They Came From Within

I'm fixated on the mental image of Meryl Streep waltzing at a wedding with Ice-T--it works--when Doug breaks the spell. "Our mission is to have our images and our culture accepted as mainstream, just like our music is. Look--if they can make Bette Midler and Barbra Streisand sex symbols and have Omar Sharif and Robert Redford fighting over them and havin' me believe it, then, damn it, it's about time that Robin Givens or Rae Dawn Chong or a hundred other actresses out there, who in my opinion look a lot fucking better and have just as much talent, get the same fuckin' shot."

"And," Doug concludes, "people can put a Wesley Snipes poster up in their bedroom, along with Kevin Costner and Tom Cruise and all the other sex symbols."

Now here's where I really need the pizza-proffering Mookie to slap me around. You make the leap here, his Spikeness whispers, and when we do your life story in black, you get Denzel Washington to play you instead of Ossie Davis. George and Doug have just completed Stalingrad, a film about the protracted World War II battle between the Germans and the Russians. Needless to say, it has as much to do with the African-American experience as, say, Olivia Newton-John did with Behind the Green Door.

I know, Spike, I know. Black filmmakers should be free at last to pursue not only African-American projects but any damn subject they please--Vikings if they so desire. But anyone--white, black, green--would be loathe to join hands with the perestroika-resistant bureaucrats in Moscow in one of the first feature film co-productions between the Superpowers. Not even Simpson and Bruckheimer with 50 points added on to their collective I.Q. would be up to that logistical nightmare. Do I really deserve Ossie Davis just for thinking this is an odd choice? Or are we the whole way to Jimmie Walker by now?

While Doug starts to explain the Stalingrad project for me, George is passing snapshots of Moscow adventures to me at the rate of a blackjack dealer on Ritalin.

"Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall could star in a movie about two black guys producing a movie in Russia about World War II," he observes, handing me a photo of Armand Hammer.

"Yeah," Doug scoffs, "call it The Producers Without Zero Mostel. Picture this: two black guys, sitting at a table that's possibly 20 feet long. Across the table from them are about 18 bureaucrats and in the middle is Nikolai Gubenko, the Russian Minister of Culture and a deputy politburo member who controls the propaganda network. All we have is a Russian interpreter and a typewriter we borrowed from the American Express office."

I'm picturing Putney Swope, which will not get me a slice at Sal's with the Elvis Costello of African-American filmmakers.

"I wanna make a comment about this project before we go on," Doug says. "One of the great things we gained from this project was that when George and I got off the plane, nobody called us nigger, alright? We got in a limo, we negotiated. I was the lawyer, George was the producer."

George is over at his desk now. "Where're my boxes?" he says, rummaging through drawers and shelves, but still keeping a toehold on the conversation. "He and I were sitting across these long tables with some of the most powerful men in the Russian bureaucracy, engaging in bitter, acrimonious and culturally confusing negotiations. Yet at no point did racism or a lack of respect for who we were as men ever come into question. And Doug and I said, through the whole experience, I wonder what this would be like if we were in Alabama in nineteen-yesterday. Where are my boxes?"

"On your desk, George," Doug gestures paternally. George sets a half-dozen handpainted teak boxes in front of me. I have photos bunched in one arm and Russian boxes in the other. They're quite beautiful, the detail stunning. Out of the corner of my eye I catch Doug observing me with a measure of silent amusement.

"It was very interesting for George and myself to be dealt with over there, from a Russian perspective. We were American filmmakers who had something that they needed--"

"Powers Boothe," George points at a photo of the actor who starred in the picture, as Doug tries to continue: "--technology, expertise, and the ability to get the film distributed in the West--versus 'the black guys' in an American sense. As we left Russia, we read on the way back to the States how China and the Soviet Union were making purchases of old MCA television programs. Programs in which we are depicted as menial, stupid, criminals and so on--in other words, "Amos and Andy" time, right? We couldn't help but think the next time we go over there, or our children go over there, that the whole attitude about us will have to be different."

It is, without question, an impressive feat that, faced with the intractable Russian bureaucracy (Doug likened it to the movie Brazil) and the intricacies of making a film of this scope (the budget was somewhere around the $20 million mark) in a foreign country, McHenry and Jackson emerged with their sanity intact, let alone a film.

"Warners never thought we'd come back with a signed distribution contract. Doing Stalingrad was like forging metal."

"If we hadn't have gotten that film out of Russia, Doug and I would not be sitting here," George insists. But they are sitting here, and McHenry/Jackson and Warner Bros. are in the endgame of negotiating a long-term production deal with each other. McHenry and Jackson have eight different film projects at the moment, including two hip-hop-influenced films, Funky Maneuvers and Clockin' the Beat. But the film most on their minds is the one in post-production, House Party II.

"The Hudlins made a film that was character-driven, socially relevant, funny, poignant," says George. "Part of the challenge that we had in making House Party II was to pay homage to the first movie and create an original piece of fabric that could stand on its own."

Still, with all of the success of House Party, why were the Hudlin Brothers not involved in the making of House Party II? Rumors varied. Some had the Hudlin Brothers being fired; others had them side-tracked by a more promising project. They reportedly maintained a financial interest. Asked to elaborate, George cautiously measures his response: "As far as our understanding--"

"GEORGE JACKSON IS SPEAKING NOW, NOT ME," Doug cuts in. "Our two voices are distinctly different--I got the soul tenor. The baritone is George Jackson. Get it right--this is a George Jackson quote."

"Our understanding," George persists.

"Hey--leave one of us in the clear! If you're wrong, you can say, 'Hey, I didn't check with Doug on this-' "

"Our understanding. OUR understanding was they were involved in the process of making their own movie, writing another project, which I understand is a fantastic science fiction piece. For whatever reason, they didn't want to be involved in the sequel. Doug and I went out of our way, when New Line approached us, to get their blessing."

"You like that line, huh? You ragged about it before, now you like that line, huh?"

"Yeah, Doug, I love that line." George presses ahead, comically dismissing his partner with a wave. "When New Line approached us, we really checked with Warrington to find out, if he and Reggie wanted us involved. We didn't really get into the details of why they weren't involved. All I know is they were happy that we were on board."

Nothing illustrates better the McHenry/Jackson concept of forging a mainstream film out of the African-American cultural perspective than the evolution of story from House Party to House Party II. In II, Kid, who starred with his rap partner Play in the original film, leaves his old neighborhood for college, where he experiences not only "issues of manhood," but "new styles of racism." Doug and George, who worked closely with screenwriter Rusty Cundieff, worked their own travails in academia into the story.

"I went to Stanford, then Harvard law school," says Doug. "George went to Harvard. These are private institutions, some of the so-called finest in the world. But what happens is 35% of the undergraduate enrollment at Stanford, and I believe there's a similar figure at Harvard, are 'legacy students.' They get in, even though they don't have the mean grade point average, because their parents went to Stanford or Harvard. And they walk around on that campus like they own it--and in no way are they made to feel inferior, whereas the poor little Mexican student or the brother, or American Indian--regardless of his grade point average--they make him feel like he's there only because of his skin color. Then there's a further pernicious idea that just because he's a minority student, the teachers are lenient on him. So when he gets a B it really should be a D. Therefore his diploma from Harvard isn't as good as a white diploma."

"Part of why we're in the film business is to try to help stave off our cultural extinction," George tells me, getting back to House Party II, "because in 150, 200 years, the only documents that people will look at are documents that are on film or videotape and if we don't exist as a result of our own hand, we will cease to exist."

"You know what?" Doug interrupts him, "We exist, but we're just distorted. We go to Hong Kong two or three times a year [the Jackson/McHenry partnership includes a merchandising business that specializes in designer phones and radios]. And the image of African-Americans, because of those old TV shows, and movies, Superfly, this that and the other, is such that we're viewed as criminals or athletes--mentally inferior, dishonest, checks will bounce, credit cards no good." While this sounds like a perfect description of my Uncle Gino, I hold my tongue--Doug is on a roll again.

"Don't get me wrong--we're not out here for completely altruistic reasons. We want to be successful financially, we want to make commercial hits--but we want to bring a spin to those hits--that just don't say that every black person's a great guy, like Sidney Poitier, but not that we're all criminals, either, like in all these other fucking movies. We want to project a happy balance, that we are fully dimensional, capable of love, that we have brains, that we can be doctors and lawyers and anything the fuck else we wanna be."

"Here's our company logo," George says, handing me an illustration of Don Quixote.

"You wanna know what our company motto is?" George and Doug look at each other, then chant together:

"You never the fuck know."

And what about my tutelary, the walking plastic explosive who makes great films close to impossible to enjoy? What about Spike, whose virtue comes from compelling people like me to mine the depths of our insecurities, whose intemperance begins with picking relentlessly at healing wounds and ends with subtitling Jungle Fever "The Fear of the Big Black Dick?"

"We have enormous respect for what Spike Lee accomplished. He's a brilliant filmmaker, a brilliant promoter," says George. "I can say with a lot of pride that I was involved in a tangential sense in the early part of his career. We would love to work with Spike Lee."

"We could help Spike," Doug adds cryptically. "We think we could make a contribution, in a collaborative venture with Spike. We could make a great movie."

As the two producers show me out into the unemployment-office-reception-area, I get one last dig in about the shoddy desks. Doug puts his hands on my shoulders and steers me towards the door: "Can I tell you something? If we had palatial offices, even if we had the money--and I wanna make it clear--we do not..." Doug is now almost as happy as George, who, perhaps because he's got a hot date coming up, is nearly singing. Bobbing with the incantation of each hardship, Doug lays it out: "We are struggling, we have no money, we have no deals, we are out there. And even if we had all that, we wouldn't have no big old offices. You wanna know how we're doing? We got a long-ass way to go. George?"

"We," George sings along with his partner, "are struggling." Smiling at the two unmatched office desks from the golden age of Lucy, Doug calls from the doorway: "Drive carefully. It's a holiday."

Back on the Hollywood Freeway I find myself thinking I'd trade my "I Survived Saturday Night in Westwood" T-shirt to be a fly on the wall in Doug and George's office right now. I'm gripped with the certainty that I have left them with the kind of impression that Little Richard might have had the first time he heard Pat Boone sing "Tutti Frutti." I'm sure I've flunked out of the Spike Lee Whitebread School of Atonement. And I really wanted Doug McHenry and George Jackson to like me. But I can hear my voice all over again congratulating both of them for their successes (no one is sending me any Laker tickets with or without preferred parking), ragging them about the condition of their comically shabby offices. I see my intention spliced to my actual behavior with important frames missing in between. Am I a white guy who happens to have a conscience, or a guy with a conscience who happens to be white? I look in the rear view mirror. There's Spike, my old buddy Spike, in the back seat. Don't worry, he tells me, these guys Doug and George have the imagination to fill in the missing frames. Thanks, Spike. I'm off the hook, for now anyway.

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Michael Angeli wrote our September cover story on River Phoenix.

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