SCOTT: I said it`s historically feasible. As I said, I don`t know the Mister character, but the man I went with said that`s his father.
SISKEL: I don`t want to be the bad guy here, but part of me wants to say to the black protesters, ”C`mon, grow up! Here you have a magnificent film of survival, an instructional film for black women. No longer than six months ago, I wrote an article saying that of all the teenage movies of 1985, there wasn`t a single image of a black girl. They were absolutely invisible. Then comes a film with some of the most powerful, rousing images of black women we`ve ever seen.
”These are fantastic things occurring for the images of black women, and for women in the American movies. And the protesters are dumping on this, soiling this movie and ruining it. They probably haven`t seen it or they`ve got thin skins. If they have it their way, William Faulkner can`t write about his rotten white people, and Orson Welles can`t make `Citizen Kane,` about a guy named Kane who`s a tyrant.”
SCOTT: You`re appealing to logic, and this is very emotional. The objection is, this movie will give white people who have that tendency another excuse to dislike black men.
PAGE: As if they needed any.
SISKEL: If people don`t like you, you can`t make a movie that`s going to make them like you more.
PAGE: Anybody who really hates black people isn`t going to see this movie. They`ll see ”Chorus Line” or something else.
SISKEL: My advice to the black community is, take this movie to heart, because this is one of the best movies about black people that exists. All that any ethnic group wants, and the only thing they ever complain about (and this goes back to the Italians complaining about ”The Godfather”) is that they want to be varied. They`ll take some bad guys; just give them some good guys. As Clarence pointed out, the images of black women have been far fewer, which, in my opinion, is the ultimate sin: invisibility. But here`s a movie full of images of black women.
PAGE: My only disagreement with you is whether ”The Color Purple” is a black story. The book is much more about black people, black history, black culture, than the movie is. In the movie, the fact that these people are black is a metaphorical statement more than anything else. It does talk about womanhood, family, love, and it does talk about how people discover themselves. But I would hate to tell everybody that this is a wonderful black movie, because I don`t think that`s really accurate.
The one thing I would add is that it`s sad that black males have been abused in movies and other media for so long, and have only recently begun to get the recognition they deserve. We still have to be defensive about what kind of movie is coming out and how we are being portrayed, so I can understand why there is this fear, this concern about a movie that may have negative images of black males in it. Why are we still so defensive? For a very obvious, historical reason: For the same reason women–women in general
–should be defensive about how movies portray women. Because heaven knows they`ve been abused often enough.
SCOTT: If you asked a protesting black male if he would have preferred for this movie not to have come out at all, he would say no, but this film is getting so much attention, what about films that show black men as strong, wonderful and brave and true? It`s not so much that this is a bad movie, but that it`s getting so much attention.
PAGE: Some other blacks made a similar statement. A 20-member black film review board made a two-pronged statement: Number one, they praised the movie for giving an opportunity for so much black talent to perform so well; number two, they were concerned about the negative black images. And that tends to be . . .
SISKEL: Well, if you want sugar-coated images, if that`s going to be the litmus test–whether it`s good because it`s a positive image–you`re going to get a lot of boring movies.
PAGE: But doesn`t everybody do that to some degree?
SISKEL: Every ethnic group reacts the same way. In the mid-`70s, when there were all kinds of black images on the screen–black westerns, black family dramas, black histories, black monster movies, black comedies, black musicals, black gangster pictures–a number of black people argued against the Superfly image. When they censored what was, by comparison, a much livelier time for blacks in the movies, I don`t know if it helped. Bill Cosby made
”Man and Boy,” a western, a decade ago and no one went to see it. Richard Pryor did ”Adios Amigo” and people did go to see it. That was a black western. The images are there.
I`ve been on record as saying that somebody ought to run a black movie theater in Chicago, given the population we have, and show black movies. There`s enough legacy in the last 10 years. We`ve had black film festivals, the Blacklight people have done it. There are images around to be seen. There have been a lot of black film festivals. Some of these films have not been supported. ”Man and Boy” was a beautiful film that no one saw. Cosby was still a star. The black community preferred ”Uptown Saturday Night” with Cosby and Poitier acting a little more jive, if you will, to ”Man and Boy,” which was a warm father and son story.
PAGE: You`re absolutely right. We should have more black theaters, more black film festivals. The fact that we don`t in a way . . .
SISKEL: And blacks better do it. You`d better do it yourself.
PAGE: Absolutely. But the fact we don`t have it fuels the defensiveness on the part of black males and females about any new black film coming out. The complaint earlier about black kids dominating TV shows registers first among black viewers. It`s the same with the sugar-coated image of Cabrini-Green on ”Good Time”–a lot of false images.
SISKEL: The fact is that when you protest this kind of picture, I`m sure some excutive sits there and begins to think: ”Hey, who needs it? These people can`t be satisfied. Forget it.” And that would be a dangerous situation.
SCOTT: I suppose it could become the proverbial self-fullfilling prophecy. But on the other hand, this sort of thing has happened with protest before–well-meaning white people saying, ”You`re harming your cause. Why don`t you shut up and just let things proceed.” And I can see two sides to that. I can see that happening, but I can also see more resentment coming through, saying, ”Yeah, well you use that as an excuse. You didn`t intend to make more black films as it was. Now you have an excuse.”
PAGE: My political view is that Hollywood has never let protest stop them from continuing to make racist movies–witness ”Year of the Dragon,” for example. They`re gonna do what they want to do out in Hollywood, I don`t think they really respond to protest one way or the other.
SISKEL: They did respond to protest in ”Year of the Dragon. Film companies put a disclaimer on new prints.
PAGE: How about ”The Godfather”? They just kept making more of them.
SISKEL: Francis Coppola had to go on television and make a disclaimer in front of us, that this does not depict all Italian people–remember when he went on TV? He had to do that . . .
PAGE: All I`m saying is it doesn`t stop them from distributing the movie, making new ones.
SISKEL: I`ll stand corrected by what you said, Ruby, to this extent, that there is a positive side to the protest as long as it doesn`t keep the movies from being made. Because if they are not made, then you`ve got nothing to talk about. But the talking about it is great. This discussion would not have existed without the protest, so, thank you to the people who protested–
(Much laughter)
SISKEL: –but I mean that–
PAGE: Amen to that . . . . Amen to that!
SISKEL: But that`s not the only issue. There are two separate issues. The protest is wonderful, because it gets us to talk, and the newspapers and the media to devote space to it, and that`s great. But what you`re reporting to me is that even in Chicago, which is embracing this movie better than any city in the United States, white people dominate the audience. White people dominate the population, but you wouldn`t expect it in this movie–
PAGE: It happened with ”Sounder,” didn`t it? Most people who watched
”Roots” were white. I think most of the audience that went to see
”Sounder” was white.
SISKEL: Well, let me tell you that, proportionately, blacks go to movies more than whites. Blacks support movies more than whites.
PAGE: But if we could support movies financially, they would be making more black movies.
SISKEL: The ultimate responsibility for the creation of black films goes to the black artists. Use any pressure you can, including this protest, to get what you want, but the way it works is–the old line used to be–if Steve McQueen wants to film Shakespeare, there`s gonna be Shakespeare with Steve McQueen in it. And, in fact, he wanted to do Ibsen and ”Enemy of the People” came out. That`s clout.
Clint Eastwood wants to do ”Honkytonk Man,” a gentle father and son story where he sings and doesn`t blow off anybody`s head, and it gets made. It bombs. Eddie Murphy is, right now, in that position. Eddie Murphy wants to do Shakespeare, it`ll get made . . . I think. What I`m saying is that it is incumbent upon these artists to make the story.
Richard Pryor in Chicago this past year made a film with a different image of a black man called ”Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling.” I`ll spoil some of the mystery of the film and reveal what it`s about. It starts with a man being burned up in a hospital, so it`s autobiographical, it`s about Pryor. Here`s a black artist talking about how you can basically destroy yourself with success–I assume that`s what it`s about–and survive. There`s another image of a black man. Now what are we going to say, that there`s a negative image of a black guy because he was snorting coke and got crazy?
All of which makes me wonder: Were there similar conversations, similar criticisms about ”A Soldier`s Story”?
PAGE: Good question. The only thing people claim about ”A Soldier`s Story” is that it wasn`t as hard-hitting as the stage play. I don`t recall real complaints about it.
SCOTT: No, no, as a matter of fact, the richness of the characters was praised. They were all male, you know, so you had some good ones and some not- so-good ones.
SISKEL: ”A Soldier`s Story” had the range. It had such a wide range that color ceased to be an issue.
SCOTT: Well, half of the community is female. I`m sure there are black women somewhere who might see the movie and not be moved by it, women who would zero in on the negative image of black males, but that would be unusual. What you might have is an initial flare-up by people who haven`t seen the movie and, as black women talk to them, won`t see this movie. But eventually it`ll become a situation where, if people don`t see the movie, they`ll shut up about it, because they don`t know what they`re talking about.
SISKEL: That, to me, is the last line of this discusssion: ”If you haven`t seen the movie, shut up about it!”
