All language subtitles for Is That Black Enough for You.2022.WEBRip.Netflix.en cc-English

["City, Country, City" by War plays]

[Elvis Mitchell] For me,
the most exciting period

in the history of film

is when movies with the word "black"
in the title went from this…

to this.

[song becomes funky]

My excitement was not just because
there was finally truth in advertising

but because I got to see
a first in the movies,

a procession of assured Black talent.

Pam Grier aglow in Friday Foster,

an early comics adaptation.

Max Julien's contemporary take
on film noir in The Mack.

Charlie Russell's 1969 play
Five on the Black Hand Side

would hit the big screen four years later.

I ain't givin' up nothin'
but bubble gum and hard times!

And I'm fresh outta bubble gum.

-[all laughing]
-Oh!

[Mitchell] And I wasn't alone
in responding this way.

-[announcer] Hell Up in Harlem.
-[announcer 2] The Black Godfather.

[Mitchell] So, if this burst of freedom
and fulfillment was so well-received

and the thirst never really went away,

why did these Black films
stop getting made?

[song fades]

[indistinct conversations]

[Mitchell] My grandmother told me
that movies changed the way she dreamed.

She hailed from Mississippi.

She said that movies turned her dreams
into something resembling stories…

[bats screeching]

…and that first film she saw
that embedded in her subconscious

was Dracula.

And its gothic chills
and mezzo-operatic tone

made her afraid to sleep for a week.

I am Dracula.

Evil spirits?! Good gracious me!
Well, there is evil spirits around here?

Why sure, the place is crawling with 'em.
And that ain't all.

What? There's more?

[Mitchell] But movies that showed
African Americans facing fear

brought that to the screen in a way
that was dehumanizing and surreal.

Who is they?! Who is they?!

[dramatic music playing]

-Zombies.
-[exclaims in fear]

[Mitchell] This also demonstrates that,
way more often than should happen,

films regarded as classics
had a way of letting Black people down.

At some point,

you're likely to be assaulted
by a cringe-worthy moment

in something from the canon
by one of the masters.

Tossed-off stereotypes
from the Master of Suspense,

and one of film's
most highly regarded dramatists,

and the premier actor-director of musicals

continue to leave a mark.

[mellow jazz playing]

Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier,
giants in theater and the movies,

slathered on blackface
and benign superiority

to take on Othello.

A closet lock and key
of villainous secrets.

[music ends]

[Mitchell] I have never been able to see
Mickey Mouse in those gloves

or Bugs Bunny, for that matter,
and not think of minstrel shows.

What else were we to assume?
They were dressing for the Harvard Club?

-Did you ever see an elephant fly?
-[chuckles] Well, I seen a horsefly.

[exclaims] I seen a dragonfly.

-I seen a housefly.
-[audience laughs]

[crow] See, I seen all that…

[Mitchell] These were probably
some of the scenes

that made their way
into my grandmother's subconscious,

fragments that she had to fight
from overtaking her image of herself,

along with the way she was treated
as a young woman of color in Mississippi.

Her awareness of images was such that,
when we visited her in Hattiesburg,

she wouldn't let us watch reruns
of The Andy Griffith Show.

She would say,

"There's no Black people
in that Southern town."

"What do you think happened to them?"

All this can sure make it hard
for me to love the movies.

For me, it's been a lifetime of watching,
and thinking, and writing about movies.

I keep coming back,

despite the waves of disregard
they keep hitting me with.

The diminution can feel like a mountain.

Maybe the simplest way
to explain representation is this.

If you were a white actor,

formal wear implied
preparing for a night on the town

and all the pleasures life had to offer.

If you were a Black actor, a black bow tie
wasn't putting on the ritz.

It meant you were going to work.
It was your uniform.

Now, I like a well-assembled ensemble
as much as the next person,

probably more so,

but I've never really been
a fan of tuxedos.

Maybe that's why.

♪ Ol' man river ♪

♪ That ol' man river ♪

♪ He must know somethin' ♪

♪ But don't say nothin'… ♪

[Mitchell] Rather than seek out
and develop new roles for Black actors,

the tired tropes of Show Boat
functioned as a way

to showcase Black talent
through recycling.

The on-screen crushing
of Black hope was institutional,

from saying there were
barely any roles for Black men

to an unreal standard of beauty

that guaranteed decades of self-hatred
for Black women.

Here she comes.

This is the part I really like.

This is when
she does that shit with her hair.

[Mitchell] This role
wasn't written for a Black actor

but oddly made an inadvertent comment

about the most desirable kind of hair…

[all cheering]

…a lesson Black women
are still dealing with.

[Martin Luther King Jr] Well,
in my, uh, days in Atlanta as a child,

there was a pretty strict system
of segregation.

I could not attend any of the theaters.

Only, uh… There were
one or two Negro theaters.

Uh, they were very small,

but, uh, they did not get
the main pictures.

If they got them, they were
two years later, three years late.

So that, uh, by and large, there was
a very strict system of segregation.

My Saturdays was basically spent
in the movies.

-[pleasant music playing]
-We would watch serialized Westerns,

like, you know,
Lash LaRue, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers,

stuff like that, or Buck Rogers,
you know, some outer space stuff.

[Suzanne De Passe] I was very interested
in Westerns.

For some reason, I loved Westerns.

Gene Autry and Johnny Mack Brown
and Roy Rogers…

[chuckling] …and all these cowboy shows.

So I'd go to the Los Angeles Theatre.
It was this big palace like the old days,

and it was still kept in great shape.

And so I'd just kick back,
sometimes be the only one there,

and I had this big old theater
all to myself.

All that stuff by John Ford,
Monument Valley, all that kind of stuff.

I think those things
sort of… sort of grew on me.

I'd seen really good… good stories.

I am going to the movies with my father,

and he is taking me to see
the movies that he likes.

Movies that have people like
John Wayne in them and Steve McQueen.

I remember Band of Angels…

[laughs] …you know, 'cause I remember
when Sidney Poitier slapped her.

[dramatic music rises, stops]

The film cut out, and you came back.
She was standing there holding her face.

We were like, "What just happened?"
My mom said, "He slapped her."

"What?! For real?"

[mutters]

"They can't show that,
but he slapped her."

If you're a movie lover, you go
to the movies you're interested in seeing.

And it's not until after you get into
the middle of the movie do you realize,

"Oh, there's no Black people
in this movie." [laughs]

You're just munching the popcorn,
and it's like,

"Did you-- Have-- Is it me, or is there
no Black people in this movie?"

"There's no Black people in the movie."
"Oh, okay."

[Mitchell] We wanna see ourselves…

…some kinda way, you know.

Uh, yeah, 'cause, like I said,
when… when I was a "kid" kid,

the Black people in the movies…
We had Stepin Fetchit…

What are you looking for?

[mutters]

Where'd you learn to be a barber?

[Jackson] …Willie Best,

Alfalfa, Buckwheat, Stymie…

but I still wanted to be them!

Hiya, Buckwheat.

[Jackson] I didn't know any Black kid
that played with white kids,

let alone hung out with 'em,

you know, and, you know,
went to their houses,

or they came to their houses
and did stuff, so…

Our Gang was like… totally like,

"Wow! Where the…
Where the hell do they live?"

I mean, I grew up in segregation,

so from the time I could talk,
walk, see, make sense of things,

the world was separate.

[gentle music playing]

But when I went to the movies…
The movies is the stuff of fantasies.

You know?

When I went to the movies, I came home,
and I wanted to be that pirate that I saw.

But…

I needed a Black cowboy.

[Zendaya] We have so many stories to tell.

We just wanna see more of us existing
in all different forms,

and I think that is a common frustration,
I think, amongst my peers.

We just wanna see us just being kids
or, like, in sci-fi, whatever.

[Fishburne] I think, like most people,

I engage with the movies in the way
that you engage with your dreams.

While enjoying those pictures
that I was seeing,

I was also projecting

and trying to visualize myself
on the screen, maybe.

[Margaret Avery] As a little girl,

all I saw in the movies
were people that didn't look like me.

So I didn't really believe
that I could ever become an actress.

Until I saw Harry Belafonte
and Dorothy Dandridge in Carmen Jones.

And when I saw them, I said, "Oh wow!"

"Maybe I could become an actress."

[Mitchell] Dorothy Dandridge
was paired three times

with a figure
who became a star in every arena

except for the one
that he was most qualified,

movies.

That was Harry Belafonte.

Dandridge matched Belafonte
in talent and temperament.

Only the towering presence of racism
could blind anyone

to their adaptable charisma.

That kept them
from more on-screen pairings.

♪ My Lord, what a morning ♪

[Mitchell] Belafonte's success as a singer
sprang from his training as an actor.

He brought the deportment
of a storyteller to music.

His extraordinary presence, he had
the physical arrogance of an athlete,

and an emotional immersion in character,

signaled his on-screen gifts immediately.

But he bristled against a system
that not only had no idea how to use him

but was so afraid of him

that his singing voice wasn't used
in Carmen Jones.

♪ I saw it fade and lose its bloom ♪

[Mitchell] So in 1959,

he responded by producing a project
that brought in director Robert Wise,

actor Ed Begley,
who both won Oscars a few years later,

blacklisted screenwriter Abe Polonsky,

and the Modern Jazz Quartet.

[dramatic jazz music playing]

Odds Against Tomorrow
was just a remarkable thing for its day,

and, uh, the fact that
I was given the opportunity

to make that kind of film

really meant a lot to me.

♪ What's the matter, pretty baby? ♪

♪ Tell me, what's your daddy done? ♪

["My Baby's Not Around" continues]

Hi, baby. What's shaking?

Bacco wants to buy you a drink.

And I wanna buy you a shiny new car.

[Mitchell] Odds Against Tomorrow
was an unforgettable film.

The last film noir of its era

that was also ahead of its time
with an honest look at race,

which means, of course, it was ignored.

Opportunities came Belafonte's way,

but the projects he was offered
didn't remotely interest him.

[Belafonte] Sidney Poitier, up until then,

had been the most popular Black figure
in the universe,

but he was Sidney Poitier.

He was not Sidney Poitier
in a Black environment,

in a Black circumstance.

He was Sidney Poitier playing
a Black person in an all-white movie.

First thing I ask myself is,
"What is a Black man,

came from nothing, going nowhere,

all of a sudden in the middle
of seven Nazi nuns?"

I… I turned it down.

And they offered it to Sidney,
and Sidney took it.

-The winner is Sidney Poitier…
-[applause]

[gentle music playing]

[Mitchell] Rather than submit himself
to material

that didn't depict the Black community
in a meaningful way,

or at all, for that matter,

Harry Belafonte chose not to appear
in movies from 1959 until 1970.

To my mind, that made him
the Muhammad Ali of the film world,

forced in his prime
away from the arena in which he belonged.

[Belafonte] Not one picture I turned down
did I regret not doing.

Mm-mm. Wasn't in my… wasn't in my turf.

I didn't resent any of them.

I'm glad others got an opportunity
and went off and did it, but my initial…

First and foremost, I'm an artist.

I'm an actor.

And I came out of a school
with Marlon Brando, Walter Matthau,

Rod Steiger, Tony Curtis,

with a director that gave us no quarter.

I'm not gonna do anything other than
what I think is worthy of being done.

And fortunately for me,
I was a runaway success

in the world at large

because I had a globe
so passionately approving

of my presence in their midst

that nobody could dismiss the fact

that that thing on the horizon
called Belafonte

could really not be fucked with.

Because anytime anybody came up
and gave me an ultimatum,

I said, "Fuck you. I'm going to Paris."

"I'll probably live there if I like,
but I… I have a destination

that answers your… your denial
of what I could be."

Just me.

I'm here.

[Mitchell] Belafonte's resolve
literally took him out of the picture.

But as frustration mounted

for people of color
demanding redress and civil rights,

movies lagged behind.

To use a Langston Hughes quote
that inspired a play and a movie,

"What happens to a dream deferred?"

"Does it dry up…
[chuckles] …like a raisin in the sun?"

"Maybe it just sags like a heavy load."

"Or does it explode?"

[explosion]

-[guns firing]
-[exciting '60s rock music playing]

[man] We've been beaten
and getting beat and getting beat,

and we've just decided
to do something about it now!

[Mitchell] Decades of punishing
mistreatment of people of color

made the 20th century an epoch of revolt.

The 1960s body politic suffered through
civil eruptions almost every year.

1965 saw one sweep through Los Angeles.

[Burnett] The thing about the Watts Riot
is that you could have anticipated it.

It was clear that was gonna happen.
There was gonna be an explosion.

Police were killing people.

They've always been killing people,
been terrorizing the community.

[sirens wailing]

If I went to a show at night,

I knew I was gonna get stopped
at one point by the police.

It's just a thing where our lives

didn't matter, it seemed, you know.

[Mitchell] By 1968,
America was in free fall.

There had been over 20 riots,
with over half happening in 1967,

including my hometown.

Law and order
have broken down in Detroit, Michigan.

[reporter] This is a shot along Linwood.

The flames and the feelings
were running hotter

than either the mayor
or the governor anticipated.

[Mitchell] Revolt broke out in movies too,

in the independent film world.

There, Black life didn't exist

only in the periphery
of the white man's gaze,

and there was often room
for more than one Black person on-screen.

And two of those Black talents on-screen

simultaneously gave
movie-star performances

that did not lead to movie stardom.

Well, what you doin' with a cat like me
in a joint like this?

[pleasant jazz music playing]

You don't think much of yourself, do you?

[Mitchell] In a more just world,

the heat and tension
sparked by Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln

in Nothing But a Man

would have been a catalyst
for larger careers and recognition.

♪ So alone that I… ♪

[Mitchell] Davis,
with his abundant talents

as singer, actor, and showman,

was certainly capable of it.

He showed a velvet control
as a mercurial, pleasure-seeking ego trip

in 1966's A Man Called Adam.

He acted along with
Cicely Tyson, Ja'Net DuBois,

and in a silent tiny role, Morgan Freeman,

who'd have to wait nearly 20 years
to get a role to show power

and the ability to speak.

Davis holds the movie
in his clenched fist until the last act

in which he basically apologizes
for all the damage his character wreaked.

All right, I was wrong, okay?

I shoulda waited
to find out what it was all about,

maybe let her
break your head with a bottle.

Honey, all I saw

was that old chick's hands
on that toodle doddle--

Adam.

[mellow jazz music playing]

[Mitchell] Van Peebles insertion
of Black life without self-pity

into the art-house world
was a fresh, new breeze.

Studio movies were trapped
in their old-fashioned patriarchal need

to shape the culture

rather than respond to it.

The corpses of misguided musicals
for all ages,

such as this, um… [questioningly]
…awesome Best Picture nominee.

But the best news of '68
was Sidney Poitier's graduation

from self-sacrifice
for miscast white movie stars

to world domination.

Both Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
and In the Heat of the Night

went wide release in 1968, the year
of their Best Picture nominations,

where his white costars
gazed at his magnificent intensity.

Don't misunderstand me.

I love your daughter.
There is nothing I wouldn't do

to try to keep her as happy
as she was the day I met her.

But it seems to me, without your approval,
we will make no sense at all.

[Mitchell] As Mark Harris wrote
in his book, Pictures at a Revolution,

"Poitier is the top box office star
in America."

[mellow funk music playing]

Unfortunately, he's also an example
of the entertainment industry's reaction

to success by people of color.

No one seems to think
that if Sidney Poitier can draw audiences,

then surely one other Black man or woman
might possibly be able to do so.

This is a time when a Black person
talking to a white person on-screen

was considered adult entertainment.

[ominous music playing]

Black success in media

is often treated as the equivalent
of finding a $100 bill on the subway,

a non-repeatable phenomenon.

When movies were first being built around,
God help us, Elvis Presley

or The Beatles,

whose first releases in the US
were on a Black-owned record label,

why wasn't anyone seeking out
these women rock pioneers

for careers in the movies?

[playing rock song]

["If I'm in Luck
I Might Get Picked Up" playing]

♪ I said if I'm in luck
I just might get picked up ♪

[Mitchell] It wouldn't be long
for a new day, or night, to drop

for where Black talent
was most likely to be recognized,

the independent film world.

Writer-director George Romero
created a new kind of action hero

by putting a movie and a gun
in the hand of Duane Jones, a Black actor,

in one of the most influential films
of all time.

-I think you should just calm down.
-[woman groans]

Oh! I screamed, "Johnny! Johnny, help me!"

[Mitchell] Romero also
breaks with tradition

by never having the hero's race mentioned

because the role wasn't written
for a Black actor.

I'll be back to reinforce
the windows and doors later.

But you'll be all right for now, okay?

[sweeping string music playing]

Okay?

You want the Black guy with you.

[chuckles] You want
the Black guy with you.

'Cause he's gonna help you get out.

See, if you kill him off, you're dead.

See, we know how to get out.

We know how to get away from the zombies.

We know how to get away
from the, you know, killing plants,

anything that's coming to get you,
'cause we're used to…

We know how to get outta the way.

We know how to get outta the way
and let… let other stuff happen.

[Mitchell] The depiction of the undead
stalking potential victims

and windows boarded up to keep them away

reminded me of TV riot footage.

Never has a film been as loaded
with allegory and metaphor,

intentional and inadvertent,
as Night of the Living Dead.

-[solemn music playing]
-[guns firing]

All right, hit him in the head,
right between the eyes.

[gunshot]

[Mitchell] Because Jones dies,
picked off after fighting to save whites,

Night of the Living Dead was embraced
by militant African Americans.

They felt it was a metaphor
for not staying with your race.

This was a sentiment I heard voiced
by the boyfriends of my older sisters.

Good shot! Okay, he's dead.

Let's go get him.
That's another one for the fire.

[Mitchell] And in an end
as chilling as the movie itself,

he's killed
and tossed onto a pile of corpses.

[flames crackling]

[Robert F. Kennedy] I have
some very sad news for all of you,

and that is that Martin Luther King
was shot and was killed tonight

-in Memphis, Tennessee.
-[crowd screaming]

[Mitchell] Coming in the year
of Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination

and only a few years after the murders
of Medgar Evers and Malcolm X,

this movie death had larger implications

than this writer
and director ever imagined.

[ominous sting plays]

Living Dead's success
should have been confirmation

of mainstream interest in Black actors.

In the year that includes Peter Sellers
playing a character of Indian descent

in the movie biz satire The Party,

1968 was also a year
with Yul Brynner as Pancho Villa,

and unfortunately,
Woody Strode as an Apache.

[TV host] American feature films
have always been directed by white men,

even when the films dealt with Black life
and used Black actors.

Black directors are excluded,

although Blacks now make up
30% of the total moviegoing audience.

And my associate, William Greaves,
has just finished producing and directing

his first feature film,
Take One and Take Two.

It's in the final stages of editing.

Hello, just to set the record straight,

there've been a number of films
of Black… by Black feature-film directors

in the '40s, like Powell Lindsay,
Oscar Micheaux, and Bill Alexander.

These directors were denied access
to Hollywood,

and their films were seen only

in the Black communities
across the country.

[Mitchell] One of the myths
that did constantly resurface

during 1968 through '78,

when a handful of Black directors
finally got to step behind the camera,

was that this was the first time
Black directors got such chances.

In fact, because they had to,

African Americans often wrote and directed

back when one person writing
and directing was rare

and discouraged by the studios.

But the Black press
supported these theaters and movies,

even as they were ignored
by the mainstream.

And, getting his start in the silent era,

was writer, director,
and occasional actor Oscar Micheaux.

He made films
for the circuit of Black theaters,

many of which were not in very good shape

because there was not
a consistent flow of Black films

despite the consistency
of Black audiences.

[mellow jazz music playing]

Keep in mind,
many studios were afraid to offend Germany

and risk losing that business,

until they were kicked out
by the Nazis in 1942.

But African-American money
wasn't good enough for them.

Many of those Black theaters
were buildings and rooms

that were converted into movie theaters.

On very small budgets,
Micheaux and other filmmakers,

even some whites,
created original material

and adapted popular books
they couldn't afford to pay much for,

but the authors went along

because they wanted their books
turned into movies.

[upbeat music playing]

Astaire often played
master-servant relationships in his films,

exaggerated in scenes where he's tapping
in front of a bunch of Black actors.

As the studios continued to hammer out
a crude mythology about African Americans,

director Alice Guy-Blaché
decided to do something else entirely.

In 1912,
she directed A Fool and His Money,

what's said to be the first film
with an all-African-American cast.

Her artistry showed a playful clarity
and did not diminish those actors.

[jaunty piano music playing]

She was successful enough in those days
that studios sought her out,

and given the care
she used to make her art,

it was only logical
that she turned down the chance

to make the first Tarzan movie.

The Black filmmakers of that era
were hustling, driven cinema lovers

who worked an early version
of independent film.

Back in this day,
"independent film" didn't mean

being a cool, desirable outsider

whose success got you access
to incredible resources.

It meant you were locked out
of the theaters

by the studios who owned them.

You were left to invent ways
to get your product to audiences.

Micheaux and his like-minded spirits

were making dramas, comedies,
musicals, and murder mysteries.

Sometimes smashing the genres together
into a single film

because their resources were limited

even though their ambitions were not.

Because, for most of the history
of the movies,

studios have been content
to leave Black money on the table,

and Black enterprise has responded,
creating, as it always has,

a de facto underground economy
and culture.

♪ I got shoes ♪

♪ When I get to Heaven
Gonna put on my shoes ♪

♪ Gonna walk all over that Heaven ♪

[Mitchell] Though we wouldn't see
evidence of it until later,

actor-turned-filmmaker
William Greaves used the medium

in a way that feels novelistic now.

After losing interest in acting

because of the simplistic uplift
he'd been cast in…

Well, now, Aunt Hattie,
everything moves fast in war.

Even our religious services
had to be speeded up.

…he begins production
on a pioneering effort,

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm.

[sniffles]

No, I said, "Don't touch me, please."
Don't ever touch me ever again, ever.

[Mitchell] Symbiopsychotaxiplasm's
ambitions, both formal and freewheeling,

were as big as its title.

It plays with time in every way possible.

The director, Bill Greaves,

he is so far in… into,
you know, making the film,

that he has no perspective.

And if you ask him,
"What is the film about?" you know,

he just gives you some answer
that's just vaguer than the question.

[Louise Greaves] I think
he was kind of torn.

He wanted to see the scene well-done.

He wanted his actors
to be inspired in some way.

So I think he was being both pushed
and pulled in both directions.

That's my theory, anyway.

[Mitchell] For decades, people
would tie themselves up into knots

trying to describe Symbiopsychotaxiplasm.

It's now a kind of film so common
that it's become its own genre,

the innovative, social satire, prank film.

[dramatic music playing]

Director Jules Dassin, who had been,
if you'll pardon the expression,

blacklisted, brought race politics
to a studio thriller

in Uptight, which he wrote
for the film's Black costars.

Dassin, Dee, and Mayfield
were shrewd, earnest, and shameless,

enfolding the world-gone-wrong impact
of Dr. King's death into a genre film.

[Fishburne] Martin Luther King
was assassinated in '68.

My mother dropped everything
and went to the funeral.

She didn't know this man,

but she dropped everything
and put on her best clothes and left.

And that was, like,
"Oh, so this is important?"

Like, this guy was important.

What he was doing was important.
What he was talking about was important.

[sad string music playing]

We are important.

Our voices, our hopes,
our dreams, our aspirations,

all that stuff, that's important.

[Martin Luther King]
We hold these truths to be self-evident.

[Mitchell] Uptight depicted
the shaky anguish

and free-floating fury
of a society desperate for answers,

the heart of genre film.

[Jackson] The day after
Dr. King got killed,

we got on a plane in Atlanta,
from Morehouse Spelman,

and flew to Memphis
and marched with the garbage workers.

And we had those "I am a man" signs.
We used to have them in the house.

[music continues]

[music fades]

[Mitchell] In an audacious turn
on the heist genre,

a group of revolutionaries
is out to stage a robbery

while Cleveland reels
after Dr. King's assassination.

A key member of the team,

at loose ends because of the chaos
spilling from King's death,

has a crisis of conscience.

I've never felt so bad in all my life.

Uptight is a contemporary version
of a 1935 John Ford movie

and begins a cycle where Black concerns
are folded into remakes.

[Jackson] Is that the one
that's like a remake of The Informer?

I knew what The Informer was,

so when I saw that,
I knew exactly what it was.

So, you look at it,
and everybody had a thing

about, you know, certain kinds of people
was just the police.

If you're at a party,
and you're passing a joint around,

and a dude don't take the joint
and hands it to somebody else…

[muttering] …it's like, "Oh man,
he's the police." You know?

Or… or somebody is acting strange,
you know, around the group when y'all…

you know, when we was revolutionaries,

when you had a revolutionary cadre
of your own, uh,

there was always somebody who was suspect.

So having that movie be that
was, you know, like that.

[Mitchell] In his autobiography,
Booker T. Jones, who composed the score,

said some called Uptight
the first blaxploitation film.

On another continent,
from another culture,

was a studio film from Italy,

and, like many movies
that changed the medium,

it was from a genre
dismissed as second-rate,

in this case, the spaghetti western.

[footsteps running]

[dramatic music plays]

A little later in the movie,

this scene was something
the director wanted to use

to drive a stake
through the heart of audience expectation.

Making Henry Fonda cold-blooded
was shattering.

He was America's big-screen moral compass.

But Isaac Hayes, in need of a hit,

was inspired by seeing
Leone's perverse use of Fonda,

who belonged on the movie Mount Rushmore
of white decency

with John Wayne,
Jimmy Stewart, and Shirley Temple.

[bullet ricochets]

So moved that producer-performer Hayes
created this piece of music.

["Walk On By" by Isaac Hayes playing]

Hayes told me that he would escape
the malfunctioning air-conditioning

at Stax Studios
by going to see this movie,

which he caught at least ten times.

Woody Strode's towering presence
convinced Hayes

that he could one day be a movie star,

and in a genre where Black inclusion
was marginal at best, the Western.

More importantly, Once Upon a Time
also motivated Hayes to create this

for his Hot Buttered Soul album.

["Walk On By" continues playing]

When Gordon Parks adapted
his semi-autobiographical novel,

The Learning Tree, in 1969,

he made the first studio-financed film
by an African-American director.

Warner Bros. got its money's worth
from the photographer-turned-filmmaker.

He wrote, directed, produced,
and composed the score.

He joked to me
that the only reason he didn't star in it

was because he was too tall.

Learning Tree follows Newt, a 12-year-old,
over the course of a summer.

One incident carries a resonance
that the movie can't shake.

Run, Tuck, run!

A moment so potent
it seems surreal and way too real,

a beat that didn't get it's due
at the time.

-[man] Stop, damn it! I'll shoot!
-[gun fires]

[eerie music playing]

[somber music playing]

You didn't have to shoot Tuck.

Now you can see what happens to criminals.

[Mitchell] The type of scene
we all knew about

but never expected to see in a movie.

And Parks also told me he packed
as much as he could into the film,

such as this glorious image
claiming the Western for Black audiences,

because he didn't know

if he'd ever get a chance
to make another one.

1969 took us from the hyperreal
to the unreal.

The wildness flowered in full force

in writer-director Robert Downey Sr.'s
revolutionary comedy about revolution,

the advertising satire Putney Swope.

You can't eat an air conditioner.

[Mitchell] Here, a Black man,
Putney Swope,

is suddenly made
the head of an advertising agency…

You're gonna make a great chairman.

…and immediately upends
the way the agency does business.

I have a feeling that there's
a lot of untapped talent around here.

I didn't do it!

Then what are you doing?
Taking her temperature?

Boss, don't fire me. I got a wife,
three kids, and a Shetland pony.

You can get more said with comedy
than you can get said straight,

and I think
that's what Blacks had to survive.

You had to, uh, make 'em laugh
under the subtext.

Downey saw an opening

where we could play
and be cutting and biting.

And I don't use words like "genius,"
but it was a stroke of something.

[Mitchell] Unhappy with the performance
of his star, actor Arnold Johnson,

director Downey dubbed his own voice
for his lead Black character…

Truth and Soul!

-[man] TS, baby.
-That's right!

…a move that surely later influenced

his son's Oscar-nominated role
in Tropic Thunder.

'Cause I'm trying to come up a little,
but it's just… it's tough.

-No, you look good.
-Any tips?

[Mitchell] 1969 was a watershed period
in Black film,

in which stories took a harsher
and more realistic look

at Black life in the past,

such as with the first American films
to deal, in somewhat stark terms,

with slavery.

The movie was called Slaves,

which both starred Dionne Warwick

and offered her singing
about a different kind of hurt

than one might have expected from her.

Ossie Davis plays a slave
attempting to hold onto logic

in a system that has none.

Twelve hundred twice. Anyone else?

[Mitchell] Davis's regal slow burn
doesn't hide his despair.

In fact, it magnifies this.

-[tense music playing]
-[camera shutter clicks]

The historic tumult continues
when Rupert Crosse becomes

the first Black actor to be nominated
for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor

for The Reivers.

[car horn honks]

[chuckling]

How do you start this thing?

[Mitchell] Crosse's sunny fluidity
frees McQueen from his laconic narcissism.

He pays attention to Crosse

and allows us to honor Crosse
in the same way.

Ten years earlier,
Crosse was featured in Shadows,

John Cassavetes' 1959 race drama
that was, of course, independently made.

You like that one
about the rabbit and the tree?

I don't know that one.

You know that one about the rabbit
that fell on out the tree and says,

"Man, that lovemaking's for the birds."

[laughs]

[Mitchell] Director Mark Rydell,

who knew Crosse from the Actors Studio,
brought him into The Reivers.

[Rydell] Rupert Crosse
was 6 foot 5 inches tall,

and I knew he was right for the part
to play opposite Steve.

It was awesome
to drive up to Steve McQueen's house

because there were maybe ten garages

with all kinds of cars,
Ferraris and, uh, Aston Martins

and racing motorcycles.

An enormous piece of property,
a courtyard.

It was… it was very lavish.

And Rupert had never seen
anything like that before,

and I must tell you,
I hadn't either till I met Steve.

I lived a little bit more modestly
but certainly better than Rupert,

who had no… no money
and was living like a young actor.

Well, we walked into the house,
and Rupert met Steve,

and, uh, Steve looked up at this giant,
and we sat down in his kind of library,

and Steve began to talk
about, uh, tae kwon do.

You know, he was a master
of those fighting disciplines,

and, uh, he was showing Rupert
some moves, and Rupert said,

"No, you're off-balance,"
said Rupert from his chair.

[chuckles]

And I saw-- And Steve looked at him,
he said, "Oh?"

He said, "Yes, you're off-balance,
you know."

"It's wrong, the way you're standing."
So Steve said, "Show me."

And Rupert uncoiled
and stood up at his height,

and they faced one another,
and in two seconds,

Steve was flying through the air

under the billiard table in the--
Actually, the next room.

So-- And I thought,
"Well, the picture's over."

"You know, there goes Rupert."

But the truth of the matter
is Steve was thrilled, you know,

that, uh… that this guy
was not afraid of him.

[Mitchell] Among the curious
and forward-thinking artists

that populated LA's film world,

which included Jack Nicholson
and screenwriter Robert Towne,

Rupert Crosse was a charismatic figure,
admired for his talent.

As Jim Brown and Rupert Crosse

were presenting a new type
of Black masculinity,

Brown, who was simultaneously
courtly and impatient,

and Crosse's smiling insolence,

Muhammad Ali, who was for me
the second Black public figure

to be the same with Black audiences
as with white audiences,

had his version of courtliness
and insolence displayed

in the 1970 documentary
a.k.a. Cassius Clay.

[narrator] He was paying lawyers
to keep him out of jail,

paying alimony to his first wife,

supporting his current wife and child.

[Mitchell] This unusual documentary
caught Ali at the crossroads of who he was

and who he would become.

Important because it shows
the self-possession

that will be the core of Black film.

And the first such Black figure
to break through in the same way as Ali,

not trying to hide
from the mainstream gaze,

was Jack Johnson,
whose struggles were depicted in the play

and now the movie The Great White Hope,

where James Earl Jones
would become the second Black man

to get a Best Actor nomination.

[woman screaming]

[Mitchell] James Earl Jones
rose to the occasion

as a lean sexual presence

for one of the few times
in his on-screen career.

-No, no! I'm--
-Put your clothes on, Miss Bachman.

-We'll take you into town.
-Jake!

Don't you fret now. Just get dressed.

[Mitchell] Interracial sexuality
and the unease it created

whipped up waves of anxiety
in film in 1970.

The Great White Hope reminded viewers

that those relationships
were based on appetites.

The changes left
at least one esteemed filmmaker at a loss,

director William Wyler,
whose ability to depict societal shift

can be seen in films
such as The Best Years of Our Lives.

And Wyler set a template

with his 1965 proto-stalker film,
The Collector.

His last film
was The Liberation of L.B. Jones,

and his power to coherently translate
up-to-the-minute drama failed him

with this hysterical fetishizing
of Black female flesh.

[melancholy organ music playing]

-You fancy goin' to lawyers?
-Sugar boy, you bustin' my arm.

You fancy goin' to lawyers!
You think they wouldn't warn a white man?

I seen fools,
but you take the sap-suckin' prize.

[Mitchell] After directing the documentary
King: A Filmed Record,

Sidney Lumet turned to something
that sounded tantalizing,

a Gore Vidal script
adapted from a Tennessee Williams play

dealing with race and sex

with James Coburn,
Robert Hooks, and Lynn Redgrave.

The desperate-to-be-lurid result
was Last of the Mobile Hotshots,

which got an X rating,

apparently because a Black man
might have sex with a white woman.

The oven door's broke,
the roof leaks, the toilet runs all day,

and you awful cute to be a landlord.

[Mitchell] Diana Sands' ability to enchant
was evident in 1970's The Landlord,

and this early story of the turmoil
caused by an overprivileged white man

gentrifying an all-Black Brooklyn street
continued the trend,

that of a Black writer, Bill Gunn,
adapting a novel

by a Black writer, Kristin Hunter.

This actor's earthy commonsense command
was made for the screen.

Sands could convey
as much with a chuckle and a smile

as most actors could
with pages of dialogue.

[chuckles softly]

[Glynn Turman] Diana Sands
was just the perfect auntie

because she knew how to be a big kid.

She was such a… a giving person,

such a joy, uh, to be around.

[Mitchell] 1970 brought Chester Himes
to the screen

in a way that finally made sense.

In his directorial debut,

Ossie Davis spins the long-standing myth
of the emotional Black sexpot on its head

by using a scene right from Himes' novel.

In his book,
Himes adds a hint of bitterness

to this turn-the-tables anecdote
about a Black woman luring a white cop

into sexual humiliation.

Please, baby.

[romantic music playing]

Please.

[Mitchell] The film adaptation
cranked the glee

of an audience bored by Black degradation

and revels in Davis's flipping the script
under a proscenium arch.

-[man] Halt in the name of the law!
-[gun fires]

-Halt in the name of the law!
-[funk music playing]

[Mitchell] The Davis take on Himes'
Old Testament avenger Harlem cops

was a playful and Afrocentric fable
that introduced the concept of high style,

scored by Hair composer Galt MacDermot,
to Black action.

[tires skidding]

The beautifully dressed detectives,

played by the wry Godfrey Cambridge
and quick-tempered Raymond St. Jacques,

were part of an eager group
of Black stage actors Davis put together.

-What is it?
-Look at this.

[Fishburne] Oh my God,
those blue shirts he was wearing,

that suit he was wearing,

the way he had his mustache manicured,
he was clean as a motherfucker, man.

You saw that white joker.
Did you identify him?

I don't know, Lieutenant.
Maybe yes, maybe no.

All those kinda people look alike to me.

[Mitchell] As a stage actor himself,
Davis knew that audiences would respond

to the warmth of Black actors
basking in their comrades' glory,

an aspect he probably wanted
movie audiences to experience.

There's a lot of fantasy going on
in Cotton Comes to Harlem.

It's a fairy tale.

But what's great is

Ossie Davis uses Harlem

in a way that I don't think
we'd ever seen it before.

It's totally authentic.

It is totally itself.

And he's got this fantasy playing out
in the midst of the reality of Harlem.

[Mitchell] Davis took a mantra
from Black revolutionaries

and made it a call-and-response song…

-["Black Enough" by Melba Moore playing]
-♪ Black enough for me ♪

[Mitchell] …of looking forward to the day
when Black pride will be celebrated

by society at large
rather than viewed as a demand for change.

Which it was, by the way,
but the song gives it a lilt.

♪ Black enough for me ♪

It's that one line
that repeats itself throughout,

which is fantastic.

Am I Black enough for you?!

[Fishburne] Calvin Lockhart
and his way of using it when he preaches,

and then Godfrey Cambridge
and his way of using it.

Is that Black enough for you?

It changes. It morphs.
It has several meanings.

Is that Black enough for you?

It ain't, but it's gonna be.

[chuckles]

That still resonates.

[Mitchell] Though Davis recognized
the need to make the composer

part of the storytelling

by including MacDermot
on Cotton Comes to Harlem,

it took Melvin Van Peebles
to make the music communicate

the shocking nature
of the Black experience.

His 1970 Watermelon Man is a satire

in which a liberal white man
wakes up one day to find out he's Black.

[screaming]

Illustrating the bone-deep horror
of being Black for whites,

Godfrey Cambridge shifts the tone
from openly broad and comedic…

[both scream]

Jeff! Jeff! Jeff!
There's a Negro in your shower!

[Mitchell] …to acting the richly observed
and deeper character transformed

by being soaked in empathy,

an evolution Van Peebles
wanted audiences to feel.

When we got married, I had no idea
it was going to be an interracial thing.

-You never told me.
-Well, I just got wind of it myself.

[Mitchell] Van Peebles engulfs a slight
and sleight-of-hand plot

by blending sketch-comedy concepts
rendered in big glossy movie terms

to meticulously make a film

about the power of dawning Black awareness
and responsibility.

Where do you think you're going?

-I'm lunching with Clark Dunwoody.
-Not in here, you're not.

[Mitchell] In a pandemic world,

Watermelon Man
has gained a new timeliness,

as whites now understand
the concept of living on borrowed time

the moment you step outside
your front door,

as African Americans always have.

Like Gordon Parks
on The Learning Tree the year before,

Van Peebles composed music
for his studio directing debut.

When my father did Watermelon Man,
and they were trying to decide

whether Watermelon Man
should come out theatrically,

they were having a little screening,
and all the bigwigs were comin' in,

and they're all white guys,

and there's a guy, a brother named Willy,
who would sweep up in the screening room.

And my dad had talked to Willy
and gave him a couple of bucks

and said, "When they screen my movie,
you make sure you like it."

So Willy's screening the movie,

they screen, uh, Watermelon Man,
Willy start…

[chuckling] "Look at that! Oh!"

"That sure is fun--"

[laughs]

And they were looking at him,
"Well, Willy likes it."

And Willy, "Oh, boss, that sure is good.
Look at that." [chuckles]

"Willy, is this funny to you?"

"Oh yeah, I can't wait to see this.
When is it coming out?"

Well, theatrical release.
That was their one-man focus group.

So my dad just did racial jujitsu
and flipped it against them.

[Mitchell] Gordon Parks,
making a second studio film in 1971,

fully incorporated the marriage
of music and film,

a defiant break from
the classically influenced European scores

of studio fare.

With this movie, Parks follows up
on his plan to include Isaac Hayes.

["Theme from Shaft"
by Isaac Hayes playing]

Shaft wasn't just a debut.
It was an announcement.

In the same way that movies
such as Easy Rider screamed,

"This is the '60s,"

Shaft laid down a count of funk
and urban panache that said

this was the 1970s.

That a private eye didn't have to look
like he slept in his clothes

or hid from view.

The newness and audacity
of a camera following a Black man

in a leather coat through Manhattan.

A private eye, dressed like a combination

of a revolutionary
and director Gordon Parks,

as the sizzle of the hi-hat
cranked up the audience.

The camera wasn't spying on the star.

It was staring at him.

This combination forever altered
the course of movies,

right down to coming from a studio

that was long known for delivering product
about an ideal America

that framed straight hair and blue eyes
as the standard of beauty.

Shaft, "sex machine for all the chicks,"
ain't nobody said that about a brother.

[mellow music playing]

You all right?

Baby, are you all right?

I got to feeling like a machine.

That's no way to feel.

[Mitchell] In 1971,
Van Peebles chose to make a movie

about the unremitting terror
Black Americans are subject to,

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song.

The title alone
made the movie part of the revolution

that would not be televised.

In those days,
networks would never run such a title

or the incendiary movie
that it accompanied.

-[women chuckling]
-What is it?

[lively music playing]

[Mitchell] In the days
before porn was unavoidable

and when Black sexuality
was still a punch line,

Sweetback showed its nerve
by turning Black sex into a show

and refusing to blink or turn away.

It's a Van Peebles
brick-by-brick construction,

a device to make the audience understand
what it's like to be objectified.

[indistinct chatter and encouragement]

[mellow music playing]

[Mitchell] Making "badass"
a part of the title

was such a badass move

that it virtually guaranteed the movie
an X rating,

which Sweetback eventually got.

Melvin Van Peebles
used the perks of exploitation

and a new liberalism in movie culture
to his advantage.

He loved the sheer effrontery
of being a Black man

with facial hair, smoking a cigar.

A pop-culture gesture

as eternal as Elvis Presley's smirk
and Megan Thee Stallion's fingernails.

Sweetback came at a time
when the X rating was just invented,

and porn moved
from sleazy downtown theaters

to the suburbs.

Midnight Cowboy
became the first X-rated film

to win the Best Picture Oscar.

The only one.

Stanley Kubrick made Clockwork Orange
and got an X.

And Marlon Brando
and director Bernardo Bertolucci

would be nominated for Oscars
for the X-rated Last Tango in Paris.

And there was the Black attempt
at X-rated social commentary, Lialeh,

with a score
by funk legend Bernard Purdie.

Even if the Motion Picture Association
offered me a G for the film,

I don't give them the right to, uh…

to decide G or X, uh,
for the Black destiny.

[Mitchell] But Van Peebles
inadvertently opened a floodgate

by hijacking the X-rating.

It's rumored he self-applied the X-rating

because it was the only symbol
not copyrighted by the ratings board,

which let everyone know
the X was theirs for the taking,

and the brave new world
of the double X and triple X was born.

After all, you've never heard
of a double R or a triple PG-13.

As with Watermelon Man,
Sweetback opens with running

but not for comic effect in this case.

Sweetback is on the run for his life.

Movement is what seems to keep him alive,

as much of the film
is about forward motion.

Van Peebles chose musicians
not just to supply music.

He made Earth, Wind & Fire
his coconspirators.

He had a secretary who I had a crush on.

I think everyone had a crush
on Priscilla, his secretary.

She had a Afro like a halo, baby.
I'd be like, "God, look at Priscilla."

"Just-- What's she wearing--"

"What's the Priscilla outfit du jour
gonna be?"

But Priscilla had a boyfriend
who was a little, you know, possessive.

She wanted to act in the movie,

but her boyfriend said,
"You can't act in the movie."

But he happened to have a new band
called Earth, Wind & Fire.

So he said, "You can't act with Melvin.
However, I wanna do the music."

[chuckles]

[Mitchell] And their contribution added to
the sweaty paranoia of Sweetback.

[jarring jazz music playing]

Unlike the sweet and muscular R&B

we'd later instantly recognize
as Earth, Wind & Fire,

their Sweetback score is discordant,
ribbons of screeching avant-garde jazz

with a pounding layer
of percussion underneath.

The music exists to make us aware

we're being plunged into a world
the movies shied away from.

It combined genres swiftly,

with reflexes as keen
as those of director Van Peebles.

♪ Run, Sweetback! ♪

[sprinklers swishing]

-♪ Run, motherfucker! ♪
-[gospel beat playing]

♪ They bled your sister!
But they won't bleed me! ♪

♪ Run, Sweetback! ♪

♪ Run, motherfucker! ♪

♪ They bled your mama! ♪

♪ They bled your papa
But they won't bleed me! ♪

[imitates screeching]

[mellow funk music playing]

My dad would actually have me
talk to people in the lobby.

He'd say, "What d'you think?"
And I'd tell him. He'd say,

"I'm not interested in what you think.
I wanna find out later."

"Go talk to those folks in the lobby
and get an idea of how they saw the movie,

how they heard about the movie,
and what did they think of the film."

[exciting music playing]

[Mitchell] It took an auteur and showman
and salesman, such as Melvin,

to understand that by making the composer
a creative partner on the project,

rather than just an employee,

the director was investing
in the movie's future.

Melvin saw that future
in a way that would eventually start

a new direction in the movie business.

First, he made the story

of the selling of the movie,
its marketing.

Otherwise, he'd have a Black movie
that would get little or no attention.

More importantly,
he had the soundtrack released first,

counting on enhanced visibility
as a sales tool.

He was an artist-entrepreneur.

It didn't matter if it was art
if no one saw it.

[music fades]

Gordon Parks changed
who the Black movie protagonist could be.

Sweetback and Shaft followed Muhammad Ali

into an era of Black figures
no longer asking for permission to be.

Their scenes were staged
to present them as assertive

rather than inviting,

a chill attitude
breaking with lowered-head likability.

A flinty and ironic distance
that forced the viewer to understand

rather than have all explained.

Listen to what I'm telling you, man.
I'm here to help you.

I am an angel of God.

[Mitchell] Harry Belafonte
brought his silken intensity

back to the big screen
for The Angel Levine,

an experimental drama he produced.

Ending his self-imposed exile
in this existential comedy

that added a twist
to the dilemma posed by Ralph Ellison

in his novel Invisible Man.

"What did I do to be so Black,
blue, and heaven-sent?"

I am an angel.

Have you come to take me away?

No.

I've come to give you life.

[Mitchell] As a more divine
and New Testament parallel,

Sidney Poitier starred as Brother John.

In this fantasy,
Poitier is a modest stranger

dropped into a conflict zone,
withholding approval and judgment

as a taciturn angel of death
torn between the past and the present.

This well-meaning fable
serves to reflect Poitier's own plight.

Ossie Davis followed up
Cotton Comes to Harlem

with a drama that focused on the tensions
of generations of Black women

in a single household.

Dear Lord, if you help me
get this house for my mother,

I'll never ask you
for anything else, amen.

[Mitchell] His young woman protagonist
fighting to be heard and for her future,

a subject much closer
to landlocked reality

than his previous film.

Writer-director Ousmane Sembène
once said that,

"Between the on-screen families
in Sounder and Black Girl,

there was a complete universe."

"That's the kind of film
I'd like to make."

And the film universe he saw
inspired him to spend much of his career

dramatizing the impact on households
of absent Black masculinity.

Now, there's a line of reasoning
that contends

that 1939 was the best year
in movie history.

But it is axiomatic that 1939
affirmed America's movie stature

as mythmaker for the world.

No period that includes Gone with the Wind
will ever have that kind of appeal to me.

The men who ran the studios
created a pop culture mythology

that gave them the chance to run
as far as they could from their origins.

And they could will a hubristic version
of America into being,

an America that never existed

but much of this country
believes still did.

Probably most of the world still does.

1939 let the studios churn out

what they considered
to be moral and literary

and catered to mainstream audiences
with whitewashed myths.

I know, Huck. I'm her slave.

But sometimes,
I can't help wondering if it's right.

[Mitchell] It's a step past appropriation
to cultural colonialism.

White actors can do a much better job
with your culture, Latinx actors,

Pacific Islanders…

-[applause]
-Miss Dorothy March,

in her impersonation of Bill Robinson,

the King of Harlem.

[Mitchell] …Black people.

A body blow meant as a compliment.

[bell tolling]

Most importantly,
there was a handoff in 1939

that cemented the power
of a central and debilitating myth

about the place of Blacks in society.

Quittin' time!

-Who says it's quittin' time?
-I said it's quittin' time.

I's the foreman. I's the one says
when it's quittin' time at Tara.

-Quittin' time! Quittin' time!
-[gentle, dreamy music playing]

[Mitchell] They were both
adaptations of books.

The number-one grossing film
of all time until 1925

was D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation.

An even bigger hit
was 1939's Gone with the Wind,

which remained the biggest
box-office sensation until 1965

and became champ again in 1971.

1972 should have been the year
for Rupert Crosse's career to flower.

His fans Jack Nicholson,
Robert Towne, and director Hal Ashby

created a role for Crosse
in the adaptation of The Last Detail.

But Crosse was diagnosed with leukemia
before shooting began.

Filming was delayed
in hopes he'd be able to participate,

but Crosse died before filming started.

In an Esquire magazine article,

Ashby reflected on Crosse's humor
and grace in the face of mortality.

The phrase "corrosive lyricism" was coined

to summarize Ashby's style
and inspired by Crosse's outlook.

[gentle piano music playing]

["Theme from Shaft"
by Isaac Hayes playing]

Isaac Hayes used his performance
at the 1972 Oscars,

when he became
the first Black Best Song winner,

to show his Hot Buttered Soul grandeur
to the entire planet.

For me, watching at home, and thrilled

by watching Hayes turn slave chains
into superstar chain mail,

it felt like a comet
crashing into the Earth,

an alteration of the atmosphere,

letting us know
things would never be the same.

It was a dizzying, thrilling mix

that introduced an element that made
Black film culture more attractive

than films from the so-called mainstream.

That element was heroism.

Now, cockroach, let's run that shit down
from the top again.

[Mitchell]
Unlike their white counterparts,

who wore their misery
like runway accessories,

Black actors played these antiheroes
with a confidence that bordered on heroism

and then crossed that border.

You gonna drop back in. Yeah.

'Cause you didn't do nothin'
but talk that brotherhood love and peace.

You didn't change nothin',
which means work

and making that talk, talk, talk happen.

But we can't drop into nothin'

'cause we never had
nothin' to drop out of.

[Mitchell] In the wake of Shaft,
there were bronze remakes of films noir.

Hit Man, a new take on Get Carter.

You are a real superstar, baby.

[Mitchell] And Cool Breeze,
yet another remake of The Asphalt Jungle

that made that term more literal

than the nouvelle vague
could ever have dreamed possible.

In these films,
protagonists stepped into the frame

with a swagger that'd never been allowed
in films above the lower depths.

I hate to say this,

but I am such a pretty motherfucker.

[laughs]

Yeah!

[Mitchell] This peak year in Black film
moved so many boundaries

that movies were changed forever.

For the first time, two Black women
were nominated for Best Actress.

Diana Ross for her first leading role

and the divine Cicely Tyson for Sounder…

Cropping season is a long way off,
Mr. Perkins.

By that time, Nathan ought to be home.

If he ain't, believe me,
the children and me will do the croppin'.

I never got the… the chance
to meet Miss Cicely Tyson.

She always reminded me of my grandmother.

She just kind of personified
this… this elegance

and this regal air of--

Just the way she moved and spoke.

No.

I'm fixin' to bake a cake for David Lee
to take to your daddy this time.

Good to see Cicely.
'Cause I grew up watching Cicely Tyson.

It was good to see us.

These movies were about us.

Son, don't get too used to this place,

'cause wherever you is,
I'm gonna love you.

[Mitchell] …which also got a Best Actor
nomination for her costar, Paul Winfield.

I didn't find myself, as a child,
attracted to movies where we were victims,

where we were powerless.

I didn't want that as a kid.

I saw Sounder again recently,
and I appreciate it much more as an adult.

I saw layers in it
that I just didn't see as a kid.

[keys rattling]

[Mitchell] And Diana Ross
was nominated for Best Actress

for her first leading role,
in the first film about Billie Holiday,

the Motown-produced Lady Sings the Blues.

[door clangs]

[keys rattling]

[melancholy music playing]

It wasn't a movie, as so many are,
about being Black.

It was about being talented.

It was Bob Mackie costumes…
[chuckles] …and Diana Ross's glamour

and Billy Dee Williams,
well, hell, you know. [chuckles]

[chuckles softly]

[De Passe] Frank Yablans
was running Paramount.

He told Berry Gordy,
after seeing a rough cut of the film,

that they weren't gonna put
any more money in it.

And Berry Gordy said to Frank,

"We're not finished.
We've got so much more to do."

And Frank said…

I won't go into the story…
[chuckling] …of what Frank really said,

but he basically said it's like you've got
the clap, and now you wanna give it to me.

Because we've never spent
more than this amount of money

on a quote-unquote Black film before.

And he said, "Well, Frank, what can I do?"

He said, "Write me a check for $2 million,
and you can do anything you wanna do."

And he did.

[Mitchell] Lady Sings the Blues
was an early, all-out glam show,

a gleaming establishment
of Black glamour in the movies.

When I think of Diana Ross,
I also think of fashion

and how many references I've used of her

for red carpet events or for photo shoots

or for these different characters
that I guess I build.

The fingers and the hair
and the whole thing

is just like, "Oh my God!"

And then she can act.

[camera shutter clicks]

[Mitchell] Not just for Ross
but her costar,

a literal embodiment
of tall, dark, and handsome,

Billy Dee Williams.

[lively music playing]

When Billy Dee Williams came on,
every woman in Hollywood just hollered…

[screams hysterically]

And I'm… I'm saying, "Oh my God!"

"What… what the…"

[laughing] "What's goin' on?!"

First of all, when I walked down
those stairs, I fell in love with myself.

[laughs]

I said, "My goodness gracious!"

I mean, I was smitten.

[man] Do you want my arm to fall off?

[Williams] Even that scene, you know,
"Do you want my arm to fall off?"

I mean, couldn't contain myself.

I kept laughing
because I was getting special lighting.

You know, it was like the old movie days.

[chuckling]

I was in hysterics.

I had to contain myself. [laughing]

Oh, it was… it was very funny for me
because it was like something

that never happened to me before,

you know, in all of the experiences
I had doing cinema.

[romantic music playing]

[Mitchell] '72 was a breakthrough year
for Black talent.

Playwright Lonne Elder III
was nominated for the Sounder screenplay,

and more importantly, it was the year

that the first Black woman
was nominated for screenwriting,

Suzanne De Passe, part of the script team
for Lady Sings the Blues.

It was a singular achievement
until Dee Rees was nominated in 2017

for her script for Mudbound,
which makes her

only the second Black woman
to be nominated for screenwriting.

[De Passe] Mr. Gordy handed me the script.
And he said,

"Read this and tell me what you think."

And I was, like, horrified

because I felt it was very stereotypical.

The perception of… who we are

as opposed to who we are and can be.

And so I began working with Sidney Furie.
Then Chris Clark was added.

She was an artist on the label,
really bright woman.

She and I became a team.

[Mitchell] The seeds are planted here

for what becomes
the most important story of the era.

It's the contribution by women
that becomes dominant.

In addition to the accolades,
the class of '72 was also action-packed.

[bullets ricochet]

The Western, Buck and the Preacher,
directed by Sidney Poitier

and also starring him and Harry Belafonte.

Belafonte had hopes for the film
that were never fulfilled.

[Belafonte] The big blow was to find that
the Black community didn't support it.

That sent me into a place
where I felt betrayed.

I felt like, "Why didn't
the Black community support this film

the way the whites would've supported
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?"

"This is our version of the same thing."
But they didn't.

And, uh, then I knew
I had several adversaries,

Black perception of itself

and Black perception as the world saw us.

[Mitchell] Fred Williamson starred
in the revenge-slave Western

The Legend of Nigger Charley,

a title that was cheeky
and outrageous even then.

And by the way,
the title no longer exists.

The movie is now
The Legend of Black Charley.

This brazen poster,

featuring a slight turn
on the daguerreotype, said it all.

"Somebody warn the West.
Nigger Charley ain't running no more."

Black was also finally added
to the horror film in a serious way,

with a commanding William Marshall
starring as the tragic vampire Blacula.

Slavery has merit, I believe.

"Merit"?

You find "merit" in barbarity?

[Mitchell] I'd always thought

that the good thing
about the institutional racism

that kept Black people from being
central figures in horror films was,

for African Americans,
the implicit understanding

that no supernatural force
or threat of possession

could be more monstrous than slavery

or the Tuskegee Experiment,

or Emmett Till,
a real-life Black innocent,

who was the victim of monsters
even the movies were afraid of,

when they weren't glamorizing them.

With the Black press
forcing the mainstream media

to cover Emmett Till's death
with an unblinking gaze

and movies stepping up
to recount Black horrors

such as slavery and institutional cruelty,

a film take on the chaos caused
by the death of Emmett Till

was the moment
Black audiences were waiting for.

That it never happened was a subtle hint
of where the real power was in Hollywood.

[tense music playing]

[Burnett] I remember the thing
that woke me up, really woke me up,

was the Emmett Till picture
on the Jet magazine.

I mean, talking about someone, grew up,
the next day, a different person.

I still have the images
I saw in Jet magazine about Emmett Till.

From that day on, I was aware
of what his mother must have felt like.

[tragic string music playing]

[Fargas] I remember as a kid,

looking at Jet magazine
and seeing Emmett Till's body,

and that impacted me.

In some ways, we've been worn down
to where we see pain and misery,

and it does nothing,

and it does nothing to us,

or it's onto the next one
because we know it's gonna happen again.

But it's getting more personal.

It's getting closer and closer to…

to just humanity, man's inhumanity to man.

[Mitchell] That ongoing terror
was beautifully defined

with the release
of Marvin Gaye's What's Going On.

He was the first to sing
social protest as a seducer

rather than being declamatory.

And Gaye released
another epical album in '72.

This time a soundtrack

that gave him the opportunity
to return to his jazz roots.

-["Trouble Man" by Marvin Gaye playing]
-♪ I come up hard, but now I'm cool ♪

♪ I didn't make it, baby
Playin' by the rules… ♪

[Mitchell] Black film soundtracks
had so often taken their cues

from What's Going On,

one of the most gorgeous and honestly
revolutionary acts of Black pop culture,

so it made sense
for Marvin Gaye to do the same.

He submitted the state
of African-American affairs

and picked up his musical autobiography
with his Trouble Man score

where he left off at What's Going On.

[suspenseful music playing]

And the movie music
that would follow in its wake

continued to assess
the collateral damage of oppression

that he spelled out earlier.

["Pusherman" by Curtis Mayfield playing]

♪ I'm your pusherman… ♪

[Mitchell] But ironically,
the most sublime of these scores

came from an artist
whose influence was evident

on Marvin Gaye's break
from old-time pop-soul.

It, too, included a honeyed falsetto

rendering the struggle
of Black American life.

♪ Ain't I clean? Bad machine
Super cool, super mean ♪

♪ Dealin' good for the Man
Super fly, here I stand ♪

♪ Secret stash… ♪

[Mitchell] Curtis Mayfield's
lyric summaries of social conditions

and a militant refusal
to surrender to institutional inertia

can be heard
throughout his entire solo career.

Mayfield's musical output for this decade
spanned 20 albums,

among them five soundtracks.

His sinewy intimacy
and piercing songwriting

set the tone in Black film from then on,

starting with Super Fly, as an example
for many of his fellow musicians.

And Mayfield took his lead
from Melvin Van Peebles

with the unusual tactic
of releasing the Super Fly score

before the movie came out.

Because it was an immediate sensation,

the Super Fly soundtrack
served as an invitation to the movie.

John Calley, who ran Warner Bros.
in the 1970s,

told me he thought Super Fly
started a trend,

using the soundtracks
to create excitement about the movies

prior to theatrical release.

The textures of Mayfield's score,

dramatizing and commenting
on the life of the protagonist,

was reflected
in the down and dirty accomplishment

of cinematographer James Signorelli.

One of the best foot-chase scenes
in movies, with no stuntmen,

was caught in the film's
guerilla shooting style by Signorelli.

[Signorelli] He had to have
a route of escape.

Jimmy was the guy he was chasing.

[exciting funk music playing]

We were standing around,
and Ron said, "I can jump that fence."

And that was all there was to it.
That was all the rehearsal.

It certainly wasn't more than one take,
I'll tell you that.

It was definitely a combination
of the two aesthetics.

One was the documentary photography
that people had been doing,

particularly Leacock, Pennebaker,
you know, Maysles, all those guys,

myself included, you know, Bob Elfstrom.

The stuff that we were all doing
was bleeding into the technique

of shooting feature films,

particularly where the environment
was a third party.

[Mitchell] Signorelli's improvisational
approach was applied

to other kinds of action in Super Fly,

such as the scene
with Sheila Frazier and star Ron O'Neal

that was frank and passionate
about Black love.

I can feel from you
what it's like out there.

I see what it does to you,

and I know… I know how dope
helps hold your head together.

I don't want your privacy, baby.

All I wanna do
is help you share the weight.

-[sensual funk music playing]
-[Frazier] I said, "Once the suds go away,

we have to stop it and refill the suds
because I don't wanna be seen."

I don't know what I was thinking about.
It was pretty hard not to be seen.

[laughs]

I would not know
that at the premiere of that movie

that they put that scene in slow motion.

[Signorelli] And I believe at one point,
Judith Crist said,

"It was the most tasteful
and erotic scene in cinema history."

[Frazier] Richard Roundtree was the one
who helped me get the audition.

Richard said, "You've gotta walk in
like it's yours."

I said, "Okay, all right."

So I walked in,
and I put my feet up on the desk,

on Sig Shore's desk,
and I said, "You know what,

you don't have to see another person
because the film is mine."

Gordon said, "You've got this!"

Well, after Gordon told me I had it,
and I was so ecstatic,

then he had to call me
and apologize and say,

"I'm so sorry,
but Sig Shore wanted a different look."

"He wanted a very voluptuous woman."

It was so devastating,
I just changed all--

I had two telephones.

I changed both… both numbers,

so I would never have to speak
to anybody again.

About three months later,

this guy walks up to me,
you know, and he's like,

"I'm a producer."
I'm like, "Good for you."

So he says, "Well, what's your name?"

So I gave him my name.
He says, "Oh my God!"

"We've been trying to find you
for three months."

"We've been trying to find you."
I'm saying, "Who's 'we'?"

So he says, "Well, I'm a producer
on a movie called Super Fly."

I said, "Eh-eh."

And as soon as I got home,
the phone was ringing off the hook.

[Mitchell] The result,
John Calley told me, was that Super Fly,

an independently made project
that Warner Bros. bought for $150,000,

a pittance by even 1972 standards,

went on to gross around $30 million.

[Ron O'Neal] Super Fly has played
to an awful lot of white people.

It's the only way you can do
19, 20 million dollars.

We've been in Boston 17 weeks.

We ran out of Black people in three weeks…
[chuckling] …in Boston, you know?

[male reporter] Super Fly,
slang for cocaine among users,

is the story
of a Black New York City narcotics dealer.

Strong objections to the film
were raised today by R.L. Livingston

of the Better Influence Association
in Fort Worth.

I don't know what this council can do,
but I'm bringing it to your attention

because you are the city council
of Fort Worth,

and you represent
the problem-solving division here,

and I hope that we can do this thing here
without the citizens going up on their own

to boycott such trash and filth
in our community.

How do you see your role in Super Fly,
as a positive force or a negative one?

Obviously, I consider it a positive one,
or I never would have done the film.

When we made Super Fly,

we made it about the way
things actually are,

and we hoped it would be judged
and criticized on that basis.

Uh, but my… from my observation, you know,

Super Fly has been largely criticized
from some…

[inhales deeply]

…some, you know, some sphere,

some… some plane, some plateau,
you know, that has no bearing on the film.

[Bobby Seale] They use the Black community
to make the movies in the first place.

Uh, we're tired of these white producers
coming in and making Black movies

and then, in turn,
are exploiting the Black community.

Also, the Black extras who live in Oakland
and Berkeley and around the area

are only getting $10 a day.

They should be getting $50 a day.

-[chanting]
-[feet stomping]

I think all the artists,
since I know them personally,

uh, you know, are responsible people

who are concerned about what is happening
in the Black communities.

We are, of course, uh,
not able to make a motion picture alone.

Many other elements
go into the making of a motion picture,

most important of which, I suppose,
initially, would be huge sums of money.

[Mitchell]
The footballers-turned-movie stars

Jim Brown and Fred Williamson

came through
that year with two films each,

with impatient titles
that are both synonyms and descriptors.

Like Shaft, whose sequel,
Shaft's Big Score,

sounds like it could be
an athlete-turned-actor adventure.

[mellow funk music playing]

And these films were all solidly tattooed
with the label "blaxploitation,"

a brand that offered acknowledgment
and dismissal simultaneously.

Though these films coursed through
the bloodstream of American social

and popular culture,

they were seldom addressed
in mainstream media,

except, of course, to provoke panic.

When I think of the word "blaxploitation,"
I think of the commodifying of Blackness.

"How do we package and sell Blackness?"

"Exploitation" because they were
white writers, white producers,

white director,

and then they took it
to the Black community,

and the Black community ate it up,
made them a lot of money,

but not us.

Is that not exploitation?

[Mitchell] Though the blaxploitation brand
so often provoked debate and condemnation,

the films quite often generated
appeal and profit.

Mainstream movies now regarded as classic

feature white stars, bored with heroism,

becoming antiheroes
as a way of wrestling with that issue

and frustrating audiences in the bargain.

[intriguing music playing]

The Black stars, and one wonders
why that wasn't a film title from the era,

made audiences beneficiaries
of another natural evolution,

swag in their own beauty

and reveling in being
in the center of the frame.

Certainly, in the Five Families scene
from The Godfather,

Francis Coppola showed the thoughtlessness
of these characters in this scene,

clearly meant to be an indictment of them
and not an approval of their thoughts.

In my city, we would keep the trafficking
to dark people, the colored.

They're animals anyway,
so let them lose their souls.

[Mitchell] Still, even understanding
what the film's intent was,

that sentiment
can be a little hard to hear.

But it did ask a question
answered by many Black films,

which showed the rot left by drugs.

No! No! For God's sake!

["People Get Up and Drive Your Funky Soul"
by James Brown playing]

[Mitchell] Black films
created a warrior class

where there hadn't been one before.

Black audiences no longer had
to sift through stories to find subtext

that explained why Black characters
hovered in the margins.

They now inhabited center frame
by natural right.

And at a time
when the only mainstream movie hero

was Bond, James Bond,

who, in 1973, saw Roger Moore's 007
go nose-to-false-nose

with the series' first
and, to date, only Black big bad,

played by Yaphet Kotto,

in this ever-changing world
in which Bond lived.

Quite revealing.

[Mitchell] Black movies were portraying
the dilemmas of the inner city,

the ravages of crime, and the drug war.

Only, in these films,
African-American leads were fighting back.

It was understood that cops wouldn't help.

They were often as indifferent
as they were corrupt.

Jim Brown reprised Slaughter,
his verb-as-surname character,

in Slaughter's Big Rip-Off,

complemented by the singular
two-fisted funk

of an early James Brown score.

[song ends]

In Hit!, Billy Dee Williams
was a CIA agent

who recruits an unlikely group
of walking wounded

in his personal fight
against international drug dealers.

He lost his daughter to drugs.

What's it gonna do for you
to kill me, man?

I'm just a worker.

It really required
a kind of a… a mentality

that he was capable
of using whatever, uh, he needed to use

in order to accomplish his mission.

-[seagulls squawking]
-[solemn piano music playing]

That's very interesting.

And, in a way that, for…
uh, little brown-skinned boys like me

never had the opportunity
to do that kind of stuff.

And the fact that Sidney
wanted me to play that character,

felt I was right for that character,

I tried to use it
in the best way that I could.

Again, it was an opportunity

to show a side
that you normally would not see on-screen.

I think that adds to the vulnerability.
I was thinking about vulnerability.

It makes the character a little bit more
than just a ruthless kind of individual.

[Mitchell] Gordon's War featured
a group of Black Vietnam vets

using their skills to return fire
against drug dealers.

It featured a couple
of startlingly original visual high points

that have been quoted in films ever since.

New Jack City, to name just one,

scored by Angelo Badalamenti,
who would later work with David Lynch.

Got a light?

This MacGyver-like action moment
with an aerosol can,

which could be seen as a metaphor
for its environmental danger,

has made its way
into innumerable action films.

[screaming]

[Mitchell] Audiences of all colors
came out to see these movies

because they could feel
the adrenaline in the actors,

many of whom came from the stage,
and those actors' exhilaration in working.

-[upbeat funk music playing]
-Second runner-up, Pretty Tony!

[Mitchell] In The Mack, for example,
Dick Anthony Williams as Pretty Tony

is as compelling as any figure
in a '30s gangster movie.

He told me his improvisations
came out of wanting to portray

an inner-city version
of Edward G. Robinson

brought up-to-date with turns of phrases
he heard growing up.

Nigga, next time you hear
grown folks talkin',

shut the fuck up. Hear?

[Mitchell] The impact
of that kind of concise hypermasculinity

would be felt decades later, in lines
that seem to be written for Black actors,

if not spoken by them.

-Want me to shoot this guy?
-Shit.

[man chuckles]

You shoot me in a dream,
you better wake up and apologize.

[chuckles]

[mellow funk music playing]

[Mitchell] There was
a more specific realization

of Edward G. Robinson to come
in Black Caesar.

They never look at me. They never look
at my face, my nose, my lame foot.

All they know is that I'm Black.

[dramatic drumbeat playing]

[Mitchell] Imagine if the man
who inspired Cohen to write Black Caesar,

Sammy Davis Jr., got to star
in the work he set into motion,

but Cohen ended up
with Fred Williamson as Black Caesar.

When he asked the studio head
to account for the size difference

between Williamson and Davis,

the studio head
thought for a moment and said,

"Give Fred a limp."

[upbeat Motown music playing]

A 1973 concert documentary,
Save the Children,

filmed at the 1972 Operation PUSH rally,

had appearances that ranged
from Jesse Jackson to The Jackson 5,

from Nancy Wilson to Zulema,

and put music
and progressive politics together.

It was a massive enterprise to assemble.

We started with the Motown acts.

So once we'd booked Marvin Gaye,

Temptations,

Gladys Knight & the Pips,
you know, folks like that,

it started to be this thing
about people wanted to do it.

And then, Clarence had a record company,
so he got Bill Withers and Nancy Wilson

and Sammy Davis Jr.

Quincy was already involved
so he got Roberta Flack,

and he put together a house band
that was an all-star band.

And so this thing
sort of turned into this amazing gathering

of some of the best musicians
that were available at that time.

It was big. It was huge.

And it was a… a huge success,

'cause all of those musicians
brought their best game.

♪ Tonight ♪

♪ I gave the greatest performance
Of my life ♪

It got to a point where
the level of artistry was off the roof.

It was crazy.

[funk music playing]

[Mitchell] Black female characters
determined to be recognized

not merely because of
their proximity to a man.

No longer compliant arm candy,

they also threw down
against a battalion of stuntmen.

It was the final frontier
for Black actresses

and established a definition of heroism

that allowed for directness
rather than martyrdom.

Before this,
movies often conflated Black femininity

with romanticized masochism.

What audiences were getting
was something entirely new.

Black films are just, like…
It's an evolution.

It's not something that's gonna come
and pop automatically,

and everything will happen immediately
because nothing happens that way,

and things will take time.

Progress has to be a slow thing

in order for it to be definite,
you know, and beneficial, I think,

so it's gonna take a little while.

There's so many different areas
that haven't been… been realized yet

as far as Black actors are concerned.

And, uh, it's all new to me.
I'm… I'm a new actress, as you know,

and, uh, I've just begun to work,

and there's so many areas of work
I haven't touched yet.

I have a lot more training
that I have to get

before I can really call myself
an actress.

[Mitchell] Laurence Olivier once said,

"When you're young,
you're too bashful to play a hero."

"You debunk it."

"It's only when you're older

that you understand
the pictorial beauty of heroism."

Black actors not only understood
that beauty, they embraced it

because of the communal thirst
we had for heroes.

America, in the throes of uncertainty,
embraced those Black heroes

who were played onto the screens
with dynamic and celebratory music scores.

Remember, it was Shaft
that saved MGM from bankruptcy.

And the newest arrival
to this extraordinary league

that redefined accomplishment and glory
in the movies was Pam Grier.

From 1970 until 1973,
she appeared in seven films,

with each role
giving her more screen time.

A 1970s Esquire magazine article

on rising stars that would go on
to change the movies,

a group that included Steven Spielberg,
who was just finishing Jaws,

and George Lucas, fighting to start
something called The Star Wars,

Pam Grier was
one of the few actors mentioned,

described as, "One of three actresses
whose movies consistently make money."

"The other two are named Barbra and Liza."

Grier said, "I'm the only lady
in movies nowadays who isn't a victim."

"Determination was key working roles
such as a half-panther madwoman,"

as the article says.

In '73, she was also in
Scream Blacula Scream…

Now, with such a lovely guide,

I'm afraid I'd lose my concentration
on the artwork.

How about that?

[Mitchell] …and Black Mama White Mama.

You can stick that up your ass.
Now, let's go!

[gun fires]

[birds chirping]

[Mitchell] But it was in Coffy
that she proved herself a movie star.

Toni Morrison once told me,
"It was a dismissal

to call Grier's characters,
such as Coffy, 'a badass.'"

"It diminished her as an actress."

And more importantly,
she thought Grier's performance

dealt with the moral complexities
demanded of Black women.

The toll of maintaining her equilibrium

while taking the law into her own hands
and dealing with betrayal

showed in her performance
as she avenges her sister's death,

a metaphor for Black women juggling roles

such as protectors
and nurturers simultaneously.

-Now, come on.
-[woman] Howie, what are you doing?

Come back to bed--

[unsettling music playing]

[gasps]

Coffy, baby. You gotta understand.
I… I thought you were dead!

-[groans]
-[screams]

[Mitchell] But often, and finally, alone.

Still, moving on.
Hopefully, towards community.

She'd be an archangel

delivering her people
from the end of the world.

Always around the corner
for African Americans.

Coffy allows Grier
a final moment of respite

in a new version
of a picture-postcard shot.

In 1973, we were in the midst
of botched opportunities,

such as Shaft in Africa,
and responses to Black action films,

such as the adaptation of the play
Five on the Black Hand Side,

which starred a young Glynn Turman.

What does that feel like?

Feels like a lifetime ago,
tell you the truth.

It's amazing
that all of that was happening then,

and, uh, that I got to work

with such wonderful,
wonderful, iconic people,

you know.

And it, uh…

It's a history, man, that…

You don't go into it thinking
that it's going to have any import.

It was just, like, uh,

survival.

You're young.

You know, you're trying to get started
in the business.

You're trying to put your foot down

and make a mark for yourself
in the business.

[Mitchell] There also came a film
that was like the answer to a riddle.

What would you get if you gave the star

of a terrible and ghastly
World War II sitcom

and the editor of that show
a chance to make a movie?

Ivan Dixon, who quit Hogan's Heroes,
and Michael Kahn, that show's editor,

first worked together on Trouble Man.

But Dixon's dream project
was an adaptation

of Sam Greenlee's agitprop satiric novel,
The Spook Who Sat by the Door,

in which a Black man,
recruited by the CIA,

takes the agency's tactics to the streets
and creates a revolution.

Dixon's years of struggle
to get this project completed

could be a movie.

Finally raising the money
to make half the movie

and showing action sequences
to get studio interest,

a bidding war, won by United Artists,
got him the other half.

According to Dixon,
the studio was appalled by a film

they feared might cause
actual riots and lawsuits

instead of a riot at the box office.

It included a line that I thought belonged
in the annals of film history,

alongside "an offer he couldn't refuse."

[man] Remember,

a Black man
with a mop, tray, or broom in his hand

can go damn near anywhere in this country.

And a smiling Black man

is invisible.

[Mitchell] This line brought down
the house when I saw the movie

in Detroit in 1973,

and it continues to set off fireworks
and inspiration decades later.

[Nipsey Hussle] I'mma name my last album
The Spook That Sat by the Door.

Basically, he used their agenda,

which was to have a token nigga
in the CIA for political reasons.

-You know, we gonna speak blunt. Fuck it.
-[woman] Right.

Um, he used it against 'em.

[gun fires]

[Mitchell] Dixon told me
that when Spook ended its theatrical run,

United Artists called him in
for a meeting and told him

the movie was being tracked
by US Intelligence,

which means there's a photo of me

and my high-school friends
somewhere in Langley.

This movie created such a furor

that Dixon felt

his theatrical moviemaking career
was finished.

A film about insurrection
was being treated

as if it were the act itself.

Don't quit

until you either win,

or you die.

[Mitchell] The Spook Who Sat by the Door
infused a genre film, the spy thriller,

with a Black perspective

and forced audiences to reexamine
how narrow that genre had been.

Ganja & Hess finds visuals,
either poetic or realistic and harsh,

to keep its emotional fluidity constant.

-[unsettling music playing]
-[screams]

[Mitchell] Duane Jones,
steely and determined

as the monster killer
in Night of the Living Dead,

is cast as the monster here,
and his resolve to keep his soul alive

as the movie shifts
from dreamscape to bloody reality

became a metaphor
for the life of Bill Gunn,

the film's writer, director, and costar.

Real-life horror played out for Gunn,

who witnessed his triumph
edited into different versions,

each badly titled recut
worse than the previous one,

transforming his art
into something monstrous.

[melancholy string music playing]

Gunn fought to work in the movies

even after his directorial debut
titled Stop!

Ishmael Reed writes,

"Warner Bros. was so upset with Stop!
that it buried the film

and got Gunn to return
his writing and directing fees."

-[siren wails]
-[funk music playing]

1974 was another seismic movement
of the needle for Black film.

[men] The Black 6.

[Mitchell] A jolt
courtesy of Diahann Carroll

as a weary but determined
mother of six in Claudine.

[woman on phone] Sorry,
that number's been disconnected.

"Disconnected"?!

[Mitchell] Diahann Carroll, whose beauty
was deepened by a core of calm,

was one of those
who seized the opportunity to be free

of her civilized smoothness.

What is that--

Please, Francis! Don't do that!
You'll electrocute yourself!

[Mitchell] As the titular character
in this drama,

Claudine fought the welfare system

and the streets of Chicago
for the souls of her children.

And she won, in that her kids
were still alive at the end.

For her efforts, Carroll got
a Best Actress Oscar nomination.

Claudine also benefited
from being one of the five scores

that Curtis Mayfield wrote.

It was a song cycle
in which all the songs came

from the perspectives of the characters,
sung by Gladys Knight & the Pips.

Including one that, in the song,

precisely outlined a centuries-old fear
faced by people of color.

["To Be Invisible"
by Gladys Knight & the Pips playing]

♪ To be invisible ♪

♪ Will be my claim to fame ♪

♪ A girl with no name ♪

I actually was cast in Claudine

when Diana Sands
was cast to play Claudine.

And then she passed away.

And so they, you know…
they reshuffled the deck,

and they found another bunch of actors.

I mean, they had…

I had auditioned, uh,

for the second-youngest son,

but I wound up
not being cast in it after that.

You know, they… they recast it.

[upbeat music playing]

[Mitchell] An intriguing piece
of editorial in action-leather camouflage

was Three the Hard Way,
which teamed Jim Brown

and Fred Williamson

with martial artist Jim Kelly's Afro.

Three cities and three of us.

[Mitchell] They take on
a neo-Nazi organization,

which develops a poison
that only kills African Americans

and will be dumped into the water supplies
of LA, Detroit, and Washington, D.C.,

all of which look suspiciously
like Los Angeles.

I thought it was
the most laughable thing I'd ever seen

until my father explained
the Tuskegee Experiment to me,

and Three the Hard Way was suddenly
a meditation on justifiable paranoia,

the scientific term for which
is "African American," I believe.

1974 follows that film
with a heartbreaking footnote,

one of the final film performances
of Diana Sands.

Honeybaby, Honeybaby was a messy cocktail
with a splash of spy caper,

a twist of action melodrama,
a zest of character comedy,

and so insecure it begins
with the movie describing itself to you.

Hey, how you doin'?

My name is J. Eric Bell,
and I just got back from Beirut, Lebanon,

while filming a movie,
Honeybaby, Honeybaby, on location.

[Mitchell] '74 was bookended with Sands.

Another of her last film appearances
is in Willie Dynamite,

which starred stage actor Roscoe Orman,
who is now better known for another role.

[Orman] I used to joke when Willie
finally left after that last scene,

he turned the corner, and there was
this big yellow bird on the street.

[laughing]

But it was true.

I mean, within… within that year
following Willie Dynamite,

there I was as Gordon on Sesame Street.

[intriguing funk music playing]

[exhales]

Looking for work?

[Mitchell] The light in Orman's eyes,
as Willie Dynamite,

signaled his eagerness
to work with an acting partner

whose radiant toughness
matched up with his coldhearted savvy.

[Orman] I had the incredible good fortune
of working with,

you know, one of the great actors
of all time.

Diana, she was
so well-grounded and educated

in terms of the art
of… of, uh, performance,

you know, and, uh…

Of course she and Lorraine Hansberry
were close friends,

and Sidney and Ruby
and Ossie and all of 'em, you know.

I mean, these were all my mentors as well.

[jaunty piano music playing]

Willie was a performer,
and those courthouse steps,

you know, that was like Baryshnikov.

Platform shoes,
high-heeled platform shoe--

[laughing]

I'd probably break
every bone in my body now.

[music ends]

[Mitchell] Three the Hard Way director
Gordon Parks Jr.

had another film that year,
Thomasine & Bushrod,

an Afrocentric and bucolic Western

that braided a Black twist
into Bonnie and Clyde with its pairing

of two of the most beautiful people
in the American West,

Vonetta McGee and Max Julien, on the run.

Their scenes together
toyed with a movie-star version

of their own real-life chemistry.

How you doin', Mr. Bushrod?

I do fine, Thomasine. I do fine.
I just never thought I'd see you again.

Here I am.

-[romantic music playing]
-And you look good. Damn, you look good.

[Mitchell] It showcased
the languorous, easy score by Arthur Lee

and the script by its star, Max Julien.

[Turman] Thomasine & Bushrod
was so much fun. Uh…

Max Julien was such a great guy

and such an innovative guy
and a daring guy.

He produced that movie.
He wrote it, produced it, you know.

He was-- He called the shots.

So, of all those motion pictures

that came out of
the "Black exploitation," quote, period,

Max was one of the few Blacks
who controlled his own product.

I knew one thing.

I knew that
Max and Vonetta were revolutionary.

Max would just say, you know,
"I'm not gonna take this shit."

[laughs]

And he didn't, you know, and, uh…

"Let's do our own, man.
We'll just do our own."

[mysterious music playing]

[Mitchell] In the adaptation
of the autobiographical book

The Education of Sonny Carson,

the young protagonist is subjected to
extremes of Black masculinity,

in a film that floats
between the brutal and the poetic.

This time, director Michael Campus,
who also made The Mack,

tells a story about a Black hero

who can't outwit
the prison-industrial complex

and is nearly suffocated by incarceration.

For Sonny, the antidote
is moving from one urban tribe to another

to prove his worth.

One of its most harrowing scenes
shows the adolescent Sonny

running the literal gauntlet
to be jumped into a gang.

-[blows thudding]
-[unsettling music playing]

[grunting]

You wanna deal with the Lords,
you deal with us later, you understand?

[Mitchell] Clanton's charged,
fully felt acting proves his understanding

of Sonny's psychic scar tissue
from a lifetime of violence.

[Jackson] He just so opposite
of who that dude was.

He was not that guy.

He was acting.

You know. You coulda--

They… they coulda found that out
the same way I did.

Just by saying,
"Come in this room and talk to us."

[Mitchell] If the decade 1968 through 1978
was about talent seizing opportunity,

there's no better tribute
to that motivation

than the reinvention of Sidney Poitier,

who turned himself
into a blue-collar straight man

in Uptown Saturday Night.

You all right, baby?

I'm fine.

I love… Sidney's comedy.

Gentlemen.

[Fishburne] He is incredibly funny in it.

And I love that
it is a depiction of Black life

in a normalized way.

[Mitchell] Such was
Poitier's physical command

that he made himself
visibly uncomfortable in a suit,

the kind of thing
that he usually wore like a second skin.

Audiences were giddy

that he could satirize
his own stylish earnestness,

and he was a movie star once more
in one of his biggest hits ever.

And if Poitier could make himself
bigger than life in the movies

in an entirely new way,
then anything was possible.

["Can't Seem to Find Him"
by The Love Unlimited Orchestra playing]

Perhaps the greatest legacy of this era,

during a time of strain and reassessment
in the mainstream,

and such moments being reflected
in most movies,

is the joy that Black performers took
in being before the camera.

["Can't Seem to Find Him" continues]

There are probably more entrances
given protagonists of Black films

than in all the movies
of the 1930s put together.

In some cases,
the actors got multiple entrances,

and the soundtracks
ushered them onto the screen.

The engagement these movies
demanded from audiences

often played like the moments in musicals
before a dance number erupts,

and the air is charged.

["Can't Seem to Find Him" continues]

It was this decade's movies
that gave notice,

careers, and new leases on life
to Black talent.

The industry would squander
that potential for them.

For example, Cleavon Little…

Hey, where the white women at?

[Mitchell] …whose quicksilver
straight-man verve was as responsible

for the success of Blazing Saddles
as anything else.

What did you expect?

"Welcome, sonny"?

[Mitchell] Cleavon Little
never found another leading role

to showcase his abilities,

unlike his costar, Gene Wilder.

[playing "That's the Way of the World"]

♪ That's the way of the world ♪

[Mitchell] That surge
of musical endorphins informed a film

with probably the best-selling
Black soundtrack of the period,

directed by the producer of Super Fly.

It's a musical so undercooked
the band doesn't bother to speak.

Some might say the film's music
was so transporting they don't need to.

And the spiritual wallop of songs
such as "That's the Way of the World"

proved that point.

♪ Hey, yeah ♪

[Mitchell] The first major studio version
of a slave narrative,

the adaptation of Mandingo,

slaps onto the screen
with its gaudy inhumanity intact.

This decades-old literary sensation

was adapted by Oscar-nominee
Norman Wexler,

with a cast that includes James Mason
and his florid accent…

Get down there.

All right.

[Mitchell] …which seems less crazy
after the trashy parade of racism.

The movie's obsession with Black sexuality

and ridiculing white fear of it

inspired the body-worshipping photography
of Robert Mapplethorpe.

That's proof Black Jesus
was the revenant's cousin too.

[Mitchell] But Black film continues
to explode through one genre after another

with writer-director
Ralph Bakshi's Coonskin,

a combination of live action and animation
that stars Barry White,

actor-playwright Charles Gordone,
and Philip Michael Thomas,

who would later star in Miami Vice
and coin the acronym EGOT.

Starting with its assaultive title,
Bakshi's experiment packs in

much commentary on race
and its cinematic treatment.

From parodying Br'er Rabbit

to sending up Krazy Kat.

Night after night, Malcolm remains cool.

[Mitchell] Conceptually,
Coonskin stirred up so much turmoil

that it scandalized
as well as entertained,

which was its point.

-[bullets ricocheting]
-[frantic drumbeat playing]

This load is getting too heavy to tote.

[Mitchell] For good or ill,
there's still nothing else like it.

Random and abrupt police intrusion
in Black life

played on as part of Black film.

In Cornbread, Earl and Me,

a young Black life ended by a cop's bullet
is the center of the story,

back when such a thing still drew a gasp
because it was so rarely dramatized

but got knowing nods from Black audiences.

-[police shouting]
-[gunshot]

[chorus vocalizing dramatically]

[Mitchell] The spill of orange soda
in the climactic scene

crudely but imaginatively worked
as a stand-in for bloodshed

and still sends a chill through me.

Cornbread!

That movie, for me,
is the original Boyz n the Hood.

[shot echoes]

Cornbread, Earl and Me is a tragic story.

And Boyz n the Hood
is also a tragic story.

And those things
are almost 20-something years apart.

[all] We do not enter
public transportation illegally.

[Mitchell] From the high-flying Shaft
and athletes-turned-adventurers,

action downshifted
into something drawn like real life.

Cooley High, a Black inner-city version
of American Graffiti,

with the ups and downs
of a coming-of-age story emerged.

And the story was given a resident lift
from Motown songs,

which would have been the soundtrack
of the characters' lives in 1964

when Cooley High was set.

The heady perfume of nostalgia
washed over Black audiences,

-who welcomed it.
-[Motown music playing]

That's Motown music.

And it's the backdrop
of Black people's lives…

[inhales]

…on film.

That's nice. That's… that's a nice change.

[laughing]

[Motown music playing]

[Turman] One of the first scenes
I remember shooting

is the scene running for the bus.

That was exactly
how I grew up in Manhattan.

That's what we did.
That's what me and my crew did.

We ran and jumped on the back of the bus
going down 7th Avenue.

I'll never forget it.
But here was the thing…

[laughing] …when we did that
going down 7th Avenue,

we jumped on the bus,
and 7th Avenue was cobblestone,

so you held on for dear life!

Can I have a hot dog, please?

[Mitchell] Turman plays
the big comedic moments and the reality

so that he becomes
an important ingredient in Cooley High

rather than overwhelm it with his spice.

-Could I have ketchup on it?
-We don't have any ketchup.

-You ain't got no ketchup?
-That's right.

[man] Got some relish?
Can I have relish on it, please?

[woman] I don't have relish.

-[man] You got no relish?
-[woman] No relish.

-[man] What you got?
-[woman] Mustard.

-Mustard?!
-[woman] That's it.

You mean, a big establishment like this,
and all you got is mustard?

-That's right.
-I don't like mustard. Do you?

Yeah, I like mustard.

Oh yeah? Well then, here.
You eat the hot dog.

And along that road,

you hit certain spots that make you go,
"Whoa! Yeah, this is-- Yeah!"

All of a sudden,
a call comes from nowhere.

Doesn't even come from my agent.
It comes from some strange other place.

"Glynn, Ingmar Bergman
is looking for you."

I said, "I'm in no mood to play.
I'm sitting here in the fucking dark."

"My kids are hungry.
I'm-- We're eating potatoes."

And I hung up the phone.

And the call came.
He said, "No, for real, Glynn."

He was looking for me.

And he'd seen Cooley High

and, you know, said he knew right then
that I was the one to be in his movie.

So… so you go from pockets
of that kind of disaster to

euphoria.

And then, so it's a ride that--

It's… unbelievable ride.

[laughs] You are outrageous,
you know that?

[Mitchell] Old-school glamour,
as portrayed again

by Diana Ross and Billy Dee Williams,

still proved potent
in the 1975 romantic melodrama Mahogany.

You gotta give 'em some pizzazz.
Show 'em your charm. Ow!

I always feel like, sometimes Black men
always feel like they have to…

Maybe there's a good reason for it.
There are obvious reasons for it, I guess.

But, uh, always this need
to show their strength.

Vulnerability is a wonderful thing to use.

It's a wonderful tool
when you're playing a character.

[sentimental music playing]

I've missed you too.

[Williams] But that's me.
I'm that kind of person.

I mean, I'm not afraid to display

my, uh… or convey my feelings about,

uh, something if I… if I feel strongly.

Play it, Sam.

♪ We're on the rock 'n' roll choo choo
Headed for Hollywood… ♪

[Mitchell] The pop-soul group Bloodstone,
whose big hit was "Natural High,"

were said to have invested
their own money to produce

the touching and sweetly odd musical

Train Ride to Hollywood,
a pastiche of 1940s movie clichés,

and inserted themselves into the mix.

[playing "Rock 'n' Roll Choo Choo"]

[Mitchell] Among Richard Pryor's gifts
was pinpoint cultural criticism,

as he proved with his 1976 comedy album
Bicentennial Nigger

and his take on Logan's Run,

a 1976 Lego-colored,
pre-Star Wars sci-fi fantasy.

[Pryor] I went to see Logan's Run, right?

They had a movie of the future
called Logan's Run.

Ain't no niggas in it.

I said, "Well, white folks
ain't planning for us to be here."

[crowd laughing, cheering]

[Pryor] That's why we gotta make movies.
Then we'll be in the picture.

[crowd cheering]

People don't ever want to--
And… and please forgive me.

People never want to offend white folks.

They want to be able
to keep white folks on their side

so that they will be allowed
to make these movies.

[exciting music playing]

[Mitchell] By 1976,

after Black films redeemed the ideal
of heroic protagonists,

mainstream movies once again
saw their worth.

Smile, you son of a…

[Mitchell] The Sting and Jaws,
which returned the thrill of victory

to white male movie stars,
were massive hits.

In fact, both Jaws and The Sting

were made by the same producers
that did Willie Dynamite.

The Sting's plot could have been lifted
from the novel Trick Baby, also a film.

And, by 1976's end, Rocky Balboa,

a hero who could have stepped out
of a Black action movie,

was pitted against a clumsy
and mocking Muhammad Ali archetype.

And though Rocky didn't win the fight,

he got the Best Picture Oscar
and the box office success to go with it.

He looks like a big flag.

[Mitchell] Rocky featured
a Black heavyweight champ

who was a parody of the all-beef persona
Ali brought to the ring.

But Ali used humor
as a mind game on his opponents,

who all tried
to glare him into submission.

He wasn't a clown.

In fact, Ali knew he could pretend
to take things lightly

because his skills
would prove his indomitability,

including a willingness to take a punch,

which may have accelerated
his slide into Parkinson's.

Stallone's savvy had him lift cleverly
from Black culture

such ideas as pounding beef
in the meat locker

and running up the museum steps,
which Joe Frazier did first,

as the book Ghosts of Manila reminds us.

As Rocky's foe, Apollo Creed,

Carl Weathers bent himself into a pretzel
to bring himself down to Stallone's size.

I needed a chiropractor
after watching Weathers fold himself

to the level of Rocky's fists.

By 1976, the notion of using the power
of musicals to capture audience attention

was no longer lost
on mainstream filmmakers.

["Car Wash" by Rose Royce playing]

With Car Wash, composer Norman Whitfield
was primed to outdo Shaft and Super Fly,

with a theme of hard-hitting funk bounce
sutured to a social context.

And it worked.

["Something He Can Feel" playing]

This song, "Something He Can Feel,"

was Curtis Mayfield's take
on Motown girl-group simmer.

Mayfield wrote it
for the proto-Dreamgirls,

Black showbiz melodrama, Sparkle…

♪ …I'm too young to let you know
Just where I'm coming from ♪

…which should have ignited the career
of star Lonette McKee

and been more than a footnote
for Irene Cara and Philip Michael Thomas.

Sparkle was
screenwriter Joel Schumacher's follow-up

to Car Wash,

and he wrote it to hypnotize audiences
and direct himself.

It ended up dazzling
the handful who saw it

but not with Schumacher behind the camera.

[upbeat music playing]

Like the potential crowd-pleaser

The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars
& Motor Kings,

this story of the Negro Leagues

also functioned as a metaphor
for the amount of effort

Blacks had to put
into entertaining audiences.

The players had to give a show
on the way to the stadium

and still played nine innings of baseball.

I loved it. I really wanted to do Bingo

'cause Bingo was a really fun
kind of character.

I mean, the man is guaranteeing us $200.

If you slice that 11 ways,
that comes out to about, uh…

Uh…

Uh, uh…

A lot of money!

[Mitchell] Bingo is
all the things Williams is.

He's physical.
He has an appetite for life.

Full of crap, you know.

[laughs]

[man 1] Who you got, man?

[man 2] A real foxy lady.

[Mitchell] The 1977 film Brothers
was a peculiar and rare attempt

at Black political melodrama.

With its haunted Taj Mahal score,

it was a romance of ideals
with Bernie Casey and Vonetta McGee

as characters based on George Jackson
and Angela Davis.

But pretty much all this movie did
was gape at their bone structure.

Before Marvel and DC
dropped faithful movie adaptations

of their universes on regular schedules,
the well-meaning street superhero story

Abar: the First Black Superman
hit screens.

This film celebrates
the Watts Tower on-screen,

giving it a sense of place
in the Black world.

-Commence firing!
-[whooshing]

[Mitchell] And,
in an early version of sampling,

it used Captain America's origin story
as a serving suggestion.

As a Black race,
let's get ourselves together,

in every respect.

For that, I'll sacrifice anything
short of murder.

Well, uh, suppose
I could, uh, make you indestructible.

[Mitchell] The cycle of Black film
was slowly winding down,

as the sure-bet returns
on Black films of a certain type

were diminishing at a rate
that seemed exponential.

So, there was no place
for a peculiar high point of the 1970s,

a biopic about a real-life boxer,

with a theme song that initially
provoked unintentional laughs.

♪ I believe the children are our future ♪

♪ Teach them well
And let them lead the way ♪

♪ Show them all the beauty
They possess inside ♪

[Mitchell] Houston's chart-topping
claiming of this song

lifted it from ode to self-absorption
to self-empowerment hymn.

This embrace of "The Greatest Love of All"
was a generational shift.

Following the lead of actors from 1968
adopting Ali's bravado,

it signaled the change
in mainstream perception of Ali,

from showboat
to "The Greatest Love of All."

[exciting funk music playing]

Prior to this 1968 through '78 era,

movie soundtracks
didn't matter to the studios

because they didn't
consistently sell much,

and usually came out
months after the movies were released.

Black '70s film ignored that example.

The scores weren't just textures
but detonations of thought and sound.

Their boldness transformed movie music
and mainstream music forever.

Suddenly, movie music
was a commercial consideration.

Black film soundtracks multiplied,

composed and performed
by R&B singers, jazz artists,

classically trained musicians,
who made a fusion of classical and modern.

Master session drummer Bernard Purdie

was out to show
the true definition of funk

in the Black X-rated film Lialeh,

where he's on camera playing the score
he composed for the movie.

Eventually, the movies
would have to take notice

because too many hits were coming out
of these Black movie scores.

[mellow funk music playing]

Robert Stigwood was producing a movie

about the white middle-class
being consumed by disco.

You know, Black music.

Because Stigwood also owned
a record label,

he made sure to use a film soundtrack
featuring his biggest artists,

the Bee Gees, to sell the movie

and help his potential audience
get over its fear of a Black planet.

Soon, soundtracks would come
to dominate the pop charts

and be expected to
because of the Black film example.

It's one of the many lasting
and unheralded achievements

of Black film of this era.

["Stayin' Alive" by Bee Gees playing]

In 1977, the most attractive points
of Black film,

the entrance, the confidence,
the propulsive theme to announce the star,

like this, finally received its homage
in a mainstream movie.

♪ Music loud and women warm ♪

♪ I've been kicked around
Since I was born ♪

[muffled] ♪ And now it's all right
It's okay… ♪

[Mitchell] Which is to say,
every generation

gets its own Elvis or Eminem.

♪ The New York Times' effect on man ♪

John Travolta was another note
in the decades-long symphony of swagger,

an off-white take on Black cool,

the next best thing.

Travolta, as Tony Manero,

may not have been the first to use
Black beats of stylization,

but he embraced it
with a bone-deep flair for expropriation.

His intensity and intent

became a truly realized
cultural phenomenon,

the biggest ever.

By 1978, Richard Pryor
had appeared in 20 movies.

With the exception of a handful of turns,

his live standup, and Wattstax,
none consistently made use of his talent.

Wanna buy a radio?

My locker's been busted
for six months now, man,

and the company ain't did shit to fix it.

Now I have to stick my finger
in some tiny-ass hole.

I cut my finger, man,
two weeks ago, and it ain't healed yet.

[Mitchell] In '78, he costarred
in what would be a most demanding role.

He played a volatile
and miserable autoworker in Blue Collar,

which would also remain
his own favorite acting work.

You a redneck, peckerwood motherfucker,
you know that?

That's it, you're through.
I've had your bullshit.

I'mma kill a motherfucker!
You understand that?

[Mitchell] It was a film
whose atmosphere was so combative,

you could make a great movie
about the making of Blue Collar.

It would be the following year

that Pryor would release himself
from fur-lined handcuffs

in his most complex and remarkable role,

himself.

I don't wanna never see
no more police in my life.

[crowd laughing, cheering]

At my house. [chuckles]

[Mitchell] To witness Pryor's startling,
jazz-drummer control

in the film Live in Concert

is to see
he was the Tony Williams of comedians.

It only highlighted
how the studios made movies,

such as The Wiz,
that squandered his blistering truth.

Phony!

[Mitchell] At this point,
it feels like only one thing

can save Black film from oblivion.

The Wiz is out! He's not here!

I'm on my way to find The Wiz.

He's gonna get me back home.

Well, that's nice.

[Mitchell] Was it an all-stops-out musical
from one of the most respected directors,

with a film debut
of a performer destined to become

the biggest pop music phenomenon
of the next decade

and a budget that could possibly equal
what was spent

to make all the Black films
produced in 1968?

A good thought in the abstract
but probably not in real life.

The director was someone whose best work

was tense, gritty movies,
such as Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon.

The star's about 20 years too old
for the part,

and the expressionism

and gospel-flavor intimacy
of the stage show

is replaced by hundreds of extras
trying not to bump into each other

in outfits that still seem to have
shiny price tags hanging off them.

The Wiz is said to have cost
between 25 and 40 million dollars to make,

as much as Super Fly grossed.

It lacked the infectious aplomb
and winning brio

of the Black movies that did succeed.

It only made
about a third of its costs back.

Sure, it may have got bad reviews,

but so did most of the films
that did extraordinary business.

The simple fact is The Wiz lost money.

So much that it gave the movie industry
the reason it had been looking for

to withdraw from the Black movie business

and handed movie executives
the chance to say things like,

"Black people don't wanna see themselves
in movies anymore."

Or something I actually heard from one,

"Black people don't see themselves
in historical dramas anyway."

It was in 1978

that the white male movie star
reaccepted the mantle of hero

after rejecting it to embody
the tormented antihero for over a decade,

the sure and steely-eyed hero archetype…

[announcer] Burt Reynolds is Hooper.

And Hooper is a real hero.

[Mitchell] …and finally
absorbed the lesson

that these Black films
understood early on.

The biggest myth that the movies promoted,

going back to D.W. Griffith
and even before,

is that we want to be saved.

But it's often a satisfying lie,

a chili cheeseburger,
poisonous but so good.

All right…

[Mitchell] Warren Beatty ascended
from impotent bank robber to the heavens.

Heaven Can Wait could be viewed
as the closing of a circle,

because a '70s remake
of Here Comes Mr. Jordan

began its life
in the hands of a Black performer

working with Francis Coppola.

[Coppola] It was a really funny script
because he's this white guy

who dies and comes back as Bill Cosby,

but everyone sees him as white.

He liked--
I don't know why it was never done.

[Mitchell] Robert De Niro
employed his movie-star concentration

to play an old-school avenger.

Clint Eastwood put down his .44 Magnum
to hang with the apes.

And the rocket that was launched
from the planet Krypton by DC Comics

in 1938

finally deposited its contents
on the movie screen.

["This Bitter Earth"
by Dinah Washington playing]

But by 1978, the crowning achievement
of the decade came into focus,

a work of art that had been playing
since the end of the previous year.

This film took the director
much of the decade

to complete and release,

though, to be fair,
it was a thesis project.

It used music deftly
to illustrate character and setting

and showed an alluring command
of the medium

and would be imitated
into the next century.

♪ Within me cries ♪

♪ I'm sure someone may answer my call ♪

♪ And this bitter earth ♪

♪ Ooh ♪

♪ May not… ♪

[Mitchell] Burnett borrowed
Dinah Washington's "This Bitter Earth"

for its delicate heartache.

And Martin Scorsese paid tribute
to the scene in both image and music.

[song continues]

[song fades]

-[child] I'll catch you!
-Can't get me, Janice!

These people I grew up with,
I really admired them, you know,

the fathers who, you know…

Unlike Hollywood films, that they…

Everyone's a prostitute
or doing something or leaving the family,

and a mother to take care,
a single parent,

these parents and fathers
were working hard, you know,

and I tried to be like 'em.

And I grew up in a community

that I really respected the people
and liked 'em because I saw who they were,

and those are the kinds of people
I didn't see represented in stories.

'Cause they were working-class people.
Watts was a really interesting place.

When I first went to UCLA,

they had this end-of-the-quarter screening
called Royce Hall Screenings.

And they showed all the best films
that were shown at…

in the film department that year.

And I was taking a class with…
The teacher was Basil Wright.

He was a documentary filmmaker
who did Song of Ceylon, things like that.

I was so lucky to get in his class.

And I remember going to the screenings
at Royce Hall,

and I couldn't understand a word
of what was going on.

I… I didn't identify--

I mean, it was a time when
the flower children was a big thing.

You know, nudity, you know,

going up to… going up to Topanga Canyon,

you know, and the guys are getting weed
and all this kind of stuff

and just finding themselves,

rediscovering themselves
and their sexuality.

And, I mean, those weren't the issues
in my community.

[pleasant orchestral music playing]

[Mitchell] Killer of Sheep
demonstrated the potential of the medium

by a poet finding beauty
in his own neighborhood.

And, of course,
he was ignored by the mainstream press.

There was no takeaway from it,

even as filmmakers
made entire careers out of copying it.

And Black film was left to wither and die.

But it refused to.

In every decade since 1978,
there's been a rise and fall

for gifted Black filmmakers
who won't give up.

Is the lesson that those
who cannot remember the past

are condemned to keep remaking Shaft?

There's much talk of the pride
that came out of the period, but again,

I think of something my grandmother said,
"You don't want pride. It's a trap."

"That means you want someone
to see your chest swelled up."

"It's a selfish thing."

"Instead, take pleasure in what you do.
That belongs to you."

"It's something you want others
to share in with you."

It's what I got from those films.

The pleasure those talents took
in making the movies,

they passed on to me and to others,

and it's a living thing.

["It's So Hard to Say Goodbye
to Yesterday" by Boyz II Men playing]

♪ It's so hard ♪

♪ To say goodbye to yesterday ♪

[song ends]

[shoes scrape on ground]

[sniffles, breathes deeply]

For the dudes who ain't here, huh?

In addition to being a repository of hope,
they were empirical proof

that we were here, that we exist,

that we create culture,

that our community is a viable community,

is an important community,

that we have voices,
and that we will be heard.

-[popping]
-[men cheering]

[Mitchell] A final note,

one person symbolized
all the ups and downs of the period.

Going from number one
at the box office to irrelevance

to being one of the last left standing.

Sidney Poitier,

who shifted his trajectory
but didn't slow a step.

He trusted his compact
with Black audiences would remain intact.

-[shot booms]
-[yelps]

[Mitchell] From 1968 through '78,
he directed and starred in five films…

I put my faith in the good book.

…all of which centered on characters
pretending to be something they're not.

Damn, man, we trusted you!
I mean, why us?!

Why not you, brother?

[Mitchell] I once asked him about this

one of the handful of times
I spoke to him,

all ending with him
turning me down for an interview.

When I mentioned
that his five directing efforts

were all about imposture…

Open your eyes.

…he laughed and said,

"Young man, I already have a therapist.
I don't need another one."

You are capable of great feats
of strength and courage.

Strength and courage.

You can beat any fighter in the world.
You will win the championship.

[gasps]

-I will?
-Yes!

[Mitchell] But being Black in America
is often about remembering

that what you think you are
isn't what other people see

and figuring out the distance
between those two perceptions.

I think it's something
my grandmother would have agreed with.

[pleasant music playing]