. The ties are all very tenuous and seem designed to give fuel to conspiracy theorists.

But Broomfield's ``Biggie & Tupac'' diverges greatly from a recent report that found Wallace, while in hiding in Vegas, ordered the Shakur hit in order to exact revenge in an escalating East Coast vs. West Coast rap turf war taken up by Los Angeles street gangs.

The film opens Friday at the Sunset 5 in West Hollywood, the Magic Johnson Theatres in Baldwin Hills and the Playhouse 7 in Pasadena. Extra security will reportedly be on duty during screenings.

``It was an intense six months putting this story together,'' Broomfield said from London last week. ``There were so many divergent stories that were just as fascinating as the primary one.''

Rap historian and biographer Bill Adler admits Broomfield's film raises questions but ultimately falls down on facts.

``He's the sort of filmmaker who is successful chiefly at asking provocative questions,'' Adler said from his New York office. ``He may not come up with provocative answers, but he does ask the questions. And because the murders are unsolved, he has all the room in the world to ruminate.

``Whether anyone actually cares at this point - well, it depends if the movie is marketed toward hip-hop fans or Broomfield fans who are amused at his take-no-prisoners approach.''

One of Broomfield's suppositions is that Shakur - an actor as well as one of the most popular rap stars of the '90s whose final album, ``All Eyez on Me,'' sold more than 6 million copies - may have been set up for murder by Knight after the rap star threatened to leave Death Row.

Knight was asked for a comment but did not respond by press time.

One of Broomfield's primary sources, ex-LAPD Detective Russell Poole, suggests Los Angeles cops were behind the Wallace hit. Wallace was signed to Sean (Puffy) Combs' Bad Boy label, a rival of Death Row.

``If this had been some ordinary drive-by shooting by some inexperienced gang-bangers, we would've solved it a long time ago,'' Poole says. ``You've got to think to yourself, 'Who could do this and get away with it?' ''

Nobody knows who committed the murders, but Broomfield questions whether a star as well-known as Wallace could've been staying in Las Vegas at the time of the Shakur killing without being recognized at least once.

``I wonder if Wallace was in Vegas and if he really did offer to pay for the hit,'' Broomfield said. ``When I read those initial reports, I was waiting for some sort of backup from people who saw him in the city, and there just wasn't any. No plane ticket, no named witnesses, no finding of what was supposedly Wallace's gun used in the murder. I found it hard to believe Wallace could've spirited himself in and out of Vegas without being seen and kept it secret all these years.''

Broomfield has made something of a name for himself with a guerrilla filmmaking style that includes sneak attacks on shocked interview subjects, tape rolling.

``With this technique, you get a higher excitement level going and you get a much more real response when they're not prepared for the camera,'' he said. ``It's not like I want to make a career out of being obnoxious.''

Obnoxious, maybe. Funny, definitely. In one scene in ``Biggie & Tupac,'' Broomfield's camera operator splits the scene in fear, leaving the director to stage a completely ridiculous interview with Knight alone in a commons room at a state prison. In the best moment, a straight-faced Broomfield asks Knight for his ``message to the kids.''

Knight urges fans to keep buying the records, but don't act them out at home.

Why bother to make a film about Shakur and Wallace in the first place? Yes, they sold a lot of records, but did their violent, thugged-out message justify big-screen hero worship?

``These were two incredibly iconic people who reinvented how a generation saw themselves,'' Broomfield insists. ``They repositioned a whole generation of black people within a particular generation and redefined that generation's relationship with their white contemporaries. It was an amazingly significant thing.''

Besides ``Kurt & Courtney,'' the London-born Broomfield's previous films include ``Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam'' and ``Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer.'' His next movie was set to be about the Oct. 9 execution of Wuornos, among the nation's only female serial killers. But Monday, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush issued a temporary stay of execution because of questions about whether Wuornos was mentally competent to drop her appeals.

If all else fails, you can probably find Broomfield returning to Los Angeles to shoot another Cali-centric story, still to be decided.

``L.A. is full of some of the world's most talented and most obnoxious people,'' he said. ``It attracts all types, some of whom are amazingly talented and some of whom are extreme opportunists. It's just an incredible place set in one of the most beautiful parts of the world. Full of fascinating stories.''

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1) SHAKUR

(2) WALLACE

(3) Filmmaker Nick Broomfield, right, follows the conspiracy theories and evidentiary dead-ends behind the killings of two famed rappers in ``Biggie & Tupac.''