Producers George Jackson and Doug McHenry stand out from the current wave of African-American filmmakers in Hollywood - they came up through the studios. With New Jack City they had their first hit. Now they're following up with House Party II.
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It worked, Spike. By design or by the logic encapsulated in the bumper sticker homily of New Age man ("Shit Happens"), it worked. Because now when I look in the mirror, staring back at me is a superfluous man, an image of self-contempt and inertia. I see not a soul on ice, but one thawed and spoiled. I see a stammering, backtracking field mouse unable to talk to hep cats. I hear myself reworking Honkette Doris Day's "Que Sera, Sera": "Will I be racist? Will I be patronizing? Here's what Spike says to me..." I thought I was fine until you came along.
I booed The Birth of a Nation. I lost my lunch watching C. Thomas Howell looking like a Coppertone orgyist instead of a black person in Soul Man. I rooted for the Bulls in the championship series. Okay, I lied about the Bulls. But you have made conversation with black filmmakers no less daunting than the rope ladder climb at the county fair. It looks easy until you take that first step and suddenly find yourself on your ass. I, in my titanium whiteness, am your hand-wringing monster, Spike. You pulled the switch that sent the 10,000 volts of hyperconscience screaming through my arhythmic body. And so, as I venture into a hot corner of the Warner Bros. lot, you will be my racial guardian angel. You are my Henry Higgins, as in Say The Right Thing, as in The Psyche of Spikey makes a Honky out of Mikey. Speak to me, Spike. Get my mind right!
With the rose tint all but sucked out of the stucco, Producer's Building #2 has to be one of the most rundown structures on Bugs and Daffy's whole lot. And you have to ask if these are indeed the offices of New jack City and House Party II producers Doug McHenry and George Jackson, because the door is unmarked, although, unlike the other doors, this one is wide open, spilling noise out to the parking lot. Inside are two peeling, faux wood desks that look like they were once a bargain on someone's front lawn. A Martin Luther King "I Have a Dream" calendar hangs askew from its tack on a louvered door missing slats. The carpet's spots look like they've been there since the last time Langston Hughes was in town. An old coffee maker stands in the corner, facing the wall like a disobedient child.
The conspicuousness of the squalor here is pretty remarkable, especially since these guys just had a $50 million hit. Frankly, I've never before met a pair of producers who were too busy or too unpretentious to bother with appearances. I'm wondering what Spike's offices look like. But shoddy decor or not, the three-room suite Jackson and McHenry work out of is crackling with energy. And someone is having fun here, because the laugh track is louder than a TV set in a retirement home.
"I LOVE LUCY!" Doug McHenry booms, when I start out by pointing at the statuette of the high priestess of cross-eyed comedy on the middle of his desk. "It's cooler to have Desi, but I gave Desi away." McHenry turns to yell through the door, "GEORGE, YOU READY?" We're waiting for George Jackson to get off the phone in the other room.
Meanwhile, a female photographer and her assistant are busy packing their gear.
"We hate to see the women go," Doug teases them. "So, where you girls going now? You goin'to deal with MARIO, right? You're going to see MARIO, aren't you? Yeah, Van Peebles gets all the glory." Doug is referring to the director of New jack City.
One of the women spots something in a trash bin. Dredging up a hosiery egg for Doug's appraisal, she smiles. "Someone's got a funky attitude."
"Yeah, well, it ain't me--this is George's office. GEORGE! GET IN HERE!"
When the women have left but George still hasn't arrived, Doug leans back, facing me with a 70-millimeter smile, his balding, polymer-shiny scalp in the cradle of his fingers, prisonerstyle. I have just asked him about his request for a black interviewer. In my mind, I'm seeing Spike form that tiny, condemnatory lemon shape with his lips.
"We heard that you actually were black," he says, having fun with me. "Seriously, we don't know anything about black interviewer requests. HEY GEORGE!"
Something between a shriek and a howl sounds from the other room and precedes George through the door. It seems the man has just managed to get a date.
"I'm happy. Put it in print! I'M HAPPY! She said yes!"
"She's gonna go with you, then," Doug congratulates him.
"She's gonna go with me. Wow. She's not my girlfriend yet," George admits, "but if I have anything to do with it, she'll come around."
Doug takes in his partner's euphoria with the satisfaction of a father who's just watched his son poke one over the fence. "It's not an official deal. But his heart--look out. I know from which I speak."
George throws himself into the chair opposite Doug and our official interview is finally ready to begin. Spike or no Spike, I know where I want to start. See, there are two ways to make it in the film industry, whether you admit to fighting the good fight or not: from the inside or the outside. More than occasionally, the choice is not yours to make. My man Spike made it the latter way. But Doug McHenry and George Jackson made it by the former method, which requires not so much a light skin as a thick one. If you've managed to succeed within the system, as both Doug McHenry and George Jackson have, you've undoubtedly done so shedding your blood, sweat and tears on projects catering to and championing white, middle-class values. Midnight Express, Hollywood Knights and Foxes--these were the films McHenry helped create during his tour of duty, which began as an assistant to Peter Guber. And there's a better than even chance that Ice-T and Wesley Snipes didn't sprawl in front of the TV to catch "The New Odd Couple" or "Laverne & Shirley," shows that George Jackson worked on as a producer-trainee for Garry Marshall.
"You guys were involved in a lot of cracker projects, sort of," I say, by way of opening up this topic. My observation is met with a silence that would make it possible to hear a spider spinning a web over the unused coffee maker.
"Cracker?" Doug questions, "What's 'cracker'? I don't understand." But George does--so does Doug, but watching me turn a whiter shade of pale must be irresistibly enjoyable--and finally bails me out.
"I think it's important to understand where Doug and I fit, in terms of the new tradition of what an African-American filmmaker is. I can almost put my finger on that tradition: One guy who does the writing, the directing, the acting; who comes from an independent film background and who raised money, or stole money, or somehow creatively put together a package, made a small film that was successful commercially, or critically, then went on and built a career as a one-man band." I don't have to be told we're talking Spike here, and Robert Townsend.
"Now Doug and I," George continues, "come from a radically different background. I worked for the president of production at Universal Pictures as part of a Lew Wasserman outreach program to executives. Call it affirmative action, call it whatever you want to, but if your phone don't ring, you can call it zero. The bottom line is that some white man in a position of authority said, 'We need to hire more black people in the film industry--' "
"Not more--one," Doug wryly amends.
"Right, one. As a result of that, I found myself working for the president of production of a major motion picture studio. Doug and I worked inside major studios in which hundreds of millions of dollars were expended on making movies. Our experience and background, therefore, are very different. We have a comprehensive, almost post-graduate school education in the film business."
"We're not saying that one is better than the other," says Doug, "just that it's a different experience. We can bring a different perspective to the black experience, having worked with Oliver Stone, Adrian Lyne, Alan Parker, David Puttnam."
After balancing his frame on the hind legs of his chair, Doug leans forward, hopefully having shaken off the nausea brought on by my cracker remark.
"There is a very strong theme in the black community that we have to rely on our own resources and not blame everything on racism."
"That is very important," George agrees, "because there are a lot of us who rest on the fact that, okay, society is racist, what's the use?"
"Right. The problem for us is compounded by the fact that Hollywood is actually built more on nepotism than racism, although both evils are definitely at work."
"When Doug and I got here, we knew that the odds of us ever taking a fucking Polaroid in Hollywood were slim and mother-fucking next to none, let alone making movies. But to Doug's credit, because he got here before I did, his experience has helped us enormously. So, in response to what you said--"
"About crackers?"
"Yeah. All Doug was doing his job. And he was trained by some of the best guys in the industry, young mavericks who now run this business. We've used our vantage point from the inside to scratch out a niche for ourselves."
And for others. When George was head of Richard Pryor's production company at Columbia, he engineered Robert Townsend's first studio deal. And it was George for whom Reggie Hudlin (who, along with his brother, Warrington, created the gold mine House Party for New Line) wrote his first screenplay, through a partnership George had with A&M Films.
So, I'm listening to Spike's voice steadily undermining my phrasing at every turn. Only one person addresses the Black Question--he wears Air Jordans and has a thing about ice cubes. You do this, you may as well get that graffiti bandit running around L.A. to spray paint HONKY across your forehead. But even with Spike's voice running through my brain, it takes me less than a quarter of an hour to disappoint everyone.
"Do you two consider yourselves African-American filmmakers, or filmmakers who happen to be African-Americans?"
Okay, it's a stupid question. A boring question. Somebody already asked this question to Spike himself in Rolling Stone. But I have to ask it here, anyway. And Doug is both gracious and tolerant. "I think if you go back into the Harlem Renaissance, Jean Toomer, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, when they were asked, 'Are you a writer, or are you a black writer?' they said, 'Well, listen, you don't ask Sartre if he's a writer or French writer and you don't ask Faulkner if he's a Southern writer or a writer from the South.' "
In fact, I do think of William Faulkner as a Southern writer. And for that matter, Jean-Paul Sartre would proclaim his Frenchness like no character out of a Monty Python skit ever could. But I feel Spike sneaking up behind me with a gag.
"I think our perspective is that we're African-American filmmakers," Doug continues, "but don't feel as though that's limiting, any more than a Scorsese or Coppola, dealing with the Italian-American perspective, or Woody Allen, working from a Jewish-American perspective, is limited."
"There is a universality to the values and experiences that these people go through," George adds, "that we're all richer for. We've got to get away from this idea that somehow, because we come from an African-American culture and we make, among other films, movies about African-Americans, our perspective is not mainstream."
And I don't need Spike to point out to me that the proof is in the pudding: New Jack City attracted not only the young urban black audience, but a substantial number of young, middle-class whites as well. George, in heavy Don King mode, rattles his fingers to drive home the message:
"What we are engaged in now is really the advancing of cultural definitions. The horizons have to broaden."
There are only two of these guys, but it seems like an even dozen. The eight years Doug has on George are used as benign ballast against the younger partner's idealism. George brims with the Tower of Power sociology of the street. With his Fat Boys physique (he and Doug produced Disorderlies), he's a Gummy Bear from Harlem with the gentleness of a Jesuit social worker. Right now, the two partners run their business around me like a couple of tag team wrestlers. Doug's in the ring now, about to apply the keister-slam: "I think the point we're trying to make is that we're African-American filmmakers because of two reasons. One, no matter what we say, the press will always label us that way. It's the reason why black people have had more of a problem assimilating into this culture than anyone else--we're identifiable." George turns out his palms, going for the pin. "Can't hide," he says. "I walk into the room, that's it--'He ain't French.' "
At this point the receptionist comes in and hands Doug an envelope that's just arrived via messenger. Inside the envelope are two choice seats to Sunday's playoff game between Portland and the Lakers. George lunges for the tickets.
"Gimmie those fuckers. Somebody finally wants us. After years of struggle, somebody wants us. It might not last for long--we may soon be in jail or dead, because this is America--but somebody wants us!"
"And look at this!" Doug shows us a blue pass. "Special parking, too! All because somebody wants to raise money by using our names. 'Hey, these are two black guys. Let's give them basketball tickets.' Uh-huh."
Seeing the wheels turning, the files being pulled in his partner's brain, George gets a look of hopelessness on his face.
"Aww, now wait a minute--"
Doug won't have it. "I don't think we should take these tickets. Because I don't want to be compromised. You can decide. I'm giving my ticket to you, George. It's hard to tell somebody no when you're taking something from 'em, and I don't fuckin' do that. You decide. On Sunday, I'm gonna be out of town anyway."
"Hey, there's gotta be a happy compromise here," I suggest. "You guys could give the tickets to me." The two of them look at each other as if I have mistakenly released a sizable quantity of methane into the atmosphere. Doug immediately picks up where he left off before the tickets arrived.
"So, we LIKE the moniker African-American. We think it's positive. The sensitivity we've gained from our own cultural experience will enhance our ability to tell other stories. Is it ultimately important? Yes. Is it ultimately politically important? No."
"What's a real challenge for us," says George, "is to take a Wesley Snipes--we think he's one of the finest actors in the world--and Ice-T, too--to take these guys and place them with a piece of material, say, about a man. You don't say if he's white or black, just a man. The challenge is to have these guys play the role of a man, but not to have him hamstrung because of the fact that he's black. Robert De Niro played a Polish guy in The Deer Hunter. What would happen if you created that same scenario with a black man?"
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.