Speaker 1: Wake that answer up in the morning.
Speaker 2: The Breakfast Club Morning.
Speaker 3: Everybody's DJ, Envy Jesse, larrys Charlamane the guy.
Speaker 4: We are the Breakfast Club. We got some special guests
Speaker 4: in the building. We have Mario and Mandela van Peebles.
Speaker 1: Welcome, Hey man, good to be here.
Speaker 4: How's it feeling.
Speaker 5: How y'all feeling good man, It's a little cold, but
Speaker 5: we're happy to be here.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm old enough to remember when it was Melvin
Speaker 2: and Mario.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Mario, they keep going, wow, yeah, you know, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: The other day I looked up and I realized I
Speaker 1: was telling Mandela this. My father gave me my first
Speaker 1: lines ever in the Future film, and then I gave
Speaker 1: him his last lines ever in the Future film.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: This is a trippy circle, Like how many people get
Speaker 1: that in their lives, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: And when I did.
Speaker 1: Posse thirty years ago, years years ago, I didn't have
Speaker 1: kids and and but I had my dad. And then
Speaker 1: this time when I did Outlaw Posse, I didn't have
Speaker 1: my dad, but I got Mandela. So I'm like the
Speaker 1: connective tissue absolutely, you know. So uh.
Speaker 6: Outlaw Posse the unofficial sequel, our official sequel.
Speaker 1: It's posse, you know, it's it's a Western. It's just
Speaker 1: you know, like Clint Eastwood did a bunch of spaghetti westerns.
Speaker 1: It's a different Western. It's not really, but it is
Speaker 1: a multi culty, wild ass group of cowboys and cow women.
Speaker 1: I guess you would say, uh, differently than before. So
Speaker 1: it's you know, before we had like like a and posse,
Speaker 1: we had Big Daddy Kane and Tone and Woodie Strode
Speaker 1: and the Hdland brothers and Blair Underwood and Sally Richardson
Speaker 1: and big cast that's the And this time we've got
Speaker 1: who got get to the mic, what Cedric? We got
Speaker 1: DC young Fly, we got Whoopy Goldberg. She didn't. I
Speaker 1: didn't cast Whoopy. Whoope cast herself playing this role. I
Speaker 1: was shooting something for Rizza Wu Tang Clan American Saga
Speaker 1: next door in Jersey to where Whoopie lives. So she
Speaker 1: came over, like, what's all this racket? And then we
Speaker 1: met and I said, she said, I've always wanted to
Speaker 1: do western. I said, I got this script I'm doing
Speaker 1: and she said, stage coach Mary, stage coach Marry. And
Speaker 1: that's how that came about. Really, Yeah, and we just
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where you meet someone like
Speaker 1: me and you just like, I want to do it,
Speaker 1: and then I'm really one of those guys. I will
Speaker 1: really call you up and be like, Okay, here's the dates,
Speaker 1: let's go, and she's like, I'm there, Montana, what are
Speaker 1: we doing?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 1: And because a lot of folks don't know that almost
Speaker 1: one out of three cowboys was black. You know, you
Speaker 1: look at the old westerns, you don't see that because
Speaker 1: we basically they call black man boys as a derogatory term.
Speaker 1: So and we got the harder jobs, the dirty job.
Speaker 1: So it's like take care of the horses, boy, take
Speaker 1: care of the cowboy. So once they said it's a cowboy,
Speaker 1: that's where the name came from. White guys like being
Speaker 1: called rough riders and and so once the Hollywood glorified cowboys,
Speaker 1: they flipped it up and they had they didn't have
Speaker 1: us playing them kind of like you know, we know
Speaker 1: the hot heavyweight champs looked like Jack Johnson Allie Tyson,
Speaker 1: but they'll make him look like Rocky in Hollywood. Just
Speaker 1: one of those things. So really, when you look at
Speaker 1: out Law Posse, you'll see like real history where you'll
Speaker 1: see some of the real characters in the movie, and
Speaker 1: the movie you'll see, oh, I thought that guy was
Speaker 1: made up. No, this is. We based the whole look
Speaker 1: on this dude. So you'll see the real people at
Speaker 1: the end. And you'll see with Whoopy Goldberg, how close
Speaker 1: she gets the stage coach Mary.
Speaker 6: What's the significance of stage coach Mary's inclusion in the film?
Speaker 1: Well, she is, you know, she has her own stage
Speaker 1: coach line that she ran up through Montana, had a
Speaker 1: big old cigar and a big old shotgun. And in
Speaker 1: the movie, there comes a point where Edward James almost
Speaker 1: is in the movie and our posse this knuckleheads with
Speaker 1: me in the posse, but I don't know he's a spy.
Speaker 1: Look at the noise. But okay, I'm gonna tell you what.
Speaker 1: There's a scene where we're going to buy some dry goods.
Speaker 1: We've just had a bank robbery go wrong. All kinds
Speaker 1: of stuff is going wrong, so we going.
Speaker 3: He's like, come on, hold up, I'm just giving a
Speaker 3: little little fractional stuff.
Speaker 1: So they we go in to the dry goods store
Speaker 1: and Edward James almost comes out with his gun. He's like,
Speaker 1: what y'all here for? And we go in there and
Speaker 1: when we come out, all the horses are gone, and
Speaker 1: we're in the middle of nowhere, and he starts cracking up.
Speaker 1: We're like, why are you laughing mad? He's like, because
Speaker 1: the Originals they don't believe the originals of the Indians,
Speaker 1: he said, they don't believe that God that we have
Speaker 1: the right to own any of God's creatures. But before
Speaker 1: you get mad, my wife was born enslave. Those same
Speaker 1: Native Americans set my wife free. So it starts to us.
Speaker 1: So we lose all our horses and we got to
Speaker 1: hit your ride with none other than there. You gotcha.
Speaker 5: I didn't get way too much to us.
Speaker 4: How I was working with your dad.
Speaker 1: It's good.
Speaker 4: I had a lot of practice tonight.
Speaker 1: It's fun.
Speaker 5: Obviously I've been his son for a while now. So
Speaker 5: on camera, we don't I don't know if he looks
Speaker 5: like I don't know. He just followed me a round.
Speaker 1: As for ship, yeah, okay, no, but we have we have.
Speaker 5: A relationship that luckily we get to wear different hats
Speaker 5: and this time we got to wear some cowboy hats
Speaker 5: and shoot some guns. And what's what's cool actually working
Speaker 5: with him at a work thing. Usually he's directing or acting,
Speaker 5: but this time he got to do both, and so
Speaker 5: he's directing and acting and I'm also playing his son.
Speaker 2: So it's a.
Speaker 1: Pretty rare one when we work together. Sometimes you're behind,
Speaker 1: I'm in front or yeah yeah. And it's what's cool
Speaker 1: is that he can ride. He's a cowboy. He can
Speaker 1: He did all his own stunts. You're not only when
Speaker 1: you're doing it like because Outlaw Posse. He's a mean
Speaker 1: ass independent. So it's not like you're gonna see a
Speaker 1: lot of billboards or anything. It's more word of mouth, right,
Speaker 1: And we just won Best Feature at the Pan African
Speaker 1: Thank You, So when you do a feature like this,
Speaker 1: you really rely on people to do a lot of
Speaker 1: It's not c g I, it's not Ai is real guy.
Speaker 1: So when he rides in, not only does he have
Speaker 1: to I have to get along with him, but with
Speaker 1: his horse because there's a lot of scenes where he's
Speaker 1: got a racing and we do it in one shot,
Speaker 1: so he'll racing on his horse and he got to
Speaker 1: save dad, you know what I mean. And and the
Speaker 1: thing about working with your son like this is we
Speaker 1: didn't have to fake the love. So when you look
Speaker 1: at it on camera like we clown and play together.
Speaker 1: We don't have to fake the love and so so
Speaker 1: you're going in with people that really get it and
Speaker 1: know their roles, and that's that's fun.
Speaker 4: All the actors know how to handle and ride horses or.
Speaker 1: If they didn't like that, DC had to go to
Speaker 1: cowb I was gonna ask.
Speaker 4: I don't know if he was on a horse like that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I had to get on a horse just because
Speaker 6: he from the South, you think rode horses.
Speaker 2: He was on a horse.
Speaker 4: They have brothers out there that ride on Atlanta horse
Speaker 4: in Atlanta.
Speaker 2: But he was.
Speaker 5: He was at the he was at the screening and
Speaker 5: I asked him how many times have you rode since
Speaker 5: He's like, I.
Speaker 1: Got a horse. Now he got a horse. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so yeah he had to and and Cedric Cedric didn't
Speaker 1: have to ride. So Cedric's in there, and uh oh
Speaker 1: in Allan Payne. Allen Payne can ride from New Jack City.
Speaker 1: I was like calling up all my old connects, come
Speaker 1: on out, let's do it. And it was mad fun.
Speaker 4: Oh you still you mentioned Alapaine.
Speaker 3: Are you still surprised of the influence of New Jack
Speaker 3: City across generations.
Speaker 1: It's a trip. In fact, we played with it. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna say nothing. No, look, no fake asked for
Speaker 1: calling things, you know what I mean? No, no am
Speaker 1: I surprised. Yeah, I was surprised. Here's the thing. You know,
Speaker 1: in most gangster films, you emotionally connect with the gangster. Right,
Speaker 1: that's easy. I mean, that's it's easy to get to.
Speaker 1: The trick in Nwjack was to not make the crime
Speaker 1: victimless by having the audience connect up with the victim.
Speaker 1: So I was two guys I was looking at. One
Speaker 1: was named Martin Lawrence and what was named Chris Rock
Speaker 1: to play the victim. And when that's what the trick
Speaker 1: was to say, Okay, we see the cost to our
Speaker 1: community of this stuff. When people watch New Jack City, yeah,
Speaker 1: they look at West that's the badass character, but they
Speaker 1: also look at the cops too. You know, you had
Speaker 1: good role models to say yes to, because if you
Speaker 1: want folks to say no emotionally, you better have some
Speaker 1: role models to emotionally say yes to. Right, you feel me,
Speaker 1: But in the middle, to have the victim get addicted
Speaker 1: to crack and we deglamorize the heck out of it.
Speaker 1: You know, so you see them in the alleyway. We
Speaker 1: nothing cute about that. So I've had people come up
Speaker 1: to me after seeing it said, man, I love the movie.
Speaker 1: I never wanted to touch No Crack after seeing New Jacksony.
Speaker 1: So that was one of the things that I was
Speaker 1: proud of, is trying to not just entertain us, and
Speaker 1: that's the thing without Law Posse, but editain us and
Speaker 1: Mandela can tell you, yeah, you could tell them that
Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff in Outlaw Posse that's really
Speaker 1: relevant today. You know, we're so divided as a country,
Speaker 1: they say right now because some of us watch MSNBC,
Speaker 1: CNN and they watch Fox News or whatever, and we
Speaker 1: have different facts. But we'll all hopefully come together and
Speaker 1: watch it western we made this Gumbo would love.
Speaker 2: So I quoted New jack City.
Speaker 6: I was on This Week ABC with Jonathan Carr Sunday
Speaker 6: and I quoted New Jackson. I said, because I was
Speaker 6: talking about how, you know, the vice president she needs
Speaker 6: to pivot and start, you know, speaking up more. And
Speaker 6: I was like, you know, I know that historically the
Speaker 6: role of the vice president is just the parrot the president,
Speaker 6: but I was just like yo for New jack for
Speaker 6: New Jack problems.
Speaker 2: We need new Jack.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're in a different time with that, and
Speaker 1: you can't you can't come at it, you know, you
Speaker 1: got to come at it ready. And and this that's
Speaker 1: the other reason I wanted to do at La Posse
Speaker 1: now is that there's a whole scene where we go
Speaker 1: in there and and we deal with some voting right issues.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: So there's stuff you'll find in out La Posse where
Speaker 1: it's like, oh wow, that's happening right now. Yeah, you know, right,
Speaker 1: even environmental stuff. Right. I don't want to get the
Speaker 1: spoilers away. You really got to check it out. March first.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, we're seeing a lot more Westerns with
Speaker 6: black cast What about that time period should black people
Speaker 6: be tapping into? What should we be learning from that
Speaker 6: time period? Well?
Speaker 1: I think well, I think there was a big sense,
Speaker 1: you know, because it was after Look, one of the
Speaker 1: things that comes up is that in eighteen sixty three
Speaker 1: up until that, because we do a scene with Whoopee
Speaker 1: on the stage coach and she looks at him and
Speaker 1: she said, boy, you know, you're lucky. You're the first
Speaker 1: generation of black men that legally gets to have a
Speaker 1: black father because until eighteen sixty three, you couldn't have
Speaker 1: a black father. Legally, the slave master made all the
Speaker 1: decisions for the kids. You had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 1: In fact, they sell you. Yeah, ask somebody it somewhere else.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So she said, you know, so we've only had since
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty three to get our father. Game on. Make
Speaker 1: it eighteen sixty five if you're in Texas. Right. So
Speaker 1: we bring up some interesting points. I think one of
Speaker 1: the things that we can learn from the Western is
Speaker 1: that there was still this sense of do for self. Yes,
Speaker 1: some of us were lucky enough to go across the
Speaker 1: country and cover wagons. Other of us had to wrap
Speaker 1: some canvas around our feet and walk, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. The other thing is that I think is
Speaker 1: I think Mandela mentioned is that you know what's interesting
Speaker 1: is that the Native American folk and the African folk
Speaker 1: had a respect for nature. Right. It was only the
Speaker 1: colonizer was sort of saying, oh, no, just chop down
Speaker 1: those tree, kill all the buffalo. Do this, Commodify it,
Speaker 1: sell it, chop it up, package it, kill it, wrap
Speaker 1: it up. And once you, once you imitate the people
Speaker 1: that would buy and sell you, what have you become
Speaker 1: and so you kind of look back and wait a minute,
Speaker 1: we don't have to imitate the people that would buy
Speaker 1: and sell us. And when you look at that and
Speaker 1: you realize, wow, a lot of us. There were enslaved
Speaker 1: folks who ran away with the Native Americans and became
Speaker 1: known as the black Seminoles. You know. Now historically in
Speaker 1: a movie they'd be played as white guys. We're not
Speaker 1: doing that, you know, we're showing everybody. So I think
Speaker 1: one of the you can look back at and see.
Speaker 1: I think it's this. If you don't know where you were,
Speaker 1: it's hard to know where you're going, right, So having
Speaker 1: an idea of your history, you go, oh, we overcame
Speaker 1: that before with Tolsa, Oklahoma. Okay, we we deal with reparations.
Speaker 1: We know what's going on. You know, reparations really were
Speaker 1: supposed to go to us, but they they gave reparations.
Speaker 1: They just gave him the slave for loss of property.
Speaker 1: That comes up in out Law polse.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Why was it important for the film to reflect the
Speaker 6: diversity of the War of the Wild Wildwell.
Speaker 1: There's a great quote by King all mess Up where
Speaker 1: he says, we either all learn to live together as
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters, and we all perished together as fools.
Speaker 1: And I think once you go, oh wow, the Chinese
Speaker 1: brothers and they built the railroad, you know, we built everything. Uh,
Speaker 1: Native Americans were here, the border moved across Mexico. You know,
Speaker 1: when you realize we all had a part in it,
Speaker 1: then you take a different pride in it, and you're
Speaker 1: not just fighting for the America you've been. Maybe you're
Speaker 1: fighting for the America we still can be. And we
Speaker 1: have an election year coming up. So my hope is
Speaker 1: that if you make film like New Jack but film
Speaker 1: that makes people think. Maybe they think when they order food,
Speaker 1: maybe they think when they drive a car, maybe they
Speaker 1: think when they vote.
Speaker 4: Why do you think it's still difficult to make films?
Speaker 3: I mean I've seen I think I interviewed and said
Speaker 3: it was so difficult to make New Jack City back
Speaker 3: in the day.
Speaker 4: And this is an independent film. Is it still very
Speaker 4: difficult for a black.
Speaker 3: Director to get things done and get the money, to
Speaker 3: get the you know, the necessary promotion and to get
Speaker 3: the necessary funding.
Speaker 4: Is it still very difficult?
Speaker 1: Well, here's the thing. I made a movie a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago called Badass about my dad and I
Speaker 1: all saw that where he made sweet Back. And he
Speaker 1: made sweet Back at a time when you know, there
Speaker 1: was no black leads in movies. You couldn't even have
Speaker 1: facial hair as a black man in a movie. And
Speaker 1: he made sweet Back, and he found an unknown group
Speaker 1: named Earth's Wind and fired to do the soundtrack, and
Speaker 1: that movie became a big hit. And then after that
Speaker 1: Hollywood made they said, well, we want to do some
Speaker 1: more of those, so they made a movie written by
Speaker 1: two Jewish guys, written movie, and they said let's do
Speaker 1: it in black, and that became Shaft, and they got
Speaker 1: Isaac Hayes who was twenty four years old from Stacks Record,
Speaker 1: and then after that they had Superfly. Now what the
Speaker 1: Black Panthers said about Sweetback was Sweetback made being a
Speaker 1: revolutionary hip and made going up against the man and
Speaker 1: the status quo hip. Shaft cool movie imitated the icing,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily the cake, because that movie makes working
Speaker 1: with the man hip, and then Superfly made dealing drugs
Speaker 1: against your own people for the man hip. So the
Speaker 1: Panthers maintained that the icings look cool, same, you know,
Speaker 1: good looking brother, flashy clothes, good soundtrack, but the revolutionary
Speaker 1: core of the cake was being drained out. Similar thing
Speaker 1: happened with hip hop. Right may start off saying the
Speaker 1: revolution won't be televised or fight the power, but at
Speaker 1: certain point, when the corporations or the corpses get involved,
Speaker 1: the content gets trained out. So all that to say,
Speaker 1: if you're the kind of filmmaker or the kind of
Speaker 1: hip hop artist, whatever, the kind of artist that just
Speaker 1: wants to do what they tell you to do, you
Speaker 1: can get the funding. But if you want to make
Speaker 1: a movie like Outlaw Posse that says, nah, man, you're
Speaker 1: gonna see us a different way. You're gonna see some
Speaker 1: badass women because they were here. You're gonna see some
Speaker 1: badass brother. This is one out of three cowboys was black.
Speaker 1: The guy who inspired me to make my first Western
Speaker 1: really was Eastwood. I did a movie called Heartbreak Ridge
Speaker 1: with Eastwood so and he unforgiven, he put more in
Speaker 1: Freeman in there. Literally it was almost like one out
Speaker 1: of three cowboys was black. So I wanted to do
Speaker 1: the kind of movies that I want to do. Not
Speaker 1: all the time. Sometimes I just want to make the money,
Speaker 1: okay for real, But sometimes when it's all about the heart,
Speaker 1: I want to make a movie that says something. And
Speaker 1: when you got to do that. If I take their money,
Speaker 1: if you take McDonald's money, you can't make supersize me.
Speaker 1: Show me. If I take the studios money, then I
Speaker 1: have to do the studio line. I wanted this movie
Speaker 1: to be out law posse, be real and gritty, and
Speaker 1: use people that played the roles and say the stuff
Speaker 1: we wanted to say that was happening there that we
Speaker 1: usually just whitewatch. And we're the point in history right
Speaker 1: where you know, they what are they calling slaves now?
Speaker 1: And slave people and unpaid workers working. Yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 1: they're they're they're taking it. Look, it used to be
Speaker 1: illegal to teach a black person to read, and now
Speaker 1: it's going to be illegal to read about an enslaved person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. We're getting to a weird
Speaker 1: place where we need to look at our history and go, Okay,
Speaker 1: we did this before. We're all here. Make the gumbo
Speaker 1: would love build it and they will come. And that's
Speaker 1: not a movie that necessarily is gonna get financing easily,
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 6: I guess that's also the beauty of a movie like
Speaker 6: New Jack City, because when you talk about how people
Speaker 6: didn't want to, you know, use crack. It makes you
Speaker 6: not want to sell it either. Right when you see
Speaker 6: somebody impressing their own people in that way.
Speaker 1: And if your consciousness is there, I'm not sure you
Speaker 1: have a different consciousness depending on what what consciousness you have.
Speaker 1: That's the level of movie you'll see. Do you feel me?
Speaker 1: It's like, and that's the same thing without laposse. Depending
Speaker 1: on your level of consciousness, you're gonna go, oh wow,
Speaker 1: I tuned into that, but somebody else, you know, might
Speaker 1: just tune into something else. You know, So it's your
Speaker 1: consciousness is clearly there, because I would look at that
Speaker 1: and go, yeah, everyone in k new Jack the touch
Speaker 1: Crag died. Yeah right everyone. But for some people it
Speaker 1: was like, well, we don't see an option. We've got
Speaker 1: to make our way out of no way. But you
Speaker 1: got to figure out a better way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially if you oppressing all those people. Yeah, hey,
Speaker 2: you ruining the whole community.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's what they call a self cleaning oven,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. So when you look at
Speaker 1: at a Western like this, you know we this is
Speaker 1: this is you know, this takes place in nineteen oh eight.
Speaker 1: What's going on in nineteen oh this brother finally got
Speaker 1: a chance to be the heavyweight champ and he whipped
Speaker 1: everyone's ass. And his name was Jack Johnson. That's not
Speaker 1: been a nineteen oh eight before women could vote this
Speaker 1: as sister named stage coach, Mary got her own stage
Speaker 1: coach line. She say, if they can make money off me,
Speaker 1: I can make money off me. I'm gonna do my
Speaker 1: own thing, you know what I mean. And then you
Speaker 1: have the fictional characters of us. So you got this
Speaker 1: crazy father and son and I don't know why what
Speaker 1: his real motivation for writing me with Me is, but
Speaker 1: it comes out in the course of the little Don't
Speaker 1: trust his ad.
Speaker 6: I know the dynamic between the Chief and Angel and
Speaker 6: the movie represent like the interplay between good and evil, right,
Speaker 6: our morality and justice? How does that dynamic add to
Speaker 6: the store?
Speaker 1: Well, that's a real layered one man, because he the
Speaker 1: cat that plays Angel is named William ay Pothers. First
Speaker 1: of all, what I wanted and was important for this
Speaker 1: was to have really smart actors. That I wanted that
Speaker 1: if you looked at them, they weren't just playing a role.
Speaker 1: You could believe they knew a lot about it. And
Speaker 1: so this cat that I wanted with Angel. He's he
Speaker 1: doesn't really think of himself as the bad guy. He's
Speaker 1: just he you know, he's just grown up feeling like
Speaker 1: an entitled guy, like it's all for him. This country
Speaker 1: is built for me. Women can't vote, Hispanics can't vote,
Speaker 1: and we had the Mexican American War. Chinese can't vote.
Speaker 1: We've got the Chinese Exclusion Act, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: They do all these this trickology to keep you from voting,
Speaker 1: just like they do now, just like they're doing in Georgia,
Speaker 1: and they're gonna do in Florida. You know, we've campaign
Speaker 1: in Florida. We know what that's about. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of the French ever was saying, pus las mem and
Speaker 1: more things change, the more they stay the same. And
Speaker 1: you're going to see some of that in the movie
Speaker 1: and go, oh sweat, that's like what's happening right now.
Speaker 1: But the character, the bad guy, the antagonist, is the
Speaker 1: guy that believes America's only for him. And when the
Speaker 1: we rob a bank, and we rob a bank do
Speaker 1: some crazy stuff, DC young Fly gets to rob a bank,
Speaker 1: we'll give out way one thing, got one thing. He
Speaker 1: robs the bank and he's in this guys, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna tell him what the dis guy's.
Speaker 4: Okay, we've seen the disguise on the trailer.
Speaker 1: No you haven't. I don't think you have.
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, maybe you have.
Speaker 2: That wasn't the misters?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, okay, but it maybe it further than that.
Speaker 1: So we rob a bay and then the sheriff is
Speaker 1: totally befuddled. When he comes out. He says, man, black
Speaker 1: and white and cahoots together, working together. Who could have
Speaker 1: seen that happening? And so in the course of our
Speaker 1: movie that the outlaw strength is their diversity. America. Part
Speaker 1: of America's strength is our diversity. You know, good allies
Speaker 1: coming our all colors.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you can't put you can't stereotype no criminals right.
Speaker 1: There, No no, no, no, no good allies coming off colors. Man.
Speaker 1: And that's that's the maturity when you go. It's something
Speaker 1: Malcolm came came to realize too. It's not not your
Speaker 1: skin color, it's where your heart is, you know, so
Speaker 1: kind of touching on what you get to the microphone.
Speaker 5: So what you mentioned, though good and evil, that that
Speaker 5: kind of dynamic at play.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking about that.
Speaker 5: It's interesting that evil is represented by the law abiding
Speaker 5: angel and then the good is the outlaws.
Speaker 1: And and that goes to our tagline, which says, you know,
Speaker 1: slavery it was legal. Not allowing women to vote was legal, legal, right,
Speaker 1: Jim Crow? Legal? Destroying nature still legal. When the laws
Speaker 1: are unjust, the.
Speaker 2: Just are outlaws, like Wade, now exactly, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 1: So the laws really is more about who has the
Speaker 1: power versus what's just and what's correct.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And so we we come into a place in this
Speaker 1: movie where we have the choice of just going for
Speaker 1: the gold or stopping to correct a couple things, some
Speaker 1: injustices on the way. I didn't say nothing.
Speaker 5: But watch the movie with you guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd be like the dude in the back of
Speaker 1: the forty dude the screen at my own screen.
Speaker 3: Why did you decide a major movie as opposed to
Speaker 3: a Netflix or streaming service.
Speaker 1: Because I like, here's the thing. When you watch TV,
Speaker 1: TV is small and man is big. When you watch
Speaker 1: a movie, man it's small. Movie is big, and I
Speaker 1: like to sit up there. Plus, when you watch a movie,
Speaker 1: you paint some money to sit in the movie, you
Speaker 1: put your devices down, you put your toys down, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, You pick your popcord up, and
Speaker 1: if the movie doesn't suck, you stay right in there
Speaker 1: and you get into it and you're engaged in it.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 2: It's very hard to watch movies at home.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I don't know why we think that's a good thing,
Speaker 6: because you're too distracted.
Speaker 1: Well you know, and plus I'm the kind of dude
Speaker 1: I'll be like, shut up, I want to see it.
Speaker 1: Unless it's a comedy, then I like to go see
Speaker 1: it right straight in the hood. We live right right
Speaker 1: good in the hood, so I'll go right down there. Okay,
Speaker 1: I know I'm part of the audience is going to
Speaker 1: be part of the movie. There's always that joke at
Speaker 1: the top. In fact, we just played at the Pan
Speaker 1: African and it was certain lines you couldn't hear because
Speaker 1: people was talking to the screen. It was fun, you know.
Speaker 1: So some of that interactive thing we we watched film
Speaker 1: kind of like we interact with art, and whereas some
Speaker 1: cultures have grown up being reverential with art, you know,
Speaker 1: like a museum or something, you get all in the
Speaker 1: touch it, take a photo of it, it's like walking
Speaker 1: down the street in New York. It's like, white folks
Speaker 1: recognize me and they're kind and they can't have a picture.
Speaker 1: Black folks they're related to you. Come on, shut up,
Speaker 1: you better take get um, you know. So there's a
Speaker 1: different there's a different quality at you know day you.
Speaker 2: Talking about allyship.
Speaker 6: I wonder how does the allyship of stage coach Marry
Speaker 6: contribute to the development of of of Chief and other characters?
Speaker 1: Right? Well, see, well there was a lot of issues.
Speaker 1: Right One was that one of her rules was you're
Speaker 1: gonna ride on my stage coach, you gotta stole your weapon.
Speaker 1: So that was all already dealing with, you know, Western
Speaker 1: we lost our horse at a certain we got to
Speaker 1: get him back, and I got stolen my weapon. It's like, wait,
Speaker 1: but that's some second amendment, like well, you want to
Speaker 1: be on my stage coach, Mary's stagecoach Mary's rules, you know.
Speaker 1: And then she asked me, she says, do you remember
Speaker 1: your dad, your pop? After she talks to him, and
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, man, they hung him for trying to
Speaker 1: teach me to read. And then they told me to
Speaker 1: call some all white priest father and the slave owner
Speaker 1: master and they said, by law, I had to take
Speaker 1: the master's last name. So I knew what all them
Speaker 1: bullshit laws. I was going to grow up to be
Speaker 1: an outlaw for sure, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of knowledge that would be drops that
Speaker 1: sort of prompt. So you go, you think about stuff
Speaker 1: and you go, wow, that white folks need to hear
Speaker 1: two black folks need to hear. But we go, wow,
Speaker 1: that makes total sense. You know. When you lay it
Speaker 1: out like that, it's like, remember the beginning of Posse.
Speaker 1: At the beginning of Posse, Woody Strode, who was the
Speaker 1: first brother I saw in a western that didn't show
Speaker 1: Woodie Strode says, history is a funny thing. They got
Speaker 1: us thinking Columbus discovered America, but there was already people
Speaker 1: here just like me putting my flag on your car
Speaker 1: and saying get out your car. I'm gonna call you evil,
Speaker 1: red savage, you know what I mean. So when you look,
Speaker 1: when you break down the whole origin story of this country,
Speaker 1: you really see it's a really all inclusive story and
Speaker 1: it's still a wonderful country. And still we got all
Speaker 1: this crazy potential. There's a lot. So I'm like the
Speaker 1: character towards the end, says I'm fighting for the America
Speaker 1: we can be, not just America we've been. You know.
Speaker 6: I love the quote in the film Angel says to
Speaker 6: willis that religion is the story we tell ourselves about
Speaker 6: the future. History is the story we tell about the past,
Speaker 6: and it's told by those in power, right.
Speaker 1: It's found that. Yeah, man, well thank you for noticing that.
Speaker 1: That was something I wrote that line with Melvin in
Speaker 1: my head. My daddy used to say history is a
Speaker 1: book written by the winner, right, And so once you
Speaker 1: understand that, you go, oh, so they're telling you a
Speaker 1: history that sets up how they want you to be,
Speaker 1: you know. Franz Fina says, the best colonizers always left
Speaker 1: behind the churches and the schools so that they could
Speaker 1: socialize the oppressed to the oppressor's point of view, right,
Speaker 1: and that one good priest could do the work of
Speaker 1: one hundred soldiers. You know. So the thing is, you
Speaker 1: got to read to learn. I mean, you got to
Speaker 1: learn to read, but then you got to read to learn.
Speaker 1: And when you really start to read your own books,
Speaker 1: and you read the biography of Malcolm and you read
Speaker 1: the history of Ethiopia, and you understand how they do
Speaker 1: They beat back the Italians and we're never colonized. We
Speaker 1: don't learn about that history, the Battle of Odwa, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. And you learn about the West
Speaker 1: and you go, oh wow, you mean Jack Johnson then
Speaker 1: went off, you got a white wife, and him and
Speaker 1: his white wife opened up a club called Black and
Speaker 1: Tan where folks of all colors were welcome. I didn't
Speaker 1: know that, do you know what I mean? I didn't
Speaker 1: know that. I mean, you just learned so much and
Speaker 1: when you learn it, you can't up but go, wow,
Speaker 1: we were here, we were doing our things. So lines
Speaker 1: like that where you say it's a book written by
Speaker 1: the winner, we really all can be winners. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be replacement like okay, if if if you
Speaker 1: win and then I'm naturally losing, that's that's that's not correct.
Speaker 1: We can actually win together, you know, and actually right,
Speaker 1: And I got white people in my family, for real.
Speaker 1: I got white gay I even got a Trumper in
Speaker 1: my family. So I got love with open arms, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. So that's why even in New
Speaker 1: Jack City, man, I mix it up. I paint with
Speaker 1: all the colors. When I make a movie, I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to make reactionary film or do under them like
Speaker 1: they've done onto us. I want to do unto them
Speaker 1: as I'd like them to do unto us, but also
Speaker 1: do on them in a real way.
Speaker 6: That quote also shows that basically like the narrative of
Speaker 6: history can be manipulated or shaped by whoever is in
Speaker 6: the position about totally what's happening now?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I mean, I was just in Cartagena, Columbia. We
Speaker 1: went to a part called Polenke. I never heard it before.
Speaker 2: Brother.
Speaker 1: Everyone looks like us. They just don't sound like us,
Speaker 1: you know. So you go there to brother comeing to hey, kay,
Speaker 1: I'll the good thing over it. You know, you're like, whoa,
Speaker 1: what are you saying? Brother? And you realize we always,
Speaker 1: all of us are speaking the colonizers' languages. We don't
Speaker 1: know our own languages, We don't know a name. But
Speaker 1: in Polenki they have this area where all the freed
Speaker 1: slaves went. And finally Spain had to cut a deal
Speaker 1: with them because they were so strong and they couldn't
Speaker 1: be beaten. They said, we'll let you have your freedom
Speaker 1: under one condition. You have to keep a white church
Speaker 1: in the center of your town. And it was like
Speaker 1: so clear. It was like, if you keep our white daddy,
Speaker 1: we will leave you alone.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: So when you really look at that, you go wow, wow.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean the most listen, this is
Speaker 1: one of the last conversations I had with my dad
Speaker 1: was he said, the modern day colonizer doesn't put chains
Speaker 1: on your body, the chains on your mind. The first
Speaker 1: step to free your mind is to control your own
Speaker 1: inma the image of what you can be, the image
Speaker 1: of what you think you can be. If you look
Speaker 1: at a western go you, man, I could be a cowboy.
Speaker 1: I could be in the West. I could be this,
Speaker 1: I could be I could do whatever that sets you free,
Speaker 1: your imagination free. And this man grew up Mandela grew
Speaker 1: up seeing his granddad and his dad as cowboys. You
Speaker 1: know what I mean. That's that's a real dope freedom
Speaker 1: to have.
Speaker 7: You have the audition for this mandal for years, right, Yeah, No,
Speaker 7: I was.
Speaker 5: I was a little bit privy to it as I
Speaker 5: was still in the writing process.
Speaker 2: So it's something that he knows.
Speaker 5: I have a love for horses and all things nature,
Speaker 5: So I think it was kind of in the back
Speaker 5: of his mind.
Speaker 2: It was written for you.
Speaker 5: I wouldn't say for me, but I would be pretty
Speaker 5: mad if someone else was playing in Sun.
Speaker 1: And the thing is, this guy can act his ass off.
Speaker 1: He's in that show Reginald the Vampire. He plays a
Speaker 1: black panther. It was turned into a vampire because the
Speaker 1: the arc of history does bend towards justice, but it
Speaker 1: takes too long. So if you're a vampire, y're around
Speaker 1: and he was, you're the What was that Mary of Kings,
Speaker 1: Mary of Kingston. Yea, I said, Jeremy Renner. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: he's doing a lot of acting, so it wasn't just
Speaker 1: like I picked him up. Listen, someone gonna be LaToya Jackson.
Speaker 1: Even if you're a Jackson doesn't mean you're gonna act,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? You know, if you're a
Speaker 1: vample doesn't mean you're gonna act so and look at
Speaker 1: like the Jackson's but we just don't have the talent.
Speaker 2: Do you feel pressure following in your possible.
Speaker 5: It's interesting because that word, I don't know. I don't
Speaker 5: feel pressure per se. I feel it's more like a
Speaker 5: resource I can tap into more so, like even even
Speaker 5: with the self tapes, the auditioning process, just having him
Speaker 5: around when I need him is great even when I'm
Speaker 5: out of town or not not around. He can make
Speaker 5: time to even watch something just putting eyes on it,
Speaker 5: and and I think that's yeah, not so much a
Speaker 5: pressure but a resource and kind of like, thank you man.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking about that.
Speaker 5: He really he really helps me out and he wants
Speaker 5: to see me win. So there is, you know, an
Speaker 5: external pressure maybe from people looking I'm happy with myself.
Speaker 5: I could I could make it and be happy, or
Speaker 5: I could, you know, have a restaurant and be happy.
Speaker 5: So really, I I do this because I enjoy the
Speaker 5: craft growing up watching him basically support us, and I've
Speaker 5: got a big family playing Make Believe.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty cool job.
Speaker 5: So I've always kind of admired that, And yeah, would
Speaker 5: I wouldn't say it's a pressure. I would say it's
Speaker 5: a it's kind of a hope to live up to that.
Speaker 2: In a way, Mario.
Speaker 6: For you, how important is it to continue to filmmaking
Speaker 6: lineage within your family by having your son NFL?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I remember a certain point my dad
Speaker 1: and I I had I done of New Jack City
Speaker 1: and then I did Posse and the movies were doing
Speaker 1: well and Hollywood was of saying, what do you want
Speaker 1: to do next? When I want to do Posse after
Speaker 1: New Jack. The critics came after me and they said, oh,
Speaker 1: he's trying to make Old Jack City boys in the
Speaker 1: boys in the Saddle until they saw the movie. And
Speaker 1: then my dad said, what do you want to do next?
Speaker 1: I said, man, I want to do that. Because he
Speaker 1: had written a book on the Black Panthers. I said,
Speaker 1: I want to turn your book on the Black Panther
Speaker 1: Party for Self Defense into a movie. He said, they're
Speaker 1: not gonna let us. Hollywood ain't ready for that. And
Speaker 1: we went to Hollywood to do it, and he was right,
Speaker 1: and we had to get the funding independently because what
Speaker 1: they wanted this was the craziest. They wanted one of
Speaker 1: the lead Black Panthers to be white.
Speaker 2: What Oh my god.
Speaker 1: And they said, yeah, man, look, Dances with Wolves is
Speaker 1: not going to star a Native American. You know, Rocky
Speaker 1: is not gonna star you know, a brother. You know.
Speaker 1: You're just at that point, you know. So I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: I see what you're doing. The dominant culture has to
Speaker 1: see itself reflect didn't film in a dominant way, and
Speaker 1: you'll be the exotic backdrop. So we didn't do it,
Speaker 1: and we had to put the funding together a different way. Well,
Speaker 1: when we did that, and I directed it and produced
Speaker 1: it and my dad wrote it and produced it, and
Speaker 1: we didn't always agree, but you know which it fell
Speaker 1: into his demand. I went his way, fell into mind,
Speaker 1: we went my way. He turned to me and he said, man,
Speaker 1: I love you. I like you, and I admire that
Speaker 1: you're courageous because we're doing stuff that we know is
Speaker 1: going to be controversial. Because what we showed with Panther
Speaker 1: was kind of the prequel to New Jack City, was
Speaker 1: that it's not an accident that you can get drugs
Speaker 1: in almost every minority community in America and guns and
Speaker 1: guns are not made in that community. You know, we
Speaker 1: don't make oozies in the hood, We don't grow poppy
Speaker 1: fields in the hood. So how does it get there
Speaker 1: on a daily basis? And the minu you follow the money,
Speaker 1: it leaves black hands brown hands very quickly, and you realize, wow,
Speaker 1: they want us to be medicated, and that to a
Speaker 1: certain degree, that represents a self cleaning oven. Right, So
Speaker 1: when we do that kind of film, you're like, WHOA.
Speaker 1: And now Panther is a really hard movie to find, Like,
Speaker 1: this is the one movie I made that. It's like,
Speaker 1: you can't find that movie.
Speaker 6: It don't even come up when you google, or maybe
Speaker 6: I was tripping, I googled just your films.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but don't up.
Speaker 1: Man. It's like there was a right wing organization that
Speaker 1: took out ads against it. It was like they just
Speaker 1: didn't want us to think they they didn't want to.
Speaker 1: They don't want you to think about that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: You just stay in the hood, bopping your head and
Speaker 1: you know, doing that and don't think about why the drugs.
Speaker 1: You know, that's that's Malcolm stuff. So what happened was
Speaker 1: Dad wanted to be a writer. First of all, Melvin
Speaker 1: wanted to be a tennis player, but he stucked at tennis.
Speaker 1: He just wanted to go at it. So he said,
Speaker 1: I want to be a writer. But then he said,
Speaker 1: he said he got out of writing the direct film,
Speaker 1: make film. I said, why, Daddy, He said, because folks
Speaker 1: weren't reading books enough. They were watching movies. So if
Speaker 1: in the future they go to some other medium and
Speaker 1: you want to reach the people, you want to reach
Speaker 1: the folks that are going to get out there and
Speaker 1: vote and change what tomorrow looks like. Then maybe we
Speaker 1: have to move mediums. So it's not so important what
Speaker 1: the vehicle is. But what is important is being a Grilloh,
Speaker 1: telling our stories, right, telling our stories that set us free,
Speaker 1: that make us go. And let me just say, you know,
Speaker 1: we're not really in the business of brain science brain surgery.
Speaker 1: But when apartheid fell, there were two favorite shows they
Speaker 1: were watching Miami Vice were A White Leading Man and
Speaker 1: a Black Bleeding Man and The Cosby Show. And I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about the Man. I don't want to litigate that.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the phenomenon of the show. Course, twenty
Speaker 1: years before they were the Obamas, it was the Huxtables.
Speaker 1: Hey man, Now we've got modern family and will and grace.
Speaker 1: Whatever it changes, how we look at who you love
Speaker 1: and how you love you feel me. So what's that quote?
Speaker 1: I love to mess up? This one by Lincoln. He says,
Speaker 1: with public opinion on your side, you can do almost anything.
Speaker 1: Without public opinion, it's very hard to get anything done.
Speaker 1: He who controls public opinion has more power than he
Speaker 1: or she who makes the laws. We're in the business
Speaker 1: of culture. I think culture can be healing. If you
Speaker 1: can make a Western, say, well, America made more Westerns
Speaker 1: than any of the type of movie. But in most
Speaker 1: Westerns I saw growing up as a kid, I didn't
Speaker 1: see us. Right. If you looked at a Western, you
Speaker 1: saw someone black. They were shuffling and not someone you
Speaker 1: wanted to be. There was a woman, she was pale,
Speaker 1: frail and needed rescuing. If there was a Chinese guy,
Speaker 1: he was hop seeing the houseboy. If there was a
Speaker 1: Mexican dude, he was the oily bandit who didn't need
Speaker 1: no stinking botches. And if there was a good only
Speaker 1: good Indian was a dead Indian. So you were kind
Speaker 1: of marginalized if you weren't a white guy. But I
Speaker 1: don't feel the need to this nobody either, right, So
Speaker 1: we have like we have some badass white characters in it,
Speaker 1: because that was real. They were there. So I'm just
Speaker 1: not making reactionary film. Outlaw Posse is probably more representative
Speaker 1: of what the West looked like, and because of that,
Speaker 1: it feels revolutionary.
Speaker 2: I like reading reviews.
Speaker 6: You know, It's interesting how when you see critics they
Speaker 6: say the film struggles with effectively managing the shifts between
Speaker 6: comedy and a more serious tone.
Speaker 2: When I read that, I'm like.
Speaker 6: Well, they don't know what it is to be black
Speaker 6: now right, Well, here's the other thing.
Speaker 2: Life is the drama.
Speaker 1: Well, here's the other thing. That's how we survived too.
Speaker 1: Someone asked my daddy, was my dad all these answers
Speaker 1: he said? He said, he said, how can we move
Speaker 1: so fast? Because he well, they killed all the slow ones, beatty,
Speaker 1: Why didn't get to the top. They didn't let me
Speaker 1: in at the bottom, you know. But but that's but
Speaker 1: that's real, and that the people that live the longest centurions,
Speaker 1: people over one hundred, have one thing, three things in common.
Speaker 1: The first is sense of humor. We got all these
Speaker 1: great black comedians. Why great jewice comedians. Why because we
Speaker 1: both people went through trauma. You go through trauma, you
Speaker 1: you either die or you laugh. You and then hopefully
Speaker 1: you laugh and then you get up and make change.
Speaker 1: Is I'm not saying I'm gonna be laughing. I'm still
Speaker 1: gonna get my ass up and make a movie that
Speaker 1: says something. And then you know, and that because we
Speaker 1: believe is you know the three loves? What are the
Speaker 1: three loves? Son? Tell your day?
Speaker 5: Love what you do?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 5: So I got closer to the mic, and here you go.
Speaker 5: Love what you do, love who you do it with,
Speaker 5: and love what you say with it.
Speaker 1: There you go, and if those three chakras line up,
Speaker 1: then you're rich, no matter what the paychest. I was in.
Speaker 1: I was with Dad on fifty sixth Street. He had
Speaker 1: a place on fifty six We're walking down the street
Speaker 1: and his brother came up to us. He had long
Speaker 1: silver dreads and he says, came up behind me, excuse me,
Speaker 1: the Savannah peoples. I have to say, I love your work.
Speaker 1: And we both turned around. We didn't know who he
Speaker 1: was talking to, and he said, I am talking to
Speaker 1: both of y'all. I'm a fan, but I'm not a groupie.
Speaker 1: I have to let you know. Sometimes I go to
Speaker 1: the movies and I'm entertained. That's a good thing. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I go to the movies and I learned something new,
Speaker 1: and that's a good thing. And every now and then
Speaker 1: I go to the movies and I come out proud
Speaker 1: to be a man of color, and that's a great thing.
Speaker 1: And with your movies, I get all three Wow, wow, I.
Speaker 6: Have the loss of your father impacted you personally and professionally.
Speaker 1: It makes me. Enjoy doing ship like this.
Speaker 4: You can't.
Speaker 1: My dad was a cloud.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I love to love him, but.
Speaker 4: That was like I'm going to wrestle Dad when I
Speaker 4: leave here.
Speaker 1: He got me in. He got me in a little,
Speaker 1: a little lock the other day. Well yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was like, I just tapped out.
Speaker 5: I'm not strong, I'm smarter, you know. So I really
Speaker 5: just had to trick him. He didn't want to go
Speaker 5: one way that I wanted him to go, so he
Speaker 5: could open up his next all right, I pushed him
Speaker 5: the other way.
Speaker 2: So he was closing.
Speaker 5: Then he just I'll open it up.
Speaker 1: He locked me in.
Speaker 2: He locked me in.
Speaker 1: This guy can he could rubble. He you got a
Speaker 1: good ground game. He pretty but he got a good
Speaker 1: ground game. You know what what I miss is our conversation, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know because towards the end hit Alzheimer's
Speaker 1: and he was starting to fade. I could we could
Speaker 1: sing songs together because that goes into a different part
Speaker 1: of the brain, you know when you learn music. I
Speaker 1: could hold his hand, he could see, he could know
Speaker 1: who I was. But I miss I miss our conversations,
Speaker 1: like conversations like this for real, like where you can
Speaker 1: and that's why I could be here all day talking.
Speaker 1: You'd be like, you're don't have to get me out
Speaker 1: of here because you were like this Negro talks too much.
Speaker 1: But I miss having those good, in depth conversations. And
Speaker 1: that's again something to go back to the movie. That
Speaker 1: I wanted the movie to do was to have conversations
Speaker 1: with America that America is afraid to have with itself.
Speaker 1: We're afraid to look at stuff and laugh and go
Speaker 1: oh wow. I never looked at it that way, and
Speaker 1: do that collectively in a room with people that don't
Speaker 1: vote like you, think like you, act like you. That's
Speaker 1: the point. If everyone around you looks and things like you,
Speaker 1: life will get born. You know what I mean. You
Speaker 1: got to challenge yourself, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 1: I missed that because Melvin, dude, I'm gonna tell you
Speaker 1: when you got a moment to count, So I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what I missed. This is one thing I so
Speaker 1: Dad had done sweet back, and we had risked. We
Speaker 1: risked everything, all of our little family savings, I mean everything.
Speaker 1: And then the movie blew up and he invited me
Speaker 1: and my sister out to La to go to a
Speaker 1: party and I was about fourteen and my sister were thirteen.
Speaker 1: We had like beautiful afros. We looked like the Jacksons again,
Speaker 1: go back to that, and she had red hair. So
Speaker 1: we go to this party and it's a bot miss one.
Speaker 1: Now we didn't know what the what a bot Mintville
Speaker 1: was and it was my dad's agent had this thing.
Speaker 1: So we go there and there are all these kids,
Speaker 1: mostly Jewish kids, standing around the dance floor, all shy,
Speaker 1: not wanting to dance, being a little timid. They had
Speaker 1: a DJ, they had a band, but well, nobody dancing.
Speaker 1: So me and my sister like, this is a party.
Speaker 1: Oh they don't know right, the floor would light up
Speaker 1: if you stepped on it. We're like oh, So we
Speaker 1: went out there like we were on soul train. We're
Speaker 1: tearing it up. They all started up plotting us and
Speaker 1: they came around the plot and my sister, my sister
Speaker 1: and I were dancing and my dad watching and you
Speaker 1: never know what Melvin van Peebles is gonna think. And
Speaker 1: he signaled us over and I said, I don't know
Speaker 1: what this guy's about to say. And we followed him
Speaker 1: into their library. This family had a McMansion, big old library,
Speaker 1: it looked like something you had of Beauty and the Beast.
Speaker 1: And Daddy took his cigar out and he said, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I love y'all. Y'all are beautiful, and you did.
Speaker 1: It's like you're on soul train. But I feel sorry
Speaker 1: for you because you're going to miss out on half
Speaker 1: of half of life. What and he said, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: he said, listen, we got to love two things about people.
Speaker 1: You gotta love who they are, but you also got
Speaker 1: to love who you are when you're with them, right,
Speaker 1: And the way you're dancing on that floor, it's not
Speaker 1: inviting other people to dance with you. In fact, it's intimidating.
Speaker 1: It almost looks like a challenge, like if they don't
Speaker 1: know the latest steps, don't have the perfectness, or that
Speaker 1: don't even bother coming out on the dance floor. So
Speaker 1: you're never gonna know what that tall Jewish brother is
Speaker 1: thinking right there and might man, he's been to Auschawitz,
Speaker 1: And I said, Ausha, what he said exactly, You don't know.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna know what that little Asian girl is thinking.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna know. You're gonna miss out on half
Speaker 1: of life because you're not bringing out the beauty and others,
Speaker 1: and then he dropped the mic and I was said wow.
Speaker 1: Me and my sister went back on the dance floor.
Speaker 1: I got the girl up, she got the old dude up.
Speaker 1: We got people involved. By the time we laughed left,
Speaker 1: we had everyone up, dancing, hanging out, having fun. And
Speaker 1: one of those guys at that party later on wound
Speaker 1: up funding one of my movies when I became an adult. Wowow,
Speaker 1: And he said, good wow life. Good allies come in
Speaker 1: all colors, you know. Then the lesson was don't leave
Speaker 1: love on the table. Some may not look like you
Speaker 1: or vote like you. Your strength is diversity. Get out there
Speaker 1: and listen to what other people are doing, and sometimes
Speaker 1: you may learn something. You may go, oh, you know what,
Speaker 1: Let me try that. Let me try his workout or
Speaker 1: her workout. What's she doing? I need to know what
Speaker 1: they're doing. Wow. I say, he was such a curious,
Speaker 1: and he had an intellectual curiosity that I missed a
Speaker 1: lot of people. We're happy if we just watched our
Speaker 1: own show with our own news facts, and we just
Speaker 1: want to see stuff that confirms what we already think.
Speaker 1: But the strength is, did you learn a new word? Today.
Speaker 2: Man, I agree so much. Man.
Speaker 6: That's why I was even when I when I brought
Speaker 6: up the New Jack City reference on on with Jonathan Carr.
Speaker 6: That's what I was in reference to because I was saying,
Speaker 6: how the vice president needs to go mix it up
Speaker 6: on Fox News.
Speaker 2: Will Obama?
Speaker 1: I want to do that with this one. I was like,
Speaker 1: put me on Fox then let me get them. They
Speaker 1: see Westerns, you know, and once you hear it, once
Speaker 1: you listen. Somebody came up to me from Fox News
Speaker 1: once it was a right wing radio station. It was
Speaker 1: after nine to eleven, and I was with my kids
Speaker 1: and they were like, what do you think of nine
Speaker 1: to eleven? I said, well, listen, first of all, well
Speaker 1: he said, what do you black people think of nine eleven?
Speaker 1: I said, dude, I can only answer for me. I
Speaker 1: don't represent black people. I can only represent my own
Speaker 1: crazy idea. But let me just say this. If you
Speaker 1: have children, and my eldest daughter says I'm going to
Speaker 1: hit my brother because he hit me, my first question
Speaker 1: is a thinking father would be did you do anything
Speaker 1: that might make your brother want to hit you? Before
Speaker 1: I condone, you're hitting him back? You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Before you get into a military stance with your brother.
Speaker 1: Did he did you do anything to him that might
Speaker 1: provoke me? Why do you hit you? Right? That's the simple,
Speaker 1: And that's a Republican or Democrat. I said, we got
Speaker 1: hit in nine to eleven, okay, but we framed it
Speaker 1: as not patriotic to ever ask the question is there
Speaker 1: anything being done abroad that might make folks want to
Speaker 1: hit us? A minute you look at that, the minute
Speaker 1: you go, oh wow, why is this going down over here?
Speaker 1: Why is that? And you have to look at it,
Speaker 1: you go, oh, there's usually something some some something to it.
Speaker 1: It's not just people just hate you randomly, you know.
Speaker 1: It's like you got to kind of look at what's
Speaker 1: going on. And when you look around, like that thing
Speaker 1: I was telling you about Cartagena, where they say, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll take you. You just have to take our Coca cola
Speaker 1: and our gods and all this and all that, and
Speaker 1: then you have your freedom, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So I think what I'm what I miss is Melvin's
Speaker 1: intellectual curiosity, and and that was a lot of that
Speaker 1: came through travel seeing how if you travel around people
Speaker 1: that you will see, oh wow, they're doing the same
Speaker 1: thing we do or they they look at it a
Speaker 1: different way. And you learn a lot when you travel.
Speaker 1: So part of it is like in this dude, he's
Speaker 1: always traveling. He's been That's what he was. He was
Speaker 1: teaching in Africa. Man, but he was a kid, you know,
Speaker 1: got bit by a line, right, Wow?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got two more questions about outlaw policy.
Speaker 6: Was the disconnect between the chief's public and private identity
Speaker 6: done on purpose?
Speaker 2: To humanism? How do you mean, like was it just
Speaker 2: done on like?
Speaker 6: Did you separate the identities his public how he was
Speaker 6: in public as opposed to personal with his family.
Speaker 2: Did you do that? The humanism more?
Speaker 1: Well, well he has yes. I mean I don't know
Speaker 1: if I did it directly to humanize him. You know,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about that Johnny Cash song the Boy
Speaker 1: Named Sue, where he grows up Like there's a great
Speaker 1: quote by Mark Twain where says, all my life my
Speaker 1: father was an idiot, but at twenty one he was
Speaker 1: a genius, meaning that I got old enough to understand
Speaker 1: what he was doing. So part of what I wanted
Speaker 1: in the father's son dynamic was an evolutionary vibe where
Speaker 1: you go, oh, now I've spent time with a cat.
Speaker 1: Now I understand why he did what he did, but
Speaker 1: you wouldn't understand it younger, you know, man, Just like
Speaker 1: in my life, I didn't always like Melvinvap, especially early
Speaker 1: on I thought he was a paternal fascist. But later on,
Speaker 1: when I said, man, I want to act and there
Speaker 1: were no good roles as an actress, I said, these
Speaker 1: roles are terrible. You know, I'm getting offered Thug one,
Speaker 1: two and three and it's not working. So I guess
Speaker 1: I got to write. So I who's gonna teach me
Speaker 1: how to write? So I went to Melvin people. I
Speaker 1: wrote this first script that was a great script, gave
Speaker 1: it to my dad. He said, huh, it's a piece
Speaker 1: of shit. Hey, I said, what do you mean he
Speaker 1: needs work? He said, nope, you can't polish the third
Speaker 1: son he was article. I said, okay, So I got better, better, better.
Speaker 1: Then I went to get the script done. Couldn't get
Speaker 1: a director, so I said, well, I guess I learned
Speaker 1: to direct. And each step that I took I had
Speaker 1: to go back to him and learn more. And finally
Speaker 1: at the end I realized he had equipped me. My
Speaker 1: mom showed me the mountain, and he equipped me to
Speaker 1: learn how to carry climb the mountain.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So yes, there were separations in it with chiefs, you know,
Speaker 1: public and private persona, but they're they're connected. It's not
Speaker 1: like he doesn't is not. I tried this in life
Speaker 1: that the Mario I am as at least friends with
Speaker 1: the Mario. I try to be that them two jokers
Speaker 1: are not in separate rooms, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I'm never going to be as cool as ID like
Speaker 1: to be, you know, but but they're close, do you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Where I go, and especially as
Speaker 1: you get older, you get more like, man, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna be myself, you know what I mean, Because.
Speaker 6: You project that script and authority in public, but sometimes
Speaker 6: you find difficulty with meeting that expectation in your house totally.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing, the cleaner you get with it,
Speaker 1: and this is what I mean by that, the more
Speaker 1: that your dreams and aspirations become your words, and then
Speaker 1: your words become your deeds, and then your deeds become
Speaker 1: your actions, then the more you affect your reality in
Speaker 1: immediate way. Right, So thoughts become your words, words become
Speaker 1: your deeds, your deeds become your actions, and so I
Speaker 1: find that and there's always a gain, but I find
Speaker 1: them more that I go. Like even this morning, like
Speaker 1: this guy he'sid, okay, Dad, Like last night, he'll be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's get one hundred in. So we do it. We're
Speaker 1: gonna go eat. We're gonna go eat. It's late. We
Speaker 1: just flew in from La, but we're gonna do one
Speaker 1: hundred push ups before we go, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So we were just like, but I have to go
Speaker 1: before lazy Marios starts to go. Well, you know, I
Speaker 1: really should make a phone call. And maybe I didn't
Speaker 1: stretching up because that negro will slow me down. I
Speaker 1: have to get up and go quick before his lazy
Speaker 1: ass gets up. So I realized there are different Marios
Speaker 1: and it just depends on which one I want to
Speaker 1: listen to. Gotcha, you know, I gotta.
Speaker 4: I just want to finish the last question, My last question.
Speaker 1: Questions by the way, New Jack City.
Speaker 3: Yes, sir, you traumatized me for a long time. Why
Speaker 3: did the light skin brother have to get stabbed in
Speaker 3: the hand?
Speaker 2: I loved it?
Speaker 1: This was a question that Will Smith brought up.
Speaker 4: Traumatized me for a long time.
Speaker 6: Man, Anyway, one of the greatest scenes in cinema.
Speaker 1: History scene you know what? You know what it was
Speaker 1: the I I wanted to just when I make a film,
Speaker 1: I want to just let it rip. And there were
Speaker 1: scenes with Wesley for real, Wesley and Allen Payne and
Speaker 1: Alan Pain's in Outlaw posit and there were scenes because
Speaker 1: we laughed and talked about it where they just did
Speaker 1: their thing, and I had the good sense as a
Speaker 1: director to get the hell out the way, no ego
Speaker 1: and go, man, they got magic, let me just film
Speaker 1: the magic, you know what I mean? Uh? And there
Speaker 1: was just moments that Wesley would do stuff and we're like, oh,
Speaker 1: that just works. It'd be killing it. You know. I
Speaker 1: still look back at when I watched that movie and think, man,
Speaker 1: that's one of his baddest roles. Man, he tore it up.
Speaker 1: He really inhabited the role. I mean, yeah, but I
Speaker 1: hear what just and I'm not gonna say nothing, but
Speaker 1: you'll see some reference to that. Youys thought you and
Speaker 1: Alan was related, right.
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 2: I don't even look at them as light skin but related.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, Well that's interesting because there's a reason
Speaker 1: for that too. In out Laws. Yeah, go feed back
Speaker 1: to so so yeah, and Allan has a great vibe.
Speaker 1: We we hang now during the you know, it's like you.
Speaker 1: The good thing is like the guy that's the same
Speaker 1: at twenty as he is is forty didn't grow much,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, you got and so the
Speaker 1: more we grow is man, the more we've gotten closer
Speaker 1: and go Many, you saw this and I can see that.
Speaker 1: And Alan's so smart and thoughtful, and he's good in
Speaker 1: this movie. Man, he did some stuff in this movie
Speaker 1: that's wow. So I'd be proud to be I'm his
Speaker 1: cinematic brother. Absolutely.
Speaker 4: All right, Well, we appreciate you brothers for joining us.
Speaker 2: Our posse is our March first, Yes.
Speaker 4: Man, Many real man, Della van Peebles, what are we
Speaker 4: gonna say?
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say that again because when independent film,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna see huge billboards everywhere. It's word of mouse.
Speaker 1: So people can go on my instagram, Mario van Peebles,
Speaker 1: I'm easy to find or you know, and and and
Speaker 1: see it. But it's gonna be March first, but it
Speaker 1: won't be at every theater, so you got to go
Speaker 1: out and make it happen, all right, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean?
Speaker 4: That's right, it's the break this club, good morning.
Speaker 1: Wake that ass up Earth in the morning. At Breakfast Club,