Causing Trouble with Odienator: Shirley, You Can't Be Serious!

by Odienator

Sometimes the gods toss me a pitch straight down the middle, one so blatant and so clear that my near-sighted, half-blind ass can hit it out of the park without even trying. Today, I'd like to thank whichever god sent me Green Book, the Peter Farrelly Jungle Fever Cookie Buddy Movie* that has White critics dancing the Hucklebuck in the aisles while twisting logic into pretzels in order to justify its existence. This is a movie where a racist (but not TOO racist) Italian man drives a regal Black musical genius across the South in 1962, realizing along the way that perhaps he should reserve the word mulignana for eggplants only. Yes, folks, in 2018, Hollywood has deemed that we need yet another "one of the Good Negroes" movies to soothe the savage breasts of insecure racists everywhere. In the year of BlackKklansman, Blindspotting, Sorry to Bother You, If Beale Street Could Talk and Black Panther, did we really need a race-based throwback so musty and old that even Stanley Kramer would have found it too dated?

Of course we did! This is how Hollywood has always worked. As soon as Black folks started running around crossing their arms and saying "Wakanda Forever," basking in films made for us and by us, Hollywood was like "hey, they're gettin' too big for their britches again! Gotta show 'em their place." It happened in 1967 after Sidney Poitier, then the top box office draw, slapped the everlasting gobstopper shit out of a rich, racist White man in Norman Jewison's Oscar-winning In the Heat of the Night. That had never been done before, and Black audiences responded accordingly with whoops of joy. Finally, Sidney had shaken off the shackles of years of playing characters who "knew their place" and come out literally swinging! Plus, he was smarter than everybody else in that movie and he knew it. Hollywood responded by completely neutering Sidney in his next film, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? His brilliant doctor character was as practically perfect as Mary Poppins yet still wasn't good enough to marry some well-below-his-league hippie White chick. I can only imagine how quickly Black audiences felt deflated by this.

I guess the Hollywood powers-that-be thought two movies with "Black" in their titles were inspiring untenable levels of African-American pride and confidence in 2018. As the Bible says, "pride goeth before destruction and an uppity Negro before the fall." So we needed to be reminded of how Hollywood likes its people of color. Enter Green Book, a movie where the Black character has to be taught how to be the White audience's interpretation of "Black." Dr. Don Shirley (an excellent Mahershala Ali) may play the piano with amazing skill, have multiple degrees, speak eight languages fluently and live above Carnegie Hall, but he apparently knows nothing about what this film thinks is Black culture, nor does he know many of the fundamentals for survival as a person of color in 1962. "I know more about your people than you do," says his driver, Tony Vallelonga, aka Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen, sporting a questionable Brawnks, Noo Yawk accent as thick as this film's bullshit). 

That line is the biggest pander for the type of audience who'd sop Green Book off the screen with a biscuit of cluelessness. But let's start at the beginning and work our way up to that excruciating sequence where Tony Lip gets to play Henry Higgins in George Bernard Shaw's Nygmalion. I called this film a "Jungle Fever Cookie Buddy Movie," which is my term for a film like 48 Hrs. where a Black guy and a White guy become friends and/or allies while the film perpetrates a false sense of equality between them. In the majority of these films, the Black character is always beneath the White character despite what the plot dictates, and everything is filtered through the White character's eyes. Ask yourself, how much do you actually know about the personal lives of Hoke from Driving Miss Daisy? Or Viola Davis in The Help? Or, Lord help me, Bagger Vance? You know practically nothing, right? Let's explore this phenomenon.

And what exactly is a "Jungle Fever Cookie" you ask?

 The coloring is equal on the cookie, but not in the movies! 

Green Book is co-written by Tony Lip's son Nick, and he's more intrested in glorifying his Daddy than giving Don Shirley any realistic humanity. (That's a good son for you!) Dr. Shirley doesn't even show up until almost half an hour into the film. Until then, we're following Tony Lip through his paces as a bouncer for the Copacabana. Tony's got a bit of a racket going on there, stealing hats for money and earning favors with the local mob guys who frequent Barry Manilow's favorite hangout spot. Currying favor with the local Mafiosi is as far as Tony Lip's willing to go--he has no interest in joining. He'd rather enter eating contests, but those are few and far between. So when the Copa has to close for renovations, Tony's suddenly at a temporary loss for work, one that could easily be supplemented by the far heavier and more dangerous work he's not willing to do for the Don. Don't worry, folks, another Don is willing to hire him.

The Vallelongas live in the northernmost borough of New York City. Tony Lip wakes up one morning to find half his in-laws and a quarter of the neighborhood in his house. His wife, Dolores (the lovely, talented Linda Cardellini) reminds him that this was the morning the sink was being repaired. The reason the goombah squad is currently present is simple: The plumbers are a couple of Black guys trying to earn a living. Dolores offers the gentlemen water in glasses, and once the men have finished, Tony Lip tosses the glasses in the trash.

Let's stop right here. This entire scene is the first sign Green Book is going to be dishonest, half-assed, Caucasian-congratulatin' bullshit. Tony Lip and his buddies converse in Italian, which is helpfully translated into English on the screen right up until the moment they get to the word mulignana. The subtitles use the literal translation of the word, which is eggplant, rather than its slang translation. You don't have to be from my beloved home state of New Jersey to know that, in a certain context, mulignana also means nigger.

This is why I would never order eggplant parmigiana at an Italian joint.

Viggo Mortensen doesn't get to say the N-word in the film, but he felt quite comfortable saying it at a post-screening Q&A in Los Angeles. "Nobody says nigger anymore," said Mortensen. When the Twitterati went up in arms, Mortensen and his defenders demanded everyone look at the context in which Mortensen used the word. Believe it or not, I agree! Context is everything here, and while I'm rather stunned Mortensen felt ballsy enough to drop the word while surrounded by two Black men, he was attempting to make a point, no matter how misguided his point actually was. Viggo's comment was wrong as fuck because people still say nigger! Read my hate mail sometimes! Or the comments under my pieces.

But context is everything, right? Too bad the subtitlers didn't follow this rule. And you know why? Becuase they didn't want to make Tony Lip and his crew seem "too racist." They needed to be Avenue Q-level racist, not Hilly-Holbrook-in-The-Help-level racist. Dolores digs the plumbers' glasses out of the trash and shakes her head the way Edith Bunker probably did, but I just have one question: Who the fuck called all those people over when the Black plumbers showed up in the first place? I have a good guess!

Anyway, these are trivial matters compared to what comes next. Tony Lip gets a bead on a job. Some doctor is looking for a driver to take him through what Timbaland referred to as the "dirty South." Oddly enough, this doctor lives atop Carnegie Hall. And he's BLICK, to use the Lethal Weapon II pronunciation.

"I was Black Moses YEARS before Ike."

Our first look at Dr. Shirley is amazing. Here's this beautiful, dark-skinned Black man with a voice so mellifluous it would shame the gods, and he's decked out in regal garb that looks as if Wakanda and Zamunda had a baby. If the makers of Green Book put out the Don Shirley Line, I'd max out my credit cards buying his threads, his throne and his shoes. I'd be dressed up at critic's screenings, throwing shade and saying "bitch, don't sit next to me! You COMMONER!!"

Speaking of shoes, Tony Lip is on board with doing the drive until he hears that he has to shine Dr. Shirley's shoes. "Youse supposed ta be shinin' MY shoes!" I said, reading Tony Lip's mind. The guy says he has no problems working for a Black man, but that shoe thing's a bridge too far! Secretly, I hoped Shirley would offer him a drink and then toss the glass into the trash after Tony Lip finished. "You people have cooties!" the good doctor would have said. But no, Dr. Shirley's gotta remain noble nad magical.

Tony Lip takes the job. Otherwise we'd have no movie. At this point, nearly an hour in, we finally see the item that gives Green Book its title. Dr. Shirley's manager hands it to Tony Lip and explains its purpose. What we learn about them in this movie is in stark contrast to what I learned about them. (Full disclosure: I actually own a few that were bequeathed to me.) Since Green Book has a White martyr complex, it says nothing about how the book explained sundown towns or how useful and important it was for Black travelers. Instead, we learn that the Green Book listings were all rundown and dangerous places where Black people have never seen anyone who looks like Don Shirley. The movie hasn't done enough damage, so now it has to piss on the thing that gives it its title.

Have a good look at it, because Farrelly and Co. aren't gonna give you one.

Dr. Shirley is smart enough to know that having muscle like Tony Lip is a good idea in the deep South. And there's a very believable scene where his bodyguard intervenes to make sure his contractual demands of a Steinway piano are met. But most of Green Book is Tony Lip trying to "loosen up" and "Blackify" Dr. Shirley. Nowhere is this more cringe-inducing and blatant than in the movie's centerpiece, an interminable scene that involves Kentucky Fried Chicken. You know the filmmakers thought this scene was important, because the trailer for Green Book highlights it, as does every single commercial. I'm absolutely stunned that KFC didn't do a movie tie-in, complete with an endorsement from their "Crispy Colonel" incarnation of Colonel Sanders. Because fried chicken is on screen so long it deserves consideration in the Supporting Actor category at this year's Academy Awards. It shows up again later at a ritzy dinner, sticking out like a sore thumb on all that that good china!

This is George Hamilton as "The Crispy Colonel"--I did not make that shit up.

The fried chicken-eating scene occurs while the duo is driving through Kentucky. Tony Lip is excited that he can buy Kentucky Fried Chicken in Kentucky! I lived in Florence, Kentucky for four months, and I'll be honest, I went to KFC just to say I bought it in Kentucky. So I get Tony Lip's enthusiasm about this. However, the scene quickly goes awry when Tony Lip tries to get Dr. Shirley to partake in the eleven herbs and spices-infused subject of a hundred thousand racist Black jokes.

Dr. Shirley declines, and for a second, I thought the movie would make a sly dig at the idea that some Black folks would NEVER eat fried chicken in "polite company." I was instead reminded that this is a film written by three White guys who know as much about Black people as I do about open-heart surgery. Dr. Shirley responds with a line that I guarantee you the writers thought was a means of bypassing stereotype:

"I have never eaten fried chicken in my life!" protests Shirley.

"Shirley, you can't be serious!" I thought. "Nigga, you from FLORIDA!"

Now I hear you muthafuckas reading this. "Odie, you a racist!! All that 'we are not a monolith' talk, and here you are painting this poor man with stereotype." Well, y'all can kiss my natural Black ass two times! Unlike the makers of Green Book, I actually looked into what Don Shirley's relatives had to say about him. His brother, Maurice said Shirley "had definitely eaten fried chicken before" he went on this road trip. So the only reason this scene exists is to show Tony Lip teaching his boss to be "more Black." Hell, this is the scene where he says "I know more about your people than you do."

Of course, Dr. Shirley discovers he likes KFC. I bet he'd like Popeye's, Bojangles or Church's even better, but Green Book doesn't have time for taste tests. Tony Lip is too busy teaching this classically trained pianist about other Black musicians like Little Richard. He asks if Shirley can play in a similar vein, which is obviously foreshadowing the moment when Shirley goes full boogie-woogie on an upright piano in a juke joint later in the film. "Now, you're truly Black!" the movie seems to be saying as the juke joint audience applauds the performance. I suppose Farrelly would have had the patrons looking at the camera all confused, saying "what de FUCK is dat shit?!" had Shirley played them some Chopin or Scott Joplin.

Green Book is an incredibly offensive film, but its decision to isolate Shirley from Black people and Black culture is its most egregious sin. The assumptions it makes are uninformed and harmful. It posits that Black people would not appreciate an educated man like Dr. Shirley because they share more in common with a racist Italian with a sixth-grade education who knows how to play cee-lo. It never gives thought to the notion that Dr. Shirley might be someone his people could be proud of, or could aspire to be. Dr. Shirley is presented as noble for playing for rich White assholes, but also problematic because he's too "White-acting" to fit in within his own community.

Dr. Shirley is never allowed to tell us what he really thinks about his life. The question of why he's even interested in playing in the segregated South isn't answered by him. Instead, it's answered by one of his fellow musicians, who says a bullshit line that's so cliched that I'm not even going to print it. Instead, Shirley gets a rain-soaked monologue where he asks Tony Lip "where do I belong?" Ali plays the hell out of that monologue, but I couldn't believe for one second that his character would deliver it.

In order to elevate Tony Lip's White Saviorism even further, Green Book also isolates Don Shirley from his own family. He tells Tony Lip that he has no idea where his brother is and that they're no longer in contact. (This is a lie.) One would be forgiven if one assumed this had to do with Shirley's homosexuality, but it does not. There's a scene here where Tony Lip has to save his boss after Shirley gets caught having sex with a gay White man in a deep South YMCA. All I could ask myself was "is this man really this stupid? Does he not know of the dangers of being horny, Black and outside at night in the deep South?" Tony Lip's nonchalant reaction to learning Dr. Shirley is gay is actually more believable than the situation in which he discovers it; he basically says he's seen this stuff before at the Copa and that, if it got out, "this could ruin your career."

Green Book bills itself as the story of "an unlikely friendship." According to the film, however, this friendship is built completely on Dr. Shirley's need to be constantly saved and educated. Tony Lip not only gets a lost lamb, he also gets his own personal Cyrano de BergerBlac to help him woo his wife. But what does Dr. Shirley get out of this "friendship"? A Guardian angel who shows him how to keep it a hunnert with Black folks?

They even had a "Tell us about your one Black friend, White people!" contest!

When Shirley shows up at the Vallelonga residence for Christmas dinner at the end of Green Book, there's the expected initial shock from everyone. But then the guys who were formerly racist against the plumbers welcome him in practically with open arms. They're gonna have to throw away an entire place setting after he leaves, including silverware! I thought. That's gonna be expensive. And Mrs. V. even thanks him for helping her husband write better love letters, which I can believe she would do. Her comment is the last line of the film, in fact, a sweet sentiment designed to send the audience out beaming over the end of the racisms!

Green Book won the Audience award at the Toronto Film Festival and is being positioned as the salve we need in this era of neo-Nazis and the president who loves them. You'd be forgiven if you got this impression from the reviews, the award nominations and the critics awards. (As of this writing, it won the National Board of Review's Best Picture and Best Actor awards.) Earlier, I said White critics were dancing the Hucklebuck over this movie, and there are plenty of reviews that support my point. But to be transparent and truthful, not everyone was fooled:

A.O. Scott wrote: "As I said, there’s not much here you haven’t seen before, and very little that can’t be described as crude, obvious and borderline offensive, even as it tries to be uplifting and affirmative."

The always elegant Richard Brody wrote: "“Green Book” offers a vision of racists changing their views, but in a way that doesn’t in any way threaten racist prejudices" and ends his review with the word "bullshit."

And my good friend Sean Burns wrote that Green Book "plays like a bizarre Trumpist’s anti-Obama empowerment fantasy, in which a proudly ignorant white prole is constantly humiliating an erudite, sophisticated black man and showing him how the world really works."

Speaking of conservative fantasies, if those folks really wanted to own those Northerner Libs and call them on their racial hypocrisy, all they'd have to do is look at some quotes from the director himself and critics like David Edelstein. Farrelly gave a very telling interview to Vulture where he kept pulling executive producer Octavia Spencer's name out whenever the question leaned toward "why the fuck are you making this dated embarassment?" But this is my favorite part of the interview:

You’re talking about the scene where Viggo can’t believe that Mahershala’s character has never eaten fried chicken and basically browbeats him into trying some for the first time. It is great. But when it started, I’ll admit I got queasy, thinking the scene might go in a racist direction.

Yeah, well, the strength of it is that when [Viggo] says, “Hey, if you told me Guineas like meatballs and spaghetti, I wouldn’t get insulted.” He kind of is opening it up and saying, “This is bullshit. Don’t bring up this race shit. I know what you like.” And there’s so much humor in there with it, you know? “You have a narrow assessment of me, Tony,” Don says. And Tony Lip goes, “Yeah, I’m good, right?” It’s that kind of stuff. When she was in the editing room with me, Octavia was howling, and it just gave me such encouragement. 

I imagined Spencer in the editing room rocking back and forth while chanting "Minny don't burn chicken" like a mantra. And I don't recall any Prince Spaghetti Day commercials causing Italians to be discriminated against. So this is major-league false equivalency. Plus, Farrelly's comment proves my exact point about how his entire movie is some White guy doling out Blackness advice to an African-American: "Don't bring up this race shit, I know what you like." Really, now?

Also at Vulture, film critic David Edelstein got in as much hot water as Prince Spaghetti when he ended his glowing review like this:

"And I have to confess that in the current, insanely divisive political climate, I enjoyed Green Book’s spoon-feeding mightily. The movie taps into a kind of nostalgia for when everything — even racism — seemed simpler, and ready to be legislated out of existence."

It took him 2 days, but Edelstein eventually tried to clean that shit up, saying: "I find to my horror that my closing line reads as if I have nostalgia for a time when racism was even more pervasive and deadly than it is today. I don’t." Rather than question the sincerity of his apology, I'd like to quote an earlier line from his review as the last point in this thesis:

"After abrasive hits like Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave and Lee Daniels’s The Butler (as well as flops like Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit), the thinking is that audiences will be in the mood for a warmhearted, mismatched-buddy, racial-bonding drama-comedy that spoon-feeds you everything and goes down real easy."

THE BUTLER IS ABRASIVE?! I reviewed it and there's a Black Man Talk on it right here at this very site. It's far from a "let's scare de White People" movie. But what the three films Edelstein singled out have in common is that they all show Black people interacting outside of the gaze of White people. No matter what one thinks of the quality of these films, they show things other than what the White characters see or know about these people. In The Butler, it's even a comic counterpoint--we see how the servants (led by my doppelganger Cuba Gooding Jr.) interact amongst themselves as opposed to how they act in "polite company."

Apparently, that's abrasive to the good White viewers who don't consider themselves racist. This thinking is why shit like Green Book still gets made, and why any complaints from critics of color are being met with protests that we're "ruining its Oscar chances!" (I still say it'll win Best Picture if its box office picks up.) Well, if "abrasive" racism onscreen makes you uncomforable, try dealing with it in real life every fucking day of your existence. Sharing a bucket of KFC isn't gonna fix that.

"Write this down. Why was I the only person who had to apologize to Dr. Shirley's family?"

The Rachel Dolezal Double Feature

by Odienator

Happy 85th Birthday, Melvin van Peebles!

A few weeks ago, New York's Quad Cinema did me a solid and showed Mr. van Peebles' first (and last) studio film, Watermelon Man in their newly-renovated theaters. It played on the same day as my favorite romantic comedy of all time, Diahann Carroll's Claudine. Unlike that film, I had never seen Watermelon Man on a big screen. Until I'd seen it on VHS, my experience with van Peebles' 1970 satire had been relegated to its appearances on TV. I always found it fascinating that, while edited for language, the TV censor did not edit out a crucial piece of comic nudity. Watermelon Man may be the only time a big, Black ass was beamed across 70's era airwaves in New York City. The Quad returned that ass, in all its big, Black glory, to the big screen where it belonged. 

While we're on the subject of Black people showing their ass, I'm here to show mine by talking about two movies about White people going...um, trans-racial. One goes against his will, the other goes on purpose. Since I have no tact, and even less common sense, Big Media Vandalism's latest double feature is named after that pioneer of "put my race down, flip it and reverse it," the White woman formerly known as Rachel Dolezal (unpronouncable symbol pending). Ms. Dolezal has changed her name to something that would get her resume shredded by 95% of human resource departments, so technically my title refers to someone who no longer exists. You know what else I wish ceased to exist? The part of my memory that contains the first time I read about muthafuckas being trans-racial.

But I digress.

Watermelon Man, the first film in our double feature, has a great tagline. The poster referred to the film as "The Uppity Movie." Now, uppity belongs to a special class of word, namely words that most often precede and modify a specific other word. Uppity's significant other of a word is nigger. I'm sure the folks at Columbia Pictures knew this, though I suspect van Peebles had something to do with the marketing. I don't recall if anyone says the word uppity in Herman Raucher's screenplay, but you'll certainly hear its partner in crime word more than once in Watermelon Man. The film's White protagonist, Jeff Gerber (Godfrey Cambridge), would certainly use it if given the chance.

Gerber is a racist, sexist asshole. He's a fitness freak in love with exercise and the daily use of his tanning bed. Gerber's daily commute to work involves successfully outrunning the bus for several stops before boarding it in triumph. As the Black bus driver tries to outpace him, his primarily White passengers cheer him on. But traffic and the fact he has to pick up passengers at other stops prevents the bus driver from besting Gerber. "Oh shit!" the passengers say collectively as Gerber wins the race yet again.

"Arrogant! Arrogant! They're all arrogant!" mutters Gerber when the bus driver angrily asks for his fare. From the back of the bus (an odd place for Gerber to sit), he yells "in the good old days, you'd have to drive from back here!" 

Gerber works in a lily-White office selling insurance. He makes sexist comments to the women there and constantly works the room with a racist joke or anecdote. None of his co-workers seem to like him, but he manages to be a hit with his customers, many of whom are presumably the same type of privileged prick Gerber is. 

At home, Gerber puts up with his extremely liberal wife, Althea (Estelle Parsons) and his precocious son and daughter, the latter of which is played by a pre-Happy Days Erin Moran. Althea is constantly on her husband's back about not caring about the "Negro problem." Althea's radio and TV are always tuned to some liberal news program that drives Gerber crazy. He spouts the typical Archie Bunker-ish things while holding court at the dinner table.

Though he's a horrible bigot, Althea puts up with her husband's nonsense, chastising him but never once considering finding herself a more enlightened partner. She seems perfectly content with the status quo of a suburban home and scheduled sex once a week. When Gerber presses her for some good lovin', she reminds him that it's Tuesday and that he'll just have to wait until tomorrow. In the Gerber home, Wednesday is Hump Day in more than one respect.

 It's here that I should point out that, a few paragraphs ago, I said Jeff Gerber was played by Godfrey Cambridge. Not only is Cambridge a Black actor, he's a dark-skinned Black actor. In his natural state, he couldn't visually pass for White even if the entire viewing audience was blind. So, in an unprecedented move, Cambridge plays Jeff Gerber in whiteface for the first act of the film. This is 19 years before Rick Baker's stunning work changing Eddie Murphy into a White Jewish man in Coming to America, so a grain of salt is required to buy Cambridge as a White man. No matter--the subversiveness of the act far outweighs any visual hiccups. Since I first saw this film back in the 70's, I was able to accept Cambridge as Beckworth With The Good Hair.

It would seem that only an act of God would cause Althea to leave her boorish husband. Watermelon Man provides a catalyst, though whether it's God's work or Satan's we'll never know. But one night, while making a middle of the night bathroom visit, Gerber catches a glimpse of his ass in the bathroom mirror. We get to see it too--van Peebles fills the entire screen with it. Gerber screams in panic, because he realizes he's turned Black as hell. 

The way van Peebles films this scene is hilarious and masterful. The soundtrack pulsates with heartbeats and strange musical instruments before the big ass reveal. Gerber then reacts with intense panic as the screeen turns colors and the editing becomes jagged. "This is all a dream!" Gerber keeps telling himself. He splashes water on his face, trying to wash that Black right out of his hair. But no amount of scrubbing will cleanse his new pigmentation. Eventually, he wakes up Althea and drags her into the bathroom to see his transformation. Of course, she freaks out, screaming about "that strange Negro in the bathroom!"

 "I'm that strange Negro in the bathroom!" yells Gerber.

"You can't go to work like that!" says Althea before calmly introducing their kids to their colorized Daddy. They don't care, but their father's terrified concern picks up the slack in the caring department.

Grasping for any logical excuse, Gerber blames the tanning bed he's been using. This would be credible if Gerber were the color of John Boehner instead of Wesley Snipes, and even more credible if Gerber's straight blond hair hasn't pulled a reverse UltraPerm and gone native. After unsuccessfully complaining to the tanning bed company (they offer to send him a new bed; presumably this one would turn him Asian), he takes the day off to soak in a bathtub full of milk. It doesn't work.

Gerber's next step is to "go to their neighborhood" to get skin bleachers. Gerber buys enough to turn the Harlem Globetrotters into the Boston Bruins. "Tell me it's coming off, Althea!" Gerber begs while covered with an obscene amount of bleacing product. It's not coming off.

Eventually, Gerber has to go to work. Now, his skin color may have changed, but he's still a White asshole underneath because he thinks its temporary. He'll still say boorish things and expect to get away with his everyday routine. Unfortunately for him, the universe has other ideas. Gerber's race for the bus turns sour mid-run when a White woman wrongly accuses him of theft. Her rationale is that he was Black and running, so he must have done something. As an angry mob surrounds him and the cops try to take him in, the Black bus driver comes to his aid. Welcome to Negritude, Mr. Gerber!

"I didn't realize you were..." begins the bus driver, but Gerber's not having it. He says it's a tanning accident, the same excuse he uses at work. Gerber tries to get through his day by purposefully ignoring his color, but that privilege doesn't come with brown skin. He's not only noticable at the ritzy club where he's supposed to meet his biggest client, he's not welcome. Gerber's angry protests are met by, you guessed it, the cops. 

After two unfair run-ins with the cops, you'd think Gerber would have some empathy for "the Negro problem." But no! He still thinks we're shiftless and lazy. He also thinks his doctor will find a medical cause for his condition. Meanwhile, Althea thinks of a more genetic cause for it. "My mother always thought you looked a little Negro," she says, which insults Gerber to the core. Althea makes it worse by pointing out that her husband's Black-sounding full name, Jefferson Washington Gerber, might have been his parents' subtle way of revealing the results of his DNA test. "I'm not Negro!!" Gerber persists.

No matter! It's Wednesday, which means sexytime with the Mrs. Unfortunately for Gerber, Althea finds a way to forget her liberalism. "I can't!" she tells him, resisting his advances. Althea may have problems, but Gerber's buxom, Nordic secretary finds Black Gerber a turn-on even if he is the same sexist pig he was when he was White. Gerber's boss also sees him in a different light--here's a chance to corner the untapped Negro market! "We've never had a Negro salesman before," he tells Gerber. Ever the company man, Gerber goes along with selling to Black customers while awaiting deliverance from his doctor.

Alas, the doc finds nothing wrong with Gerber. Not only does he tell him he's really Black, he suggests Gerber finds a Black doctor. Gerber's neighbors also have a suggestion for him, which they convey in a series of phone calls that say "move out, nigger!" Althea can no longer stand the threats. She sends the kids to her mother's, then joins them after the neighbors make an absurd bid to buy the Gerbers' home. Her problem isn't that the neighbors are forcing them out, it's that Gerber uses their racist panic to get a ridiculously high amount of money for the house. She bitches that Gerber "took advantage of those nice people!" 

With Gerber's marriage gone, he hops on his eager, willing secretary. But her fetishism for Negro flesh gives way to extreme racism once Gerber calls her out for bigotry. The secretary is so mad, she screams rape, sending Gerber running off into the night.

Watermelon Man ends with Jeff Gerber moving to the "colored part of town" and opening up a practice to corner that untapped Negro insurance market. The last scene finds him joining the revolution, so to speak, finally accepting his Blackness and planning to do the one thing Althea used to pester him about--pay attention to the plight of his Black brethren.

That's how Watermelon Man ends, but it's not how Columbia nor Raucher wanted it to finish. Both wanted Jeff Gerber to wake up from his nightmare a new and improved White man, sort ot like how John Howard Griffith turned back White in Black Like Me. van Peebles wasn't having it, citing that "Blackness is not a disease to be cured." Shockingly, this wasn't the dumbest idea Columbia had for this movie: They wanted Jack Lemmon to play Gerber in both incarnations. Can you imagine Black Jack Lemmon married to the Oscar winning actress from Bonnie and Clyde? This film wouldn't have made a dime!

The most unusual thing about Watermelon Man, besides the funky, very strange score van Peebles composed (it includes Love, That's America, which was commandeered by Occupy Wall Street), is van Peebles' casting of Mantan Moreland. van Peebles was once asked what types of studio system Black characters he had problems with, and his response was "every damn last one of them." So seeing Moreland, a contemporary of Stepin Fetchit, onscreen in a van Peebles production was certainly jarring. Moreland doesn't do anything offensive--he's actually pretty funny responding to racist White Gerber and his newly Black alter ego--but his presence here is still a surprise.

The attitudes presented in this satire still have the power to sting today, for nothing has changed. Watermelon Man's skewering of White beliefs and actions, liberal or not, remain fresh, sharp and biting. And Cambridge, who died way too soon, creates a role as memorable as Gitlow, the hilarious character he played in Ossie Davis' Purlie Victorious. 

Watermelon Man probably couldn't be made today, but the next film on our roster certainly has a shot. 16 years after Godfrey Cambridge put on whiteface, C. Thomas Howell put on blackface to star in Soul Man. Soul Man is an embarrassing fiasco that doesn't deserve mention in the same post as Watermelon Man, because any similarities between the two are easily overshadowed by the hideous amount of misguided racism contained in this 1986 disaster. But I have to go here, if only to show how fucked up '80's movies were about race before The Black New Wave ushered in a slew of Black directors to tell our stories. Lest you think I'm trying to push some form of 2017 "wokeness" on a 30-year old movie, keep in mind I haven't seen this thing since 1986. it was so offensive it stuck with me all these years.

How the fuck did this film get made, and why the fuck would I say it could be remade? Simple: Affirmative Action complaints. This is a film about a rich White boy who gets into Harvard Law School but can't afford to pay for it because his Dad (James Sikking) cuts off the pursestrings. Rather than get a job (or blackmail his neurotic Dad), Howell decides to apply for a scholarship specifically earmarked for Black students. He dyes himself black with tanning pills, buys a nappy wig and wins over the scholarship people. If you thought Godfrey Cambridge made an unconvincing White boy, feast your eyes on the reverse:

Not only does Howell not look Black, he looks like a cross between a faded Willie Tyler and Lester ventriloquist dummy and Chris Rock's evil White twin.

Now, if the film really wanted to be honest about who benefits most from affirmative action, Howell would have stayed White, slapped on a blonde wig and some tits, and played Christina Thomasina Howellina instead of "Mark Watson." But no, he's gotta be Black. So let's play along for a minute. 

Unlike Cambridge's condition, Howell's is easily reversible. He can go back to being White anytime he wants. Additionally, despite all the stereotypes Howell must endure, from the White girl who complains that his fake Black dick is too small, to the White kids who think he's good at basketball,  to the parents who see him as Prince or a pimp in cringe-worthy fantasy sequences, none of these transgressions are treated with the response or repercussions a person of color would have, thereby negating any satirical power the film thinks it has. 

Howell is teamed up with Rae Dawn Chong, who plays the original recipient of the scholarship. She has a daughter and a working class job, so she's certainly less privileged than Howell. But the film doesn't treat Howell's fraud with the life-changing seriousness it deserves. Chong falls in love with him, and even after she discovers he's not only White but the reason she's busting her ass to get through Harvard Law, she still takes him back. Howell gives up the scholarship, which he must now pay back to Chong. He also gives up his "color," but gets to keep the chocolate fantasy. 

James Earl Jones, who got an Oscar nomination the same year Watermelon Man came out, is on hand as Negro John Houseman. His job is to scare Howell's character, who thinks he's got an in because both he and Jones have brown skin. Jones has certainly been in more embarrassing roles (here's looking at you, BloodTide), but he's tasked with employing a level of gravitas that this film does not deserve. Jones gets to make speeches about how great it is to be a Harvard Law graduate ("a Harrrvard Lawwww GRADUATE!" he repeatedly says) and gets to play the bad guy while Howell's buddy Arye Gross tries to defend his actions in a court-like setting. Jones is the best thing in Soul Man, but that's saying very little.

At the end of Soul Man, we're supposed to believe that Howell has a better understanding of what it means to be Black, and of his own privilege. But, as Melvin van Peebles said, "Blackness is not a disease to be cured." We know Jeff Gerber fully understands Blackness, because he's stuck with it and he'll learn the full-immersion way. In Soul Man, the main character is let off the hook with no punishment outside of a financial one. Viewers today may see Howell's actions as a "blow" to "unfair" practices for minorities, but in actuality, it's all about the joys of cultural appropriation without consequence. If being Black were as easy as Soul Man makes it, everbody would be a disciple of Dolezal.

Causing Trouble With Odienator: I Got Some Alt-History Shows Too!

by Odienator

(Ed. Note: Using his awesome foot massaging skills, Big Media Vandalism blog runner Odienator has managed to secure a meeting with the bigwigs at HBO. He is currently on-site trying to get a show-running gig at the network responsible for such classics as The Wire, Oz, Deadwood and The Sopranos.

We here at BMV have wired Odie, because we heard there are dragons and shit over there at HBO. Considering they rarely get to eat dark meat, we feared that Odie might look like a three-piece from Popeye's to these fire-breathing creatures. Big Media Vandalism's creator and spiritual lifeforce, Steven Boone stands ready to intervene should any shit go down. Let's listen in to Odie's meeting.)

ODIE

Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Big. Seriously, I can't believe that's your actual name. Is your last name short for anything?

MR. BIG

No, that's my full name. I'm a member of the New Haven Bigs. Our surname goes back to the Mayflower.

ODIE

Cool! The Mayflower Bigs! That's real cool! I appreciate your time today, sir. I promise you won't regret it!

MR. BIG

Time is money, kid. Grab those matches and light my cigar, will you? (Puff puff) Good. Good. Now, pitch me. 

ODIE

OK. What had happened was: The other day, somebody in my Twitter feed tweeted a press release about your new show, Song of the South...

MR. BIG

You mean Confederate?

ODIE

Yeah, yeah, my bad! Confederate! Anyway, the showrunners' defense was that they were into "world creating" and that this new genre y'all got called "alt-history" was the hottest thing in TV.

MR. BIG

Indeed, we want to do something like The Man in the High Castle. We were rather pissed Netflix beat us to the punch in the alt-history game. And this sounds perfect--what if the South won the Civil War?

ODIE

Didn't that brother who co-wrote Chi-Raq already do this plot?

MR. BIG

There is nothing new under the Sun, Odie. Your Sunday School teacher taught you that, I am sure. 

ODIE

She was too busy telling us that frankincense and myrrh were what the New Testament called weed. I guess she was dealing in Alt-history, right?

MR. BIG

The clock's ticking kid. Can't you hear the Hans Zimmer Dunkirk score playing on the PA system here? 

HANS ZIMMER

Tick-tick-tick-tick. BRAAAAAAHHHHHM!!

ODIE

Sorry. OK, I'll be quick! So I got an idea for a new show that'll be as edgy and gritty as the shows HBO is known for. And it's a costume show with fierce creatures like Game of Thrones. Check this out. It's called Lions.

MR. BIG

What? Is this a spinoff of Empire?

ODIE

Not Cookie Lyon! Lions! You know, like the thing in the MGM logo?

MR. BIG

I see. Continue.

ODIE

OK, so we're in an alternate history where the Roman Empire never fell. 

MR. BIG

Great! We won't have to cast any minorities in this.

ODIE

It's not gonna matter, you'll see! So you know how, back in Roman times, the emperor would have Colisseum events where he fed people to the lions?

MR. BIG

Yeah, I saw Gladiator. 

HANS ZIMMER

(Few notes of Gladiator score plays, then) BRAAAAAAHHHHNMMM!

ODIE

Your Muzak is fuckin' lit, Mr. Big. But anyway! Anyway! We're going to tell this story from the lions' point of view. 

MR. BIG

Wait, what?

ODIE

An example! Just hear me out. You mentioned the Bible a minute ago--well, remember when Daniel was in the Lions' Den? Well, we recreate that shit as a flashback because our main human is a descendant of Daniel's. And when God delivers Daniel from the Lions' Den, we'll have a lion saying "Ain't this a bitch? That mu'fucka looked delicious!" 

MR. BIG

This is absurd, Odie. Lions don't talk, for starters, and we haven't done animation at HBO since Happily Ever After.

ODIE

No no! This will be live-action. We got some CGI lions voiced by famous actors. Anthony Hopkins can be a lion. Al Pacino--he's done like 40 movies for you guys already--he can be a lion. Oh, James Earl Jones! He can bring that Mufasa shit! And Patrick Stewart too!

MR. BIG

You really think Patrick Stewart would play a talking lion, kiddo?

ODIE

Hey, he's playing a talking piece of shit in that Emoji movie. A chatty lion with a nappy-ass mane would be a step up for him!

MR. BIG

I've heard enough. Security!! Get this fool out of my office!

ODIE

Wait! Wait! Security, please! Before you drag me outta here, I got one more idea. Please, Mr. Big. You know you need more minority show runners up in here when the shit truly hits the fan over this slave fan fiction show you're doing. You need me, dude! Give me one more pitch!

MR. BIG

All right. But this better not have any talking ferrets or tubas and shit in it.

ODIE 

No. No. Just real people! OK, this time, it's an alt-history look at the last 8 years. Remember how some folks were scared that, if Obama got elected, he'd enslave all of White America? Well, I'm pitching that this shit ACTUALLY HAPPENS.  Every White person's a slave! We can get Margot Robbie as a runaway slave doing illegal TV transmissions on a network called Br'er Fox News and...

MR. BIG

Security!! Drag his dumb, country ass outta here!

ODIE

Wait...waaaaait!

HANS ZIMMER

 BRRRAAAAAAHHHHHMMM!

(End transmission)

Causing Trouble With Odienator: We Need To Talk About Earl

by Odienator

(Spoiler alert for a spoiled ass movie.)

Long ago, I gave up on any hope that Hollywood would see the error of its ways and try to craft non-White characters of substance. I am resigned to the fact that your average screenwriter, who is statistically a White male, falls into one of these three theoretical categories:

1. They've never come in contact with people of color. At all.

2. They learned about how to write Black characters from the Hollywood studio system or episodes of '70's cop shows like Baretta and Starsky And Hutch.

3. Everybody has the same token Black friend, whom they use as an inspiration. This guy fits so neatly into every single Black stereotype that staring at him would incur the risk of being blinded by the racist version of a solar eclipse.

As the token Black friend of a number of people (and you know who you are, and YES I KNOW I'm your token, so please stop acting like you're enlightened), I have at least tried to establish a baseline that would not embarass my mother in public. I have multiple degrees and speak several languages. And yet, I'm never seen onscreen, unless you count every time my doppelganger Cuba Gooding Jr. shows up. And all Cuba's been doing lately onscreen is running--he's playing O.J. Simpson on TV and a runaway slave in a Christian movie at theaters right now. You're killing me, Cuba.

"Are you gonna drive my Ford Bronco, Mister Whitaker?'

Readers of this blog know I'm an extremist. I now reside at the opposite side of the minority character equation; rather than drown in false hope, I backstroke in the pool of mocking Black stereotypes in film. It's a deep pool, folks, and you all know how much we love picking apart these travesties of justice here at Big Media Vandalism. With that said, some kind of award should be given to Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. I've always wanted to meet #3 in my list above, and thanks to screenwriter Jesse Andrews, I have been formally introduced.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl was huge at Sundance, winning the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize. Until today, it held a 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating. After seeing the film at an advanced screening at the Museum of the Moving Image, I went to read those reviews. Every positive review I read said very little about Earl. One of them didn't even mention him at all! Plus, if you watch the trailer, you'll see how little Earl is referenced there as well. He's in the damn title, but his appearance in the trailer I saw is not much longer than the Fox Searchlight logo's appearance. I wonder why. Hmmm...

We need to talk about Earl. Yes, I stole that line from We Need To Talk About Kevin. Fuck Kevin. If Tilda Swinton had just called my mother, no discussion about Kevin would have been necessary. Mom would have shot a few arrows in Kevin's ass and told him to sit his ass down. Tilda and my Mom would then bond over Lipton tea and Shop-Rite brand Windmill cookies. We Need To Talk About Kevin would have been over in 5 minutes.

I'm almost tempted to send my mother to see Me and Earl and the Dying Girl if only to get her sure to be memorable take on the movie. Alas, I don't want my ass beaten, so I'm going to pass on recommending any movies to Miss Arlene.

Let's talk about Earl, and while we're at it, somebody call Guinness Book to see what the world record is on racial stereotypes in a movie.

Earl Lives In A Bad Neighborhood 

We're immediately told that Earl lives on the other side of town. The movie doesn't say "the wrong side of the tracks," but it damn sure doesn't look like any right side of the tracks I've visited. Earl's house is rundown in a way that screams "Ghetto Designs By Tim Burton." Considering how much gentrification is going on, I guarantee you there's some bearded White hipster with ugly feet crammed in some flip-flops living next to Earl. Yet we only see Black folks in Earl's area, including Earl's brother, who is even more of a stereotype than Earl. More on him later.

Earl is Greg's Token Black Frie--I mean, Greg's "Co-worker."

Greg is the "Me" in the title, and since he is telling the story, we'll be treated to his viewpoint, a viewpoint that solely exists to romanticize and justify how fucked up it is that people must suffer and/or be marginalized so a straight, White male can "grow as a person." Greg is supposedly so detached that Earl is his only friend. Greg can't even call him "a friend." He refers to Earl as "my co-worker" because they make parodies of classic movies like Peeping Tom and Midnight Cowboy. These parodies are a huge pander to the type of all-knowing, snooty cinephiles who feel they're above standard movie fare. Like those folks, these kids are too cool to enjoy current movies, even to mock them.

Me and Earl is so dishonest about this plot element it doesn't even mention Be Kind Rewind, whose plot featured a Black guy and a White guy making their own versions of classic movies. This isn't even an homage to Gondry's film, it's a damn ripoff of it. And Jack Black and Yasiin Bey's remade movies are far better. If we see more than 20 seconds of any of Greg and Earl's lazy film parodies, I'll eat my hat.

Being Greg's Black friend has numerous perks, all of which are stereotypes. 

Earl Knows About Drugs

When Greg and Earl eat the weird soup whose recipe their teacher got from Costa Rica or some other brown place ripe with "Other"-ness, it's Earl who points out that they're high on drugs. "The soup had drugs in it!" Earl tells Greg. Perhaps Earl learned about dope from his brother, whose vocation seems to be toking on the porch while holding a giant pit bull. Because all Black folks have vicious pit bulls and love sitting on the porch smoking their reefer, right? Confidentially, I have never smoked weed, but I did have a Maltese. She was no pit bull, but that bitch would have ripped your balls off nonetheless.

There's another character in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl who sells drugs on school grounds. He's White, but his only defining characteristic is the type of music he's constantly singing. Nope, not emo or heavy metal or even Toxic by Britney Spears. This fool is rapping. Fake-ass Eminem wannabe comes into play when we discover

Earl Knows How to Fight

Greg doesn't know how to fight, but Earl appears to be an expert on scrapping. Greg gets into a fight, but once he starts getting his ass kicked, Earl runs in like a superhero and takes over. Leave it to your tough token buddy to save your ass when you write a check it can't cash! It's a well-known, yet incorrect given that we all know how to fight, which is why we're presumed to be far more dangerous than we actually are by the cops.

Later, Earl whips Greg's ass in front of Pit Bull Porch Manor aka Earl's house, and Earl's brother screams out ignorant comments before threatening Greg with a new, improved ass-kicking-slash-pit bull chewing. Earl's bro also calls Greg a pussy, which leads me to

Earl Is Oversexed

He's a teenager, so of course he's oversexed. Greg is also a teenager, but we rarely hear Greg talking filth-flarn-filth about fucking. No, instead we get Earl's constant running commentary on "dem titties." The breasts in question belong to the Dying Girl. She's dying of leukemia, yet all Earl can ask about her is if Greg has played with, touched, looked at, lusted over or done any other number of activities one can do with "DEM TITTIES." Earl says "dem titties" so many times that you could make a damn good sample of him saying "dem titties" over a rap beat, and you wouldn't even have to loop it. Earl talks about titties so much I stopped liking them.

Every Black character in this film is preoccupied with sex and utters sex-related dialogue. The chauffeur who takes Greg to the prom has two modes of dialogue: One is him saying "HUHHHHH?" as if he were channeling Stepin Fetchitt. The other is him practically demanding Greg fuck his date in the back of the limo. Nobody else talks about sex. Greg makes allusions to making out with Rachel, the dying girl, but his dialogue is respectable and chaste by comparison to the brown and oversexed folks.

Earl Teaches Greg About Soul(TM)

It's Earl who chastises Greg for being cold and distant, even to a girl whose suffering is beneficial for Greg's character growth. Once again, the Black character helps his White friend pull the stick out of his White ass and FEEL or GROW or CHANGE or GET FUNKY or whatever else these Bagger Vances do in these movies. 

"See the way youse holdin' dat club, boss? That's how ya needs ta hold dem titties!"

 Speaking of Bagger Vance:

Earl Sounds Like a 1930's Movie Character--With Curses

"Why does Earl sound like Eddie Rochester Anderson?" I kept asking myself while watching this movie. Earl's dialogue is peppered with profanities and occasionally broken English I assume I'm supposed to take as "Ebonics." I suppose it's meant to be charming but again, only the Black folks in this movie talk like this. Fake ass Eminem Drug Dealer also talks like this, but this movie had already gifted him with a Ghetto Pass, so I'm taking a tip from the movie and including him as an honorary member of the tribe.

I could go on about Earl, but why bother? The far more egregious sin is in this film's treatment of Rachel. Since Love Story, pretty girls have died of cancer in order to teach White dudes lessons about life. The illness is treated callously--it becomes all about the dude and not the poor, suffering girl. Not only does the dying girl in this film's title suffer, the final joke in the film mocks her death. If that weren't offensive enough, she then assists him from "beyond the grave" as it were, taking time from her busy schedule of dying as slowly and as painfully as possible to pen a fucking letter of recommendation for Greg's college application. He gets it after she's gone to glory.

Sundance movies have a bad reputation that I sometimes think is unearned. But Me and Earl and the Dying Girl should have its poster in the dictionary next to the term "Sundance movie." It exemplifies every single worthy complaint about Sundance movies, and yet critics and audiences ate it up and will continue to shovel heaping spoonfuls of its poison into their gullets on opening weekend. To quote Bugs Bunny, "I hope ya choke!"

Every year, there's a movie that the critics love that I find dreadful. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is this year's version of that, but I at least am in good company amongst my circle of critic friends, all of whom hated it. Sheila O'Malley called it "a pandering, self-flattering mess, featuring unearned catharsis, lazy clichés and characters presented in broad, sometimes-offensive stereotypes." Matt Prigge says "[i]f you need to know what hipster racism is, then here’s a great example: a film that trades on ignorant stereotypes but think it’s above it because it’s enlightened." And Sean Burns summed up my feelings better than anyone else in a tweet he wrote eons ago. 

He simply said "Fuck this movie."

Quick and Dirty: Guess Who Might Ruin The Wiz?

by Odienator

During the first year of my Black History Mumf series, I wrote a piece on the 1978 big screen version of The Wiz. It was entitled Guess Who Ruined The Wiz? I answered the question by pointing to Miss Ross and her director, Sidney Lumet. The piece was a bit meaner than I intended; despite all the scorn I deservingly heaped on the miscasting and misdirection, the movie has a special place in my heart. At least I did mention that in the original piece.

Fast forward to today, where it was announced that, after fucking up The Sound of Music and Peter Pan, NBC is now tackling The Wiz. And they're doing it with Cirque Du Soleil! I will not hide my utter hatred for Cirque Du Soleil--or any circus for that matter--so my excitement is really tempered by this announcement. After all, to appease Deadline Hollywood's skeered White editor, the one so concerned with "too many ethnics" on TV, NBC might cast that White lady rapper with the Blaccent as Dorothy. I ain't saying her name because she might be like Beetlejuice and show up here if I do, and I do not need that right now.

When it was rumored NBC was considering a live version of The Wiz, Big Media Vandalism creator Steven Boone and I had a conversation about casting. I said Usher should be The Scarecrow and Cedric the Entertainer should step inside Ted Ross' furry Mean Ole Lion mane. I couldn't decide on Dorothy, as there are so many superb choices. Denzel would make an interesting Wiz (and his singing isn't bad--see The Mighty Quinn), but I have a sneaky suspicion that NBC might make the same mistake the 1978 version did and cast Kevin Hart as The Wiz. Like Pryor before him, Hart has too much electricity to be this character. Now, Kevin Hart as the Tin Man--that might be entertaining. 

On February 7, 2014, the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens ran a print of The Wiz. It was an appropriate venue, as much of the movie was shot behind the museum at Kaufman-Astoria Studios. Boone and I attended (I told him our attendance was MANDATORY), and we were suddenly transported back to our youth. 

Aftewards, I wrote a Facebook post about it that I'm reposting here, both as an update to my prior piece and a timely mention now that we know NBC may be singing Mike's classic Scarecrow number from the movie version of The Wiz.

Here's what I posted on Facebook on February 7, 2014:

Watching The Wiz tonight on the big screen was a bittersweet experience. I still stand by everything I said in that infamous 2008 piece I wrote on the movie, but I reconnected with the reasons why I watched it a million times growing up. As a kid, New York City WAS the Emerald City to me. Sitting in a theater on the Astoria Studios lot, where most of The Wiz was shot, was a little surreal. MoMI has items from the movie in their museum exhibit right now.

When Diana Ross sings Home, Sidney Lumet wisely keeps the camera on her (she acts the hell out of the song, I must say). I used to think it was cheesy to have the faces of the people she met in Oz going by as she sang. This time, it was profoundly sad. My eyes started to water, because it played like an In Memoriam reel. Nipsey Russell, Mabel King, Richard Pryor, Ted Ross, Lena Horne, Michael Jackson--all dead. Hell, Sidney Lumet is dead. Dede Allen, who edited The Wiz is dead too.

My least favorite scene in the movie, the extended Emerald City color coordinated fashion show, also hit me hard this time. I had totally forgotten where it takes place--between the Twin Towers. The globe has the OZ logo on it. The Wiz also apparently is at the top of the Trade Center, as we see Miss Ross and company take one of the elevators.

They showed a 35mm print, which made me happy even though it looked as grungy as the old Universal logo. There were sound problems at times as well. Despite all that, it was great to hear Mike sing my theme song "You Can't Win, You Can't Break Even." through theater speakers, and to see Lena Horne returning to the screen, even if her attire made her look like she's in a Tyler Perry movie.

Tony Walton's art direction remains a high point of the movie. It is so deliciously ghetto that the Yellow Brick Road is made of the same kind of linoleum my Mom used to tile our floors with, and he gets maximum mileage out of both real locations like the Brooklyn Bridge and the studio backlot.

Over the years, I have softened to Miss Ross, even if I still think she's miscast. Her interaction with Jackson's scarecrow has always been a highlight for me, and I love how, in order to scare off the crows, she throws out the favorite line of all Black aunts: "YOU GO ON ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS NOW!!" Jackson is even better than I remembered. Russell and Ted Ross (recreating his Tony winning Cowardly Lion) have a lot of fun with their roles, and it's infectious.

All in all, a very nostalgic return to a staple of my youth, a film that I first saw on a double bill with Which Way Is Up? back in 1978. The director of that film, Michael Schultz, should have directed this one.

Me again:

I look forward to the Black Twitter live tweet of this blessed event in December. Especially if they cast Cookie Lyon as Evillene. I know that is probably miscasting, but I'd kill to hear my Taraji P. say "I'll get you Boo Boo Kitty, and your little dog, too!"