Mystery Black performer on TV

[Joe G]

Did anybody else see this? Light-skinned black guy sitting in a chair with a mic, under a spotlight. I was going to call him a "comedian", but it was more social commentary, in the vein of Gil Scott Heron, I guess. Very stream-of-consciousness, ranging from funny to wistful to devastating. I could only take him in small doses, but I kept coming back. Anyone know who this is?

[Joe G]

Not ringing any bells? The guy was a trip. A very fast talker, like he had more energy than his body and mouth could handle. Like I said, I could only take him in small doses, but it was certainly different.

[Chuck Nessa]

What time was this on?

[Christiern]

Several years ago, there was a Shirley Clark film like that. I don't recall the guy's name (the film was named after him--"Joey"?), but she filmed him as he rambled on and reminisced, getting drunk in the process. At one point he said something rather shocking about Miles Davis, quickly adding, "but I'll never tell." His moods were a roller coaster ride, it was a remarkable film.

[Joe G]

What time was this on?

I came back from G.R. around 11 pm I think, so it was around that time. He wasn't getting drunk, just smoking like a chimney. I couldn't tell when this was filmed, as I didn't catch any references that would have dated it for certain. He was definitely an echo of the 60's, but whether he had experienced it himself is hard to say. He didn't look older than mid 30's, so it would have had to have taken place in the late 70's or early 80's if he was old enough to remember the 60's. But I got the feeling it was more recent than that... the closing credits had archival footage of the Black Panthers.

[Adam]

Several years ago, there was a Shirley Clark film like that. I don't recall the guy's name (the film was named after him--"Joey"?), but she filmed him as he rambled on and reminisced, getting drunk in the process. At one point he said something rather shocking about Miles Davis, quickly adding, "but I'll never tell." His moods were a roller coaster ride, it was a remarkable film.

The Shirley Clarke film is "Portrait of Jason."

It is pretty great.

[Christiern]

Thanks, Adam, that's the one. I'd love to see it again.

BTW I checked last Saturday's TBS schedule and didn't find anything like that.

Here's something on it from the NY Times site

Portrait of Jason

1967 - Biography/Gender Issues/Race & Ethnicity/Sociology

Type: Documentary

Distributor: Film-Maker's Distribution Center

Directed by Shirley Clarke. (NR, 105 minutes).

• Portrait of Jason is a disturbing but fascinating 90-minute exercise in the Avant Garde (earlier prints ran 105 minutes). Experimental filmmaker Shirley Clarke, produced, edited, directed and provided voiceover for this landmark film. Essentially, the picture consists of an interview with "Jason," a young black homosexual and male prostitute. Despite her kaleidoscope style, Clarke takes great pains not to editorialize: Jason is Jason, like it or not. While mainstream critics expressed nausea and disgust over Portrait of Jason, Swedish director Ingmar Bergman declared it to be "the most fascinating film I've ever seen." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
  

Edited March 23, 2004 by Christiern

[maren]

I never heard of "Portrait of Jason" -- sounds like I'll have to check it out.

But Joe G's description also made me think of "A Huey P. Newton Story" -- writted and performed by Roger Guenveur Smith off-Broadway ~5 years ago -- and then filmed by Spike Lee:

the film offers but one story about the charismatic, hyper-energetic, stuttering, chain-smoking Newton, a document of an off-Broadway play performance, in which Smith, as Newton, is the only person on stage, seated for the most part in a wooden chair, dressed in black, reading poetry, proclaiming his philosophies, fretting about the possibilities, and decrying the way it all turned out.

The play was conceived by Smith as an unscripted, ever-evolving event, and so the film, shot before a live audience in November 2000, can only capture a single night's improvisation. Using archival footage (a clip from Three the Hard Way when Newton gets on a jag about Jim Kelly, a soundtrack clip from William F. Buckley asking him to define "revolutionary suicide"), and sound effects (as in the play's live performances, you can hear a typewriter when Newton lists the Ten Points), Lee's movie is mesmerizing, disturbing, and provocative, much like its subject. His previous live performance films -- John Leguizamo's Freak for HBO, and the theatrical release The Original Kings of Comedy -- have revealed that he has a fine ability to attune his own eye and technique to subjects who already have a scheme for self-presentation.

For this film, Lee and Smith collaborated, and have made some beautifully nuanced and also audacious choices: a "See Spot Run" text appears by Newton's head as he reports that when he graduated from high school a "functional illiterate," he was assigned an IQ of "74, or 75 on a good day," and then spent years determinedly pursued his college and graduate degrees, wrote poetry and books, like Revolutionary Suicide. Or later, jazzing himself into a kind of dancing frenzy to Bob Dylan, Newton throws himself onto the floor and begins doing push-ups, smoking furiously all the while. The camera takes a low angle closeup shot of his face, sweating and pained, and Newton's smoke puffs right at you. It's unnerving, too intimate, and dead-on effective.

Throughout, Smith reveals his extraordinary ability to embody this vexed, vexing, and wholly fascinating character. His Newton is a bundle of nerves and justified paranoia, a feeling enhanced by Lee's prowling, circling, and sharply angled camera shots. At times you're looking at him through chain-link fencing, at others from overhead, and at still others, in dark silhouette, the smoke from his ever-present Kool forming a ghostly halo around his afro. He uses contemporary references to bring you along into his combination nightmare and reality, as he walks a tightrope of sanity and anxiety, ever on the verge of falling off. You know "Victoria's Secret?" he asks. Well, Newton goes on, he was haunted by "J. Edgar's secret," the specter of "that bitch" sneaking up behind him in a nightie and high heels. And the Panthers, he says, carried legal guns, like the NRA and Charlton Heston.

He encourages the live audience to laugh along with him, to respond when he asks questions of them. They remain anonymous, in shadow, seated around Newton/Smith on the floor and above him in balcony seats, such that the stage resembles the kind of surveillance-ready architecture of a prison. And so, you feel him when he announces, despite his visible gift and thrill at being the center of attention, "I hate stages. I'm not an entertainer." Indeed, Newton was not. He was a revolutionary, a brilliant thinker, and a man who was frustrated and anguished by his own insight into a legal and political system that was indeed designed to destroy him.

And indeed, Newton resisted performing for audiences, becoming an "icon" and a representative for the Cause, during his entire short life. That he's caught here, literally and figuratively, is both ironic and fortunate for us.

[RainyDay]

This sounds like the one-man show done about Huey Newton. I can't remember the actor's name. He was in Do the Right Thing and peddled pix of MLK and Malcolm in the film.

He talked very fast because that is how Huey talked, like he was on speed. That was BEFORE Huey found cocaine. Roger Guenveur Smith, that's the actor's name.

That's what it sounds like you might have seen.

[RainyDay]

maren and I both win cigars.

[maren]

maren and I both win cigars.

Well, at least we agree with each other, if this ISN'T what Joe G saw!!!

[stage production had music by Marc Anthony Thompson, aka Chocolate Genius]

[Joe G]

Cigars for the ladies! That's the guy. Mystery solved; thanks!

[Adam]

For those in Southern California, "Portrait of Jason" is actually screening soon at the LA County Museum of Art, as part of a great "jazz film" night of sorts, with "Pull My Daisy" and "Shadows." "Shadows" has a score by Mingus.

This is probably the first public screening of "Portrait of Jason" in L.A since 1998, when I included it in an Shirley Clarke tribute.

http://www.lacma.org/

Click on Films, click on the "America of Diane Arbus" series

Friday, May 7

7:30 pm

Pull My Daisy

(1958/b&w/30 min.)

Scr: Jack Kerouac; dir: Alfred Leslie, Robert Frank; w/Allen Ginsburg, Gregory Corso, Larry Rivers, Alice Neel, David Amram, Peter Orlovsky.

Pull My Daisy is a beat-era time capsule about a drunken literary gathering in a Bowery loft, shot silent and featuring improvised voice-over narration by Jack Kerouac and an “all-stars of the beat generation” cast. When the film was first released in New York, it was double billed with Cassavetes’s Shadows.

8:00 pm

Shadows

(1959/b&w/81 min.)

Scr/dir: John Cassavetes; w/Ben Carruthers, Lelia Goldoni, Hugh Hurd.

Restored print courtesy UCLA Film and Television Archive.

Shadows may well be the film that has defined American independent filmmaking for nearly fifty years. The film is a partially improvised story of interracial romance, and its naturalistic scenes strongly evoke the French New Wave, the culture of the beat generation, and the jazz music that fueled it. Shot entirely in gritty New York locations—and despite costing a mere $40,000—Shadows won the Critic’s Choice Award at the Cannes Film Festival. Its style and subject matter represent a spirit of candidness that had not been present in previous American films.

9:35 pm

Portrait of Jason

(1967/b&w/105 min.)

Dir: Shirley Clark; w/ Jason Holliday.

Restored print courtesy MOMA Film Archive.

Long unavailable for screening and made pre-Stonewall, Clarke’s legendary feature-length interview with a black male hustler in New York City was an audacious and provocative use of the new cinema-vérité technology to explore the hidden and taboo corners of society.

[medjuck]

BTW The late Shirley Clark also made a feature length film about Ornette Coleman.

[Christiern]

Did anyone mention Shirley Clark's 1963 film, "The Cool World"? It was a pioneering film that included several unknown black actors who would go on to fame. It also featured music written by Mal Waldron and played by a Dizzy Gillespie quintet with James Moody and Kenny Barron.

[ghost of miles]

Did anyone mention Shirley Clark's 1963 film, "The Cool World"? It was a pioneering film that included several unknown black actors who would go on to fame. It also featured music written by Mal Waldron and played by a Dizzy Gillespie quintet with James Moody and Kenny Barron.

I would love to find the original soundtrack of that, with Waldron playing. Another version with Dizzy was re-issued a few years back as part of a Verve twofer on one CD. Did the one with Waldron, done for the film itself, ever come out?

[ghost of miles]

THE COOL WORLD was based on a rather controversial novel by Warren Miller, btw. I've never read it--the author was white, writing from a black adolescent pov in Harlem. I once wrote a short story along similar lines, and therefore avoided Miler's book, since it seemed to provoke such a strong reaction from black writers (maybe I should've read it to get a better sense of what not to do!).

Another subject, sort of related to the thread topic: anybody ever catch Franklin Ajaye? I saw him about 15 years ago on HBO, doing stand-up, and he was fantastic. I think he wrote briefly for "In Living Color" but quit because he thought it glamourized ghetto life.