Beginnings and Great FIlms

Last week, a former student of mine, Japonica Brown, received the first big break of her career.  Such moments, for all of us, validate our training and deep down, our choices, to live a life often fraught with disappointment and criticism.  Talking to her about her recent stage work and her new television role led me to remember two other Tougaloo actresses, Mia Ellis and Jasmine Hughes, who are now embarking upon similar careers. This led me to think about the early films of some of my favorites actors.  In the early days of their careers, Japonica, Mia, and Jasmine will be thankful for the small roles, thankful for the work, and thankful for the checks, but eventually, they will be negotiating pay-or-play deals and have entourages.  (All I've ever asked for was a trip to a well-stocked swag room!)    Something tells me, though, that they will look fondly upon the days when they could walk the streets and grab some McDonald's unnoticed.  The price of fame has always been anonymity.

 

As Department Chair at Tougaloo, I did a lot of needless paperwork, dealt with massive administrative incompetence, and taught a full course load among other things.   But then, I was able to do something blissfully amazing.  I hired some good people and developed programs. One of the most important acts in my tenure was hiring Rebecca Hardin-Thrift and developing a quality creative writing/drama program.  And wow! The first production was 'Night Mother. Not only is the play an excellent one, but it only required two actors and a minimal set which in Tougaloo College terms means, "minimal costs." In the film version, Anne Bancroft plays the overbearing, oblivious mother, and Sissy Spacek, the determined suicidal daughter.  Though I had never seen the play's theatrical production, I greatly respected the work of the film.   I was so glad Rebecca had picked a good play, and I hope you, dear reader, understand my meaning here, and not one that was "black" simply because Tougaloo is a predominately black school and she, a white teacher.  That said and to clarify things even further, the drama program also did the real For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf, Our Town, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Dutchman, and Vital Signs...you get the point.  

But I digress... Japonica Brown was cast as the mother, and without seeing the film (you know I asked), was the very image of Bancroft. Played it damn near identically.  I knew then what I can tell you now... Japonica Brown is a damn fine actor.  Her comedic and dramatic timing was impeccable, but most importantly, she seemed transformed. The role is a good one, but not transformative by nature.  What I mean is that Japonica had changed into someone else and wasn't Japonica playing a character. She was her; for that period of time, she was Thelma Cates.  

   

I remember the first time I saw all three perform for the first time at Tougaloo.  Jasmine, who had transferred to Tougaloo from Kent State (yeah, that one) in the second semester was an exceptional student who had plans bigger than Tougaloo. Some days, though, as she will attest, it was a struggle to get her to embrace the Tougaloo moment to get to the Hollywood moment. The first time I saw her perform was at a pageant, probably the Miss Tougaloo, as entertainment.   Jasmine performed Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman." Entering from the back of the room, she command attention much like Truth must have from beginning to end.  While most play it as a downtrodden former slave, Jasmine played it sassy, giving Truth a different perspective and voice. Most people tremble when they perform "Ain't I a Woman." Not Jasmine.  Big floppy black hat and fan in hand, Jasmine's Truth wasn't bent by her life as a black woman, she was inspired by it. 

Now, Mia, is quite the different story.  You notice her spirit before you notice her, and because she is so incredibly sweet, she was overlooked for student-run productions. She takes rejection better than anyone I know.  Mia doesn't curse--even when she should. Mia doesn't drink--even when she should. She tells her family she loves them as a matter of daily record, and you could trust her to hold a million dollars for years and she won't spend a dime simply because you asked her not to do so. But she got a break when Clinnesha Dillon, Tougaloo's playwright, was directing her senior project, Hand Me Down Blues.  Cast as a wise-cracking maid and queen of the malaprop, Mia stole the show right from under the lead!  No one had ever seen Mia outside her usual self, and it made a huge difference.  From there, she played the twisted Lula (in whiteface) for The Dutchman. She cursed. She cajoled. She seduced.  Mia, like Japonica, transforms, and when the play is over, she was Mia again.  Beautifully serene and grateful for the experience.  When she auditioned for the MFA program in Acting at Brown, the Department Chair remarked that she had a "good soul" (I hope I got that right, but the essence, I'm sure.). She has one of the best--period.

So, in the spirit of these young thespians and Rebecca Hardin-Thrift's work with the drama program, I offer a short list of early films by big name, often one-name, actors. 

Ironically, this first one is an adaptation of a play: A Soldier's Story.  (Take note, Tyler. No, I'm not over it yet.)  Imagine a young Denzel, David Allan Grier, Robert Townsend, and Howard Rollins. Don't forget William Allen Young (Moesha's dad), Larry Riley, and Patti LaBelle!  

Badlands: Based on a true story, this is Sissy Spacek's first film.  Also, check out Raggedy Man and Carrie.  

For early cameos of Samuel L. Jackson in his pre-Shaft days, check out Sea of Love (Al Pacino and Ellen Barkin). Great movie and he's in one of the earliest scenes and has two lines, so don't blink.  Also, watch Spike Lee's School Daze.  His big film break is as Gator in Spike's Jungle Fever, which is also Halle Berry's debut as his crack-smoking girlfriend.  Jackson's performance is even more chilling since he plays an addict not too long after leaving rehab himself.  Now, Sam's really big break was in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, which is one of those movies who MUST see at least three times and definitely before you die.   

Laurence Fishburne fans should check him out when he was Larry:  Cornbread, Earl, and Me and Apocalypse Now.  And lest we forget his role as Swain in The Color Purple. Clearly Oprah has forgotten since he wasn't on the television reunion special but Shug turns to Swain for support just before she takes off for the church, not Celie, Sophia, or Harpo. Just Swain. 

I love Sean Penn, but before he won two Oscars, he was the resident bad boy of Hollywood and former Mr. Madonna who never quite fit into the Brat Pack.  Good thing.  He's still working. Many of them aren't.  See his comedic side in  Fast Times at Ridgemont High (as well as Anthony Edwards before E.R. and Forest Whitaker before Last King of Scotland). But the film that made him a star was Bad Boys, and no, Will and Martin aren't in it.  

Have a good film week, folks!  I saw Denzel in Unstoppable. Great action film! Worth the price of the ticket.

Magnolias, 

CLJ

Non-Holiday Films for the Holidays

Non-holiday films for the holidays 

Well, it's Fall Break, or Thanksgiving Break, and I've been preparing for Black Friday for a couple of weeks now. I've had no takers from Facebook to assist me in covering my three stores, so that's that.  Not only will I not sleep from Thursday to Friday afternoon, I will do so with minimal help unless the husband really does come this year. 

But three films have really been popping into my head lately, A Raisin in the Sun, Barbershop and Cadillac Records. Strange combination, I know.  Many know how I LOVE the original adaptation with Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee.  Poitier's Walter Lee Younger must learn to both appreciate his family and learn his place as its new patriarch.  He learns this in a way that can almost be considered tragically transformative, almost losing everything, including himself. 

I've often regarded both Barbershop movies highly. Like A Raisin in the Sun, its ultimate lesson is to realize that the life you have and the people within that life are more important than any material gain. After a long day, Calvin, Jr. (Ice Cube) realizes that his shop is "worth saving."  He becomes a man that day who appreciates his family--immediate and extended.  Sound familiar?  It should.  Calvin Jr. is a modern-day Walter Lee Younger, and like Walter, he learns almost too late that the very life from which he is running away, is the very life he loves and should love.  Thus, he should be thankful.  I learned to take a hard look at those people and things in my life that I took for granted and were taking me for granted.  Some were worth saving, and some weren't. I removed much of which wasn't worth saving to focus my energies on that which was.  Most importantly, though, I learned that I am always worth saving, and acted accordingly. 

Now where exactly does Cadillac Records fit in here...Well, remember, I told you I'm a big Black Friday shopper.  When Howling Wolf, perfectly performed by Eamonn Walker, drives to Chicago from Mississippi and parks his old beat-up truck in front of Chess Records, Len Chess offers to give him a $100 advance.  Wolf responds, "I don't borrow against the store. Just pay me what you owe me."  Of course, this is antithetical to the way Chess has handled things but he knows right then that Howling Wolf knows the game he's been playing on his artists.  Wolf is from Mississippi, so is Muddy Waters, but somehow Muddy confused tolerance with friendship and business along the way, and has forgotten a few things. (And I won't even tell you how much I love Jeffrey Wright in this film. He remains one of the best even with a mediocre script!)  Alas, one of the most important concepts here, and one I learned a little late is "not to borrow against the store."   


This means, people, that I no longer use credit unless in extreme emergencies. Black Friday isn't an extreme emergency unless it's something for my mother; everyone can understand that, I hope.   


So, as you get ready for Friday and the Christmas shopping season, remember to stop and be thankful for your blessings and please, don't borrow against the store to show people you love them. If they really loved you, they wouldn't want you to ruin your financial life for a bauble or as James Weldon Johnson puts it, "a mess of pottage."


Magnolias, 
CLJ


P.S. I know some of you thought I was going to bash Beyonce's performance.  Not going to give you the satisfaction.  Ha!  Oh, what the hay...She should never take a role in which she must curse. It's clearly evident that she doesn't use profanity in her personal life, so those scenes were just painful. Lest we forget the hotel scene, the restaurant scene, the empty house scene.  Her best scenes involved the music. Sing, Bey, just sing. 

Review of Tyler Perry's For Colored Girls (2010)

When I heard that Tyler Perry would be helming the film adaptation of  Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf, my first thought was, unfortunately, “damn.”  A reverently and simply whispered, “damn.”  Don’t get me wrong I appreciate what Tyler Perry has accomplished in a very short period of time. I go to his movies, and his signature character Madea, despite the critics, is actually part of a tradition of comedians in drag from Milton Berle to Flip Wilson’s Geraldine.  (For those of you who don’t know Flip Wilson’s Geraldine…shame.) On this, we as a community have been too hard on Perry, because whether we acknowledge it, we all have a Madea in our families just like we all have addicts and ne’er-do-wells.  Including me.

That said, I recognize that the most successful black director—or director—for that matter is not a filmmaker, and definitely had no real experience in employing the strategies and techniques that an adaptation of this place required.  This film would be its only chance for celluloid, and while it will continue to be financially successful, it will not be considered a great film.  So, like many black folks I know, I waited with baited breath.  (I was not pleased with Why Did I Get Married 2; the film had serious continuity problems and even the actors seemed out of sync…but I digress. See my mini-review on iTunes.) Considering that this will be the definitive film adaptation I am reminded of Spike Lee’s 4 Little Girls. Spike originally proposed the film when he was a film student; the parents said no, recognizing even if he didn’t that the story could only be told once and that Spike just wasn’t ready.  And he wasn’t.  When he was, they consented to the documentary; they had been waiting for him.   For Colored Girls was such a groundbreaking (Tony-nominated) play, and Perry isn’t skilled enough to make this adaptation the epic it needed.  We should have waited for him a little longer.

Opening weekend found me at the theatre with the husband who had already facebooked that he hoped the film wouldn’t be a male bashing film…a Color Purple, Women of Brewster Place, Waiting to Exhale moment for black women and would inevitably begin one of our notoriously serious discussions…

Previews….waiting….Previews…Lights dim…Previews….Waiting…Shhhh…Damn, more (black) people who won’t shut up…Movie starts…

So here goes… Tyler Perry did the absolute best directing job he could possibly do. 

Perry tells linear stories. For Colored Girls isn’t supposed to be a linear story.  And the first point of concern was how would Perry weave the poetics of Shange into a Tyler Perry script. One critic said the “words were from two different worlds.”  I must agree.  To alleviate the problem, Perry could have decided not to pen the script and let Shange revisit and revise, or use the monologues as necessary and when appropriate, or not at all.  Had Perry used flashbacks and maintained the integrity of the play’s original monologue-laden direction, then the use of monologues may not have been a problem.  As it stands, some scenes were forced and contrived in which the monologue breaks the continuity of Perry’s dialogue and jars the audience into another film space that seems foreign to the moment before it.

Now, to be fair, the film does have its endearing moments, but this is not a film for laughter.  This is a film to be internalized and to make us uncomfortable, not by which to be entertained.    

Were it not for the bevy of talented actresses, give or take a couple, this film would have failed miserably.    Loretta Devine, Phylicia Rashad, Kimberly Elise, and Anika Noni Rose, are clearly actors for the ages. Their performances are top-notch and they know how to make the unseamless transition from Perry’s to Shange’s to Perry’s dialogue at least look somewhat seamless. 

Rose’s is perfectly cast as the Lady in Yellow. You smile with her, and you are there on that floor with her.  More than a few of us recognized how a few moments can change a life.  And Perry’s need to give us a comedic moment is found as she delivers a slap to the corpse of her rapist. But this isn’t a moment for comedy, and though it gives us a chance to lighten up a bit, laughing, even here in this moment, feels wrong.

Kimberly Elise is absolutely phenomenal as an abused woman who does not leave in time.  She becomes this woman, who we know all too well. She is the woman who downplays her beauty to satisfy the jealous rages of her man, who endures abuse at home and at work, and who is so numb to her life that she lives one minute at a time.  This is where Perry is at his strongest. He’s made his career on the downtrodden black woman, and Elise’s performance transcends his usual fair with a simple question: Am I dreaming?  

Phylicia Rashad as the apartment building’s den mother offers a strong performance, and is most powerful when she forces Elise’s character to take partial responsibility for the deaths of her children.  Yet, even in this scene, I am reminded of Perry’s penchant for the homage. Oprah has this same scene with Lynn Whitfield in The Women of Brewster Place. Thanks for the shout-out, I’m sure, Mr. Perry. But she doesn’t really have her own story but through the stories of others, and this is a serious flaw here.  Who is this woman who lives between an abused mother and an abused daughter? Who is this woman who has survived?

Perhaps the best-defined performance of the film is Loretta Devine’s as the Woman in Green.  We knew the monologue was coming, and Perry actually directs this well. We know her. We know women who are strong everywhere but at home, who love to damn distraction, and who, one day, simply have had enough.  The movement of her monologue from one scene to the community center was a perfect transition and the highlight of the film. She has survived. Exhale.

Thandie Newton and Whoopi Goldberg are likewise exceptional but their characters lack the development to make their performances mean something to you.   Whoopi plays crazy well enough but we don’t interact with her enough to know her, and Thandie’s overnight change seems rushed. Had Perry realized that his audience would have engage for the additional half hour it would have taken to tell their stories we might appreciate them more.  And the young girl playing the sister is not unforgettable but I don’t remember her name, do you?  I’m sure we’ll see her again after this though.  Perry keeps his favorites working; she’ll show up on Meet the Browns or House of Payne eventually. 

Perry has no idea what to do with Kerry Washington in this film. Her monologue would have been wonderfully told in flashback but alas, we have her story in a kitchen with glassy eyes that don’t tell us much.   As with Rashad’s character, we must ask: Who is she? He created Hill Harper’s character so that their would be one good brother but doesn’t use him nearly enough. 

Macy Gray realizes her strength and weaknesses of her voice; she’s not going to be a leading lady and she doesn’t try to be.  She knows she’s scary…

Now…I have saved Janet Jackson’s performance until now, because the tragedy of her performance is that she really believes she can act.  Well, maybe as Penny, but by Different Strokes and Fame, something was lost on the way to the studio.  She did well in the first Why Did I Get Married because not much was required, but by the sequel, she and Perry just couldn’t get there.  His decision to cast her in For Colored Girls was clearly the remnants of a childhood crush and near idolatry.  She just doesn’t have the range to play this character, and part of that problem is her character isn’t three dimensional enough to help her.  She isn’t believable, because she isn’t real. A woman that strong and bitchy at the office is usually a pushover at the house.  Not for Janet though. She’s equal opportunity cold—and stiff.   And of course, she gets the DL brother.  Of course, she contracts HIV. Of course, she kills him. No. Wait. Are they sitting on the bed? Back to back? No knife in her hand? Really, Perry?  Are you dreaming?

Well, she does give the community center a check but still flinches when being hugged. Okay then.

And so it goes…all of the women convene on a rooftop to celebrate the young girl going to college. 

Whoopi comes by—still crazy—and leaves unchanged.  Janet has already confided that she has HIV and then they all rise to look at the stars or moon, fire going. Can anyone say Waiting to Exhale? End scene.  

For Colored Girls could have been an epic but it’s an enjoyable movie. Perry has been focusing on abuse so long he misses the point that the play is about empowerment, not abuse. When those women stand on the stage, they stand there to tell their stories as stories of survival from the abuse that could have killed them, made them kill themselves.  But they only considered it…

So, go see the movie. Love the movie. Be inspired to write poems and sing (cue my Color Purple moment.) Buy the DVD, not the bootleg. Support all efforts for a Broadway revival.   Most of all, though, survive and surpass. Period.