White Liberal, Black Superman

THERE is a very short history of films made by committed artists with political intentions. There are the famous propaganda films--Leal Riefenstahl's Olympia and Triumph of the Will, the early Soviet Union silent classics, the American, "Why We Fight" series during World War II. But films which have dealt with social process in a direct attempt to instruct or instigate change are few and mostly foreign. Think of Battle of Algiers The Confession If the films of Godard.

The summer however, American critics and audiences began to consider films in increasingly political terms. The reception of The Candidate made it seem that earlier attempts by Haskell Wexler and Emile de'Antonio had prepared U.S. critics at long last for a film which at least broached contemporary issues. Even The Trial of the Catonsville Nine a lib-rad pageant released in early June received much kinder treatment from the press due to political leanings which film critics would probably not have generally taken into consideration a few years back.

Perhaps more important pop entertainment was politicized by the entrance of blacks into Hollywood genres in some cases constituting acts every bit as political as the more highbrow whites filmed social commentary. One decent film emerged from the trashleap to become the biggest black but of the year perhaps of them all. Super Fly

In the course of the summer, I had opportunities to interview representatives of most of the mayor political releases Gregory Peck, the producer of Catonsville Nine was the first I talked with and had the least to say. He decided to back the production, out of a gut level reaction against what was happening in Vietnam if he had personal politics at all they were directed against our totalitarian cultural blandness and could not be specified particularly by the star of Marooned and The Chairman. Later talks with Jeremy Larner screenwriter of The Candidate and Ron O'Neal, the star of Super Fly did manage to reveal real intentions behind their respective huts.

A note on interview form no matter how you cut, verbatim question and answer is the only way to write one up if the subject is going to be the men of issue at hand, and not the interviewer. The manner of speech earmarked the man more than the few verifiable facts. This does not matter as much in intellectual discussions, but the principle, I think, remains the same.

About one month after The Candidate opened in Boston. I met Jeremy Larner at a small French restaurant on Boylston Street. As I had given the film an unfavorable review (which he of course disagreed with). Larher had not been particularly anxious to talk. But he did, in fact, provide amiable enough. Looking very much as you imagined Hector Bloom, the Jewish college basketball star of Larner's first novel, Drive. He said, he spoke with an engaging humor to his edgines, though the presence of a taciturn political friend, who contributed an occasional grunt or mumble and proved invisible otherwise, was slightly discomforting. The talk began over omelettes.

Q: How did you first become associated with Redford and Ritchie on The Candidate?

A: Listen, before I answer those questions, let me tell you what I disagree with about your review.

Q: OK, let's do that.

A: There are some things I agree with, but..."The filmmakers have not mentioned Vietnam in a vain attempt to reduce the chance of incipient outdatedness..."

Q: You did mention it once.

A: Right, So this is wrong. But it is not just an attempt to avoid "outdatedness," though it is a serious problem, I don't know why you would take that lightly, for the war could have changed drastically by the time the film came out. It's really not a film about Vietnam, but certainly some of the things that got us into Vietnam. And the mention of Vietnam that's there is not insignificant, where what are serious subjects for McKay...are turned into a kind of a joke and kind of offensive and puts him off against the television people a little bit.

Now, You say "in the process of winning, McKay becomes less of a statesman, but a potent show-biz votegetter;" I disagree. He was never a statesman, but he was a person, who was trying to be serious about his life and about his work, and who cared about certain issues.

Q: Where is this expressed, that he's so serious and living his life so consciously?

A: It may not be well enough expressed, but the fact that he's avoided politics up to now, and the fact that he's running a legal aid office, and his own attitude towards Lucas when Lucas first approaches him. A good part of the film is spent trying to establish this, whether successfully or not.

Q: The fact that he's not politically committed doesn't make him a serious person

A: He's suspicious of politics, like a lot of people. Yet he isn't a profound thinker, he isn't represented as the world's brightest guy. He's a type who doesn't believe, say necessarily, that elections and politics and taking positions is at all the right way to get things done; he's on to something that's more fundamental, he thinks. But he's not necessarily an intellectual. He is, in fact, like a lot of liberal candidates, that is, intuitive, confused, with potentiality to be led by his emotions. Now you say, "Whether Ritchie and Larner feel this process necessary, and McKay's actions morally justified, is unclear." Well, I think that that's the most ridiculous statement in the review, no, the second most ridiculous statement. I think it's crystal-clear whether one thinks this process necessary or his actions morally justified. We're not moralizing. We're not moralizing because that would be all too pat to moralize but there's no proof for that in any part.

Q: No proof

A: Right, there's no part of the film you could point to that would say this process is justified. We're showing you what the process is, we're also showing you how silly it is and how little it has to do with getting good people to lead us. To say that...

Q: It seems to me what you're doing then, as you've done in your previous points, is merely proving what I think of as limitations in the film. For example, outdatedness. If you were thinking in terms of real politics and how audiences could effect things in real situations, you wouldn't have to worry about outdatedness...

A: We're not interested in showing people how they could effect a political situation. We're making a movie about a certain kind of character in a certain kind of process in a certain kind of situation. We are not serious in your sense. We're serious in the sense of being artists. Artists do not have to solve political problems. One argument is they shouldn't care. We're not telling people what to do. We're showing how this kind of candidate can get elected, totally unprepared to exercise power. That's not everything but it is alot. And over the weeks it's gotten very disgusting when high brow reviewers try to pin us with a purpose bigger than we intended...and missing the point of what we were trying to do.

Q: But it is a real criticism to say that the limits you set yourself are too limited to validate your statement.

A: There's nothing we leave out of the campaign that would happen in a campaign. He is not pressured on the war in Vietnam any more than he would really be. You should know what his position would be on Vietnam. It would be to bring the war to a close...Would it show our moral integrity if we had another scene on Vietnam?

Q: It's not really a question of moral interests

A: But you said it was a cop-out.

Q: OK I say in my sense if I made the film, it would be a cop-out and I do think it's still unclear whether you think McKay's actions justified.

A: Then how could we present these men as being so venal and stupid?

Q: If you take that situation as the given you work with and you say that this is what the men have to go through then you say he is morally justified in participating

A: You're saddling us with a theme we do not have. Given a certain person, this is what happens. This explains the candidacy of John Lindsay for example. But it doesn't say something different couldn't happen to another candidate. It does say, look, this is what happening. Certainly the implication is we could do a hell of a lot better. You're confusing art with preaching.

Q: No. I'm not, I can point to works of art which a have messages

A: Art doesn't have to preach. But I think you have to be very obtuse to come out of there that we feel this is necessary.

Q: If Mckay in the course of the film having been introduced to political chicanery, going through all the whoring and what not you had him go through had say lost.

A: He didn't doe a lot of whoring. He loses himself in the feedback. That's important. It goes against the back room image most people have of politics. This is what happens in real life. Most of our politicians are not evil. In fact, Bill McKay might become an effective senator with a good liberal voting record...But in fact I think it is very clear he loses something as a human being.

Q: All this is painfully obvious. But what exactly is he as a human being. He seems like a nice fellow. His wife comes across as a very unsavory character but she throws the most serious doubt on his character in the whole film when she says. You could win if you take it seriously. We don't know enough about him to know how that registers.

A: That may be a valid criticism. Look, you say "in the context of easy ironies that the film presents, in which all men are power-hungry or venal on a solely personal level," ...in a sense, all political people are on a personal level, but I think we show relatively idealistic people in this film.

Q: But not in the political arena...I'm not disturbed that you paint people in politics that way, but I think there may be a level beyond that, where a candidate may recognize the system cynically for what it is, but use it as a tool.

A: That would be great, but that's another film, that's Ted Kennedy. That's also McKay a little further along, or Marvin Lucas.

Q: Right, I think he's the hero of the film.

A: You say: "I presume that attitude the filmmakers wanted to express was 'this is the way the system works, and if we want to change it from within, we'll have to temper our idealism.' That's total bullshit. All the film is saying is this is the atmosphere, these are the pressures.

Q: Art is reportage.

A: Yes, it certainly is. We did try to avoid a lot of cliches. We spent an awful lot of time just on the crowds, the overwhelming feedback. Just the fact that we choose to show this shows we think this is important.

Q: Then an important question is "who are you addressing this film to?"

A: Not necessarily, not if you don't necessarily think a film is a political act. I hope everybody sees this. Everybody could have learned something from it. The film is a human act. There are, of couse, compromises, simply on the level that the word "fuck" isn't used so we wouldn't get a R rating.

You say we're never sure why McKay goes along with it. You may be right about that, but we do try to hint at those reasons. If you just sit there, you'll see a human being who is struggling...he does not have as concrete an ideology as a student, even as a Harvard student. McKay's downfall is he thinks he can do things his own way. One of the marvelous things about Lucas is Lucas knows he can't, but dangles this in front of him. Then McKay becomes trapped. If he loses, he won't only lose, he'll be humiliated.

Politicans are amazingly weak people. They can't say no to anybody. So they get surrounded by people like Marvin Lucas who baby them and manipulate them along. And very few of them are ideological, though they may give a series of ideological speeches. They are the kind of people who are very sensitive to how they are coming across.

Q: At the end of he flim. McKay is in the Senate. If you were to make a film The Sena or how do you think Mckay would act?

A: There's a range of possibilities, I think you would then show him as a much more consciously cynical person. I don't know that that would make a good film. I've never considered it.

Actually, I don't think people like Bill Mckay should run for high offices. People who are cleaner.-

Q: What's an example?

A: You may be asking that to find out something about what I'm like as a person, but that doesn't reflect much in The Candidate. The people I'd like to see in office are not necessarily the ones that would run for office or the ones I'd like to make a movie about. The best senators are not the most glamorous people, and the best people in the country aren't senators.

Q In what sense are you political

A I'm a writer. As a political person, that's a different story. First of all. I have a higher obligation as an artist, that in no way cuts against my political obligations, and that's to tell the truth. That's a simple way of saying something that turns out to be very complicated. As a political person, my point of view is expressed by Nobody Knows, the book I wrote about the McCarthy campaign, which is that there are very fundamental changes needed in this country, and it's very tricky matter how we go about getting them I'm against a violent revolutionary approach on grounds that it's dangerous, counter productive and immoral. I believe in democracy for one thing I think as long as there's any chance whatever, you've got to try to persuade people. I think the McCarthy and McGovern campaign is hopeful, though I'm not pieased with the route his campaign has taken in the last three weeks..To me, there's a big distinction between socialism and communism.

Q After the McCarthy experience do you see yourself getting directly involved with a political campaign again"

A: I get involved in these things now and then out of a sense of obligation. I just try to make sure that I'm effective. Mostly, for the last two years. I've been working on a novel I got involved with the McCarthy campaign by a fluke. He needed someone, and I was free. It was a responsibility I couldn't refuse, he was he most hopeful thing happening in this country. (I was known in certain literary political circles as a "radical," and a friend of mine knew McCarthy and showed him some essays I had written on education in impoverished schools. McCarhy liked them..)

I was going to quit after the California primary, but stayed on because McCarhy was all we had left. After California I didn't feel any justification in saying that, with Bobby Kennedy or Eugene McCarthy, one was beer than the other, In retrospect, I'm sorry that Kennedy didn't win and get to be president, though I didn't like how he behaved in the campaign.

Q: You think he would have been president?

A: Oh, I think McCarthy would have, if he tried.

Q: Did you Robert Redford, and Michael Ritchie share similar political concerns?

A: Human concerns, yeah, but Redford and Ritchie are not very political people. Redford is like McKay in that he distrusts politics and prefers to stay away from them; he's endorsed McGovern, but you won't see him going out and doing the sort of thing Paul Newman did.

Q: Same incidents in the film have obviously come out of Nobody Knowns. How much came out of Ritchie's experience with the Tunney campaign.'

A: Some, not as many specific incidents, but Ritchie's feel for what goes on in a make up room before a debate. The actual dialogue was written by me. We traveled around with Tunney for awhile. I was also with Unruh, wrote a piece on Unruh and Reagan...Nothing Jarman says in The Candidate hasn't been said by Reagan or Murphy People don't realize how crazy these guys are when they're with their hometown people.

Q: A major part of the film depicts California, the happiness culture--

A: Right...Ritchie lives in the San Francisco area, Redford's from the Valley, the other side of Low Angeles...California is just an example of what the rest of the country becomes...It's a redundancy to moralize about California, all you have to do is show it.

Most people in California don't think or talk about books and they regard writers as janitors, somebody you have to have. The things you talk about in L.A. are rock music, movies, and "where my head is at."

Q: There seems to be a theme running throughout year work of people with delayed adolescence, grouping for something to hang on to in their lives or professionally...

A: Yes Obviously the social system has collapsed to a degree, leaving a lot of people shipwrecked. The things people believe in don't work as well in terms of them making a life for themselves, and that's something that does crop up again and again in my writing.

By the way, this is the first time I have defended my film so insistently, because your review expressed what a lot of people felt about the film, I don't think the film is above criticism.

* * *

I spoke with Ron O'Neal under quite different circumstances. As is often done for stars with commercial prospects, a studio representative and one of Sack Theaters invited a few critics to dine with the star at the suits. The interview was interspersed with casual conversation and the dining room's piano.

O'Neal is a tall, bag and handsome man who lives in New York but speaks with an educated Midwest accent, unexpected after his portrayal of Super Fly, a live cokepusher named Priest. O'Neal led off by calling the production the "definitive black film."

Q: Have you seen Clayton Riley's piece in the Sunday Times? Compared to the other black films. Super Fly came off pretty well, but what he said in general was that all black films subscribe to a sort of black macho ethic which he thought was very crude in which there was a return to the law of the gun and women figure only as sexual pawns.

A He's probably absolutely correct, Clayton, you see, fancies himself as the moral and artistic leader of the black artistic community. He usually states the obvious rather well, in a rather esoteric and involved fashion. He's very, very bright, but not particularly wise. Being correct is not necessarily the only thing of worth.

Q: What good is Super Fly if Riley's criticisms are correct'

A: Go see the film and watch the black audience watch the film.

Q: In other words, you think it's useful to have black versions of the crude white superheroes?

A: Yeah, but super Fly isn't one of those. He has a father and a lover, for example.

Q: I agree as did Riley to some extent Now, if Super Flogets outside the macho ethic in the course of the film, what do you see as his eventual end?

A: He'd have to leave the country, Or else he'd return and be forced back into some hustle or another.

Q: Then do you agree with Eddie's statement, that hustles like the coke trade are the only way for some bright blocks to get ahead?

A: I would agree...if you are in that certain situation it can seem that way, because it is almost "the truth." There are exceptions, I think he could be a moyie star.

Q: Do you enjoy the life?

A: I've only had it for three days.

Q: But you were in theater beforehand.

A: People don't listen to theater anymore. New York theater taught me one thing: it's hard but it's fair. There are no holds learned, no rules. You've got to be good on your own.

Black producers are the same as white producers. Everyone has his reasons.

Q: At what level did you get involved with super Fly?

A: The ground floor. The role was written for me by Philip Fenty, a friend of mine from Cleveland. After I did The Organization, he was cine president of Creative. Advertising, very Madison Avenue, and decided he wanted to do films..He thought I was saleable, and I encouraged him. He finally wrote a script, with my assistance, then he went out and found a producer, Sig Shore. I never believed for an instant we were going to do this film. But then we auditioned actors, and selected Gordon Parks, Jr., as director