Diahann Carroll: The Turner Classic Movies interview

Diahann Carroll

Diahann Carroll (b. 1935) will always be thought of, first and foremost, as a groundbreaking actress on television, having been the first African-American woman to topline a network TV series in a non-stereotypical role, in the dramedy JULIA (1968-71, NBC). She also was the first African-American diva on a primetime soap, chewing much scenery as Dominique Deveraux in DYNASTY (1981-1989, ABC) in the 1980s. In a career spanning six decades, she’s done one-offs and recurring parts in innumerable series, hosted network variety specials, worked the talk show circuit. Carroll has done it all, from THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL (1978) to GREY’S ANATOMY (2005–, ABC); she was and is a television fixture.

Carroll has had an equally impressive, if less prolific, film career. She came from New York to Hollywood in 1954 and landed a small part in Otto Preminger’s CARMEN JONES (1954), the first of three pictures she would make with the hot-headed filmmaker. Preminger also gave Carroll a supporting part in his much-maligned, never-on-video adaptation of PORGY AND BESS (1959), in which she sang the Gershwin classic “Summertime,” and a starring role as a teacher confronting racist land barons in the Deep South in the Civil Rights-era misfire HURRY SUNDOWN (1967). But the film that showcased her acting ability more than any other was John Berry’s CLAUDINE (1974), which recently aired on TCM. The film saw this most sophisticated of ladies convincingly portraying a welfare mother struggling to raise her kids in Harlem. It was an Oscar-nominated performance and something of a crowning achievement, though her career continues today, nearly 40 years later.

I interviewed Carroll in 2009 as part of the research for my eventual book on racial politics in film and television. The interview was posted earlier this week on Turner Classic Movies’ blog, Movie Morlocks.

“Destroy All Monsters” BD news and notes

I sometimes wonder how my life might be different if not for all the hours I spent watching KTLA-TV (channel 5) in my youth. KTLA was the bargain basement of Los Angeles broadcasting in the 1970s, but I hardly knew it. I was a 10-year old kid sprawled out on the floor in front of our old Admiral color TV, with big rabbit ears poking out from behind it, whiling away my childhood with the likes of Lugosi, Chaney, Karloff, and Godzilla. Variety was not KTLA’s strong suit; in fact the station would air the same movie in their primetime “Million Dollar Movie” slot, five nights a week — yes, the same movie — and then again on Sunday afternoon. By the end of the week, my friends and I knew the movie inside and out, and we’d re-enact entire scenes at recess. Later in life I would develop a habit of latching on to favorite movies and re-watching them over and over, examining minute details, a habit I can trace all the way back to those KTLA days.

One of the biggest thrills of my entire childhood was DESTROY ALL MONSTERS, the 1968 monster mash-up from Toho Studios that brought together Godzilla and all the other A-list Japanese monsters (Rodan, Mothra, King Ghidorah) plus more than a few B- and C-listers (Minya, Gorosaurus, Manda, and many others you wouldn’t recognize unless you’re geeked on this stuff). Set in the future world of 1999 (!), the film has the too-familiar plot wherein aliens (in this case, beautiful femaliens in shimmering silver frocks) seize control of Earth’s monsters and turn them loose on mankind, demanding the planet’s surrender. Yet, despite what it lacks in originality and its anachronistic special effects (remember, this came out the same year as 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY), this film was made with such energy and anything-goes imagination that I saw it as nothing less than an epic.

So it was quite an honor when Media Blasters chose Ed Godziszewski and myself to provide an audio commentary and materials for other special features to be packaged with its new DESTROY ALL MONSTERS BD and DVD releases, which began shipping from Amazon.com and other online retailers earlier this month. (No word yet as to when it will be available in retail stores.) In our discussion we talk about the child-like wonder the movie inspired in us back in the day (Ed saw the film at a Chicago cinema in 1969; I probably first saw it on TV around 1974-ish), but the over-arching theme of our commentary is the fast-declining state of the Japanese film industry in the late 1960s and the resulting decline of Toho’s Godzilla franchise, of which this film marks the ninth entry. I was blissfully unaware back in those KTLA-watching days, but DESTROY ALL MONSTERS now strikes me as something of a melancholy moment, a monster movie tinged with ennui, for it was the last joint effort by the genre’s four founding fathers (producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, director Ishiro Honda, SFX director Eiji Tsuburaya, composer Akira Ifukube), a final hurrah that was intended to end the series with a flourish. The series didn’t end there after all, but that’s another story.

I’d advise anybody interested in this title to order it fast, though. Before long, you may regret not having done so.

Order DESTROY ALL MONSTERS BD from Amazon.com.

Order DESTROY ALL MONSTERS DVD from Amazon.com.

Book review: “Nicholas Ray: The Glorious Failure of an American Director” by Patrick McGilligan

"Nicholas Ray" by Patrick McGilligan

Last week my review of Patrick McGilligan’s new biography of troubled film director Nicholas Ray was published in the Los Angeles Times. It’s likely my last book review for the newspaper, at least for the foreseeable future, as it coincided with the announcement that the staff was being cut (yet again) and that freelance reviewers would no longer be utilized. Thus the Times Mirror building sinks another inch into the quicksand, en route to the paper’s long, slow, excruciating demise.

Nicholas Ray is of course best known for his masterpiece, “Rebel Without a Cause,” but he also made a number of good-to-excellent and/or interestingly quirky films noir and westerns with the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Joan Crawford, Robert Mitchum, and others. Though he worked in the studio system of the 1950s, his best films were tales of iconoclastic loners, defying the cliched sunny conventions of that decade’s commercial cinema. For this, Ray was revered in Europe as a master on par with Kazan, but such praise is a bit problematic. Unlike Kazan, Ray lacked a clear and cohesive vision for his work, and his personal and professional life spun out of control; in addition to a handful of fine films, he made a lot of crappy ones, as well. He was basically thrown out of Hollywood and spent the last two decades of his life drinking and being exalted by filmmakers and film students.

McGilligan is a fine biographer; I particularly enjoyed his previous book about the life and work of Oscar Micheaux. Though his work is typically thorough here, it feels as if the author is at odds with himself about his own subject. Ray was often brilliant but almost always frustratingly distant and/or erratic, and I admire McGilligan’s honesty. This isn’t a hagiography.

You can read the review here.

She would have been 80

Patricia Ryfle: 1931-2009

Monday, June 6, would have been my mother’s 80th birthday. I’ve been remembering her a lot lately, and enjoying her oddball quirks and weird ways. For a long time, all I could remember was the sight of her wasting away from cancer, in pain. Thankfully, that phase is passing.

And as the pall of gloomy memories lifts, I have finally begun the task of disposing of the last of her earthly possessions. After she passed on July 3, 2009, I was more shell-shocked than grieved; spending three months watching your mother die, powerless to stop what’s coming, is a humbling and numbing experience. I cleared out her apartment as best as I could, but I hadn’t let go of her, so I couldn’t make myself get rid of all her things. About 10 boxes of stuff came home with me, and they’ve been unopened on the back shelf of the garage ever since.

Now as I sift through the rubble of her life, I’m struck by just how emotionally distraught I obviously was while packing up her things. Did I really think I might have some use for a set of ping-pong paddles she must have bought c. 1972? Was I planning to use her stationery to write gag letters from the grave to her friends? A paperweight? Pots and pans? In those nights immediately after her death, standing alone in her apartment at 1 a.m. on a weeknight, I can see myself debating whether a blouse or sweater should go into the Goodwill bag, or will I just want to hold it someday, to remember her by?

I still have boxes to go, of clothes and papers and things, but now that’s all most of it is to me — things, not her. And I think I can, at last, bring myself to do as she did with anything she no longer had use for: “Throw it out!”

Book review: ‘Sal Mineo: A Biography’ by Michael Gregg Michaud

James Dean, Sal Mineo, Natalie Wood

My 355-word review of Michael Gregg Michaud’s new biography of actor Sal Mineo was published in today’s Los Angeles Times. The book is a good, quick read, though it is more of a regurgitation of facts and events than an examination of Mineo’s life and art. James Franco has optioned the book for a biopic project with the intention of directing.

There is a mythology surrounding Mineo’s life and death that implies a non-existent tragedy: that his murder was somehow the result of a life misspent on sex, drugs, and other excesses of fame. The truth is that Mineo’s star burned out rather quickly and he became a working actor in order to survive; based on the book and other material I’ve read about him, Mineo lived in the moment and was not one for self-reflection. His murder was a random act of violence that had no connection to Mineo’s career or lifestyle. This doesn’t appear to be the makings of another “Auto Focus,” but  Mineo was a compelling character nonetheless. If the film ever gets made, it will be interesting to see in what direction Franco takes the material.

Read the full review of “Sal Mineo: A Biography’ by Michael Gregg Michaud @ latimes.com

“Georgia, Georgia” DVD audio commentary with Dirk Benedict, Stig Bjorkman

Dirk Benedict, Stig Bjorkman, Steve Ryfle in the studio.

Recently I produced a DVD audio commentary track for GEORGIA, GEORGIA (1972), a rare and mostly forgotten film starring the late Diana Sands and written by Maya Angelou, making it the one of the first feature films ever penned by an African-American woman. Shot on location in Sweden, the film was directed by Stig Bjorkman, a film journalist and director who is an internationally respected authority on Ingmar Bergman and is perhaps best known in America as the author of Woody Allen on Woody Allen. It was also the film debut of one Dirk Benedict, years before he would attain stardom as Lt. Starbuck on BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and as Templeton “Faceman” Peck on THE A-TEAM. The commentary track was recorded with Dirk, Stig, and myself at ES Audio in Burbank in September.

It was only through a lucky coincidence and sheer generosity that Bjorkman and Benedict were brought into the recording studio to reminisce about the making of the film. Bjorkman resides in Stockholm, and because this project is hardly a big-budget affair, I was doubtful that we’d be able to do anything more than a telephone interview that could be spliced into the commentary track. As it turned out, Bjorkman was scheduled to attend a Bergman film festival at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (his new documentary …BUT FILM IS MY MISTRESS was making its west coast debut) and he enthusiastically agreed to record the commentary during his L.A. stopover. Stig suggested I also approach Dirk Benedict and ask him to participate (the two men have remained friends ever since they met way back in 1971 on the GEORGIA, GEORGIA shoot); a few emails later, Dirk had offered to do just that. What I didn’t know is that Dirk lives thousands of miles away in the state of Montana, and that what he’d actually agreed to do was to drive the entire distance to Los Angeles. “I owe it to the film,” he later told me.

Diana Sands and Dirk Benedict in "Georgia, Georgia"

GEORGIA, GEORGIA is the story of Georgia Martin (Sands), an American pop star in the Diahann Carroll/Shirley Bassey/Diana Ross diva tradition, living in a self-imposed personal, apolitical exile in Europe. The story begins with Georgia’s arrival in Stockholm for a concert date; at a press conference at the airport, she’s berated with questions on a multitude of topics that irritate her and (unbeknownst to the viewer, at least at first) set up the movie’s intertwining themes: inter-racial romance, women’s liberation, the Vietnam War, American war deserters in Europe, black power, homosexuality. It’s soon apparent that Georgia’s bulletproof, bitchy facade is just a façade, and when she lets her guard down she’s a confused, lonely and conflicted woman. The only person permitted to see Georgia in this fragile state is Mrs. Anderson (Minnie Gentry), her traveling handmaid and surrogate mother, a woman whose husband was murdered by a white supremacist lynch mob, and whose hatred and distrust of white America runs deep. The two women exist in a codependent bubble, much of it spent alone in drab hotel rooms, with Georgia relying on the older woman for comfort and counsel (their private ritual involves Georgia sitting, childlike, on the floor between Mrs. Anderson’s legs, sans makeup and wig, while the older woman brushes Georgia’s cornrows and lulls her with the spiritual “This Little Light of Mine”) and Mrs. Anderson clinging to Georgia out of a misplaced sense of parental over-reach. When Georgia falls for a white American expat photographer (Benedict), she breaks (in Mrs. Anderson’s mind) the ultimate taboo, leading to the film’s Greek-tragedy conclusion.

The film was produced by Kelly-Jordan Enterprises, a small production company formed in 1971 with the goal of making prestige African-American films on low budgets; in the time of films like SHAFT and SWEET SWEETBACK, Kelly-Jordan was essentially an “anti-Blaxploitation” project. Its two principals, Quentin Kelly (a white former PR man from Westinghouse Broadcasting) and Jack Jordan (an African-American manager and promoter of jazz vocalists, including Josephine Baker and Eartha Kitt) signed Diana Sands, who had been winning accolades on Broadway for years, to a contract to star in five pictures. Sands had previously co-starred in a number of films, including an outstanding role in Hal Ashby’s THE LANDLORD (1970), and now she appeared to be on the verge of full-blown stardom. Unfortunately, the fates were not kind.

Dirk Benedict, Stig Bjorkman

GEORGIA, GEORGIA was released in March 1972 and received good reviews from the New York critics and the black press, but Kelly-Jordan succeeded in booking the film almost exclusively in black theaters and it earned just over an estimated $1 million at the box office. Kelly-Jordan essentially broke even on its first effort, but its next two pictures were financial disasters. The art-horror film GANJA & HESS (1973), directed by actor and playwright Bill Gunn, was deemed virtually unreleasable (the film has been revalidated as an art house masterpiece only in the last decade or so) and the company’s second Diana Sands vehicle, HONEYBABY HONEYBABY (shot c. 1972, released 1974) was something of a train wreck. Kelly-Jordan eventually ran out of investors and its dream of a prestige black film enterprise sputtered out unceremoniously. Meanwhile, Diana Sands was stricken with a rare and aggressive form of cancer; the filming of her final movie, WILLIE DYNAMITE (1973) was temporarily halted while she received treatment. Sands began filming on another movie, CLAUDINE (1974) but she was forced to leave the production after she was found, on the first day of shooting, collapsed on the floor of her dressing room, writhing in pain. She was replaced in the title role by her childhood friend, Diahann Carroll. Sands died in September 1973 at age 39.

The irony of a film about a black woman, written by arguably our foremost black American woman writer, with a commentary track by three white men (even if two of those men worked on the film) is not lost on me. I am trying to invite and obtain participation from other people who were involved in the production. Unfortunately the budget for this project is virtually zero, so the task is difficult.

GEORGIA, GEORGIA will be released on DVD sometime in 2011 by Scorpion Releasing. I’ll have more information as it becomes available.

Acknowledgments to Chris Poggiali’s Temple of Schlock for stills from GEORGIA, GEORGIA.

Special guest lineup for UCLA’s 1970s black cinema fest taking shape

You may have heard about the month-long survey of 1970s Black cinema taking place during October at UCLA’s Billy Wilder Theater. I’ve been assisting the programmers of this event with arranging for appearances by a number of special guests who were involved in various films as actors, filmmakers, writers. The series premiered on Friday, October 1 with SUPER FLY and SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAADASSSSS SONG, with special guest Phillip Fenty (SUPER FLY screenwriter) in attendance.

Other guests scheduled to appear (though not all have confirmed yet) include actress Marlene Clark (GANJA & HESS), actor Christopher St. John (SHAFT), director Michael Schultz (COOLEY HIGH), director William Crain (BLACULA) and director Jack Hill (COFFY).

The film series was originally promoted as a Blaxploitation festival, but that’s something of a misnomer as several films that are included can hardly be lumped into that category. Saturday night’s program was something of an anti-Blaxploitation twin bill: CLAUDINE (1974) is a sweet love story with Diahann Carroll cast against type as a working single mother struggling to get by, who falls for a garbage man (James Earl Jones). AARON LOVES ANGELA (1975) is a reworked ROMEO AND JULIET with a young African-American boy (Kevin Hooks) falling for a Puerto Rican girl (Irene Cara) despite the objections of just about everyone around them, set in the run-down neighborhoods of 1970s Harlem. Other films scheduled later this month include BUCK AND THE PREACHER (1972), Sidney Poitier’s debut as a director and the best of the so-called “black westerns” of the 1970s; the somewhat forgotten GORDON’S WAR (1973), directed by the great Ossie Davis, an anti-drug revenge fantasy that is diametrically opposed to the (unintentional) glorification of drugs that was SUPER FLY; The Moms Mabley vehicle AMAZING GRACE (1974); the incomparable COOLEY HIGH (1975), an ode to adolescence on Chicago’s south side in the early 1960s; and Bill Gunn’s nearly indescribable horror-erotic-fantasy GANJA & HESS (1973), which is curiously paired on a Halloween double-feature with its artistic and spiritual opposite, William Crain’s BLACULA (1972). Not to worry, there are plenty of full-tilt Blaxploitation classics on the marquee as well.

View the program schedule for “Paint It Black: Revisiting Blaxploitation and African-American Cinema of the 1970s.”

Pam Grier interview

Pam Grier

Pam Grier never asked to be America’s first modern female asskicker. She never even wanted to be an actress. As legend has it, 40 years ago Grier was a fresh-faced kid from Colorado trying to scrape by in Los Angeles, a shy tomboy in Levi’s and hiking boots, whose Hollywood dream was to work on a film crew behind the camera, not in front. Plucked from anonymity and crowned queen of the 1970s grindhouse, whatever Grier lacked in acting chops she compensated for with sheer physical and sexual prowess. While the Gloria Steinems were fighting for equal rights in the halls of Congress, this unlikely superwoman championed female liberation on screen by literally castrating the white male action hero power structure.

Continue reading “The Accidental Action Heroine.”

Paul Mooney interview

Paul Mooney

Paul Mooney remembers discovering the raw political power of the n-word. As a young comic honing his craft during the ‘60s—a time when stand-up was undergoing a revitalizing transformation from punchlines to monologues—Mooney and his better-known best friend, one Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor III, seized control of America’s ugliest racial epithet and wielded it as a comic weapon.

“When Richard and I use it on stage in front of an audience with both white and black folks in it, we are saying something that white people can’t,” Mooney says in his memoir Black Is the New White. “It’s forbidden to them, but allowed to us. Ain’t too many things like that. It’s liberating.”

Continue reading “Richard Pryor’s Designated Writer: An Interview with Paul Mooney.”