Anthony Mackie
The “Pain & Gain” Interview
with Kam Williams

Born in New Orleans on September 23, 1979, Anthony Mackie attended the Julliard School of Drama. He was discovered after receiving rave reviews for playing Tupac Shakur in the off-Broadway play “Up Against the Wind.”

Immediately following, Anthony made an auspicious film debut as Eminem’s nemesis, Papa Doc, in Curtis Hanson’s “8 Mile.” His performance caught the attention of Spike Lee, who subsequently cast him in “Sucker Free City” and “She Hate Me.” He also appeared in Clint Eastwood’s “Million Dollar Baby” as well as in Jonathan Demme’s “The Manchurian Candidate.”

Anthony had five features on movie screens in 2006. In addition to “We Are Marshall,” he starred in “Half Nelson,” with Ryan Gosling, adapted from director Ryan Fleck’s Sundance-winning short “Gowanus Brooklyn;” in Preston Whitmore’s “Crossover;” in Frank E. Flowers ensemble crime drama “Haven,” opposite Orlando Bloom and Bill Paxton; and in the film adaptation of Richard Price’s “Freedomland,” starring Samuel L. Jackson.

Besides an impressive film career, the gap-toothed thespian has performed both on and off Broadway, making his Broadway debut as the stuttering nephew, Sylvester, alongside Whoopi Goldberg in August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” Next he was seen as the lead in Regina King’s modern retelling of Chekov’s “The Seagull,” in Stephen Belber’s “McReele,” and in the Pulitzer Prize-winning “A Soldier’s Play.”

More recently, Anthony participated in the Kennedy Center’s presentation of “August Wilson’s 20th Century.” As one of more than 30 renowned stars of stage and screen, he performed in three readings of Wilson’s cycle of ten plays chronicling the African-American experience, each set in a different decade of the 20th century. A true aficionado of live theatre, he hopes to return to the stage soon.

In 2009, he played Sgt. JT Sanborn on the big screen in Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker,” a film which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. That same year, he reprised his role as Tupac Shakur in “Notorious,” the biopic of Notorious B.I.G.

In 2010, he took a break from film to return to Broadway where he starred in “A Behanding in Spokane.” He subsequently returned to Hollywood to appear opposite Kerry Washington in “Night Catches Us.” Then he appeared in “The Adjustment Bureau” and “Real Steel.” Last year, he made several movies, including “Man on a Ledge,” “10 Years” and “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.”

2013 is proving very productive for Anthony, with the horror thriller “Vipaka,” the coming of age drama “The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete,” the crime thriller “Runner, Runner” and “Bolden” being among his offerings. Here, he talks about his new movie, “Pain & Gain,” a fact-based crime comedy co-starring Dwayne Johnson and Mark Wahlberg.

Kam Williams: Hi Anthony, thanks for another interview.

Anthony Mackie: What’s going on, my man?

KW: Nothing much, brother. What an impressive resume you’ve compiled for someone so young: The Hurt Locker, The Manchurian Candidate, Notorious, We Are Marshall, Half Nelson, 8 Mile, American Violet, The Adjustment Bureau, Gangster Squad, Night Catches Us, etcetera, etcetera...  

AM: Thanks a lot, Kam. I’ve been very fortunate to land all the projects that I’ve done. I have a great team of people working with me.

KW: So, what interested you in Pain & Gain?

AM: It was the script. I was really psyched about Michael [director Michael Bay] doing a story with three-dimensional characters like these who you could real delve into to see what makes them tick.

KW: A Michael Bay flick with both that trademark action as well as some complex character development. It felt almost like I was watching a new genre of film.

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The Big Wedding
Film Review by Kam Williams

This picture is such a wholesale disaster that it’s hard to decide where to start in critiquing it. I could talk about how it is just the latest case of Hollywood remaking a French farce (Mon Frère se Marie) which somehow lost all of its charm in the translation into English. Or I could point out how it’s a slight variation of Meet the Parents and even has Robert De Niro reprising his role as a macho father-in-law less inclined to reason than to threaten to bust a kneecap or tweeze a guy’s gonads off.

Or I could focus on how the production squandered the services of a talented cast including a quartet of Oscar-winners in De Niro, Susan Sarandon, Robin Williams and Diane Keaton, as well as that of such seasoned comedians as Topher Grace, Katherine Heigl, Amanda Seyfried and SNL alum Christine Ebersole. Or I might mention the telling fact that the movie sat on the shelf for over a year before the studio made the ill-advised decision to pump up the marketing and dump it on the gullible public.

Then there’s the homophobia and racism, reflected in disparaging offhand, remarks about lesbian and Colombian characters. Equally-objectionable is the picture’s frequent resort to sophomoric sight gags ranging from projectile vomiting to sucker punches to the face.

Perhaps most offensive of all is the film’s coarse, off-color humor featuring a life-size sculpture of a nude woman masturbating, a seductive wedding guest pleasuring her seatmate under the table during the reception, and a relentlessly-lurid script laced with salacious lines like “I can’t believe I’m being cock-blocked by my own mom,” “Go [expletive] a yak!” and “My father had his penis in your mom.”

All of the above amounts to a bitter disappointment, especially given the pedigree of the elite ensemble. Blame for this fiasco rests squarely on the shoulders of writer/director/producer Justin Zackham, who ostensibly was trying to replicate the lowbrow nature of his only other feature-length offering, Going Greek, a raunchy teensploitation flick released back in 2001. 

As for the storyline, Mr. Zackham lazy relies on “The Big Lie” cliché, a hackneyed plot device popular on TV sitcoms since the Golden Age of Television. It basically revolves around characters going to increasingly great lengths to hide an embarrassing fact from someone until the ruse blows up in their faces and the truth comes out anyway.

Here, we have Missy (Amanda Seyfried) and Alejandro (Ben Barnes) on the verge of tying the knot in Connecticut, when they learn that his birth mother, Madonna (Patricia Rae), is unexpectedly flying in from Colombia to attend the wedding. Because she’s a devout Catholic, they don’t want her to know that the adoptive parents (De Niro and Keaton) have been divorced for a decade.     

So, instead of simply explaining the changed state of affairs to Madonna, everybody agrees to participate in an elaborate cover-up to make it appear that Don and Ellie are still together, even though he’s currently in a committed, long-term relationship with Bebe (Sarandon). What a patently-preposterous premise!  

The escalating concatenation of calamities adds-up less to a sidesplitting, screwball comedy than to an incoherent string of crude skits, the crudest being a scene where an undignified De Niro sheepishly sports a substance-eating grin after getting caught in the act of performing cunnilingus between a widespread pair of naked legs.

Look! A falling star! Make a wish!

Poor (0 stars)

Rated R for profanity, sexuality and brief nudity

In English and Spanish with subtitles

Running time: 90 minutes

Distributor: Lionsgate Films

To see a trailer for The Big Wedding, visit

King's Faith
Film Review by Kam Williams

Brendan King (Crawford Wilson), a kid raised in the foster care system, was sent away at the age of 15 after being caught dealing drugs and running guns as a member of a notorious gang known as Avenue D. Upon parole a few years later, the juvenile offender was released to the custody of Vanessa (Lynn Whitfield) and Mike Stubbs (James McDaniel), a couple still struggling with the loss of their police officer son in a senseless act of violence while he was on duty.

The emotionally-wounded foster parents see taking Brendan in as an opportunity to not only help rehabilitate an at-risk youth but to perhaps restore their faith in humanity, too. Because the boy became Born Again behind bars, the prospects for his future are very bright indeed, despite a checkered past marked by 18 different foster home placements, 9 felony and 11 misdemeanor arrests, and 4 convictions.

After all, he’s now settling into a new school, Northside High, and living in a relatively-upscale suburban enclave located a safe distance from the bad influences rampant around the ‘hood. Furthermore, to keep Brendan on the straight and narrow, the Stubbs give him a curfew, find him a part-time job, and even encourage him to join The Seekers, a Christian community service group for teenagers.

Everything goes well until the fateful day he rescues a classmate from a car wreck. Natalie (Kayla Compton), a girl most likely-type, happens to be president of the school’s student council. However, she ends up in trouble when the police find drugs in the car at the scene of the accident.

But Brendan’s role as the hero lands him in the limelight, which has the unfortunate side effect of notifying his former partners in crime of his present whereabouts. Soon, they show up looking for the fruit of the valuable contraband he’d hidden before being sent up the river, and they threaten to put a hurtin’ on him if he doesn’t deliver or rejoin their ranks.

Will Brendan revert to his old outlaw ways? Or will the convert put his trust in the Lord and avoid temptation this time around? Thus unfolds King’s Faith, a very relevant morality play written and directed by Nicholas DiBella.

Carefully crafted with Evangelicals in mind, this modern parable will certainly resonate with the faith-based demographic as well as secular individuals interested in an entertaining, wholesome family flick with a sobering message. The cinematic equivalent of a thought-provoking Bible study likely to ignite further discussion about a variety of real-life challenges folks face today.

Very Good (3 stars)

Rated PG-13 for violence, drug use and mature themes

Running time: 107 minutes

Distributor: Faith Street Film Partners

To see a trailer for King's Faith, visit

Paradise: Love
(Paradies: Liebe)
Film Review by Kam Williams

Paradise: Love is the initial offering in a trilogy of incendiary dramas from the Austria-born director Ulrich Seidl. Each of the three installments focuses on a different female from the same family.

This episode revolves around Teresa (Magarete Tiesel), an unremarkable single-mom whom we find tired of her Vienna existence at the point of departure. The jaded 50 year-old divides her time between raising an adolescent (Melanie Lenz) and working with the mentally-handicapped.

Needing a break from that humdrum routine, Teresa leaves her daughter in the care of a sister (Maria Hofstaetter) before flying alone to Kenya for a much-needed vacation. However, she’s planning for a little more than fun in the sun, since her destination is a resort that caters to the carnal desires of European sex tourists.

Specifically, it’s older white women looking to get their groove back, so to speak, with help of African men, the younger and better endowed the better. The goal, obviously, is less to find romance than to mate with any hunks who find them attractive.

Upon arriving, Teresa checks into the hotel where she makes the acquaintance of several fellow Austrians with the same goal in mind. What soon unfolds is a series of lusty liaisons approached by the consenting parties with a compatible set of competing expectations.

The women want to be wined and dined a bit prior to seduction, while the local lads are more than happy to oblige with the unspoken understanding that they will be tipped generously for providing stud service. Given the language, age and cultural differences, it is no surprise that complications still ensue for first-timer Teresa as she awkwardly attempts to negotiate her way with fellows with hidden agendas.

Will her cravings be satiated? Will she be respected in the morning? Will she be fleeced out of every last pfennig by the local Romeos? Those are the basic questions raised over the course of this intriguing character study, a female empowerment flick which harks back to Heading South (2005), a similarly-themed film set in Haiti starring Charlotte Rambling.

Fair warning: the film does feature graphic nudity and indiscriminate coupling, as the ladies sensuously sample a veritable smorgasbord of native cuisine. When all is said and done, Teresa returns home revitalized enough to resume her unfulfilling life, but ostensibly having to keep her assorted sexual conquests a secret.

After all, as the saying goes: What happens in Nairobi, stays in Nairobi!

Excellent (4 stars)

Unrated R for violence, profanity, graphic sexuality and frontal nudity

In German, Swahili and English with subtitles

Running time: 120 minutes

Distributor: Strand Releasing

To see a trailer for Paradise: Love, visit

Mike Tyson
The “Scary Movie 5” Interview
with Kam Williams

Born in Brooklyn on June 30, 1966, Michael Gerard Tyson is an all-time boxing great who, in his prime, struck fear in the heart of any opponent he squared off against. He compiled an impressive record of 50 wins, 5 losses and 1 disqualification for biting off an opponent’s ear over the course of an incomparable career in which he became the first undisputed heavyweight champ to hold the WBA, WBC and IBF title belts simultaneously.

Iron Mike has weathered a host of woes and controversies outside the ring ranging from allegations of spousal abuse to a rape conviction to the death of his 4 year-old daughter, Exodus, to declaring bankruptcy after frittering away over $300 million in prizefight purses. Today, he is a very happily-married man, with a couple of children, Milan and Morocco, by his third wife, Kiki.

Mike is currently on a 36-city tour of the country in “Undisputed Truth,” a one-man Broadway show which is part comedy/part confessional and covers all of the above and more. Here, the pugilist-turned-actor talks about his latest movie, Scary Movie 5, co-starring a rogues gallery of controversial celebrities including Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, Katt Williams and Snoop Dogg.

Kam Williams: Hi Mike, thanks for the interview.

Mike Tyson: What’s up, Kam?

KW: I really appreciate your taking the time to speak with me.

MT: It’s all good in the ‘hood, my friend.

KW: Ray Hirschman asks: What interested you in Scary Movie 5?

MT: Whew! It’s a franchise that’s going to last ‘til the end of time. I wanted to be involved with that. I don’t care how silly it comes across. It’s more so for us than for kids. It’s adults acting stupid and silly.   

KW: What was it like working with this cast?

MT: Everybody was great. Ashley [Tisdale] was awesome. I got an autographed picture of her for my niece.

KW: Children’s book author Irene Smalls asks: How did you get into acting?

MT: Just from messing around with a friend, Jim Toback, the director of The Pickup Artist. I always used to see him in New York and talk to him when I was younger, like a teenager. Anthony Michael Hall brought me onto the set of one day in about ’86, and Jim and I became acquainted and then good friends, and he started putting me into his movies, first Black and White, and then we did Tyson. He thought I was an interesting character. After that, I did The Hangover and got bitten by the acting bug. I have a lot of friends who’ve won Oscars, and they started telling me I could do it, too.  

KW: I remember your doing a great job in Black and White opposite some famous daughter. Who was it, Jennifer Jason Leigh?

MT: That was Bijou Phillips. She was awesome in that film.

KW: And Jim’s documentary, Tyson, was riveting from start to finish. 

MT: I’m just very grateful for his friendship. He’s a remarkable dude.

KW: Larry Greenberg says: When we talk about comedy, you hear words that could refer to boxing like “timing” and “punch line.” Do you see any similarities between the two?

MT: I don’t know. People tell me I’m a comedian, but I don’t approach acting from that perspective. I do know that everything in life has to do with your timing and perception. You have to be comfortable with the rhythm that you’re in. You can’t just jump into a fast rhythm if yours is slow. You might have to pick up the pace but in your own particular way. It has to do with personality, too.

KW: Richie the intern was wondering how the play‘s coming along?

MT: We’ve been doing just great, selling out every night. And I couldn’t believe the reviews. I couldn’t believe it was me they were talking about. They’re saying “Remarkably funny!” and “Moving!” I was like “They’re talking about me?” The biggest honor I had so far was when the comedian Jeff Ross told me he liked it and said, “You’re one of us, now” That was just amazing.

KW: Fight fan Mike Ehrenberg asks: Who was stronger, Razor Ruddick or Bonecrusher Smith?

MT: Bonecrusher was stronger, but Razor Ruddick hit harder.

KW: Mike also asks: What was the hardest punch you ever took in the ring?

MT: Wow! A bunch of guys really rang my clock. Gee! Razor Ruddick… Lennox Lewis… Evander Holyfield… They all did a number on me.

KW: Finally, Mike is curious about how you think you would’ve matched up against some of the other heavyweight greats in the ring?

MT: I have no idea. I just did what I did in my era, basically because of my admiration for the guys who came before me. That’s how I’ve always looked at it. I never thought of boxing like, I’m going to be the greatest fighter ever and make a lot of money. Instead, I thought I was going to win because I learned from the best. I carefully studied the videotapes of all the fighters from the past, dissected their styles, and entered the ring with their spirit.

KW: Harriet Pakula-Teweles says: Champ—you’ve had a long and varied career that involved lots of press coverage. What’s the thing you’d most have us remember about you?

MT: Overcoming my adversities.

KW: When you look in the mirror, what do you see?

MT: Me? I see an old, broke-ass black guy taking care of a bunch of kids, living life, taking them to school, and all that stuff, who’s asking himself: What the hell is this? But I wouldn’t give it up for the world because I love my wife. I never expected to have a life like this. No chaos… no confusion… no lawsuits… no violence… no going to jail…

KW: I’m originally from Bed-Stuy, too, from around Nostrand Avenue and Eastern Parkway.

MT: I know where that’s at. That’s an awesome neighborhood! Bed-Stuy, do or die! I’m from Franklin between DeKalb and Willoughby. Do you remember the Welfare place at 500 DeKalb?

KW: Sure, I’m older than you. I was born in the early Fifties.

MT: Oh, so you know what’s really going down. My mother used to have us waiting with her in that long-ass line when we were kids. But we moved to Brownsville when I was 10.

KW: The Ling-Ju Yen question: What is your earliest childhood memory?

MT: Being in the hospital at about 5 years of age, after I drank some Drano. I remember it like it was yesterday. My mother had a bunch of people over the house, and I drank it because no one was paying me any attention.

KW: Yeah, children would prefer to be praised than punished, but they’d rather be punished than ignored.

MT: No doubt about it. That’s life. That’s our nature as human beings. 

KW: What is your favorite dish to cook?

MT: Artichokes.

KW: Lastly, if you could have one wish instantly granted, what would that be for?

MT: That my daughter could still be with us.

KW: My condolences, Mike. Thanks again, and best of luck with all your endeavors.

MT: Thank you, Kam. Okay, brother.

To see the schedule for Mike Tyson’s one-man play Undisputed Truth, visit

To see a trailer for Scary Movie 5, visit