After growing up in Jersey City, New Jersey, OD Henderson watched a tremendous number of inappropriate films. At the age of 4, a particularly large, bad year for Henderson and very young to be eye-to-eye by “The Exorcist”.
But at that time it was also that the author of Future Boston Globe film critic and new book “Black Caerar and Fox Cleopatras: A History of Blacktation Cinema” saw a double bill of “coffee” and “Fox Brown”, starring Palm Grier. Grier’s figures in Henderson’s book prominently were published earlier this month.
It has been a very good read, and Henderson is coming to the music box theater of Chicago for a book signing and 35 mm screening “Super Fly” in 1972, another seminal title in Garish is in another seminal title, cruel, Vitley Expressive Screen Era of BlaxPlocation.
This word does not fly with everyone these days. Nor was it in the long-standing phase of the American film, which brought a flower of black opportunities on the screen-the timerson frameed the timeline from 1970 to 1978-“Cotton Kams to Harlem” provoked the success of the success of “Shaft”, a year later in 1971.
Henderson has no problem with the label because he loves the range of work that includes it. “Is this a style, such as comedy or Western,” he writes in the preamble of the book, “or some more liquids and are difficult to define? I like to describe it, the way I describe the equally slippery word ‘Film Noare’: BlaxPlitation is an era, a period of time when some movies are fixed and other people are forced examples.”
Our conversation is edited for clarity and length.
The 1973 poster starring Palm Grier for “Coffee”. (LMPC/Getty Images)
Question: OD, “Coffee” and “Fox Brown” are not 4 years old at least 10 years old?
A: I must definitely not be at that age! The same year, 1974, I also saw a dual feature of “Enter the Dragon” and “Black Belt Jones”. I remember that Jim Kelly and Palm Grier are fascinated by both of them, only in “car wash” by Franklin Ajay’s Ephro. I saw a lot of films, are very young, but when you have aunt or old cousin, you had opportunities to do such things. I remember that my platform told me a lot of time, when we saw something on the Duce, 42nd Street, in Times Square: “Don’t tell your mother.”
Question: Take us back in the beginning. Some people think that the blaxPlitation era began with the “shaft”, but it was a major studio, MGM, not the American International Pictures …
A: “Shaft” was the film that originally saved MGM from bankruptcy, so there was a major share in the success of the Hollywood film. At that time MGM was about to merge with the 20th century Fox, but the deal fell. And then the “Shaft” earned a lot of money directed by Gordon Parks. A year ago, however, Samuel Goldwin Jr. created “Cotton Cums to Harlem” with the direction of Ossi Davis, and earned a lot of money first. It was found on a Hollywood radar that black people would watch a film about black people.
Defining blaxPlitation by the same style would be dissatisfied, but there are general features for all that are not style-specific: attitude, swagger and most importantly, I will argue, music and fashion.
Question: I mean, “Fox Brown” opening credit is almost too much for a film. fantastic. And an unmarasty song, although compared to the title song of “Tubble Man”?
A: This is one of the best songs of Marvin Gay. He wanted to become a singer like Frank Sinatra, not the sexy soul singer who became he. But he wrote the entire score for “Truble Man”. Michael Kahan, who became the editor of Spielberg, edited that film, by the way.
Question: You write in the book you started research with an explanation for the death of the BlaxPlitation era. But he changed?
A: This is done, yes. My principle was this because until the late 70s, there were too many black people on TV, and TV was free. You had a major event like “Roots”, but before that, Black Sutom who was the hit: “The Jefferson,” “Good Times,” “Sanford & Son.” I assumed whether the blackets was a combination of that, as well as blockbusters such as “jaw” and “star wars”. Black people went to them, like everyone else.
But then Elvis Mitchell interviewed me for his Netflix documentary on BlaxPlitation, “Is that black enough for you?” And we had a friendly controversy about what it killed. He thinks that it was a commercial failure of “The Wise” in 1978. We went forward and back on him, and he finally said, “I think we really think the same thing here: when (blackets) films were marketing for black audiences, the era died.” “The Wise” spends an inadvertent amount, and lost a lot. But it is dear to my age by black people everywhere. As much as I have a problem with “The Vis”, I can’t deny its childhood love.
Question: Did the real low-down movies had a blockplocal era, a lot of crime and sex, a two-edged sword, do you think?
A: You must first talk about what was happening on the screen before this time. With the former Hollywood era (1929–1934), in films like “Baby Face”, color actors sometimes did more than bit roles-The Made, The Porter. But until the Sydney Poitier came together in the mid -20th century, there was not much more than that of those negative images. When Poitier became a star, he suffered to represent the entire race in positive lights. Eventually he controlled his own films and started directing, and this allowed him to become independent.
With Blaxploitation, yes, it is a lot of salty, a little message has been thrown, such as broccoli you hide under the cheese sauce so that the child eats it (laughing). But black people saw themselves in power. When I looked at Jim Kelly in Palm Grier in “Black Belt Jones” or “Coffee”, I mean, this clint is different from sticking a gun to a black man’s face and asking him if he feels lucky. Or watching thug number three on an episode of “Beretta”. Palm Grier did one thing by pulling a gun from his Ephro: We were in power.
As anything starts underground, once it goes into the mainstream, it is destroyed. This is what happened to the blockplication.
Question: In the 70s, for “respectable” studio films, Oscars winning, to co-opt the same levels of violence, it did not take a long time in the 70s.
A: Right. Look at “The Godfather”, which actually came from a garbage book. I always say that there was an exploitation film called an exploitation film.
Question: Do you think the blockplication has found a suspicious or two -edged second life for Quentin Tartino?
A: Okay, I loved “Jackie Brown” …
Question: My favorite.
A: My too. This is the place where he really removes blaxPlitation for an essence. With “Django Unchaed”, what I also like, he (completely) is focusing on the most salty and negative imagination. It is a pastech that often works. but not always. Tartino, and I hate to say this, he talks about white-boys, who thinks what he thinks, focuses on what he is doing is the best elements of blasphemy without realizing what he is doing. And is not worth the inclination.
Richard Roundty “Shaft” in 1971. (MGM)
Question: You fly a lot of favorite in “Black Caesar and Fox Cleopatras”. Do you have a favorite moment or sequence that you like what you like is about blockplication?
A: Inauguration of “shaft”. When the shaft comes out of the metro on the 42nd Street, walks with that song in time, and on the road. This is a decisive moment for me. I had literally meaning yesterday, and I will do it again tonight: Get out of the Times Square Station on the 42nd Street and listen to that subject in my head. (Director) Gordon Parks asked Richard Roundtie to cross the road without looking, as the shaft would never see both ways. The moment when he goes almost from the cab? This actually happened. He ran the Richard Roundator on the first day. On the first day of filming.
Henderson will sign copies of “Black Kaiser and Fox Cleopatras: A History of Blacktation Cinema” and introduce “Superfly” on 27 February in the music box theater. $ 12 tickets at musicboxtheatre.com. Post-screening discussion with Henderson and Roegerebert.com editor and critic Brian Tallico.