Production Of New James Brown Film Reveals Structural Persistence of the Cultural Politics of White Supremacy and Capitalist Expropriation In the U.S.

“If I Steal It, Is It Mine?”: Racism, Cultural Expropriation, and the African American Artist in the U.S.
by Kofi Natambu
The Poetry Project Newsletter
New York
December, 1990

appropriation: 3. To take to or for oneself; take possession of. To make one’s own. The act of appropriating.

expropriation: 1. To take (property, ideas etc.) from another, especially without his permission. 2. To deprive (a person, business etc.) of property. To be separated from one’s own.
—The Random House Dictionary of the English Language

A critical analysis of the structural relationship between the African American artist and the political economy of culture in the United States must begin with a theoretical investigation of the social and cultural history of aesthetics and “race” in this country. However, the major problem with the teaching of this history is that the writing of it is monopolized by “white Americans” who don’t know anything about the subject.

For example, it is painfully clear that 98% of all the books written about ‘culture’ in the United States don’t have the slightest idea who the following people are or what they’ve “contributed” to American culture: ‘Native Americans (“Indians”), African Americans (“Negroes”), Asian Americans (“Orientals”), Latino Americans (“Hispanics”). As a result these same writers can’t really talk coherently or accurately about the actual historical experience of the Euro Americans (“white people” of English, Irish, Scottish, Italian, French, German and Eastern European descent). Obviously this creates tremendous confusion when it comes to any clear understanding of the complex meaning of these various histories. This is largely because of a profound ignorance of even the empirical details of what the cross-cultural contacts and conflicts of the many heterogeneous groups that make up the North American continent actually represent. Thus it is not surprising that the ideology of racism (the most powerful instrument of oppression in the world today outside of capitalism itself) dominates contemporary discourse about culture, aesthetics and ‘identity’ in the United States.

THE RELENTLESS HEGEMONY that this ideology wields continues to distort, obscure, and confuse the issue when it comes to a critical assessment of the major role that appropriation plays in cultural theory and praxis today. This is no less true within so-called “avant-garde” circles than it is in the academic/institutional oligopoly known as the “cultural mainstream.” In fact, what both of these aesthetic communities have in common is an equal disdain for, yet voracious exploitation of, other cultural ideas, practices, traditions and values stemming from different social/cultural groups (e.g. African Americans). These reactionary attitudes and philosophical limitations constitute the basis of the historical expropriation of black cultural forms in all the arts (i.e. music, dance, literature, visual arts, ‘performance art’, theater, etc.) by white artists and critics who seek to not only use (or appropriate) the techniques, methods and conceptual ideas of African Americans but to co-opt, absorb and consume them as their property through the systematic ‘legal’ and criminal theft of their cultural productions.

This is carried out by the massive structural domination of the art market by huge corporations owned and administered by predominately upper-class white males who, through bureaucratic managerial control, inherited wealth, and monopolistic manipulation of the vast economic network of marketing, distribution and exchange outlets (the various sites of Capital in the political economy of culture in this country as well as globally), determine what the schools and mass media teach about “who did what, when, where and how” when it comes to American cultural history.

There is nothing necessarily conspiratorial or sinisterly “planned” with respect to this on-going condition. It is simply the way things are when it comes to political, economic and social reality in the United States. The fact that the cultural/artistic communities (‘mainstream’ and ‘avant-garde’) largely support and accept the rather heinous status quo only exposes the vested interests of the “art world” when it comes to their own privileged position within the system. So the point is not merely that individual white artists “stole” their own “personal” aesthetic styles (and much of their content) from blacks but that as a necessarily privileged group of artists (by dint of their “race”, class, and sometimes gender) they were able to do much more than merely “appropriate” information (i.e. creatively use thematic and stylistic material as aesthetic source, cultural reference or energy conduit). The truth is that white artists have always sought to own the economic rights to, and residual benefits of, African American cultural artifacts and conceptions. What made this possible for them is the surplus value of what black artists and cultural workers have produced (in the form of usurious “contracts”, absurdly exploitive royalty arrangements and rigidly segregated markets at the points of both material production and exchange).

THE MOST BLATANT and notorious example of all this is the recording industry whose monumental profiteering off the creative genius of such legendary and seminal musicians, composers and singers as Scott Joplin, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Theolonious Monk, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Louis Jordan, Charles Mingus (and just about every blues artist in history) is scandalous. These are just a very few of the huge number of black artists who have revolutionized music as an art form in the 20th century and who have been mercilessly exploited. Who is the great Jimi Hendrix but a man whose extraordinary talent and vision has been plundered by a whole cottage industry of artistic and financial parasites who continue to bilk millions of dollars from his estate, while doing third-rate imitations of his artistry? In this context, who is Eric Clapton? Who are Mick Jagger & Keith Richard? Who is every ho-hum heavy metal guitarist since 1971? What does the multi-billion dollar music industry represent under these conditions? It’s important to note that this is not simply a matter of “trashing” your favorite white musician/songwriter either. After all, I’m not interested in examining the motives or intent of personalities involved in this process. What’s significant is the political, economic and cultural context that they are a part of, and what they decide to do about these conditions as far as their own cultural work is concerned.

In this light it’s easy to see the implications of the infamous “cover song’ tradition of the 1950s and early 1960s by white artists (a situation in which a popular white artist records the song and/or music of a black artist that often results in black artists not being paid royalties for their work and simultaneously being stymied from getting airplay and openly selling their music to a wider audience). Everyone from Pat Boone to Elvis Presley have cashed in on this little strategy. And while the economics and academic recognition of this situation have improved to a certain degree (more people are aware of what is happening and why) it still remains a major concern within the African American cultural community. Just ask the attorneys representing Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and the estates of Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, and yes, James Marshall Hendrix, all of whom are currently involved in massive lawsuits against their respective recording companies. I’m sure there are many more examples.

Another cultural area where this syndrome of white appropriation turns into its ugly linguistic cousin is literature, where three generations of black writers in this century have been ignored, neglected and ripped-off with hardly anyone in academia or the avant-garde batting an eyelash. How else does one explain the colossal ignorance surrounding the important literary contributions of such major ‘modern’ and ‘postmodern’ writers as Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, Richard Wright, Chester Himes, Ann Petry, Melvin B. Tolson, Adrienne Kennedy, John A. Williams, Ishmael Reed, Bob Kaufman, Clarence Major, William Melvin Kelley, Charles Wright, Samuel Delany, Gayl Jones, Jayne Cortez, Calvin Hernton, David Henderson, June Jordan, Al Young and even Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka (whose towering achievements are far too often dismissed as the infantile rantings of a ‘bitter nigger’). There are many other people I could mention but I think you get the point. How many of you reading this essay have heard of/read Sterling A. Brown, W.E.B. DuBois, C.L.R. James or Ida B. Wells? On the other hand how many of you know the work of W.C. Williams, Norman Mailer, Thomas Pynchon, Ezra Pound, Emma Goldman, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf and Jack Kerouac? Many more, I’ll bet.

The fault for all this lies of course with the public educational system whose curriculums and policy decisions throughout the country mirror the already established ideology of the bourgeois class that does indeed “run” the nation. The mere fact that the American literary canon is made up almost exclusively of European and white American males makes this clearly self-evident. The expropriation of the oral tradition in ‘American literature’ begins with the poetic and narrative strategies of Thomas Woolfe and William Faulkner in the 1920s and reaches its apex in the Beat Generation poets of the 1950s (check out Kerouac, Ginsberg and Corso for starters). Again the issue is not the individuals who choose to use/appropriate material from other traditions and folk forms, but the supporting political economy that promotes and markets their cultural productions as “representative” or “central” to a certain aesthetic expression. At the same time the culture industry ignores or renders invisible the work of the seminal forces in the field.

THIS HISTORICAL DYNAMIC continues today with the myriad innovations in popular dance, painting (graffiti, mural art, etc.), ‘performance art,’ multimedia and film by black artists all being mined by white American artists with scarcely any real critical attention being paid to the nature of their technical and expressive achievements. One very significant example of this is the lack of serious critical analysis and commentary surrounding the powerful new hybrid/synthetic form known as RAP. Most white critics and journalists seem more interested in determining whether young black people inventing the form are “underclass criminals” or simply “obscene illiterates.” This is cultural racism of a particularly insidious and manipulative kind, especially in light of the tremendous popularity (as both form and artifact) that RAP enjoys among middle class white suburban youth (records don’t consistently go double platinum without this demographic audience). The corresponding fact that many white and black scholars are beginning to write in literary and cultural journals about the aesthetics and cultural politics of the form also exposes the dangerously reductive and racist attitudes of such middlebrow publications as Newsweek, The New York Times, New Republic, and The New Criterion. Between the “gliberals” (thanks, Ishmael!) and the neoconservatives, African American art is getting slapped around (and expropriated) from all sides.

But this historical assault on the intellectual and spiritual vitality, creative innovation, and liberating vision of African American art in all its forms cannot and will not stop the contemporary black artist any more than the imitators of Armstrong, Hughes, Hurston, Ellington, Parker, Ellison, Wright, Baldwin, Young and Holiday were able to stop their legendary contributions to the 20th century cannon (sic) of world culture. WORD!

HAROLD CRUSE
(1916-2005)

"Racial democracy is, at the same time, cultural democracy and the question of cultural democracy in America is posed in a way never before seen or considered in other societies. This uniqueness results historically from the manner in which American cultural developments have been influenced by the Negro presence. Since a cultural philosophy has been cultivated to deny this truth, it remains for the Negro intellectual to create his own philosophy and to bring the facts of cultural history in focus with the culture practices of the present. In advanced societies it is not the race politicians of the "rights" leaders who create the new ideas and the new images of life and man. That role belongs to the artists and the intellectuals of each generation. Let the race politicians, if they will, create political, economic, or organizational forms of leadership; but it is the artists and creative minds who will, and must, furnish the all important content. And in this role, they must not be subordinated to the whims and desires of politicians, race leaders, and civil rights entrepreneurs whether they come from the Left, the Right, or Center...Which means to say, in advanced societies the cultural front is a special one that requires special techniques not perceived, understood, or appreciated by political philistines. There are those among the latter who give lip service to the idea that Culture and Art belong to the People, but what they actually give to the people (not to speak of what they give to Negroes as people) is not worthy of examination. It is the Negro creative intellectual who must take seriously the idea that culture and art belong to the people--with all the revolutionary implications of that idea. "

--"Cultural Leadership and Cultural Democracy" from The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual by Harold Cruse, 1967

"The peculiarities of the American social structure, and the position of the intellectual class within it, make the functional role of the Negro intellectual a special one. The Negro intellectual must deal intimately with the white power structure and cultural apparatus, and the inner realities of the black world at one and the same time. But in order to function successfully in this role, he has to be acutely aware of the American social dynamic and how it monitors the ingredients of class stratifications ...Therefore the functional role of the Negro intellectual demands that he cannot be absolutely separate from either the black or white world."

-- Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (1967)

Harold Cruse
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 

Harold Wright Cruse (1916--2005) was an American academic who was an outspoken social critic and teacher of African American studies at the University of Michigan until the mid-1980s. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (1967) is his best-known book.

1.1 Early life
1.2 Theater career
1.3 Academic life
1.4 Death and legacy
2 Works
3 Footnotes
4 Additional reading

Biography

Early life
 

Harold Cruse was born March 8, 1916, in Petersburg, Virginia.[1] His father was a railway porter. After his parents divorced, Cruse moved to New York City, New York. Cruse became interested in the arts as a young man, thanks in large measure to his close relationship with an aunt who often took him to shows on the weekend. During World War II, Cruse joined the U.S. Army and served in Europe and north Africa.[2] Upon returning home, he attended the City College of New York without graduating. In 1947 Cruse joined the Communist Party for several years.

Theater career

In the mid-1960s Cruse, along with LeRoi Jones (now Amiri Baraka), founded the Black Arts Theater in Harlem. Cruse viewed the arts scene as a white-dominated misrepresentation of black culture, epitomized by George Gershwin's folk opera Porgy and Bess and Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun.

Many believed Cruse was an opponent of "integration" which he referred to as "assimilation" because its policies were only geared towards integrating blacks into white society and not whites into black; betraying an inherent unacceptability of blackness in mainstream America. But in reality Cruse simply believed in a pluralistic society, any group must amass and control its own political, economic and cultural capital before true integration was possible. Without group self-determination, any group, but particularly American blacks would rely on the benevolence of other groups with political, economic and cultural capital, to voluntarily integrate with blacks which would lead to the dismantlement of black institutions and cultural traditions; rather than facilitate an equal and negotiated sharing throughout society.

While Cruse was very critical of American society, he reserved the bulk of his criticism for black intellectuals and leaders who he believed did not have the academic appetite to master the various disciplines necessary to advocate for real and effective societal change.

Academic life

After publishing The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual in 1967, he was invited to lecture at the University of Michigan (1968) and taught in the African-American Studies program at the Center for Afro-American and African Studies there until the mid-1980s.[3] Cruse was one of the first African-American studies professors, becoming one of the first to earn tenure without holding a college degree.

A theme of The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual is that intellectuals must play a central role in movements for radical change. This idea re-appeared in his other works including Rebellion or Revolution, a compilation of essays, and Plural But Equal.

Death and legacy

On March 25, 2005, Cruse died from congestive heart failure while living in an assisted-living facility in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was survived by his wife of 36 years, Mara Julius.

Works
 

Cruse, Harold (2009). Rebellion or revolution?. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 9780816668038.
Cruse, Harold (2005). The crisis of the Negro intellectual: A historical analysis of the failure of Black leadership. New York: NYRB Classics.
Cruse, Harold (1987). Plural but equal: a critical study of Blacks and minorities and America's plural society (1 ed.). New York: William Morrow. ISBN 0688044867.
Cruse, Harold (2002). The essential Harold Cruse: a reader. William Jelani Cobb (ed.) (1 ed.). New York: Palgrave. ISBN 9780312293963., with a foreword by Stanley Crouch.
Footnotes[edit]
Jump up ^ Bernstein, Adam (2005-03-29). "Social Critic, Essayist Harold Cruse Dies". The Washington Post (Washington, D.C.). pp. B08. Retrieved 2013-05-21.
Jump up ^ Warikoo, Niraj (2005-03-28). Obituaries. "Harold Cruse: Author, Activist and U-M Professor". Detroit Free Press (Detroit, MI). p. B4. Archived from the original on 30 March 2005. Retrieved 2013-05-21.
Jump up ^ Lehmann-haupt, Christopher (2005-03-30). "Harold Cruse, Social Critic and Fervent Black Nationalist, Dies at 89". The New York Times (New York, NY). ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2013-05-21.
Additional reading[edit]
"An author of "Thought," Harold Cruse". African American Registry.
"The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual by Harold W. Cruse" - New York Review of Books
"Harold Cruse and Afrocentric Theory"
Harold Cruse's The crisis of the Negro intellectual reconsidered. Jerry Gafio Watts (ed.). New York: Routledge. 2004. ISBN 9780415915755.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/movies/james-brown-is-celebrated-in-get-on-up.html

MOVIES

His Own Godfather
James Brown Is Celebrated in ‘Get On Up’
By NELSON GEORGE
JULY 23, 2014
New York Times

Chadwick Boseman as Brown in the new biopic “Get On Up.”  Credit  D. Stevens/Universal Studios

It’s just the kind of movie clip YouTube was made for. In the 1965 Frankie Avalon vehicle, “Ski Party,” James Brown and his backing vocal group, the Famous Flames, enter a ski lodge after rescuing a frozen reveler. Resplendent in a white-and-red sweater, tight black slacks, black pointy-toed shoes and a regal pompadour, Brown performs “I Got You (I Feel Good),” giving the lily-white crowd of clapping skiers a taste of the showmanship that had made him a star on the so-called “chitlin circuit” among blacks. Even in a movie as disposable as “Ski Party,” Brown turned a corny scene into genuine entertainment.

In the biopic “Get On Up,” opening Friday, the filmmakers recreate this moment, trying to see it from Brown’s point of view. While he glides through his steps, we see slow-motion shots of the listeners as if they were creatures from another, whiter planet, one Brown is reluctantly visiting in hopes of reaching a wider audience. In that scene, Brown dances off the set. In the new film, he does a split but doesn’t come up, apparently having ripped his pants.   The new moment is slightly comic but undercuts Brown’s mastery.

Depicting James Brown on screen has always been a seductive proposition. As one of the greatest stage performers of the 20th century, he has inspired documentarians, playwrights, comedians and other artists who see the outlines of his greatness.  But capturing the man inside, and the meaning of his life, is a tricky business.

There was a fluidity to his identity that was reflected in his many stage nicknames: Mr. Dynamite, the hardest working man in show business, Soul Brother No. 1, the Godfather of Soul and the Original Disco Man, as he variously billed himself. All enduring pop stars have the ability to shift with the culture, but Brown’s moves — from staunch integrationist to proto-black nationalist and back, from civil rights role model to wife beater, from disciplined bandleader to drug addict — suggest an inner turmoil that belied his outer confidence. Shortly after his death, I helped edit a collection of articles that spanned Brown’s long career, and in reading the pieces was struck by how many journalists saw the contours of the man but struggled to truly penetrate his psyche. With a feature film about to arrive and a coming documentary, it’s time to take stock of this imposing figure.

Brown, who died on Christmas Day 2006, began his career in the ’50s under the spell of Little Richard and ended it as a major influence on current singer-dancers like Usher and Chris Brown. Michael Jackson and Prince, of course, were acolytes. Reared on gospel, blues and jazz, Brown was a dominant force in the soul ’60s, created funk, inspired disco and laid hip-hop’s foundation with his beats.

As important as Brown was on vinyl, his stage show and personality are legendary: Tilting a mike stand far forward and, before it hit the stage, pulling it back via the cord. Dropping into and rising out of splits. Feigning exhaustion and donning a regal cape before returning to sing again. Executing every new dance from the ’60s to the ’80s with deft steps and body control made Brown a dominant figure during an explosive era for pop music.

Brown was a self-made man who as a child was abandoned by both his parents. So, with success, he constructed his own world in which few could address him by his first name (for employees and interviewers alike it was strictly Mr. Brown), and musicians were fined midshow. An immense ego strove to mask any insecurity. His drive to succeed was as unrelenting as his dancing. During the civil rights movement, he emerged as a leader capable of preventing a riot in Boston after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But he was also an eccentric, who would give up his processed hair for an Afro during the “Black Is Beautiful” era, only to return to the retro style because he loved having straight hair.

“Get On Up,” directed by Tate Taylor from a clever screenplay by the brothers Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, attempts the difficult task of capturing a driven artist whose career spanned six decades and whose public persona overshadowed his inner life. Just as hip-hop would take break beats from the middle or end of Brown’s records to make new sounds, the Butterworths eschew a linear structure, jumping from 1988 to 1968 to 1938 and so on to put you at important turning points in Brown’s life.

The producer Brian Grazer, a Brown fan since his teenage years, first got rights to the star’s story 13 years ago, he said. At one point, Spike Lee was to direct, with Wesley Snipes to star. When Brown died, “it made making the film impossible,” Mr. Grazer added. “All the relationships we’d cultivated dissipated.” Struggles over the estate made Mr. Grazer and company step away.

“Then about a year after his death, Mick Jagger called,” Mr. Grazer said. “He’d cleared all the key rights and read the script. He wanted to partner up.”

Mr. Jagger thought Brown’s “life and times and his struggle against adversity” deserved a film treatment, he said via email. Not only did he push to get “Get On Up” made but he is also producing a coming documentary about Brown directed by the Oscar-winning Alex Gibney.

“James was an early influence on me in many ways,” Mr. Jagger said. “He showed me how to interact with an audience and that you always have to give 100 percent of your energy every show.”

Though not close friends, Brown and Mr. Jagger did interact quite a bit in the ’60s. Both performed in “The T.A.M.I. Show,” a multi-act concert filmed in 1964, a sequence that plays a small part in the biopic.

It’s an interesting cultural phenomenon of the Obama presidency that a surprising number of films focused on black American history have both been financed and successful: “42,” “Django Unchained,” “The Help,” “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” and the 2014 Oscar winner for best picture, “12 Years a Slave.” In addition, two separate films centered on Nelson and Winnie Mandela have been released. A film about Jimi Hendrix is due in September. A biopic of Nina Simone has been filmed; a feature about the 1965 civil rights march that began in Selma just wrapped; one about Miles Davis is shooting now; and projects about the rap group NWA and the rapper Tupac Shakur are in the works.

African-Americans tend to view any Hollywood treatments of their history with at best guarded optimism and often with dread. Decades of omissions, half-truths and outright lies about their role in this nation’s history tend to make black viewers skeptical of the most well-intentioned projects. There is also a sense that black directors and writers are being excluded from telling these stories in Hollywood since, with a few notable exceptions (Mr. Daniels, Steve McQueen of “12 Years a Slave” and Ava DuVernay of “Selma,” among them), these films have been told by white producers, writers and directors. That said, many of these projects have languished, in some cases, for decades until the current epoch. Certainly, they have been a boon to many black performers. Chadwick Boseman, a relatively unknown young actor, has, with Jackie Robinson in “42” and now Brown, played two of the most important cultural figures in American history.

Portraying Brown is complicated by the singer himself, who sometimes seemed to be a caricature of soul music emotion as well as an expression of it. This was particularly true in the last decades of his life, when in the “Blues Brothers” movies and TV appearances he played cartoonlike versions of himself.

Even back at his height as a best-selling recording artist and cultural figure in the ’60s and ’70s, Brown was ridiculed by stand-up comedians for his guttural singing, sweaty histrionics and massive ego. One of Eddie Murphy’s signature “Saturday Night Live” moments was the 1983 skit “James Brown Celebrity Hot Tub Party,” in which he parodied Brown’s vocals and processed hair, and, backed by a funky band, squealed about the virtues of relaxing in bubbling hot water. It was a wickedly funny take on Brown that showcased Mr. Murphy’s genius for mimicry and made it hard to watch Brown again without a knowing smile. Mr. Murphy’s version of Brown was so compelling that even when he played James (Thunder) Early in “Dreamgirls” (2006), a character who looked a lot like the soul singer Wilson Pickett, it was hard not to see it as another version of Brown.

Truthfully, Brown’s legacy is much richer than just passionate singing. With the aid of the arrangers Pee Wee Ellis and Fred Wesley, Brown reworked the bluesy basis of rhythm and blues so that every instrument worked as part of the rhythm section, creating funk music in the process. Though “Get On Up” doesn’t spend much time on Brown’s creative process, there is an effective scene in which Brown browbeats his band, making every musician, from guitarist to trumpeter, testify to the notion that everyone is playing “a drum.”

At the film’s end, a title card explains how widely his beats have been sampled. But there are no scenes showing Brown’s initial irritation with his music being reworked, his struggle to understand sampling or his collaborations with hip-hop figures like Afrika Bambaataa. Hip-hop samples, both of his music and his vocals, have kept Brown relevant to young listeners in a way that have eluded most of his ’60s soul peers. The spit-and-polish Brown trying to relate to saggy-pants M.C.s could have been fun.

Like many musicians, Brown suggested in interviews that you’d learn all you need to know about him by listening to his music, but that actually isn’t true. His ideas about ownership and control of his career were visionary. Before running into tax troubles in the mid-’70s Brown owned a number of radio stations, fast-food restaurants, record labels and a private plane well before it became a rock-star staple.

My favorite sequence in “Get On Up” is not a stage performance or a temper tantrum, but a moment when Brown’s smarts are depicted. His manager and booking agent Ben Bart gives him a Cadillac as a gift, a clichéd way for white authority figures to reward black stars for achievement. Brown is not impressed. Later, he outlines a new system of touring, assuming a central role in booking his shows and thus minimizing promoters’ ability to pocket most of the gate.

Brown would sit in his dressing room after every show going over the box office ledger and greeting local radio D.J.s and record store owners until he’d shaken every hand, all the while getting his hair done. Brown, no doubt, was over the top. But young James Brown was also a forward thinker who would thrive in the current music environment, in which artists are self-contained enterprises who rely not on record company largess but on their own talent, innovations and moxie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_George

Nelson George
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

NELSON GEORGE

Born     September 1, 1957 (age 56)
Brooklyn, New York, USA
Education    St. John's University
Occupation    journalist
author
columnist
music & culture critic
filmmaker
Years active    1979–present

Nelson George (born September 1, 1957) is an African-American author,[1] columnist, music and culture critic, journalist, and filmmaker. He has been nominated twice for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Contents 
1 Biography
2 Literary work
3 Film and television work
4 References
 

Biography

George attended St. John's University, after which he served as a music editor for Billboard magazine from 1982 to 1989. While there, George published two books; Where Did Our Love Go: The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound in 1986, and The Death of Rhythm & Blues in 1988. He also wrote a column, entitled "Native Son," for the Village Voice from 1988 to 1992. He first got involved in film when, in 1986, he helped to finance director Spike Lee's debut feature She's Gotta Have It.

A lifelong resident of Brooklyn, New York, George currently lives in Fort Greene.

Literary work

George has authored fifteen non-fiction books, including the bestseller The Michael Jackson Story in 1984, Blackface: Reflections on African-Americans and the Movies in 1994, Elevating the Game: Black Men and basketball in 1992 and Hip Hop America in 1998. With Alan Leeds he co-authored The James Brown Reader, a collection of articles about the Godfather of Soul in 2008. in 1991 he co-wrote the Halle Berry vehicle Strictly Business and in 1993 Nelson was co-creator of the movie CB4 starring comedian Chris Rock.

Nelson George's The Death of Rhythm and Blues chronicles and critiques the path that R&B has taken. Nelson takes a close look at the genre's fall to the hands of the mainstream and even mentions that some popular artists sold out.

Film and television work
 

In 2004, George made a short film called To Be a Black Man, starring Samuel L. Jackson, and a documentary called A Great Day in Hip-Hop. Both titles appeared in festivals in New York, London, and Amsterdam. He executive-produced the HBO film Everyday People which also debuted in 2004 at the Sundance Film Festival.

Currently he is serving as co-executive producer of VH1's Hip Hop Honors television show and executive producer of Black Entertainment Television's American Gangster series, which was the highest rated series in the history of BET in 2006. His directorial debut, Life Support, starring Queen Latifah, aired on HBO on March 10, 2007. Latifah won several awards for her performance as Ana Wallace, including a Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild award, and the NAACP Image Award. Life Support was also named best TV film of the year by the NAACP. He also currently hosts the VH-1 series "Soul Cities", which examines the music and culture of six prominent cities in the U.S.

A resident of Fort Greene, Brooklyn for over 25 years, George wrote, narrated, and co-directed with Diane Paragas the 2012 feature documentary, Brooklyn Boheme, portraying the uniquely vibrant and diverse African American artistic community of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill during the 1980s and '90′s that included Spike Lee, Chris Rock, Branford Marsalis, Rosie Perez, Saul Williams, Lorna Simpson, Toshi Reagon, writer Touré, writer Adario Strange, Guru of Gang Starr, Erykah Badu, and Talib Kweli, among many others. Unlike the legendary Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, which was largely a literary scene, the artists collected in these neighborhoods were as involved with newer means of expression (film, rock music, hip hop, avante garde theater, stand up comedy, photography) as with traditional African-American artistic pursuits (poetry, jazz.) The film premiered on Showtime Networks in February 2012 for Black History Month.

References
Jump up ^ "BROWNSVILLE BRED Announces Series Of Post-show Talk Backs". Broadway World. July 6, 2011. Retrieved 8 July 2011.

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/29/mick-jagger-get-on-up_n_5625588.html?utm_hp_ref=entertainment&ir=Entertainment

Why Did Mick Jagger Produce The James Brown Movie, 'Get On Up'? Let Him Tell You
by Christopher Rosen
July 29, 2014
Huffington Post

MICK JAGGER

Mick Jagger has been a James Brown fan for actual decades. The Rolling Stones lead singer, who turned 71 on Sunday, has admitted he copied many of Brown's dance moves on stage. As the men rose to prominence as two of the biggest singers of the 1960s, they even became acquaintances. It was a relationship that lasted until Brown's death in 2006.

"I saw him at a show in Cleveland. I can't remember when, but we were both there together," Jagger told HuffPost Entertainment when asked about the last time he saw Brown alive. "I went to see his show, and he came to see me. We had a good time."

For Jagger, his connection to Brown has only increased in the eight years since the pioneering singer died. Peter Afterman, Brown's estate manager and Jagger's long-time friend, asked the Rolling Stones frontman if he wanted to make a documentary on Brown's life after securing music rights to Brown's catalog of hit songs. Jagger thought to take it one step further: a feature film about Brown that could work in concert with documentary. It was then that he connected with producer Brian Grazer, who had been working on a Brown movie himself for a decade with little triumph. Using a script written by Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, Jagger and Grazer put together "Get On Up," an unconventional biography about Brown that jumps through the singer's life, from his troubled upbringing in Georgia to his incredible career as a performer to his numerous issues with the law. (Brown was arrested multiple times on domestic violence charges and also spent time in prison for other offenses, including a three-year stint after leading police on a high-speed chase in 1988.)

Starring Chadwick Boseman as Brown and directed by Tate Taylor, "Get On Up" hopes to capitalize on audiences who helped make "Lee Daniels' The Butler" and Taylor's previous film, Best Picture-nominee "The Help," surprise box office hits in the month of August. For his part, Jagger has everything in his power to make the film a success: In addition to being a hands-on producer for "Get On Up" during production, Jagger has promoted the film on the "Today" show and in interviews with TIME magazine, Billboard, USA Today and The Huffington Post. We spoke to Jagger about his involvement in "Get On Up" at the world famous Apollo Theater in New York on a hazy, hot and humid Saturday afternoon in July. An edited transcript of our conversation is below.

You were producing the Alex Gibney documentary, "Mr. Dynamite: James Brown and the Power of Soul," and, as the story goes in the press notes, woke up one day and thought a feature on Brown would be great too. Why?

It's just a different animal, isn't it? Obviously I thought of "Ray." I thought "Ray" was a great movie. I loved that movie and people loved that movie. But I thought, in a way, that James Brown's life story and his onstage persona was more interesting. The onstage performances are more vivid and alive than in Ray's story. As much as we love Ray Charles, and he's one of my favorite singers, but I mean, when I thought about it, I thought, "Wow, if you could make a movie like that [with Ray Charles], we can certainly do a movie about someone like James Brown." But without copying "Ray" in any way, so why not make a feature of it too? And we can do the documentary, too. They can both be fantastic.

You've discussed how James Brown influenced you. Watching the movie, I couldn't help but think of how we can see parts of James Brown in singers like David Lee Roth and Axl Rose and also modern hip-hop artists like Kanye West and Jay Z. Do you think people even realize how influential Brown was across all genres of music?

Well, probably not. Why would they? But he was definitely a role model on many levels. He's a role model as a guy who comes out on stage and really works his butt off. He always gave his best. He came out and did it. I never thought, "I want to be like that!" But obviously that rubs off on you. The other person I toured with was Little Richard. Every night he went out there -- didn't matter who the audience was, whether they were good, bad or indifferent -- and he just worked it. That rubs off on you. These are guys who were just always working it. So that's the way you want to be. On the other level, James Brown wanted to be in control of his own destiny. This movie is about someone who wants to be in control of their career and their life, especially when they came from a place where they weren't in control or they had very little to start with.

The movie depicts the infamous T.A.M.I. concert, and shows a screen version of The Rolling Stones watching Brown perform. How familiar were you with Brown before that show?

Very familiar. I had everything. I had all his music. I had seen his music here at the Apollo. I talked to him. I hung out with him.

How much influence did you have on who was cast as a Mick Jagger for that scene?

Not much, in the end. I was somewhere far away. I don't want to talk about it really. How can I talk about it without sounding ... there was a little bit of poetic license in that scene. In the end the scene works. It's a fun scene. It wasn't really what happened, but it works well.

As a producer was there one moment that you really fought to keep in the finished film?

I can't really remember. My thing was, I wanted you, the audience, to be pulling for James. Sometimes when I read the script, I felt there was some feeling that you ... I was really saying, "I'm not pulling for this guy enough." It was quite simple really: It was just a question of juxtaposition of a few scenes. It wasn't really taking things out, it was where things were in the story. It's just where you put the accentuation. It doesn't matter how bad he is or how good he is, you want to see both sides of a character. But nevertheless, you do want to be pulling for him.

You obviously don't need to be a producer. Why do you do it?
I quite enjoy doing it. It's a different discipline, but it has a lot of things that are the same [as leading the Rolling Stones]: managing large groups of people, making sure they get on with a common goal. But you've also got a lot of competing parties and you have problems to solve and so on. I also like the literary part of it, which I don't really get to do that much. I like the scripts. I like solving the puzzles. I kind of enjoy the dealmaking. I mean, as long as it doesn't go on forever. It's a lot of moving parts! As long as it doesn't take all my time, because I like to do creative things in other ways, it's a great thing. It's still a creative thing, it's not a business only thing. So it depends which route you take. Being a producer can mean many things. For this particular movie, it was quite interesting because it did have a good literary beginning. Other movies you're presented with a script and there is very little you can say. It's done. It could even be cast. You still get the same credit. With this, it was a much longer process.

You weren't just a rubber stamp of approval.

I'm not really interested in doing that. I don't mind doing that, you know, if it's a project you really love.

With this film and the documentary, you've become the de facto caretaker of James Brown's legacy for a generation of young viewers. Do you think about who will do that for you and the Rolling Stones?

Not really. I don't think about that much [laughs]. I always get asked about it!

With that in mind, did you feel any pressure to make sure James Brown's legacy was shown in a way that was true to him?

Yeah, I want it to be true to him. I think he's a wonderful artist and I didn't want it to be over-glamorized or too de-glamorized and sleazy. In making the documentary, it was the same thing. By shading and nuancing, you can destroy someone's reputation. In the documentary, for instance, it would be very easy to accentuate the negative side -- which everyone has in their life -- and that would be a mean thing to do. What I tried to do in both these films is to show not only the creative and other side, but to show him as a complete person as much as possible. But still really leave people with an uplifting feeling, which I think is a correct thing to do for an artist of his status.

How did you decide on Tate Taylor as director?

Brian and I, once we decided to partner up but before we had a deal, we decided to look for directors. We looked at lots of directors, and Tate was on the top of our list of people. We thought that even though Tate was relatively inexperienced, he did have experience with doing "The Help," which we liked. It was a bit of a leap of faith with Tate because he hadn't done a lot. But he convinced us that he could do this and he had boundless enthusiasm and energy and vitality to push the project through, especially for the limited amount of money that we had to make it. We decided that Tate could do it. I think we were vindicated at the end.

When did you realize it was the right decision?

When you start seeing the first assembly cut, after the first couple of weeks. You know, "Okay, I think it's working. We're going to keep going!"

Tate's going to be forever connected with James Brown, and I wanted to ask you about your connection with Martin Scorsese. Do you have a favorite scene from his movies set to your music?

I can't remember. He's used "Gimme Shelter" a lot. I'm doing this HBO series with Marty now. I think we're talking about using Stones music in that. Some of it. But, yeah he has a really great flare for using music. He was one of the first who used loud rock music, like, in your face. Before, it was sort of in the background, and he lets the music sometimes take over the scene in a really great way.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/brian-grazer-reveals-why-spike-lee-was-replace-by-tate-taylor-to-direct-james-brown-biopic

 
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Panopticon-Review/342702882479366

Brian Grazer Reveals Why Spike Lee Was Replaced By Tate Taylor To Direct James Brown Biopic
BY TAMBAY A. OBENSON
JANUARY 16, 2013
Shadow And Act
On Cinema of the African Diaspora

James Brown in Alex Gibney's "Mr. Dynamite."

Recapping what we've known until today...

First Spike Lee spent years trying to get his Jackie Robinson project financed and produced (unsuccessfully), only to eventually watch Legendary Pictures and Brian Helgeland launch their own Jackie Robinson picture, with Chadwick Boseman starring (scheduled to be released in 2013).

And then it was announced in October that Spike would have to, once again, sit back and watch (this time) Tate Taylor (director of The Help) helm a James Brown biopic, with super producer Brian Grazer producing, and Mick Jagger joining Grazer as producer.

You'll recall that a film based on the life of the singer has long been in the works, with Spike Lee directing, and Brian Grazer overseeing the production. Obviously, something happened, since Spike is no longer attached to direct, but Brian Grazer is still on to produce.

In the October post announcing the director change, we all wondered what could've happened that inspired the director change; now, 3 months later, we have our answer.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, posted on their website this morning, producer Brian Grazer was asked that question specifically. Here's the section of the interview where it's all addressed:

RS: What happened with Spike Lee, who was said to be directing the original movie project before Brown's death?

BG: He was the choice when I had the rights. I had just produced Inside Man with him. When the rights left me, I didn't have any control, and I couldn't make director choices. So when it came later with new people and new rights holders, we weren't doing it with Spike Lee anymore. The world was different then. Now you have to make movies for less money.

RS: When it was announced that Lee was no longer involved and that a white director, Tate Taylor, was on board, the blogosphere went nuts. How do you respond to those comments?

BG: What would I say? I view that a bunch of different ways. Mick and I don't see the world that way. I started my career making Boomerang and CB4. I've made so many movies where I've supported black artists. Tate made The Help, and that had almost an entirely black population. I just want to try to make the best movie.

RS: Were you surprised by those reactions?

BG: Well, I didn't read them! I can't make movies like that, where I'm going to look at some blog and change the course of the whole movie. I also think Mick is so amazing. For him to decide he's going to participate and split half the money – he's a man of integrity, and I feel pretty good about that.

Well, after reading all that, what I gather from his response is that the choice for who to direct was out of his control, after James Brown died, and the rights issues became more complicated as they now fell under a different set of rights holders, who, we can assume, didn't want Spike Lee to direct.

Is that what you read in all this as well?

He adds that the world was different then, and now movies have to be made cheaper. Does that mean we can also infer that Spike's asking fee was higher than Tate Taylor's? Or the budget for Spike's version of the film was more than what financiers were willing to spend on a Spike Lee-directed film about James Brown?

So, while we get answers we didn't have before, the answers themselves raise even more questions, which means, even more speculation.

In the interview, Grazer reveals how much of a James Brown fan he is, and how long he's been trying to get the project off the ground (12 years since he bought the rights), as well as how much of his own money he's invested in it thus far ($2 million). He also shares that, at one point, Al Sharpton was a consultant on the movie.

And as for whether James Brown (whom Grazer said he met several times while he was alive, and even discussed the project) was at all concerned about a warts and all telling of his life story on film, Grazer said he seemed OK with that.

And finally, with regards to casting, Grazer says they haven't decided yet, but are about to begin the process of testing/auditioning actors, and believes they'll likely be looking at a lot of actors before they find the right one.

You might recall that, at one point, Wesley Snipes was Spike's man for the starring job, but my guess is that Wesley's tax problems meant a change in plans.

In fact, as recently as 2009, it seemed like the project was as close to a sure-thing as any can get, with Spike saying in an interview with MTV News, "We're doing it together – it's going to happen... He’s my man."

He was referring to Wesley Snipes in that quote back in January 2009 (S&A hadn't been born yet).

Spike added that he intended to use James Brown's "authentic voice" during for any musical sequences in the film; essentially, Wesley would lip-synch.

Years later since that interview, little seemed to have further developed on the project, and it looked like it was dead.

In a 2011 interview, James Brown's daughter, Dr. Yamma Brown, said that the family was considering Eddie Murphy, Chris Brown & Usher to star in the Godfather of Soul’s biopic - an announcement which, as I recall, took a lot of you by surprise.

Whether or not any of the above gentlemen are still being considered, or if there are others, we'll find out eventually; although, I doubt it.

As I've said before, go with an unknown - definitely not a star.

The screenplay has been penned by Jez Butterworth & John-Henry Butterworth (they wrote the script for Fair Game, the Naomi Watts and Sean Penn film).

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Panopticon-Review/342702882479366
 

RE: The previous four (4) posts on the new James Brown film, 'Get On Up,' and its broader political, aesthetic, economic, ideological, and historical implications for African Americans within the structural and institutional contexts of the fundamental political economy and culture governing the United States.

Thus a recapitulation (now updated in italics and boldface text) of the initial quote from the critical essay "Cultural Leadership and Cultural Democracy" by Harold Cruse from his classic text 'The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual' (William Morrow, 1967) is in order: 

"Racial democracy is, at the same time, cultural democracy and the question of cultural democracy in America is posed in a way never before seen or considered in other societies. This uniqueness results historically from the manner in which American cultural developments have been influenced by the Negro presence. Since a cultural philosophy has been cultivated to deny this truth, it remains for the Negro intellectual to create his own philosophy and to bring the facts of cultural history in focus with the culture practices of the present. In advanced societies it is not the race politicians or the "rights" leaders who create the new ideas and the new images of life and man. That role belongs to the artists and the intellectuals of each generation. Let the race politicians, if they will, create political, economic, or organizational forms of leadership; but it is the artists and creative minds who will, and must, furnish the all important content. And in this role, they must not be subordinated to the whims and desires of politicians, race leaders, and civil rights entrepreneurs whether they come from the Left, the Right, or Center...Which means to say, in advanced societies the cultural front is a special one that requires special techniques not perceived, understood, or appreciated by political philistines. There are those among the latter who give lip service to the idea that Culture and Art belong to the People, but what they actually give to the people (not to speak of what they give to Negroes as people) is not worthy of examination. It is the Negro creative intellectual who must take seriously the idea that culture and art belong to the people--with all the revolutionary implications of that idea. "

--"Cultural leadership and Cultural Democracy" from The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual by Harold Cruse, 1967

The Cinematic Art and Legacy of Wendell B. Harris, Independent Filmmaker

Sundance Institute's 25th Anniversary Party

(L-R) Director Barbara Kopple, Sundance Film Festival director Geoffrey Gilmore, writer/director Wendell B. Harris Jr. and director Steven Soderbergh attend the Sundance Institute's 25th Anniversary Party held at the Racquet Club during the 2009 Sundance Film Festival on January 19, 2009 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images) * Local Caption * Steven Soderbergh;Geoffrey Gilmore;Barbara Kopple;Wendell B. Harris Jr.

All,

Wendell B. Harris (b. 1954) is a genius and one of the greatest and most important filmmakers in the United States today even though he's only made one film thus far that has been nationally distributed--the justly critically acclaimed and iconic CHAMELEON STREET (1990), a now classic and legendary independent black film that not only many film lovers throughout this country but in many film festivals and screenings throughout the globe have been raving about--and continue to rave about--to this day. Like many others I am still happily obsessed with this truly brilliant movie and I have personally shown the film to students in many undergraduate and graduate college film courses I have taught throughout the country. In any event please check out the following video and text below that includes two fantastic interviews with Harris himself in 2010 in Brooklyn, NY (where he talks with the equally great film critic Armond White!) and a lengthy fascinating interview via skype in 2011 after a screening of Chameleon Street (CS) in Austin, Texas. I've also enclosed the original New York Times review of CS from January 29, 1990 (!) which somehow manages to explain in some excruciating now retrospective manner just how far so-called "black cinema" has declined (at least the kind of "black film" (sic) that the controlling white corporate sponsors in the mainstream film industry heinously and routinely now make "available" to mass audiences via the thoroughly corrupt, venal, clueless, illiterate, INCOMPETENT, and extremely self hating likes of Tyler Perry (yuck!) and Lee Daniels (double yuck!!). It's absolutely bizarre and tragic but not surprising in the least that Perry's personal fortune is now over 300 million dollars and he has his own independent film studio in Hollywood and Daniels has made six very bad--and racist--movies that have been repeatedly nominated for Academy Awards in which over half of which have actually won awards while Wendell Harris still struggles in almost total commercial obscurity and can't get another film of his released or financed for the many reasons he talks about in the following interviews. The word "injustice" doesn't even begin to describe why this is so. It's obviously a major indictment of a rapidly declining society and culture that would rather--as usual--lazily embrace, buy, and defend the ignorant, destructive, and overtly hateful expressions of babbling and jejune con artists than seek out or pay any real attention to those artists and works that actually do tell us something real and valuable about our lives via art...

Yet what remains inspiring (and useful!) is that Wendell continues to fight for real, viable alternatives and to educate others as to how and why this creative committment to genuine art can and must take place. In other words Harris openly acknowledges and heartily supports the idea and necessity of STRUGGLE even in the face of the most overwhelming and disturbing odds. Wendell categorically REFUSES to give in to or succumb to the pervasive forces of despair and disillusionment. But thankfully that's what great artists always do and so it is in that ongoing creative and transformative spirit that I share the following information, insight, and analysis with you. Enjoy...and pass the word...

Kofi

"Dare To Struggle, Dare To Win"

"Rubiks Cube" and "Street Diagnosis": Scenes from"Chameleon Street"--by Wendell B. Harris:








Uploaded by cfood3000 on Oct 18, 2011:

Cinema 41 of Austin, TX, presents discussion with director Wendell B. Harris, Jr., via skype after screening of CHAMELEON STREET at Hideout on Aug. 24, 2011 (video by Anne Heller):



http://www.cinemad.iblamesociety.com/2007/12/wendell-b-harris-jr.html

INDEPENDENT. AVANT-GARDE. CULT. UNDERGROUND. STICKS AND STONES.

WENDELL B. HARRIS JR.

In the film CHAMELEON STREET (1989), the enigmatic Doug Street goes through a series of cons, sometimes to make money, sometimes to prove he can do more than what the world expects of him. In short time he goes from a simple extortion plot to complex impersonations, including as a reporter from Time, a Yale student, a lawyer and even a surgeon. Yes, a surgeon.

The point of the film is not just to tell a story of a con man, but asks what a black man is expected to do to make a living in this modern world. Based mostly on the true story of super-con-man William Douglas Street, Jr. the film is written and directed by Wendell B. Harris, Jr. who also turns in an uncanny performance as the lead character.

The film existed in the burgeoning indie cinema of the early 90s. Unlike most of the films around him though, Harris provided a complicated character and not a simple genre drama or comedy. The extremely intelligent Street has great ideas to fight the system, but is constantly stumped by tiny details he cannot control. It’s a drama and you root for Street to win but feel sorry for the people getting conned as well. And it’s bittersweet funny, as the sardonic humor in the film rings all too true. Above all, you feel the frustration that leads to fighting back against the grain.

The film won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1990. But that didn’t lead to distribution. Rather, the prize led to many meetings in Hollywood, the insult of a possible remake rather than a distribution deal, some deals for writing scripts, and a brutal joke. CHAMELEON STREET did get a forgettable theatrical release and Wendell was able to write some scripts. Only now at the end of 2007 does the film finally get a DVD release.

CINEMAD: I’m glad the film is finally coming out to DVD.

WENDELL HARRIS: My DVD distributor told me, “Please understand that CHAMELEON STREET is being perceived as an ‘art-house’ film by retailers. This will affect their initial buy.”

I’ve always had a really big problem with understanding what the word art-house film means. What is an art-house film? To me, it always has a connotation that, from a marketing standpoint, it means that not much of an effort is going to be made.

I would agree with that.

That may not be the case with Image. I think John Powers [marketing Vice President, Image Entertainment] knows what he is doing. What is your take on that phrase?

The art-house tag? That does mean that they will not put as much effort into it as they would toward a bad movie with a famous actor. I don’t necessarily think an art-house film has to make you think, but for the most part, it’s a film that’s not escapist.

It’s not TRANSFORMERS (2007).

No. You’re not going to be thinking while you’re watching TRANSFORMERS.

There are films from all over the world that are called art-house. But when I hear the words ‘art-house’, for some reason, it’s genetically speared into my DNA: I always think of EL TOPO (1970). And I haven’t even seen EL TOPO. But I think about this film! I’ve heard that the director lined up a million lizards and shot them on camera.

Frogs. [Actually, the famous frog scene is in the follow-up film to EL TOPO, called HOLY MOUNTAIN (1973).]

OK, frogs then. But that’s what comes to my mind whenever I hear that art-house tag. Shooting a million frogs. Something accomplished on a very low budget that very few people want to see. I have never fought people who call [CHAMELEON STREET] an ‘art film’ or a ‘black film’ or an ‘avant-garde’ film. To me, an art-house film is an un-marketed film.

CHAMELEON STREET has never been marketed aggressively. Up until this point, this is the most exposure it has ever received. The only reason you’ve ever heard of the film is because some film critics from 1990, 1991 and 1992 … they would not let it die.

The first time I heard about your film was because of the controversy of it not getting distribution. I don’t know what the show was, but you were being interviewed on a PBS show. It was specifically about how no one would distribute it even though it won at Sundance. Only Will Smith wanted to buy it so that he can make a remake.

That’s partially true. It went through four permutations. It was Arsenio Hall. Then Will Smith, then Sinbad. Between 1990 and 1993 I was totally focused on getting through the gauntlet. You know. You’re running through this gauntlet trying to reach a distributor. I never said Hollywood suppressed CHAMELEON STREET until around the mid-90s.

I remember when Elvis Mitchell came with the BBC to interview me at my apartment in Burbank. At one point Elvis Mitchell says to me, “Sorry for your film being suppressed.”

I said, “ Uh – what do you mean? Why do you think that?”

He said, “Well, why do you think Warner Brothers has paid you a quarter of a million dollars for the remake rights? Yet they refuse to distribute your film.”

The camera’s running and I’m going , “Aaaaaaaah…er, ah…” Robert Krulwich made the same point a year later on an ABC special. Now it’s 2007 and I can tell you: yeah, it was suppressed, all right.

How do those discussions with distributors go? “We really love your film and we think it’d be better if we make it again?” It’s purely business for them to buy a good idea and put someone famous in it.

That’s true. If you make the money, you’ll be promoted. If you don’t make the money, you won’t be. But as Orson Welles said, “There’s something more important in Hollywood than money. What vision is being promoted? ” In other words, what are the ideas being promoted in the film? Ideas get demoted and suppressed. Money is not the final arbiter. Content is king. It is what’s going to be given / fed to the American public and to the world.

The ideas in CHAMELEON STREET have always threatened the status quo. I was essentially paid a quarter of a million dollars to . . . it almost feels like bribe money, or hush money. I was told repeatedly by every distributor in Hollywood, “It’s a wonderful film! We just don’t know what to do with it.” But they knew exactly what to do with it. Suppress it.

I forgot to mention it was also being considered for Wesley Snipes as well. Each time it was given to a different person, it was given a different ambience. For Wesley Snipes, it was changed into a kind of car chase movie. For Sinbad, it was changed into a kind of goof-ball character. For Arsenio, it was a hybrid of the two.


Wendell B. Harris, Jr. as Doug Street.


Did they tell you what other titles they were going to call it?

No, they were going to keep it CHAMELEON STREET. By the way, when this went down, I was also given an associate producer credit, so that when the film was remade, I would be consulted.

Did winning Sundance not pack enough punch?

The prize of winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance is a 14” crystal obelisk. But that’s not the real prize. The real prize is that you get immediate access to every major production house in Hollywood. You get 25 meetings with all the top people. I could take the next three hours and tell you about my meetings with Jane Fonda’s company, Robert Redford’s company, Barry Levinson, Ed Pressman, Irving Azoff, Steven Spielberg, whoever! That’s the real prize.

If you were alive at the time you’ll recall I’m sure that 1989, 1990, 1991- that was the epoch of the black director. That was when being black was such a wonderful plus and you could actually get a good deal. After Sundance, I went to Hollywood in 1990, got an apartment in Burbank. I told myself that I was going to make myself as available as possible for the next three years.

But by 1993, after being there for three years, working to get work, I was sitting in Musso and Frank’s. A friend of mine who worked over at Paramount came over to my table and said, “Guess what I just heard?”

I said, “What?”

She said, “Well, it goes like this ….. All you have to do to get a production deal in Hollywood today is be black, male and NOT Wendell Harris.”

(Laughs) I said, “Thanks a lot!”

That sucks.

It makes a great anecdotal story. But man, when you actually go through it, it’s like going through hell.

I heard of one project called NEGROPOLIS.

That was one of my projects that I was pushing. I pushed to get that made for about four years. That was my satire comedy. I did get a bite in 1992 from Spike Lee’s production company but the deal fell apart. I pitched NEGROPOLIS all over Glib Town. In retrospect, I think some people in Hollywood were perhaps disturbed by the premise of NEGROPOLIS. You know, you walk into these meetings in Hollywood and say, “Okay, the whole movie takes place in ancient Rome except the emperor and ruling elite are all black and all the slaves are white. Isn’t that hilarious?” The response would always be, “Isn’t that amusing - ? Yes, what a novel approach. Do you see that novel door over there? Go make a novel exit.” I guess white people don’t want to be slaves. Who knew? Oh well ….. But the Senate is mixed. There are a few white senators. Koreans, too .

But there is so much hilarious stuff in NEGROPOLIS. Like I said, ancient Rome is being run by a black emperor named Canigula. Not Caligula -- Canigula. I wrote some great roles for several great artists: Shirley Caesar, Aimee Mann, Dom Irrera, Stephanie Miller, Aretha Franklin, Leah Krinsky and Chris Tucker…. This was before Chris Tucker started making 50 million per pic. One of the characters I loved was the Middle-Aged Hercules. He’s still strong but he wears a truss. Wanted Bill Murray for that. Then there is Alexander the Great who happens to be Jewish. Very Kosher but he’s got this long flaxen waxen blond hair which he is totally obsessed about… constantly combing his hair. I wrote that part for Howard Stern. You have to remember back in 1990 Howard Stern looked like he was about to assume the mantles of Groucho Marx, Pigmeat Markham, Jack Carter and Don Rickles. So, I wrote this great role for him. Also wrote a phenomenal role for Oprah Winfrey…. Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile and Cosmetology. Cleopatra runs this global corporation called Cleo’s Cosmetics, Inc. whose main product is beauty makeup for women. You would have seen facets of Oprah that have never been seen on film. That woman is a great actor. But they always stick her in these stolid, rustic, turgid, bucolic, Jemima matron roles. She has so many nuances but you never…. Well , anyway --- She was born to play Cleopatra. Then there was “Canigula.” That’s the part I wanted to play.

We should talk about something positive around the film. Was this your first feature?

I had experience with 8mm back when I was 9. But, yes -- it was my first feature on 35mm. Prior to that, it was short films in 8mm, super 8, 16mm and super-16. Working for years at Prismatic Images…. our audio/video studio in Flint, Michigan, which was incorporated in 1979. The end goal was always to make feature films. But to get to that end goal, there were 8 or 9 years shooting weddings, commercials, state lotto ads, making dubs for people of their VHS and beta tapes. It all built up to the making of CHAMELEON STREET.

It was obviously friends and people from around the city, everything coming together to help.

You got that right. Two-thirds of the investments for the $1.5 million budget came from my parents, Helen and Wendell B.Harris, Sr. that was $740,000. The remainder of the budget came from other investors. It took 4 years to get essentially a quarter of a million dollars from investors. It was like scraping dried blood off the sidewalk. You make hundreds of presentations to potential investors and only a handful come through.

But then it did.

It did. I’ve always said that CHAMELEON STREET is like the emblematic independent production. Everything about it is from the independent world and that experience.

Did you already know about the subjects that made the main character? It was essentially based off two scam artists, correct?

Certainly 90% of it is Doug Street’s story. The section where he impersonates the foreign exchange student from France comes principally out of Erik Dupin’s experience. Although, I have to add, Doug Street has a hot and heavy foreign film addiction. He loves German and French films.

You heard their story and were taken by it?

In 1983, I read a Detroit Free Press article on Doug Street. He had just been incarcerated in upper state Michigan for his impostor activities. In the article, they ran through what he had done during the 70’s and early 80’s. The moment I read the article, I said ‘Ah! What a fantastic film!’ I walked into the kitchen and told my parents. That’s how it all began. That was May of 1983. Took a year and a half before I went up to Kinross Correctional Facility in upper-state Michigan to interview Doug Street on three-quarter inch video. That began a prolonged period of research, which continued for the next 3 years, using letters mostly. I visited him a few times after he got transferred to Jackson Prison.

When you take this movie around the world, it’s amazing how some people respond. After screenings there would always be a question and answer session. You’re standing up there answering questions. It was like people were talking to Doug Street and not me! They got angry with Doug for treating this woman like that or using this kind of language, or whatever! If I ever saw the power of media, it was then. I would be answering questions at the end of the screening and people would be talking to me as if I were Doug Street …. completely oblivious to the fact that I’m just the actor. It was his life’s story that had been painstakingly researched. There were 36 versions of the screenplay written over 4 years. Doug Street wrote innumerable letters and everything in the film comes out of his experience.

That’s a good acting job too.

You hear about these people who are on soap operas, you know --- they’re walking through the grocery store and someone reprimands them for doing something to someone’s husband on the show. It’s very interesting.


Doug Street (Harris) makes a black Barbie for his daughter.


Did you understand his motivation? Is he nuts or is he somebody who just got so frustrated with society that this seemed like the thing to do?

I wouldn’t call him nuts. You used the word frustration, which is the illegitimate brother of anger. I know that Doug is angry. He told me one time, “I’ve got anger that goes back to kindergarten. Anger is my best friend.” It goes back to things that happened in his childhood which he continued to fester over as the years went on.

The anger that is present in Doug Street is present in 99.99% of black males in America. Every black male in America has been touched by this anger. Sometimes it feels like you’re being marinated in anger. Why? The playing field of this country is not only uneven --- it has potholes. And some of these potholes have signs that say, “For Colored Only.”

I’m not necessarily leaving out black women either. I’ve been black for 53 years now. Certainly, I’ve never met a black male who’s happy with the way black people are regarded and treated in the United States.

Does he have a wall that is missing that enabled him to take the steps to do things he knew he would get caught and put in jail for?

On the back of the DVD of CHAMELEON STREET, there’s a small little blurb that reads:

CHAMELEON STREET IS A FILM BASED ON THE TRUE STORY OF AN AMAZING CONMAN FROM MICHIGAN WHO EXCHANGES HIS DEAD END LIFE FOR A BRAND NEW IDENTITY. IN FACT, MANY NEW IDENTITIES ARE ASSUMED: REPORTER, DOCTOR, LAWYER, DETROIT TIGER AND MORE.

For Doug to actually take his bit of black anger and channel it into these various roles, I feel that there are so many things at play here. The effects of racism really boil down to personal experiences. You talk about ‘Oh, I went over here and this happened to me, the next minute that happened to me’. People who are constantly railing on ‘black people really need to pull themselves up by their own boot straps, get on with their lives, stop playing the blame game, stop playing the race card’ have not only missed the point … they have also missed the past. And they have also missed the elliptical nature of racism. Racism insists that your Present, Past, and Future are all identical. Playing the race card …. ! What a canard. The moment you are born into this country they hand you a race card. It’s a color-coded society. It would certainly be hypocritical to deny that. When Doug Street takes his experiences and says ‘I’m not going to play this game the way they are hypocritically laying it out for me. Instead, I’m going to go through these permutations that reveal how hollow and shallow the game really is.’ Then he proceeds to perform 36 hysterectomies at a Chicago hospital without getting past high school, let alone medical school.

He’s showing that society is ready to bow down at what you’re wearing, or what you say your degree is. All of that does work on a thematic level. But when you sit the real Doug Street down, you look into Doug’s face, you hear him talk about what he did, when he did it, who he did it to….. you can see he gets a real charge out of making this society dance to his tune.

Which is incredible.

People are amazing. People can do so much! The people who actually make the decisions for the masses in this country and in this world, they are very aware of ‘the power’ of the people, and how important it is to keep people thinking: Keep quiet, pay your taxes, just shut up and shut down, keep on keeping on and keep off the lawn while you’re doing it.

Don’t think about how we are raping you physically, spiritually, medically, financially, culturally. Don’t think about any of that. That’s partially why I think the whole undercurrent of Doug Street’s life and what he has attempted to do, really does expose this hypocritical , harsh life we’re living in, in high relief.

Did he enjoy the process of the film being made, something being done with his life? After he was caught, what was his mood?

He was only caught the two times. He was incarcerated not because somebody found out he had been impersonating someone, but because he was turned in by his wife. Another time he was caught because he had used someone else’s credit card, using too many charges. The point is that he wasn’t caught because of trip ups in his impersonations, but because of what he regarded as betrayal by his ex-wife.
He really is one of the most incredible con men that lived because he didn’t get caught.

That’s true. That’s true. We didn’t tell the whole story. I’ll tell you something I haven’t told a lot of people. The screenplay that we shot was a 274-page screenplay. That’s longer than LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962), along with half of GONE WITH THE WIND (1939). We shot an amazing story. I could make another two CHAMELEON STREETs with the footage left over!


Production still: Incarcerated in Jackson Prison, Street (Harris, left) listens to fellow inmate Eugene Raymond (Henri Watkins) explain why he killed his mother over comic books.

I take it he was smart enough to know that sooner or later, if you’re not playing by the rules, you’re going to go to prison.

One word you have not used in this interview that usually crops up is ‘compulsion’. He’s been incarcerated on more than one occasion for living this kind of lifestyle of impersonation. I don’t want to, in 2007, make any kind of equivocal statements based on where Doug’s head is at now. But I will say that between 1983 and ending with our joint appearance on the Geraldo show in 1990, my impression of Doug was that he felt it was his duty to continue with this lifestyle. He would make an effort to shore up or eliminate those aspects of his life that ended up always getting him in jail. Like bad credit card debt, or a woman.

The existence of racism … in so many words, this seems to be his take on it. As long as he is living in a society that promotes inequity, where a Katrina can take place at the drop of a hat, he is going to continue his crusade which other people have labeled (usually white people) a criminal compulsion. Racism is a criminal compulsion. Nothing good comes out of it. It triggers all kinds of angst and emotional abortion. Things happen. Things don’t happen. Some people weep, some people wail, some people work and some people impersonate other characters, like Doug.

It’s not done in a way where he’s ashamed of who he is, he wants to be someone else. That’s more like giving up. It’s different to say, I want to be a doctor so badly that I’ll just do it. That’s almost more of a psychotic thing where you’re trying to erase your identity. Instead, he was more like ‘look asshole, I can do this.’

When I’m standing in front of an audience after CHAMELEON STREET, I often end up mentioning that Doug literally performed 36 hysterectomies. There is always this gasp of horror that comes from the audience. Mostly from women. And I agree … it’s worth a couple good gasps. But Doug would say it’s also worth gasping at the way doctors are treated like demi-gods in this country. Not just doctors but anybody with a degree. And it really bugs him that our society kow-tows to an idea of professionalism … not the real thing. Cutting a woman open without a medical degree is an extremely disturbing aspect of how far he was willing to take this thing. I hasten to add that every one of those 36 hysterectomies was blatantly successful. But it’s small consolation to those women who scream at me, “HOW DARE HE!”


Production still: Street (Harris, center) removes uterus of female patient without a medical degree, high school diploma or GED. Dr. Wendell B. Harris, Sr. hovers in the background serving as medical consultant for this scene.


It’s hard enough to make a film about somebody and their life, which you also want to make a film in which their condition exists in. At what point in your editing or your shooting, do you think, ‘Ok, this is going to be my comment.’ When there’ll be other times that reflect what happened exactly.

I did not see CHAMELEON STREET as an opportunity for Wendell Harris to start editorializing or adding to this or that experience. When I get a response from an audience member who acts like this entire thing came out of my experience, it is disheartening because I have to go back five steps and explain that this was a well-researched film. It was Doug Street’s life story, not mine. I did not spend four and a half years on that script so that I could get my take or slant grafted in. When we were shooting the film I would always tell the crew, ‘Look …. What we’re doing is, we’re putting Doug Street alone, naked, on top of a large Formica table. We’re putting these klieg lights on him and we’re going to shoot him from every angle.’ That’s what we did. One thing you haven’t quite asked me yet is, ‘What was Doug Street’s reaction to the film?’

Yeah that was coming.

There’s a famous registered letter that Doug wrote and sent to my mother, the executive producer, Helen Harris in 1989, hours after he first saw CHAMELEON STREET. He sent a brief one-page letter … very succinct, very pithy, very to the point. Doug was very disappointed. He felt exposed, that liberties had been taken with his life story. He was most upset with the slogan on the poster we used in our first campaign: I think therefore I scam.

He was very offended about that. He forgets that I got that line from him. One thing he was very pleased about was getting any revenue from the film. Through contractual agreement he did get a cut of the film’s revenue. He never turned down any of the checks.

What’d your parents think?

They liked it. My mother is very much alive but my father died in 2000. But they both liked it. They would have liked it even more if it had made a profit for the Harris family. I was just thinking earlier this morning that the film was released 17 years ago. The only thing that has gotten me through the last 17 years, other than the Lord Jesus Christ, are the memories of watching CHAMELEON STREET with audiences in Italy, Germany, and America. That as well as the reviews critics have written. I mean – I don’t want to give the impression that I’ve spent the last 17 years sitting in a corner fondling reviews of CHAMELEON STREET. But an odd thing happens when you spend the family’s fortune on an independent film that sinks, not without a trace but certainly without a profit. Some people kind of look sideways at “artists” anyway. But when the artist doesn’t make any money they go from looking sideways to looking down, avoiding eye contact. And if you don’t make money for a very long time they stop looking altogether.

But the memory of seeing audiences in Germany, Italy, Atlanta, Georgia, almost falling out of their chairs laughing…. That helped sustain me.

Did you always act in your films growing up?

Yes. Acting is always #1. Everybody has three aspects of genius…. Everybody has three talents – three areas of expertise in which they can perform at genius level. But one of these talents is your main root and the other two branch out from it. For me, it’s acting. Acting is my main root. Writing and directing came from my desire to act back when I was four or five years old. That’s when I told my Mom, “I think I need to start directing and writing my own films. That way, I’ll always get the part.”

That makes sense. After the three years in Burbank, did you think wanted to try acting instead?

I had a development deal with Jerry Weintraub, Cary Granit and Matt Leipzig at Warner Bros. for an alien / UFO movie. I was contracted to write the screenplay in 1991. I stayed in that development posture for about a year before everything evaporated into the ether. It’s called ‘turnaround’. I then moved back to Michigan with my research that I had done. Took all that research into a different direction, for a film called ARBITER ROSWELL. I started writing that script in 1993. I was writing other scripts for Hollywood and Showtime at the time. All the money I was making was being funneled back into ARBITER ROSWELL, which we started shooting in 1997. Steven Soderbergh was one of the actors we shot with. Also Ed Lawrence, Joel Weiss, Denice Marcel and Serena Roney-Dougal. Began making trips to Roswell with film crews …. Interviewing most of the major participants including Walter Haut, Glenn Dennis, Phillip Corso, and Carl Vick. Extensive interviews with the crème de la crème of ufology: Stanton Friedman, Linda Moulton- Howe and Michael Hesemann. We also interviewed counter-intelligence agent Frank Joseph Kaufmann on multiple occasions. There is no doubt that Frank Kaufmann is the most important witness / percipient of the Roswell incident --- period. The actual process of shooting and editing ARBITER ROSWELL extended over the next 10 years. There’s a trailer for ARBITER ROSWELL on the DVD of CHAMELEON STREET, which will give you an indication of what that film is all about.

The bottom line is: What’s great about being an independent is that you get to do it your way. I spent three years in Hollywood writing scripts for people and got a very good taste of what it’s like when you have a committee of six people giving you notes about the screenplay and screwing it nine ways to hell.

Absolutely.

It doesn’t work, but it does pay the bills. It doesn’t get the film made with the vision intact. 13 years have been spent on ARBITER ROSWELL – that’s three times as much time spent on making CHAMELEON STREET. You lose all kinds of things when it takes 13 years to make a film. You lose the respect of most of your family and friends. People don’t return your phone calls. But here’s the plus. At the end of the process, you get what you want. I was spoiled by CHAMELEON STREET where 99.9% of what’s on screen is what I wanted. The exact same thing is the case for ARBITER ROSWELL.

That’s great. Do you see the end coming? The finished product? Or do you see that some things still need to fall in place first?

The trailer for ARBITER ROSWELL is a 33-minute trailer. The finished film is a three-hour film. All the footage has been shot, but it is not completely edited yet. This 33-minute trailer gives a very good taste of what the finished film is all about. Many people have told me that once the DVD gets released, it’ll be much easier to find investors to help complete ARBITER ROSWELL. To be finished after 13 years…..

You started it with Jerry Weintraub, but do you actually own it?

The screenplay I wrote for Weintraub was called UNTITLED UFO STORY. That was just a generic title. That screenplay is still owned by Warner Brothers and Jerry Weintraub and has nothing to do with ARBITER ROSWELL. With Jerry Weintraub, a very funny guy, by the way, he gave me complete ownership over all the books his production company purchased to research UNTITLED UFO STORY. It was almost like $3,000 worth of research material. But I have to make clear that there’s no relation between ARBITER ROSWELL and UNTITLED UFO STORY.

You made a friendship with Steven Soderbergh from meeting at Sundance. Weren’t you there before his film was?

Here’s how the world perceives it. SHE’S GOT TO HAVE IT (1986) by Spike Lee and SEX, LIES & VIDEOTAPE (1989) were both released before CHAMELEON STREET. Steven had won [the Audience Award at] Sundance for SEX, LIES. Even though CHAMELEON STREET was actually shot and completed before [either film]. I took 11 months editing CHAMELEON STREET. That’s what, like four times as long as the guys who edited GONE WITH THE WIND ---? That’s about a year. That was brutal. Spike and Steven had both gotten out of the box with their films.

By 1990, Steven was one of the judges [at Sundance] along with Wim Wenders. The first time I ever met Steven was at a CHAMELEON STREET screening. The lights come up; we go up on stage and answer questions. Somebody from the back asked me a question that was so erudite and on the money, that I said, “Who are you? Are you a filmmaker?”

This voice in the back mumbles “Um, yes.” That was Steven, that’s how I first met him.

When you win the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance ---- that is not an automatic distribution deal.

Or even a job.

Although it did transpire into three development deals. Steven kept saying “Don’t worry, it’ll come through. It’s going to come through!” This is in 1991. When a joke starts going around Hollywood that all you have to do to get a production deal is be a black male director and not Wendell Harris, I finally got hip to what was happening. Shame on me spending three years trying to work with them. I should have moved back to Michigan, worked up my company and gone on to the next film. But, I could not believe you could win the Grand Jury prize and not get some kind of deal.

What Hollywood cares about is money.

You said a mouthful there. I went to a million of these meetings. I pitched and I pitched until I was hoarse. I remember belly aching to Soderbergh, “I’m pitching and pitching and they’re nodding and showing me the door.”

He said, “You know what I do when I go to these meetings, I don’t talk. They think I’m extremely profound. You might want to try that.”

I wish I had now. All that talking I did was so much lost carbon monoxide.


Doug Street (Harris) refuses to pose seriously for his mug shot.


The film wouldn't be the same if made by a studio.

I’m sure you’re aware of how many of your decisions, as an independent, are made by how much money you have. If I ever sat down and went through CHAMELEON STREET and said ‘I wanted to do this, but I had to do this’ because you are limited with money. All of that means nothing when you can actually put your product on the table, go to bed at night and not lose sleep over, ‘I wish I had done that, I wish I had this or shot this’. Being an independent is glorious.

Will Smith has apparently copied your scene about solving the Rubik’s Cube to get respect. Do you have any idea of what that was?

I don’t necessarily blame Will Smith for the impression of CHAMELEON STREET. He was smart enough to marry Jada Pinkett Smith. If I have a problem at all, it’s this: I feel that CHAMELEON STREET deserves as much distribution as --- uh …. what’s the film with the dead guy on the beach?

WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S (1989).

WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S! If I were to walk through the country and ask people about the two films, people would recognize WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S immediately. Then they would ask me, ‘Where is CHAMELEON STREET?’

http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/news/2010/07/forever-contreband-wendell-b-harris-jr-s-chameleon-street/


FOREVER CONTRABAND: WENDELL B. HARRIS JR.’S “CHAMELEON STREET”

By Brandon Harris in News
on Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

Perhaps it goes without saying that the world of independent film missed the boat on Wendell B. Harris Jr. No one, especially this author with the same surname as the now fifty-six year old Michigan native, wants to play the woulda, shoulda, coulda game. Yet whenever I think about the career I would have liked to have seen Mr. Harris have, it’s hard not to turn a bit melancholy. I guess being in the right place in the right time with the right people and a large enough sum of money counts for something, but if being at the podium in Park City with the Narrative Grand Jury Prize in your hands isn’t that place, than what is? No studio executive in 1990 thought to offer Mr. Harris the chance to direct Hugh Jackman and Robert Deniro in a sizably budgeted, sure to be faux uplifting account of the events in Selma; I’m not sure he would have accepted if they had.

After all, he made a film in Chameleon Street, his diabolically funny debut which screens as part of Contraband Cinema tonight at BAM, that reveals a black consciousness as messy, hysterical, and laden with the unspoken burdens of otherness as those that belong to most of the black folks I know. Which is also to say that he gave us, in the form of William Douglas Street, the con man who impersonated a Time Magazine reporter, Ivy League student, appellate lawyer and gynecological surgeon, one of the most unforgettable characters to grace American movie screens in the past quarter century. Charming and unrepentant, Street gets lost in his various masks, but even when he’s caught, he never fully lets on to the low simmer resentment than swims just underneath the surface of this formally audacious, wholeheartedly entertaining yarn. He’s just too debonair to be a victim, too singular to be an archetype, too righteous to be Flint, Michigan’s black answer to Tom Ripley. Leaving the Angry Black Man and Tragic Mulatto in the cellar where the rest of the cliches are stored, in Mr. Harris’ world there is just no way to simultaneously get ahead and Do The Right Thing, even if he plays as many roles for as many different people as the President does today, without the motorcade and fancy D.C. zip code. Of course, by the end of the film, you still don’t quite know him; you never can.

Like Billy Woodberry and Leslie Harris and Larry Clark (the darker one), Mr. Harris has so far left us, despite making a debut more widely acclaimed and known than any of theirs, without an encore, as hard as he surely tried. Good for him; despite his meetings with the Spielbergs and the Fondas, he didn’t see fit to remake Chameleon Street with Will Smith or Arsenio Hall or Sinbad, as was reportedly suggested during his stint in development hell. Integrity still counts for something. He’ll be on hand tonight with firebrand critic Armond White to discuss his picture after the 9:30 show.

Wendell B. Harris Jr.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wendell B. Harris, Jr.
Born: Wendell Burks Harris, Jr.
March 5, 1954 (age 58)
Occupation Actor, Filmmaker

Wendell B. Harris, Jr. (born March 5, 1954), is a Juilliard and Interlochen-trained American filmmaker and actor. He is the writer, director and lead actor of Chameleon Street, which won the Grand Jury prize at the 1990 Sundance Film Festival.[1] Wendell and Prismatic Images went on to produce a radio series entitled Black Biography which showcased Black icons from the spheres of art, history, and politics. He has appeared as an actor in the films Out of Sight and Road Trip. Wendell Harris is currently in post-production for the forthcoming documentary, Arbiter Roswell. This 14-year project chronicles the relationship between public opinion, the media, and the military-industrial complex.


References ^ James, Caryn (January 29, 1990). "After Pizza an Polite Squabbling, a Film Wins". New York Times. Retrieved 2 May 2010.
See Wendell B. Harris Jr. at the Internet Movie Database

Uploaded by adobeairstream on May 20, 2009

Adobeairstream interviews Wendell Harris Jr. about his movie Chameleon Street, re-run at the Marfa Film Festival and Sundance this year, after many years underground.



http://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/29/movies/critic-s-notebook-after-pizza-and-polite-squabbling-a-film-wins.html?pagewanted=1

Critic's Notebook; After Pizza and Polite Squabbling, a Film Wins
By CARYN JAMES
Special to The New York Times
January 29, 1990

For more than six hours on Friday, the judges of the dramatic competition at the Sundance U.S. Film Festival squabbled politely, ordered in pizza, listened to one another's impassioned speeches and finally wondered how to break or evade the rules. When their private deliberations were over and the awards to independent film makers were announced at a modest ceremony on Saturday night, the grand-prize winner turned out to be one of the least talked about, least traditional, most personal films in the festival: Wendell B. Harris Jr.'s ''Chameleon Street,'' the fact-based story of a quick-change artist.

But the five judges made a point of giving special recognition to Charles Burnett's poetic drama ''To Sleep With Anger,'' resolving the problem of how to reward both films without diluting the impact of the prize.

Each movie is by a black writer and director, and if there was a statement implicit in the awards this year, it was the diversity and growing strength of black film makers.

A third film by and about blacks was one of the best received by the jurors and audiences. ''House Party,'' an energetic, lighthearted film about black teen-agers, features the rap musicians Kid 'n' Play. Written and directed by Reginald Hudlin and produced by his brother, Warrington Hudlin, who founded the Black Film Maker Foundation, ''House Party'' won both the jury award for excellence in cinematography and the Film Makers Trophy, a prize voted by the festival film makers themselves.

There had been a buzz, as they say here, about both ''House Party'' and ''To Sleep With Anger'' throughout the 10-day festival, which ended today. But during the endless movie conversations that took place in restaurants, at parties and in theater lobbies, ''Chameleon Street'' was scarcely noticed, much less buzzed about. To the very finish, it seemed that the only person who had actually seen the film was its publicity agent.

It is not hard to understand the difficulty in getting an audience to ''Chameleon Street,'' a film that is always admirable and sporadically enjoyable. Mr. Harris plays William Douglas Street, a man whose various poses question the nature of identity itself. In a loose series of fragments, he becomes a surgeon who performs an operation, a Harvard student and a civil-rights lawyer.

In quasi-documentary style, the film uses actors as well as people playing themselves, blending fact and fiction so the distinctions are never made clear. And though Street's first-person narration suggests that his behavior is both clever and compulsive, the audience remains too detached from this problematic figure to be absorbed in the film in more than an intellectual way.

''To Sleep With Anger,'' a leisurely work filled with visual imagery and references to black folklore, is stylistically more audacious than most mainstream films. But compared with ''Chameleon Street,'' this story of a middle-class black family is conventional. At least it has a straightforward narrative and a major star, Danny Glover. But the rough free-form structure of ''Chameleon Street'' seemed to count with the jury.

Armond White, a judge and a critic for the black weekly New York newspaper The City Sun, said after the ceremony on Saturday: '' 'Chameleon Street' is a different, more personal kind of cinema than most conventional narrative films. If Wendell B. Harris is not encouraged to work, American cinema is dead.'' But Mr. White emphasized that the jury award to Mr. Burnett was ''not a consolation prize; it's awarded with all the confidence and admiration of the jury,'' and with the feeling that there were just not enough prizes to go around.

The other judges included the actress Alfre Woodard and the film makers Steven Soderbergh, Peter Wollen and Morgan Fisher.

''House Party'' is by far the most mainstream of the competition films, the one with the greatest chance of commercial success. Unlike most of the films here, it was financed by a substantial production company, New Line Cinema, and it is to open across the country in March.

But while ''House Party'' sounds like a stock film for high school audiences - the hero, Kid, defies his father's punishment and escapes to a late-night party - Reginald Hudlin's direction and feel for his characters' speech and style raises the film above its genre.

At times, Kid's nightlong adventure resembles a black teen-age version of Martin Scorsese's ''After Hours.'' As Kid wanders through his small-town streets, he escapes from school bullies and is stopped for no reason by white policemen who call him eraser head because his haircut resembles a mesa on top of his scalp. But while Mr. Hudlin creates an effortless narrative that sweeps viewers along on a strong current of visual energy and music, he also carries the audience through a range of black society, from a country-club party to a cramped housing project.

''House Party'' was an unlikely choice for this festival, but it turned out to be so popular that two screenings were added. At one showing on Friday night, a crowd largely composed of middle-aged skiers and film fans sat quietly through a film that would have most theatrical audiences dancing in their seats. But after ''House Party'' ended, the audiences cheered and yelled, going wild to the extent that any Sundance audience ever does.

Though ''House Party'' managed to please the judges and audiences, it finished second in the audience vote for most popular film. This year's audience award for drama went to ''Longtime Companion,'' written by Craig Lucas. The film follows a group of gay men as the presence of AIDS gradually and tragically reaches them. ''Longtime Companion'' is the sort of well-meaning melodrama intended to touch audiences in the most visceral way, and the Sundance viewers were obviously responding to its sentiment rather than to its very limited artistry.

During the festival's final weekend, mainstream Hollywood stars, directors and producers arrived, at least in a small way. On Friday afternoon, Mr. Glover showed up for a screening of ''To Sleep With Anger'' and a reception for the film.

That night, while Mr. Glover was watching ''House Party,'' most of the movie-business types were at ''Blue Steel.'' Its director, Kathryn Bigelow, and its star, Jamie Lee Curtis, flew in for the premiere of the film, which was shown out of competition. Ms. Bigelow, who likes to subvert genre conventions, has created an intense, violent thriller about a rookie police officer, played by Ms. Curtis, who falls in love with a murderer (Ron Silver).

But though Ms. Curtis and Mr. Silver are chilling in their roles, Ms. Bigelow tends to rely on pretentious visual tricks; shafts of blue light are forever cutting across the screen. ''Blue Steel'' has little meaning beyond its overwrought style.

No one could call the awards ceremony anything but understated. The actor Willem Dafoe presented the prizes to the winners, many of whom wore jeans and snow boots.

Awards included those for the documentary competition, whose judges also seemed torn between conventional and innovative forms. But they obviously had fewer qualms about splitting a prize than the dramatic-prize jurors did. The documentary award was given to Stephanie Black's ''H-2 Worker,'' about the mistreatment of Jamaican migrant workers in Florida, and to Pat O'Neill's ''Water and Power,'' a decidedly nonnarrative vision of California politics, droughts and history. Mr. O'Neill's film was also shown at the New York Film Festival in October.

The ceremony's liveliest moment arrived when Mr. Harris, looking serene behind dark glasses, stepped up to accept his award for ''Chameleon Street.''

''I want to show you half a second of what's really going on,'' he said, and took off his glasses, gave an open-mouthed wide-eyed look of panic, then calmly replaced the glasses and his demeanor. He then offered to give movie roles to ''everyone who can hear my voice now,'' which was enough to generate some curiosity on the part of all those people who had forgottten that ''Chameleon Street'' was even in competition.

http://foxbrownfox.net/the-artists/wendell-b-harris-jr/


The House That Fox Built
Pish Posh, Passions and Professions
Interview with Wendell B. Harris, Jr.

Wendell B. Harris, Jr. (b. 1954) is an American filmmaker who was trained in drama at the prestigious Interlochen and Juilliard schools. He is the writer, director and lead actor of Chameleon Street, a Gethsemane84, Inc. / Prismatic Images, Inc. film, which won the Grand Jury prize at the 1990 Sundance Film Festival.

Wendell and Prismatic Images went on to produce a remarkable radio series entitled Black Biography, which showcased Black icons from the spheres of art, history and politics. He has appeared as an actor in the films Out of Sight and Road Trip.

Wendell Harris is currently in post-production for the forthcoming documentary, ARBITER ROSWELL. This compelling and rather startling 14-year endeavor chronicles the incestuous and internecine relationship between our minds, our media, and the military-industrial complex. Wendell returned to the 2009 Sundance Film Festival to screen Chameleon Street in the Sundance Collection and is touring as a guest speaker at college and university campuses nationwide. Recently, Wendell and Chameleon Street were lauded at the 2009 Marfa Film Festival – Marfa, TX.

The Films of Wendell B. Harris, Jr.

What is Chameleon Street?

http://foxbrownfox.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/smokes-copy.jpg?w=547


Overflowing with talent and intelligence, Chameleon Street is an offbeat comedy and an overlooked gem. Juilliard graduate Wendell B. Harris Jr. hits a home run the first time out, writing, directing and acting in a sly tale loosely based on the exploits of a real con man, William Douglas Street. Like an African-American Ferdinand Waldo Demara, Street finds life more exciting when he’s assuming a different identity. Functioning as a lawyer, a student and even a surgeon comes easy because Street knows how to adapt himself to the needs of the people he meets, with a polite smile and a proper list of bogus credentials. As he says, quite sincerely, “I think, therefore I scam.”