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Episode 295: Wil Haygood Talks 'Colorization,' Black Films in a White World, and Meeting James Baldwin
204 Plays3 years ago
Wil Haygood is the author of nine books. His latest is Colorization: 100 Years of Black Films in a White World (Knopf, 2021).
This conversation was part of a live series for Goucher College's MFA in Creative Nonfiction.
Sponsor: West Virginia Wesleyan College's MFA in Creative Writing.
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
Social Media: @CNFPod
Show notes and newsletter: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Dedication to Sam Jeffries
00:00:01
Speaker
This episode is dedicated to Sam Jeffries, a tier 3 patron. Happy New Year. Let's get after it.
New Year Resolutions and Writing Support
00:00:10
Speaker
Hey, it's that time of year. You're getting on the treadmill, I imagine. You might even be hiring a personal trainer for that hot bod of yours. Soft AF, in my case. But maybe your writing needs a boost, that little something.
00:00:25
Speaker
That little something, something in your corner, if you're looking to level up your work, or you're working on a book, an essay, a query, book proposal, you name it. Like I said, if you're ready to level up, email me, Brendan at Brendan O'Mara.com, and we'll start a dialogue. I'd be honored to help you get where you want to go. I sort of picture myself walking down the hallway to my home and then turning a key and opening the door. And then I got to say to myself,
00:00:55
Speaker
Do I wanna see this person sitting on the sofa waiting on me to come home so we can start? So, you know, so that we can start talking. So yes, it's fun to think that you'll walk into your house and there's Sugar Ray Robinson, or you'll walk into your house and there's Sammy Davis Jr., or you'll walk into your house and there's Thurgood Marshall.
Introduction to The Creative Nonfiction Podcast
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And I mean, those are the kind of people
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who I have just loved to have gotten to know through research, through finding people, family members, relatives, friends, some enemies, finding people who have known them throughout their lives.
00:01:48
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Well, boy, this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to badass people since 2013 about the art and craft of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara. How's it going? My goodness, my goodness, are you in for a treat? What a way to start off 2022.
Introducing Will Haygood
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Speaker
It's Will Haygood. He's the author of nine books, his latest being Colorization, 100 Years of Black Films in a White World. It's published by Knopf.
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Speaker
This conversation I did as part of a Goucher Colleges MFA and creative nonfiction a little live event Not unlike what happened with Ricky Tucker. This is a rebroadcast with my slick editing skills for you
00:02:31
Speaker
Will's been a long time reporter for the Washington Post, where his piece on Eugene Allen, the butler for several presidents in the White House, became a book that was the basis for Lee Daniels, the butler, starring Forrest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey. You might have heard of them. Will has also written books on Sugar Ray Robinson and Thurgood Marshall and Sammy Davis Jr.
00:02:55
Speaker
Will's talent, ability, and rigor might only be surpassed by his generosity. How generous? He blurbed my book Six Weeks in Saratoga way back in early 2011. Oh boy. Before the book came out that summer. So that ought to tell you everything you need to know.
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a little housekeeping here before the main event.
Social Media Hiatus and Patreon Support
00:03:15
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I want to remind you to keep the conversation going on Twitter at cnfpod or at Creative Nonfiction Podcast on Instagram. You can also support the podcast by becoming a paid member at patreon.com slash cnfpod.
00:03:27
Speaker
As I say, the show is free, but it sure as hell ain't cheap. Members get transcripts, chances to ask questions of future guests, special podcasts, a little caveat though, I'm in a social media deprivation chamber for all of January, maybe longer. So if you don't get a reply or my famous James Hetfield gifts in reply to you, I'm not big timing you, who would I be to do that?
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Speaker
I would greatly appreciate your ambassadorship of the show in my absence from those attention-sucking demon platforms. So if I don't like or retweet or James Hetfield your tweets it's because I'm sort of off a grid. Not the grid but a grid of swords.
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free ways to support the show you can always leave a kind review or rating on Apple podcast or Spotify written reviews for our little podcast that could go such a long way towards validating it for the way we're seeing effort who might be typing in one of the guest names and they'll be like well I haven't heard of that podcast room who the hell's that guy but
00:04:34
Speaker
Wow, there's a lot of reviews. I'll give it a shot, and they might be like, holy shit. I kind of dig this thing. We've stalled out a bit. It'd be nice to ramp that up again in the new year while it's still new and fresh. Show notes and my up to 11 monthly newsletter can be found at brendanomare.com. Once a month, no spam. As far as I can tell, you can't beat it.
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Sport for the Creative Nonfiction podcast is also brought to you by West Virginia Wesleyan College's Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing. Now in its 10th year, this affordable program boasts a low student to faculty ratio and a strong sense of community. I mean, they might very well be in their 11th year now. Shoot, I should ask.
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Speaker
Recent CNF faculty include random Billings Noble, Jeremy Jones, and Sarah Einstein. There's also fiction and poetry tracks. Recent faculty there being Ashley Bryant-Phillinson, Jacinda Townsend, as well as Diane Gilliam and Savannah Sipple. So no matter your discipline, man, if you're looking to up your craft or learn a new one, consider West Virginia Wesleyan right in the heart of Appalachia. Visit nfa.wvwc.edu for more information and dates of enrollment.
00:05:45
Speaker
Okay, so Will came on the show to talk about his new book, which is so much more than merely a chronicle of influential black movies.
Overview of 'Colorization' by Haygood
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It weaves in the tumultuous past century, last hundred years, the current events of the time that informed the movies, the roles of black actors and black filmmakers have made the slight moments of subversion that black actors would inject into the films
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that pretty much only that they could tell it was their own little wink to the audience. The strides and the backslides and the tremendous work that still needs to be done. He begins the book with Birth of a Nation, an anti-black film, and ends the book soberingly and depressingly with the Unite the Right march in Charlottesville in 2017. That revealed to many of us that maybe this country isn't quite as enlightened as it purports to be.
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That's only become more apparent over the last few years. All that said, Will's book is sweeping, and it's fun, too. Sure, it can be grim and maddening in places, not the writing or the reporting or the way it's put together, just the sheer sadness of the atrocities this country and some of its people are guilty of.
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The story is handled by a master and you're about to hear how he got his start in journalism and how a chance encounter with James Baldwin put Will on the path to nine books and counting. So buckle up CNFers and make sure your seat trays are in their upright and locked position. Yep, we are clear for takeoff.
00:07:36
Speaker
And things I always love to get into at the start of these conversations, well, sometimes tracking as we start to pull in the latest book, of course, colorization, is just getting a sense of the arc of a career as well. So I understand you graduated from Miami University in 1976 with a degree in urban planning. So how did you end up parlaying that into journalism? Well, I graduated
Haygood's Career Journey
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stayed in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio for a few years. I was a social worker, had a job for five months on a weekly newspaper. And then I wanted to leave my hometown and I went to New York City simply to experience life.
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moved away from home, lived at the YMCA in New York City. After I landed in New York City, I worked as a waiter. I sort of just wanted to be around the arts, you know, writers. I went to see a lot of plays in New York City. This was the early eighties. Started running out of money and I got a job in the,
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Speaker
executive training program at Macy's, Macy's department store. So I became a low level floor manager at Macy's, worked that job for about two years, got fired. And I didn't know what I was doing. The store manager had told me that in the retelling just is not in your soul, Will Hager. And I wanted to say, no kidding. No, it wasn't.
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I was happy to get out of there. Anyway, moved back to my hometown and had to ask myself at the age of 24 what it was that I really wanted to do in life. And I said, I love writing. I like writing. So I started writing small newspapers all around the country. And I got a job as a copy editor in Charleston, West Virginia.
00:09:43
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And from there I went to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette where I was a, you know, Metro reporter. And then from there, and I went to the Boston Globe, which was my dream newspaper. And I became a national and foreign correspondent at the Boston Globe. And then one day the Washington Post called me and then I started at the Washington Post in about 2002 and worked there a number of years. And so that's sort of the quick arc of my career.
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Speaker
Now you said even in working in retail, and that's something I can attest to, I've worked countless years in retail, often writing and reading and doing all the kind of hustle on the side to try to make a go of it. So you always had that love of writing. So where did that seed come from that helped sustain you while you were doing this thing that wasn't in your soul?
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I think it was from reading this book of letters and by Langston Hughes in in Arnabantems. There was a book of letters. I was about 21 years old when I bought this book of letters.
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It was like a 40-year history of these two Black writers and their intense love of the arts. They would write letters back and forth starting in the years of the Harlem Renaissance and going up through the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. And I just found those letters very fascinating that two Black men
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could make a living through their words, through writing. Both of these men wrote novels and essays and short stories. And so that really gave me an opening to the arts.
00:11:48
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into literature, although I didn't study English literature when I was in college, of course, as you mentioned. But I think after college, after college is really when my love of the arts and books really started to flower. I mean, because during all my jobs after college, I would always save up enough money to buy one hardback book every paycheck.
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Every one of my paychecks, I would go downtown to the bookstore and browse and I would always get a brand new hardback book. It just filled me with life to be walking around my neighborhood with a brand new book.
00:12:33
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Yeah, and you get a sense of, in talking to you and hearing you talk about the people that really inspire you, that books are just tremendously important to you. And not only that as a reader, but as a writer in wanting to contribute to the bookshelves of bookstores or personal libraries.
00:12:53
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and everything. So when did you start thinking beyond the amazing reporting and journalism you were doing into thinking like, okay, I want to start stringing together something that will be bound between those two hard covers? Something happened in my life that was very meaningful. When I was at the Boston Globe in the early 80s and I hadn't yet written
James Baldwin Interview's Impact
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a single book. The feature editor of the newspaper called me in, Cindy Smith. She called me into her office and said, hey, there is a visiting writer at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. And we'd like you to go up there and interview this writer. And I said, ah, great, great. Who is it? And she said, James Baldwin.
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that just that guy was done yeah i mean like the the james baldwin and i hardly slept that night i mean because i hadn't been at the newspaper that long and i certainly knew if i messed this story up it might not look good for me at the newspaper but anyway the next morning i caught the train up up there and
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Baldwin was staying at this house with two friends of his I guess his host on the campus and as I was walking up on the porch both of them were walking out and one of them said hey Will go ahead in he's upstairs he'll be right down he's waiting on you and I went in and sat on the sofa and I heard these footsteps
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hustling down the steps. And it was James Baldwin. I mean, to come face to face. He really was the first superstar who also that I had ever met in life. He was the very first bigger than life
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figure who I had met in my life. And he came downstairs and he's smoking a cigarette, you know, and he said, Hey, baby, how you doing? You know, so we started the interview and I knew that there was a question that I wanted to ask him. And because I knew nothing about the world of books, how you even write a book, who do you tell and that you want to write a book? How does that process even happen? I had no clue.
00:15:24
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And so at the end of the interview, I said, and excuse me, Mr. Baldwin, may I ask you something personal? And he said, oh, sure, sure, baby, shoot. And I said, do you think that someday I will be able to write books? And because I've never written a book.
00:15:52
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And he looked at me and he said, how the hell should I know what you'll be able to do in your life? I mean, what kind of question is that to ask me? And oh my goodness, I just felt, I felt bad. I felt unwise. I just felt silly and also felt crushed and
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And I think he saw all that on my face because he leaned into me. He said, hey, baby, but I'll tell you something. Whatever you do in life, you must go the way your blood beats. And hearing that, I mean, I wrote that down in my notebook. You must go the way your blood beats.
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And even when people would tell me that I didn't have the talent to write books, I just knew that I was going to continue to try to go the way my blood beats. And here I am nine books later.
00:16:58
Speaker
That's amazing. Yeah, I have that in my notes. And it's one thing, like he went from that one moment of kind of crushing your spirit to then giving you the one thing that he could give you, which was a certain measure of hope. And if you're going to pursue this, you really do need to be all in. Right. Yes. Yes. You're exactly right. And I've often wondered,
00:17:24
Speaker
My goodness, how would my life have turned out if he hadn't have said that to me that day? Because after that day, I was more determined than ever to write books. And within a year later, I had signed my first book contract, which was a book called Two on the River, which was about a trip down in Mississippi.
00:17:54
Speaker
That's incredible. So how did you then start to integrate the kind of writing that it takes in research and reporting to do a book into whatever it was you were doing at the time? Unless you had a book leave where you were able to take some time, but maybe you were able to integrate it into what you were doing as your day job at the time. So how did that manifest?
00:18:19
Speaker
Yeah. You know, it's hard to get time to write your books if you're working on a newspaper. And so I had taken the trip
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Speaker
down the Mississippi River when I was at the Boston Globe. And so that journey was on their time, on their dime, so to say. But then I came up with an idea. I wanted to write a major biography of the Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. And so my editor, Peter Davison, after the Mississippi River book came out, he asked me what I wanted to do next.
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And I said, I wanted to write a book about Adam Clayton Powell Jr. because there is no major biography about it. And I think that there should be. And this is an important fact too. I felt that I owed Powell a debt because
00:19:28
Speaker
He was a major legislator who passed bills to help poor people, and I came from a family of a single mother. I was the first person in my family to go to college, but I also was accepted into what's known as
00:19:48
Speaker
the Upward Bound program and it's still flourishing. It's like local colleges in a city will identify about 100 students, low-income students, all backgrounds, and they will bring them to their college campus.
00:20:11
Speaker
And it's a federal funding program during the summer to teach you about college and then you take courses, etc. And so
00:20:23
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After college, I really was intrigued, you know, who started this program, how did it happen? And I knew I started doing some reading and I found out. And it was Adam Clayton Powell who helped pass some of the major legislation during that time in the 1960s. And so I just told myself, someday I'm going to write a book about Powell. I don't even know why.
00:20:50
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I think it was after my Baldwin meeting that I told myself that I was going to write a book about Powell, that that was going to be my first book.
00:21:04
Speaker
But that got sort of wade late because I took this trip down the Mississippi River and then I was asked to turn that into a book. But anyway, so I wrote that book, Pow, and I took a leave of absence and I was able to get a fellowship. That helped me. I moved to Washington then. I worked four years on that book and it came out.
00:21:29
Speaker
And then I just started thinking that my life should be focused around newspaper work and writing books. And so that is how I've been able to carve my life.
Journalism and Book Writing Synergy
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Speaker
Journalism and books now teaching and still books.
00:21:50
Speaker
Yeah, I read that, you know, you said, I'm a better journalist because of the books and I probably write better because of my newspaper experience. So in what way have those two fed into the other and created a flywheel that has carried you to this day? Yeah, you know, I think that I wouldn't have the skills or the drive, maybe the skills
00:22:21
Speaker
and the research skills to write books if I hadn't have had an opportunity to work on these newspapers and to work with editors who've listened to my story ideas. And so I really think that, yes, one field
00:22:49
Speaker
one field certainly feeds the other. When I've written books, you know, I wrote a book about Sammy Davis Jr., about Thurgood Marshall, about Sugar Ray Robinson. In a sense, they've been deep, deep, deep dives into personalities. They've also been the kind of books about people
00:23:19
Speaker
who I would have loved to have hung out with. When I'm thinking of an idea to write a book, I sort of picture myself walking down the hallway to my home and then turning a key and opening the door. And then I got to say to myself,
00:23:40
Speaker
Do I want to see this person sitting on the sofa waiting on me to come home so we can start? So, you know, so that we can start talking. So yes, it's fun to think that you'll walk into your house and there's Sugar Ray Robinson, or you'll walk into your house and there's Sammy Davis Jr., or you'll walk into your house and there's Thurgood Marshall. And I mean, those are the kind of people
00:24:07
Speaker
who I have just loved to have gotten to know through research, through finding people, family members, relatives, friends, some enemies, finding people who have known them throughout their lives.
00:24:27
Speaker
When you're going through and you're opening the door and you're happy to see, let's say, you know what, you'll throw Sugar Ray up as sitting on the couch. And there are some days like, oh, this is great. Here's Sugar Ray. I'm glad to see you today. I'm glad to be writing about you today. What about those days where you're like, oh, Sugar Ray, I don't have it. I don't have it in me. And all sincerity, I'm really kind of sick of you today. I can't do it. Yeah. Yeah.
00:24:56
Speaker
I'm very lucky. I mean, it really has never, never happened to me. And I mean, I will think long and hard. I mean, I'll think about six months out. Do I really want to do this book? Am I ready to spend four to five years with this person? And it's just like my new book here and the one on black films. I love film and I love movies. We all do.
00:25:26
Speaker
And so I knew it would be a joy to turn the key and see all of these movie people sitting there waiting on me. And at the end of the day, you know, so this was easy to think of. And, you know, it was easy. It wasn't easy to do the book, you know, because, you know, I had a, you know,
00:25:50
Speaker
whole lot of structural things that I had to get right in the book, but it was certainly a joy to come up with the idea to do the book.
00:26:02
Speaker
Now, I understand that the kernel or the seed of this book came when you were on set for The Butler, which is based on the book in the magazine, PC Roll for the Washington Post. Maybe you can talk to us about how that seed started to germinate and take root right there on that set with a pretty special cast. Yes. You know, I wrote this story about
00:26:28
Speaker
in this White House butler, Gene Allen, and it appeared on the front page of the Washington Post in 2008. It was about this man who's an African American who worked in the White House for 34 years as a butler to eight presidents.
00:26:48
Speaker
from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan. So it was a long, epic life. He saw the country change and spin. Anyway, that story appears in the Washington Post. And then there's a whole lot of calls to me from movie studios and the rights to get bought. And friends of mine said to me, Will, it'll never happen. It's hard to get movies made
00:27:17
Speaker
blah, blah, blah. And life went on. The story did get option. But then it got dropped after a year. And I said to myself, oh, okay, it's just like my friend said, it got option. And now it has simply frittered away. And then about, that was 2008. Then, and then, and then at the beginning of 2012, I'm sitting at home,
00:27:47
Speaker
eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and my phone rings, and it's Pam Williams, who was one of the producers of the option, and she said, hey, are you ready to make a movie? And I said, who is this? And she said, well, and it's Pam Williams. We are getting ready to make a movie. And I said,
00:28:17
Speaker
now I haven't heard anything in like three years is this really happening and she said yes and actually we've signed the actress who's going to play the wife to the butler and I said oh wow who is it and she said Oprah Winfrey and I said now Pam now I know you
00:28:40
Speaker
are definitely trying to pull my leg, aren't you? And she said, no, no, no. Oprah has come out of her long absence from film acting, and she is going to play the wife of the butler. And then she called me back a day later and said, we've signed the butler himself, and that's Forest Whitaker.
00:29:01
Speaker
And so I said, oh my goodness. And then there were a lot of other people in the cast who they signed and they would call me over the subsequent days, Vanessa Redgrave, Terrence Howard, Robin Williams, Alan Rickman, Jane Fonda, Lee Schriever, Cooper Gooding, Mariah Carey. It was just an amazing cast.
00:29:31
Speaker
six Oscar winners, maybe seven, but there were multiple Oscar winners. So anyway, we start filming in late 2012 in New Orleans. They asked me to come down to the movie set. I do. Lee Daniels, he was the director. He has a soiree one night and
00:29:57
Speaker
whole cast is there, or most of the cast is there.
Inspiration Behind 'Colorization'
00:30:01
Speaker
And I'm looking around at this multiracial cast, black actors, white actors. They had all taken pay cuts because they believed in this story and wanted to be in this movie. And I'm in the kitchen, just very quietly, just me. And I'm in the kitchen and I'm looking out over the throng of people, Oprah and,
00:30:25
Speaker
Terrence Howard and Jane Fonda and, you know, this amazing cast. And I just said to myself, my goodness, this is so rare. Somebody needs to write a book about this moment. And Terrence Howard had heard me say that and he walked over to me and he said, you're the writer, so you ought to write that book.
00:30:49
Speaker
And it just hit me later that night. Maybe I should. And that's kind of how this book was born.
00:30:59
Speaker
in a sense he's saying like you gotta follow your blood beats in your blood was beating in this direction very much very much so and of course you know you when you start start the book why was it important for you to start with Griffith's the birth of a nation to catalyze and propel us into the next hundred years of of black film in a white world yes
00:31:28
Speaker
That movie, it was a revenge film against Abraham Lincoln for freeing the slaves. It was an anti-black movie. And it was a big spectacle. It played all around the country. It was America's first blockbuster, this big movie.
00:31:58
Speaker
hurt black people. I mean every day there was this big new movie and it played for four years all across the country and it had all kind of technical and wizardry and tricks. D. W. Griffith who made the movie was all of a sudden spoken of as this kind of cinematic genius and yet
Impact of 'Birth of a Nation'
00:32:27
Speaker
And there were black people who were painted as murderers and rapists and fiends on screen. And so to have that big spectacle, big blockbuster play endlessly for four years that was bound to cause hurt and pain for blacks, and it did.
00:32:56
Speaker
And there were massive, massive, massive picketing going on. There were lawsuits. It was the first movie where blacks rallied to stop it. It became a great cause in terms of we must stand up. We must go over to the theater.
00:33:21
Speaker
We must get arrested if need be. And that's what happened. It became more than a movie. It became an assault on black livelihood. It really, in a way, was the birth of cinema in this country. And then you look 25 years later and you have gone with the win. So in a span
00:33:51
Speaker
Brendan, of two decades, two and a half decades, you have two pro-slavery movies. I mean, that really became enormously popular in famous movies. And so I just knew that to come out of the gate
00:34:20
Speaker
to explain what's to come.
00:34:24
Speaker
in these pages that I had to sort of start with that movie. You know, something else that's very important. It was screened in President Woodrow Wilson's White House because the author of the novel, Thomas Dixon, had gone to college with Woodrow Wilson. And so these two guys were friends. And so the movie had a private screening at the White House.
00:34:54
Speaker
So you can imagine the looks on the faces of the black, black help, black, black butlers and maids working at the White House who had to sit through that.
00:35:10
Speaker
Yeah, and then when you talk about Gone with the Wind as well, there was a kind of a wave of these almost anti-bellum nostalgia books where Margaret Mitchell writes Gone with the Wind. But then you cast somebody like a Hattie McDaniel who was desperate to be a star and an entertainer, and she does win the Oscar for
00:35:33
Speaker
supporting actress in this but it's it's playing it's playing to a detrimental stereotype that was just you know further i don't know just kind of imprinted on on screen and so it was a very bittersweet and probably more bitter in the end. Yes, Hany McDaniel had played maid roles in
00:35:56
Speaker
many films and she was black and she just couldn't find a role as a nurse or a doctor or a lawyer or a school teacher and so she was caught in this
00:36:09
Speaker
fierce web of drama, movie making, and stereotypes. And of course, she won the Oscar. She was not invited to the world premiere of the movie in Georgia, Atlanta. But an interesting little note, at the world premiere of that movie,
00:36:34
Speaker
You know, there had been a week-long series of soirees in Georgia. And in Atlanta, the night before the movie was shown, there was a huge party, huge gala.
00:36:57
Speaker
for highbrow people in the city. And they had invited a local black choir from a church to sing at this segregated event. And this black choir shows up and little boys and girls. One of the little boys in the choir that night
00:37:26
Speaker
was the young, very young Martin Luther King Jr. So it's just those little nuggets that make book writing and book research so fun.
00:37:41
Speaker
Well, you start to see what was great about those little grace notes that you're able to pull in through the thing is it does create this incredible through line that you see throughout the entire century, essentially, that you chronicle in this book and having those things come in as it rings with us. You're like, okay, there's a little handhold where we're kind of climbing up this ladder.
00:38:06
Speaker
of this story, this giant sweeping story you're telling. So that had to have been like very sort of on your mind as you were, you know, synthesizing this narrative. Yes, you are exactly right. I mean, in another through line, through line, and this just hits me right now.
00:38:30
Speaker
Brendan, and it's really sort of spooky. James Baldwin, as you know, it weaves in and out of this book. He used to write a whole lot of film reviews in the 50s and 60s and 70s. And he wrote screenplays himself. And so Baldwin weaves in and out of this book.
00:39:00
Speaker
hear his words sort of set me off on my own journey of writing books. You know, Hattie McDaniel was in the tough spot. You are so right. I mean, but as she said in the book, she would rather play a maid than have to be a maid. Very powerful statement.
00:39:30
Speaker
Yeah, and speaking of Baldwin, anytime that you brought him into the fray, it's like you putting your arm around a friend and be like, hey, I kind of need you to comment on something here. And I highlighted so many of those passages because they ring so trillion. I feel like everything that came out of his mouth and out of his pen was just so brilliant and quotable and resonant. You know, he said something
00:40:00
Speaker
Brendan in, you know, in the sixties, he said, all of these films with mostly white actors, actresses, if you see someone who is black, he said, they will do something.
00:40:20
Speaker
that's not in the script, they will do something on screen to let you know that they know what time it is, you know, to like put a little bit
00:40:35
Speaker
of their cultural juice on the screen so that you who are Black out there sitting in the audience can say, man, look at Richard Pryor. Okay, okay, man. You know, he's so cool. He's so hip. Man, look at Diana Ross. Man, look at Pam Grier. I mean, he knew that these things were happening
00:41:04
Speaker
on screen and you know he says those things so beautifully and as you said he he he knew what time it was when it came to filmmaking in this country in the hard high road and the black entertainers had declined he knew
00:41:28
Speaker
Yeah, he wrote, white people in this country, or actually here we go, say, what the black actor has managed to give are moments, indelible moments, creative, miraculously, beyond the confines of the script, hints of reality, smuggled in like contraband, like a maudlin tail, and with enough force, if unleashed, to shatter the tail to fragments. And that's exactly what you're talking about.
00:41:51
Speaker
How did you find that so quick? Great. I had that one pulled out. Yeah. Right. I mean, I never could have said it as cool as that. I mean, that's just so on point, isn't it? That's just an amazing quote. Amazing.
00:42:13
Speaker
And maybe talk a little bit about Oscar Michaud and what an incredibly enterprising spirit this man was.
Oscar Michaud's Role in Film
00:42:23
Speaker
Yeah, you know, his chapter follows the first chapter of the book.
00:42:28
Speaker
And, you know, he started making films in the 1920s. He was a black man born in the Midwest, went to South Dakota with the Homestead Act, which meant that he got money from the federal government to settle some land. And so of all places, and this black man goes out to South Dakota, starts farming,
00:42:55
Speaker
He does OK for the first couple of years. Then he suffers some setbacks. He gets lonely. He starts writing books at night on his farm. And then he says to himself, maybe I can turn these into silent movies and then maybe I can make
00:43:14
Speaker
longer movies and so he writes several books and then he says to himself it's time to take my game to his next level and he writes scripts and then he hires actors to make silent films and then he makes larger films
00:43:37
Speaker
And over the next 10 years, he becomes the first black serious filmmaker in this nation's history. And it is an astounding story. He had a career as a serious filmmaker for a good 30 years. And not enough people know about it.
00:44:04
Speaker
And I know this book could have easily been just you merely chronicling
00:44:11
Speaker
just that you know the films over there almost like a catalog of film but you're very strict it was a very smart move as storytelling you really braid in the current events of the time as you're kind of it's like one step movie one step current events and all how these things are braided together so how important was it for you to really to incorporate all that into the fold of the recipe of this entire book yes I knew
00:44:42
Speaker
that once you left a movie theater, and if you were black, 80 feet outside of that theater, you were gonna run into America and the country. You were gonna see what was going on.
00:45:05
Speaker
be it uprisings, or be it lynchings, or be it protest. You know, the film world was one thing, but the reality, the hundred year reality was totally something else. And so I knew that I had to fall back
00:45:27
Speaker
on my newspaper skills to do some research, to ask questions. What was going on when this movie hit the theaters? What else was happening, you know, with these swath of movies in the forties or in the fifties? How does Sidney Poirier become Sidney Poirier?
00:45:57
Speaker
How did Sammy Davis Jr. keep rising and rising and rising? What was his life like? I knew that I had to pick and choose the stories that I wanted to tell. And once I had the structure of the book down pat, and then I could start,
00:46:25
Speaker
running up the road. I mean, there are many, many white heroes in this book, like Ralph Nelson and Stanley Kramer and Brad Pitt during later years, wanting to tell the kind of stories that had never been told on screen before. And so, yes, it is a book that's heartbreaking,
00:46:56
Speaker
but it also is a book in that triumphant too, in very many, many ways.
00:47:05
Speaker
there's a there's a moment to a great great passage in the book where you were you you illustrate very well the in terms of the the ambassadors for what was going on at the time and how it was a you know Sydney Portier and Henry Belafonte who were like the perfect marriage oh my bad I'm gonna pop right in here it is Harry Belafonte not Henry Belafonte sorry about that Harry Belafonte
00:47:36
Speaker
to carry a certain message. Because you write like Paul Robeson and James Baldwin, seeing these two mercurial and far too honest about society, Joe Lewis and Sugar Ray Robinson, they were mired in a brutish sport, that lesson that agreed to which they were viewed as intellectuals. But Poitiers and Belafonte, they stepped into another realm. So what was that realm then? So often, because this nation
00:48:05
Speaker
and evolved out of slavery, and then legal segregation. And for decades and decades and decades, whites never experienced how to get to know Black people. And so a lot of the insight, if one wants to call it that, came from the arts.
00:48:33
Speaker
So somebody could go to see the Hansberry play, a Raisin in the Sun on Broadway and say, ah, that's what it's like to be black in a family in this country. And so, and with Sidney Portier and Harry Belafonte,
00:48:59
Speaker
They were the first two Black matinee idols and so people people could look at them and you know and they judge the whole race of people.
00:49:16
Speaker
by these people on the big magical 60-foot cinematic screen. In another way, of course, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, another way, of course, came from blacks. Neighborhood to neighborhood to neighborhood, this nation has been very segregated, and it remains segregated in large ways. And so,
00:49:44
Speaker
Heck, it's only been in the past two years where we've seen Brendan on TV commercials, black and white couples, on TV commercials. This is a new phenomenon. It's only been in the past two years, really,
00:50:02
Speaker
It's been very, very, very noticeable in the past year. It's been striking almost. Five years ago, you never saw a mixed race, a mixed race marriage, a black man and a white woman or a white man and a woman who's black or Asian on a TV commercial. I mean, Hollywood just wouldn't do it.
00:50:31
Speaker
marketing people, they just wouldn't do it. Now we are able to see it. And so, and I hope that that means that Hollywood is starting to become more woke, more woke.
Hollywood's Diversity and Success
00:50:49
Speaker
I think maybe it is, there's still a long way to go, but for so long, the mantra in Hollywood
00:51:01
Speaker
to foreign marketers had been, no, we aren't going to send this movie over to you because we have a black lead character and we know that these black themed movies won't sell well over in Hong Kong or France or Switzerland. And with the Black Panther,
00:51:28
Speaker
All that was washed away. It became this humongous international hit. And so I think that the people in Hollywood have to start being honest about the world. The world will go see movies with black and brown people.
00:51:48
Speaker
And I get the sense, too, that over the course of writing the book, you know, you come across various phrases that were peppered with exclamation points. And anytime I caught that, I was like, I feel like Will's having a good time here. Or he's shocked. But most of the time it was like, I think he's having a fun time here writing this book, as gut-wrenching as some of it is, a lot of it is.
00:52:12
Speaker
I'm like, I feel like Will is in the pocket here having, he's enjoying writing this book. That's coming off the page. Like, was that the sense that you were having behind the keyboard? Oh my goodness. Yes. And I mean, I think because movies are magical. I was a foreign correspondent for several years and whenever I would land overseas and I would meet somebody new and, you know,
00:52:41
Speaker
have a meal with them or whatever. Inevitably, they would want to talk about in American movies. And so it was just fun to talk about movies in my life. And it was very, very, very fun to write about movies. And I think too, Brendan, I think that
00:53:06
Speaker
This book offered me a chance to not only write about black movies, it gave me a chance to write about white movies too. It just gave me a chance to write about movie series, the whole world of cinema. I mean,
00:53:25
Speaker
It's sort of a theme. I would choose something Sammy Davis Jr. or Thurgood Marshall or Sugar Ray Robinson and use them as the spoke wheel to tell the story of this country. And so in this book, I've chosen black filmmaking and the struggle to tell the story of this country.
00:53:55
Speaker
the bad and the good, the dark and the light. And I mean, because I think we have to know our history. I think this country sometimes averts our eyes to its history.
00:54:18
Speaker
We had all of these monuments in these in these southern monuments on these college campuses where these black students have had to walk by these monuments for decades and They are right there Showed a great insensitivity toward black students and in the aftermath of Eric Garner's death and
00:54:47
Speaker
George Floyd's death. There was a feeling, hey, maybe we should take up some of these monuments. Maybe we should send them to historical sites. These people wanted slavery to continue in this country.
00:55:11
Speaker
that black students have to walk past that every day. It's just not right. And so I think that the story of this country can be told through the apparatus of cinema. And that's what I'm trying to do in this book.
00:55:33
Speaker
And given where you started the book and kind of where it ends with, towards the back half of the book, of course, is the Charlotte's 2017 in Charlottesville, where it begins is with the birth of a nation. You see that there has been progress over 100 years, but then you see backslides, sometimes major, significant backslides.
00:55:57
Speaker
So in light of that, where does your optimism lie as you cast your aperture open at this last 100 years? Yes, I think that the streaming services, Hulu, Netflix, Apple, they're spreading their arms wide.
00:56:23
Speaker
And they are saying to the big studios, okay, if you don't want to show inclusion on the big screen, we'll darn sure show it on the small screen. Spike Lee took his last movie, Defy Bloods, to the small screen after it had played a few weeks on the big screen.
00:56:54
Speaker
Apa DuVernay, another great filmmaker. She's gone over to the small screen. I think that these filmmakers, all they want to do is work. They want to work. They want to be able to show their art. And I'm very happy about the streaming services because they are doing some very wonderful things. And I think there's hope. I think there's a lot of hope.
00:57:24
Speaker
hope going forward. I don't want movies to die. I love going to a movie on the big screen. I want that to keep happening. But I think that the people running the studios have to broaden their eyes. They have to invite more people to the table. There is room at the table.
00:57:44
Speaker
I mean, people will go to see rich storytelling, and that's what movies are about, telling stories.
00:57:56
Speaker
Yeah, and that's just at the seat at the table. And what's sad is that there are so many people out there that think if we pull up a chair for, let's just use Ava DuVernay, then that's no longer a chair available to someone else, where it's not a zero-sum game. It is truly an abundant game, but people want to play it like a win for you is a loss for me when actually pulling up this extra chair is a win for everybody. It really is. I mean, I've been on
00:58:26
Speaker
movie sets. And the movie sets that I've been on that have been directed by somebody black, those movie sets are more racially diverse than the movies that are directed by somebody who's white. So
00:58:54
Speaker
Hollywood need not fear, need not fear racial diversity. I mean, you know, and it's been so hard, Brendan, to get these movies made. As I tell this story in the book, it was hard to get Selma made, the movie Selma, with the great performance by David
00:59:19
Speaker
or Yellowo, who should have been nominated for an Oscar and who wasn't. I mean, it was a towering, towering performance. It took four years to get The Butler Maid. And that movie opened at number one at the box office and stayed there for three weeks and played in 75 foreign countries. So...
00:59:47
Speaker
It's tough when Hollywood puts these roadblocks in front of movies that ultimately turn out to be a success because when any movie is a success, that means Hollywood is more healthier.
01:00:08
Speaker
It seems to me that the people who run in the studios should open their arms wider, much wider.
01:00:18
Speaker
Now, as I always like to bring these conversations down for a landing, I like asking guests for a recommendation of some kind, and that can be anything from a book to maybe, Jermaine Lee speaking, a movie, or a brand of coffee or a new pair of socks. So I'd extend that question to you, Will. Again, for the people listening out there live and who will eventually listen to this as a part of the podcast, what would you recommend for them out there?
Holiday Film Recommendations
01:00:43
Speaker
Goodness. Okay. Well, since we're going into the
01:00:48
Speaker
uh holiday season and one of my thrills as a kid was in the get around in the tv set to watch uh miracle on 34th street uh plus that movie has meant a lot to me because i later went to work at Macy's so uh
01:01:13
Speaker
I'm going to recommend a movie, a family movie that you can get with your family and watch this movie. And I think you'll learn something. And I shamelessly have to recommend Lee Daniels as the butler. I think it's a great festive holiday movie. And that tells a lot about the history of this country and, uh,
01:01:42
Speaker
So that's what I'll recommend. Fantastic, fantastic. Well, nothing shameless about that at all. Well, it's an amazing story. And what you've done here with colorization is just a just an incredible, incredible book that is just very just deeply informative as a history to cinema, but also just a history of the past hundred years of of everything that you write about. It's just an incredible piece of work. So I have to just commend you and a job well done. And thank you so much for taking the time to talk a little shop today.
01:02:13
Speaker
Well, it's been an honor to be with you. I'm a fan of your work, of your writing. So thank you very, very much. Thank you.
01:02:28
Speaker
Oh man, I love Will. Thanks to Will. Thanks to Goucher for arranging it. And thanks to West Virginia Wesleyan College's MFA in Creative Writing for the support. That's your Acknowledgement Section. Be sure to check out Will's new book. Wherever you buy your books, I always link up to Powell's and my show notes and newsletter. But you can choose your indie store of choice. Indie store of your choosing. However you want to phrase it.
01:02:52
Speaker
at the dropping of this here podcast. Yeah, it drops. It drops every Friday. I will have been off Twitter and Instagram for seven full days. It's a bit weird. It's an experiment I'm doing in large part because I don't like how it triggers me.
01:03:10
Speaker
And I'm not like a real super scroller by any stretch, but I... Not good for me. People who overshare kind of grate me because I see through what they're doing, mainly because I know I've been there. And we all kind of know that on the surface, like what's really going on.
01:03:29
Speaker
And we all know, it's phony as hell. Pardon the Holden Caulfield rant, but that bugs me for one. Then there are the people who are a bit too self-promotiony about their own work and their phony airbrushed workstations and like, here's the coffee and the... Just give me a dungeon. Just a dungeon. Anyway.
01:03:59
Speaker
All this is to say is that it makes me feel ugly and triggers very ugly feelings of what's really baseless resentment. I sort of riffed on this in the latest newsletter. You can read about that if you'd like by subscribing at BrendanOmero.com. You know, social media, it keeps me from doing what I'm really meant to do, which is make a great podcast for you and then write great essays and articles and books also, you know, for you.
01:04:29
Speaker
Yeah, of course I'm scratching my own itch in a lot of ways, but whatever. Also, I'm not so sure social media has any bearing on show growth, some maybe, but you've heard me say that there are some days where I'll put out a bunch of tweets with quotes and links and to promote the show, and there might be 50 downloads.
01:04:49
Speaker
Other days I don't do anything and there would be 600. So can you be relevant without social media? That presumes I was ever relevant in the first place. So I'd rather remove myself from the equation. Email if you want. Creative Nonfiction Podcast at gmail.com or brendan at brendanamare.com. Door is open. Sometimes it takes me a little while to get back to you but I'm largely decent and I tend to reply within a week. Some people might say no but
01:05:18
Speaker
There's a good chunk of you where I do get back within a week. Well, I think I should do it. I think that should be it. I think so. Trying to be more positive in the new year that social media ran from about two minutes ago.
01:05:34
Speaker
seems to belie that resolution of sorts of trying to be more positive in the new year, but most trying to do less. Less is my one word summation for 2022. Anyway, happy new year, CNF-ers. And same as ever, if you can't do interview, see ya.
01:06:14
Speaker
you