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Rhinestone Sharecropping
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 24, 2018
I kept hoping that Spike Lee’s terrible remake, and that habit of the arts, wherein the trampled over creative is posthumously patronized and turned into a saint — could give Bill Gunn some reprints, re-releases, and the papers they thought he burned. Well, boo hoo. I will be thinking of sharecropping as some hologram above the text, unlike titles that are explicitly referenced to, or alluded to in the work, there is no line where the characters utters, “the movie business is just sharecropping with rhinestones.” Land you tend and work and understand, but do not own. Reading this and viewing two of his films, that very few artists that are create with such sureness, as in every word and scene knows where to aim its arrow, and making sure not to miss his [Gunn’s] center.
October 17, 2021
Microagressions! Man, has Bill Gunn got ‘em. Like the schmendrick producer, absurdly named Cubby (isn’t there only one person in the world named Cubby?) who keeps bellyaching “Blacks are gonna take over the world!”—in between showing Bill Gunn pictures of his new fancy-breed horse (“I dunno what it is, I just know it cost $10,000”). Or the finance guy who suggests whites write better black stories than blacks “because they have the objectivity there.” Yadda yadda yadda. Read Teen Vogue (or Claudia Rankine or basically any major American magazine) lately? It’s all the rage. The Whole Foods Karens of HuffPost consume white-on-black microaggressions like they were a new blueberry-inflected superfood.
But Gunn, my man, these rich pishers pull the same shit with all of us—yes, racial condescension not included. The same dumb stories about stuff they bought, which is described as if it were some kind of achievement. The very passing acquaintance with political reality and lived life generally—yep, Bill, it’s the same as when you were writing the novel’s thinly veiled Roman-a-clef version of the biopic of a football hero (who really, really seems to be O.J.)
Bill Gunn was a fascinatingly original voice who wrote the masterly screenplay for Hal Ashby’s much neglected debut THE LANDLORD; directed the compellingly bizarre hoodoo epic GANJA AND HESS which was converted into the even more bizarrely 50 SHADES-esque DA SWEET BLOOD OF JESUS by Spike Lee; and created an ahead-of-its-time autobiographical soap called PERSONAL PROBLEMS that could give Issa Rae some lessons in personal problems. This thinly veiled talking-out-of-school yarn has a chapter called “Blue Notes,” and it shares much in common with Eleanor Perry’s Roman-a-clef of getting fucked over in Hollywood. Gunn’s version, sadly, is lacking a lot of Perry’s juice—and the scenes where the hero’s old-timer dad tells Faulkneresque tales of black poverty are less than expertly drawn. The book is for Gunn super fans only.
But Gunn, my man, these rich pishers pull the same shit with all of us—yes, racial condescension not included. The same dumb stories about stuff they bought, which is described as if it were some kind of achievement. The very passing acquaintance with political reality and lived life generally—yep, Bill, it’s the same as when you were writing the novel’s thinly veiled Roman-a-clef version of the biopic of a football hero (who really, really seems to be O.J.)
Bill Gunn was a fascinatingly original voice who wrote the masterly screenplay for Hal Ashby’s much neglected debut THE LANDLORD; directed the compellingly bizarre hoodoo epic GANJA AND HESS which was converted into the even more bizarrely 50 SHADES-esque DA SWEET BLOOD OF JESUS by Spike Lee; and created an ahead-of-its-time autobiographical soap called PERSONAL PROBLEMS that could give Issa Rae some lessons in personal problems. This thinly veiled talking-out-of-school yarn has a chapter called “Blue Notes,” and it shares much in common with Eleanor Perry’s Roman-a-clef of getting fucked over in Hollywood. Gunn’s version, sadly, is lacking a lot of Perry’s juice—and the scenes where the hero’s old-timer dad tells Faulkneresque tales of black poverty are less than expertly drawn. The book is for Gunn super fans only.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews