C&C 41: Blaxploitation, An Amnesiac Assassin, And A Shakespeare BBQ

Plus some other recommendations

Before he became the film critic at the Boston Globe, Odie Henderson was a tech worker and a regular at the mothership Noir City festival in San Francisco. I had cocktails with him and Eddie Muller once or twice at Twin Peaks Tavern near the Castro Theatre. From those conversations, I knew I’d enjoy his new book Black Caesars and Foxy Cleopatras: A History of Blaxploitation Cinema (2024).

He structures this entertaining, idiosyncratic survey chronologically, covering 1970-78, opening each section with what’s happening in American culture at the time. Best of all, he casts the net appealingly wide, considering Blaxploitation-adjacent fare like the James Bond film Live and Let Die (1973), calling it a “Hollywood ouroboros” as it opened when it “was surrounded by Blaxploitation movies paying homage to 007;” the working-class romantic comedy Claudine (1974), which netted Diahann Carroll an Academy Award nomination and “so changed (the author’s) perspective on movies that its inclusion in this book was mandatory;” even The Wiz (1978). But the main focus is squarely on the big names of the title; if you’re looking for an episode-by-episode critique of the short-lived Shaft TV series, Henderson’s your man. There’s also plenty of talk about the soundtracks and fashions of these films, interviews with people involved with making them, and a smart conversation with a millennial critic about how younger audiences approach and appreciate the genre decades later. Not to mention’s Henderson’s sly sense of humor, as when he tells the story of Roscoe Orman, cast as Gordon on Sesame Street at the same time he was playing the title role of a pimp in Willie Dynamite (1974)—and, even more confusingly for children watching daytime TV, another pimp on the soap opera All My Children.

Orman mentioned getting letters from kids begging him not to beat up Big Bird, a not-so-far-fetched request. After all, Sesame Street did have a workable corner.

I enjoyed the book so much that I will allow the Yankee fan’s gratuitous reference to “the evil New York Mets.” After all, he’s talking about 1973, the year that the Yanks were preparing to bunk awkwardly at Shea Stadium while their decrepit ballpark was rebuilt, and the Mets made it to the World Series. Normally, I’m not so forgiving.

What I’m Watching

Knox Goes Away (2024). Fun fact #1: Michael Keaton has directed two movies, and he plays a professional killer in both of them.

Fun fact #2: I enjoyed his first hitman film, The Merry Gentleman (2009), and that was before it showed me the awesome power of my reach. A review I posted on my old blog spawned a segment on CBC Radio in Canada, making me a continental force to be reckoned with.

Fun fact #3. I liked Knox Goes Away, too. Keaton plays the title character, diagnosed with a rapidly-acting dementia. The condition has already led him to screw up one assignment, so he’s putting his affairs in order when his estranged son (James Marsden, well-matched with Keaton) shows up on his doorstep, desperate for his dad’s help after killing the man who exploited his daughter. Can Knox do the job before losing all sense of himself? Screenwriter Gregory Poirier plays the pulpy plot straight, aided by Keaton’s lean direction. As in Gentleman, he has a strong sense of everyday life, particularly in the scenes with the cops dogging his trail.

Fun fact #4. Amnesia, which writer Lee Server described as “noir’s version of the common cold,” is making a movie comeback in 2024. There’s the Russell Crowe film Sleeping Dogs, which I haven’t yet seen, and later this year comes The Actor, an adaptation of Donald E. Westlake’s novel Memory. The book is being reissued with the movie’s title in July, and I discovered that one of the blurbs is by … me, from a 2010 post on the same blog where my review of The Merry Gentleman appeared. Clearly, I have underestimated my power.

Fat Ham. The Seattle Repertory Theater’s production of James Ijames’s 2022 Pulitzer Prize-winning play runs through May 12. Ijames doesn’t simply set Hamlet at a southern Black family’s backyard barbecue; for one thing, his version is a hell of a lot funnier than Shakespeare’s, and features musical interludes. He interrogates the tragic form itself, asking what role culture and individual choices play in our fates. And the ending is a wow.

Dave Attell, Hot Cross Buns (Netflix). God, I’ve missed Attell and his cranky old man stage persona. His new special is forty solid minutes of nonstop laughs.

What (Else) I’m Reading

Jia Tolentino’s profile of Park Chan-wook for The New Yorker doubles as an elegy for peak TV, as Park’s adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer for HBO shapes up as the last program of its kind for a long while. (Bonus: if you read the article after watching Dave Attell’s special, as I did, your mind will be blown.) If you haven’t seen Park’s Decision to Leave (2022), remedy that at once. Up next for him: a film of Donald E. Westlake’s masterpiece The Ax (1997) and an English-language TV series based on Park’s own masterpiece Oldboy (2003).

No one buys books. Yes, people do buy books. It’s the Substack dustup of the week.

I loved Gary Shteyngart’s Martini Tour of New York City, especially this section on doctors reversing course on alcohol consumption:

A glass of water with our salad. A splash of cucumber juice after our workout. The more articles I read, the angrier I became. Modern Americans are supposed to submit to all the indignities of late capitalism: the endless work hours, the 9 P.M. e-mails from our superiors, software that monitors our every keystroke. And then we’re not even supposed to have a drink in the middle of this psychic carnage? (Perhaps that drink would interfere with our productivity.) I understand that most doctors want us only to stay healthy, but the Rx on their prescription pads seems to read “Endless suffering endured daily; refill until death.”

There’s gold, Jerry, gold in Brett Martin’s GQ interview with Seinfeld. Naturally, I’m here for the praise showered on the Mets announcing troika of Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez, and Ron Darling. But I was chilled by his blunt assessment that “the movie business is over” and why that’s so.

... film doesn’t occupy the pinnacle in the social, cultural hierarchy that it did for most of our lives. When a movie came out, if it was good, we all went to see it. We all discussed it. We quoted lines and scenes we liked. Now we’re walking through a fire hose of water, just trying to see.

What do you think has replaced film?

Depression? Malaise? I would say confusion. Disorientation replaced the movie business. Everyone I know in show business, every day, is going, What’s going on? How do you do this? What are we supposed to do now?

And while I’m always skeptical of an insanely wealthy person advising you to “make whatever little money you need to survive,” his take on “the golden way of living” doesn’t seem wrong.

What I’m Drinking

My friend, the gifted bartender Matt Pachmayr, introduced me to Chris Hannah’s Bywater a few years ago.  It’s a Crescent City riff on the Brooklyn, and I do enjoy my Brooklyn variations. Aged rum is the way to go, but the drink is so good that any rum will do.

The Bywater

• 1 ¾ oz. aged rum

• ¾ oz. Averna

• ½ oz. green chartreuse

• ¼ oz. falernum

• 2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters

• 2 dashes orange bitters

Stir. Strain. Express the oils from an orange twist over the glass. Garnish with a cherry.