Archives for Spike Lee

Interview with Director Sam Pollard

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BUILDING ON LEGACIES: INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR SAM POLLARD

Editor-turned-director’s latest work features late Mayor Maynard Jackson

Sam Pollard on set

There’s something synchronistic about a trailblazing African-American mayor, who paved the way for a trailblazing African-American president, having his story told by a talented editor-director, who himself came up through the influence of a legendary African-America director.

Pollard, left, and Spike Lee with their Emmys

Sam Pollard’s timely documentary Maynard, then, is an exemplar of black legacy all around—in front of and behind the camera. We read frequent reports of the current presidential administration on a quest to erase the legacy of the country’s first black president. Pollard’s film asserts that Barack Obama’s legacy, in part, is a continuation of strides began from folks like Maynard Jackson.

“Listen,” Pollard says, “looking at Maynard in hindsight is a breath of fresh air.”

CHECK OUT MY REVIEW OF MAYNARD

Maynard Jackson Jr.’s story is long overdue for the screen. In 1973, the charismatic, unflappable politician was elected mayor of the city of Atlanta, becoming first African-American to lead a major southern city. Jackson held the post for three terms and by the time of his death had changed the course of politics.

Maynard Jackson

Pollard’s film illuminates a political terrain fraught with racial discord, political in-fighting, complex alliances, both black and white. Sound familiar to today’s politics? And yet, Maynard inspires hope. Our nation’s been through this before, it says, and we have come through the other side.

Even before becoming a longtime editor of the films of director Spike Lee, Pollard had a winding career in editing. Before Lee, Pollard spent 20 years doing low-budget work with vanguards like the late Bill Gunn. But working with Lee for more than 20 years has provided Pollard with “a sense of how to tell a story,” he says. “Being an editor has had a very positive impact on my directorial career.”

The Emmy winner (his “Slavery By Another Name”), four-time Peabody Award winner and Academy Award nominee has produced films on playwright August Wilson, singer Marvin Gaye and author Zora Neale Hurston.

In Maynard, Pollard’s command of his material—with assistance from his editor Jeff Cooper and cameraman Henry Adebonojo—is on display. The documentary vibrates with a sense of the era—its roiling racial politics, its music, the clothes. Maynard Jackson, tall and broad, uses carefully chosen words, commands audiences with his articulate speeches and forthright assertions. Sound familiar? We see Jackson, successful in high school and college, grandson of famed civil rights leader John Wesley Dobbs, primed for greatness.

There would be stumbles along the way. Facing defeat after a run for the Georgia senate, a young Jackson dusted himself off, and turned the experience into a successful campaign for mayor.

Pollard uses archival footage to great effect. I was gobsmacked by footage of a portly Jackson in the ring with Muhammad Ali for a promotional boxing match. News footage and interviews of the Atlanta child murders that rocked Jackson’s second term remain potent. And Jackson’s legacy-burnishing renovation of the Atlanta airport into an international hub truly speaks to his lasting accomplishments.

Pollard with Shirley Franklin, former mayor of Atlanta

But it’s the talking heads that give weight to Pollard’s film and Jackson’s story. Famed mayors Andrew Young and Shirley Franklin. Civil rights heavy-hitters Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Former President Bill Clinton. Attorney Vernon Jordan. Pollard gets them to speak personally about Jackson. The voices of Jackson’s family wring true intimacy from the proceedings. Jackson’s son, daughters, ex-wife and widow bring the Jackson legacy into focus. Their contributions went beyond speaking in front of the camera, though. It was the Jackson clan that brought Maynard to life. Pollard says he was sought out by the family to bring the story of the late mayor to the screen.

“The family reached out to me,” he says. “They were looking for someone to help produce a film about their father.”

The family understood its patriarch’s place in history. A quote by Jackson’s daughter Bunnie Jackson Ransom—“He was the Obama before Obama”—has been used in some promotional materials.

Maynard was not a perfect mayor. He belatedly contended with a corrupt cabinet member, and seemed to lose his zest for politics during his apprehensive third term. Pollard intended to create a full portrait of the man.

“The easy part would be to not have complexity,” he says. “I wanted a very rounded perspective.”

Bill Clinton on Maynard Jackson

To that end we see former mayors still touched Maynard’s influence, Bill Clinton’s eyes brighten as he relates a Jackson anecdote as only he can. And the scene in which the news of Maynard’s untimely death reaches each of his family members is masterfully filmed and edited.

The documentary gained from what Pollard calls the “benefit of living witnesses.” The film boasts participation from other trailblazers of the era.

“They are still alive. All these former mayors touched by him,” he says. “You can hear directly from people who pass on his legacy.”

Up next for Pollard is a feature film on the life of Bert Williams, a black entertainer from the Vaudeville era. The Bahamas-born Williams rose to become one of the most popular comedians of his day. Pollard’s film, sure to be as provocative as Spike Lee’s Bamboozled, is in the fundraising phase.

Maynard debuts Nov. 16 at DOC in NYC.

Official site here

Sam Pollard’s filmography here

 

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Quik Flix Hit

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Video review

Oldboy (2013)

Rated R

oldboy

Good Universe/Vertigo Entertainment

In Oldboy, Joe Doucett (Josh Brolin) slaughters a dozen men during a battle royal up and down a sparse warehouse corridor. This film too was slaughtered at box office. That director Spike Lee’s remake of the fantastic 2003 South Korean film bombed confuses me. He’s a gifted director, regardless of how you receive his politics or social activism, and the original is a movie so good even a mediocre director would have to go out of his/her way to ruin it. So how did this happen?

In the BloghouseI’m not sure, but don’t miss the opportunity to give this overlooked drama/thriller a chance now that it’s available on DVD. Be warned, though, that like the brutal, uncompromising original, its taboo subject matter revealed in its final act is not for all sensibilities.

Much of the original story remains intact, though relocated to an American city, of course. Beginning in the early 90s, we meet Doucett as a slimy, perverted drunken ad exec who misses his daughter’s third birthday party for sake of a do-or-die client meeting he quickly destroys through his piggish behavior. Doucett is the type of guy you suspect would have missed his daughter’s birthday regardless, and is quick to tie one on after a night of abject failure. We know the drill: vomit, urine, tears, a meek attempt at reconciliation. We’d feel sorry for him if he wasn’t such a slimeball who deserved everything happening to him.

After that intro, he awakens alone, locked in what appears to be a modest hotel room, hung over, confused. He will remain in this room for 20 years. As he round-robins through fear, anger, sadness, suicidal thoughts—and takeout dumplings—a television offers hints at the changing world outside: The Clinton years, the George W. years—including the Sept. 11 attacks and the second Iraq war—and into the Obama years. The TV also offers martial arts programs, which help him tune up his flabby physique; an exercise program, whose comely female host becomes a sexual surrogate; and most importantly, a true-crime show that details the rape and murder of his ex-wife, the frame-up that makes the missing Doucett the suspect, and the subsequent adoption of his daughter.

This is a terrific first act.

Just as he’s about to execute a years-in-the-making escape, he’s gassed and released, provided with an envelope of money, an iPhone and cool sunglasses. Doucett knows what needs to be done: find his daughter, create a long list of people he may have wrong and set off on a mission of revenge. By the way, years of studying martial arts on TV can be put to good use in the real world.

In his search, Doucett meets two key people. The first is a caring social worker and former drug addict (Elizabeth Olsen, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Godzilla) who reads the never-mailed letters Doucett wrote for his daughter while locked away and is moved by his plight. The second is the shadowy figure (Sharlto Copley, District 9) who is responsible for Doucett’s incarceration. This guy’s an effeminate, obscenely rich, seemingly all-knowing puppet master, who’s obviously demented. He makes Doucett an offer that makes up the second act of the film. Doucett has to discover who this man is and why he imprisoned him for 20 years. If he can accomplish this in 48 hours, the mystery man will confess to being the real culprit in his wife’s death (which he proves with a sickening video), pay Doucett millions of dollars, free his daughter (who the man maintains he has captured) and finally commit suicide.

The rest of the film plays out as a cat-and-mouse drama, love story and fight film leading to the big twist of the third act.

Brolin’s (Sin City: A Dame to Kill For) antihero is as grungy and nihilistic as actor Choi Min-shik’s version in the original; however the former’s character seems driven by obsession and trauma, while the latter’s performance has those plus a layer of insanity.

I think the film gets a lot right. It respects Chan-wook Park’s original, paying subtle homage to the infamous squid scene and the nasty tongue scene. And in a couple instances it one-ups its predecessor with the neat use of smartphone technology and a box cutter; it even sidesteps the hypnosis scenes I thought were the most contrived elements of the original film.

Park is nearly peerless in his cinematic framing, visual composition and shock imagery; his skills move his nasty genre effort to elegant heights at times. Lee doesn’t mimic Park, but relies on his own talents in tonal shifts, image repetition, his trademark “floating” double dolly shot and complex music cues to make scenes snap. While I don’t think Lee’s film captures character quirks and complexities as well as Park’s, the impact of Lee’s tweaked final act still shocks, disgusts, saddens.

So what’s going on? How did a movie this good fail so shockingly at the box office? We might factor in Lee’s controversial nature—did it bring perceived baggage to a genre film? (It certainly didn’t to his Inside Man.) Also, the original was a masterwork that has gained cult-film status; it’s always tricky to tamper with that kind of work. I recall casting changes, the film’s release date being shuffled around, and talk of studio interference of the final edit. If its failure was a matter of poor timing and promotion, it’ll find a good life on home video.

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