Top of the Heap

 1972, d. Christopher St. John - Criterion Channel

Part of Criterion's Beyond Blacksploitation programming.

A Youtube Black culture critic/essayist I follow, F.D. Signifier, said recently "There's no such thing as a 'conversation' about the Black experience between a Black person and a non-Black person...what that is is a lecture. What that is is me telling you about the Black experience...." which isn't to say that there can't or shouldn't be engagement, asking questions, receiving answers, but that's not a coversation, or a back-and-forth about the Black experience. He noted that just as he can't speak on certain experiences of white or queer or trans people, a non-Black person cannot speak to the Black experience.

What this all is to say is that Top of the Heap is most definitely a film about a Black experience (saying 'the Black experience' assumes it's a singular experience which doesn't seem right) and while I picked up on much of what the character George (writer/director Christopher St. John) is going through emotionally and culturally, I'm certain I'm missing much of the subtext (I'm still parsing out what the astronaut fantasy sequences are exactly conveying).

George is a police officer, but he's struggling with his position. His common refrain is "I can do whatever the hell I want" but it's a defense mechanism, both daring someone to tell him otherwise and also to convince himself that he's not as stuck or trapped as he feels.

George's mother has just passed away, and George can't face it. He's also just been passed over for a promotion to captain, which has almost completely disengaged him from his job, but he still can't help but be so straight-laced. He and his partner bust a couple of low level drug dealers who are just having a roast chicken dinner with some cocaine and counting their money. They infer a bribe to let them go invoking brotherhood but George goes into a deep sweat internally deliberating the choice between an inherently racist system and the job he's sworn to do to uphold it. The men completely disregard any authority he thinks he has and things come to a head until his partner turns up.

He's cheating on his wife with a young, broke lounge singer, and it's clear his wife is still looking for some semblance of love or affection from him, but finding little. His daughter, now thirteen, was busted making out with a boy by her mom, and George doesn't see the big deal (until he comes across an arrested 13-year-old prostitute which causes him to reconsider his almost feminist stance on female sexuality and discovery, and is a real unfortunate backtrack the film makes), and then he finds her high on pills. Between his job and his philandering he doesn't have time for his daughter (this is the only scene we see her in) but his guilt sends him out to perform vigilante justice beating the ever living shit out a drug dealer (not even necessarily the one who sold his daughter the pills).

There are multiple instances where George is disrespected by white people (including a tense encounter with another police officer) until they learn he's a cop and then he receives instant respect. Conversely, Black people treat him like a brother until they find out he's a cop, and then he's an other... working for The Man.

The film here is largely the stress George faces in his duality, hating his job despite being praised for how good he is at it, and that he doesn't seem to fit in with his community. In his waking dreams, he's an astronaut, a captain (the rank that passed him by), untethered to his daily existence, and yet, still unable to escape the Earth, his mission shot for the cameras in a studio warehouse. In the end, he's warned both in his real life and in his waking dream to get out, but where he was successful in his dream, he fails in life. The weight of his badge and gun, family, his choices, gravity all holding him down.

The film opens with George wading into a small scale riot between protesters and construction workers, he gets the cool close-up-from-below and a spunky "bullshit" line reading with a horn sting behind him as introduction. This is a fake-out of badassery that betrays the pensive, thoughtful film that's to follow, and is quickly subverted as he is tossed into the mud and a piss-filled balloon explodes on his face.

The music of the film is not great, and the dubbing is out of sync most of the time (and maybe even trying to correct the dialogue in post), so there are a lot of weaknesses in the production, but the story breaks through boldly and makes for compelling viewing. The narrative structure, as a tour of George's psyche, is practically flawless.

As engaged as I was, I still couldn't help but feel there's a part of this that I'm missing, aspects of the narrative that pass me by. But, if that's the case, it's because they're not meant for me to understand or relate to, and that's more than ok. This isn't a conversation for me to take part in, and it's not even a lesson. This movie isn't trying to approach or explain itself to a white audience. It shouldn't have to, and it doesn't care to. And it wouldn't work nearly as well if it did.

Dolemite Is My Name

Twenty-for-Seven #12 (Day 5)
2019, d. Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow) - Netflix

The Tarantino effect on my movie watching was rather huge.  My obsession with Pulp Fiction in the mid-90s drove me to seek out all sorts of different genres of music and movies I hadn't previously been exposed to, including blacksploitation.  I watched most of the big name pictures - Shaft, Truck Turner, Cleopatra Jones, Black Belt Jones, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song and more of the smaller ones - and was explicitly aware of both Rudy Ray Moore and Dolemite by name but I completely mistook what I heard about it as a celebration, rather than satire, of pimp culture.  It's so nice to be re-educated.

Dolemite Is My Name is half biopic on Rudy Ray Moore and half behind-the-scenes on the production of Dolemite.  It's also a very, very strong reminder of what a charismatic performer Eddie Murphy can be, and makes one wish he chose his projects more judiciously to be in higher standard efforts like this.

Rudy Ray Moore had tried it all, with unsuccessful records and comedy albums behind him.  In his mid-40's working at a record store  he desperately wanted to be an entertainer and showman of note, but by the 1970s the type of singing/dancing/comedy performers Moore was emulating had started to vanish.  Comedy clubs has started forming and performers like Redd Foxx and Richard Pryor started working blue, and Moore's outdated stylings were gaining him no traction.  Around this time he caught on to the local legend of "Dolemite", a figure of tall tales the homeless and addicted would tell each other for amusement.  Moore started refining the stories with dirtier, more comedic punchlines and then started inhabiting the character on stage.  After very successfully self-printing and selling records, he joined up with a label to greater success.

But there was still more opportunity he foresaw, especially at the movies.  He self financed (including a series of loans) production of a movie based around the Dolemite character.  It's not something that should have worked, really but his intuition served him well, finding the right crew of people to work with, and the right motivation for making it all happen.

The film serves Moore very well, presenting him as an up-front, honest, and decent man whose desires were to entertain and to make a name for himself doing so.  He shrewdly saw a need in a market and filled the void, multiple times.  The act of doing Dolemite may not have been his preferred way to becoming a star, but he was dedicated to performing, whatever it took.

Murphy is downright excellent in the role, disappearing into a personality that obviously means a lot to him.  There's a real sense of love and affection to the portrayal of Moore, almost as if Murphy is trying to say "this is how I'd like to be remembered some day".

The cast is excellent, with Wesley Snipes delivering an unflattering but hilarious performance as coked out, vainglorious actor/director D'Urville Martin (Martin in real life would have been 35 at the time of shooting Dolemite, and died at age 45 in 1984... Snipes is now 57).  Da'vine Joy Randolph is incredible as Lady Reed, who has a very close friendship with Moore, one that the film treasures without ever insinuating is leading towards a romantic one.  It's rather beautiful aspect of the film. Other supporting cast are rounded out by comedy stalwarts Keegan Michael Key, Craig Robinson, Titus Burgess, Mike Epps with some guest shots from Chris Rock, Bob Odenkirk, Snoop Dogg, and Ron Cephas Jones.

Dolemite Is My Name is a fun time and clearly made with an affinity towards the source and what it meant in its time.  It certainly made me curious about this overlooked blacksploitation parody on my part.  Black Dynamite is one of my favourite all-time movies and Dolemite seems to have been a clear influence on it.