African-American

CAR WASH: insight amidst the hijinks

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Otis Day, Antonio Fargas and Darrow Igus in CAR WASH. Courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Here’s a jubilant good time at the movies. On June 19, Turner Classic Movies will air the unpretentious ground-breaker Car Wash from 1976. Car Wash portrays the raucous hijinks and foibles of the crew at a downtown LA car wash, the Dee-Luxe, and explores a diversity of contemporary African-American perspectives. And the title song became a major disco hit.

The mostly African-American crew of the Dee-Luxe is very aware that they are at the bottom rung of the economic ladder. The work is menial and boring, and they have no stake in the enterprise. To pass the time, they resort to teasing and pranks. Some of the antics are sophomoric, and many are politically incorrect.

Car Wash samples a range African-American perspectives, from an angry African nationalist to a flamboyantly corrupt preacher. Mostly, we have guys getting by in a dead end job, so they can survive and maybe have fun after work. There’s an openly gay character, which was a big deal in 1976; (he has the best and most quoted line in the movie)..

Henry Wingi in CAR WASH. Courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Car Wash is not a message picture. It does make observations, and lets you form your own social criticism. The white carwash owner is unimaginative, cheap and resistant to change, and his son, the heir-apparent, is well-meaning, but he’s a cannabis-addled buffoon. The foreman’s hard work and initiative is not rewarded. It’s hard to maintain dignity in the face of overtly racist attitudes from customers and symbols of institutional racism, like a parole officer. This America is not a meritocracy.

The guys in the crew are played by a bonanza of African-American acting talent: Bill Duke, Ivan Dixon, Franklyn Ajaye, Antonio Vargas, Otis Day, Leonard Jackson,  Garrett Morris, Arthur French, Darrow Igus and Ray Vitte, along with Clarence Muse, who acted in his first Hollywood movie in 1929. Native-Americans and Latinos are represented by Henry Wingi (one of Hollywood’s great stunt men) and Pepe Serna, respectively.

Comedians George Carlin, Richard Pryor and “Professor” Irwin Corey have cameos. Brooke Adams and Danny DeVito were in the cast, too, but had their scenes cut.

Melanie Mayron in CAR WASH. Courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Car Wash was the first film by an African-American director shown in competition at Cannes (and possibly the most unabashedly low brow Cannes entry). Director Michael Schultz was already a veteran television director and was the most prolific African-American director of Hollywood films before Spike Lee.

Three cast members – Bill Duke, Ivan Dixon and Melanie Mayron – became prolific directors themselves. Those three, not a white man among them, have amassed over 160 directing credits between them. Screenwriter Joel Schumacher, one of the few white males with a major creative role in Car Wash, would also go on to direct feature films.

If you miss Car Wash on TCM, you can stream it from Amazon, AppleTV and YouTube.

AMERICAN FICTION: this can’t be happening

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Photo caption: Jeffrey Wright in AMERICAN FICTION. Courtesy of MGM.

In the sharply funny American Fiction, Monk (Jeffrey Wright) is an academic and a novelist, the kind who wins literary awards, not the kind who people read on the airplane or on the beach. He is also African-American, named Thelonious Monk Ellison at birth, and his father and both siblings are physicians. His literary agent (John Ortiz) has not found a publisher ready to buy Monk’s latest high-falutin manuscript, an updating of Aeschylus.

Monk’s sensibilities are offended whenever he is pigeon-holed as a Black Writer. But he is enraged by books and movies that portray everyday African-American life as driven by deadbeat dads, crack addicts, and getting shot by the police. Monk, himself financially stressed by circumstance, goes ballistic when a Black writer (Issa Rae) gets a best seller by penning a story crammed with negative tropes.

Monk, in his cups, goes all in, adopting the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh, and cramming every offensive stereotype into a volume initially titled My Pafology (until it gets an even worse new title). Monk demands that his agent submit it to publishers, and they are shocked when publishing houses and movie studios vie over the rights.

The joke here is that, far from ignoring black voices, the New York and Hollywood cultural gate-keepers, not a Trump voter among them, are eager to embrace black artists and black content – as long as the work conforms to the stereotypes with which they are comfortable. American Fiction sends up the white intelligentsia for incentivizing black creatives to perform in a new, but equally disgusting, form of black face. It’s wickedly funny.

While American Fiction is a successful social parody, it includes heartfelt threads of family dynamics and personal self-discovery. (There’s even a wedding.)

Jeffrey Wright is wonderful as a Monk who is pompous and curmudgeonly when we first meet him, but who becomes more complicated as we learn more about his upbringing. Tracee Ellis Ross (Blackish), Sterling K. Brown and Erika Alexander are each remarkably winning as Monk’s siblings and love interest, respectively. Leslie Uggams is downright brilliant as Monk’s mother. The entire cast is excellent, including the actors playing powerful white nitwits, especially Miriam Shor and Adam Brody

American Fiction is the directorial debut of its screenwriter, Cord Jefferson, who won a Primetime Emmy for Watchmen. It is a brilliant screenplay; Jefferson adapted it from the book Erasure by Percival Everett.

American Fiction is nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. Jefferson’s screenplay, Laura Karpman’s score, Jeffrey Wright and Sterling K. Brown are also Oscar-nominated. This is one of my Best Movies of 2023.

THE NEUTRAL GROUND: the supremacist legacy of old statues

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Photo caption: C.J. Hunt in NEUTRAL GROUND. Photo courtesy of PBS POV.

In the pointed documentary The Neutral Ground, C.J. Hunt explores the continuing legacy of Confederate monuments in America. Finding the backlash against removing New Orleans’ Confederate monuments so absurd, Hunt, a producer for The Daily Show, started out to make a snarky YouTube video. But he found himself drawn more deeply into the history of Confederate monuments, so intentionally braided with white supremacy.

In my view (and C.J. Hunt’s), it’s a no-brainer to remove monuments that should never have been erected in the first place. After all, these monuments celebrate men who led a traitorous insurrection against their own country, who sought to keep other human beings enslaved and who lost a disastrous war. Traitors. Slavers. Losers.

But Hunt is fascinated by the chorus of White Southerners advocating for the preservation of Confederate monuments to maintain pride in (White) Southern heritage. All of them claim that the Civil War was not about slavery. And none of them would say that they are White supremacists or that slavery was acceptable. Hunt notes a disconnect with historical fact:

“The founding documents of the Confederacy talk so obsessively about slavery, the real mystery is how so many people came to believe that Confederate symbols have nothing to do with it.”

I am a student of American history, and this is one of my pet peeves. If you’re interested, you can read more thoughts about THE NEUTRAL GROUND and the Lost Cause lie.

Now back to the movie, The Neutral Ground.

Hunt is very funny. To a woman who wants to keep all the statues in their prominent places with plaques for context, he suggests this wording: “Hi, I’m Robert E. Lee. A long time ago, I turned on my country and led over 200,000 Southern sons to their graves, so we could keep our basic right to own human beings as property. #SorryI’mNotSorry“.

After meeting a round of genteel “as long as you stay in your place” racists, Hunt is unnerved by encounters with the “I want to kill you” variety of racists.

For me, the highlights of The Neutral Ground were Hunt’s sparring with his own African-American father. His dad, moving about his kitchen in an Aunt Jemima apron, critically recounts the evolution of C.J.’s own racial awareness and imparts his own unblinking view of institutional racism in America. This repartee sets the stage for The Neutral Ground to become even more personally-focused for C.J. Hunt.

I watched The Neutral Ground on PBS’ POV; it’s now streaming on PBS.

MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM: searing, with an electric performance

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Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis in MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a searing revelation of the impacts of racism, with charged performances by Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis.

The plot is about a turbulent recording session in 1927 Chicago, featuring the ferocious diva Ma Rainey, the Mother of the Blues. But the movie is really about how each character has been traumatized by racism. We see overt racism in the American North – in a cop, a working class deli, a recording studio and a crushing final shot of cultural appropriation. But the key is the reflection of racism in how it has shaped each of the characters.

There is a violent eruption that literally stuns the audience, and then, as Billy Wilder advised, the movie doesn’t stick around too long after. This is a dark film.

Chadwick Boseman in MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM

The core of the film is Chadwick Boseman’s portrayal of Levee, the trumpet player in Ma’s backup band. He sees himself as a star in the making, which doesn’t sit well with Ma. Boseman’s Levee is a peacock, but Boseman reveals that Levee understands superficiality and transcends it. At his core is a rage and a unhealed wound, profound emotional damage that he is able to hide…until he doesn’t.

Whether blowing his horn, hanging in the band room or canoodling with Ma’s oversexed sweet young thang (Taylour Paige), Levee is charismatic. The highlight of the film is his gripping monologue, and he’s absolutely electric at the climax.

Boseman died earlier this year at 43 after playing Jackie Ronbison, James Brown and Thurgood Marshal, and soaring to superstardom as Black Panther. There’s been a lot of buzz about a posthumous Oscar for this performance, which is both sentimental and richly deserving. I certainly haven’t seen a better performance in 2020.

Viola Davis, as one would expect, has the presence and ferocity to make an excellent Ma Rainey. The real Ma Rainey wore exaggerated makeup and was constantly sweaty, and Davis uses here characteristics in her performance.

Davis and Boseman are big stars, but Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is an ensemble work. Colman Domingo, Glynn Turman, Michael Potts, Jeremy Shanos and Paige are all excellent.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Blues is the second August Wilson play, following Fences, that Denzel Washington has brought to the screen in a deal that originated at HBO and moved to Netflix. This is obviously a play, but it doesn’t feel too stagey, especially with the scenes of the Chicago streets and an earlier Ma Rainey live performance in the rural South.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is one of the Best Movies of 2020 – So Far and a Must See. It’s streaming on Netflix.

DA 5 BLOODS: a few compelling elements

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Isiah Whitlock Jr., Norm Lewis, Clarke Peters, Delroy Lindo and Jonathan Majors in in DA 5 BLOODS. Cr. DAVID LEE/NETFLIX © 2020

Spike Lee’s latest film, Da 5 Bloods has some compelling elements, but the movie isn’t compelling as a whole. It’s too long and drags in places. The Wife and I stopped watching after the first hour. I finished it a couple days later.

Da 5 Bloods works best as a reflection on the Vietnam War and on the Black experience in America; how Spike handles those themes is far more evocative than is the story itself.

The story: four African-American vets return to Vietnam fifty years after their service. They are seeking to recover the remains of their beloved commanding officer. What they keep to themselves, is that he is buried with a fortune in gold bars. This quest is remarkably similar to Treasure of the Sierra Madre (and Spike even throws in the most famous quote from Sierra Madre).

Delroy Lindo in DA 5 BLOODS. Photo courtesy of NETFLIX.

The best reason to watch Da 5 Bloods are the performances of Delroy Lindo and Clarke Peters. Lindo has the best role of his craeer – as a man who is tormented by PTSD from wartime guilt and a family tragedy back home.

The old actors play themselves in the fifty-years-before flashback scenes. I suspended disbelief, but it decidedly did not work for The Wife.

Besides Delroy Lindo’s searing monologues, the highlights of the movie are an unexpected family reunion for the Clarke Peters character and a gripping sequence in a minefield.

The supporting cast is excellent, especially Melanie Thierry, Paul Walter Hauser, Jean Reno, Le Y Tan and first time actress Sandy Huong Pham, Jonathan Majors, so great in The Last Black Man in San Francisco, is fine but wasted in an underwritten role.

Da 5 Bloods does showcase an impressive selection of soul shakes. Spike also drops in has signature double dolly shot in the epilogue, to effetively cap the Clarke Peters story line.

One of the best things about Da 5 Bloods is the soundtrack; I can’t get enough of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, and neither can Spike. Time Has Come Today by the Chambers Brothers is underused in the movie, but dominates the great trailer embedded below (and the trailer is better than the movie).

Da 5 Bloods is streaming on Netflix.