1
00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:07,000
Downloaded from
YTS.MX
2
00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:13,000
Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.MX
3
00:00:21,229 --> 00:00:23,648
For me,
the most exciting period
4
00:00:23,732 --> 00:00:25,066
in the history of film
5
00:00:25,150 --> 00:00:28,737
is when movies with the word "black"
in the title went from this…
6
00:00:30,905 --> 00:00:31,740
to this.
7
00:00:43,460 --> 00:00:47,714
My excitement was not just because
there was finally truth in advertising
8
00:00:48,214 --> 00:00:51,051
but because I got to see
a first in the movies,
9
00:00:51,134 --> 00:00:54,054
a procession of assured Black talent.
10
00:00:55,055 --> 00:00:57,557
Pam Grier aglow in Friday Foster,
11
00:00:57,640 --> 00:00:59,768
an early comics adaptation.
12
00:01:00,268 --> 00:01:04,314
Max Julien's contemporary take
on film noir in The Mack.
13
00:01:04,397 --> 00:01:08,485
Charlie Russell's 1969 play
Five on the Black Hand Side
14
00:01:08,568 --> 00:01:10,945
would hit the big screen four years later.
15
00:01:11,780 --> 00:01:16,618
I ain't givin' up nothin'
but bubble gum and hard times!
16
00:01:16,701 --> 00:01:18,703
And I'm fresh outta bubble gum.
17
00:01:18,787 --> 00:01:20,580
-Oh!
18
00:01:21,623 --> 00:01:24,292
And I wasn't alone
in responding this way.
19
00:01:26,377 --> 00:01:29,756
-Hell Up in Harlem.
The Black Godfather.
20
00:01:30,840 --> 00:01:35,637
So, if this burst of freedom
and fulfillment was so well-received
21
00:01:35,720 --> 00:01:38,014
and the thirst never really went away,
22
00:01:38,098 --> 00:01:41,267
why did these Black films
stop getting made?
23
00:01:55,865 --> 00:01:59,786
My grandmother told me
that movies changed the way she dreamed.
24
00:02:00,453 --> 00:02:02,372
She hailed from Mississippi.
25
00:02:02,455 --> 00:02:06,793
She said that movies turned her dreams
into something resembling stories…
26
00:02:07,836 --> 00:02:11,714
…and that first film she saw
that embedded in her subconscious
27
00:02:11,798 --> 00:02:12,757
was Dracula.
28
00:02:13,299 --> 00:02:16,511
And its gothic chills
and mezzo-operatic tone
29
00:02:16,594 --> 00:02:19,264
made her afraid to sleep for a week.
30
00:02:19,347 --> 00:02:22,016
I am Dracula.
31
00:02:22,100 --> 00:02:25,895
Evil spirits?! Good gracious me!
Well, there is evil spirits around here?
32
00:02:25,979 --> 00:02:29,399
Why sure, the place is crawling with 'em.
And that ain't all.
33
00:02:29,482 --> 00:02:30,567
What? There's more?
34
00:02:30,650 --> 00:02:33,778
But movies that showed
African Americans facing fear
35
00:02:33,862 --> 00:02:38,324
brought that to the screen in a way
that was dehumanizing and surreal.
36
00:02:38,408 --> 00:02:39,784
Who is they?! Who is they?!
37
00:02:41,244 --> 00:02:42,787
-Zombies.
38
00:02:44,539 --> 00:02:48,710
This also demonstrates that,
way more often than should happen,
39
00:02:48,793 --> 00:02:52,964
films regarded as classics
had a way of letting Black people down.
40
00:02:53,047 --> 00:02:53,965
At some point,
41
00:02:54,048 --> 00:02:56,968
you're likely to be assaulted
by a cringe-worthy moment
42
00:02:57,051 --> 00:03:00,388
in something from the canon
by one of the masters.
43
00:03:00,471 --> 00:03:04,058
Tossed-off stereotypes
from the Master of Suspense,
44
00:03:04,142 --> 00:03:06,603
and one of film's
most highly regarded dramatists,
45
00:03:06,686 --> 00:03:09,606
and the premier actor-director of musicals
46
00:03:09,689 --> 00:03:11,399
continue to leave a mark.
47
00:03:12,525 --> 00:03:16,738
Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier,
giants in theater and the movies,
48
00:03:16,821 --> 00:03:20,200
slathered on blackface
and benign superiority
49
00:03:20,283 --> 00:03:22,160
to take on Othello.
50
00:03:22,660 --> 00:03:25,747
A closet lock and key
of villainous secrets.
51
00:03:27,248 --> 00:03:30,877
I have never been able to see
Mickey Mouse in those gloves
52
00:03:30,960 --> 00:03:35,048
or Bugs Bunny, for that matter,
and not think of minstrel shows.
53
00:03:35,131 --> 00:03:38,468
What else were we to assume?
They were dressing for the Harvard Club?
54
00:03:38,551 --> 00:03:42,388
-Did you ever see an elephant fly?
-Well, I seen a horsefly.
55
00:03:42,472 --> 00:03:44,474
I seen a dragonfly.
56
00:03:45,016 --> 00:03:47,185
-I seen a housefly.
57
00:03:48,019 --> 00:03:49,103
See, I seen all that…
58
00:03:49,187 --> 00:03:51,356
These were probably
some of the scenes
59
00:03:51,439 --> 00:03:54,234
that made their way
into my grandmother's subconscious,
60
00:03:54,317 --> 00:03:57,654
fragments that she had to fight
from overtaking her image of herself,
61
00:03:57,737 --> 00:04:01,366
along with the way she was treated
as a young woman of color in Mississippi.
62
00:04:01,449 --> 00:04:05,536
Her awareness of images was such that,
when we visited her in Hattiesburg,
63
00:04:05,620 --> 00:04:08,498
she wouldn't let us watch reruns
of The Andy Griffith Show.
64
00:04:09,165 --> 00:04:10,166
She would say,
65
00:04:10,250 --> 00:04:12,794
"There's no Black people
in that Southern town."
66
00:04:12,877 --> 00:04:14,921
"What do you think happened to them?"
67
00:04:15,004 --> 00:04:19,008
All this can sure make it hard
for me to love the movies.
68
00:04:19,592 --> 00:04:25,306
For me, it's been a lifetime of watching,
and thinking, and writing about movies.
69
00:04:25,390 --> 00:04:26,724
I keep coming back,
70
00:04:26,808 --> 00:04:30,353
despite the waves of disregard
they keep hitting me with.
71
00:04:30,853 --> 00:04:33,731
The diminution can feel like a mountain.
72
00:04:34,691 --> 00:04:38,361
Maybe the simplest way
to explain representation is this.
73
00:04:38,444 --> 00:04:39,988
If you were a white actor,
74
00:04:40,071 --> 00:04:43,032
formal wear implied
preparing for a night on the town
75
00:04:43,116 --> 00:04:45,743
and all the pleasures life had to offer.
76
00:04:46,703 --> 00:04:49,872
If you were a Black actor, a black bow tie
wasn't putting on the ritz.
77
00:04:49,956 --> 00:04:53,626
It meant you were going to work.
It was your uniform.
78
00:04:53,710 --> 00:04:57,505
Now, I like a well-assembled ensemble
as much as the next person,
79
00:04:57,588 --> 00:04:58,756
probably more so,
80
00:04:58,840 --> 00:05:01,384
but I've never really been
a fan of tuxedos.
81
00:05:02,051 --> 00:05:03,678
Maybe that's why.
82
00:05:19,110 --> 00:05:22,488
Rather than seek out
and develop new roles for Black actors,
83
00:05:22,572 --> 00:05:25,450
the tired tropes of Show Boat
functioned as a way
84
00:05:25,533 --> 00:05:28,453
to showcase Black talent
through recycling.
85
00:05:28,536 --> 00:05:31,914
The on-screen crushing
of Black hope was institutional,
86
00:05:31,998 --> 00:05:34,876
from saying there were
barely any roles for Black men
87
00:05:34,959 --> 00:05:36,919
to an unreal standard of beauty
88
00:05:37,003 --> 00:05:40,340
that guaranteed decades of self-hatred
for Black women.
89
00:05:40,423 --> 00:05:41,716
Here she comes.
90
00:05:42,633 --> 00:05:43,885
This is the part I really like.
91
00:05:43,968 --> 00:05:45,762
This is when
she does that shit with her hair.
92
00:05:45,845 --> 00:05:48,348
This role
wasn't written for a Black actor
93
00:05:48,431 --> 00:05:50,433
but oddly made an inadvertent comment
94
00:05:50,516 --> 00:05:52,560
about the most desirable kind of hair…
95
00:05:54,062 --> 00:05:57,565
…a lesson Black women
are still dealing with.
96
00:05:59,692 --> 00:06:02,904
Well,
in my, uh, days in Atlanta as a child,
97
00:06:02,987 --> 00:06:06,032
there was a pretty strict system
of segregation.
98
00:06:06,115 --> 00:06:08,826
I could not attend any of the theaters.
99
00:06:08,910 --> 00:06:13,164
Only, uh… There were
one or two Negro theaters.
100
00:06:13,247 --> 00:06:14,624
Uh, they were very small,
101
00:06:14,707 --> 00:06:18,252
but, uh, they did not get
the main pictures.
102
00:06:18,336 --> 00:06:22,465
If they got them, they were
two years later, three years late.
103
00:06:22,548 --> 00:06:28,346
So that, uh, by and large, there was
a very strict system of segregation.
104
00:06:31,057 --> 00:06:33,684
My Saturdays was basically spent
in the movies.
105
00:06:33,768 --> 00:06:37,105
-We would watch serialized Westerns,
106
00:06:37,188 --> 00:06:41,484
like, you know,
Lash LaRue, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers,
107
00:06:41,567 --> 00:06:45,154
stuff like that, or Buck Rogers,
you know, some outer space stuff.
108
00:06:45,238 --> 00:06:48,157
I was very interested
in Westerns.
109
00:06:49,200 --> 00:06:51,327
For some reason, I loved Westerns.
110
00:06:51,411 --> 00:06:54,539
Gene Autry and Johnny Mack Brown
and Roy Rogers…
111
00:06:54,622 --> 00:06:56,666
…and all these cowboy shows.
112
00:06:57,750 --> 00:07:02,380
So I'd go to the Los Angeles Theatre.
It was this big palace like the old days,
113
00:07:02,463 --> 00:07:04,507
and it was still kept in great shape.
114
00:07:04,590 --> 00:07:07,301
And so I'd just kick back,
sometimes be the only one there,
115
00:07:07,385 --> 00:07:09,637
and I had this big old theater
all to myself.
116
00:07:09,720 --> 00:07:12,849
All that stuff by John Ford,
Monument Valley, all that kind of stuff.
117
00:07:12,932 --> 00:07:15,476
I think those things
sort of… sort of grew on me.
118
00:07:15,560 --> 00:07:18,146
I'd seen really good… good stories.
119
00:07:18,229 --> 00:07:22,817
I am going to the movies with my father,
120
00:07:22,900 --> 00:07:26,696
and he is taking me to see
the movies that he likes.
121
00:07:26,779 --> 00:07:31,284
Movies that have people like
John Wayne in them and Steve McQueen.
122
00:07:33,035 --> 00:07:35,037
I remember Band of Angels…
123
00:07:35,121 --> 00:07:38,624
…you know, 'cause I remember
when Sidney Poitier slapped her.
124
00:07:40,710 --> 00:07:44,255
The film cut out, and you came back.
She was standing there holding her face.
125
00:07:44,338 --> 00:07:47,383
We were like, "What just happened?"
My mom said, "He slapped her."
126
00:07:47,467 --> 00:07:48,551
"What?! For real?"
127
00:07:49,635 --> 00:07:51,554
"They can't show that,
but he slapped her."
128
00:07:52,054 --> 00:07:55,933
If you're a movie lover, you go
to the movies you're interested in seeing.
129
00:07:56,017 --> 00:08:00,104
And it's not until after you get into
the middle of the movie do you realize,
130
00:08:00,188 --> 00:08:03,357
"Oh, there's no Black people
in this movie."
131
00:08:03,441 --> 00:08:06,235
You're just munching the popcorn,
and it's like,
132
00:08:06,319 --> 00:08:10,448
"Did you-- Have-- Is it me, or is there
no Black people in this movie?"
133
00:08:10,531 --> 00:08:12,950
"There's no Black people in the movie."
"Oh, okay."
134
00:08:13,534 --> 00:08:15,495
We wanna see ourselves…
135
00:08:16,454 --> 00:08:18,539
…some kinda way, you know.
136
00:08:18,623 --> 00:08:22,710
Uh, yeah, 'cause, like I said,
when… when I was a "kid" kid,
137
00:08:22,793 --> 00:08:25,171
the Black people in the movies…
We had Stepin Fetchit…
138
00:08:25,254 --> 00:08:26,547
What are you looking for?
139
00:08:28,799 --> 00:08:30,760
Where'd you learn to be a barber?
140
00:08:30,843 --> 00:08:32,011
…Willie Best,
141
00:08:33,095 --> 00:08:36,307
Alfalfa, Buckwheat, Stymie…
142
00:08:39,185 --> 00:08:40,895
but I still wanted to be them!
143
00:08:41,395 --> 00:08:42,688
Hiya, Buckwheat.
144
00:08:42,772 --> 00:08:45,274
I didn't know any Black kid
that played with white kids,
145
00:08:45,358 --> 00:08:46,859
let alone hung out with 'em,
146
00:08:46,943 --> 00:08:49,362
you know, and, you know,
went to their houses,
147
00:08:49,445 --> 00:08:51,656
or they came to their houses
and did stuff, so…
148
00:08:51,739 --> 00:08:53,491
Our Gang was like… totally like,
149
00:08:53,574 --> 00:08:56,077
"Wow! Where the…
Where the hell do they live?"
150
00:08:56,869 --> 00:08:58,538
I mean, I grew up in segregation,
151
00:08:58,621 --> 00:09:04,544
so from the time I could talk,
walk, see, make sense of things,
152
00:09:04,627 --> 00:09:05,795
the world was separate.
153
00:09:07,213 --> 00:09:10,424
But when I went to the movies…
The movies is the stuff of fantasies.
154
00:09:10,508 --> 00:09:11,342
You know?
155
00:09:11,425 --> 00:09:16,222
When I went to the movies, I came home,
and I wanted to be that pirate that I saw.
156
00:09:17,098 --> 00:09:17,932
But…
157
00:09:19,308 --> 00:09:20,810
I needed a Black cowboy.
158
00:09:23,437 --> 00:09:25,356
We have so many stories to tell.
159
00:09:25,439 --> 00:09:29,777
We just wanna see more of us existing
in all different forms,
160
00:09:29,860 --> 00:09:33,239
and I think that is a common frustration,
I think, amongst my peers.
161
00:09:33,823 --> 00:09:38,119
We just wanna see us just being kids
or, like, in sci-fi, whatever.
162
00:09:38,202 --> 00:09:39,745
I think, like most people,
163
00:09:39,829 --> 00:09:42,873
I engage with the movies in the way
that you engage with your dreams.
164
00:09:42,957 --> 00:09:45,876
While enjoying those pictures
that I was seeing,
165
00:09:45,960 --> 00:09:47,420
I was also projecting
166
00:09:48,254 --> 00:09:51,299
and trying to visualize myself
on the screen, maybe.
167
00:09:53,551 --> 00:09:55,261
As a little girl,
168
00:09:55,344 --> 00:09:59,140
all I saw in the movies
were people that didn't look like me.
169
00:09:59,724 --> 00:10:03,561
So I didn't really believe
that I could ever become an actress.
170
00:10:03,644 --> 00:10:09,859
Until I saw Harry Belafonte
and Dorothy Dandridge in Carmen Jones.
171
00:10:09,942 --> 00:10:14,113
And when I saw them, I said, "Oh wow!"
172
00:10:14,196 --> 00:10:17,074
"Maybe I could become an actress."
173
00:10:18,367 --> 00:10:20,661
Dorothy Dandridge
was paired three times
174
00:10:20,745 --> 00:10:23,414
with a figure
who became a star in every arena
175
00:10:23,497 --> 00:10:25,958
except for the one
that he was most qualified,
176
00:10:26,042 --> 00:10:26,876
movies.
177
00:10:26,959 --> 00:10:29,086
That was Harry Belafonte.
178
00:10:29,587 --> 00:10:32,798
Dandridge matched Belafonte
in talent and temperament.
179
00:10:32,882 --> 00:10:36,093
Only the towering presence of racism
could blind anyone
180
00:10:36,177 --> 00:10:38,220
to their adaptable charisma.
181
00:10:38,304 --> 00:10:41,641
That kept them
from more on-screen pairings.
182
00:10:47,438 --> 00:10:52,360
Belafonte's success as a singer
sprang from his training as an actor.
183
00:10:52,443 --> 00:10:55,780
He brought the deportment
of a storyteller to music.
184
00:10:55,863 --> 00:10:59,867
His extraordinary presence, he had
the physical arrogance of an athlete,
185
00:10:59,950 --> 00:11:02,536
and an emotional immersion in character,
186
00:11:02,620 --> 00:11:05,414
signaled his on-screen gifts immediately.
187
00:11:05,498 --> 00:11:09,919
But he bristled against a system
that not only had no idea how to use him
188
00:11:10,002 --> 00:11:11,545
but was so afraid of him
189
00:11:11,629 --> 00:11:15,383
that his singing voice wasn't used
in Carmen Jones.
190
00:11:21,430 --> 00:11:22,973
So in 1959,
191
00:11:23,057 --> 00:11:27,645
he responded by producing a project
that brought in director Robert Wise,
192
00:11:27,728 --> 00:11:31,107
actor Ed Begley,
who both won Oscars a few years later,
193
00:11:31,190 --> 00:11:33,567
blacklisted screenwriter Abe Polonsky,
194
00:11:33,651 --> 00:11:35,653
and the Modern Jazz Quartet.
195
00:11:38,948 --> 00:11:43,452
Odds Against Tomorrow
was just a remarkable thing for its day,
196
00:11:44,203 --> 00:11:47,540
and, uh, the fact that
I was given the opportunity
197
00:11:47,623 --> 00:11:49,291
to make that kind of film
198
00:11:50,501 --> 00:11:51,752
really meant a lot to me.
199
00:12:12,189 --> 00:12:13,649
Hi, baby. What's shaking?
200
00:12:15,651 --> 00:12:17,695
Bacco wants to buy you a drink.
201
00:12:18,612 --> 00:12:20,614
And I wanna buy you a shiny new car.
202
00:12:20,698 --> 00:12:23,743
Odds Against Tomorrow
was an unforgettable film.
203
00:12:23,826 --> 00:12:25,494
The last film noir of its era
204
00:12:25,578 --> 00:12:28,998
that was also ahead of its time
with an honest look at race,
205
00:12:29,081 --> 00:12:31,375
which means, of course, it was ignored.
206
00:12:31,459 --> 00:12:34,086
Opportunities came Belafonte's way,
207
00:12:34,170 --> 00:12:37,715
but the projects he was offered
didn't remotely interest him.
208
00:12:37,798 --> 00:12:40,176
Sidney Poitier, up until then,
209
00:12:40,259 --> 00:12:43,471
had been the most popular Black figure
in the universe,
210
00:12:44,138 --> 00:12:46,849
but he was Sidney Poitier.
211
00:12:47,558 --> 00:12:50,686
He was not Sidney Poitier
in a Black environment,
212
00:12:50,770 --> 00:12:52,438
in a Black circumstance.
213
00:12:52,521 --> 00:12:58,068
He was Sidney Poitier playing
a Black person in an all-white movie.
214
00:12:58,152 --> 00:13:01,489
First thing I ask myself is,
"What is a Black man,
215
00:13:02,239 --> 00:13:04,867
came from nothing, going nowhere,
216
00:13:04,950 --> 00:13:09,663
all of a sudden in the middle
of seven Nazi nuns?"
217
00:13:09,747 --> 00:13:11,123
I… I turned it down.
218
00:13:12,541 --> 00:13:15,586
And they offered it to Sidney,
and Sidney took it.
219
00:13:16,170 --> 00:13:18,130
-The winner is Sidney Poitier…
220
00:13:23,344 --> 00:13:25,304
Rather than submit himself
to material
221
00:13:25,387 --> 00:13:28,390
that didn't depict the Black community
in a meaningful way,
222
00:13:28,474 --> 00:13:29,934
or at all, for that matter,
223
00:13:30,017 --> 00:13:35,356
Harry Belafonte chose not to appear
in movies from 1959 until 1970.
224
00:13:35,439 --> 00:13:39,568
To my mind, that made him
the Muhammad Ali of the film world,
225
00:13:39,652 --> 00:13:43,322
forced in his prime
away from the arena in which he belonged.
226
00:13:43,405 --> 00:13:46,534
Not one picture I turned down
did I regret not doing.
227
00:13:47,618 --> 00:13:50,371
Mm-mm. Wasn't in my… wasn't in my turf.
228
00:13:50,871 --> 00:13:52,289
I didn't resent any of them.
229
00:13:52,373 --> 00:13:57,127
I'm glad others got an opportunity
and went off and did it, but my initial…
230
00:13:57,711 --> 00:13:59,713
First and foremost, I'm an artist.
231
00:14:00,214 --> 00:14:01,382
I'm an actor.
232
00:14:01,465 --> 00:14:05,344
And I came out of a school
with Marlon Brando, Walter Matthau,
233
00:14:05,427 --> 00:14:07,930
Rod Steiger, Tony Curtis,
234
00:14:08,013 --> 00:14:11,767
with a director that gave us no quarter.
235
00:14:12,434 --> 00:14:16,438
I'm not gonna do anything other than
what I think is worthy of being done.
236
00:14:17,273 --> 00:14:21,151
And fortunately for me,
I was a runaway success
237
00:14:21,235 --> 00:14:22,611
in the world at large
238
00:14:22,695 --> 00:14:26,991
because I had a globe
so passionately approving
239
00:14:27,074 --> 00:14:29,827
of my presence in their midst
240
00:14:29,910 --> 00:14:31,704
that nobody could dismiss the fact
241
00:14:31,787 --> 00:14:34,915
that that thing on the horizon
called Belafonte
242
00:14:34,999 --> 00:14:37,042
could really not be fucked with.
243
00:14:37,126 --> 00:14:39,962
Because anytime anybody came up
and gave me an ultimatum,
244
00:14:40,045 --> 00:14:42,506
I said, "Fuck you. I'm going to Paris."
245
00:14:42,590 --> 00:14:46,760
"I'll probably live there if I like,
but I… I have a destination
246
00:14:46,844 --> 00:14:50,931
that answers your… your denial
of what I could be."
247
00:14:51,473 --> 00:14:52,308
Just me.
248
00:14:55,394 --> 00:14:56,478
I'm here.
249
00:14:56,562 --> 00:15:00,190
Belafonte's resolve
literally took him out of the picture.
250
00:15:00,274 --> 00:15:01,775
But as frustration mounted
251
00:15:01,859 --> 00:15:05,070
for people of color
demanding redress and civil rights,
252
00:15:05,154 --> 00:15:07,239
movies lagged behind.
253
00:15:07,323 --> 00:15:11,076
To use a Langston Hughes quote
that inspired a play and a movie,
254
00:15:11,660 --> 00:15:13,704
"What happens to a dream deferred?"
255
00:15:13,787 --> 00:15:16,498
"Does it dry up…
…like a raisin in the sun?"
256
00:15:16,999 --> 00:15:19,335
"Maybe it just sags like a heavy load."
257
00:15:20,628 --> 00:15:22,588
"Or does it explode?"
258
00:15:27,468 --> 00:15:29,929
We've been beaten
and getting beat and getting beat,
259
00:15:30,012 --> 00:15:32,681
and we've just decided
to do something about it now!
260
00:15:34,600 --> 00:15:37,311
Decades of punishing
mistreatment of people of color
261
00:15:37,394 --> 00:15:40,397
made the 20th century an epoch of revolt.
262
00:15:40,481 --> 00:15:46,153
The 1960s body politic suffered through
civil eruptions almost every year.
263
00:15:46,236 --> 00:15:50,115
1965 saw one sweep through Los Angeles.
264
00:15:50,199 --> 00:15:53,327
The thing about the Watts Riot
is that you could have anticipated it.
265
00:15:53,410 --> 00:15:56,538
It was clear that was gonna happen.
There was gonna be an explosion.
266
00:15:57,122 --> 00:15:58,374
Police were killing people.
267
00:15:58,457 --> 00:16:01,585
They've always been killing people,
been terrorizing the community.
268
00:16:03,170 --> 00:16:04,505
If I went to a show at night,
269
00:16:04,588 --> 00:16:07,341
I knew I was gonna get stopped
at one point by the police.
270
00:16:08,842 --> 00:16:11,261
It's just a thing where our lives
271
00:16:12,513 --> 00:16:14,515
didn't matter, it seemed, you know.
272
00:16:15,849 --> 00:16:19,353
By 1968,
America was in free fall.
273
00:16:19,853 --> 00:16:24,400
There had been over 20 riots,
with over half happening in 1967,
274
00:16:24,483 --> 00:16:26,276
including my hometown.
275
00:16:26,360 --> 00:16:30,489
Law and order
have broken down in Detroit, Michigan.
276
00:16:31,281 --> 00:16:33,075
This is a shot along Linwood.
277
00:16:33,158 --> 00:16:35,244
The flames and the feelings
were running hotter
278
00:16:35,327 --> 00:16:37,788
than either the mayor
or the governor anticipated.
279
00:16:39,081 --> 00:16:41,208
Revolt broke out in movies too,
280
00:16:41,709 --> 00:16:43,335
in the independent film world.
281
00:16:43,419 --> 00:16:45,379
There, Black life didn't exist
282
00:16:45,462 --> 00:16:48,549
only in the periphery
of the white man's gaze,
283
00:16:48,632 --> 00:16:52,136
and there was often room
for more than one Black person on-screen.
284
00:16:52,636 --> 00:16:54,555
And two of those Black talents on-screen
285
00:16:54,638 --> 00:16:57,975
simultaneously gave
movie-star performances
286
00:16:58,058 --> 00:17:00,561
that did not lead to movie stardom.
287
00:17:01,270 --> 00:17:04,148
Well, what you doin' with a cat like me
in a joint like this?
288
00:17:06,025 --> 00:17:07,818
You don't think much of yourself, do you?
289
00:17:08,527 --> 00:17:10,154
In a more just world,
290
00:17:10,237 --> 00:17:13,741
the heat and tension
sparked by Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln
291
00:17:13,824 --> 00:17:15,242
in Nothing But a Man
292
00:17:15,325 --> 00:17:19,121
would have been a catalyst
for larger careers and recognition.
293
00:17:24,001 --> 00:17:26,170
Davis,
with his abundant talents
294
00:17:26,253 --> 00:17:28,213
as singer, actor, and showman,
295
00:17:28,297 --> 00:17:30,132
was certainly capable of it.
296
00:17:30,215 --> 00:17:34,386
He showed a velvet control
as a mercurial, pleasure-seeking ego trip
297
00:17:34,470 --> 00:17:37,556
in 1966's A Man Called Adam.
298
00:17:37,639 --> 00:17:40,893
He acted along with
Cicely Tyson, Ja'Net DuBois,
299
00:17:40,976 --> 00:17:43,812
and in a silent tiny role, Morgan Freeman,
300
00:17:44,396 --> 00:17:48,025
who'd have to wait nearly 20 years
to get a role to show power
301
00:17:48,108 --> 00:17:49,902
and the ability to speak.
302
00:17:49,985 --> 00:17:53,906
Davis holds the movie
in his clenched fist until the last act
303
00:17:53,989 --> 00:17:58,452
in which he basically apologizes
for all the damage his character wreaked.
304
00:17:59,078 --> 00:18:01,080
All right, I was wrong, okay?
305
00:18:01,997 --> 00:18:04,958
I shoulda waited
to find out what it was all about,
306
00:18:05,042 --> 00:18:07,002
maybe let her
break your head with a bottle.
307
00:18:07,086 --> 00:18:09,338
Honey, all I saw
308
00:18:09,421 --> 00:18:13,175
was that old chick's hands
on that toodle doddle--
309
00:18:13,258 --> 00:18:14,093
Adam.
310
00:18:17,846 --> 00:18:21,016
Van Peebles insertion
of Black life without self-pity
311
00:18:21,100 --> 00:18:24,228
into the art-house world
was a fresh, new breeze.
312
00:18:31,610 --> 00:18:35,447
Studio movies were trapped
in their old-fashioned patriarchal need
313
00:18:35,531 --> 00:18:36,824
to shape the culture
314
00:18:36,907 --> 00:18:38,826
rather than respond to it.
315
00:18:38,909 --> 00:18:41,703
The corpses of misguided musicals
for all ages,
316
00:18:41,787 --> 00:18:46,250
such as this, um…
…awesome Best Picture nominee.
317
00:18:46,333 --> 00:18:50,462
But the best news of '68
was Sidney Poitier's graduation
318
00:18:50,546 --> 00:18:54,007
from self-sacrifice
for miscast white movie stars
319
00:18:54,091 --> 00:18:55,759
to world domination.
320
00:18:55,843 --> 00:18:59,012
Both Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
and In the Heat of the Night
321
00:18:59,096 --> 00:19:04,184
went wide release in 1968, the year
of their Best Picture nominations,
322
00:19:04,268 --> 00:19:08,147
where his white costars
gazed at his magnificent intensity.
323
00:19:08,981 --> 00:19:10,524
Don't misunderstand me.
324
00:19:11,108 --> 00:19:13,986
I love your daughter.
There is nothing I wouldn't do
325
00:19:14,069 --> 00:19:16,738
to try to keep her as happy
as she was the day I met her.
326
00:19:16,822 --> 00:19:20,492
But it seems to me, without your approval,
we will make no sense at all.
327
00:19:22,953 --> 00:19:26,540
As Mark Harris wrote
in his book, Pictures at a Revolution,
328
00:19:26,623 --> 00:19:30,127
"Poitier is the top box office star
in America."
329
00:19:34,298 --> 00:19:38,927
Unfortunately, he's also an example
of the entertainment industry's reaction
330
00:19:39,011 --> 00:19:40,846
to success by people of color.
331
00:19:41,722 --> 00:19:44,975
No one seems to think
that if Sidney Poitier can draw audiences,
332
00:19:45,058 --> 00:19:50,522
then surely one other Black man or woman
might possibly be able to do so.
333
00:19:51,106 --> 00:19:54,943
This is a time when a Black person
talking to a white person on-screen
334
00:19:55,027 --> 00:19:57,821
was considered adult entertainment.
335
00:20:04,369 --> 00:20:06,246
Black success in media
336
00:20:06,330 --> 00:20:10,250
is often treated as the equivalent
of finding a $100 bill on the subway,
337
00:20:10,334 --> 00:20:12,252
a non-repeatable phenomenon.
338
00:20:13,420 --> 00:20:17,174
When movies were first being built around,
God help us, Elvis Presley
339
00:20:17,841 --> 00:20:19,092
or The Beatles,
340
00:20:19,176 --> 00:20:23,263
whose first releases in the US
were on a Black-owned record label,
341
00:20:23,347 --> 00:20:26,475
why wasn't anyone seeking out
these women rock pioneers
342
00:20:26,558 --> 00:20:28,143
for careers in the movies?
343
00:20:40,656 --> 00:20:44,743
It wouldn't be long
for a new day, or night, to drop
344
00:20:44,826 --> 00:20:47,913
for where Black talent
was most likely to be recognized,
345
00:20:47,996 --> 00:20:49,414
the independent film world.
346
00:20:49,998 --> 00:20:53,377
Writer-director George Romero
created a new kind of action hero
347
00:20:53,460 --> 00:20:58,799
by putting a movie and a gun
in the hand of Duane Jones, a Black actor,
348
00:20:58,882 --> 00:21:01,718
in one of the most influential films
of all time.
349
00:21:01,802 --> 00:21:04,554
-I think you should just calm down.
350
00:21:04,638 --> 00:21:08,934
Oh! I screamed, "Johnny! Johnny, help me!"
351
00:21:09,017 --> 00:21:11,186
Romero also
breaks with tradition
352
00:21:11,270 --> 00:21:13,814
by never having the hero's race mentioned
353
00:21:13,897 --> 00:21:17,025
because the role wasn't written
for a Black actor.
354
00:21:17,776 --> 00:21:21,196
I'll be back to reinforce
the windows and doors later.
355
00:21:21,280 --> 00:21:23,198
But you'll be all right for now, okay?
356
00:21:25,951 --> 00:21:26,785
Okay?
357
00:21:27,286 --> 00:21:29,162
You want the Black guy with you.
358
00:21:29,246 --> 00:21:31,957
You want
the Black guy with you.
359
00:21:32,040 --> 00:21:34,167
'Cause he's gonna help you get out.
360
00:21:34,251 --> 00:21:36,545
See, if you kill him off, you're dead.
361
00:21:36,628 --> 00:21:38,714
See, we know how to get out.
362
00:21:39,756 --> 00:21:43,260
We know how to get away from the zombies.
363
00:21:43,343 --> 00:21:46,680
We know how to get away
from the, you know, killing plants,
364
00:21:46,763 --> 00:21:50,142
anything that's coming to get you,
'cause we're used to…
365
00:21:50,934 --> 00:21:52,644
We know how to get outta the way.
366
00:21:53,562 --> 00:21:58,066
We know how to get outta the way
and let… let other stuff happen.
367
00:21:59,151 --> 00:22:02,529
The depiction of the undead
stalking potential victims
368
00:22:02,612 --> 00:22:04,948
and windows boarded up to keep them away
369
00:22:05,032 --> 00:22:07,743
reminded me of TV riot footage.
370
00:22:07,826 --> 00:22:11,288
Never has a film been as loaded
with allegory and metaphor,
371
00:22:11,371 --> 00:22:15,208
intentional and inadvertent,
as Night of the Living Dead.
372
00:22:24,384 --> 00:22:27,012
All right, hit him in the head,
right between the eyes.
373
00:22:28,138 --> 00:22:31,767
Because Jones dies,
picked off after fighting to save whites,
374
00:22:31,850 --> 00:22:35,604
Night of the Living Dead was embraced
by militant African Americans.
375
00:22:35,687 --> 00:22:38,857
They felt it was a metaphor
for not staying with your race.
376
00:22:38,940 --> 00:22:42,527
This was a sentiment I heard voiced
by the boyfriends of my older sisters.
377
00:22:42,611 --> 00:22:44,780
Good shot! Okay, he's dead.
378
00:22:44,863 --> 00:22:47,532
Let's go get him.
That's another one for the fire.
379
00:22:48,784 --> 00:22:52,204
And in an end
as chilling as the movie itself,
380
00:22:52,287 --> 00:22:55,123
he's killed
and tossed onto a pile of corpses.
381
00:23:00,462 --> 00:23:03,465
I have
some very sad news for all of you,
382
00:23:03,965 --> 00:23:08,345
and that is that Martin Luther King
was shot and was killed tonight
383
00:23:08,428 --> 00:23:10,555
-in Memphis, Tennessee.
384
00:23:10,639 --> 00:23:13,975
Coming in the year
of Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination
385
00:23:14,059 --> 00:23:18,313
and only a few years after the murders
of Medgar Evers and Malcolm X,
386
00:23:18,397 --> 00:23:20,774
this movie death had larger implications
387
00:23:20,857 --> 00:23:23,318
than this writer
and director ever imagined.
388
00:23:25,320 --> 00:23:27,697
Living Dead's success
should have been confirmation
389
00:23:27,781 --> 00:23:30,367
of mainstream interest in Black actors.
390
00:23:30,450 --> 00:23:34,663
In the year that includes Peter Sellers
playing a character of Indian descent
391
00:23:34,746 --> 00:23:37,165
in the movie biz satire The Party,
392
00:23:37,249 --> 00:23:41,002
1968 was also a year
with Yul Brynner as Pancho Villa,
393
00:23:41,628 --> 00:23:45,173
and unfortunately,
Woody Strode as an Apache.
394
00:23:47,092 --> 00:23:50,470
American feature films
have always been directed by white men,
395
00:23:50,554 --> 00:23:54,057
even when the films dealt with Black life
and used Black actors.
396
00:23:54,141 --> 00:23:55,725
Black directors are excluded,
397
00:23:55,809 --> 00:23:59,229
although Blacks now make up
30% of the total moviegoing audience.
398
00:23:59,312 --> 00:24:02,858
And my associate, William Greaves,
has just finished producing and directing
399
00:24:02,941 --> 00:24:05,819
his first feature film,
Take One and Take Two.
400
00:24:05,902 --> 00:24:07,863
It's in the final stages of editing.
401
00:24:09,072 --> 00:24:11,366
Hello, just to set the record straight,
402
00:24:11,450 --> 00:24:15,120
there've been a number of films
of Black… by Black feature-film directors
403
00:24:15,203 --> 00:24:19,207
in the '40s, like Powell Lindsay,
Oscar Micheaux, and Bill Alexander.
404
00:24:19,708 --> 00:24:22,002
These directors were denied access
to Hollywood,
405
00:24:22,085 --> 00:24:23,503
and their films were seen only
406
00:24:23,587 --> 00:24:25,797
in the Black communities
across the country.
407
00:24:26,756 --> 00:24:28,925
One of the myths
that did constantly resurface
408
00:24:29,009 --> 00:24:31,261
during 1968 through '78,
409
00:24:31,344 --> 00:24:35,140
when a handful of Black directors
finally got to step behind the camera,
410
00:24:35,223 --> 00:24:39,060
was that this was the first time
Black directors got such chances.
411
00:24:40,604 --> 00:24:42,564
In fact, because they had to,
412
00:24:42,647 --> 00:24:45,192
African Americans often wrote and directed
413
00:24:45,275 --> 00:24:48,028
back when one person writing
and directing was rare
414
00:24:48,111 --> 00:24:50,405
and discouraged by the studios.
415
00:24:50,489 --> 00:24:53,700
But the Black press
supported these theaters and movies,
416
00:24:53,783 --> 00:24:56,578
even as they were ignored
by the mainstream.
417
00:24:57,496 --> 00:25:00,123
And, getting his start in the silent era,
418
00:25:00,207 --> 00:25:03,668
was writer, director,
and occasional actor Oscar Micheaux.
419
00:25:04,169 --> 00:25:06,630
He made films
for the circuit of Black theaters,
420
00:25:06,713 --> 00:25:08,632
many of which were not in very good shape
421
00:25:08,715 --> 00:25:12,177
because there was not
a consistent flow of Black films
422
00:25:12,260 --> 00:25:14,804
despite the consistency
of Black audiences.
423
00:25:16,723 --> 00:25:20,018
Keep in mind,
many studios were afraid to offend Germany
424
00:25:20,101 --> 00:25:21,895
and risk losing that business,
425
00:25:21,978 --> 00:25:25,232
until they were kicked out
by the Nazis in 1942.
426
00:25:25,774 --> 00:25:28,902
But African-American money
wasn't good enough for them.
427
00:25:28,985 --> 00:25:31,530
Many of those Black theaters
were buildings and rooms
428
00:25:31,613 --> 00:25:33,782
that were converted into movie theaters.
429
00:25:34,282 --> 00:25:37,619
On very small budgets,
Micheaux and other filmmakers,
430
00:25:37,702 --> 00:25:40,330
even some whites,
created original material
431
00:25:40,413 --> 00:25:44,125
and adapted popular books
they couldn't afford to pay much for,
432
00:25:44,209 --> 00:25:45,585
but the authors went along
433
00:25:45,669 --> 00:25:48,171
because they wanted their books
turned into movies.
434
00:25:52,342 --> 00:25:56,263
Astaire often played
master-servant relationships in his films,
435
00:25:56,346 --> 00:26:00,892
exaggerated in scenes where he's tapping
in front of a bunch of Black actors.
436
00:26:03,019 --> 00:26:08,233
As the studios continued to hammer out
a crude mythology about African Americans,
437
00:26:08,316 --> 00:26:12,862
director Alice Guy-Blaché
decided to do something else entirely.
438
00:26:12,946 --> 00:26:16,324
In 1912,
she directed A Fool and His Money,
439
00:26:16,408 --> 00:26:20,787
what's said to be the first film
with an all-African-American cast.
440
00:26:20,870 --> 00:26:25,792
Her artistry showed a playful clarity
and did not diminish those actors.
441
00:26:29,337 --> 00:26:33,341
She was successful enough in those days
that studios sought her out,
442
00:26:33,425 --> 00:26:35,719
and given the care
she used to make her art,
443
00:26:35,802 --> 00:26:37,971
it was only logical
that she turned down the chance
444
00:26:38,054 --> 00:26:40,473
to make the first Tarzan movie.
445
00:26:42,225 --> 00:26:45,895
The Black filmmakers of that era
were hustling, driven cinema lovers
446
00:26:45,979 --> 00:26:49,608
who worked an early version
of independent film.
447
00:26:49,691 --> 00:26:52,569
Back in this day,
"independent film" didn't mean
448
00:26:52,652 --> 00:26:54,613
being a cool, desirable outsider
449
00:26:54,696 --> 00:26:57,949
whose success got you access
to incredible resources.
450
00:26:58,033 --> 00:27:00,368
It meant you were locked out
of the theaters
451
00:27:00,452 --> 00:27:02,829
by the studios who owned them.
452
00:27:02,912 --> 00:27:06,833
You were left to invent ways
to get your product to audiences.
453
00:27:06,916 --> 00:27:09,085
Micheaux and his like-minded spirits
454
00:27:09,169 --> 00:27:14,424
were making dramas, comedies,
musicals, and murder mysteries.
455
00:27:14,507 --> 00:27:18,136
Sometimes smashing the genres together
into a single film
456
00:27:18,219 --> 00:27:20,472
because their resources were limited
457
00:27:20,555 --> 00:27:22,766
even though their ambitions were not.
458
00:27:22,849 --> 00:27:25,977
Because, for most of the history
of the movies,
459
00:27:26,061 --> 00:27:29,648
studios have been content
to leave Black money on the table,
460
00:27:29,731 --> 00:27:33,777
and Black enterprise has responded,
creating, as it always has,
461
00:27:33,860 --> 00:27:37,322
a de facto underground economy
and culture.
462
00:27:43,828 --> 00:27:46,915
Though we wouldn't see
evidence of it until later,
463
00:27:46,998 --> 00:27:49,751
actor-turned-filmmaker
William Greaves used the medium
464
00:27:49,834 --> 00:27:52,337
in a way that feels novelistic now.
465
00:27:52,420 --> 00:27:54,130
After losing interest in acting
466
00:27:54,214 --> 00:27:56,925
because of the simplistic uplift
he'd been cast in…
467
00:27:57,008 --> 00:28:00,887
Well, now, Aunt Hattie,
everything moves fast in war.
468
00:28:01,429 --> 00:28:04,349
Even our religious services
had to be speeded up.
469
00:28:04,432 --> 00:28:06,810
…he begins production
on a pioneering effort,
470
00:28:06,893 --> 00:28:09,062
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm.
471
00:28:10,313 --> 00:28:14,275
No, I said, "Don't touch me, please."
Don't ever touch me ever again, ever.
472
00:28:14,359 --> 00:28:18,738
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm's
ambitions, both formal and freewheeling,
473
00:28:18,822 --> 00:28:20,615
were as big as its title.
474
00:28:20,699 --> 00:28:24,285
It plays with time in every way possible.
475
00:28:24,369 --> 00:28:26,121
The director, Bill Greaves,
476
00:28:26,204 --> 00:28:29,874
he is so far in… into,
you know, making the film,
477
00:28:29,958 --> 00:28:31,334
that he has no perspective.
478
00:28:31,418 --> 00:28:34,713
And if you ask him,
"What is the film about?" you know,
479
00:28:34,796 --> 00:28:38,258
he just gives you some answer
that's just vaguer than the question.
480
00:28:38,341 --> 00:28:40,427
I think
he was kind of torn.
481
00:28:40,510 --> 00:28:43,972
He wanted to see the scene well-done.
482
00:28:44,639 --> 00:28:48,143
He wanted his actors
to be inspired in some way.
483
00:28:48,226 --> 00:28:52,355
So I think he was being both pushed
and pulled in both directions.
484
00:28:52,856 --> 00:28:54,899
That's my theory, anyway.
485
00:28:55,650 --> 00:28:58,778
For decades, people
would tie themselves up into knots
486
00:28:58,862 --> 00:29:02,157
trying to describe Symbiopsychotaxiplasm.
487
00:29:02,907 --> 00:29:06,911
It's now a kind of film so common
that it's become its own genre,
488
00:29:06,995 --> 00:29:10,039
the innovative, social satire, prank film.
489
00:29:11,624 --> 00:29:15,503
Director Jules Dassin, who had been,
if you'll pardon the expression,
490
00:29:15,587 --> 00:29:19,466
blacklisted, brought race politics
to a studio thriller
491
00:29:19,549 --> 00:29:23,428
in Uptight, which he wrote
for the film's Black costars.
492
00:29:23,511 --> 00:29:28,349
Dassin, Dee, and Mayfield
were shrewd, earnest, and shameless,
493
00:29:28,433 --> 00:29:33,772
enfolding the world-gone-wrong impact
of Dr. King's death into a genre film.
494
00:29:35,774 --> 00:29:38,276
Martin Luther King
was assassinated in '68.
495
00:29:38,777 --> 00:29:42,572
My mother dropped everything
and went to the funeral.
496
00:29:42,655 --> 00:29:44,491
She didn't know this man,
497
00:29:44,574 --> 00:29:48,411
but she dropped everything
and put on her best clothes and left.
498
00:29:49,037 --> 00:29:51,498
And that was, like,
"Oh, so this is important?"
499
00:29:51,581 --> 00:29:53,374
Like, this guy was important.
500
00:29:53,458 --> 00:29:57,086
What he was doing was important.
What he was talking about was important.
501
00:29:58,630 --> 00:29:59,672
We are important.
502
00:30:00,256 --> 00:30:03,218
Our voices, our hopes,
our dreams, our aspirations,
503
00:30:03,301 --> 00:30:05,178
all that stuff, that's important.
504
00:30:05,261 --> 00:30:08,014
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
505
00:30:08,097 --> 00:30:10,642
Uptight depicted
the shaky anguish
506
00:30:10,725 --> 00:30:14,771
and free-floating fury
of a society desperate for answers,
507
00:30:14,854 --> 00:30:16,856
the heart of genre film.
508
00:30:16,940 --> 00:30:18,691
The day after
Dr. King got killed,
509
00:30:18,775 --> 00:30:21,569
we got on a plane in Atlanta,
from Morehouse Spelman,
510
00:30:21,653 --> 00:30:24,864
and flew to Memphis
and marched with the garbage workers.
511
00:30:24,948 --> 00:30:28,201
And we had those "I am a man" signs.
We used to have them in the house.
512
00:30:36,209 --> 00:30:38,962
In an audacious turn
on the heist genre,
513
00:30:39,045 --> 00:30:41,631
a group of revolutionaries
is out to stage a robbery
514
00:30:41,714 --> 00:30:44,968
while Cleveland reels
after Dr. King's assassination.
515
00:30:45,635 --> 00:30:47,262
A key member of the team,
516
00:30:47,345 --> 00:30:50,682
at loose ends because of the chaos
spilling from King's death,
517
00:30:50,765 --> 00:30:52,684
has a crisis of conscience.
518
00:30:52,767 --> 00:30:55,395
I've never felt so bad in all my life.
519
00:30:55,895 --> 00:31:00,275
Uptight is a contemporary version
of a 1935 John Ford movie
520
00:31:00,358 --> 00:31:04,279
and begins a cycle where Black concerns
are folded into remakes.
521
00:31:04,362 --> 00:31:07,031
Is that the one
that's like a remake of The Informer?
522
00:31:07,115 --> 00:31:08,491
I knew what The Informer was,
523
00:31:08,575 --> 00:31:10,702
so when I saw that,
I knew exactly what it was.
524
00:31:10,785 --> 00:31:13,329
So, you look at it,
and everybody had a thing
525
00:31:13,413 --> 00:31:16,499
about, you know, certain kinds of people
was just the police.
526
00:31:17,000 --> 00:31:19,252
If you're at a party,
and you're passing a joint around,
527
00:31:19,335 --> 00:31:21,880
and a dude don't take the joint
and hands it to somebody else…
528
00:31:21,963 --> 00:31:24,716
…it's like, "Oh man,
he's the police." You know?
529
00:31:24,799 --> 00:31:29,053
Or… or somebody is acting strange,
you know, around the group when y'all…
530
00:31:29,137 --> 00:31:31,222
you know, when we was revolutionaries,
531
00:31:31,306 --> 00:31:35,143
when you had a revolutionary cadre
of your own, uh,
532
00:31:35,226 --> 00:31:37,478
there was always somebody who was suspect.
533
00:31:37,562 --> 00:31:42,609
So having that movie be that
was, you know, like that.
534
00:31:42,692 --> 00:31:46,571
In his autobiography,
Booker T. Jones, who composed the score,
535
00:31:46,654 --> 00:31:50,116
said some called Uptight
the first blaxploitation film.
536
00:31:51,242 --> 00:31:53,953
On another continent,
from another culture,
537
00:31:54,037 --> 00:31:56,080
was a studio film from Italy,
538
00:31:56,164 --> 00:31:58,833
and, like many movies
that changed the medium,
539
00:31:58,917 --> 00:32:01,628
it was from a genre
dismissed as second-rate,
540
00:32:01,711 --> 00:32:03,922
in this case, the spaghetti western.
541
00:32:07,675 --> 00:32:09,302
A little later in the movie,
542
00:32:09,385 --> 00:32:12,013
this scene was something
the director wanted to use
543
00:32:12,096 --> 00:32:15,725
to drive a stake
through the heart of audience expectation.
544
00:32:15,808 --> 00:32:19,062
Making Henry Fonda cold-blooded
was shattering.
545
00:32:19,145 --> 00:32:22,148
He was America's big-screen moral compass.
546
00:32:22,231 --> 00:32:24,776
But Isaac Hayes, in need of a hit,
547
00:32:24,859 --> 00:32:28,112
was inspired by seeing
Leone's perverse use of Fonda,
548
00:32:28,196 --> 00:32:31,032
who belonged on the movie Mount Rushmore
of white decency
549
00:32:31,115 --> 00:32:34,077
with John Wayne,
Jimmy Stewart, and Shirley Temple.
550
00:32:36,537 --> 00:32:40,333
So moved that producer-performer Hayes
created this piece of music.
551
00:32:58,935 --> 00:33:02,105
Hayes told me that he would escape
the malfunctioning air-conditioning
552
00:33:02,188 --> 00:33:04,983
at Stax Studios
by going to see this movie,
553
00:33:05,066 --> 00:33:07,193
which he caught at least ten times.
554
00:33:07,276 --> 00:33:09,821
Woody Strode's towering presence
convinced Hayes
555
00:33:09,904 --> 00:33:12,115
that he could one day be a movie star,
556
00:33:12,198 --> 00:33:16,327
and in a genre where Black inclusion
was marginal at best, the Western.
557
00:33:16,411 --> 00:33:20,957
More importantly, Once Upon a Time
also motivated Hayes to create this
558
00:33:21,040 --> 00:33:22,875
for his Hot Buttered Soul album.
559
00:33:34,762 --> 00:33:38,057
When Gordon Parks adapted
his semi-autobiographical novel,
560
00:33:38,141 --> 00:33:40,685
The Learning Tree, in 1969,
561
00:33:40,768 --> 00:33:45,314
he made the first studio-financed film
by an African-American director.
562
00:33:45,398 --> 00:33:48,735
Warner Bros. got its money's worth
from the photographer-turned-filmmaker.
563
00:33:49,318 --> 00:33:53,573
He wrote, directed, produced,
and composed the score.
564
00:33:53,656 --> 00:33:57,035
He joked to me
that the only reason he didn't star in it
565
00:33:57,118 --> 00:33:58,953
was because he was too tall.
566
00:33:59,037 --> 00:34:03,374
Learning Tree follows Newt, a 12-year-old,
over the course of a summer.
567
00:34:04,542 --> 00:34:08,046
One incident carries a resonance
that the movie can't shake.
568
00:34:08,129 --> 00:34:09,088
Run, Tuck, run!
569
00:34:09,172 --> 00:34:13,468
A moment so potent
it seems surreal and way too real,
570
00:34:13,551 --> 00:34:15,720
a beat that didn't get it's due
at the time.
571
00:34:15,803 --> 00:34:17,847
-Stop, damn it! I'll shoot!
572
00:34:38,076 --> 00:34:39,869
You didn't have to shoot Tuck.
573
00:34:41,579 --> 00:34:43,706
Now you can see what happens to criminals.
574
00:34:43,790 --> 00:34:45,625
The type of scene
we all knew about
575
00:34:45,708 --> 00:34:48,503
but never expected to see in a movie.
576
00:34:48,586 --> 00:34:52,423
And Parks also told me he packed
as much as he could into the film,
577
00:34:52,507 --> 00:34:57,261
such as this glorious image
claiming the Western for Black audiences,
578
00:34:57,345 --> 00:34:58,805
because he didn't know
579
00:34:58,888 --> 00:35:01,557
if he'd ever get a chance
to make another one.
580
00:35:02,558 --> 00:35:06,270
1969 took us from the hyperreal
to the unreal.
581
00:35:06,354 --> 00:35:08,439
The wildness flowered in full force
582
00:35:08,523 --> 00:35:14,487
in writer-director Robert Downey Sr.'s
revolutionary comedy about revolution,
583
00:35:14,570 --> 00:35:16,989
the advertising satire Putney Swope.
584
00:35:17,073 --> 00:35:19,325
You can't eat an air conditioner.
585
00:35:20,701 --> 00:35:22,620
Here, a Black man,
Putney Swope,
586
00:35:22,703 --> 00:35:25,456
is suddenly made
the head of an advertising agency…
587
00:35:25,540 --> 00:35:27,208
You're gonna make a great chairman.
588
00:35:27,291 --> 00:35:30,461
…and immediately upends
the way the agency does business.
589
00:35:30,545 --> 00:35:34,132
I have a feeling that there's
a lot of untapped talent around here.
590
00:35:35,216 --> 00:35:36,050
I didn't do it!
591
00:35:36,134 --> 00:35:38,261
Then what are you doing?
Taking her temperature?
592
00:35:38,928 --> 00:35:42,932
Boss, don't fire me. I got a wife,
three kids, and a Shetland pony.
593
00:35:43,015 --> 00:35:47,603
You can get more said with comedy
than you can get said straight,
594
00:35:48,146 --> 00:35:51,440
and I think
that's what Blacks had to survive.
595
00:35:51,524 --> 00:35:55,319
You had to, uh, make 'em laugh
under the subtext.
596
00:35:55,862 --> 00:35:57,989
Downey saw an opening
597
00:35:58,072 --> 00:36:01,075
where we could play
and be cutting and biting.
598
00:36:02,618 --> 00:36:06,914
And I don't use words like "genius,"
but it was a stroke of something.
599
00:36:06,998 --> 00:36:10,960
Unhappy with the performance
of his star, actor Arnold Johnson,
600
00:36:11,043 --> 00:36:15,006
director Downey dubbed his own voice
for his lead Black character…
601
00:36:15,840 --> 00:36:17,925
Truth and Soul!
602
00:36:18,009 --> 00:36:20,178
-TS, baby.
-That's right!
603
00:36:20,261 --> 00:36:21,971
…a move that surely later influenced
604
00:36:22,054 --> 00:36:24,974
his son's Oscar-nominated role
in Tropic Thunder.
605
00:36:25,057 --> 00:36:28,186
'Cause I'm trying to come up a little,
but it's just… it's tough.
606
00:36:28,269 --> 00:36:29,770
-No, you look good.
-Any tips?
607
00:36:32,148 --> 00:36:35,902
1969 was a watershed period
in Black film,
608
00:36:35,985 --> 00:36:38,779
in which stories took a harsher
and more realistic look
609
00:36:38,863 --> 00:36:40,656
at Black life in the past,
610
00:36:40,740 --> 00:36:44,994
such as with the first American films
to deal, in somewhat stark terms,
611
00:36:45,077 --> 00:36:46,204
with slavery.
612
00:36:46,287 --> 00:36:48,414
The movie was called Slaves,
613
00:36:48,497 --> 00:36:50,541
which both starred Dionne Warwick
614
00:36:50,625 --> 00:36:53,169
and offered her singing
about a different kind of hurt
615
00:36:53,252 --> 00:36:55,171
than one might have expected from her.
616
00:36:56,088 --> 00:36:59,258
Ossie Davis plays a slave
attempting to hold onto logic
617
00:36:59,342 --> 00:37:00,843
in a system that has none.
618
00:37:00,927 --> 00:37:03,262
Twelve hundred twice. Anyone else?
619
00:37:03,346 --> 00:37:07,391
Davis's regal slow burn
doesn't hide his despair.
620
00:37:07,475 --> 00:37:09,727
In fact, it magnifies this.
621
00:37:16,567 --> 00:37:19,612
The historic tumult continues
when Rupert Crosse becomes
622
00:37:19,695 --> 00:37:23,616
the first Black actor to be nominated
for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor
623
00:37:23,699 --> 00:37:24,867
for The Reivers.
624
00:37:29,205 --> 00:37:31,249
How do you start this thing?
625
00:37:31,332 --> 00:37:35,795
Crosse's sunny fluidity
frees McQueen from his laconic narcissism.
626
00:37:35,878 --> 00:37:37,630
He pays attention to Crosse
627
00:37:37,713 --> 00:37:40,925
and allows us to honor Crosse
in the same way.
628
00:37:41,008 --> 00:37:44,470
Ten years earlier,
Crosse was featured in Shadows,
629
00:37:44,553 --> 00:37:50,851
John Cassavetes' 1959 race drama
that was, of course, independently made.
630
00:37:50,935 --> 00:37:53,396
You like that one
about the rabbit and the tree?
631
00:37:53,479 --> 00:37:54,605
I don't know that one.
632
00:37:55,106 --> 00:37:58,109
You know that one about the rabbit
that fell on out the tree and says,
633
00:37:58,192 --> 00:38:00,194
"Man, that lovemaking's for the birds."
634
00:38:01,529 --> 00:38:02,780
Director Mark Rydell,
635
00:38:02,863 --> 00:38:06,450
who knew Crosse from the Actors Studio,
brought him into The Reivers.
636
00:38:06,534 --> 00:38:09,078
Rupert Crosse
was 6 foot 5 inches tall,
637
00:38:09,161 --> 00:38:12,707
and I knew he was right for the part
to play opposite Steve.
638
00:38:13,541 --> 00:38:16,168
It was awesome
to drive up to Steve McQueen's house
639
00:38:16,252 --> 00:38:19,255
because there were maybe ten garages
640
00:38:19,338 --> 00:38:23,259
with all kinds of cars,
Ferraris and, uh, Aston Martins
641
00:38:23,342 --> 00:38:25,386
and racing motorcycles.
642
00:38:25,469 --> 00:38:28,222
An enormous piece of property,
a courtyard.
643
00:38:28,306 --> 00:38:29,765
It was… it was very lavish.
644
00:38:29,849 --> 00:38:32,184
And Rupert had never seen
anything like that before,
645
00:38:32,268 --> 00:38:35,688
and I must tell you,
I hadn't either till I met Steve.
646
00:38:36,272 --> 00:38:38,983
I lived a little bit more modestly
but certainly better than Rupert,
647
00:38:39,066 --> 00:38:42,153
who had no… no money
and was living like a young actor.
648
00:38:42,236 --> 00:38:45,573
Well, we walked into the house,
and Rupert met Steve,
649
00:38:45,656 --> 00:38:50,578
and, uh, Steve looked up at this giant,
and we sat down in his kind of library,
650
00:38:50,661 --> 00:38:53,914
and Steve began to talk
about, uh, tae kwon do.
651
00:38:53,998 --> 00:38:57,126
You know, he was a master
of those fighting disciplines,
652
00:38:57,209 --> 00:39:00,629
and, uh, he was showing Rupert
some moves, and Rupert said,
653
00:39:00,713 --> 00:39:04,300
"No, you're off-balance,"
said Rupert from his chair.
654
00:39:05,551 --> 00:39:08,554
And I saw-- And Steve looked at him,
he said, "Oh?"
655
00:39:09,180 --> 00:39:11,515
He said, "Yes, you're off-balance,
you know."
656
00:39:11,599 --> 00:39:15,353
"It's wrong, the way you're standing."
So Steve said, "Show me."
657
00:39:15,436 --> 00:39:19,857
And Rupert uncoiled
and stood up at his height,
658
00:39:19,940 --> 00:39:22,693
and they faced one another,
and in two seconds,
659
00:39:22,777 --> 00:39:24,945
Steve was flying through the air
660
00:39:25,029 --> 00:39:28,574
under the billiard table in the--
Actually, the next room.
661
00:39:28,657 --> 00:39:31,369
So-- And I thought,
"Well, the picture's over."
662
00:39:31,452 --> 00:39:33,287
"You know, there goes Rupert."
663
00:39:33,954 --> 00:39:37,083
But the truth of the matter
is Steve was thrilled, you know,
664
00:39:37,166 --> 00:39:39,543
that, uh… that this guy
was not afraid of him.
665
00:39:39,627 --> 00:39:42,463
Among the curious
and forward-thinking artists
666
00:39:42,546 --> 00:39:44,382
that populated LA's film world,
667
00:39:44,465 --> 00:39:48,344
which included Jack Nicholson
and screenwriter Robert Towne,
668
00:39:48,427 --> 00:39:52,431
Rupert Crosse was a charismatic figure,
admired for his talent.
669
00:39:52,515 --> 00:39:54,433
As Jim Brown and Rupert Crosse
670
00:39:54,517 --> 00:39:57,103
were presenting a new type
of Black masculinity,
671
00:39:57,686 --> 00:40:00,940
Brown, who was simultaneously
courtly and impatient,
672
00:40:01,023 --> 00:40:02,900
and Crosse's smiling insolence,
673
00:40:03,401 --> 00:40:06,987
Muhammad Ali, who was for me
the second Black public figure
674
00:40:07,071 --> 00:40:10,533
to be the same with Black audiences
as with white audiences,
675
00:40:10,616 --> 00:40:13,327
had his version of courtliness
and insolence displayed
676
00:40:13,411 --> 00:40:16,705
in the 1970 documentary
a.k.a. Cassius Clay.
677
00:40:16,789 --> 00:40:19,125
He was paying lawyers
to keep him out of jail,
678
00:40:19,208 --> 00:40:21,168
paying alimony to his first wife,
679
00:40:21,961 --> 00:40:24,380
supporting his current wife and child.
680
00:40:25,047 --> 00:40:29,468
This unusual documentary
caught Ali at the crossroads of who he was
681
00:40:29,552 --> 00:40:30,970
and who he would become.
682
00:40:31,053 --> 00:40:33,764
Important because it shows
the self-possession
683
00:40:33,848 --> 00:40:36,016
that will be the core of Black film.
684
00:40:36,517 --> 00:40:40,312
And the first such Black figure
to break through in the same way as Ali,
685
00:40:40,396 --> 00:40:42,440
not trying to hide
from the mainstream gaze,
686
00:40:42,523 --> 00:40:45,901
was Jack Johnson,
whose struggles were depicted in the play
687
00:40:45,985 --> 00:40:48,279
and now the movie The Great White Hope,
688
00:40:48,362 --> 00:40:51,157
where James Earl Jones
would become the second Black man
689
00:40:51,240 --> 00:40:53,159
to get a Best Actor nomination.
690
00:41:04,545 --> 00:41:07,006
James Earl Jones
rose to the occasion
691
00:41:07,089 --> 00:41:08,924
as a lean sexual presence
692
00:41:09,008 --> 00:41:11,677
for one of the few times
in his on-screen career.
693
00:41:11,760 --> 00:41:14,054
-No, no! I'm--
-Put your clothes on, Miss Bachman.
694
00:41:14,138 --> 00:41:15,598
-We'll take you into town.
-Jake!
695
00:41:15,681 --> 00:41:17,808
Don't you fret now. Just get dressed.
696
00:41:17,892 --> 00:41:21,228
Interracial sexuality
and the unease it created
697
00:41:21,312 --> 00:41:24,356
whipped up waves of anxiety
in film in 1970.
698
00:41:24,440 --> 00:41:26,650
The Great White Hope reminded viewers
699
00:41:26,734 --> 00:41:29,195
that those relationships
were based on appetites.
700
00:41:29,278 --> 00:41:33,073
The changes left
at least one esteemed filmmaker at a loss,
701
00:41:33,157 --> 00:41:36,785
director William Wyler,
whose ability to depict societal shift
702
00:41:36,869 --> 00:41:40,206
can be seen in films
such as The Best Years of Our Lives.
703
00:41:41,165 --> 00:41:42,374
And Wyler set a template
704
00:41:42,458 --> 00:41:46,337
with his 1965 proto-stalker film,
The Collector.
705
00:41:46,420 --> 00:41:49,757
His last film
was The Liberation of L.B. Jones,
706
00:41:49,840 --> 00:41:54,261
and his power to coherently translate
up-to-the-minute drama failed him
707
00:41:54,345 --> 00:41:58,265
with this hysterical fetishizing
of Black female flesh.
708
00:42:02,478 --> 00:42:05,898
-You fancy goin' to lawyers?
-Sugar boy, you bustin' my arm.
709
00:42:05,981 --> 00:42:09,401
You fancy goin' to lawyers!
You think they wouldn't warn a white man?
710
00:42:10,152 --> 00:42:13,906
I seen fools,
but you take the sap-suckin' prize.
711
00:42:14,740 --> 00:42:18,035
After directing the documentary
A Filmed Record,
712
00:42:18,118 --> 00:42:20,829
Sidney Lumet turned to something
that sounded tantalizing,
713
00:42:20,913 --> 00:42:24,416
a Gore Vidal script
adapted from a Tennessee Williams play
714
00:42:24,500 --> 00:42:26,377
dealing with race and sex
715
00:42:26,460 --> 00:42:29,922
with James Coburn,
Robert Hooks, and Lynn Redgrave.
716
00:42:30,005 --> 00:42:33,509
The desperate-to-be-lurid result
was Last of the Mobile Hotshots,
717
00:42:33,592 --> 00:42:35,010
which got an X rating,
718
00:42:35,094 --> 00:42:39,807
apparently because a Black man
might have sex with a white woman.
719
00:42:41,183 --> 00:42:46,105
The oven door's broke,
the roof leaks, the toilet runs all day,
720
00:42:46,188 --> 00:42:48,440
and you awful cute to be a landlord.
721
00:42:48,524 --> 00:42:53,362
Diana Sands' ability to enchant
was evident in 1970's The Landlord,
722
00:42:53,445 --> 00:42:57,950
and this early story of the turmoil
caused by an overprivileged white man
723
00:42:58,033 --> 00:43:01,579
gentrifying an all-Black Brooklyn street
continued the trend,
724
00:43:01,662 --> 00:43:05,374
that of a Black writer, Bill Gunn,
adapting a novel
725
00:43:05,457 --> 00:43:08,168
by a Black writer, Kristin Hunter.
726
00:43:09,336 --> 00:43:13,090
This actor's earthy commonsense command
was made for the screen.
727
00:43:13,173 --> 00:43:16,427
Sands could convey
as much with a chuckle and a smile
728
00:43:16,510 --> 00:43:19,305
as most actors could
with pages of dialogue.
729
00:43:23,559 --> 00:43:26,520
Diana Sands
was just the perfect auntie
730
00:43:26,604 --> 00:43:28,689
because she knew how to be a big kid.
731
00:43:28,772 --> 00:43:31,567
She was such a… a giving person,
732
00:43:31,650 --> 00:43:34,320
such a joy, uh, to be around.
733
00:43:35,904 --> 00:43:38,824
1970 brought Chester Himes
to the screen
734
00:43:38,907 --> 00:43:40,659
in a way that finally made sense.
735
00:43:40,743 --> 00:43:42,911
In his directorial debut,
736
00:43:42,995 --> 00:43:47,833
Ossie Davis spins the long-standing myth
of the emotional Black sexpot on its head
737
00:43:47,916 --> 00:43:50,794
by using a scene right from Himes' novel.
738
00:43:50,878 --> 00:43:53,797
In his book,
Himes adds a hint of bitterness
739
00:43:53,881 --> 00:43:57,426
to this turn-the-tables anecdote
about a Black woman luring a white cop
740
00:43:57,509 --> 00:43:59,428
into sexual humiliation.
741
00:43:59,511 --> 00:44:00,804
Please, baby.
742
00:44:03,140 --> 00:44:04,141
Please.
743
00:44:09,605 --> 00:44:11,732
The film adaptation
cranked the glee
744
00:44:11,815 --> 00:44:14,360
of an audience bored by Black degradation
745
00:44:14,443 --> 00:44:18,656
and revels in Davis's flipping the script
under a proscenium arch.
746
00:44:18,739 --> 00:44:20,991
-Halt in the name of the law!
747
00:44:21,075 --> 00:44:23,285
-Halt in the name of the law!
748
00:44:23,869 --> 00:44:28,290
The Davis take on Himes'
Old Testament avenger Harlem cops
749
00:44:28,374 --> 00:44:32,961
was a playful and Afrocentric fable
that introduced the concept of high style,
750
00:44:33,045 --> 00:44:36,090
scored by Hair composer Galt MacDermot,
to Black action.
751
00:44:37,383 --> 00:44:38,884
The beautifully dressed detectives,
752
00:44:38,967 --> 00:44:43,180
played by the wry Godfrey Cambridge
and quick-tempered Raymond St. Jacques,
753
00:44:43,263 --> 00:44:47,142
were part of an eager group
of Black stage actors Davis put together.
754
00:44:47,226 --> 00:44:49,561
-What is it?
-Look at this.
755
00:44:50,104 --> 00:44:52,981
Oh my God,
those blue shirts he was wearing,
756
00:44:53,065 --> 00:44:54,900
that suit he was wearing,
757
00:44:54,983 --> 00:44:59,405
the way he had his mustache manicured,
he was clean as a motherfucker, man.
758
00:44:59,488 --> 00:45:01,824
You saw that white joker.
Did you identify him?
759
00:45:03,409 --> 00:45:06,078
I don't know, Lieutenant.
Maybe yes, maybe no.
760
00:45:07,663 --> 00:45:09,373
All those kinda people look alike to me.
761
00:45:09,456 --> 00:45:13,919
As a stage actor himself,
Davis knew that audiences would respond
762
00:45:14,002 --> 00:45:17,548
to the warmth of Black actors
basking in their comrades' glory,
763
00:45:17,631 --> 00:45:21,176
an aspect he probably wanted
movie audiences to experience.
764
00:45:22,386 --> 00:45:25,556
There's a lot of fantasy going on
in Cotton Comes to Harlem.
765
00:45:28,016 --> 00:45:29,184
It's a fairy tale.
766
00:45:29,268 --> 00:45:31,061
But what's great is
767
00:45:31,145 --> 00:45:33,522
Ossie Davis uses Harlem
768
00:45:34,231 --> 00:45:37,067
in a way that I don't think
we'd ever seen it before.
769
00:45:37,985 --> 00:45:39,445
It's totally authentic.
770
00:45:39,528 --> 00:45:41,155
It is totally itself.
771
00:45:41,238 --> 00:45:45,784
And he's got this fantasy playing out
in the midst of the reality of Harlem.
772
00:45:46,744 --> 00:45:49,580
Davis took a mantra
from Black revolutionaries
773
00:45:49,663 --> 00:45:51,707
and made it a call-and-response song…
774
00:45:56,628 --> 00:45:59,757
…of looking forward to the day
when Black pride will be celebrated
775
00:45:59,840 --> 00:46:03,886
by society at large
rather than viewed as a demand for change.
776
00:46:03,969 --> 00:46:07,014
Which it was, by the way,
but the song gives it a lilt.
777
00:46:12,227 --> 00:46:14,688
It's that one line
that repeats itself throughout,
778
00:46:14,772 --> 00:46:16,899
which is fantastic.
779
00:46:16,982 --> 00:46:18,609
Am I Black enough for you?!
780
00:46:19,443 --> 00:46:22,780
Calvin Lockhart
and his way of using it when he preaches,
781
00:46:22,863 --> 00:46:26,116
and then Godfrey Cambridge
and his way of using it.
782
00:46:26,200 --> 00:46:28,160
Is that Black enough for you?
783
00:46:28,243 --> 00:46:30,996
It changes. It morphs.
It has several meanings.
784
00:46:31,079 --> 00:46:32,623
Is that Black enough for you?
785
00:46:33,540 --> 00:46:34,958
It ain't, but it's gonna be.
786
00:46:36,752 --> 00:46:39,171
That still resonates.
787
00:46:39,254 --> 00:46:41,715
Though Davis recognized
the need to make the composer
788
00:46:41,799 --> 00:46:43,133
part of the storytelling
789
00:46:43,217 --> 00:46:45,427
by including MacDermot
on Cotton Comes to Harlem,
790
00:46:45,511 --> 00:46:48,764
it took Melvin Van Peebles
to make the music communicate
791
00:46:48,847 --> 00:46:51,475
the shocking nature
of the Black experience.
792
00:46:51,975 --> 00:46:54,436
His 1970 Watermelon Man is a satire
793
00:46:54,520 --> 00:46:58,565
in which a liberal white man
wakes up one day to find out he's Black.
794
00:46:59,733 --> 00:47:03,278
Illustrating the bone-deep horror
of being Black for whites,
795
00:47:03,362 --> 00:47:07,074
Godfrey Cambridge shifts the tone
from openly broad and comedic…
796
00:47:08,784 --> 00:47:11,870
Jeff! Jeff! Jeff!
There's a Negro in your shower!
797
00:47:11,954 --> 00:47:15,999
…to acting the richly observed
and deeper character transformed
798
00:47:16,083 --> 00:47:18,126
by being soaked in empathy,
799
00:47:18,210 --> 00:47:21,797
an evolution Van Peebles
wanted audiences to feel.
800
00:47:21,880 --> 00:47:25,759
When we got married, I had no idea
it was going to be an interracial thing.
801
00:47:25,843 --> 00:47:29,096
-You never told me.
-Well, I just got wind of it myself.
802
00:47:29,179 --> 00:47:32,057
Van Peebles engulfs a slight
and sleight-of-hand plot
803
00:47:32,140 --> 00:47:36,228
by blending sketch-comedy concepts
rendered in big glossy movie terms
804
00:47:36,311 --> 00:47:37,980
to meticulously make a film
805
00:47:38,063 --> 00:47:41,859
about the power of dawning Black awareness
and responsibility.
806
00:47:41,942 --> 00:47:43,443
Where do you think you're going?
807
00:47:43,527 --> 00:47:46,238
-I'm lunching with Clark Dunwoody.
-Not in here, you're not.
808
00:47:46,321 --> 00:47:47,865
In a pandemic world,
809
00:47:47,948 --> 00:47:50,409
Watermelon Man
has gained a new timeliness,
810
00:47:50,492 --> 00:47:54,580
as whites now understand
the concept of living on borrowed time
811
00:47:54,663 --> 00:47:56,623
the moment you step outside
your front door,
812
00:47:56,707 --> 00:47:59,710
as African Americans always have.
813
00:48:00,294 --> 00:48:03,422
Like Gordon Parks
on The Learning Tree the year before,
814
00:48:03,505 --> 00:48:06,758
Van Peebles composed music
for his studio directing debut.
815
00:48:06,842 --> 00:48:10,762
When my father did Watermelon Man,
and they were trying to decide
816
00:48:10,846 --> 00:48:13,432
whether Watermelon Man
should come out theatrically,
817
00:48:13,515 --> 00:48:17,102
they were having a little screening,
and all the bigwigs were comin' in,
818
00:48:17,185 --> 00:48:18,854
and they're all white guys,
819
00:48:18,937 --> 00:48:22,733
and there's a guy, a brother named Willy,
who would sweep up in the screening room.
820
00:48:22,816 --> 00:48:25,193
And my dad had talked to Willy
and gave him a couple of bucks
821
00:48:25,277 --> 00:48:28,071
and said, "When they screen my movie,
you make sure you like it."
822
00:48:28,155 --> 00:48:29,448
So Willy's screening the movie,
823
00:48:29,531 --> 00:48:31,909
they screen, uh, Watermelon Man,
Willy start…
824
00:48:31,992 --> 00:48:34,453
"Look at that! Oh!"
825
00:48:34,536 --> 00:48:35,746
"That sure is fun--"
826
00:48:36,830 --> 00:48:39,541
And they were looking at him,
"Well, Willy likes it."
827
00:48:39,625 --> 00:48:43,003
And Willy, "Oh, boss, that sure is good.
Look at that."
828
00:48:43,086 --> 00:48:44,588
"Willy, is this funny to you?"
829
00:48:44,671 --> 00:48:47,841
"Oh yeah, I can't wait to see this.
When is it coming out?"
830
00:48:47,925 --> 00:48:51,345
Well, theatrical release.
That was their one-man focus group.
831
00:48:51,428 --> 00:48:55,057
So my dad just did racial jujitsu
and flipped it against them.
832
00:48:57,893 --> 00:49:02,022
Gordon Parks,
making a second studio film in 1971,
833
00:49:02,105 --> 00:49:04,858
fully incorporated the marriage
of music and film,
834
00:49:04,942 --> 00:49:08,362
a defiant break from
the classically influenced European scores
835
00:49:08,445 --> 00:49:09,696
of studio fare.
836
00:49:09,780 --> 00:49:13,533
With this movie, Parks follows up
on his plan to include Isaac Hayes.
837
00:49:30,676 --> 00:49:34,471
Shaft wasn't just a debut.
It was an announcement.
838
00:49:34,554 --> 00:49:37,057
In the same way that movies
such as Easy Rider screamed,
839
00:49:37,641 --> 00:49:38,684
"This is the '60s,"
840
00:49:38,767 --> 00:49:42,771
Shaft laid down a count of funk
and urban panache that said
841
00:49:42,854 --> 00:49:44,690
this was the 1970s.
842
00:49:44,773 --> 00:49:47,818
That a private eye didn't have to look
like he slept in his clothes
843
00:49:47,901 --> 00:49:49,486
or hid from view.
844
00:49:49,569 --> 00:49:53,115
The newness and audacity
of a camera following a Black man
845
00:49:53,198 --> 00:49:55,659
in a leather coat through Manhattan.
846
00:49:55,742 --> 00:49:58,161
A private eye, dressed like a combination
847
00:49:58,245 --> 00:50:01,081
of a revolutionary
and director Gordon Parks,
848
00:50:01,164 --> 00:50:03,917
as the sizzle of the hi-hat
cranked up the audience.
849
00:50:04,584 --> 00:50:06,795
The camera wasn't spying on the star.
850
00:50:07,295 --> 00:50:08,630
It was staring at him.
851
00:50:09,756 --> 00:50:12,759
This combination forever altered
the course of movies,
852
00:50:12,843 --> 00:50:14,845
right down to coming from a studio
853
00:50:14,928 --> 00:50:18,348
that was long known for delivering product
about an ideal America
854
00:50:18,432 --> 00:50:22,561
that framed straight hair and blue eyes
as the standard of beauty.
855
00:50:22,644 --> 00:50:26,523
Shaft, "sex machine for all the chicks,"
ain't nobody said that about a brother.
856
00:50:29,526 --> 00:50:30,652
You all right?
857
00:50:31,903 --> 00:50:33,321
Baby, are you all right?
858
00:50:35,073 --> 00:50:36,992
I got to feeling like a machine.
859
00:50:37,826 --> 00:50:39,161
That's no way to feel.
860
00:50:47,961 --> 00:50:51,757
In 1971,
Van Peebles chose to make a movie
861
00:50:51,840 --> 00:50:55,844
about the unremitting terror
Black Americans are subject to,
862
00:50:55,927 --> 00:50:58,346
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song.
863
00:50:58,430 --> 00:51:01,433
The title alone
made the movie part of the revolution
864
00:51:01,516 --> 00:51:03,643
that would not be televised.
865
00:51:03,727 --> 00:51:07,314
In those days,
networks would never run such a title
866
00:51:07,397 --> 00:51:10,484
or the incendiary movie
that it accompanied.
867
00:51:11,485 --> 00:51:13,153
-What is it?
868
00:51:19,367 --> 00:51:22,079
In the days
before porn was unavoidable
869
00:51:22,162 --> 00:51:25,123
and when Black sexuality
was still a punch line,
870
00:51:25,207 --> 00:51:28,835
Sweetback showed its nerve
by turning Black sex into a show
871
00:51:28,919 --> 00:51:31,338
and refusing to blink or turn away.
872
00:51:31,421 --> 00:51:33,965
It's a Van Peebles
brick-by-brick construction,
873
00:51:34,049 --> 00:51:38,512
a device to make the audience understand
what it's like to be objectified.
874
00:51:42,682 --> 00:51:45,018
Making "badass"
a part of the title
875
00:51:45,102 --> 00:51:46,686
was such a badass move
876
00:51:46,770 --> 00:51:49,481
that it virtually guaranteed the movie
an X rating,
877
00:51:49,564 --> 00:51:51,483
which Sweetback eventually got.
878
00:51:51,566 --> 00:51:54,903
Melvin Van Peebles
used the perks of exploitation
879
00:51:54,986 --> 00:51:58,198
and a new liberalism in movie culture
to his advantage.
880
00:51:58,281 --> 00:52:01,535
He loved the sheer effrontery
of being a Black man
881
00:52:01,618 --> 00:52:04,037
with facial hair, smoking a cigar.
882
00:52:04,538 --> 00:52:05,997
A pop-culture gesture
883
00:52:06,081 --> 00:52:10,544
as eternal as Elvis Presley's smirk
and Megan Thee Stallion's fingernails.
884
00:52:10,627 --> 00:52:14,339
Sweetback came at a time
when the X rating was just invented,
885
00:52:14,422 --> 00:52:17,259
and porn moved
from sleazy downtown theaters
886
00:52:17,342 --> 00:52:18,510
to the suburbs.
887
00:52:18,593 --> 00:52:21,429
Midnight Cowboy
became the first X-rated film
888
00:52:21,513 --> 00:52:23,265
to win the Best Picture Oscar.
889
00:52:23,348 --> 00:52:24,307
The only one.
890
00:52:24,891 --> 00:52:27,978
Stanley Kubrick made Clockwork Orange
and got an X.
891
00:52:28,979 --> 00:52:31,982
And Marlon Brando
and director Bernardo Bertolucci
892
00:52:32,065 --> 00:52:36,111
would be nominated for Oscars
for the X-rated Last Tango in Paris.
893
00:52:36,653 --> 00:52:41,491
And there was the Black attempt
at X-rated social commentary, Lialeh,
894
00:52:41,575 --> 00:52:44,202
with a score
by funk legend Bernard Purdie.
895
00:52:44,286 --> 00:52:48,123
Even if the Motion Picture Association
offered me a G for the film,
896
00:52:48,206 --> 00:52:50,208
I don't give them the right to, uh…
897
00:52:50,292 --> 00:52:54,421
to decide G or X, uh,
for the Black destiny.
898
00:52:56,006 --> 00:52:58,592
But Van Peebles
inadvertently opened a floodgate
899
00:52:58,675 --> 00:53:00,010
by hijacking the X-rating.
900
00:53:00,594 --> 00:53:03,138
It's rumored he self-applied the X-rating
901
00:53:03,221 --> 00:53:06,850
because it was the only symbol
not copyrighted by the ratings board,
902
00:53:06,933 --> 00:53:10,270
which let everyone know
the X was theirs for the taking,
903
00:53:10,353 --> 00:53:14,524
and the brave new world
of the double X and triple X was born.
904
00:53:14,608 --> 00:53:18,904
After all, you've never heard
of a double R or a triple PG-13.
905
00:53:19,821 --> 00:53:23,033
As with Watermelon Man,
Sweetback opens with running
906
00:53:23,116 --> 00:53:25,076
but not for comic effect in this case.
907
00:53:25,160 --> 00:53:27,787
Sweetback is on the run for his life.
908
00:53:27,871 --> 00:53:30,624
Movement is what seems to keep him alive,
909
00:53:30,707 --> 00:53:32,626
as much of the film
is about forward motion.
910
00:53:34,544 --> 00:53:38,089
Van Peebles chose musicians
not just to supply music.
911
00:53:38,173 --> 00:53:41,343
He made Earth, Wind & Fire
his coconspirators.
912
00:53:41,426 --> 00:53:43,386
He had a secretary who I had a crush on.
913
00:53:43,470 --> 00:53:46,306
I think everyone had a crush
on Priscilla, his secretary.
914
00:53:46,389 --> 00:53:49,809
She had a Afro like a halo, baby.
I'd be like, "God, look at Priscilla."
915
00:53:49,893 --> 00:53:51,186
"Just-- What's she wearing--"
916
00:53:51,269 --> 00:53:53,855
"What's the Priscilla outfit du jour
gonna be?"
917
00:53:53,939 --> 00:53:57,442
But Priscilla had a boyfriend
who was a little, you know, possessive.
918
00:53:57,525 --> 00:53:58,735
She wanted to act in the movie,
919
00:53:58,818 --> 00:54:00,862
but her boyfriend said,
"You can't act in the movie."
920
00:54:00,946 --> 00:54:04,241
But he happened to have a new band
called Earth, Wind & Fire.
921
00:54:04,741 --> 00:54:08,620
So he said, "You can't act with Melvin.
However, I wanna do the music."
922
00:54:10,163 --> 00:54:14,501
And their contribution added to
the sweaty paranoia of Sweetback.
923
00:54:16,419 --> 00:54:18,755
Unlike the sweet and muscular R&B
924
00:54:18,838 --> 00:54:22,092
we'd later instantly recognize
as Earth, Wind & Fire,
925
00:54:22,175 --> 00:54:26,846
their Sweetback score is discordant,
ribbons of screeching avant-garde jazz
926
00:54:26,930 --> 00:54:29,599
with a pounding layer
of percussion underneath.
927
00:54:29,683 --> 00:54:31,768
The music exists to make us aware
928
00:54:31,851 --> 00:54:35,981
we're being plunged into a world
the movies shied away from.
929
00:54:36,064 --> 00:54:37,899
It combined genres swiftly,
930
00:54:37,983 --> 00:54:41,319
with reflexes as keen
as those of director Van Peebles.
931
00:55:03,049 --> 00:55:05,969
My dad would actually have me
talk to people in the lobby.
932
00:55:06,052 --> 00:55:09,014
He'd say, "What d'you think?"
And I'd tell him. He'd say,
933
00:55:09,097 --> 00:55:11,808
"I'm not interested in what you think.
I wanna find out later."
934
00:55:11,891 --> 00:55:16,146
"Go talk to those folks in the lobby
and get an idea of how they saw the movie,
935
00:55:16,229 --> 00:55:18,940
how they heard about the movie,
and what did they think of the film."
936
00:55:20,066 --> 00:55:23,445
It took an auteur and showman
and salesman, such as Melvin,
937
00:55:23,528 --> 00:55:27,949
to understand that by making the composer
a creative partner on the project,
938
00:55:28,033 --> 00:55:29,576
rather than just an employee,
939
00:55:29,659 --> 00:55:32,287
the director was investing
in the movie's future.
940
00:55:32,787 --> 00:55:35,415
Melvin saw that future
in a way that would eventually start
941
00:55:35,498 --> 00:55:37,709
a new direction in the movie business.
942
00:55:37,792 --> 00:55:39,294
First, he made the story
943
00:55:39,377 --> 00:55:41,963
of the selling of the movie,
its marketing.
944
00:55:42,047 --> 00:55:46,343
Otherwise, he'd have a Black movie
that would get little or no attention.
945
00:55:46,426 --> 00:55:49,304
More importantly,
he had the soundtrack released first,
946
00:55:49,387 --> 00:55:52,474
counting on enhanced visibility
as a sales tool.
947
00:55:53,224 --> 00:55:55,560
He was an artist-entrepreneur.
948
00:55:55,643 --> 00:55:58,563
It didn't matter if it was art
if no one saw it.
949
00:55:59,898 --> 00:56:03,485
Gordon Parks changed
who the Black movie protagonist could be.
950
00:56:03,568 --> 00:56:05,987
Sweetback and Shaft followed Muhammad Ali
951
00:56:06,071 --> 00:56:11,618
into an era of Black figures
no longer asking for permission to be.
952
00:56:11,701 --> 00:56:14,371
Their scenes were staged
to present them as assertive
953
00:56:14,454 --> 00:56:15,997
rather than inviting,
954
00:56:16,081 --> 00:56:19,501
a chill attitude
breaking with lowered-head likability.
955
00:56:20,001 --> 00:56:23,713
A flinty and ironic distance
that forced the viewer to understand
956
00:56:23,797 --> 00:56:25,632
rather than have all explained.
957
00:56:27,801 --> 00:56:31,012
Listen to what I'm telling you, man.
I'm here to help you.
958
00:56:31,096 --> 00:56:33,306
I am an angel of God.
959
00:56:33,390 --> 00:56:36,101
Harry Belafonte
brought his silken intensity
960
00:56:36,184 --> 00:56:39,020
back to the big screen
for The Angel Levine,
961
00:56:39,104 --> 00:56:41,356
an experimental drama he produced.
962
00:56:41,439 --> 00:56:44,734
Ending his self-imposed exile
in this existential comedy
963
00:56:44,818 --> 00:56:47,862
that added a twist
to the dilemma posed by Ralph Ellison
964
00:56:47,946 --> 00:56:49,948
in his novel Invisible Man.
965
00:56:50,031 --> 00:56:53,743
"What did I do to be so Black,
blue, and heaven-sent?"
966
00:56:54,452 --> 00:56:55,537
I am an angel.
967
00:56:58,123 --> 00:56:59,958
Have you come to take me away?
968
00:57:01,418 --> 00:57:02,252
No.
969
00:57:03,837 --> 00:57:05,213
I've come to give you life.
970
00:57:05,296 --> 00:57:08,633
As a more divine
and New Testament parallel,
971
00:57:08,716 --> 00:57:11,553
Sidney Poitier starred as Brother John.
972
00:57:11,636 --> 00:57:14,431
In this fantasy,
Poitier is a modest stranger
973
00:57:14,514 --> 00:57:18,351
dropped into a conflict zone,
withholding approval and judgment
974
00:57:18,435 --> 00:57:22,439
as a taciturn angel of death
torn between the past and the present.
975
00:57:22,522 --> 00:57:26,734
This well-meaning fable
serves to reflect Poitier's own plight.
976
00:57:28,361 --> 00:57:30,905
Ossie Davis followed up
Cotton Comes to Harlem
977
00:57:30,989 --> 00:57:34,993
with a drama that focused on the tensions
of generations of Black women
978
00:57:35,076 --> 00:57:36,494
in a single household.
979
00:57:36,578 --> 00:57:39,080
Dear Lord, if you help me
get this house for my mother,
980
00:57:39,164 --> 00:57:41,916
I'll never ask you
for anything else, amen.
981
00:57:42,000 --> 00:57:46,087
His young woman protagonist
fighting to be heard and for her future,
982
00:57:46,171 --> 00:57:49,132
a subject much closer
to landlocked reality
983
00:57:49,215 --> 00:57:50,592
than his previous film.
984
00:57:51,176 --> 00:57:54,429
Writer-director Ousmane Sembène
once said that,
985
00:57:54,512 --> 00:57:57,932
"Between the on-screen families
in Sounder and Black Girl,
986
00:57:58,016 --> 00:57:59,559
there was a complete universe."
987
00:58:00,351 --> 00:58:02,562
"That's the kind of film
I'd like to make."
988
00:58:03,062 --> 00:58:07,525
And the film universe he saw
inspired him to spend much of his career
989
00:58:07,609 --> 00:58:11,988
dramatizing the impact on households
of absent Black masculinity.
990
00:58:12,906 --> 00:58:15,575
Now, there's a line of reasoning
that contends
991
00:58:15,658 --> 00:58:19,662
that 1939 was the best year
in movie history.
992
00:58:19,746 --> 00:58:24,334
But it is axiomatic that 1939
affirmed America's movie stature
993
00:58:24,417 --> 00:58:25,793
as mythmaker for the world.
994
00:58:26,377 --> 00:58:30,673
No period that includes Gone with the Wind
will ever have that kind of appeal to me.
995
00:58:30,757 --> 00:58:34,511
The men who ran the studios
created a pop culture mythology
996
00:58:34,594 --> 00:58:38,848
that gave them the chance to run
as far as they could from their origins.
997
00:58:38,932 --> 00:58:42,393
And they could will a hubristic version
of America into being,
998
00:58:43,144 --> 00:58:45,563
an America that never existed
999
00:58:45,647 --> 00:58:48,191
but much of this country
believes still did.
1000
00:58:48,274 --> 00:58:50,735
Probably most of the world still does.
1001
00:58:50,818 --> 00:58:53,905
1939 let the studios churn out
1002
00:58:53,988 --> 00:58:56,616
what they considered
to be moral and literary
1003
00:58:56,699 --> 00:59:00,078
and catered to mainstream audiences
with whitewashed myths.
1004
00:59:00,161 --> 00:59:02,163
I know, Huck. I'm her slave.
1005
00:59:02,247 --> 00:59:05,041
But sometimes,
I can't help wondering if it's right.
1006
00:59:05,750 --> 00:59:10,004
It's a step past appropriation
to cultural colonialism.
1007
00:59:10,088 --> 00:59:14,384
White actors can do a much better job
with your culture, Latinx actors,
1008
00:59:15,468 --> 00:59:17,011
Pacific Islanders…
1009
00:59:17,095 --> 00:59:18,972
-Miss Dorothy March,
1010
00:59:19,055 --> 00:59:21,140
in her impersonation of Bill Robinson,
1011
00:59:21,224 --> 00:59:22,308
the King of Harlem.
1012
00:59:23,142 --> 00:59:24,394
…Black people.
1013
00:59:25,061 --> 00:59:27,897
A body blow meant as a compliment.
1014
00:59:31,442 --> 00:59:34,571
Most importantly,
there was a handoff in 1939
1015
00:59:34,654 --> 00:59:37,907
that cemented the power
of a central and debilitating myth
1016
00:59:37,991 --> 00:59:40,076
about the place of Blacks in society.
1017
00:59:40,159 --> 00:59:41,369
Quittin' time!
1018
00:59:41,452 --> 00:59:44,205
-Who says it's quittin' time?
-I said it's quittin' time.
1019
00:59:44,289 --> 00:59:47,584
I's the foreman. I's the one says
when it's quittin' time at Tara.
1020
00:59:47,667 --> 00:59:52,171
-Quittin' time! Quittin' time!
1021
00:59:52,255 --> 00:59:54,841
They were both
adaptations of books.
1022
00:59:54,924 --> 00:59:58,636
The number-one grossing film
of all time until 1925
1023
00:59:58,720 --> 01:00:01,306
was D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation.
1024
01:00:01,389 --> 01:00:04,809
An even bigger hit
was 1939's Gone with the Wind,
1025
01:00:04,892 --> 01:00:08,271
which remained the biggest
box-office sensation until 1965
1026
01:00:09,147 --> 01:00:11,232
and became champ again in 1971.
1027
01:00:12,066 --> 01:00:16,529
1972 should have been the year
for Rupert Crosse's career to flower.
1028
01:00:16,613 --> 01:00:20,408
His fans Jack Nicholson,
Robert Towne, and director Hal Ashby
1029
01:00:20,491 --> 01:00:24,287
created a role for Crosse
in the adaptation of The Last Detail.
1030
01:00:24,370 --> 01:00:28,333
But Crosse was diagnosed with leukemia
before shooting began.
1031
01:00:28,416 --> 01:00:31,711
Filming was delayed
in hopes he'd be able to participate,
1032
01:00:31,794 --> 01:00:34,589
but Crosse died before filming started.
1033
01:00:35,840 --> 01:00:37,759
In an Esquire magazine article,
1034
01:00:37,842 --> 01:00:42,013
Ashby reflected on Crosse's humor
and grace in the face of mortality.
1035
01:00:42,096 --> 01:00:44,807
The phrase "corrosive lyricism" was coined
1036
01:00:44,891 --> 01:00:48,478
to summarize Ashby's style
and inspired by Crosse's outlook.
1037
01:01:01,991 --> 01:01:05,745
Isaac Hayes used his performance
at the 1972 Oscars,
1038
01:01:05,828 --> 01:01:08,956
when he became
the first Black Best Song winner,
1039
01:01:09,040 --> 01:01:12,835
to show his Hot Buttered Soul grandeur
to the entire planet.
1040
01:01:12,919 --> 01:01:14,962
For me, watching at home, and thrilled
1041
01:01:15,046 --> 01:01:19,592
by watching Hayes turn slave chains
into superstar chain mail,
1042
01:01:19,676 --> 01:01:22,512
it felt like a comet
crashing into the Earth,
1043
01:01:22,595 --> 01:01:24,806
an alteration of the atmosphere,
1044
01:01:24,889 --> 01:01:28,226
letting us know
things would never be the same.
1045
01:01:29,644 --> 01:01:31,771
It was a dizzying, thrilling mix
1046
01:01:31,854 --> 01:01:35,525
that introduced an element that made
Black film culture more attractive
1047
01:01:35,608 --> 01:01:38,194
than films from the so-called mainstream.
1048
01:01:38,277 --> 01:01:39,987
That element was heroism.
1049
01:01:40,071 --> 01:01:44,200
Now, cockroach, let's run that shit down
from the top again.
1050
01:01:44,283 --> 01:01:46,077
Unlike their white counterparts,
1051
01:01:46,160 --> 01:01:48,287
who wore their misery
like runway accessories,
1052
01:01:48,371 --> 01:01:52,667
Black actors played these antiheroes
with a confidence that bordered on heroism
1053
01:01:52,750 --> 01:01:54,752
and then crossed that border.
1054
01:01:54,836 --> 01:01:56,295
You gonna drop back in. Yeah.
1055
01:01:56,379 --> 01:02:00,258
'Cause you didn't do nothin'
but talk that brotherhood love and peace.
1056
01:02:00,341 --> 01:02:02,427
You didn't change nothin',
which means work
1057
01:02:02,510 --> 01:02:05,263
and making that talk, talk, talk happen.
1058
01:02:05,346 --> 01:02:06,556
But we can't drop into nothin'
1059
01:02:06,639 --> 01:02:08,641
'cause we never had
nothin' to drop out of.
1060
01:02:08,725 --> 01:02:12,937
In the wake of Shaft,
there were bronze remakes of films noir.
1061
01:02:13,020 --> 01:02:15,314
Hit Man, a new take on Get Carter.
1062
01:02:15,398 --> 01:02:18,568
You are a real superstar, baby.
1063
01:02:18,651 --> 01:02:21,738
And Cool Breeze,
yet another remake of The Asphalt Jungle
1064
01:02:21,821 --> 01:02:23,865
that made that term more literal
1065
01:02:23,948 --> 01:02:27,368
than the nouvelle vague
could ever have dreamed possible.
1066
01:02:27,452 --> 01:02:30,371
In these films,
protagonists stepped into the frame
1067
01:02:30,455 --> 01:02:34,167
with a swagger that'd never been allowed
in films above the lower depths.
1068
01:02:36,419 --> 01:02:37,545
I hate to say this,
1069
01:02:38,880 --> 01:02:42,759
but I am such a pretty motherfucker.
1070
01:02:45,636 --> 01:02:46,888
Yeah!
1071
01:02:46,971 --> 01:02:49,891
This peak year in Black film
moved so many boundaries
1072
01:02:49,974 --> 01:02:51,476
that movies were changed forever.
1073
01:02:52,059 --> 01:02:55,730
For the first time, two Black women
were nominated for Best Actress.
1074
01:02:55,813 --> 01:02:57,940
Diana Ross for her first leading role
1075
01:02:58,024 --> 01:03:01,194
and the divine Cicely Tyson for Sounder…
1076
01:03:01,277 --> 01:03:03,988
Cropping season is a long way off,
Mr. Perkins.
1077
01:03:04,489 --> 01:03:06,574
By that time, Nathan ought to be home.
1078
01:03:07,366 --> 01:03:10,828
If he ain't, believe me,
the children and me will do the croppin'.
1079
01:03:10,912 --> 01:03:14,624
I never got the… the chance
to meet Miss Cicely Tyson.
1080
01:03:14,707 --> 01:03:16,417
She always reminded me of my grandmother.
1081
01:03:16,501 --> 01:03:20,922
She just kind of personified
this… this elegance
1082
01:03:21,005 --> 01:03:22,799
and this regal air of--
1083
01:03:22,882 --> 01:03:25,134
Just the way she moved and spoke.
1084
01:03:25,802 --> 01:03:26,844
No.
1085
01:03:26,928 --> 01:03:30,556
I'm fixin' to bake a cake for David Lee
to take to your daddy this time.
1086
01:03:30,640 --> 01:03:34,811
Good to see Cicely.
'Cause I grew up watching Cicely Tyson.
1087
01:03:34,894 --> 01:03:37,104
It was good to see us.
1088
01:03:37,688 --> 01:03:40,358
These movies were about us.
1089
01:03:41,526 --> 01:03:43,736
Son, don't get too used to this place,
1090
01:03:44,987 --> 01:03:47,406
'cause wherever you is,
I'm gonna love you.
1091
01:03:47,490 --> 01:03:51,661
…which also got a Best Actor
nomination for her costar, Paul Winfield.
1092
01:03:51,744 --> 01:03:57,166
I didn't find myself, as a child,
attracted to movies where we were victims,
1093
01:03:57,250 --> 01:03:58,751
where we were powerless.
1094
01:03:58,835 --> 01:04:00,086
I didn't want that as a kid.
1095
01:04:00,670 --> 01:04:04,340
I saw Sounder again recently,
and I appreciate it much more as an adult.
1096
01:04:04,423 --> 01:04:06,843
I saw layers in it
that I just didn't see as a kid.
1097
01:04:08,886 --> 01:04:11,889
And Diana Ross
was nominated for Best Actress
1098
01:04:11,973 --> 01:04:15,893
for her first leading role,
in the first film about Billie Holiday,
1099
01:04:15,977 --> 01:04:18,771
the Motown-produced Lady Sings the Blues.
1100
01:04:26,946 --> 01:04:31,367
It wasn't a movie, as so many are,
about being Black.
1101
01:04:32,618 --> 01:04:34,120
It was about being talented.
1102
01:04:34,203 --> 01:04:38,291
It was Bob Mackie costumes…
…and Diana Ross's glamour
1103
01:04:38,374 --> 01:04:43,129
and Billy Dee Williams,
well, hell, you know.
1104
01:04:46,048 --> 01:04:48,175
Frank Yablans
was running Paramount.
1105
01:04:48,259 --> 01:04:52,179
He told Berry Gordy,
after seeing a rough cut of the film,
1106
01:04:52,263 --> 01:04:54,807
that they weren't gonna put
any more money in it.
1107
01:04:54,891 --> 01:04:57,226
And Berry Gordy said to Frank,
1108
01:04:57,310 --> 01:04:59,979
"We're not finished.
We've got so much more to do."
1109
01:05:00,479 --> 01:05:01,480
And Frank said…
1110
01:05:01,564 --> 01:05:05,234
I won't go into the story…
…of what Frank really said,
1111
01:05:05,318 --> 01:05:09,196
but he basically said it's like you've got
the clap, and now you wanna give it to me.
1112
01:05:09,280 --> 01:05:11,949
Because we've never spent
more than this amount of money
1113
01:05:12,033 --> 01:05:14,076
on a quote-unquote Black film before.
1114
01:05:14,160 --> 01:05:16,621
And he said, "Well, Frank, what can I do?"
1115
01:05:16,704 --> 01:05:20,458
He said, "Write me a check for $2 million,
and you can do anything you wanna do."
1116
01:05:21,959 --> 01:05:22,919
And he did.
1117
01:05:23,002 --> 01:05:26,714
Lady Sings the Blues
was an early, all-out glam show,
1118
01:05:26,797 --> 01:05:30,092
a gleaming establishment
of Black glamour in the movies.
1119
01:05:30,176 --> 01:05:33,054
When I think of Diana Ross,
I also think of fashion
1120
01:05:33,137 --> 01:05:36,182
and how many references I've used of her
1121
01:05:36,265 --> 01:05:38,893
for red carpet events or for photo shoots
1122
01:05:38,976 --> 01:05:42,063
or for these different characters
that I guess I build.
1123
01:05:42,730 --> 01:05:46,567
The fingers and the hair
and the whole thing
1124
01:05:46,651 --> 01:05:48,194
is just like, "Oh my God!"
1125
01:05:48,277 --> 01:05:50,655
And then she can act.
1126
01:05:51,948 --> 01:05:54,241
Not just for Ross
but her costar,
1127
01:05:54,325 --> 01:05:58,245
a literal embodiment
of tall, dark, and handsome,
1128
01:05:58,329 --> 01:05:59,580
Billy Dee Williams.
1129
01:06:01,082 --> 01:06:06,212
When Billy Dee Williams came on,
every woman in Hollywood just hollered…
1130
01:06:07,630 --> 01:06:09,840
And I'm… I'm saying, "Oh my God!"
1131
01:06:09,924 --> 01:06:11,050
"What… what the…"
1132
01:06:11,133 --> 01:06:13,260
"What's goin' on?!"
1133
01:06:16,806 --> 01:06:20,184
First of all, when I walked down
those stairs, I fell in love with myself.
1134
01:06:21,894 --> 01:06:24,188
I said, "My goodness gracious!"
1135
01:06:24,855 --> 01:06:26,691
I mean, I was smitten.
1136
01:06:27,191 --> 01:06:29,193
Do you want my arm to fall off?
1137
01:06:30,611 --> 01:06:33,406
Even that scene, you know,
"Do you want my arm to fall off?"
1138
01:06:33,489 --> 01:06:35,032
I mean, couldn't contain myself.
1139
01:06:35,116 --> 01:06:38,744
I kept laughing
because I was getting special lighting.
1140
01:06:38,828 --> 01:06:40,913
You know, it was like the old movie days.
1141
01:06:43,207 --> 01:06:45,042
I was in hysterics.
1142
01:06:45,126 --> 01:06:48,337
I had to contain myself.
1143
01:06:48,421 --> 01:06:52,133
Oh, it was… it was very funny for me
because it was like something
1144
01:06:52,216 --> 01:06:54,510
that never happened to me before,
1145
01:06:54,593 --> 01:06:58,139
you know, in all of the experiences
I had doing cinema.
1146
01:06:59,557 --> 01:07:02,518
'72 was a breakthrough year
for Black talent.
1147
01:07:02,601 --> 01:07:06,355
Playwright Lonne Elder III
was nominated for the Sounder screenplay,
1148
01:07:06,439 --> 01:07:08,274
and more importantly, it was the year
1149
01:07:08,357 --> 01:07:11,277
that the first Black woman
was nominated for screenwriting,
1150
01:07:11,360 --> 01:07:15,364
Suzanne De Passe, part of the script team
for Lady Sings the Blues.
1151
01:07:15,448 --> 01:07:20,161
It was a singular achievement
until Dee Rees was nominated in 2017
1152
01:07:20,244 --> 01:07:22,538
for her script for Mudbound,
which makes her
1153
01:07:22,621 --> 01:07:26,292
only the second Black woman
to be nominated for screenwriting.
1154
01:07:26,375 --> 01:07:28,919
Mr. Gordy handed me the script.
And he said,
1155
01:07:30,337 --> 01:07:32,256
"Read this and tell me what you think."
1156
01:07:33,007 --> 01:07:35,051
And I was, like, horrified
1157
01:07:35,968 --> 01:07:38,387
because I felt it was very stereotypical.
1158
01:07:39,180 --> 01:07:42,725
The perception of… who we are
1159
01:07:42,808 --> 01:07:45,728
as opposed to who we are and can be.
1160
01:07:46,395 --> 01:07:50,191
And so I began working with Sidney Furie.
Then Chris Clark was added.
1161
01:07:50,274 --> 01:07:53,069
She was an artist on the label,
really bright woman.
1162
01:07:53,152 --> 01:07:54,904
She and I became a team.
1163
01:07:54,987 --> 01:07:56,489
The seeds are planted here
1164
01:07:56,572 --> 01:07:59,825
for what becomes
the most important story of the era.
1165
01:07:59,909 --> 01:08:02,787
It's the contribution by women
that becomes dominant.
1166
01:08:04,038 --> 01:08:09,126
In addition to the accolades,
the class of '72 was also action-packed.
1167
01:08:11,837 --> 01:08:16,175
The Western, Buck and the Preacher,
directed by Sidney Poitier
1168
01:08:16,258 --> 01:08:19,345
and also starring him and Harry Belafonte.
1169
01:08:20,513 --> 01:08:23,557
Belafonte had hopes for the film
that were never fulfilled.
1170
01:08:23,641 --> 01:08:27,353
The big blow was to find that
the Black community didn't support it.
1171
01:08:27,436 --> 01:08:31,816
That sent me into a place
where I felt betrayed.
1172
01:08:32,566 --> 01:08:36,070
I felt like, "Why didn't
the Black community support this film
1173
01:08:36,821 --> 01:08:41,325
the way the whites would've supported
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?"
1174
01:08:41,408 --> 01:08:44,161
"This is our version of the same thing."
But they didn't.
1175
01:08:44,662 --> 01:08:48,290
And, uh, then I knew
I had several adversaries,
1176
01:08:48,374 --> 01:08:50,793
Black perception of itself
1177
01:08:50,876 --> 01:08:53,546
and Black perception as the world saw us.
1178
01:08:55,673 --> 01:08:58,509
Fred Williamson starred
in the revenge-slave Western
1179
01:08:58,592 --> 01:09:00,719
The Legend of Nigger Charley,
1180
01:09:00,803 --> 01:09:03,722
a title that was cheeky
and outrageous even then.
1181
01:09:04,223 --> 01:09:07,059
And by the way,
the title no longer exists.
1182
01:09:07,143 --> 01:09:10,354
The movie is now
The Legend of Black Charley.
1183
01:09:10,437 --> 01:09:11,814
This brazen poster,
1184
01:09:11,897 --> 01:09:15,609
featuring a slight turn
on the daguerreotype, said it all.
1185
01:09:15,693 --> 01:09:19,530
"Somebody warn the West.
Nigger Charley ain't running no more."
1186
01:09:21,198 --> 01:09:25,119
Black was also finally added
to the horror film in a serious way,
1187
01:09:25,202 --> 01:09:30,249
with a commanding William Marshall
starring as the tragic vampire Blacula.
1188
01:09:30,332 --> 01:09:32,585
Slavery has merit, I believe.
1189
01:09:33,752 --> 01:09:34,587
"Merit"?
1190
01:09:35,337 --> 01:09:38,591
You find "merit" in barbarity?
1191
01:09:39,508 --> 01:09:40,634
I'd always thought
1192
01:09:40,718 --> 01:09:43,012
that the good thing
about the institutional racism
1193
01:09:43,095 --> 01:09:46,682
that kept Black people from being
central figures in horror films was,
1194
01:09:46,765 --> 01:09:49,560
for African Americans,
the implicit understanding
1195
01:09:49,643 --> 01:09:53,022
that no supernatural force
or threat of possession
1196
01:09:53,105 --> 01:09:55,649
could be more monstrous than slavery
1197
01:09:55,733 --> 01:09:57,860
or the Tuskegee Experiment,
1198
01:09:57,943 --> 01:10:01,030
or Emmett Till,
a real-life Black innocent,
1199
01:10:01,113 --> 01:10:04,533
who was the victim of monsters
even the movies were afraid of,
1200
01:10:05,034 --> 01:10:07,244
when they weren't glamorizing them.
1201
01:10:09,038 --> 01:10:11,665
With the Black press
forcing the mainstream media
1202
01:10:11,749 --> 01:10:14,752
to cover Emmett Till's death
with an unblinking gaze
1203
01:10:14,835 --> 01:10:17,379
and movies stepping up
to recount Black horrors
1204
01:10:17,463 --> 01:10:20,424
such as slavery and institutional cruelty,
1205
01:10:20,507 --> 01:10:24,136
a film take on the chaos caused
by the death of Emmett Till
1206
01:10:24,220 --> 01:10:27,056
was the moment
Black audiences were waiting for.
1207
01:10:27,806 --> 01:10:33,103
That it never happened was a subtle hint
of where the real power was in Hollywood.
1208
01:10:35,147 --> 01:10:37,650
I remember the thing
that woke me up, really woke me up,
1209
01:10:37,733 --> 01:10:40,527
was the Emmett Till picture
on the Jet magazine.
1210
01:10:40,611 --> 01:10:44,698
I mean, talking about someone, grew up,
the next day, a different person.
1211
01:10:46,158 --> 01:10:49,453
I still have the images
I saw in Jet magazine about Emmett Till.
1212
01:10:49,536 --> 01:10:53,832
From that day on, I was aware
of what his mother must have felt like.
1213
01:10:56,168 --> 01:10:57,461
I remember as a kid,
1214
01:10:57,544 --> 01:11:00,923
looking at Jet magazine
and seeing Emmett Till's body,
1215
01:11:01,006 --> 01:11:03,300
and that impacted me.
1216
01:11:04,551 --> 01:11:07,888
In some ways, we've been worn down
to where we see pain and misery,
1217
01:11:07,972 --> 01:11:08,889
and it does nothing,
1218
01:11:10,140 --> 01:11:12,142
and it does nothing to us,
1219
01:11:12,226 --> 01:11:16,272
or it's onto the next one
because we know it's gonna happen again.
1220
01:11:16,355 --> 01:11:17,940
But it's getting more personal.
1221
01:11:18,023 --> 01:11:20,276
It's getting closer and closer to…
1222
01:11:21,277 --> 01:11:24,697
to just humanity, man's inhumanity to man.
1223
01:11:26,991 --> 01:11:29,326
That ongoing terror
was beautifully defined
1224
01:11:29,410 --> 01:11:32,371
with the release
of Marvin Gaye's What's Going On.
1225
01:11:32,454 --> 01:11:36,083
He was the first to sing
social protest as a seducer
1226
01:11:36,166 --> 01:11:37,876
rather than being declamatory.
1227
01:11:37,960 --> 01:11:41,422
And Gaye released
another epical album in '72.
1228
01:11:41,505 --> 01:11:42,923
This time a soundtrack
1229
01:11:43,007 --> 01:11:46,093
that gave him the opportunity
to return to his jazz roots.
1230
01:11:55,644 --> 01:11:59,148
Black film soundtracks
had so often taken their cues
1231
01:11:59,231 --> 01:12:00,357
from What's Going On,
1232
01:12:00,858 --> 01:12:05,279
one of the most gorgeous and honestly
revolutionary acts of Black pop culture,
1233
01:12:05,362 --> 01:12:08,198
so it made sense
for Marvin Gaye to do the same.
1234
01:12:08,282 --> 01:12:10,993
He submitted the state
of African-American affairs
1235
01:12:11,076 --> 01:12:15,080
and picked up his musical autobiography
with his Trouble Man score
1236
01:12:15,164 --> 01:12:17,374
where he left off at What's Going On.
1237
01:12:21,545 --> 01:12:24,173
And the movie music
that would follow in its wake
1238
01:12:24,256 --> 01:12:27,343
continued to assess
the collateral damage of oppression
1239
01:12:27,426 --> 01:12:29,053
that he spelled out earlier.
1240
01:12:34,725 --> 01:12:37,519
But ironically,
the most sublime of these scores
1241
01:12:37,603 --> 01:12:40,022
came from an artist
whose influence was evident
1242
01:12:40,105 --> 01:12:43,108
on Marvin Gaye's break
from old-time pop-soul.
1243
01:12:43,192 --> 01:12:45,361
It, too, included a honeyed falsetto
1244
01:12:45,444 --> 01:12:48,113
rendering the struggle
of Black American life.
1245
01:12:57,081 --> 01:13:00,334
Curtis Mayfield's
lyric summaries of social conditions
1246
01:13:00,417 --> 01:13:03,962
and a militant refusal
to surrender to institutional inertia
1247
01:13:04,046 --> 01:13:06,965
can be heard
throughout his entire solo career.
1248
01:13:07,049 --> 01:13:11,512
Mayfield's musical output for this decade
spanned 20 albums,
1249
01:13:11,595 --> 01:13:13,764
among them five soundtracks.
1250
01:13:14,515 --> 01:13:17,851
His sinewy intimacy
and piercing songwriting
1251
01:13:17,935 --> 01:13:20,312
set the tone in Black film from then on,
1252
01:13:20,396 --> 01:13:24,983
starting with Super Fly, as an example
for many of his fellow musicians.
1253
01:13:25,067 --> 01:13:27,945
And Mayfield took his lead
from Melvin Van Peebles
1254
01:13:28,028 --> 01:13:31,156
with the unusual tactic
of releasing the Super Fly score
1255
01:13:31,240 --> 01:13:33,117
before the movie came out.
1256
01:13:33,951 --> 01:13:36,203
Because it was an immediate sensation,
1257
01:13:36,286 --> 01:13:40,374
the Super Fly soundtrack
served as an invitation to the movie.
1258
01:13:40,999 --> 01:13:44,253
John Calley, who ran Warner Bros.
in the 1970s,
1259
01:13:44,336 --> 01:13:47,172
told me he thought Super Fly
started a trend,
1260
01:13:47,256 --> 01:13:50,008
using the soundtracks
to create excitement about the movies
1261
01:13:50,092 --> 01:13:52,428
prior to theatrical release.
1262
01:13:53,053 --> 01:13:55,013
The textures of Mayfield's score,
1263
01:13:55,097 --> 01:13:58,308
dramatizing and commenting
on the life of the protagonist,
1264
01:13:58,392 --> 01:14:00,936
was reflected
in the down and dirty accomplishment
1265
01:14:01,019 --> 01:14:03,188
of cinematographer James Signorelli.
1266
01:14:03,272 --> 01:14:07,025
One of the best foot-chase scenes
in movies, with no stuntmen,
1267
01:14:07,109 --> 01:14:10,154
was caught in the film's
guerilla shooting style by Signorelli.
1268
01:14:10,237 --> 01:14:11,738
He had to have
a route of escape.
1269
01:14:11,822 --> 01:14:12,948
Jimmy was the guy he was chasing.
1270
01:14:20,080 --> 01:14:23,292
We were standing around,
and Ron said, "I can jump that fence."
1271
01:14:26,712 --> 01:14:29,256
And that was all there was to it.
That was all the rehearsal.
1272
01:14:29,339 --> 01:14:31,884
It certainly wasn't more than one take,
I'll tell you that.
1273
01:14:31,967 --> 01:14:34,928
It was definitely a combination
of the two aesthetics.
1274
01:14:35,012 --> 01:14:38,682
One was the documentary photography
that people had been doing,
1275
01:14:38,765 --> 01:14:42,394
particularly Leacock, Pennebaker,
you know, Maysles, all those guys,
1276
01:14:42,478 --> 01:14:44,813
myself included, you know, Bob Elfstrom.
1277
01:14:44,897 --> 01:14:48,442
The stuff that we were all doing
was bleeding into the technique
1278
01:14:48,525 --> 01:14:49,735
of shooting feature films,
1279
01:14:49,818 --> 01:14:53,238
particularly where the environment
was a third party.
1280
01:14:53,322 --> 01:14:56,158
Signorelli's improvisational
approach was applied
1281
01:14:56,241 --> 01:14:58,535
to other kinds of action in Super Fly,
1282
01:14:58,619 --> 01:15:02,247
such as the scene
with Sheila Frazier and star Ron O'Neal
1283
01:15:02,331 --> 01:15:05,125
that was frank and passionate
about Black love.
1284
01:15:05,209 --> 01:15:07,836
I can feel from you
what it's like out there.
1285
01:15:09,338 --> 01:15:10,881
I see what it does to you,
1286
01:15:10,964 --> 01:15:14,259
and I know… I know how dope
helps hold your head together.
1287
01:15:15,135 --> 01:15:17,095
I don't want your privacy, baby.
1288
01:15:18,347 --> 01:15:20,849
All I wanna do
is help you share the weight.
1289
01:15:20,933 --> 01:15:24,520
-I said, "Once the suds go away,
1290
01:15:24,603 --> 01:15:28,357
we have to stop it and refill the suds
because I don't wanna be seen."
1291
01:15:28,440 --> 01:15:31,735
I don't know what I was thinking about.
It was pretty hard not to be seen.
1292
01:15:33,195 --> 01:15:37,824
I would not know
that at the premiere of that movie
1293
01:15:37,908 --> 01:15:40,327
that they put that scene in slow motion.
1294
01:15:40,410 --> 01:15:43,330
And I believe at one point,
Judith Crist said,
1295
01:15:43,413 --> 01:15:46,792
"It was the most tasteful
and erotic scene in cinema history."
1296
01:15:48,794 --> 01:15:52,381
Richard Roundtree was the one
who helped me get the audition.
1297
01:15:52,464 --> 01:15:56,385
Richard said, "You've gotta walk in
like it's yours."
1298
01:15:57,511 --> 01:15:58,845
I said, "Okay, all right."
1299
01:15:58,929 --> 01:16:02,391
So I walked in,
and I put my feet up on the desk,
1300
01:16:02,474 --> 01:16:04,685
on Sig Shore's desk,
and I said, "You know what,
1301
01:16:04,768 --> 01:16:07,646
you don't have to see another person
because the film is mine."
1302
01:16:08,730 --> 01:16:10,649
Gordon said, "You've got this!"
1303
01:16:10,732 --> 01:16:14,027
Well, after Gordon told me I had it,
and I was so ecstatic,
1304
01:16:14,111 --> 01:16:16,822
then he had to call me
and apologize and say,
1305
01:16:16,905 --> 01:16:20,450
"I'm so sorry,
but Sig Shore wanted a different look."
1306
01:16:20,534 --> 01:16:22,869
"He wanted a very voluptuous woman."
1307
01:16:22,953 --> 01:16:26,248
It was so devastating,
I just changed all--
1308
01:16:26,331 --> 01:16:27,749
I had two telephones.
1309
01:16:27,833 --> 01:16:29,501
I changed both… both numbers,
1310
01:16:29,585 --> 01:16:32,504
so I would never have to speak
to anybody again.
1311
01:16:33,171 --> 01:16:34,715
About three months later,
1312
01:16:34,798 --> 01:16:37,384
this guy walks up to me,
you know, and he's like,
1313
01:16:37,467 --> 01:16:39,928
"I'm a producer."
I'm like, "Good for you."
1314
01:16:40,012 --> 01:16:41,847
So he says, "Well, what's your name?"
1315
01:16:41,930 --> 01:16:44,391
So I gave him my name.
He says, "Oh my God!"
1316
01:16:44,474 --> 01:16:46,977
"We've been trying to find you
for three months."
1317
01:16:47,060 --> 01:16:49,938
"We've been trying to find you."
I'm saying, "Who's 'we'?"
1318
01:16:50,022 --> 01:16:52,899
So he says, "Well, I'm a producer
on a movie called Super Fly."
1319
01:16:52,983 --> 01:16:53,817
I said, "Eh-eh."
1320
01:16:55,402 --> 01:16:58,739
And as soon as I got home,
the phone was ringing off the hook.
1321
01:16:58,822 --> 01:17:01,992
The result,
John Calley told me, was that Super Fly,
1322
01:17:02,075 --> 01:17:06,413
an independently made project
that Warner Bros. bought for $150,000,
1323
01:17:06,496 --> 01:17:09,166
a pittance by even 1972 standards,
1324
01:17:09,249 --> 01:17:12,961
went on to gross around $30 million.
1325
01:17:13,045 --> 01:17:15,839
Super Fly has played
to an awful lot of white people.
1326
01:17:15,922 --> 01:17:18,800
It's the only way you can do
19, 20 million dollars.
1327
01:17:18,884 --> 01:17:20,636
We've been in Boston 17 weeks.
1328
01:17:20,719 --> 01:17:24,431
We ran out of Black people in three weeks…
…in Boston, you know?
1329
01:17:25,182 --> 01:17:28,226
Super Fly,
slang for cocaine among users,
1330
01:17:28,310 --> 01:17:31,563
is the story
of a Black New York City narcotics dealer.
1331
01:17:31,647 --> 01:17:35,734
Strong objections to the film
were raised today by R.L. Livingston
1332
01:17:35,817 --> 01:17:38,403
of the Better Influence Association
in Fort Worth.
1333
01:17:38,487 --> 01:17:42,574
I don't know what this council can do,
but I'm bringing it to your attention
1334
01:17:42,658 --> 01:17:44,826
because you are the city council
of Fort Worth,
1335
01:17:44,910 --> 01:17:47,496
and you represent
the problem-solving division here,
1336
01:17:47,579 --> 01:17:51,875
and I hope that we can do this thing here
without the citizens going up on their own
1337
01:17:51,958 --> 01:17:54,836
to boycott such trash and filth
in our community.
1338
01:17:55,629 --> 01:18:00,801
How do you see your role in Super Fly,
as a positive force or a negative one?
1339
01:18:01,385 --> 01:18:05,013
Obviously, I consider it a positive one,
or I never would have done the film.
1340
01:18:05,097 --> 01:18:06,640
When we made Super Fly,
1341
01:18:06,723 --> 01:18:10,769
we made it about the way
things actually are,
1342
01:18:11,645 --> 01:18:15,899
and we hoped it would be judged
and criticized on that basis.
1343
01:18:15,982 --> 01:18:19,319
Uh, but my… from my observation, you know,
1344
01:18:19,403 --> 01:18:22,072
Super Fly has been largely criticized
from some…
1345
01:18:23,198 --> 01:18:25,534
…some, you know, some sphere,
1346
01:18:25,617 --> 01:18:29,329
some… some plane, some plateau,
you know, that has no bearing on the film.
1347
01:18:30,163 --> 01:18:33,458
They use the Black community
to make the movies in the first place.
1348
01:18:33,542 --> 01:18:36,712
Uh, we're tired of these white producers
coming in and making Black movies
1349
01:18:36,795 --> 01:18:39,423
and then, in turn,
are exploiting the Black community.
1350
01:18:39,506 --> 01:18:42,968
Also, the Black extras who live in Oakland
and Berkeley and around the area
1351
01:18:43,051 --> 01:18:44,344
are only getting $10 a day.
1352
01:18:44,428 --> 01:18:46,096
They should be getting $50 a day.
1353
01:18:48,390 --> 01:18:51,977
I think all the artists,
since I know them personally,
1354
01:18:52,477 --> 01:18:54,980
uh, you know, are responsible people
1355
01:18:55,063 --> 01:18:59,735
who are concerned about what is happening
in the Black communities.
1356
01:18:59,818 --> 01:19:04,614
We are, of course, uh,
not able to make a motion picture alone.
1357
01:19:04,698 --> 01:19:08,034
Many other elements
go into the making of a motion picture,
1358
01:19:08,118 --> 01:19:12,080
most important of which, I suppose,
initially, would be huge sums of money.
1359
01:19:14,249 --> 01:19:16,126
The footballers-turned-movie stars
1360
01:19:16,209 --> 01:19:18,587
Jim Brown and Fred Williamson
1361
01:19:18,670 --> 01:19:21,047
came through
that year with two films each,
1362
01:19:21,131 --> 01:19:24,801
with impatient titles
that are both synonyms and descriptors.
1363
01:19:24,885 --> 01:19:27,637
Like Shaft, whose sequel,
Shaft's Big Score,
1364
01:19:27,721 --> 01:19:30,682
sounds like it could be
an athlete-turned-actor adventure.
1365
01:19:32,726 --> 01:19:37,063
And these films were all solidly tattooed
with the label "blaxploitation,"
1366
01:19:37,147 --> 01:19:41,693
a brand that offered acknowledgment
and dismissal simultaneously.
1367
01:19:41,777 --> 01:19:44,988
Though these films coursed through
the bloodstream of American social
1368
01:19:45,071 --> 01:19:46,364
and popular culture,
1369
01:19:46,448 --> 01:19:48,950
they were seldom addressed
in mainstream media,
1370
01:19:49,034 --> 01:19:51,244
except, of course, to provoke panic.
1371
01:19:51,328 --> 01:19:56,416
When I think of the word "blaxploitation,"
I think of the commodifying of Blackness.
1372
01:19:57,417 --> 01:19:59,586
"How do we package and sell Blackness?"
1373
01:19:59,669 --> 01:20:05,634
"Exploitation" because they were
white writers, white producers,
1374
01:20:05,717 --> 01:20:06,718
white director,
1375
01:20:06,802 --> 01:20:09,262
and then they took it
to the Black community,
1376
01:20:09,346 --> 01:20:13,433
and the Black community ate it up,
made them a lot of money,
1377
01:20:14,309 --> 01:20:15,602
but not us.
1378
01:20:17,229 --> 01:20:18,980
Is that not exploitation?
1379
01:20:19,981 --> 01:20:24,653
Though the blaxploitation brand
so often provoked debate and condemnation,
1380
01:20:24,736 --> 01:20:28,031
the films quite often generated
appeal and profit.
1381
01:20:31,576 --> 01:20:33,870
Mainstream movies now regarded as classic
1382
01:20:33,954 --> 01:20:36,122
feature white stars, bored with heroism,
1383
01:20:36,206 --> 01:20:39,751
becoming antiheroes
as a way of wrestling with that issue
1384
01:20:39,835 --> 01:20:42,045
and frustrating audiences in the bargain.
1385
01:20:44,589 --> 01:20:49,427
The Black stars, and one wonders
why that wasn't a film title from the era,
1386
01:20:49,511 --> 01:20:52,264
made audiences beneficiaries
of another natural evolution,
1387
01:20:52,889 --> 01:20:54,516
swag in their own beauty
1388
01:20:54,599 --> 01:20:57,018
and reveling in being
in the center of the frame.
1389
01:20:58,144 --> 01:21:01,523
Certainly, in the Five Families scene
from The Godfather,
1390
01:21:01,606 --> 01:21:04,943
Francis Coppola showed the thoughtlessness
of these characters in this scene,
1391
01:21:05,026 --> 01:21:08,947
clearly meant to be an indictment of them
and not an approval of their thoughts.
1392
01:21:09,030 --> 01:21:12,868
In my city, we would keep the trafficking
to dark people, the colored.
1393
01:21:12,951 --> 01:21:16,037
They're animals anyway,
so let them lose their souls.
1394
01:21:16,121 --> 01:21:19,124
Still, even understanding
what the film's intent was,
1395
01:21:19,207 --> 01:21:21,501
that sentiment
can be a little hard to hear.
1396
01:21:21,585 --> 01:21:24,337
But it did ask a question
answered by many Black films,
1397
01:21:24,421 --> 01:21:26,590
which showed the rot left by drugs.
1398
01:21:26,673 --> 01:21:27,841
No! No! For God's sake!
1399
01:21:34,472 --> 01:21:36,308
Black films
created a warrior class
1400
01:21:36,391 --> 01:21:38,268
where there hadn't been one before.
1401
01:21:38,351 --> 01:21:42,272
Black audiences no longer had
to sift through stories to find subtext
1402
01:21:42,355 --> 01:21:45,859
that explained why Black characters
hovered in the margins.
1403
01:21:45,942 --> 01:21:48,778
They now inhabited center frame
by natural right.
1404
01:21:48,862 --> 01:21:51,656
And at a time
when the only mainstream movie hero
1405
01:21:51,740 --> 01:21:53,783
was Bond, James Bond,
1406
01:21:53,867 --> 01:21:58,830
who, in 1973, saw Roger Moore's 007
go nose-to-false-nose
1407
01:21:58,914 --> 01:22:02,667
with the series' first
and, to date, only Black big bad,
1408
01:22:02,751 --> 01:22:04,085
played by Yaphet Kotto,
1409
01:22:04,169 --> 01:22:07,172
in this ever-changing world
in which Bond lived.
1410
01:22:09,549 --> 01:22:10,592
Quite revealing.
1411
01:22:12,427 --> 01:22:15,513
Black movies were portraying
the dilemmas of the inner city,
1412
01:22:15,597 --> 01:22:18,099
the ravages of crime, and the drug war.
1413
01:22:18,183 --> 01:22:21,978
Only, in these films,
African-American leads were fighting back.
1414
01:22:22,062 --> 01:22:24,272
It was understood that cops wouldn't help.
1415
01:22:24,356 --> 01:22:27,317
They were often as indifferent
as they were corrupt.
1416
01:22:27,400 --> 01:22:30,904
Jim Brown reprised Slaughter,
his verb-as-surname character,
1417
01:22:30,987 --> 01:22:32,489
in Slaughter's Big Rip-Off,
1418
01:22:32,572 --> 01:22:35,158
complemented by the singular
two-fisted funk
1419
01:22:35,241 --> 01:22:37,035
of an early James Brown score.
1420
01:22:38,161 --> 01:22:41,414
In Hit!, Billy Dee Williams
was a CIA agent
1421
01:22:41,498 --> 01:22:44,042
who recruits an unlikely group
of walking wounded
1422
01:22:44,125 --> 01:22:46,920
in his personal fight
against international drug dealers.
1423
01:22:47,003 --> 01:22:48,630
He lost his daughter to drugs.
1424
01:22:48,713 --> 01:22:50,840
What's it gonna do for you
to kill me, man?
1425
01:22:52,133 --> 01:22:53,259
I'm just a worker.
1426
01:22:53,843 --> 01:22:58,807
It really required
a kind of a… a mentality
1427
01:22:58,890 --> 01:23:03,311
that he was capable
of using whatever, uh, he needed to use
1428
01:23:03,395 --> 01:23:06,940
in order to accomplish his mission.
1429
01:23:09,651 --> 01:23:11,111
That's very interesting.
1430
01:23:11,611 --> 01:23:16,324
And, in a way that, for…
uh, little brown-skinned boys like me
1431
01:23:16,408 --> 01:23:19,119
never had the opportunity
to do that kind of stuff.
1432
01:23:20,036 --> 01:23:22,789
And the fact that Sidney
wanted me to play that character,
1433
01:23:22,872 --> 01:23:24,708
felt I was right for that character,
1434
01:23:24,791 --> 01:23:27,794
I tried to use it
in the best way that I could.
1435
01:23:28,753 --> 01:23:30,213
Again, it was an opportunity
1436
01:23:30,296 --> 01:23:34,134
to show a side
that you normally would not see on-screen.
1437
01:23:34,634 --> 01:23:38,304
I think that adds to the vulnerability.
I was thinking about vulnerability.
1438
01:23:38,388 --> 01:23:43,685
It makes the character a little bit more
than just a ruthless kind of individual.
1439
01:23:46,896 --> 01:23:49,649
Gordon's War featured
a group of Black Vietnam vets
1440
01:23:49,733 --> 01:23:53,403
using their skills to return fire
against drug dealers.
1441
01:23:53,486 --> 01:23:56,823
It featured a couple
of startlingly original visual high points
1442
01:23:56,906 --> 01:23:59,701
that have been quoted in films ever since.
1443
01:23:59,784 --> 01:24:01,828
New Jack City, to name just one,
1444
01:24:01,911 --> 01:24:05,999
scored by Angelo Badalamenti,
who would later work with David Lynch.
1445
01:24:06,666 --> 01:24:07,584
Got a light?
1446
01:24:07,667 --> 01:24:10,378
This MacGyver-like action moment
with an aerosol can,
1447
01:24:10,462 --> 01:24:13,590
which could be seen as a metaphor
for its environmental danger,
1448
01:24:13,673 --> 01:24:16,509
has made its way
into innumerable action films.
1449
01:24:20,180 --> 01:24:22,766
Audiences of all colors
came out to see these movies
1450
01:24:22,849 --> 01:24:25,685
because they could feel
the adrenaline in the actors,
1451
01:24:25,769 --> 01:24:30,565
many of whom came from the stage,
and those actors' exhilaration in working.
1452
01:24:30,648 --> 01:24:33,860
Second runner-up, Pretty Tony!
1453
01:24:33,943 --> 01:24:36,988
In The Mack, for example,
Dick Anthony Williams as Pretty Tony
1454
01:24:37,072 --> 01:24:40,575
is as compelling as any figure
in a '30s gangster movie.
1455
01:24:40,658 --> 01:24:43,745
He told me his improvisations
came out of wanting to portray
1456
01:24:43,828 --> 01:24:46,081
an inner-city version
of Edward G. Robinson
1457
01:24:46,164 --> 01:24:49,209
brought up-to-date with turns of phrases
he heard growing up.
1458
01:24:50,668 --> 01:24:53,963
Nigga, next time you hear
grown folks talkin',
1459
01:24:54,047 --> 01:24:55,590
shut the fuck up. Hear?
1460
01:24:55,673 --> 01:24:58,760
The impact
of that kind of concise hypermasculinity
1461
01:24:58,843 --> 01:25:02,847
would be felt decades later, in lines
that seem to be written for Black actors,
1462
01:25:02,931 --> 01:25:04,557
if not spoken by them.
1463
01:25:04,641 --> 01:25:06,601
-Want me to shoot this guy?
-Shit.
1464
01:25:07,602 --> 01:25:10,939
You shoot me in a dream,
you better wake up and apologize.
1465
01:25:14,275 --> 01:25:16,111
There was
a more specific realization
1466
01:25:16,194 --> 01:25:18,863
of Edward G. Robinson to come
in Black Caesar.
1467
01:25:18,947 --> 01:25:22,951
They never look at me. They never look
at my face, my nose, my lame foot.
1468
01:25:23,034 --> 01:25:24,577
All they know is that I'm Black.
1469
01:25:26,079 --> 01:25:28,957
Imagine if the man
who inspired Cohen to write Black Caesar,
1470
01:25:29,040 --> 01:25:33,044
Sammy Davis Jr., got to star
in the work he set into motion,
1471
01:25:33,128 --> 01:25:36,005
but Cohen ended up
with Fred Williamson as Black Caesar.
1472
01:25:36,881 --> 01:25:39,759
When he asked the studio head
to account for the size difference
1473
01:25:39,843 --> 01:25:41,427
between Williamson and Davis,
1474
01:25:41,511 --> 01:25:44,180
the studio head
thought for a moment and said,
1475
01:25:44,264 --> 01:25:45,640
"Give Fred a limp."
1476
01:25:50,145 --> 01:25:53,523
A 1973 concert documentary,
Save the Children,
1477
01:25:53,606 --> 01:25:56,985
filmed at the 1972 Operation PUSH rally,
1478
01:25:57,068 --> 01:26:01,447
had appearances that ranged
from Jesse Jackson to The Jackson 5,
1479
01:26:01,990 --> 01:26:05,201
from Nancy Wilson to Zulema,
1480
01:26:05,285 --> 01:26:07,745
and put music
and progressive politics together.
1481
01:26:07,829 --> 01:26:10,665
It was a massive enterprise to assemble.
1482
01:26:12,375 --> 01:26:14,252
We started with the Motown acts.
1483
01:26:14,335 --> 01:26:17,005
So once we'd booked Marvin Gaye,
1484
01:26:17,088 --> 01:26:18,214
Temptations,
1485
01:26:18,298 --> 01:26:20,800
Gladys Knight & the Pips,
you know, folks like that,
1486
01:26:20,884 --> 01:26:23,344
it started to be this thing
about people wanted to do it.
1487
01:26:23,428 --> 01:26:28,308
And then, Clarence had a record company,
so he got Bill Withers and Nancy Wilson
1488
01:26:28,391 --> 01:26:29,934
and Sammy Davis Jr.
1489
01:26:30,018 --> 01:26:33,062
Quincy was already involved
so he got Roberta Flack,
1490
01:26:33,146 --> 01:26:36,649
and he put together a house band
that was an all-star band.
1491
01:26:38,026 --> 01:26:42,113
And so this thing
sort of turned into this amazing gathering
1492
01:26:42,197 --> 01:26:46,159
of some of the best musicians
that were available at that time.
1493
01:26:46,242 --> 01:26:47,952
It was big. It was huge.
1494
01:26:48,036 --> 01:26:50,205
And it was a… a huge success,
1495
01:26:50,288 --> 01:26:53,416
'cause all of those musicians
brought their best game.
1496
01:27:02,175 --> 01:27:07,180
It got to a point where
the level of artistry was off the roof.
1497
01:27:07,263 --> 01:27:08,181
It was crazy.
1498
01:27:09,432 --> 01:27:12,727
Black female characters
determined to be recognized
1499
01:27:12,810 --> 01:27:15,188
not merely because of
their proximity to a man.
1500
01:27:15,939 --> 01:27:17,982
No longer compliant arm candy,
1501
01:27:18,066 --> 01:27:21,236
they also threw down
against a battalion of stuntmen.
1502
01:27:21,819 --> 01:27:24,447
It was the final frontier
for Black actresses
1503
01:27:24,530 --> 01:27:27,033
and established a definition of heroism
1504
01:27:27,116 --> 01:27:30,078
that allowed for directness
rather than martyrdom.
1505
01:27:30,161 --> 01:27:33,456
Before this,
movies often conflated Black femininity
1506
01:27:33,539 --> 01:27:34,958
with romanticized masochism.
1507
01:27:36,209 --> 01:27:39,963
What audiences were getting
was something entirely new.
1508
01:27:40,046 --> 01:27:42,799
Black films are just, like…
It's an evolution.
1509
01:27:42,882 --> 01:27:45,551
It's not something that's gonna come
and pop automatically,
1510
01:27:45,635 --> 01:27:48,888
and everything will happen immediately
because nothing happens that way,
1511
01:27:48,972 --> 01:27:50,306
and things will take time.
1512
01:27:50,390 --> 01:27:52,267
Progress has to be a slow thing
1513
01:27:52,350 --> 01:27:55,019
in order for it to be definite,
you know, and beneficial, I think,
1514
01:27:55,103 --> 01:27:56,771
so it's gonna take a little while.
1515
01:27:56,854 --> 01:28:00,483
There's so many different areas
that haven't been… been realized yet
1516
01:28:00,566 --> 01:28:02,902
as far as Black actors are concerned.
1517
01:28:02,986 --> 01:28:07,282
And, uh, it's all new to me.
I'm… I'm a new actress, as you know,
1518
01:28:07,365 --> 01:28:10,159
and, uh, I've just begun to work,
1519
01:28:10,243 --> 01:28:12,787
and there's so many areas of work
I haven't touched yet.
1520
01:28:12,870 --> 01:28:14,789
I have a lot more training
that I have to get
1521
01:28:14,872 --> 01:28:17,375
before I can really call myself
an actress.
1522
01:28:17,458 --> 01:28:19,585
Laurence Olivier once said,
1523
01:28:19,669 --> 01:28:22,755
"When you're young,
you're too bashful to play a hero."
1524
01:28:22,839 --> 01:28:23,840
"You debunk it."
1525
01:28:23,923 --> 01:28:25,383
"It's only when you're older
1526
01:28:25,466 --> 01:28:28,553
that you understand
the pictorial beauty of heroism."
1527
01:28:28,636 --> 01:28:32,098
Black actors not only understood
that beauty, they embraced it
1528
01:28:32,181 --> 01:28:35,143
because of the communal thirst
we had for heroes.
1529
01:28:35,226 --> 01:28:39,272
America, in the throes of uncertainty,
embraced those Black heroes
1530
01:28:39,355 --> 01:28:44,277
who were played onto the screens
with dynamic and celebratory music scores.
1531
01:28:44,360 --> 01:28:47,905
Remember, it was Shaft
that saved MGM from bankruptcy.
1532
01:28:47,989 --> 01:28:51,159
And the newest arrival
to this extraordinary league
1533
01:28:51,242 --> 01:28:55,288
that redefined accomplishment and glory
in the movies was Pam Grier.
1534
01:28:55,371 --> 01:28:59,917
From 1970 until 1973,
she appeared in seven films,
1535
01:29:00,001 --> 01:29:02,712
with each role
giving her more screen time.
1536
01:29:02,795 --> 01:29:05,631
A 1970s Esquire magazine article
1537
01:29:05,715 --> 01:29:08,926
on rising stars that would go on
to change the movies,
1538
01:29:09,010 --> 01:29:12,513
a group that included Steven Spielberg,
who was just finishing Jaws,
1539
01:29:12,597 --> 01:29:16,100
and George Lucas, fighting to start
something called The Star Wars,
1540
01:29:16,184 --> 01:29:18,436
Pam Grier was
one of the few actors mentioned,
1541
01:29:18,519 --> 01:29:22,523
described as, "One of three actresses
whose movies consistently make money."
1542
01:29:22,607 --> 01:29:24,942
"The other two are named Barbra and Liza."
1543
01:29:25,026 --> 01:29:28,988
Grier said, "I'm the only lady
in movies nowadays who isn't a victim."
1544
01:29:29,072 --> 01:29:33,409
"Determination was key working roles
such as a half-panther madwoman,"
1545
01:29:33,493 --> 01:29:34,952
as the article says.
1546
01:29:35,036 --> 01:29:37,830
In '73, she was also in
Scream Blacula Scream…
1547
01:29:37,914 --> 01:29:40,249
Now, with such a lovely guide,
1548
01:29:40,333 --> 01:29:43,336
I'm afraid I'd lose my concentration
on the artwork.
1549
01:29:44,170 --> 01:29:45,505
How about that?
1550
01:29:46,547 --> 01:29:48,216
…and Black Mama White Mama.
1551
01:29:48,299 --> 01:29:51,177
You can stick that up your ass.
Now, let's go!
1552
01:29:56,641 --> 01:29:59,560
But it was in Coffy
that she proved herself a movie star.
1553
01:29:59,644 --> 01:30:02,647
Toni Morrison once told me,
"It was a dismissal
1554
01:30:02,730 --> 01:30:05,775
to call Grier's characters,
such as Coffy, 'a badass.'"
1555
01:30:05,858 --> 01:30:07,819
"It diminished her as an actress."
1556
01:30:07,902 --> 01:30:10,279
And more importantly,
she thought Grier's performance
1557
01:30:10,363 --> 01:30:13,741
dealt with the moral complexities
demanded of Black women.
1558
01:30:13,825 --> 01:30:16,369
The toll of maintaining her equilibrium
1559
01:30:16,452 --> 01:30:19,497
while taking the law into her own hands
and dealing with betrayal
1560
01:30:19,580 --> 01:30:22,792
showed in her performance
as she avenges her sister's death,
1561
01:30:22,875 --> 01:30:25,169
a metaphor for Black women juggling roles
1562
01:30:25,253 --> 01:30:28,214
such as protectors
and nurturers simultaneously.
1563
01:30:28,297 --> 01:30:30,341
-Now, come on.
-Howie, what are you doing?
1564
01:30:31,134 --> 01:30:32,427
Come back to bed--
1565
01:30:36,431 --> 01:30:39,809
Coffy, baby. You gotta understand.
I… I thought you were dead!
1566
01:30:42,812 --> 01:30:45,648
But often, and finally, alone.
1567
01:30:45,731 --> 01:30:48,693
Still, moving on.
Hopefully, towards community.
1568
01:30:48,776 --> 01:30:50,027
She'd be an archangel
1569
01:30:50,111 --> 01:30:52,321
delivering her people
from the end of the world.
1570
01:30:52,405 --> 01:30:55,116
Always around the corner
for African Americans.
1571
01:30:55,700 --> 01:30:58,494
Coffy allows Grier
a final moment of respite
1572
01:30:58,578 --> 01:31:01,456
in a new version
of a picture-postcard shot.
1573
01:31:02,748 --> 01:31:06,294
In 1973, we were in the midst
of botched opportunities,
1574
01:31:06,377 --> 01:31:09,922
such as Shaft in Africa,
and responses to Black action films,
1575
01:31:10,006 --> 01:31:13,301
such as the adaptation of the play
Five on the Black Hand Side,
1576
01:31:13,384 --> 01:31:15,052
which starred a young Glynn Turman.
1577
01:31:15,136 --> 01:31:16,888
What does that feel like?
1578
01:31:18,931 --> 01:31:21,684
Feels like a lifetime ago,
tell you the truth.
1579
01:31:21,767 --> 01:31:26,147
It's amazing
that all of that was happening then,
1580
01:31:27,732 --> 01:31:30,443
and, uh, that I got to work
1581
01:31:30,526 --> 01:31:33,154
with such wonderful,
wonderful, iconic people,
1582
01:31:33,821 --> 01:31:34,697
you know.
1583
01:31:35,573 --> 01:31:36,741
And it, uh…
1584
01:31:37,950 --> 01:31:39,702
It's a history, man, that…
1585
01:31:41,078 --> 01:31:44,999
You don't go into it thinking
that it's going to have any import.
1586
01:31:46,209 --> 01:31:48,002
It was just, like, uh,
1587
01:31:48,753 --> 01:31:49,754
survival.
1588
01:31:50,463 --> 01:31:51,422
You're young.
1589
01:31:52,048 --> 01:31:54,675
You know, you're trying to get started
in the business.
1590
01:31:54,759 --> 01:31:56,511
You're trying to put your foot down
1591
01:31:56,594 --> 01:31:59,347
and make a mark for yourself
in the business.
1592
01:31:59,430 --> 01:32:03,059
There also came a film
that was like the answer to a riddle.
1593
01:32:03,142 --> 01:32:05,311
What would you get if you gave the star
1594
01:32:05,394 --> 01:32:08,064
of a terrible and ghastly
World War II sitcom
1595
01:32:08,147 --> 01:32:10,775
and the editor of that show
a chance to make a movie?
1596
01:32:10,858 --> 01:32:15,404
Ivan Dixon, who quit Hogan's Heroes,
and Michael Kahn, that show's editor,
1597
01:32:15,488 --> 01:32:17,448
first worked together on Trouble Man.
1598
01:32:17,532 --> 01:32:19,909
But Dixon's dream project
was an adaptation
1599
01:32:19,992 --> 01:32:24,789
of Sam Greenlee's agitprop satiric novel,
The Spook Who Sat by the Door,
1600
01:32:24,872 --> 01:32:27,375
in which a Black man,
recruited by the CIA,
1601
01:32:27,458 --> 01:32:31,379
takes the agency's tactics to the streets
and creates a revolution.
1602
01:32:31,462 --> 01:32:34,757
Dixon's years of struggle
to get this project completed
1603
01:32:34,840 --> 01:32:35,841
could be a movie.
1604
01:32:36,342 --> 01:32:38,636
Finally raising the money
to make half the movie
1605
01:32:38,719 --> 01:32:41,347
and showing action sequences
to get studio interest,
1606
01:32:41,430 --> 01:32:45,518
a bidding war, won by United Artists,
got him the other half.
1607
01:32:46,227 --> 01:32:49,438
According to Dixon,
the studio was appalled by a film
1608
01:32:49,522 --> 01:32:52,567
they feared might cause
actual riots and lawsuits
1609
01:32:52,650 --> 01:32:54,986
instead of a riot at the box office.
1610
01:32:55,069 --> 01:32:58,823
It included a line that I thought belonged
in the annals of film history,
1611
01:32:58,906 --> 01:33:01,492
alongside "an offer he couldn't refuse."
1612
01:33:02,577 --> 01:33:03,536
Remember,
1613
01:33:04,078 --> 01:33:07,248
a Black man
with a mop, tray, or broom in his hand
1614
01:33:07,748 --> 01:33:10,459
can go damn near anywhere in this country.
1615
01:33:10,543 --> 01:33:12,086
And a smiling Black man
1616
01:33:12,753 --> 01:33:13,671
is invisible.
1617
01:33:13,754 --> 01:33:16,215
This line brought down
the house when I saw the movie
1618
01:33:16,299 --> 01:33:18,301
in Detroit in 1973,
1619
01:33:18,384 --> 01:33:22,263
and it continues to set off fireworks
and inspiration decades later.
1620
01:33:22,346 --> 01:33:25,099
I'mma name my last album
The Spook That Sat by the Door.
1621
01:33:25,182 --> 01:33:26,434
Basically, he used their agenda,
1622
01:33:26,517 --> 01:33:30,146
which was to have a token nigga
in the CIA for political reasons.
1623
01:33:30,229 --> 01:33:32,773
-You know, we gonna speak blunt. Fuck it.
-Right.
1624
01:33:32,857 --> 01:33:34,984
Um, he used it against 'em.
1625
01:33:36,819 --> 01:33:40,281
Dixon told me
that when Spook ended its theatrical run,
1626
01:33:40,364 --> 01:33:42,908
United Artists called him in
for a meeting and told him
1627
01:33:42,992 --> 01:33:45,286
the movie was being tracked
by US Intelligence,
1628
01:33:45,369 --> 01:33:47,288
which means there's a photo of me
1629
01:33:47,371 --> 01:33:50,249
and my high-school friends
somewhere in Langley.
1630
01:33:50,333 --> 01:33:52,335
This movie created such a furor
1631
01:33:52,418 --> 01:33:53,502
that Dixon felt
1632
01:33:53,586 --> 01:33:56,255
his theatrical moviemaking career
was finished.
1633
01:33:56,839 --> 01:33:59,508
A film about insurrection
was being treated
1634
01:33:59,592 --> 01:34:01,302
as if it were the act itself.
1635
01:34:02,094 --> 01:34:03,095
Don't quit
1636
01:34:04,639 --> 01:34:06,015
until you either win,
1637
01:34:06,891 --> 01:34:07,850
or you die.
1638
01:34:07,933 --> 01:34:12,104
The Spook Who Sat by the Door
infused a genre film, the spy thriller,
1639
01:34:12,188 --> 01:34:13,439
with a Black perspective
1640
01:34:13,522 --> 01:34:18,319
and forced audiences to reexamine
how narrow that genre had been.
1641
01:34:18,944 --> 01:34:22,948
Ganja & Hess finds visuals,
either poetic or realistic and harsh,
1642
01:34:23,032 --> 01:34:25,409
to keep its emotional fluidity constant.
1643
01:34:31,040 --> 01:34:32,958
Duane Jones,
steely and determined
1644
01:34:33,042 --> 01:34:36,170
as the monster killer
in Night of the Living Dead,
1645
01:34:36,253 --> 01:34:40,633
is cast as the monster here,
and his resolve to keep his soul alive
1646
01:34:40,716 --> 01:34:44,011
as the movie shifts
from dreamscape to bloody reality
1647
01:34:44,095 --> 01:34:46,639
became a metaphor
for the life of Bill Gunn,
1648
01:34:46,722 --> 01:34:49,183
the film's writer, director, and costar.
1649
01:34:49,725 --> 01:34:51,727
Real-life horror played out for Gunn,
1650
01:34:51,811 --> 01:34:54,730
who witnessed his triumph
edited into different versions,
1651
01:34:54,814 --> 01:34:58,109
each badly titled recut
worse than the previous one,
1652
01:34:58,192 --> 01:35:00,611
transforming his art
into something monstrous.
1653
01:35:02,446 --> 01:35:04,532
Gunn fought to work in the movies
1654
01:35:04,615 --> 01:35:08,119
even after his directorial debut
titled Stop!
1655
01:35:08,202 --> 01:35:09,662
Ishmael Reed writes,
1656
01:35:09,745 --> 01:35:13,290
"Warner Bros. was so upset with Stop!
that it buried the film
1657
01:35:13,374 --> 01:35:16,669
and got Gunn to return
his writing and directing fees."
1658
01:35:19,171 --> 01:35:24,343
1974 was another seismic movement
of the needle for Black film.
1659
01:35:24,427 --> 01:35:25,720
The Black 6.
1660
01:35:29,682 --> 01:35:31,600
A jolt
courtesy of Diahann Carroll
1661
01:35:31,684 --> 01:35:34,812
as a weary but determined
mother of six in Claudine.
1662
01:35:34,895 --> 01:35:37,022
Sorry,
that number's been disconnected.
1663
01:35:37,648 --> 01:35:39,191
"Disconnected"?!
1664
01:35:39,275 --> 01:35:43,154
Diahann Carroll, whose beauty
was deepened by a core of calm,
1665
01:35:43,237 --> 01:35:46,031
was one of those
who seized the opportunity to be free
1666
01:35:46,115 --> 01:35:47,450
of her civilized smoothness.
1667
01:35:47,533 --> 01:35:48,451
What is that--
1668
01:35:48,534 --> 01:35:52,037
Please, Francis! Don't do that!
You'll electrocute yourself!
1669
01:35:52,538 --> 01:35:54,915
As the titular character
in this drama,
1670
01:35:54,999 --> 01:35:56,876
Claudine fought the welfare system
1671
01:35:56,959 --> 01:35:59,587
and the streets of Chicago
for the souls of her children.
1672
01:35:59,670 --> 01:36:03,132
And she won, in that her kids
were still alive at the end.
1673
01:36:03,215 --> 01:36:07,178
For her efforts, Carroll got
a Best Actress Oscar nomination.
1674
01:36:07,261 --> 01:36:09,930
Claudine also benefited
from being one of the five scores
1675
01:36:10,014 --> 01:36:11,182
that Curtis Mayfield wrote.
1676
01:36:11,766 --> 01:36:14,435
It was a song cycle
in which all the songs came
1677
01:36:14,518 --> 01:36:18,272
from the perspectives of the characters,
sung by Gladys Knight & the Pips.
1678
01:36:18,355 --> 01:36:20,441
Including one that, in the song,
1679
01:36:20,524 --> 01:36:23,736
precisely outlined a centuries-old fear
faced by people of color.
1680
01:36:34,371 --> 01:36:36,499
I actually was cast in Claudine
1681
01:36:37,666 --> 01:36:40,586
when Diana Sands
was cast to play Claudine.
1682
01:36:41,837 --> 01:36:43,589
And then she passed away.
1683
01:36:44,548 --> 01:36:47,176
And so they, you know…
they reshuffled the deck,
1684
01:36:47,259 --> 01:36:49,011
and they found another bunch of actors.
1685
01:36:49,094 --> 01:36:50,095
I mean, they had…
1686
01:36:50,971 --> 01:36:53,057
I had auditioned, uh,
1687
01:36:53,140 --> 01:36:55,100
for the second-youngest son,
1688
01:36:55,184 --> 01:36:58,395
but I wound up
not being cast in it after that.
1689
01:36:58,479 --> 01:37:00,105
You know, they… they recast it.
1690
01:37:01,857 --> 01:37:05,569
An intriguing piece
of editorial in action-leather camouflage
1691
01:37:05,653 --> 01:37:08,364
was Three the Hard Way,
which teamed Jim Brown
1692
01:37:09,031 --> 01:37:10,658
and Fred Williamson
1693
01:37:10,741 --> 01:37:13,327
with martial artist Jim Kelly's Afro.
1694
01:37:13,410 --> 01:37:15,371
Three cities and three of us.
1695
01:37:15,454 --> 01:37:17,581
They take on
a neo-Nazi organization,
1696
01:37:17,665 --> 01:37:21,210
which develops a poison
that only kills African Americans
1697
01:37:21,293 --> 01:37:26,549
and will be dumped into the water supplies
of LA, Detroit, and Washington, D.C.,
1698
01:37:26,632 --> 01:37:29,426
all of which look suspiciously
like Los Angeles.
1699
01:37:29,510 --> 01:37:32,263
I thought it was
the most laughable thing I'd ever seen
1700
01:37:32,346 --> 01:37:35,266
until my father explained
the Tuskegee Experiment to me,
1701
01:37:35,349 --> 01:37:40,271
and Three the Hard Way was suddenly
a meditation on justifiable paranoia,
1702
01:37:40,354 --> 01:37:44,233
the scientific term for which
is "African American," I believe.
1703
01:37:45,776 --> 01:37:49,655
1974 follows that film
with a heartbreaking footnote,
1704
01:37:49,738 --> 01:37:52,825
one of the final film performances
of Diana Sands.
1705
01:37:52,908 --> 01:37:56,954
Honeybaby, Honeybaby was a messy cocktail
with a splash of spy caper,
1706
01:37:57,037 --> 01:38:00,708
a twist of action melodrama,
a zest of character comedy,
1707
01:38:00,791 --> 01:38:05,504
and so insecure it begins
with the movie describing itself to you.
1708
01:38:05,588 --> 01:38:07,214
Hey, how you doin'?
1709
01:38:07,298 --> 01:38:11,218
My name is J. Eric Bell,
and I just got back from Beirut, Lebanon,
1710
01:38:11,302 --> 01:38:15,723
while filming a movie,
Honeybaby, Honeybaby, on location.
1711
01:38:15,806 --> 01:38:18,517
'74 was bookended with Sands.
1712
01:38:18,601 --> 01:38:21,812
Another of her last film appearances
is in Willie Dynamite,
1713
01:38:21,896 --> 01:38:26,692
which starred stage actor Roscoe Orman,
who is now better known for another role.
1714
01:38:27,192 --> 01:38:30,279
I used to joke when Willie
finally left after that last scene,
1715
01:38:30,362 --> 01:38:33,282
he turned the corner, and there was
this big yellow bird on the street.
1716
01:38:37,286 --> 01:38:38,120
But it was true.
1717
01:38:38,203 --> 01:38:41,248
I mean, within… within that year
following Willie Dynamite,
1718
01:38:41,332 --> 01:38:43,417
there I was as Gordon on Sesame Street.
1719
01:38:47,421 --> 01:38:48,422
Looking for work?
1720
01:38:50,341 --> 01:38:52,843
The light in Orman's eyes,
as Willie Dynamite,
1721
01:38:52,927 --> 01:38:55,846
signaled his eagerness
to work with an acting partner
1722
01:38:55,930 --> 01:38:59,642
whose radiant toughness
matched up with his coldhearted savvy.
1723
01:38:59,725 --> 01:39:02,978
I had the incredible good fortune
of working with,
1724
01:39:03,062 --> 01:39:05,731
you know, one of the great actors
of all time.
1725
01:39:05,814 --> 01:39:10,152
Diana, she was
so well-grounded and educated
1726
01:39:10,235 --> 01:39:14,281
in terms of the art
of… of, uh, performance,
1727
01:39:14,365 --> 01:39:15,366
you know, and, uh…
1728
01:39:15,950 --> 01:39:18,494
Of course she and Lorraine Hansberry
were close friends,
1729
01:39:18,577 --> 01:39:22,623
and Sidney and Ruby
and Ossie and all of 'em, you know.
1730
01:39:22,706 --> 01:39:24,833
I mean, these were all my mentors as well.
1731
01:39:27,378 --> 01:39:30,130
Willie was a performer,
and those courthouse steps,
1732
01:39:30,214 --> 01:39:32,299
you know, that was like Baryshnikov.
1733
01:39:32,383 --> 01:39:35,886
Platform shoes,
high-heeled platform shoe--
1734
01:39:38,764 --> 01:39:41,058
I'd probably break
every bone in my body now.
1735
01:39:43,894 --> 01:39:46,480
Three the Hard Way director
Gordon Parks Jr.
1736
01:39:46,563 --> 01:39:49,483
had another film that year,
Thomasine & Bushrod,
1737
01:39:49,566 --> 01:39:51,944
an Afrocentric and bucolic Western
1738
01:39:52,027 --> 01:39:55,322
that braided a Black twist
into Bonnie and Clyde with its pairing
1739
01:39:55,406 --> 01:39:58,325
of two of the most beautiful people
in the American West,
1740
01:39:58,409 --> 01:40:01,412
Vonetta McGee and Max Julien, on the run.
1741
01:40:01,495 --> 01:40:04,081
Their scenes together
toyed with a movie-star version
1742
01:40:04,164 --> 01:40:05,958
of their own real-life chemistry.
1743
01:40:06,041 --> 01:40:07,584
How you doin', Mr. Bushrod?
1744
01:40:09,003 --> 01:40:12,589
I do fine, Thomasine. I do fine.
I just never thought I'd see you again.
1745
01:40:14,216 --> 01:40:15,467
Here I am.
1746
01:40:15,551 --> 01:40:19,013
-And you look good. Damn, you look good.
1747
01:40:20,180 --> 01:40:23,392
It showcased
the languorous, easy score by Arthur Lee
1748
01:40:23,475 --> 01:40:26,103
and the script by its star, Max Julien.
1749
01:40:26,770 --> 01:40:29,773
Thomasine & Bushrod
was so much fun. Uh…
1750
01:40:29,857 --> 01:40:31,984
Max Julien was such a great guy
1751
01:40:32,067 --> 01:40:34,737
and such an innovative guy
and a daring guy.
1752
01:40:34,820 --> 01:40:37,781
He produced that movie.
He wrote it, produced it, you know.
1753
01:40:37,865 --> 01:40:39,533
He was-- He called the shots.
1754
01:40:39,616 --> 01:40:41,535
So, of all those motion pictures
1755
01:40:41,618 --> 01:40:44,621
that came out of
the "Black exploitation," quote, period,
1756
01:40:44,705 --> 01:40:48,959
Max was one of the few Blacks
who controlled his own product.
1757
01:40:49,043 --> 01:40:49,918
I knew one thing.
1758
01:40:50,002 --> 01:40:53,505
I knew that
Max and Vonetta were revolutionary.
1759
01:40:54,131 --> 01:40:57,051
Max would just say, you know,
"I'm not gonna take this shit."
1760
01:40:58,719 --> 01:41:01,388
And he didn't, you know, and, uh…
1761
01:41:01,472 --> 01:41:03,640
"Let's do our own, man.
We'll just do our own."
1762
01:41:06,018 --> 01:41:08,979
In the adaptation
of the autobiographical book
1763
01:41:09,063 --> 01:41:11,231
The Education of Sonny Carson,
1764
01:41:11,315 --> 01:41:15,319
the young protagonist is subjected to
extremes of Black masculinity,
1765
01:41:15,402 --> 01:41:19,323
in a film that floats
between the brutal and the poetic.
1766
01:41:20,199 --> 01:41:23,786
This time, director Michael Campus,
who also made The Mack,
1767
01:41:23,869 --> 01:41:25,954
tells a story about a Black hero
1768
01:41:26,038 --> 01:41:28,874
who can't outwit
the prison-industrial complex
1769
01:41:29,708 --> 01:41:32,252
and is nearly suffocated by incarceration.
1770
01:41:32,336 --> 01:41:36,882
For Sonny, the antidote
is moving from one urban tribe to another
1771
01:41:36,965 --> 01:41:38,383
to prove his worth.
1772
01:41:38,467 --> 01:41:42,012
One of its most harrowing scenes
shows the adolescent Sonny
1773
01:41:42,096 --> 01:41:45,933
running the literal gauntlet
to be jumped into a gang.
1774
01:41:50,604 --> 01:41:54,066
You wanna deal with the Lords,
you deal with us later, you understand?
1775
01:41:54,149 --> 01:41:58,028
Clanton's charged,
fully felt acting proves his understanding
1776
01:41:58,112 --> 01:42:02,241
of Sonny's psychic scar tissue
from a lifetime of violence.
1777
01:42:03,075 --> 01:42:05,119
He just so opposite
of who that dude was.
1778
01:42:05,202 --> 01:42:06,870
He was not that guy.
1779
01:42:07,454 --> 01:42:08,705
He was acting.
1780
01:42:09,540 --> 01:42:11,208
You know. You coulda--
1781
01:42:11,291 --> 01:42:14,002
They… they coulda found that out
the same way I did.
1782
01:42:14,086 --> 01:42:16,547
Just by saying,
"Come in this room and talk to us."
1783
01:42:16,630 --> 01:42:22,010
If the decade 1968 through 1978
was about talent seizing opportunity,
1784
01:42:22,094 --> 01:42:24,263
there's no better tribute
to that motivation
1785
01:42:24,346 --> 01:42:26,390
than the reinvention of Sidney Poitier,
1786
01:42:26,473 --> 01:42:28,767
who turned himself
into a blue-collar straight man
1787
01:42:28,851 --> 01:42:30,227
in Uptown Saturday Night.
1788
01:42:30,310 --> 01:42:31,436
You all right, baby?
1789
01:42:32,062 --> 01:42:33,313
I'm fine.
1790
01:42:33,397 --> 01:42:36,400
I love… Sidney's comedy.
1791
01:42:36,483 --> 01:42:37,609
Gentlemen.
1792
01:42:37,693 --> 01:42:40,279
He is incredibly funny in it.
1793
01:42:40,362 --> 01:42:46,201
And I love that
it is a depiction of Black life
1794
01:42:46,285 --> 01:42:47,870
in a normalized way.
1795
01:42:47,953 --> 01:42:50,205
Such was
Poitier's physical command
1796
01:42:50,289 --> 01:42:53,167
that he made himself
visibly uncomfortable in a suit,
1797
01:42:53,250 --> 01:42:56,336
the kind of thing
that he usually wore like a second skin.
1798
01:42:56,837 --> 01:42:58,046
Audiences were giddy
1799
01:42:58,130 --> 01:43:00,799
that he could satirize
his own stylish earnestness,
1800
01:43:00,883 --> 01:43:04,803
and he was a movie star once more
in one of his biggest hits ever.
1801
01:43:04,887 --> 01:43:08,015
And if Poitier could make himself
bigger than life in the movies
1802
01:43:08,098 --> 01:43:10,851
in an entirely new way,
then anything was possible.
1803
01:43:25,741 --> 01:43:28,035
Perhaps the greatest legacy of this era,
1804
01:43:28,118 --> 01:43:31,121
during a time of strain and reassessment
in the mainstream,
1805
01:43:31,205 --> 01:43:33,707
and such moments being reflected
in most movies,
1806
01:43:33,790 --> 01:43:38,128
is the joy that Black performers took
in being before the camera.
1807
01:43:42,925 --> 01:43:46,470
There are probably more entrances
given protagonists of Black films
1808
01:43:46,553 --> 01:43:49,431
than in all the movies
of the 1930s put together.
1809
01:43:49,514 --> 01:43:52,434
In some cases,
the actors got multiple entrances,
1810
01:43:52,517 --> 01:43:54,978
and the soundtracks
ushered them onto the screen.
1811
01:43:55,062 --> 01:43:57,481
The engagement these movies
demanded from audiences
1812
01:43:57,564 --> 01:44:01,443
often played like the moments in musicals
before a dance number erupts,
1813
01:44:01,526 --> 01:44:03,654
and the air is charged.
1814
01:44:19,753 --> 01:44:22,714
It was this decade's movies
that gave notice,
1815
01:44:22,798 --> 01:44:26,093
careers, and new leases on life
to Black talent.
1816
01:44:26,176 --> 01:44:29,137
The industry would squander
that potential for them.
1817
01:44:29,221 --> 01:44:30,889
For example, Cleavon Little…
1818
01:44:30,973 --> 01:44:32,975
Hey, where the white women at?
1819
01:44:34,559 --> 01:44:37,896
…whose quicksilver
straight-man verve was as responsible
1820
01:44:37,980 --> 01:44:41,066
for the success of Blazing Saddles
as anything else.
1821
01:44:41,608 --> 01:44:43,277
What did you expect?
1822
01:44:43,819 --> 01:44:44,945
"Welcome, sonny"?
1823
01:44:45,654 --> 01:44:48,115
Cleavon Little
never found another leading role
1824
01:44:48,198 --> 01:44:50,158
to showcase his abilities,
1825
01:44:50,242 --> 01:44:52,536
unlike his costar, Gene Wilder.
1826
01:44:59,334 --> 01:45:02,170
That surge
of musical endorphins informed a film
1827
01:45:02,254 --> 01:45:05,590
with probably the best-selling
Black soundtrack of the period,
1828
01:45:05,674 --> 01:45:08,260
directed by the producer of Super Fly.
1829
01:45:08,343 --> 01:45:12,347
It's a musical so undercooked
the band doesn't bother to speak.
1830
01:45:12,431 --> 01:45:16,560
Some might say the film's music
was so transporting they don't need to.
1831
01:45:16,643 --> 01:45:20,439
And the spiritual wallop of songs
such as "That's the Way of the World"
1832
01:45:20,522 --> 01:45:21,606
proved that point.
1833
01:45:24,735 --> 01:45:27,738
The first major studio version
of a slave narrative,
1834
01:45:27,821 --> 01:45:29,489
the adaptation of Mandingo,
1835
01:45:29,573 --> 01:45:33,243
slaps onto the screen
with its gaudy inhumanity intact.
1836
01:45:33,327 --> 01:45:35,412
This decades-old literary sensation
1837
01:45:35,495 --> 01:45:38,040
was adapted by Oscar-nominee
Norman Wexler,
1838
01:45:38,123 --> 01:45:42,252
with a cast that includes James Mason
and his florid accent…
1839
01:45:42,336 --> 01:45:43,337
Get down there.
1840
01:45:44,463 --> 01:45:45,297
All right.
1841
01:45:47,007 --> 01:45:50,886
…which seems less crazy
after the trashy parade of racism.
1842
01:45:50,969 --> 01:45:54,014
The movie's obsession with Black sexuality
1843
01:45:54,097 --> 01:45:55,932
and ridiculing white fear of it
1844
01:45:56,016 --> 01:45:59,811
inspired the body-worshipping photography
of Robert Mapplethorpe.
1845
01:46:01,480 --> 01:46:04,107
That's proof Black Jesus
was the revenant's cousin too.
1846
01:46:04,191 --> 01:46:08,070
But Black film continues
to explode through one genre after another
1847
01:46:08,153 --> 01:46:10,489
with writer-director
Ralph Bakshi's Coonskin,
1848
01:46:10,572 --> 01:46:14,034
a combination of live action and animation
that stars Barry White,
1849
01:46:14,117 --> 01:46:17,537
actor-playwright Charles Gordone,
and Philip Michael Thomas,
1850
01:46:17,621 --> 01:46:21,583
who would later star in Miami Vice
and coin the acronym EGOT.
1851
01:46:21,666 --> 01:46:25,253
Starting with its assaultive title,
Bakshi's experiment packs in
1852
01:46:25,337 --> 01:46:28,090
much commentary on race
and its cinematic treatment.
1853
01:46:28,173 --> 01:46:30,092
From parodying Br'er Rabbit
1854
01:46:30,175 --> 01:46:31,760
to sending up Krazy Kat.
1855
01:46:31,843 --> 01:46:35,222
Night after night, Malcolm remains cool.
1856
01:46:36,306 --> 01:46:39,476
Conceptually,
Coonskin stirred up so much turmoil
1857
01:46:39,559 --> 01:46:41,728
that it scandalized
as well as entertained,
1858
01:46:41,812 --> 01:46:43,021
which was its point.
1859
01:46:48,026 --> 01:46:50,362
This load is getting too heavy to tote.
1860
01:46:50,445 --> 01:46:53,073
For good or ill,
there's still nothing else like it.
1861
01:46:53,156 --> 01:46:55,992
Random and abrupt police intrusion
in Black life
1862
01:46:56,076 --> 01:46:58,620
played on as part of Black film.
1863
01:46:58,703 --> 01:47:00,163
In Cornbread, Earl and Me,
1864
01:47:00,247 --> 01:47:04,042
a young Black life ended by a cop's bullet
is the center of the story,
1865
01:47:04,126 --> 01:47:07,712
back when such a thing still drew a gasp
because it was so rarely dramatized
1866
01:47:08,296 --> 01:47:10,841
but got knowing nods from Black audiences.
1867
01:47:16,263 --> 01:47:18,723
The spill of orange soda
in the climactic scene
1868
01:47:18,807 --> 01:47:21,810
crudely but imaginatively worked
as a stand-in for bloodshed
1869
01:47:22,602 --> 01:47:24,688
and still sends a chill through me.
1870
01:47:25,272 --> 01:47:26,481
Cornbread!
1871
01:47:26,565 --> 01:47:29,109
That movie, for me,
is the original Boyz n the Hood.
1872
01:47:31,236 --> 01:47:33,321
Cornbread, Earl and Me is a tragic story.
1873
01:47:33,947 --> 01:47:37,200
And Boyz n the Hood
is also a tragic story.
1874
01:47:37,784 --> 01:47:41,371
And those things
are almost 20-something years apart.
1875
01:47:41,997 --> 01:47:45,459
We do not enter
public transportation illegally.
1876
01:47:45,542 --> 01:47:48,545
From the high-flying Shaft
and athletes-turned-adventurers,
1877
01:47:48,628 --> 01:47:51,965
action downshifted
into something drawn like real life.
1878
01:47:52,048 --> 01:47:55,844
Cooley High, a Black inner-city version
of American Graffiti,
1879
01:47:55,927 --> 01:47:59,222
with the ups and downs
of a coming-of-age story emerged.
1880
01:47:59,306 --> 01:48:02,601
And the story was given a resident lift
from Motown songs,
1881
01:48:02,684 --> 01:48:06,104
which would have been the soundtrack
of the characters' lives in 1964
1882
01:48:06,188 --> 01:48:07,689
when Cooley High was set.
1883
01:48:07,772 --> 01:48:11,234
The heady perfume of nostalgia
washed over Black audiences,
1884
01:48:11,318 --> 01:48:13,737
-who welcomed it.
1885
01:48:13,820 --> 01:48:15,071
That's Motown music.
1886
01:48:15,822 --> 01:48:20,702
And it's the backdrop
of Black people's lives…
1887
01:48:22,329 --> 01:48:23,205
…on film.
1888
01:48:24,748 --> 01:48:27,417
That's nice. That's… that's a nice change.
1889
01:48:32,130 --> 01:48:34,132
One of the first scenes
I remember shooting
1890
01:48:34,216 --> 01:48:36,134
is the scene running for the bus.
1891
01:48:36,843 --> 01:48:39,846
That was exactly
how I grew up in Manhattan.
1892
01:48:39,930 --> 01:48:42,891
That's what we did.
That's what me and my crew did.
1893
01:48:42,974 --> 01:48:45,852
We ran and jumped on the back of the bus
going down 7th Avenue.
1894
01:48:45,936 --> 01:48:48,772
I'll never forget it.
But here was the thing…
1895
01:48:48,855 --> 01:48:53,401
…when we did that
going down 7th Avenue,
1896
01:48:53,485 --> 01:48:56,696
we jumped on the bus,
and 7th Avenue was cobblestone,
1897
01:48:56,780 --> 01:48:59,074
so you held on for dear life!
1898
01:49:00,408 --> 01:49:02,118
Can I have a hot dog, please?
1899
01:49:02,202 --> 01:49:05,163
Turman plays
the big comedic moments and the reality
1900
01:49:05,247 --> 01:49:08,333
so that he becomes
an important ingredient in Cooley High
1901
01:49:08,416 --> 01:49:10,252
rather than overwhelm it with his spice.
1902
01:49:10,335 --> 01:49:12,546
-Could I have ketchup on it?
-We don't have any ketchup.
1903
01:49:13,547 --> 01:49:15,131
-You ain't got no ketchup?
-That's right.
1904
01:49:15,215 --> 01:49:17,342
Got some relish?
Can I have relish on it, please?
1905
01:49:17,425 --> 01:49:18,510
I don't have relish.
1906
01:49:18,593 --> 01:49:20,303
-You got no relish?
-No relish.
1907
01:49:20,387 --> 01:49:21,846
-What you got?
-Mustard.
1908
01:49:21,930 --> 01:49:23,348
-Mustard?!
-That's it.
1909
01:49:23,431 --> 01:49:26,142
You mean, a big establishment like this,
and all you got is mustard?
1910
01:49:26,226 --> 01:49:28,436
-That's right.
-I don't like mustard. Do you?
1911
01:49:28,520 --> 01:49:30,105
Yeah, I like mustard.
1912
01:49:30,188 --> 01:49:32,440
Oh yeah? Well then, here.
You eat the hot dog.
1913
01:49:33,650 --> 01:49:35,652
And along that road,
1914
01:49:35,735 --> 01:49:40,991
you hit certain spots that make you go,
"Whoa! Yeah, this is-- Yeah!"
1915
01:49:41,074 --> 01:49:43,159
All of a sudden,
a call comes from nowhere.
1916
01:49:43,243 --> 01:49:47,163
Doesn't even come from my agent.
It comes from some strange other place.
1917
01:49:47,247 --> 01:49:49,749
"Glynn, Ingmar Bergman
is looking for you."
1918
01:49:50,917 --> 01:49:55,213
I said, "I'm in no mood to play.
I'm sitting here in the fucking dark."
1919
01:49:55,297 --> 01:49:58,425
"My kids are hungry.
I'm-- We're eating potatoes."
1920
01:49:59,259 --> 01:50:00,719
And I hung up the phone.
1921
01:50:00,802 --> 01:50:03,305
And the call came.
He said, "No, for real, Glynn."
1922
01:50:03,388 --> 01:50:04,681
He was looking for me.
1923
01:50:04,764 --> 01:50:06,933
And he'd seen Cooley High
1924
01:50:07,601 --> 01:50:12,981
and, you know, said he knew right then
that I was the one to be in his movie.
1925
01:50:13,064 --> 01:50:18,278
So… so you go from pockets
of that kind of disaster to
1926
01:50:19,237 --> 01:50:20,280
euphoria.
1927
01:50:21,156 --> 01:50:22,991
And then, so it's a ride that--
1928
01:50:23,074 --> 01:50:25,452
It's… unbelievable ride.
1929
01:50:30,373 --> 01:50:33,251
You are outrageous,
you know that?
1930
01:50:33,335 --> 01:50:35,503
Old-school glamour,
as portrayed again
1931
01:50:35,587 --> 01:50:37,589
by Diana Ross and Billy Dee Williams,
1932
01:50:37,672 --> 01:50:42,052
still proved potent
in the 1975 romantic melodrama Mahogany.
1933
01:50:42,135 --> 01:50:45,889
You gotta give 'em some pizzazz.
Show 'em your charm. Ow!
1934
01:50:45,972 --> 01:50:49,392
I always feel like, sometimes Black men
always feel like they have to…
1935
01:50:49,476 --> 01:50:53,104
Maybe there's a good reason for it.
There are obvious reasons for it, I guess.
1936
01:50:53,188 --> 01:50:57,901
But, uh, always this need
to show their strength.
1937
01:50:58,443 --> 01:51:00,862
Vulnerability is a wonderful thing to use.
1938
01:51:00,945 --> 01:51:03,698
It's a wonderful tool
when you're playing a character.
1939
01:51:08,244 --> 01:51:09,454
I've missed you too.
1940
01:51:10,121 --> 01:51:12,832
But that's me.
I'm that kind of person.
1941
01:51:12,916 --> 01:51:16,169
I mean, I'm not afraid to display
1942
01:51:16,961 --> 01:51:20,173
my, uh… or convey my feelings about,
1943
01:51:21,007 --> 01:51:24,052
uh, something if I… if I feel strongly.
1944
01:51:24,135 --> 01:51:25,345
Play it, Sam.
1945
01:51:28,723 --> 01:51:32,060
The pop-soul group Bloodstone,
whose big hit was "Natural High,"
1946
01:51:32,143 --> 01:51:34,896
were said to have invested
their own money to produce
1947
01:51:34,979 --> 01:51:36,856
the touching and sweetly odd musical
1948
01:51:36,940 --> 01:51:40,568
Train Ride to Hollywood,
a pastiche of 1940s movie clichés,
1949
01:51:40,652 --> 01:51:42,862
and inserted themselves into the mix.
1950
01:51:46,074 --> 01:51:49,786
Among Richard Pryor's gifts
was pinpoint cultural criticism,
1951
01:51:49,869 --> 01:51:54,457
as he proved with his 1976 comedy album
Bicentennial Nigger
1952
01:51:54,541 --> 01:51:56,751
and his take on Logan's Run,
1953
01:51:56,835 --> 01:52:01,256
a 1976 Lego-colored,
pre-Star Wars sci-fi fantasy.
1954
01:52:01,339 --> 01:52:03,466
I went to see Logan's Run, right?
1955
01:52:03,550 --> 01:52:05,969
They had a movie of the future
called Logan's Run.
1956
01:52:06,052 --> 01:52:07,303
Ain't no niggas in it.
1957
01:52:07,804 --> 01:52:10,598
I said, "Well, white folks
ain't planning for us to be here."
1958
01:52:14,519 --> 01:52:18,148
That's why we gotta make movies.
Then we'll be in the picture.
1959
01:52:19,482 --> 01:52:23,027
People don't ever want to--
And… and please forgive me.
1960
01:52:23,653 --> 01:52:26,573
People never want to offend white folks.
1961
01:52:27,240 --> 01:52:30,827
They want to be able
to keep white folks on their side
1962
01:52:30,910 --> 01:52:34,748
so that they will be allowed
to make these movies.
1963
01:52:37,375 --> 01:52:38,918
By 1976,
1964
01:52:39,002 --> 01:52:42,505
after Black films redeemed the ideal
of heroic protagonists,
1965
01:52:42,589 --> 01:52:45,258
mainstream movies once again
saw their worth.
1966
01:52:45,341 --> 01:52:46,801
Smile, you son of a…
1967
01:52:46,885 --> 01:52:50,305
The Sting and Jaws,
which returned the thrill of victory
1968
01:52:50,388 --> 01:52:53,308
to white male movie stars,
were massive hits.
1969
01:52:53,391 --> 01:52:55,560
In fact, both Jaws and The Sting
1970
01:52:55,643 --> 01:52:58,480
were made by the same producers
that did Willie Dynamite.
1971
01:52:58,563 --> 01:53:03,777
The Sting's plot could have been lifted
from the novel Trick Baby, also a film.
1972
01:53:03,860 --> 01:53:07,155
And, by 1976's end, Rocky Balboa,
1973
01:53:07,238 --> 01:53:09,449
a hero who could have stepped out
of a Black action movie,
1974
01:53:09,532 --> 01:53:12,869
was pitted against a clumsy
and mocking Muhammad Ali archetype.
1975
01:53:12,952 --> 01:53:14,662
And though Rocky didn't win the fight,
1976
01:53:14,746 --> 01:53:17,999
he got the Best Picture Oscar
and the box office success to go with it.
1977
01:53:18,082 --> 01:53:19,918
He looks like a big flag.
1978
01:53:20,794 --> 01:53:23,213
Rocky featured
a Black heavyweight champ
1979
01:53:23,296 --> 01:53:27,467
who was a parody of the all-beef persona
Ali brought to the ring.
1980
01:53:28,051 --> 01:53:31,262
But Ali used humor
as a mind game on his opponents,
1981
01:53:31,346 --> 01:53:33,807
who all tried
to glare him into submission.
1982
01:53:33,890 --> 01:53:34,849
He wasn't a clown.
1983
01:53:34,933 --> 01:53:38,228
In fact, Ali knew he could pretend
to take things lightly
1984
01:53:38,311 --> 01:53:41,064
because his skills
would prove his indomitability,
1985
01:53:41,147 --> 01:53:43,024
including a willingness to take a punch,
1986
01:53:43,107 --> 01:53:46,236
which may have accelerated
his slide into Parkinson's.
1987
01:53:47,821 --> 01:53:51,032
Stallone's savvy had him lift cleverly
from Black culture
1988
01:53:51,115 --> 01:53:53,785
such ideas as pounding beef
in the meat locker
1989
01:53:53,868 --> 01:53:57,622
and running up the museum steps,
which Joe Frazier did first,
1990
01:53:57,705 --> 01:54:00,667
as the book Ghosts of Manila reminds us.
1991
01:54:01,543 --> 01:54:04,128
As Rocky's foe, Apollo Creed,
1992
01:54:04,212 --> 01:54:09,217
Carl Weathers bent himself into a pretzel
to bring himself down to Stallone's size.
1993
01:54:09,300 --> 01:54:12,804
I needed a chiropractor
after watching Weathers fold himself
1994
01:54:12,887 --> 01:54:15,223
to the level of Rocky's fists.
1995
01:54:16,432 --> 01:54:21,521
By 1976, the notion of using the power
of musicals to capture audience attention
1996
01:54:21,604 --> 01:54:24,190
was no longer lost
on mainstream filmmakers.
1997
01:54:26,693 --> 01:54:31,406
With Car Wash, composer Norman Whitfield
was primed to outdo Shaft and Super Fly,
1998
01:54:31,489 --> 01:54:35,493
with a theme of hard-hitting funk bounce
sutured to a social context.
1999
01:54:36,536 --> 01:54:37,453
And it worked.
2000
01:54:44,752 --> 01:54:47,005
This song, "Something He Can Feel,"
2001
01:54:47,088 --> 01:54:50,550
was Curtis Mayfield's take
on Motown girl-group simmer.
2002
01:54:50,633 --> 01:54:53,177
Mayfield wrote it
for the proto-Dreamgirls,
2003
01:54:53,261 --> 01:54:55,722
Black showbiz melodrama, Sparkle…
2004
01:55:01,936 --> 01:55:05,315
…which should have ignited the career
of star Lonette McKee
2005
01:55:05,398 --> 01:55:09,527
and been more than a footnote
for Irene Cara and Philip Michael Thomas.
2006
01:55:10,111 --> 01:55:12,906
Sparkle was
screenwriter Joel Schumacher's follow-up
2007
01:55:12,989 --> 01:55:14,115
to Car Wash,
2008
01:55:14,198 --> 01:55:17,660
and he wrote it to hypnotize audiences
and direct himself.
2009
01:55:18,161 --> 01:55:20,622
It ended up dazzling
the handful who saw it
2010
01:55:20,705 --> 01:55:23,166
but not with Schumacher behind the camera.
2011
01:55:24,918 --> 01:55:26,461
Like the potential crowd-pleaser
2012
01:55:26,544 --> 01:55:29,297
The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars
& Motor Kings,
2013
01:55:29,380 --> 01:55:30,924
this story of the Negro Leagues
2014
01:55:31,007 --> 01:55:34,135
also functioned as a metaphor
for the amount of effort
2015
01:55:34,218 --> 01:55:36,346
Blacks had to put
into entertaining audiences.
2016
01:55:36,429 --> 01:55:39,515
The players had to give a show
on the way to the stadium
2017
01:55:39,599 --> 01:55:41,643
and still played nine innings of baseball.
2018
01:55:41,726 --> 01:55:44,354
I loved it. I really wanted to do Bingo
2019
01:55:44,437 --> 01:55:47,273
'cause Bingo was a really fun
kind of character.
2020
01:55:47,357 --> 01:55:49,734
I mean, the man is guaranteeing us $200.
2021
01:55:49,817 --> 01:55:52,820
If you slice that 11 ways,
that comes out to about, uh…
2022
01:55:52,904 --> 01:55:54,113
Uh…
2023
01:55:54,197 --> 01:55:55,657
Uh, uh…
2024
01:55:55,740 --> 01:55:56,741
A lot of money!
2025
01:55:57,951 --> 01:56:00,078
Bingo is
all the things Williams is.
2026
01:56:00,161 --> 01:56:02,705
He's physical.
He has an appetite for life.
2027
01:56:02,789 --> 01:56:04,082
Full of crap, you know.
2028
01:56:09,587 --> 01:56:10,838
Who you got, man?
2029
01:56:12,006 --> 01:56:13,549
A real foxy lady.
2030
01:56:13,633 --> 01:56:18,346
The 1977 film Brothers
was a peculiar and rare attempt
2031
01:56:18,429 --> 01:56:20,598
at Black political melodrama.
2032
01:56:20,682 --> 01:56:22,934
With its haunted Taj Mahal score,
2033
01:56:23,017 --> 01:56:27,021
it was a romance of ideals
with Bernie Casey and Vonetta McGee
2034
01:56:27,105 --> 01:56:30,441
as characters based on George Jackson
and Angela Davis.
2035
01:56:30,525 --> 01:56:34,404
But pretty much all this movie did
was gape at their bone structure.
2036
01:56:34,988 --> 01:56:38,449
Before Marvel and DC
dropped faithful movie adaptations
2037
01:56:38,533 --> 01:56:43,496
of their universes on regular schedules,
the well-meaning street superhero story
2038
01:56:43,579 --> 01:56:46,874
the First Black Superman
hit screens.
2039
01:56:47,375 --> 01:56:50,420
This film celebrates
the Watts Tower on-screen,
2040
01:56:50,503 --> 01:56:52,880
giving it a sense of place
in the Black world.
2041
01:56:52,964 --> 01:56:55,174
-Commence firing!
2042
01:56:59,387 --> 01:57:01,889
And,
in an early version of sampling,
2043
01:57:01,973 --> 01:57:05,852
it used Captain America's origin story
as a serving suggestion.
2044
01:57:05,935 --> 01:57:08,229
As a Black race,
let's get ourselves together,
2045
01:57:08,312 --> 01:57:09,397
in every respect.
2046
01:57:09,480 --> 01:57:12,400
For that, I'll sacrifice anything
short of murder.
2047
01:57:12,483 --> 01:57:17,655
Well, uh, suppose
I could, uh, make you indestructible.
2048
01:57:18,614 --> 01:57:21,534
The cycle of Black film
was slowly winding down,
2049
01:57:21,617 --> 01:57:24,662
as the sure-bet returns
on Black films of a certain type
2050
01:57:24,746 --> 01:57:27,957
were diminishing at a rate
that seemed exponential.
2051
01:57:28,041 --> 01:57:32,503
So, there was no place
for a peculiar high point of the 1970s,
2052
01:57:32,587 --> 01:57:34,964
a biopic about a real-life boxer,
2053
01:57:35,048 --> 01:57:38,551
with a theme song that initially
provoked unintentional laughs.
2054
01:57:51,105 --> 01:57:53,441
Houston's chart-topping
claiming of this song
2055
01:57:53,524 --> 01:57:57,820
lifted it from ode to self-absorption
to self-empowerment hymn.
2056
01:57:57,904 --> 01:58:01,866
This embrace of "The Greatest Love of All"
was a generational shift.
2057
01:58:02,366 --> 01:58:06,162
Following the lead of actors from 1968
adopting Ali's bravado,
2058
01:58:06,245 --> 01:58:09,499
it signaled the change
in mainstream perception of Ali,
2059
01:58:09,582 --> 01:58:12,126
from showboat
to "The Greatest Love of All."
2060
01:58:14,295 --> 01:58:17,381
Prior to this 1968 through '78 era,
2061
01:58:17,465 --> 01:58:19,717
movie soundtracks
didn't matter to the studios
2062
01:58:19,801 --> 01:58:22,011
because they didn't
consistently sell much,
2063
01:58:22,095 --> 01:58:25,056
and usually came out
months after the movies were released.
2064
01:58:25,139 --> 01:58:27,517
Black '70s film ignored that example.
2065
01:58:28,351 --> 01:58:33,397
The scores weren't just textures
but detonations of thought and sound.
2066
01:58:33,481 --> 01:58:38,569
Their boldness transformed movie music
and mainstream music forever.
2067
01:58:38,653 --> 01:58:41,906
Suddenly, movie music
was a commercial consideration.
2068
01:58:41,989 --> 01:58:44,158
Black film soundtracks multiplied,
2069
01:58:44,242 --> 01:58:48,496
composed and performed
by R&B singers, jazz artists,
2070
01:58:48,579 --> 01:58:52,792
classically trained musicians,
who made a fusion of classical and modern.
2071
01:58:52,875 --> 01:58:55,336
Master session drummer Bernard Purdie
2072
01:58:55,419 --> 01:58:58,005
was out to show
the true definition of funk
2073
01:58:58,089 --> 01:59:00,299
in the Black X-rated film Lialeh,
2074
01:59:00,383 --> 01:59:03,970
where he's on camera playing the score
he composed for the movie.
2075
01:59:06,556 --> 01:59:09,142
Eventually, the movies
would have to take notice
2076
01:59:09,225 --> 01:59:13,062
because too many hits were coming out
of these Black movie scores.
2077
01:59:18,359 --> 01:59:20,361
Robert Stigwood was producing a movie
2078
01:59:20,444 --> 01:59:23,281
about the white middle-class
being consumed by disco.
2079
01:59:23,781 --> 01:59:25,533
You know, Black music.
2080
01:59:25,616 --> 01:59:28,286
Because Stigwood also owned
a record label,
2081
01:59:28,369 --> 01:59:31,914
he made sure to use a film soundtrack
featuring his biggest artists,
2082
01:59:31,998 --> 01:59:33,833
the Bee Gees, to sell the movie
2083
01:59:33,916 --> 01:59:38,087
and help his potential audience
get over its fear of a Black planet.
2084
01:59:38,171 --> 01:59:41,382
Soon, soundtracks would come
to dominate the pop charts
2085
01:59:41,465 --> 01:59:44,719
and be expected to
because of the Black film example.
2086
01:59:44,802 --> 01:59:47,930
It's one of the many lasting
and unheralded achievements
2087
01:59:48,014 --> 01:59:49,599
of Black film of this era.
2088
01:59:53,311 --> 01:59:56,856
In 1977, the most attractive points
of Black film,
2089
01:59:56,939 --> 02:00:01,235
the entrance, the confidence,
the propulsive theme to announce the star,
2090
02:00:01,319 --> 02:00:04,822
like this, finally received its homage
in a mainstream movie.
2091
02:00:12,872 --> 02:00:14,874
Which is to say,
every generation
2092
02:00:14,957 --> 02:00:16,834
gets its own Elvis or Eminem.
2093
02:00:19,378 --> 02:00:23,633
John Travolta was another note
in the decades-long symphony of swagger,
2094
02:00:24,425 --> 02:00:26,552
an off-white take on Black cool,
2095
02:00:27,094 --> 02:00:28,471
the next best thing.
2096
02:00:29,847 --> 02:00:31,933
Travolta, as Tony Manero,
2097
02:00:32,016 --> 02:00:35,269
may not have been the first to use
Black beats of stylization,
2098
02:00:35,353 --> 02:00:38,898
but he embraced it
with a bone-deep flair for expropriation.
2099
02:00:38,981 --> 02:00:40,983
His intensity and intent
2100
02:00:41,067 --> 02:00:44,070
became a truly realized
cultural phenomenon,
2101
02:00:44,612 --> 02:00:45,655
the biggest ever.
2102
02:00:47,490 --> 02:00:51,619
By 1978, Richard Pryor
had appeared in 20 movies.
2103
02:00:51,702 --> 02:00:54,330
With the exception of a handful of turns,
2104
02:00:54,413 --> 02:00:58,125
his live standup, and Wattstax,
none consistently made use of his talent.
2105
02:00:58,209 --> 02:00:59,585
Wanna buy a radio?
2106
02:00:59,669 --> 02:01:01,921
My locker's been busted
for six months now, man,
2107
02:01:02,004 --> 02:01:04,257
and the company ain't did shit to fix it.
2108
02:01:04,340 --> 02:01:06,968
Now I have to stick my finger
in some tiny-ass hole.
2109
02:01:07,051 --> 02:01:10,513
I cut my finger, man,
two weeks ago, and it ain't healed yet.
2110
02:01:10,596 --> 02:01:15,309
In '78, he costarred
in what would be a most demanding role.
2111
02:01:15,393 --> 02:01:19,188
He played a volatile
and miserable autoworker in Blue Collar,
2112
02:01:19,730 --> 02:01:22,984
which would also remain
his own favorite acting work.
2113
02:01:23,693 --> 02:01:26,487
You a redneck, peckerwood motherfucker,
you know that?
2114
02:01:26,570 --> 02:01:29,031
That's it, you're through.
I've had your bullshit.
2115
02:01:29,115 --> 02:01:31,492
I'mma kill a motherfucker!
You understand that?
2116
02:01:31,575 --> 02:01:34,245
It was a film
whose atmosphere was so combative,
2117
02:01:34,328 --> 02:01:37,498
you could make a great movie
about the making of Blue Collar.
2118
02:01:37,581 --> 02:01:39,333
It would be the following year
2119
02:01:39,417 --> 02:01:42,253
that Pryor would release himself
from fur-lined handcuffs
2120
02:01:42,336 --> 02:01:45,089
in his most complex and remarkable role,
2121
02:01:45,172 --> 02:01:46,007
himself.
2122
02:01:46,090 --> 02:01:49,802
I don't wanna never see
no more police in my life.
2123
02:01:51,887 --> 02:01:53,639
At my house.
2124
02:01:54,390 --> 02:01:57,893
To witness Pryor's startling,
jazz-drummer control
2125
02:01:57,977 --> 02:01:59,687
in the film Live in Concert
2126
02:01:59,770 --> 02:02:03,107
is to see
he was the Tony Williams of comedians.
2127
02:02:03,941 --> 02:02:06,610
It only highlighted
how the studios made movies,
2128
02:02:06,694 --> 02:02:10,156
such as The Wiz,
that squandered his blistering truth.
2129
02:02:10,239 --> 02:02:11,574
Phony!
2130
02:02:12,241 --> 02:02:14,535
At this point,
it feels like only one thing
2131
02:02:14,618 --> 02:02:16,579
can save Black film from oblivion.
2132
02:02:16,662 --> 02:02:18,748
The Wiz is out! He's not here!
2133
02:02:19,415 --> 02:02:21,417
I'm on my way to find The Wiz.
2134
02:02:22,043 --> 02:02:23,711
He's gonna get me back home.
2135
02:02:24,420 --> 02:02:25,504
Well, that's nice.
2136
02:02:25,588 --> 02:02:29,800
Was it an all-stops-out musical
from one of the most respected directors,
2137
02:02:29,884 --> 02:02:32,636
with a film debut
of a performer destined to become
2138
02:02:32,720 --> 02:02:35,514
the biggest pop music phenomenon
of the next decade
2139
02:02:35,598 --> 02:02:38,517
and a budget that could possibly equal
what was spent
2140
02:02:38,601 --> 02:02:41,354
to make all the Black films
produced in 1968?
2141
02:02:41,437 --> 02:02:45,274
A good thought in the abstract
but probably not in real life.
2142
02:02:45,358 --> 02:02:47,610
The director was someone whose best work
2143
02:02:47,693 --> 02:02:51,781
was tense, gritty movies,
such as Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon.
2144
02:02:51,864 --> 02:02:54,575
The star's about 20 years too old
for the part,
2145
02:02:54,658 --> 02:02:55,951
and the expressionism
2146
02:02:56,035 --> 02:02:58,537
and gospel-flavor intimacy
of the stage show
2147
02:02:58,621 --> 02:03:01,916
is replaced by hundreds of extras
trying not to bump into each other
2148
02:03:01,999 --> 02:03:06,420
in outfits that still seem to have
shiny price tags hanging off them.
2149
02:03:06,504 --> 02:03:11,092
The Wiz is said to have cost
between 25 and 40 million dollars to make,
2150
02:03:11,175 --> 02:03:13,219
as much as Super Fly grossed.
2151
02:03:13,302 --> 02:03:16,180
It lacked the infectious aplomb
and winning brio
2152
02:03:16,263 --> 02:03:18,224
of the Black movies that did succeed.
2153
02:03:18,307 --> 02:03:21,018
It only made
about a third of its costs back.
2154
02:03:21,102 --> 02:03:22,561
Sure, it may have got bad reviews,
2155
02:03:22,645 --> 02:03:25,398
but so did most of the films
that did extraordinary business.
2156
02:03:25,481 --> 02:03:27,983
The simple fact is The Wiz lost money.
2157
02:03:28,067 --> 02:03:31,612
So much that it gave the movie industry
the reason it had been looking for
2158
02:03:31,695 --> 02:03:34,407
to withdraw from the Black movie business
2159
02:03:34,490 --> 02:03:37,493
and handed movie executives
the chance to say things like,
2160
02:03:37,576 --> 02:03:40,371
"Black people don't wanna see themselves
in movies anymore."
2161
02:03:40,454 --> 02:03:42,498
Or something I actually heard from one,
2162
02:03:42,581 --> 02:03:45,751
"Black people don't see themselves
in historical dramas anyway."
2163
02:03:47,420 --> 02:03:49,046
It was in 1978
2164
02:03:49,130 --> 02:03:52,425
that the white male movie star
reaccepted the mantle of hero
2165
02:03:52,508 --> 02:03:57,012
after rejecting it to embody
the tormented antihero for over a decade,
2166
02:03:57,680 --> 02:04:01,183
the sure and steely-eyed hero archetype…
2167
02:04:01,684 --> 02:04:03,894
Burt Reynolds is Hooper.
2168
02:04:03,978 --> 02:04:06,188
And Hooper is a real hero.
2169
02:04:06,272 --> 02:04:08,023
…and finally
absorbed the lesson
2170
02:04:08,107 --> 02:04:10,609
that these Black films
understood early on.
2171
02:04:10,693 --> 02:04:13,529
The biggest myth that the movies promoted,
2172
02:04:13,612 --> 02:04:16,323
going back to D.W. Griffith
and even before,
2173
02:04:16,407 --> 02:04:18,576
is that we want to be saved.
2174
02:04:19,201 --> 02:04:21,787
But it's often a satisfying lie,
2175
02:04:21,871 --> 02:04:26,000
a chili cheeseburger,
poisonous but so good.
2176
02:04:27,084 --> 02:04:28,043
All right…
2177
02:04:28,127 --> 02:04:32,298
Warren Beatty ascended
from impotent bank robber to the heavens.
2178
02:04:32,381 --> 02:04:35,926
Heaven Can Wait could be viewed
as the closing of a circle,
2179
02:04:36,010 --> 02:04:38,637
because a '70s remake
of Here Comes Mr. Jordan
2180
02:04:38,721 --> 02:04:41,474
began its life
in the hands of a Black performer
2181
02:04:41,557 --> 02:04:43,184
working with Francis Coppola.
2182
02:04:43,267 --> 02:04:46,479
It was a really funny script
because he's this white guy
2183
02:04:46,562 --> 02:04:49,023
who dies and comes back as Bill Cosby,
2184
02:04:49,106 --> 02:04:51,275
but everyone sees him as white.
2185
02:04:52,067 --> 02:04:54,487
He liked--
I don't know why it was never done.
2186
02:04:54,987 --> 02:04:58,115
Robert De Niro
employed his movie-star concentration
2187
02:04:58,199 --> 02:05:00,034
to play an old-school avenger.
2188
02:05:00,701 --> 02:05:03,871
Clint Eastwood put down his .44 Magnum
to hang with the apes.
2189
02:05:04,830 --> 02:05:08,250
And the rocket that was launched
from the planet Krypton by DC Comics
2190
02:05:08,334 --> 02:05:09,668
in 1938
2191
02:05:09,752 --> 02:05:12,963
finally deposited its contents
on the movie screen.
2192
02:05:28,229 --> 02:05:32,441
But by 1978, the crowning achievement
of the decade came into focus,
2193
02:05:32,525 --> 02:05:36,195
a work of art that had been playing
since the end of the previous year.
2194
02:05:37,363 --> 02:05:39,615
This film took the director
much of the decade
2195
02:05:39,698 --> 02:05:40,866
to complete and release,
2196
02:05:40,950 --> 02:05:43,786
though, to be fair,
it was a thesis project.
2197
02:05:43,869 --> 02:05:46,872
It used music deftly
to illustrate character and setting
2198
02:05:46,956 --> 02:05:49,583
and showed an alluring command
of the medium
2199
02:05:49,667 --> 02:05:51,835
and would be imitated
into the next century.
2200
02:06:10,980 --> 02:06:13,691
Burnett borrowed
Dinah Washington's "This Bitter Earth"
2201
02:06:13,774 --> 02:06:15,276
for its delicate heartache.
2202
02:06:15,359 --> 02:06:19,071
And Martin Scorsese paid tribute
to the scene in both image and music.
2203
02:06:22,241 --> 02:06:24,743
-I'll catch you!
-Can't get me, Janice!
2204
02:06:24,827 --> 02:06:28,330
These people I grew up with,
I really admired them, you know,
2205
02:06:28,414 --> 02:06:30,249
the fathers who, you know…
2206
02:06:30,332 --> 02:06:32,501
Unlike Hollywood films, that they…
2207
02:06:32,585 --> 02:06:36,380
Everyone's a prostitute
or doing something or leaving the family,
2208
02:06:36,463 --> 02:06:38,757
and a mother to take care,
a single parent,
2209
02:06:38,841 --> 02:06:42,720
these parents and fathers
were working hard, you know,
2210
02:06:42,803 --> 02:06:44,054
and I tried to be like 'em.
2211
02:06:44,138 --> 02:06:45,681
And I grew up in a community
2212
02:06:45,764 --> 02:06:50,185
that I really respected the people
and liked 'em because I saw who they were,
2213
02:06:50,269 --> 02:06:53,939
and those are the kinds of people
I didn't see represented in stories.
2214
02:06:54,857 --> 02:06:58,736
'Cause they were working-class people.
Watts was a really interesting place.
2215
02:07:00,613 --> 02:07:02,197
When I first went to UCLA,
2216
02:07:02,281 --> 02:07:06,160
they had this end-of-the-quarter screening
called Royce Hall Screenings.
2217
02:07:06,243 --> 02:07:08,996
And they showed all the best films
that were shown at…
2218
02:07:09,079 --> 02:07:11,290
in the film department that year.
2219
02:07:11,790 --> 02:07:15,628
And I was taking a class with…
The teacher was Basil Wright.
2220
02:07:15,711 --> 02:07:19,256
He was a documentary filmmaker
who did Song of Ceylon, things like that.
2221
02:07:19,340 --> 02:07:21,258
I was so lucky to get in his class.
2222
02:07:21,342 --> 02:07:24,345
And I remember going to the screenings
at Royce Hall,
2223
02:07:24,428 --> 02:07:27,431
and I couldn't understand a word
of what was going on.
2224
02:07:27,514 --> 02:07:28,682
I… I didn't identify--
2225
02:07:28,766 --> 02:07:32,102
I mean, it was a time when
the flower children was a big thing.
2226
02:07:32,186 --> 02:07:33,562
You know, nudity, you know,
2227
02:07:33,646 --> 02:07:36,065
going up to… going up to Topanga Canyon,
2228
02:07:36,148 --> 02:07:39,902
you know, and the guys are getting weed
and all this kind of stuff
2229
02:07:39,985 --> 02:07:41,779
and just finding themselves,
2230
02:07:41,862 --> 02:07:44,156
rediscovering themselves
and their sexuality.
2231
02:07:44,740 --> 02:07:47,868
And, I mean, those weren't the issues
in my community.
2232
02:07:57,670 --> 02:08:00,798
Killer of Sheep
demonstrated the potential of the medium
2233
02:08:00,881 --> 02:08:03,717
by a poet finding beauty
in his own neighborhood.
2234
02:08:03,801 --> 02:08:07,012
And, of course,
he was ignored by the mainstream press.
2235
02:08:07,096 --> 02:08:09,056
There was no takeaway from it,
2236
02:08:09,139 --> 02:08:12,726
even as filmmakers
made entire careers out of copying it.
2237
02:08:12,810 --> 02:08:15,312
And Black film was left to wither and die.
2238
02:08:15,813 --> 02:08:16,897
But it refused to.
2239
02:08:17,481 --> 02:08:21,360
In every decade since 1978,
there's been a rise and fall
2240
02:08:21,443 --> 02:08:24,279
for gifted Black filmmakers
who won't give up.
2241
02:08:24,363 --> 02:08:26,949
Is the lesson that those
who cannot remember the past
2242
02:08:27,032 --> 02:08:29,076
are condemned to keep remaking Shaft?
2243
02:08:29,576 --> 02:08:32,663
There's much talk of the pride
that came out of the period, but again,
2244
02:08:32,746 --> 02:08:37,626
I think of something my grandmother said,
"You don't want pride. It's a trap."
2245
02:08:37,710 --> 02:08:40,671
"That means you want someone
to see your chest swelled up."
2246
02:08:40,754 --> 02:08:42,214
"It's a selfish thing."
2247
02:08:42,297 --> 02:08:46,009
"Instead, take pleasure in what you do.
That belongs to you."
2248
02:08:46,552 --> 02:08:49,221
"It's something you want others
to share in with you."
2249
02:08:49,722 --> 02:08:51,515
It's what I got from those films.
2250
02:08:51,598 --> 02:08:53,976
The pleasure those talents took
in making the movies,
2251
02:08:54,059 --> 02:08:57,020
they passed on to me and to others,
2252
02:08:57,104 --> 02:08:58,313
and it's a living thing.
2253
02:09:25,841 --> 02:09:27,760
For the dudes who ain't here, huh?
2254
02:09:28,385 --> 02:09:33,766
In addition to being a repository of hope,
they were empirical proof
2255
02:09:34,308 --> 02:09:36,685
that we were here, that we exist,
2256
02:09:37,186 --> 02:09:38,771
that we create culture,
2257
02:09:39,271 --> 02:09:41,732
that our community is a viable community,
2258
02:09:41,815 --> 02:09:43,358
is an important community,
2259
02:09:43,859 --> 02:09:47,196
that we have voices,
and that we will be heard.
2260
02:09:49,114 --> 02:09:50,449
A final note,
2261
02:09:50,532 --> 02:09:53,494
one person symbolized
all the ups and downs of the period.
2262
02:09:53,577 --> 02:09:56,789
Going from number one
at the box office to irrelevance
2263
02:09:56,872 --> 02:09:59,333
to being one of the last left standing.
2264
02:09:59,416 --> 02:10:00,834
Sidney Poitier,
2265
02:10:00,918 --> 02:10:04,046
who shifted his trajectory
but didn't slow a step.
2266
02:10:04,546 --> 02:10:08,133
He trusted his compact
with Black audiences would remain intact.
2267
02:10:10,260 --> 02:10:14,973
From 1968 through '78,
he directed and starred in five films…
2268
02:10:15,057 --> 02:10:16,975
I put my faith in the good book.
2269
02:10:17,059 --> 02:10:21,188
…all of which centered on characters
pretending to be something they're not.
2270
02:10:21,271 --> 02:10:24,149
Damn, man, we trusted you!
I mean, why us?!
2271
02:10:25,442 --> 02:10:26,777
Why not you, brother?
2272
02:10:26,860 --> 02:10:28,987
I once asked him about this
2273
02:10:29,071 --> 02:10:31,323
one of the handful of times
I spoke to him,
2274
02:10:31,406 --> 02:10:33,992
all ending with him
turning me down for an interview.
2275
02:10:34,076 --> 02:10:36,203
When I mentioned
that his five directing efforts
2276
02:10:36,286 --> 02:10:38,372
were all about imposture…
2277
02:10:38,455 --> 02:10:39,373
Open your eyes.
2278
02:10:39,456 --> 02:10:41,166
…he laughed and said,
2279
02:10:41,250 --> 02:10:45,045
"Young man, I already have a therapist.
I don't need another one."
2280
02:10:45,546 --> 02:10:49,967
You are capable of great feats
of strength and courage.
2281
02:10:50,634 --> 02:10:53,303
Strength and courage.
2282
02:10:53,387 --> 02:10:59,268
You can beat any fighter in the world.
You will win the championship.
2283
02:11:01,395 --> 02:11:03,522
-I will?
-Yes!
2284
02:11:05,274 --> 02:11:08,652
But being Black in America
is often about remembering
2285
02:11:08,735 --> 02:11:11,989
that what you think you are
isn't what other people see
2286
02:11:12,072 --> 02:11:15,576
and figuring out the distance
between those two perceptions.
2287
02:11:16,159 --> 02:11:19,079
I think it's something
my grandmother would have agreed with.