Black Directors in Hollywood

CHAPTER THREE. Black Urban Action Films and Mainstream Images

C H A P T E R T H R E E Black Urban Action Films and Mainstream Images The creative, pioneering efforts of Van Peebles, Parks, Davis, and Poitier were not just transitory occurrences that had no impact on the Hollywood scene. It wasn’t that Hollywood was contritely endeavoring to make reparations for its legacy of African American screen images, nor was there a particular era of egalitarianism that white studio bosses were opening up for black filmmakers. By the early 1970s, it became a clear business strategy that black screen images offered a means for tapping into a large paying audience who found something compelling in those black images. The ‘‘good Negro’’ images may have played well in the previous decade, which saw the civil rights movement reach its height, but the political, economic, and cultural changes under way in America by the early ’70s called for something new. The cultural images offered in black urban action films resonated with the times. The black urban action film—deemed ‘‘Blaxploitation’’ at the time—became its own genre, and the genre proffered popular images of black men and women through traits of extraordinary cool, sexuality, and violence. Black directors who obtained work in Hollywood at this time achieved varying degrees of success. Some made only one or two films, while others continued to work long into the 1980s and 1990s. Some worked only in films, while others directed projects for stage and television as well. Gordon Parks Jr. was the outstanding black director of the seventies black urban action genre, fashioning movies that held a discernible political edge. With a black director such as Fred Williamson, the black action hero became a recognizable icon who, for better or worse, could be interchangeable with his/her white counterparts. At the same time, directors such as Ivan Dixon, Hugh A. Robertson, Ron O’Neal, Gilbert Moses, and Raymond St. Jacques all made a name for themselves in other creative areas before turning to directing films. 4 5 Gordon Parks Jr. But remember, these two films [Shaft, Super Fly] brought out a new audience . They made money for shaky studios and launched new stars in Hollywood .1 Gordon Parks Jr. At one point in his early years as a still photographer, Gordon Parks Jr. worked under the name of Gordon Rogers to avoid confusion with or exploitation of his father’s name. But their names and professions would overlap in the early ’70s as father and son both directed two of the most recognized black films of the era—Shaft and Super Fly, respectively. Gordon Parks Jr. was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1934, and after attending the American School in Paris, he graduated from White Plains High School in New York state in 1952. He completed a two-year stint in the army before embarking on a career as a musician in the early ’60s. But drawn to photography, he developed a convincing portfolio, eventually earning a position to shoot stills for the feature film Burn (1969). In 1969, he also won a position as a cameraman on the shooting of The Learning Tree, his father’s first film. And again in 1972, he worked as a still photographer on Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather before getting the opportunity to direct his own film, Super Fly (1972). From there, Parks Jr. went on to direct three additional films—Three the Hard Way (1974), Thomasine and Bushrod (1974), and Aaron Loves Angela (1975)—before establishing his own film company in Kenya in 1979.2 Thomasine and Bushrod, perhaps inspired by director Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967), focuses on the titular black couple who are ‘‘stickup artists who roam the West after the turn of the century, shooting up citizens, falling in love (with each other) and distributing the plunder of the territorial banks among the poor folks. . . . They are pursued by a rabid white marshal, and naturally they meet a violent end.’’3 WithVonetta McGee and Max Julien as the title characters, most critics applaud their chemistry, but the overall assessment of the film is less flattering. Black critic Donald Bogle concludes that the ‘‘movie has some mildly entertaining segments but is far too fragmented and sluggishly directed.’’4 In a similar fashion, Aaron Loves Angela misfired in finding an audience. In his informative book, Blackface: Reflections on African-Americans in the Movies, black author, critic, and screenwriter Nelson George concludes that ‘‘Aaron Loves...