The Happy Sad
Film Review by Kam Williams
Couples’ Lives Serendipitously Intertwine in Bifurcated Brooklyn Drama
Stan (Cameron Scoggins) and Annie (Sorel Carradine) are a young couple in crisis. She recently informed him over brunch in a Brooklyn bistro that she wanted to take a break “to figure things out.”
Flabbergasted Stan pressured her for an explanation, so she lied and said that she was already sleeping with a fellow schoolteacher, Mandy (Maria Dizzia). Believing the fib, he decided on the spot to end the relationship.
The bitter breakup frees Stan to explore his own curiosity about bisexuality, so he makes the online acquaintance of a tall, dark and handsome stranger (LeRoy McClain). The two agree to meet, and end up mating on the first date. Only after Stan has given away his gay virginity does he learn that that Marcus has a live-in boyfriend.
What makes the situation even messier, his life mate, Aaron (Charlie Barnett), just happens to be a waiter Stan and Annie know from their favorite restaurant. Marcus and Aaron do have an open relationship that’s lasted six years. Trouble is, their only rule is you’re not allowed to develop feelings for anybody you cheat with.
That’s a problem since Marcus falls in love at first sight with Aaron. However, Stan isn’t quite inclined to reciprocate. He’s not even sure that he’s bi, let alone ready to come out of the closet to be in an interracial homosexual relationship.
Not one to give up easily, Aaron informs Marcus that “I want to take my jaw, unhinge it, and swallow your head whole.” Meanwhile, odd woman out Annie does seduce her cute colleague Mandy, but when lesbianism doesn’t work out proceeds to lick her wounds at a local watering hole where she turns the head of a two-bit comedian.
So unfolds The Happy Sad, a gender-bending romantic romp directed by Rodney Evans (Brother to Brother). You almost need a score card to keep track of all the coupling, uncoupling, and re-coupling, but the out-of-the-closet antics are amusing enough to intrigue.
Who will end up with whom? The possibilities are endless when the players are this open-minded and so confused about their identities!
Very Good (3 stars)
Unrated
Running time: 86 minutes
Distributor: Miasma Films
To see a trailer for The Happy Sad, visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKp_fZ4M-zE
Spark: A Burning Man Story
Film Review by Kam Williams
Visually-Captivating Documentary Chronicles Annual Bohemian Gathering
Every summer, about 60,000 free-spirited fugitives of civilization descend on an empty spot in the Nevada desert and dub it Black Rock City to participate in an annual ritual known as Burning Man. The gathering basically affords a horde of artistic, ex-hippie hedonists a week of fun in the sun free from the dictates of otherwise humdrum lives divided between being stuck in stultifying suburbia and commuting to boring, corporate desk jobs.
Braving nightly windstorms and sweltering 100+ degree days, these would-be bohemians are mostly aging flower children looking to recreate the magic they once enjoyed at counter-cultural concerts like Woodstock before finally making major concessions to conformity. Here, they make the most of the opportunity to shed their societal facades (and maybe even their clothes) and to get in touch once again with their primal selves.
Not that absolutely anything goes at Burning Man. The event does have ten guidelines encouraging: “Radical Expression,” “Communal Effort” and “Gifting,” to name a few. And “Participation” is mandatory, since no spectators are allowed.
Co-directed by Steve Brown and Jessie Deeter, Spark: A Burning Man Story is a visually-captivating documentary which chronicles the goings-on at last year’s gathering. We learn that the love fest is called Burning Man because the climax of the conclave involves setting on fire a 35 foot-tall, 3,000 pound effigy of a guy.
Many attendees work on their costumes, floats and/or constructions for months prior to their arrival, much like participants in New Orleans Mardi Gras or Philly’s Mummers’ Parade. But Burning Man seems to have a distinctly anti-establishment agenda, evidenced by the torching of 70 foot-tall models of skyscrapers called “Merrill Lynched,” “Goldman Sucks” and Bank of Un-America.”
Why Occupy Wall Street when you can occupy the desert?
Excellent (4 stars)
Unrated
Running time: 90 minutes
Distributor: Paladin Films
To see a trailer for Spark: A Burning Man Story, visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0XGiOnuxO8
The Speech
The Story behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream
by Gary Younge
Book Review by Kam Williams
Haymarket Books
Paperback, $19.95
192 pages
ISBN: 978-1-60846-356-5
“A great speech is both timely and timeless. First and foremost, it must touch and move its immediate audience… But it must also simultaneously reach over the heads of the assembled to posterity.
The ‘I Have a Dream’ speech qualified on both counts. It was delivered in a year that started with Alabama Governor George Wallace, standing on the steps of the state capitol, declaring ‘Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!’
The speech starts, both literally and metaphorically, in the shadow of Lincoln, ends with a quote from a Negro spiritual, and in between quotes the song ‘America the Beautiful’ while evoking ‘a dream rooted in the American dream’ and drawing references from the bible and Constitution…
Fifty years later, the speech endures as a defining moment in the Civil Rights Movement… This gripping book unearths the fascinating chronicle behind ‘The speech’ and the revealing events surrounding The March on Washington.”
-- Excerpted from Introduction
On August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, an unapologetically poetic appeal for the elusive equal rights long denied African-Americans. Unfortunately, over the years, the late martyr’s historic address has all but been reduced to his wish that “my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
A half-century later we find that “content of character” phrase being appropriated, quoted out of context and willfully misrepresented by arch-conservatives from Glenn Beck to Herman Cain in service of a right-wing agenda. For this reason, it is rather refreshing to find an opus like this being published on the 50th anniversary to remind us of the true meaning of Dr. King’s moving remarks.
The author of the book is Gary Younge, a broadcaster and columnist based in Chicago. Here, the award-winning journalist does a masterful job of not only dissecting Dr. King’s words, but of filling in much of the back story to the events leading up to his taking the podium.
We learn that “I Have a Dream” was not the planned focus of the speech, in fact, that divinely-inspired, emotional crescendo was substantially improvised on the spot as an afterthought. King’s intended theme merely revolved around an earnest explanation that blacks had descended on the District of Columbia “to cash a promissory note for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
For, while preparing his speech on the eve of the march, King had been advised by a colleague to cut out the lines about his having a dream. “It’s trite… It’s cliché,” Reverend Wyatt Tee Walker warned.
But, the next day on the National Mall, as Dr. King came close to finishing reading from his prepared text, gospel great Mahalia Jackson started prompting him to go off script. “Tell them about the dream, Martin!” she shouted repeatedly, referring to a familiar refrain she’d heard her dear friend eloquently riff about in sermons several times before.
Fortunately, Martin did indeed heed Mahalia, and began waxing romantic about his prophetic vision. “Aw, sh*t, he’s using the dream,” Reverend Walker moaned. Yet, as Coretta Scott King would recall, “At that moment, it seemed as if the Kingdom of God appeared.”
And the rest, as they say, is history.
To order a copy of The Speech, visit: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1608463222/ref%3dnosim/thslfofire-20
Forest Whitaker
“The Butler” Interview
with Kam Williams
This Forest’s on Fire!
Forest Whitaker is a distinguished artist and humanist. He is the founder of PeaceEarth Foundation, co-founder and chair of the International Institute for Peace, and the UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Peace and Reconciliation. A versatile talent, Forest is one of Hollywood’s most accomplished performers, receiving such prestigious honors as a Best Actor Academy Award for his performance in The Last King of Scotland, as well as a Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival for Bird.
Over the past decade, he has dedicated most of his time to extensive humanitarian work, feeling compelled by his social awareness to seek ways of using the film medium as a means of raising peoples’ consciousness. To that end, he produced the award-winning documentary Kassim the Dream, which tells the touching story of a Ugandan child soldier turned world champion boxer; Rising from Ashes, which profiles Rwandan genocide survivors’ attempt to qualify for the Olympics riding wooden bicycles; Serving Life, which focuses on hospice care for prisoners at Louisiana’s Angola Prison; and the Peabody Award-winning Brick City, which offers an unvarnished peek at inner-city life in Newark, New Jersey.
Whitaker was the 2007 recipient of the Cinema for Peace Award, and he currently sits on the board of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. In addition, he serves as a Senior Research Scholar at Rutgers University, and as a Visiting Professor at Ringling College of Art and Design, too.
Besides the aforementioned films, Forest’s impressive resume’ includes The Great Debaters, The Crying Game, Panic Room, Platoon, Ghost Dog, Mr. Holland’s Opus and Good Morning Vietnam. Here, he talks about his latest outing as the title character in Lee Daniels’ The Butler, a decades-spanning sage chronicling the life and career of an African-American who served eight presidents in the White House.
Kam Williams: Hi Forest, I’m honored to have this opportunity.
Forest Whitaker: Oh, no, it’s a pleasure just to talk to you, Kam.
KW: What interested you in The Butler?
FW: It’s an amazing story. And the script was beautiful in the way it followed this man who served eight presidents and portrayed his love for his family, as well as the love between him and his son. So, I saw it as offering a great challenge and opportunity. And I thought that Lee [director Lee Daniels] would do a wonderful job with the script as a filmmaker, so that was an attraction as well. And I had wanted to work with Oprah, so all of that came together to afford me this tremendous opportunity.
KW: Did the film’s father-son relationship resonate with you when you reflected upon your relationship with your own dad?
FW: Yes, it’s hard to always understand and appreciate your father when you’re coming up, especially since my dad had three jobs when we moved to L.A. So, he was always working. Plus, coming from the South, from Texas, he had a certain way of disciplining that made it hard for me to appreciate, at the time. You don’t fully appreciate the reasons why or the sacrifices that were being made until a later age. In some ways it did parallel the journey of ultimate appreciation that we see in the movie of me towards my son and my son towards me.
KW: How did you prepare for the role of Cecil Gaines?
FW: I trained with a butler coach for quite some time. And I studied the history and, of course, tried to make that a part of my own emotional understanding of the time period and the presidency. In terms of the aging process, I particularly had to work on movement and mannerisms. I also tried to understand the dialect and speech patterns. And I worked on how I could communicate my thoughts more clearly without words. I wanted to fill myself up enough so that you would be able to feel my thoughts, even in scenes where I would say nothing.
KW: That hard work paid off. I cried about a half-dozen times during the film.
FW: It’s very moving because it deals with so many primal issues: loss, degradation, even joy. Lee painted a picture that allows you to get in touch with many different emotions.
KW: True. Attorney Bernadette Beekman asks: What was it like acting opposite Oprah?
FW: Oprah just really committed completely to the movie. She was startling, at times, in how deeply she was into the authenticity of the scenes. For instance, there was a big emotional moment that wasn’t shown completely in the film where she screamed and fell to the ground, letting out a piercing wail that went through my bones. It had me trying to figure out how to comfort her, because it’s hard to find the proper emotion to respond to pain that overwhelms.
KW: Editor/Legist Patricia Turnier says: You are a great director, in addition to of course being an excellent actor. Personally, I love biopics, like where you played Charlie Parker in Bird. Is there a story about an icon that you would like to direct and star in?
FW: Yes, there’s a film I’ve been developing about Louie Armstrong that I’d like to direct and star in. I wrote the script and really believe in it. I think it’s something I’ll probably do next year, although I haven’t made a final decision about whether I should direct it or not. It’s a really special story.
KW: Leah Fletcher asks: How did it feel, when you were just breaking into the industry, to receive such a glowing acknowledgment from a seasoned and respected actor such as Sean Connery for your work in The Crying Game?
FW: Leah, I didn’t even know ‘til now that Sean Connery had commented about my work in The Crying Game. A lot of Brits believe that I was British for quite some time after that film. So, I can see how Sean Connery might have said something. That’s nice.
KW: Harriet Pakula-Teweles says: You produced the extraordinary Fruitvale Station. Is this a new role you see for yourself?
FW: The truth is, I produce one or two movies every year, both independent and studio films. I’ll continue to produce. In fact, I have a documentary that just came out about the Rwandan National Cycling team called Rising from Ashes.
KW: I loved it!
FW: Oh, you already saw it. Great!
KW: You can check out my review at Rotten Tomatoes. Bernadette also says: You are a true Renaissance Man. Besides acting, you write, direct, narrate and produce. You’re like a latter-day Oscar Micheaux.
FW: Oscar Micheaux reshaped the Black Film Movement. Those are some great shoes to fill. I can only take that as a compliment. Thanks, Bernadette. That gives me something to live towards, because it’s a lot.
KW: Director Rel Dowdell, who has made two low-budget films, including Changing the Game last year, would like to know how he can pitch you about a project.
FW: I have my company, Significant Productions, in Los Angeles. And I also have a company called JuntoBox Films Select, a crowd-sourcing film site which we produce movies out of. We just finished one with a first-time filmmaker, called Sacrifice. And we’re about to do another one in a month or so. Rel can reach out to either one of those companies.
KW: Is there any question no one ever asks you, that you wish someone would?
FW: [Chuckles] I can’t think of one.
KW: The Sanaa Lathan question: What excites you?
FW: Two things: The success of my children, and the work for social justice that I do with my foundation.
KW: When you look in the mirror, what do you see?
FW: I see someone who is continuing to try to build his connection with the rest of the world.
KW: If you could have one wish instantly granted, what would that be for?
FW: That everyone could recognize themselves in the face of the other people that they see.
KW: The Kerry Washington question: If you were an animal, what animal would you be?
FW: Either a leopard or an eagle.
KW: The Ling-Ju Yen question: What is your earliest childhood memory?
FW: My dad teaching me to ride a bike at about 5 or 6.
KW: The Anthony Mackie question: Isthere something that you promised to do if you became famous, that you still haven’t done yet?
FW: No, and my goals have expanded.
KW: The Viola Davis question: What’s the difference between you are at home as opposed to the person we see on the red carpet?
FW: I’m the same person, just with different clothes on. I’m the same.
KW: The Anthony Anderson question: If you could have a superpower, which one would you choose?
FW: I’d be a spreader of love.
KW: The Gabby Douglas question: If you had to choose another profession, what would that be?
FW: I’d either be a natural healer or a teacher.
KW: The bookworm Troy Johnson question: What was the last book you read?
FW: Solutions Focus. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1904838065/ref=nosim/thslfofire-20
KW: The Judyth Piazza question: What key quality do you believe all successful people share?
FW: Passion!
KW: Harriet also asks: With so many classic films being redone, is there a remake you'd like to star in?
FW: The Audrey Hepburn-Albert Finney film, Two for the Road.
KW: What advice do you have for anyone who wants to follow in your footsteps?
FW: Always tell yourself that you want to continue to grow, and you’ll be more connected to growth.
KW: The Jamie Foxx question: If you only had 24 hours to live, how would you spend that time?
FW: With my family.
KW: Thanks again for the time, Forest, and best of luck with The Butler, and I hope to talk to you about your upcoming independent project.
FW: Sure, Kam, and thanks again for supporting Rising from Ashes.
To see a trailer for Lee Daniels’ The Butler, visit:
Lee Daniels’ The Butler
Film Review by Kam Williams
Forest Whitaker Delivers Oscar-Quality Performance in Emotionally-Searing Civil Rights Saga
Eugene Allen (1919-2010) served eight presidents over the course of an enduring career in the White House during which he rose from the position of Pantry Man to Head Butler by the time he retired in 1986. In that capacity, the African-American son of a sharecropper felt privileged to be an eyewitness to history, since his tenure coincided with the implementation of most of the landmark pieces of legislation dismantling the Jim Crow system of racial segregation.
Directed by two-time Oscar-nominee Lee Daniels, The Butler is a father-son biopic relating events in Allen’s life as they unfolded against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement. This fictionalized account features Academy Award-winner Forest Whitaker in the title role as Cecil Gaines, and his A-list supporting cast includes fellow Oscar-winners Cuba Gooding, Jr., Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, Robin Williams and Melissa Leo, as well as nominees Terrence Howard and Oprah Winfrey.
The point of departure is a plantation in the Deep South, where Cecil witnesses his father’s (David Banner) murder on the cotton field for protesting his mother’s (Mariah Carey) rape at the hand of an overseer. Because the perpetrator was never brought to justice, the youngster gets the message at an early age that “Any white man could kill us at any time and not be punished for it.”
Therefore, eager to avoid the same fate as his dad, he skips town as a teenager, settling in Washington, DC where he lands steady work as a bartender in a hotel catering to an upscale clientele. There he also meets Gloria (Winfrey), the maid he would one day marry and start a family with.
Cecil’s sterling reputation as a polite and deferential black man eventually reaches the White House, where he takes a position on the express understanding that “You hear nothing. You see nothing. You only serve.” Although he manages to maintain an inscrutably apolitical façade on the job, the same can’t be said for the home front, where current events are freely debated.
There, Cecil finds himself increasingly at odds with his elder son, Louis (David Oyelowo), a civil rights activist inclined to participate in voter registration marches, sit-ins at segregated lunch counters and freedom bus rides. The simmering tension between the two builds over the years to the boiling point when Louis derisively refers to his as father an Uncle Tom.
At that juncture, Cecil’s protective spouse intervenes to slap her son before uttering the moving line likely to land Oprah Winfrey another Academy Award nomination: “Everything you have, and everything you are, is because of that butler.” However, Forest Whitaker is even more deserving of accolades, delivering a nonpareil performance as a humble provider understandably reluctant to rock the boat.
Kudos to Lee Daniels for crafting such a gut-wrenching tour de force which never hits a false note while chronicling critical moments in the African-American fight for equality.
Excellent (4 stars)
Rated PG-13 for violence, sexuality, smoking, profanity, ethnic slurs, disturbing images and mature themes
Running time: 132 minutes
Distributor: The Weinstein Company
To see a trailer for Lee Daniels’ The Butler, visit: