A Life Filmodic

Introduction

 In the late 90’s and early 2000’s, John Enbom, Dan Etheridge, Rob Thomas and Paul Rudd began to develop a show called Party Down, about the Party Down catering company in Hollywood. The show’s characters included Henry, a failed actor back at the company after a 10 year absence, Casey, a struggling comedian whose big break is a bit role in a Judd Apatow film, Constance, a long faded B-movie actress who tutors Kyle, a vapid pretty boy reality star, Roman, a failed hard science fiction screenwriter, and Ron, the team leader, who wishes to open a soup buffet restaurant. The show was developed off and on for several years, even shooting a makeshift pilot in the backyard of co-creator Rob Thomas in order to shop the show to networks. In 2008, Starz picked up the series, hiring directors Fred Savage and Bryan Gordon to assist with production, and the cast of the pilot, along with a few new faces, was reassembled to begin production (Pastorek 2-3). 

 Premiering on March 20, 2009, the show was an almost immediate critical success. It was named one of the top shows of 2009 by AFI (AFI), and maintains a 66 percent approval rating on Metacritic. Andrew Wallenstein noted, “Lurking behind the surface of this raucous comedy is an astute meditation on the promise and peril of leading an unconventional life, something about which aspiring actors know a thing or two” (Wallenstein). The show worked – as a television comedy, as a comedy about the workplace, and as a deconstruction of the Hollywood lifestyle that claims so many. But it was not enough to keep the show running.  On June 30, 2010, two seasons, the loss of two cast members, and a season 2 finale which snagged less than a million viewers in its time slot, Starz pulled the plug on the show, citing low ratings. The critical response to the show had remained constantly good throughout, but the show did not have enough viewers to sustain it.

 However, after the cancellation of Party Down, Starz removed it from their On Demand services, sparking a fan backlash. The first two episodes were reinstated, and eventually the entire series made its way to Netflix, where it is still streaming to this day (Umstead and Spangler 1).  The DVD sales for the series have been relatively strong for a sitcom that never scored more than 3 million viewers, and fan sites have sprung up across the web, analyzing the relationships of the characters and asking what happens next (the end of the series is a hopeful moment, where Henry, the main character, heads into his first audition in months – not a strict conclusion to the storylines, but a moment of hope after a series predicated on misery and struggle) (Shore). Much like Arrested Development before it, the show found a second life on DVD and the Internet, and now rumors about a finale movie have begun to circulate, among both the fan communities and the cast and crew of the show itself.

 So the question becomes, what was the importance of Party Down, and what does it say about television comedy? I would argue that Party Down, with its late in the decade premiere and workplace comedy style, was the natural endpoint for the previous decade of comedy. In terms of the fan response, the network response to the show, the distribution of the show on various platforms, and the ways in which it reflected larger trends in mainstream American comedy, it was a show that captured a small-scale zeitgeist, one that spanned about 10 years and was the natural evolution of the sitcom form. Its early cancellation only solidified the cruel nature of the business that it parodied, and the ways in which television is both changing and remaining the same in allowing programs to breathe. As costar Jane Lynch said, “You never have to cancel Party Down. There are undiscovered, talented, funny people in Los Angeles, and we all know each other. I could cast that show right now. I don’t know what goes on behind the scenes, but there was an audience there” (Pastorek).

This paper will examine Party Down in three contexts – the television/workplace comedy, the Hollywood that the show creates and satirizes, and the fan culture, which developed in the show’s wake. By looking at what gave way to these factors, why the show evolved the way it did, and why the show is important to the comedic medium, we can see that Party Down is reflexive of the industry that produced it. Ultimately, Party Down is an important text worthy of examination, and must be placed in its proper historical context. The framework provided here will help to do just that.

Party Down and Television Comedy

Ian Jarvie asks “Who made films and why? What was the context of their release? Why are these films being made?” (Jarvie 4).  The same questions can apply to a discussion of television. The workplace comedy did not appear from a vacuum. As noted by Nussbaum, the American sitcom was on life support going into the 2000’s with the end of Seinfeld and the beginning of the erosion of the traditional family sitcom. But numerous advances were made in the early part of the decade, none more important than the British version of The Office, “which began the trend of mockumentary sitcom that reflected and parodied reality TV” (Nussbaum 2) In essence, even though the show was scripted, it maintained the free-wheeling nature of the documentary, seeming to be improvised and photographed in a fly-on-the-wall style. Other sitcoms, like Arrested Development, were influential in deconstructing the traditional nature of sitcoms (single camera, long story arcs), and shows like Sex and the City began to speak with a certain complexity about the characters, defining them as three dimensional, as opposed to previous sitcoms, which occasionally focused too heavily on single character traits (Nussbaum).

Indeed, Party Down reflected many of these trends. The show was a single camera sitcom, shot in handheld and digital, much in the same manner as Arrested Development. Though it never reached the complexity and intertextuality of the aforementioned show, the characters were provided with story arcs – all of the characters have projects that they are working on, and their failures and successes provide many of the running gags for the series. “The characters were never boiled down to a single trait” (Shore).  For example, Kyle, who begins the series as the token pretty boy, stars in a base-jumping movie that’s supposed to be his big break, but the film is eventually titled Jumping Boy and released direct-to-DVD in Asia. Similarly, Ron, the team leader, is working to create a Souper Crackers franchise, which is an all-you-can eat buffet restaurant. He manages to get the restaurant at the end of season 1, but by season 2, it has failed, and he’s back on the Party Down team as a team member. There are also broader story arcs – the romance between Henry and Casey, the friendly rivalry between Roman and Kyle – which further flesh out the show and its characters. This is important, because Enbom notes that the show started as a more freewheeling enterprise, perhaps one where different actors would be in place as the caterers every week (Pastorek 4). But by keeping a roster of characters and managing several different story arcs in addition to the main, party-related story of each episode, the show solidifies itself as a modern comedy, with multidimensional characters and situations that contributed to each week’s jokes. The show created comedy out of both the situations and the characters, something that could not be achieved if it had been a week-to-week jokey sitcom (Umstead and Spangler 1).

An interesting point is raised by Schwartz, who analyzes the prevalence of the workplace comedy as representative of shifting trends in American life. He says, “Early TV focused on the family because that was where Americans largely focused their lives, he said. And in those days, sitcoms for the most part provided a sincere, loving look at the American family. Popular portrayals of the office skipped the sincere stage… Television went where the American family was going” (Schwartz 1). In short, the workplace comedy is not so much a new form of sitcom as it is a reframing of traditional family sitcoms, where the family consists of coworkers, bosses, and customers. The achievements of life are negotiated in the office context, suggesting that the workplace is where life is truly lived in modern society.

Party Down is certainly reflexive of these trends as well. The family created here is the family of Party Down Catering, with its ineffectual father Ron and mother figure Constance (Lydia, to some extent, in the second season), and the children, played by the other members of the team. If there weren’t romance involved, we could say that Henry and Casey are brother and sister types, and Roman and Kyle are the wacky siblings. This is not outright said on the program at any point, but certainly implied. Havrilesky notes that “The dilemma of the day job — do I keep myself afloat with this meaningless toil, or do I follow my dreams to bankruptcy and beyond? — looms ever present here. The characters not only struggle with their own choices, but also confront the specter of other people’s success (or failure) on a daily basis.” (Havrilesky 1). This drama, as the characters attempt to navigate the world of Hollywood, creates the family unit. Everyone struggles with their personal problems, but they also ask themselves about the wiseness of their current choices, and are bonded to the fellow members of the team by these choices. Only Constance manages to escape the family unit by the end of the series, marrying into money despite loving the team (Pastorek). Furthermore, the workplace comedies of the 21^st century rarely leave the office, and Party Down is no exception. The show takes place almost entirely at the parties the team caters – there are less than five scenes in the entire 20 episodes that take place away from the parties. By only providing work relationships for the viewing audience, this furthers the notion that the modern family is negotiated in the workplace context.

The notion of the workplace as the family unit also helps to explain the presence of the actors in the show. Enbom noted that his calling card for the show was “not a lot of money, but unlimited creativity” (Pastorek 6). Because the show was produced on such a small budget and was largely free from network interference, it was able to get a large list of stars to appear, famous and not.  It’s also reflexive of a larger trend in 21^st century comedy; the troupe of actors who moves from project to project. Although there was not a set troupe of actors from another project that came to Party Down, many of the people who appeared on the show had worked together in other contexts (Benson). Rob Thomas, one of the cocreators, was responsible for Veronica Mars, and several actors from that show (Kristin Bell, Ryan Kwanten) make appearances. Judd Apatow is mentioned several times, another source of actors for the show (cocreator Paul Rudd, Martin Starr, Adam Scott, Lizzy Caplan, and Jane Lynch). Similarly, the mid 90’s comedy troupe The State had several appearances, including Ken Marino as Ron and Joe Lo Truglio as one of Ron’s friends. The show was directed by several members of the cast, and one of the main directors was Fred Savage, of The Wonder Years fame, who took an early interest in the show and helped produce it.  Famous actors pop up now and then, in what was called “favors” by Rob Thomas (J.K. Simmons, Joey Lauren Adams, Megan Mullaly)  (Pastorek). And various other bit players from TV make appearances as well – Andre Royo, from The Wire, appears as a Hollywood player in one episode.

In short, the modern comedic landscape is self-regenerating, where the same actors work with the same directors and writers over and over, and different comedic products are produced (Shore). This is not necessarily a new trend – we can trace comedic teams far back into television and cinema history. But rarely has the stable of actors been as large as this, and rarely has it appeared with this frequency. The family unit that Schwartz describes could be an apt metaphor for the current Hollywood comedy itself. Look at The Office, which recently began a huge run of guest stars as its main star, Steve Carell, exited the show. Ryan notes that one of the side benefits to this method of casting is an “easy, unforced chemistry between the writers and stars” (Ryan).

By continually appearing in each other’s projects, it becomes easier for these performers and writers to craft characters and form long stories. Indeed, Pastorek notes that the early days of the show were characterized by experimentation, but within four episodes, the general outlines and plots for the show had been established (Pastorek 2). Perhaps this could be indicative of new models of Hollywood distribution, where the quicker something is put out, the better (perhaps this is why the show had such a rushed production schedule – 4 days of shooting per episode, and usually a budget of under $250,000 for the entire episode). The rapid fire nature of the program, the family environment it fosters between the actors, the large stable of talent and the contextualization as both a workplace comedy and a sitcom position Party Down as one of the preeminent television comedies of the past decade.

Party Down And Hollywood

Party Down’s initial story premise seems to be clichéd and overdone – a group of struggling artists attempting to make it in Hollywood.  As noted by Havrilesky, “The driving force of the show is: Should you make your creative destiny into a religion? Or should you give in to the suspicions that you have no talent and should just hang it all up right now and stop kidding yourself?” (Havrilesky). Indeed, the characters on the program seem to constantly ask what their place in the Hollywood system is – at one point, after the failure of his base-jumping movie, Kyle asks Roman if he’s going to make it, and Roman hesitates for several moments before saying yes, suggesting that although the characters constantly hold out hope for the big break, the odds of it actually happening are slim to none. In creating the show, Rob Thomas said, “If The Office is a show about people who have really given themselves over to the rat race, let’s do a show about people who’ve chased the dream for far too long” (Pastorek 1).

The question of when to give up becomes an important one on the show – because Henry, the main character, has given up on his dream of acting, many of the characters ask him what led to his decision, and when he knew it was time to move on. His answer is his appearance in the “Where Are They Now?” box in an issue of TV Guide, for his long-ago appearance in a famous beer ad with the slogan “Are we having fun yet?” This is perhaps the show’s most literal manifestation of the greed and horror of Hollywood, and an indicator that even if the caterers work hard and catch their break, there is still the possibility that they will end in failure. The looming possibility of this failure, then, becomes the underlying subtext for the entire series – certainly not an original concept, but one that works for a show primarily set in the Hollywood system.  

Where the show differs from typical examinations of this lifestyle is its attention to detail and its focus on these specific characters. The catering lifestyle is one that claims many young actors, and indeed, most of the cast of the show had some experience with catering large parties. As noted by Lizzy Caplan, who plays Casey on the show, “ I remember catering a premiere, and it was horrible. People don’t pay attention to you when you’re the caterer. They don’t even look at you. They just ask for things and take things, and you’re walking around rubbing shoulders with these actors, like, “No, no, no, it should be me, and it will be me in a year, and then all you assholes will feel so bad about not paying attention to me.” (Pastorek 3). The show focuses with laser precision on this cast of characters and perfectly captures their angst and loathing. They frequently get Shored and drunk on the job, take long breaks to get involved in various adventures (including an orgy and a switch with a famous rock star in one episode), and generally don’t care much about the work they are doing. But they remain intensely jealous of the people who they are catering for, even when they treat the caterers like garbage, because their clients represent he lifestyle they wish they had.

The power structure of the haves and have-nots becomes an important undercurrent for the series, but what’s interesting is that the stars they cater to are just as nervous, self-loathing and neurotic as the caterers.  This suggests that although Hollywood can make your dreams come true, it also eats the people it works to make famous, and the price of fame can be just as high as the price of working a dead-end job and waiting for your break.  As Havrilesky notes, “Rather than helpful advice, what the aspiring actors, comedians and writers on staff get is discouragement, again and again — from their agents, from their parents, from their boyfriends and girlfriends, and from each other”  (Havrilesky). The subtext of the show is the implication that this cycle will continue with the actors as long as they struggle to make it, but it also paints a realistic portrait of what the struggle for fame consists of, something that few other Hollywood-themed shows in the 21^st century sought to do. The shared misery of being in Hollywood is perfectly manifested  - although the characters long for fame and fortune, perhaps their current situation makes the struggle easier, and makes the crap that they take from the Hollywood types easier to swallow, because they know the possibility remains that they will eventually be in those shoes. As one of Roman’s rivals states in an episode where Party Down caters a script selling party, “It was so much more fun when it was just us in that crappy apartment, writing together.”  

The show also represents the new production cycles, which are common in the digital Hollywood age. As mentioned before, the show was filmed with a cast that largely knew each other, but it was also shot in a guerrilla style similar to independent films (Pastorek 1-5). The shoot was usually 4 days, often taking place at cast member’s homes. The food was never replaced during the shoot, meaning actors frequently had to eat stale hors d’ouevres. No one had a trailer – the cast frequently had to prepare and do makeup in the bedrooms of the houses they were shooting in. And the cast was not bound to the show – indeed, at the end of the first season, Jane Lynch had to leave because of her contractual commitments to Glee, and the show brought in Megan Mullaly to replace her. This fast production schedule made it easier for the show to be topical and relevant, and allowed for more guest stars to make their way into the show, giving them chances to flex their comedic chops.

It also comments on the show itself – the rushed production schedule was in direct contrast to the work schedule on regular sitcoms, suggesting that this led to more creative input and less studio interference during production. In an ironic move, the only note passed down from the network was a need for more sex – one episode takes place at an orgy and another at an adult video awards celebration, where copious female nudity populates the margins. This is an extremely stereotypical note for executives to pass down, and the show doesn’t comment on it, but it certainly represents a tear in the show’s fabric, the presence of an element that does not necessarily jibe with the feel of the program. But it also represents the necessity of being a team player in the Hollywood system – if the show had not included these elements, it might have been cancelled even sooner, or not received as much funding from the network. It also raises questions of how much a show is controlled by its creators, and how much of it is outside influence on the part of executives. A television show is a complicated negotiation, and it’s interesting to see how Party Down finds a balance between studio dictation and personal independence. 

Party Down and Fan Culture

In Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins writes that media has moved toward the participatory, and the consumer becomes the producer, creating the media he or she wants (Jenkins 3). This certainly works as an analysis of how Party Down came into being – a group of artists who wanted to say something about the medium they are utilizing and a culture that may be unsung. But Jenkins also crafts an expert analysis of fan culture in the modern era, which can be utilized for this series. Jenkins notes that fan culture challenges status quo consumerism. Fans use primary texts (in this case, show episodes and DVD releases) in order to construct cultures from the text, both by rereading them and repurposing them to their own needs (Jenkins 177). The fans are building areas to have fun in the context of the shows, and continuing the stories via fan fiction. Jenkins goes on to identify five aspects of fan culture, which can be useful as a model for examining Party Down in relation to this convergence and fan culture. These five characterizations are as follows:

1.     Appropriation – A person appropriates in their own life a particular text, work, and practice relating to their fan object. Often these objects are reinterpreted in their own life. 

2. Participation – There is an openness for people to participate at all levels within the community. They are so inspired by it they write music, create events, etc. 
3. Emotional Investment – People become really invested in this object, topics, etc. It is something they are really into and something they want to talk about. 
4. Collective Intelligence (rather than the expert paradigm) – There is room for everyone to have something to say and contribute to the collective understanding of the group. Collective intelligence doesn’t need credentials, degrees, etc.; experiences and insights are beneficial to the community and conversation.
5. “Virtual” Community – These are communities that are not necessarily built around face-to-face meetings. Some of these people know each other and some are unknown, but more often than not these groups will have times to meet face to face (Jenkins).

Appropriation manifests itself in the response of Hollywood types to the program. Lizzy Caplan mentions being on the set of Children’s Hospital, which is run by many of Party Down’s cast members, and how they lamented on the demise of the show, because it so accurately reflected the Hollywood that they had lived in (Pastorek 9). As mentioned before, many of the cast and crew of the show had worked in catering and odd jobs before they became famous, so the show could be seen as a manifestation of their past struggles, a fictional interpretation of what they saw to be the problems inherent in trying to break into Hollywood.

Participation can be seen at the fansite level. The Facebook fan page for Party Down currently has 80,897 members, and the wall has numerous posts encouraging fans to recommend the show to others, posts to fan fictions about the characters, and recommendations for other shows in the same vein. On the first page alone, user Jodie Irvine writes about catching reruns on ABC2 in Australia, Nathan Rolf suggests Children’s Hospital for its inclusion of many cast members, and Piero Roco writes, “Bought S1 DVD tonight. So good. Terrific, smart commentary. Cool outakes. Next release of S1 on DVD, more gag reel please!” (Facebook). There is even a small movement on the page for the release of an mp3 of “My Struggle,” an unintentionally anti-Semitic song sung by Kyle’s band at a wedding party, along with requests for more songs from the band. This fan culture is partially the creation of the show, and partially the desire for fans to continue the show after its cancellation. Many people on fan pages speculate about what happens to characters after the conclusion, and the fanfics are a manifestation of this desire. The show cannot continue in the traditional sense, but in convergence culture, fans can reappropriate the show’s materials and use them to craft their own scenarios for the characters.

Emotional investment can also be tied to this fansite culture. The fans begin to view these characters as real people, who make decisions of their own free will and continue their lives when the camera isn’t looking. Indeed, many of the fanfics can be attributed to this investment. For example, the crucial relationship in the series was between Henry and Casey, who began as a couple that had casual sex, then became a romantic couple, then split up for months, then came back together for work, and then negotiated their romantic feelings and work demeanors for the remainder of the series. As noted before, this relationship inspires most of the fan fiction of the show, but it also shows how fan fiction is limited by the show’s framework. The fanfic “It’s a Tangled Rat’s Nest,” by RaspBerryStars, has the slogan “For Henry, being with Casey is his only option” (FanFictionNet). This not only suggests that there’s enough emotional investment and backstory for the characters to inspire other, post-cancellation stories, but that although the fans have some say in their own fanfics, there’s a certain amount of changing of the basic plot that they can and can’t do. In this case, the relationship between Henry and Casey, which remained hazy at the end of the series, can be completed in the fanfic realm, but only if it follows the rules of the relationship established in the previous 20 episodes.

The cancellation of the show also led to the depiction of emotional investment – on numerous fan sites and message boards, the fans decried the network for not giving the show more of a change, and lamented the fact that the show’s plots would never be fully resolved.  As noted by Paul Rudd, “Our reviews were strong. The die-hard fans of the show felt like it was their show. That’s cool. We all took pride in that, I think” (Pastorek 8). No matter what the eventual fate of Party Down ends up being, the show has an established audience that connected withthe characters, and a devoted base which keeps the show alive online. For that, the show can be said to have strong emotional ties.

Collective intelligence comes into play in regards to the show itself. One of the great advantages of the Internet is the proliferation of information about television shows and media forms. Indeed, via Wikipedia, IMDB, and Facebook, one could learn almost everything there is to know about Party Down, from the initial idea of the show to its eventual production and cancellation. Fan sites note cross references to other shows and other roles the actors have played – Kristin Bell, who played Veronica Mars on the show of the same name, appears as the evil head of Valhalla Catering, Party Down’s closest rival, and several lines of dialogue in the series come directly from Mars (Benson). The creators are allowed to speak on behalf of their program, as noted in Pastorek’s extensive chronicling of the series. And ultimately, all of the information is collected by various sites and made available to the public, creating Jenkins’ “sum total of information held individually by members of a knowledge community” (Jenkins 322). The Internet has made it possible for the Party Down fan community to flourish, and also made it possible for all the information about the show to be compiled in several centralized hubs. This collective intelligence is important, because although it can lead to reductive readings of history, it also makes sure that these texts are filed and given their importance, so they are not lost to history.

Finally, we return to the idea of the virtual community, which has been discussed previously but deserves mentioning again.  The virtual culture creates “affinity spaces” where people both engage more actively and learn more from popular culture topics than they do from textbooks (Gee via Jenkins 186). Although we cannot necessarily say that Party Down is a show that teaches useful skills, we can say that it’s a show which provides a worldwide view of a very narrow culture, Indeed, the aforementioned Facebook post discussed the show airing from Australia, which suggests the reach of the show is global via the Internet. The Internet also provides access to the show and all of its intertextual materials, so a person could learn extensively about the show even if they do not live in America. Baltierra notes that “Shows amass a cult like following through the release of DVD’s and syndication via cable or the Internet.” A show like Party Down might not have survived long if it hadn’t immediately been released on DVD at the conclusion of its first season, where fans could devour the episodes several at a time and multiple times, then discuss them on Internet message boards (Baltierra 11).

The show continues to survive moreso in the message board forums than on fansites like those inspired by Harry Potter or Middle Earth, but the community exists just the same – a group of people contributing to the knowledge of the show, and continuing its story and supporting its cast as they move into future endeavors. Ultimately, fan culture manifests itself in a variety of ways, and Party Down represents a very narrowly focused audience, one that appreciates different comedic forms and keeps shows alive even after their cancellation, all on the worldwide Internet community. Fan culture develops in interesting and exciting ways, and looking at Party Down as a microcosm of these cultures helps us to understand why it proliferates.

Party Down – What’s Important?

Shore says, “If Arrested Development was the king of television comedy, Party Down was the heir apparent” (Shore). Party Down was certainly the culmination of a decade of television comedy. It refined the styles, which had been present in several sitcoms up to that point. It was reflexive both about the nature of TV comedy and the Hollywood business, which both the characters and the show itself were involved in. In its cancellation and fan culture, it shows how a cancelled show no longer has to be the end, as it can be rewatched, dissected, and recontextualized for audiences for years to come.

But ultimately, the importance of Party Down is what came next. Sitcoms like Louie and Community have begun to play with self -reference and breaking the boundaries of what traditional sitcoms can be. Digital convergence has placed all of the episodes of the show online, and heralded a still developing trend of television shows finding second lives on Netflix. Networks, in their wisdom, are still cancelling shows before they’ve been given a chance to grow, but shows are also being allowed to grow even when the ratings are down, such as Community. And Party Down helped to continue the trend of a stable of comedic actors working together and making products that comment on themselves and the industry at large. Party Down is not the most unique show to exist, but it personifies many of the trends of sitcoms that became popular in the past decade, and it should be regarded as important, not just because of its cultural impact, but because of its humorous look at the business we so often take for granted.

“The reason that it’s difficult for the gay community to be integrated into society at large, as it should be, is that there’s no champion for them, in Congress or in the White house. and that’s how every group of people has been integrated into society. that’s how it works.”- Lewis Black

It’s funny that Ken Mehlman, head of the Republican National Committee, came out recently, because in Kirby Dick’s Outrage, his name pops up briefly amidst the litany of closeted politicians on Capitol Hill. He, of course, spearheaded the 2004 federal amendment to ban gay marriage. Bill Maher, on Larry King Live, mentioned Mehlman’s name as one of the many politicians that is closeted. In reruns of that program, this piece of information was censored.

Is there a conspiracy to keep closeted politicians closeted? This is the thesis proposed by Dick, which, alas, he does not really pursue. Certainly the conspiracy could be applied to the Reagan administration, who absolutely refused to acknowledge AIDS until tens of thousands were already dead and infected, and Roy Cohn, who had sex with men while spearheading Joseph McCarthy’s Communist witch hunts. But beyond these two things, the doc doesn’t address much in the way of conspiracy. The film is more about the politicians on the hill who are closeted, and the vast array of evidence that exists to prove that they are closeted. He follows this information with their records of voting on gay issues. I believe the highest percent of the six politicians documented was 28 percent of their votes in favor of gay rights. The film gives a litany of reasons why they’re closeted - for political gain, mostly - but the more pressing question is, why? Why would someone in the closet vote repeatedly against their own rights? Why won’t they just admit that they’re gay and move on?

I’m conflicted on the subject myself. I believe that it’s the right of every GLBT person to come out when it’s right for them. When I came out in December of 2004, it was the end of a long period of self reflection and discovery, and it came when I was ready to tell people that I was gay, not when people dictated I should come out. I’ve been extremely blessed to have a group of supportive people in my family and friends, and I’ve never been chastised or persecuted by my peers for who I am.

BUT. Barney frank says in the film, “You have a right to privacy, not to hypocrisy.” I half agree. I also feel that as a politician, if you are closeted and you come out and vote again and again against gay rights legislation, you lose your privilege to come out when you feel it is appropriate. Especially if proof of your gayness is easily documented. Several of the talking heads in the film (including a wonderful Barney Frank) talk about how it’s still difficult for them to go out to traditionally gay places, because even if they’re out, they’re still being watched like hawks to see if they slip up or do the wrong thing, since any slip-ups or wrong hookups can lead to them losing their positions. That’s fair. But some of the closeted people (especially Larry Craig, who comes off really shitty here) try to pay off their hookups and remain inconspicuous while they’re getting hummers from boys they pick up at bars. That’s not acceptable. Hell, the film produces an audiotape from a gay chatline and a gay.com profile for another politician. Did they seriously think they were going to get away with it? And further, did they think that they could still hold the positions they did when that kind of evidence got out?

Some have said that the film is biased in portraying largely Republican congressmen and politicians, and that surely there are closeted Democrats. This is true, and an accurate charge that could be leveled against the film. But like I said before, Democrats don’t often spew the virulent hate that Republicans do, and have much better track records in regards to voting on gay issues. For the most part, they earn the right to privacy. This goes for TV personalities too. Consider Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon of CNN. Both men have been reported in numerous outlets as being gay, and there’s very little evidence to suggest that they aren’t. But both reporters (Lemon especially) have engaged in civil debate and reporting in regards to LGBT issues and thus can come out when they feel it is right, since they have an in depth understanding of the issues at hand. (Certainly it would be great if both men came out, since Don Lemon is a major crush object, but that’s another story).

Internalized self hatred is really the guiding principle behind Outrage. The film is certainly flawed (it follows a pretty distinct pattern and loses its way a bit when it gets into the marriage debate, along with taking far too many shots at Charlie Crist) but the idea of self hatred fueling these politicians’ beliefs and ideals is both heartbreaking and infuriating. It’s the equivalent, as one of the interviewees points out, of making fun of someone at school for being gay because you secretly are scared that you might be gay. Is it necessarily right and true to out these politicians? You know how I feel. The question we should really be asking, and the film answers it pretty well, is why they won’t come out, and why the cycle of hatred keeps perpetuating itself on the Hill. Harvey Milk said that “You gotta give em hope,” and the Republicans in power are certainly denying the GLBT citizens of this country the possibility of hope, in the most dishonest and terrible way possible.

For some reason, I was thinking a lot about Todd Solondz while I watched Dead Man Walking. I think it’s because Solondz is a filmmaker who works with literally dozens of taboo subjects in each of his films, and forces us to see the humanity of his characters and the hard moral and ethical judgments we make daily against people who are different from us. Happiness featured a sympathetic pedophile, Palindromes confronted the abortion debate from both sides, and Storytelling concerned a filmmaker being wrongfully accused of making fun of his desperately fucked up subjects. He sees the good in everyone, and loves people, even if their choices have denied them the ability to lead normal lives.

Similarly, Dead Man Walking is about a death row inmate, a nun, and the families of the inmate’s victims, and takes all sides on their issues. Yes, Matthew Poncelet is guilty of raping and murdering two teenagers, and the parents have every right to want him to be put to death. But Sister Helen Prejean, the Sarandon character, is caught between them. She knows that Jesus teaches us to turn the other cheek, but it’s never really that simple - through the film, she’s confronted with the monstrosity of the crimes and the deep belief that everyone deserves love and forgiveness, even murderers.

Sister Helen gets a letter from Matthew asking him to visit her in prison. She does. He wants her to appeal his case to save him from death. She does, and the appeal is denied. She visits with the families of the victims and wonders why she’s helping this man who committed such atrocities. All throughout the film, her faith gets tested, but she has some of the strongest resolve of any spiritual character I’ve seen in film. Instead of trying to convert Matthew at the last minute, or dropping Bible quotes at everyone she meets (although there’s a great, eerily prescient moment where she tells a guard who claims “eye for an eye” that the Bible also says you should kill adulterers, homosexuals, etc.), she just wants Matthew to accept the enormity of what he’s done, reconcile with himself, and go to his death knowing that even though he did something terrible, he can be forgiven by God.

The characters that truly test her are the parents of the victims. They hate her at first, but we see that, of course, they have their motives. She visits the father of the boy, on the verge of divorce, packing up the remnants of a life that he can never return to, and she helps him to find his way through the ashes. And the parents of the girl wrongly intuit that her visit is a sign that she’s switched to the other side, and chastise her for supporting a man who killed their daughter. In these scenes, we see that it’s not going to be as easy as “Helen loves Matthew and that’s that,” but that real people have been affected by his actions, and the consequences are deep. Once again, Jesus tells us that we should love everyone, but it’s impossible for these parents to do so, because their children were the victims, and killing the killer is the only justice that can be done. How is Sister Helen supposed to react to this? Can she rightly help the man knowing what he did? She ultimately decides that she can, because once again, she knows that God loves everyone, and forgives, and if Matthew can realize this, he will enter into heaven. The closing scenes of the movie add yet another dimension, as Sister Helen again encounters the boy’s father, and offers to help him move on, in her own way, leading to a closing shot that is absolutely perfect.

At its heart, the film is against capital punishment (Tim Robbins, who directed,  perhaps overplays this a bit in the closing scenes, but the final 30 minutes generate such deep emotion that he can be forgiven for pushing it so far), but it’s also a pretty remarkable examination of real, true faith. I’m not religious, but I was raised Christian, and I tire greatly of hearing the rhetoric of televangelists and right wing Republican crazies demanding exact followings of the rules set forth in the Bible. The Bible has never really been a rule book, but a guide book, and Sister Helen understands this and tries to help others understand it too. She knows in her heart what is right, has her faith greatly tested by the events of the film, and comes out at the end with the same resolve and the same feelings she had at the beginning - she says frequently “I’ve never done anything like this before” in regards to Matthew, but she treats him exactly as she treats the inner city children she works with, and his final acceptance of her love is all the more powerful for it.

Watching the film, which is great from all the usual technical aspects, I was also struck by the courage that it probably took to make it. It’s easy to make a movie that’s against the death penalty (the atrocious Life of David Gale proved this), but it’s another to make a movie that’s also an examination of the deep love at the heart of the human spirit, that sees issues from all perspectives and gives them all credence, and that makes it across the finish line without being preachy or treacly. Matthew is not a stupid man, and Helen sees the good in him, and helps him to see it in himself. For that, we must be grateful, and celebrate this kind of filmmaking that looks like Oscar bait but feels like the reality of people put in difficult situations and finding their way across the river.

You gotta love when a movie has the whole concept in the title. Not since Snakes on a Plane has a movie been as absurdly literal in its title as Hot Tub Time Machine. But once you get past the title, you’ve still got a 90 minute movie to make, and it better live up to the promise of the title, or you’re in trouble. Hot Tub Time Machine succeeds in having, indeed, a hot tub time machine, but does it work as a comedy after that? Kinda, sorta.

The movie at least has the courtesy to get us to the time machine quickly, since less than 20 minutes in a 99 minute (including credits) film have elapsed before we’re back in 1986. But I’m ahead of myself. We start with three guys who have dissatisfying lives. Adam (John Cusack) just broke up with his girlfriend (probably not a coincidence, since the director here is Steve Pink and in both of his and Cusack’s previous efforts, the solid Grosse Pointe Blank and the superb High Fidelity, breakups were a mutual starting point for the Cusack characters). Nick (Craig Robinson) is working at a dog shop, and since this is a male comedy, there’s a poop joke within a minute of meeting him. And Lou (Rob Corddry) is a drunk who passes out in his car with the engine running. This is misread as a suicide attempt by Adam and Nick, and they decide to take him to the ski lodge where they spent most of the 80’s partying. Along for the ride is Jacob (Clark Duke), Adam’s nephew, who sucks at talking to women.

They party, they get zapped back in time, and holy crap, we’re in the 80’s! Specifically, 1986 Winterfest and a Poison concert. The guys decide to relive the night exactly as it went back then, although the idea of getting stabbed in the eye and getting in a fight is not appetizing at all for Lou. Predictably, because otherwise the movie would be too rigidly structured, this doesn’t happen, and the guys bring a good deal of their 200’s knowledge back with them and try to make things different. Specifically, Nick sings Black Eyed Peas at a concert, Adam meets up with a rock journalist (Lizzy Caplan) and tries to get with her, and Lou and Jacob kind of float around, getting in mishaps and getting threatened by the local ski patrol, who beat Lou up all those years ago. Secrets are revealed, friendships are tested, and the guys stumble drunk and stoned through a crazy weekend while trying to make it back home.

If this sounds predictable, you would be right. If you think that the movie is going to end with the characters exactly where they were before, having not changed anything in the future, you obviously haven’t been attending too many movies. So the question becomes, is the movie funny, and how does it do with it’s concept? The answers to both questions are a bit complicated.

We’ll start with the funny one. The movie is funny, but not really funny enough. If anything, it feels desperately truncated. It barely introduces the characters before getting into the time travel stuff, it barely explains itself as it goes along, and it serves mostly as a clothesline for time travel gags. That’s fine to an extent, but it’s hard for the truly big laughs to generate if the movie doesn’t sit still or build on any of its jokes. The best laughs in the movie come courtesy of the one armed bellhop (a perfectly cast Crispin Glover), who still has his arm in the 80’s and gets into various situations of arm peril that frustrate and excite Lou. To be fair, there are plenty of laughs scattered in the film (the outcome of a football game, Nick’s drunken phone call to his future wife) but nothing that truly transcends.Not to mention that the movie has a pretty nasty sexist and homophobic streak. Yes, these jokes are the staples of all these sorts of comedies, and yes, I’ve laughed at similar material in other films (The Hangover, I’m looking at you). But the difference is that the jokes in those films come from characters who I know would say those things, and occasionally those jokes were funny. Here, those gags come from one dimensional stereotypes and aren’t funny to begin with, and it casts a pall over the film that almost kills it altogether.

As far as the concept goes, the movie tries to have it both ways, and only marginally succeeds. The “butterfly effect” concept of everything the guys do affecting the future is introduced and then quickly forgotten. There’s no real urgency to the guys getting back in time. The Lizzy Caplan love interest would be great if her and Adam were given any chance at all to interact, but she’s mostly delegated to a few brief scenes that never establish her as a character. And while the aforementioned jokes about calling future wives and possible baby daddy issues are funny, the movie doesn’t linger on them long enough for them to truly connect.

The casting, at the least, is inspired. Cusack and Robinson do well as the straight men, and Duke brings some good laughs to his nerdy character. Corddry oversells it as the party animal character, but luckily never crosses the threshold to annoying. The wise old repairman played by Chevy Chase was a great choice, but the movie never gives him anything to do, which sucks. And Lizzy Caplan, by being Lizzy Caplan, is just awesome, even though, again, her character pretty much exists to fuel the fantasies of the boys in the audience.

Even though Hot Tub Time Machine is a mildly funny movie and a decent time waster, it’s really quite disappointing that it isn’t better. With the amount of talent assembled and a concept as awesome as a time machine that is also a hot tub, surely this could have been funnier.

5/10

SPOILERS AHEAD

What message, exactly, is the ending of The Book Of Eli trying to convey? That those who have faith will be rewarded for their faith? That the Bible is only a powerful tool depending on who uses it? Or is it just an absurdly literal metaphor for modern Christianity? I’m not sure, and if I asked the Hughes brothers, who directed, and Gary Whitta, who wrote it, it might illuminate the situation more. But I was perplexed, especially since it came at the end of a movie that, while not particularly inspired, raised some interesting questions and had some interesting moments.

Like most post apocalypse stories of late, the nature of the apocalypse is never explained (although Mila Kunis’ character, Solara, might be a clue). All we know is that everything is washed out and vaguely orange and blue. Denzel Washington’s character, who isn’t ever really named except in the title and on a name tag on his eponymous book, wanders the landscape. He’s a badass, in the tradition of Denzel playing badass characters. We see him taking out a group of thugs mercilessly with a sword. He doesn’t talk much, and doesn’t appear to have much TO talk about, except that he’s heading west and doesn’t want anyone with him.

Eventually he comes to a little town, providing the best stretch of the movie, mostly because it takes interesting directions with the post apocalypse scenario. Water is bartered for food and goods, and in the film’s best scene, Eli trades KFC wet napkins and a lighter for a battery charge. (It helps that the shopkeep in this scene is played by Tom Waits, who invites interest into a film just by appearing). Anyway, we meet the head of the town, Carnegie (Gary Oldman, over the top and awesome at it), who is searching for a book, and regularly sends out bands of generic ruffians to search for it.

Because the movie has been out for some time, and because I doubt anyone with a brain could mistake what book Carnegie wants, I’ll just say it: It’s the Bible. In another bit of plot that could have been a movie unto itself but instead is just thrown out randomly, we learn that after the “flash,” all copies of the Bible were burned, because people thought that it had caused the end of the world. Now it seems as though Eli possesses the only copy. Bit of luck, that is. He’s also one of the only people who lived “before” the explosion, which also never gets elaborated upon and reeks of missed opportunity for the filmmakers.

Anyway, Eli refuses to give the book up, and Carnegie gets pissed, and Solara, whose sole function in this movie is to keep the plot moving, runs away with Eli. The last half of the movie, disappointingly, is mostly a chase between Eli, Solara, and Carnegie, as he seeks to track them down and Eli attempts to make it west.

There’s alot of good stuff going on in the movie, some of it previously mentioned. The performances are uniformly solid, although I think Denzel makes the wrong choice playing the role so restrained and introverted, especially considering the revelations (ho, ho) at the end of the film. The Hughes brothers, who haven’t made a movie since 2001’s From Hell, show that they still have their chops, directing a couple of virtuoso set pieces. Although the movie doesn’t contain much originality, it’s never truly boring, and even when we get yet another variation of scenes we’ve seen in a dozen other movies of this type, it’s compelling enough to sustain interest.

It’s the ending where I think the film falls apart. There’s a scene at about the 2/3rds mark where Eli explains to Solara that he has been guided across the country for 30 years by faith. There’s also a scene earlier in the film where Solara’s mother encounters Eli, and he asks about her blindness, and how she survived. She replies that since she was blind since birth, it was easy for her to survive after the “flash” because she already knew how to survive. The pieces are laid for the big revelation at the end where Carnegie opens the Bible and discovers… it’s Braille, and Eli was blind the whole time. BIG ENDING TWIST!

I don’t dislike that the movie takes a pro-Christian angle at the end. If anything I think it’s pretty ballsy to come out with such a blatant declaration of faith at the end of a mainstream Hollywood movie. But the movie hasn’t provided enough empirical evidence to support its conclusion. Yes, Eli is rarely seen without his glasses, and yes, we never see the inside of the book until that final moment, but we also don’t know whether or not Eli was blind before or after the “flash.” So either the scene with Solara’s mother is strangely out of place, or it was trying to establish a connection between her and Eli that isn’t fully established enough to support the ending. We also have been given a few clues that Eli’s faith is protecting him, but in a movie so grounded in grit and realism, it feels oddly out of place to deploy that piece of information.

I also don’t fully understand the Malcolm McDowell character and the final shot of the film. Eventually, Eli and Solara make it to Alcatraz, where McDowell’s character is attempting to rebuild civilization by populating it with books. Probably a good idea, but considering the country and maybe the entire world lacks any centralized living system, let alone any system of distribution, how does he plan on getting the culture back out there? And why, at the end of the film, after Eli (sob!) dies, does Solara go back to the town she came from? I think the assumption is that she is bringing the Bible back, but all we see her with is Eli’s sword and backpack. Are we just supposed to assume that she has it in her backpack? The closing narration by Eli suggests that this may be the case, but again, the movie lacks evidence. With a couple more rewrites of the script, I could see an ending like this working, but there’s not enough here for Hughes, Hughes, and Whitta to get away with it.

So The Book of Eli is a decent movie, worth watching if it ever pops up on TV. It’s a shame that it’s so filled with promise and ultimately so many wasted opportunities for greatness. I think the next director who attempts a post apocalypse story could life some of the elements from this one and really turn it into something great.

6/10

So I have to come clean and tell you all that I’m posting a few things I’ve already written to kickstart this blog for a couple reasons. One is because I want you all to see some of the work I’m doing and hope to continue doing in grad school. The other is that I’ve been insanely busy trying to finish my senior year of college and haven’t had time to watch much of anything new. But I hope you are all enjoying these piece, and please feel free to leave me feedback in the comments. 

Anyway, this is a paper I wrote for a class about the Blaxploitation movement. Yes, it’s a movement, not a genre. The professor was my mentor and main man Novotny Lawrence, who also assisted me in the Whitaker paper and in so many other aspects of my life, it’s ridiculous. I’m dedicating my senior thesis partially to him. But I digress. Enjoy my writings. 

TWO STEPS FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK

On the surface, Together Brothers, released on August 7, 1974 by 20th Century Fox on a single screen in New York City (IMDB, “Together Brothers), seems to be one of the many films of the blaxploitation movement to be forgotten by mass audiences. Its release was overshadowed by other blaxploitation films released that year such as The Education of Sonny Carson (1974), Foxy Brown (1974), and Sugar Hill (1974). A Google search reveals only two reviews for the film, neither of which were written at the time of the film’s release, and both of which are largely plot summary, offering no substantial analysis of the film. However, Together Brothers represents an interesting film in the movement, primarily because it both subverts some of the movement’s lesser aspects while simultaneously engaging in many of the movement’s attitudes towards women, homosexuals, and white society. The film also represents a shift from the normal locations and actors present in most of the period’s films while still utilizing the detective film genre and blaxploitation’s revision of what that genre entails. The result is an interesting and overlooked film that deserves more than it received upon its initial release. 

The film opens as Mr. Kool (Ed Bernard) watches a house being demolished as a group of locals look on. Mr. Kool is a police officer who wanders on foot restoring peace and order to the impoverished areas of Galveston, Texas. After witnessing Mau Mau (Kenneth Bell) rob a local convenience store for alcohol, we discover that Mr. Kool is a mentor to several young boys in the community, including Mau Mau, A.P. (Nelson Sims), Monk (Owen Pace), Gri Gri (Kim Dorsey), and their leader, H. J. (Ahmad Nurradin). Later on in the evening, Mr. Kool is followed by Tommy (Anthony Wilson), H.J.’s younger brother, and Tommy witnesses a masked figure brutally murder Mr. Kool. Tommy is rendered mute from the shock, and H.J. and the gang decide after the funeral to seek out the man who killed Mr. Kool. The remainder of the film functions as what Novotny Lawrence describes as “the same pattern as traditional detective films. Specifically, a crime is committed, which prompts the hero/heroine’s search to discover the perpetrator and reveal his/her motives” (29). This leads to the “brothers,” as they are called in the film, both befriending a local group of Latinos to help them sneak into the police station and obtain files on recently released inmates. Eventually, it is discovered that the killer is Billy Most (Lincoln Kilpatrick), a drag queen who was previously arrested for stealing a baby from an affluent white man. Mr. Kool had been the officer who took the baby back, and Most killed him because, as Billy says in the film, “Mess with Billy Most, and your black ass gonna die.”The film ends with a chase as Most tries to kill Tommy, but then realizes that Tommy is the baby that he so desperately wanted. The brothers and the police arrive in time to see Most cuddling Tommy close to his chest, calling him “My baby!” He is then arrested. The final shot of the film shows the brothers walking off into the night, enacting what they referred to themselves as earlier in the film: “Together brothers.” 

The film was written by Jack DeWitt and Joe Green, and directed by William A. Graham, who had directed one previous blaxploitation film, Honky, in 1971. The executive producer was Sanford Howard, and the soundtrack was composed by Barry White, featuring the Love Unlimited Orchestra. It also represents the only time White ever composed music for a film. 

Together Brothers contains all of the blaxploitation genre’s establishing features described by Amanda Howell in “Spectacle, Masculinity, And Music,” but it also goes about them in an atypical way. Howell describes the themes of blaxploitation as “vulgarity, violence, and vanity” (3), yet Together Brothers contains only one scene of graphic violence (not counting the staged fight in which the brothers and the Latino gang participate in to distract the police). The film does contain uses of the word “nigger” and various other obscenities, but it does not overplay these elements. And the film is far from containing vanity, as it takes place in an impoverished section of Galveston, Texas, populated by prostitutes, vagrants, and kids on the streets. Howell notes that “Most (of these films) were filmed on location in America’s largest—and most troubled—black neighborhoods”(5), and Together Brothers does contain representations of dilapidated inner cities, but the focused has been shifter to a coastal Texas town as opposed to the ghettoes of Los Angeles and Harlem. This was perhaps a choice made by the filmmakers in order to distance them from the other black film being made during this period, which largely focused on the more urban locales. The film contains black supporting characters, which blaxploitation films always featured, and a black hero, who Novotny Lawrence describes as “a character able to navigate the white world while maintaining blackness” (18). Yet the characters are largely children, and white characters are largely not present in the film, except in a few brief scenes where they show up as cops, another character commonly associated with blaxploitation. It could be inferred that the white cops are incompetent in that it is up to the brothers to solve the crime, and the brothers also have a scene where they refer to themselves as “dumb darkies” in front of a white police officer, but the white presence is not in the film enough to really say. The children characters represent the detectives that have appeared in blaxploitation films up to this point, and they largely fulfill the stereotypes established by films like Cotton Comes To Harlem (1970), though it must be noted that the boys do not fit any of the stereotypes established by Donald Bogle in Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks. This is where the central roles being given to children also come into play. Although the brothers are old enough to think about sex and women, they are not overly sexualized characters, and they are smart and clever, as demonstrated by the scene in which H.J. solves the case. The lack of predominant white characters also might tie into this, because there is no one around to demonize or chastise the black men for the majority of the run time. 

Sadly, the film does not contain positive representations of women. Up to this point, women in blaxploitation films were described by Kelly Hankin as “representations of a sexist male fantasy” (91), and in this film, it’s no different. The women in the film are all prostitutes or subservient to their men, as depicted by H.J.’s mother in a single scene. Luckily, the film also manages to address the problem of drug use in the black community, in a scene where H.J. goes to visit a therapist who tells him “(Tommy) needs a lot of help, and no junkie can do that,” before checking H.J.’s arms for needle marks. This is a positive step forward in the genre, after films that have glorified the drug industry while simultaneously attempting to be anti-drug, like Superfly (1972). Together Brothers represents a positive step forward for many aspects of the genre, and yet still suffers from some of its problems. 

The representation of the gay characters in the film is also significant, because while the characters on display can be viewed as stereotypes, they are two of the most fully fleshed out gay characters to appear in blaxploitation films. The role of the gay character in blaxploitation films up to this point was described by Joe Wlodarz in “Beyond The Black Macho” as such; “What we commonly see in these films through their queer representations is a tension between the whitening of homosexuality (and vice versa) in a frequently homophobic manner (to distance blackness from queerness) and an acknowledgment of black sexual diversity (however anxiously the films view such a cultural reality)” (The Velvet Light Trap 11). The role of the gay man was also described by Vito Russo in The Celluloid Closet as the “sissy” (17) who “perpetuates negative stereotypes about gay men. It’s an insult to call a man effeminate, for it means he is like a woman and thus not as valuable as a real man” (17). Basically, the films up to this point were depicting gay characters as raging, stereotypical “fags” and “queens,” even though it seems, in scholarly retrospect, like the films were positioning them as characters to be celebrated in a society of ethnic and cultural diversity. The characters of Billy Most and Maria, Billy’s presumed girlfriend, are both different and similar to these definitions. Both characters are stereotypes, in that they are drag queens with lisps that are referred to as “fags” by both the brothers and their female friends. Maria personifies the sort of one dimensional character that existed up to this point in the genre. We learn nothing about her character except what H.J. obtains through questioning her about Billy Most, and Maria hangs herself before the end of the film, although it is unclear whether it was a suicide or a murder. But Billy is given a back story and a personality, partially because he is eventually revealed to be the killer, both a step back and a step forward for the gay character in the blaxploitation film. This character might not have been possible without Blacula (1972) and Wlodarz describes why: 

“After exhuming and staking Billy (Rick Metzler) in the cemetery, Gordon (Thalmus Rasulala) finally realizes that Bobby is also a vampire and ominously suggests to Bobby’s sister that “he could be anywhere.” The film’s own difficulty in containing the queer threat that it seems compelled to introduce is echoed in this statement by Gordon. For “Bobby” (read: gay black man) could indeed “be anywhere,” and the eventual destruction of this one vampire cannot erase the symbolic disruption that his presence creates in the film” (15). 

Billy and Maria are the logical progression of the Bobby character from Blacula, in that the film situates “normative” black males, represented by the brothers, against the gay characters. Though the brothers refer to Billy as a “fag,” the presence of these gay characters suggests that “there is no normative blackness, no normal masculinity to which the black subject, American or otherwise, might refer” (Wlodarz 16). In its own sly way, Together Brothers is a positive commentary on black homosexual life, even though it goes about it in a somewhat stereotypical way. This was right before Car Wash (1976) depicted the black male as a “tough, loud, back-talking gay black man” (Wlodarz 16), which established a new stereotype while furthering the cause of the black homosexual in American film. However, the importance of Together Brothers in establishing black queer characters is something to celebrate. Also worth noting is that Maria and Billy Most exchange a single kiss, something that did not happen in mainstream American cinema until Making Love was released in 1982. 

The music by Barry White, in the only soundtrack he ever produced, is interesting, in that it also represents many of the sounds of the blaxploitation era while simultaneously creating a unique sound. The crucial song, which became a hit off the soundtrack, was “Honey Please, Can’t Ya See,” a song about a man being saved by a woman. What’s curious about the song is that it’s used in the context of the film between Billy and Maria, and so the song is given a homosexual subtext that furthers the notions of the gay characters being important in the film. Here is an entire song based on love, and it is used in the film to describe two men, something that was unheard of before this point in blaxploitation. The music is performed by the Love Unlimited Orchestra, who bring a certain lush quality to the music, even though they utilize many of the same instruments and sounds which have come to be associated with blaxploitation music. The lushness can especially be heard in “Killer’s Lullaby,” the theme that prefaces the killer’s appearance on screen before Billy is revealed. The track has an Ennio Morricone vibe, and is something completely different from the music that blaxploitation is normally known for. The other popular song on the soundtrack was “Somebody’s Gonna Off The Man,” which plays during the opening credit montage as Mr. Kool walks through Galveston, and the lyrics are quite obvious foreshadowing to his fate. Though the soundtrack is well known for being Barry White’s only soundtrack, and though it was well received upon release, modern critics consider it to be a lesser work, with All Music Guide referring to it as “thin and plodding” (1). 

Together Brothers is what Howell describes as “extreme, cheap and easy to produce” (12), in regards to the blaxploitation movement. It is a film that was made cheaply, distributed in a small fashion, and relatively forgotten. Though it does fulfill many of the problems that the blaxploitation movement had up until this point, it also represents a crucial turning point toward the end of the movement, when filmmakers began to move away from the conventions established by earlier films and try things that were new and different. The impact of Together Brothers is small in historical context, especially with so many other blaxploitation films being released in this same period. However, it is an important work, one that hopefully will be recognized as a flawed but interesting work in the movement.

To give you all a taste of what’s coming, here’s a paper I’m working on for publication hopefully by the end of the year. It’s imperfect, to be sure, but I discovered in my research that no substantial analysis of one of my favorite actors around exists at this point. I decided to take it upon myself to do just that. I hope you enjoy it. 

Since debuting on screen as a football player in Fast Times At Ridgemont High (1982), Forest Whitaker has been one of the most recognizable and likeable faces in Hollywood. As an actor, he has starred in some of the most memorable films of the last 30 years, including Platoon (1986), The Crying Game (1992), Panic Room (2002), and The Last King Of Scotland (2006), for which he received the Academy Award for Best Actor.  And as a director, he has made several films with strong female leads, including Waiting to Exhale (1995).  When describing the process of choosing films and acting, Whitaker said:

“As an actor, I’ve always tried to find the certain thing that connects with everyone. When you’re looking at a character… you think he’s certainly connected with me in some way, so how can I go inside myself and find that thing? … I’m just trying to tell different stories that relate, that explore the experience, the universal experience that brings us closer together in some kind of weird way” (Alexander 478-79).

Whitaker’s quote is interesting because it describes the process many actors go through, yet in looking at his films, it occasionally is hard to determine where Whitaker’s entry point for a character lies. This stems from an underlying notion in several of Whitaker’s films, a notion that his characters being separatists. Though separatism, particularly in the black community, is traditionally defined as a movement to create separate institutions for blacks in a predominantly white society, Whitaker’s films both utilize this notion of separatism and present new ways in which separatism can be seen.

The Last King of Scotland (2006) utilizes the separatist in the traditional sense with Whitaker’s character, Idi Amin, but in films like The Crying Game (1992) and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) Whitaker’s characters work from a definition of separatism written by historian Wilson Jeremiah Moses, who says, “(While separatism) in its extreme form advocated the perpetual physical separation of the races, (it) usually referred only to a simple institutional separatism, or the desire to see black people making independent efforts to sustain themselves in a provenly hostile environment” (Moses 23). In short, Whitaker’s separatist characters are not necessarily looking for separation from whites, but trying to survive in places that reject them or despise their way of life. Each film deals with the issue of separatism in a unique and interesting way, and we must examine how these films are both uplifting and problematic in their depictions of separatism.

We begin with the literal separatism demonstrated by The Last King of Scotland (2006).  Based on the story of real life Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, the film follows Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy), a doctor who comes to Uganda in the 1970’s to help the sick and needy. Through a series of chance events, he ends up becoming the doctor of the recently elected President Amin (Whitaker). As he serves Amin and is drawn deeper into the politics of Uganda, he realizes the horrors that are being committed under Amin’s regime and struggles desperately to escape.

The film’s main character is Garrigan, which, according to film scholar Diarah N’Daw-Spech, is typical for films of this nature. N’Daw-Spech says, “Historically, films based in Africa, featured its Black inhabitants in conflict with a White heroic adventurer” (The Crisis 57). In essence, the film is already positioning itself as a separatist film because despite the fact that a white character is present in a predominantly black society, the white character turns out to be the hero and the character audiences look up to, thus establishing a white male hierarchy in a self sufficient black society. The other white characters in the film are similarly praised, and the only woman character in the film to not have sex with Garrigan is the white doctor played by Gillian Anderson, a disturbing choice that could imply African women have the same thought process as what Donald Bogle refers to as the “big black buck” (Bogle 4) a black male character who is oversexed, savage, and hungry for white flesh.

Yet Amin himself is also a separatist. At the beginning of the film, he gives a speech to a frenzied crowd where he claims, “In my heart I am a simple man like you. I am you. We will make this country better, stronger, and free!” Yet by the end of the film, when a plane lands in Uganda filled with hostages, Amin’s first question is “How many of them are Zionists?” suggesting that Amin plans to murder those among the hostages who are Zionists. A foreign ambassador from Britain continually shows Garrigan evidence that Amin is murdering those people in his employ that speak poorly of him and his policies, and an ending title card tells that Amin ended up killing 300,000 Ugandans under his regime. Amin was able to accomplish all of this because, as noted by critic Eric D. Snider, “While Amin may be a homicidal despot (a fact that becomes more chillingly clear as time goes on), he’s also a charismatic leader.” Amin’s separatism is covered up in his speeches and his public persona, which makes Whitaker’s portrayal of the man all the more chilling, because he commits atrocities without the people of his country even knowing. When Garrigan confronts Amin about the murder of a doctor, Amin tells him, “You have stepped deep into the heart of my country. Uganda embraces you.” This could imply one of two things. Either the country of Uganda has an undercurrent of racism and bigotry underneath its exterior, or that Amin is making a statement about how he feels about leading Uganda in the future. The exact nature of Amin’s separatism is not sufficiently explored in the film, but the audience is provided with enough details from Garrigan’s discoveries to infer that Amin is looking to ethnically cleanse his country- in short, to create a separate country that is made in his image. The terrifying implications of Amin’s life and Whitaker’s fierce performance make The Last King of Scotland a portrait of both strict and implied separatism.

The Crying Game (1992) is not specifically about Whitaker’s character, Jody, but Jody provides the themes and lays the groundwork for the love story that unfolds in the final half of the film. Jody, a British soldier in Ireland, is kidnapped by the IRA, who plans to execute him if several IRA prisoners are not released by Britain. Jody is guarded by Fergus (Stephen Rea), and the two develop a bond. Jody asks Fergus to seek out Dil (Jaye Davidson), Jody’s lover from back home, should he end up being killed. At the end of the three days, Jody escapes custody only to be killed by a British army transport. Fergus escapes and starts a new life in London. He eventually meats Dil, and the two fall in love. Unfortunately, the IRA attempts to lure Fergus back in, and he must deal with their advances along with the unexpected revelations Dil has for him.

The central themes of the film are alienation, which directly relates to separatism, and human desire. We get the alienation right away, when Whitaker, a black man in Ireland, snarls at his captors, “I get sent the one place in the world where they call you nigger to your face.” Later, Whitaker tells the fable of the frog and the scorpion to Fergus, a story in which a scorpion crosses a river on a frog’s back, but ends up stinging the frog before they can cross, saying “It’s in my nature.” Is Jody implying that it’s in the nature of the Irish characters to be racist towards blacks? It appears that the film will leave it at that, until Whitaker’s character is killed and Fergus returns to London, where his British coworkers call him “mick” and “paddy”. Lori Rogers says that such slurs “not only remove Fergus from his true identity, but reveals how negative (his Irish identities) impact is in this British society” (Rogers 92).

This is further complicated when Fergus begins a relationship with Dil, who is not only black but ultimately revealed to be a transwoman, or a man in the process of becoming a woman. Now we are presented with two conflicts- the racism that was present both in the Irish towards Jody, and the sexual confusion that Fergus feels when he realizes he was attracted to another man.  Jody’s conversations with Fergus have implied that he might be gay. He tells Fergus about Dil, “She could be anybody’s type, but she wouldn’t suit you.” But the revelation of Dil’s gender puts Fergus in what perhaps could be seen as a parallel to Dil and Jody’s relationship- instead of two black people falling in love, it is a white man and a black transwoman.  Rogers goes on to say “Underlying this relationship (lies) an erotic possibility, a sense of mutual need and identification that could provide salvation for the protagonists.” (Rogers 96). The film implies its separatist notions further by saying that were these characters able to accept their racial, sexual, and national identities, their relationship would work out, but because they are from backgrounds that would not make them ideal lovers, society (in this case, another racist IRA member played by Miranda Richardson who utilizes her female sexuality in an attempt to lure Fergus back to the IRA) will persecute them and make sure that they do not find happiness.  Ultimately, the film ends with Fergus in jail for murder and Dil coming to visit him, where he repeats the fable of the frog and the scorpion, an interesting parallel to their relationship and the film’s ultimate resolution, in which Fergus takes the blame for a murder that Dil committed. The Crying Game is a challenging and complex work that warrants even deeper considerations than the ones presented here.

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) is by far one of the strangest films in Whitaker’s filmography. He plays a hit man for the mob named Ghost Dog, who lives on a roof, communicates through messenger pigeon, and follows the code of the Samurai, which requires him to be loyal to a master – in this case, a mobster named Louie (John Tormey). After a hit goes poorly, and the daughter of a mafia boss is left alive while her lover is killed, the mobsters decide to kill Ghost Dog to cover up their involvement with the murder. Ghost Dog works against them trying to kill the mobsters before they kill him and his master.

Defining the exact nature of the separatism apparent in Ghost Dog is difficult to do, as the film makes no definite statements on the nature of Ghost Dog’s past. We simply see how he lives, his methodology, and the code he lives by. Certainly literal separatism is present in the fact that a black man is serving a group of racist Italian mobsters who say things like “Indians, niggers, same thing.” But it is present in more subtle ways, like how Ghost Dog is frequently compared to a bear. Raymond, an ice cream truck owner who Ghost Dog converses with (even though the truck owner only speaks French and Ghost Dog only speaks English), says that bears are “solitary animals, adaptable to all sorts of climates, environments, and foods. Despite their limited social interactions, bears are a formidable adversary.” Later in the film, when Ghost Dog stops two hunters who have killed a rare black bear and asks “So you kill them because they are rare?” In this way, the filmmakers may be implying that Ghost Dog is simply a separatist because he is a unique individual who lives by the samurai code while simultaneously embracing both mob and hip hop culture. The subtle connection between ancient traditions and modern culture is always apparent in the film, and it seems as though Ghost Dog is more connected to the past than to the present, making him even more of a rarity.

Several critics posit that Ghost Dog is both insane and a man of extreme contradictions. Roger Ebert says Ghost Dog is “profoundly sad… (which) comes from his alienation from human society, his loneliness, his attempt to justify inhuman behavior (murder) with a belief system (the samurai code) that has no connection with his life or his world.” Alain Silver and James Ursini, on the other hand, connect his lifestyle with that of hip-hop culture, saying, “Although his gangsta looks fit the samurai stylization of his physical movements, Ghost Dog is distinct from that culture… Unlike the gangsta with his crew, Ghost Dog has and needs no one.” Ghost Dog’s penchant for rap music and his rap-stylized clothes seem to be in contradiction with the samurai lifestyle, although his clothing is certainly more muted than that of typical “gangsta” types.  Unfortunately, the nature of his character is never fully resolved by the end of the film, except that we know he follows the samurai code even to his death. By being a man of contradictions who lives alone, commits murders and has seemingly no past, Ghost Dog emerges as an almost self made separatist.

Forest Whitaker’s filmography is filled with work that positions him as an integrationist, and many of his films take on the topic of racism with candor and respect. But several of his works contain problematic notions of separatism that should be noted and discussed, even though the films contain many ideas and techniques of merit. Forest Whitaker will continue to select films based on his connections to the characters, and hopefully more of them will involve the issues of separation and integration in fascinating and occasionally oblique ways.