>I count 10 Spike movies made in the '90s, and 6 of them are
>certifiably good, and hands down better than anything BPKBP
>can deliver.

I was a bit reluctant to factor in stuff like Mo' Better Blues and Jungle Fever at first because come on people originally seemed to be dealing mostly with stuff from 1993 upwards...

but yeah, I think Spike was fine for the first few years of the 90s, but Crooklyn was the end of that winning streak.

He got his groove back with Get On the Bus, but that movie suffered due to lack of support.


>I definitely agree that MALCOLM X is Spike's pinnacle
>achievement. But to be fair, most directors hit a lull after
>big bio films. Oliver Stone after JFK (unless you consider
>NATURAL BORN KILLERS a well made movie - which it's not),

It most definitely is not.

>And it's a shame because the book is sooo good. Do yourself a
>favor and read Richard Price's books.

I read Clockers around the time the movie came out, but honestly, I did not feel it much ar the time because Price's approach felt too... anthropological. Like, I could tell that he had done a lot of research for the book, but the research seemed almost to weigh it down... I didn't feel he really captured the souls of his black characters.

(Maybe I should reading it again now in a post-Wire world, though.)

But then, Spike's problem in adapting the novel was the opposite: he clearly didn't give a shit about the cops.

>His problem was the studio, who used BPKBP as a shield. The
>studios saw bigger returns with BPKBP than say, a movie about
>racial identity, and started pumping out/better promoting the
>BPKBP flicks. Couple that with Spike's attitude (which
>shouldn't be a factor, but hey, if attitude wasn't a factor,
>Edward Norton would be playing the Hulk right now) and it
>becomes very clear why DEAD PRESIDENTS had more commercials
>airing than CLOCKERS (and lets be fair, DEAD PRESIDENTS is not
>better than CLOCKERS). So yes, it's very much a case of Spike
>vs. a genre.

I think Dead Presidents actually is a LOT better than Clockers... I wanna say that's just me, but I know I can't be the only one who believes this.

The problem Spike had was that his movies were just not sexy enough in the right way. I thin it's a bit simplistic to think it was because there was not enough of BPKBP... because when he tried to make one of those movies, it still didn't work for him.


>The "canceling each other out" factor is a big one here too.
>It's why you're not supposed to put out 2 similar movies at
>the same time - they both fail, and not just at the theatre. I
>know a lot of people who don't know which movie they saw,
>PRESTIGE or ILLUSIONIST, on cable the other day. Or the dozen
>war movies that came out in '07/'08 when you only went to see
>THE HURT LOCKER.
>And unfortunately, "Black people are in it" is viewed as a
>genre instead of just as casting.

Hmmm... I agree with the "canceling out" (I think The Prestige ultimately prevailed over The Illusionist, though). But why didn't most of the BPKBP movies cancel each other out? Why was it only Spike who suffered?

>I don't think people ignored failures in Spike's films or in
>his catalog because his peers weren't as good as him. Nor do I
>think people "assume" his movies are good because there are
>few black films of that time period. SHE'S GOTTA HAVE IT is a
>good movie, it doesn't matter who is or isn't making movies in
>1980-something.

I agree with you on SGHI... Nobody had seen anything like that before.

>I think people confuse problematic with social commentary.
>More often than not, complaints about his work stem from
>that.

I'm not talking about the social commentary, though... I'm talking about some of the "problems" that became a regular feature of Spike's movies. Such as his seeming inability to write an ending, and other third-act snafus... The preachiness was a bit of an issue too, of course.


>I never once got the impression he was mad there was a John
>Singleton or Hughes Bros. out there getting their work seen. I
>get the impression he's mad at the fact these movies that are
>about little more than glorified poverty and
>waaaay-overglorified violence get/got more attention than his
>films. Can you blame him?

Probably not... but what I *do* blame him for is his growing bitterness and anger towards the audience which I feel culminated with Bamboozled (which, by the way, I think is utterly craptastic though I know it's considered a brilliant classic in many quarters)


>It's the '90s: George Clooney has
>ZERO movie star bankability, can barely get noticed on two
>different TV shows and could not carry a movie (remember ONE
>FINE DAY or THE PEACEMAKER?). He's not a better actor than
>Wesley, and Wesley's been in the business longer. Cut to
>today: George chooses what movie he wants to make. Can Wesley
>do that? Could Wesley ever do that?
>That's the major point here: the movers and shakers of '90s
>rom-coms can make just about any movie they want. The movers
>and shakers of '90s BPKBP cannot.

Yeah, well... THEY'RE BLACK!!

I think that kinda goes without saying, doesn't it? It's not about BPKBP in particular... I think that if you compare black actors with their white peers in ANY era in history, for the most part the negroes are going to fall short in terms of career advancement.

>>Nia Long
>
>Note the difference between advancing and sticking around. She
>went from being the teenager in those BPKBP films to being the
>20-something in the ensuing black romances. Chances are good
>she'll end up playing the 30-something mom on a sitcom in a
>year or two. That's not advancing, that's playing what ever
>game is being played.

LOL well. I guess I was just giving a pass to anybody who managed to stick around. Because for a black actor to still be working after 15+ years... that's kind like an achievement, isn't it?

>>Is Hustle & Flow more violent than the average "white" drama
>>of its kind?
>
>Oh God no, but the reason it was able to get backing is
>because of the precedent set by those '90s BPKBP flicks.

I... I'm not completely sure about that.

>>It's been a long time since we had really violent black
>>movies, I think
>
>Word? You mean other than the movie about the poor girl who's
>raped by her stepfather, has multiple abortions, then gets
>AIDS? Or the movie where the main character wins by beating up
>Ludacris and going to jail?

Maybe it's wrong of me to do so, but I sort of think of the violence of Precious as being cut from a different cloth from BPKBP.

>What you see now are movies that use this hyper level of
>violence to tell dramatic stories. In short, the grown-up
>versions of all those '90s flicks.

Interesting way to put it... I have to think about that.

>>... After Friday, broad comedy replaced
>>violence as the defining feature of the "hood movie."
>
>Historically, this is true in every entertainment medium. You
>go from ultra violent to ultra goofy. That's not particular to
>black films.

Yup.

_____________________

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali