BAMBOOZLED

Q: What did you learn about minstrels from working on Bamboozled?

Audio Answer

Q: When you saw yourself in blackface for the first time, what was your reaction?

It made me really sad that black people had to go through such a demeaning, defacing process just to eat. But it also made me very mad too. I was like, damn, this is so unfair. This was so unfair. So that's where it really made me feel things. And then as I started doing the performer itself and I really started doing all that stuff, boy... it felt real nature but it felt real funny. It was a weird mix of feelings going on.

Q: How authentic was it? Did they go through and burn the cork like they showed in the movie?

Actually the process that was shown in the film was the authentic process. But the actual make-up that we used... there was no way we could have used that. That stuff is so acidic and so harsh. And it drips and it's just a terrible terrible substance to have on your face. So we had to actually use like a black lipstick - like that kind of make-up so that it stayed on our face while we danced and all that stuff. But it just goes to show you even more how they really had to go through a lot.

Q: How aware do you think black performers are today of standing on those shoulders and understanding the history that came before them. Because this is the type of thing that people want to push aside...

It's not overlooked in an "on purpose" way. It's naivete, just not knowing. Not knowing what that whole minstrel thing was about, what the performance was about, what was going on in society at the time, what type of companies they were. I found out a lot. I found out this was a very classical form and there were playwrights, they were musicians and they were poets. They wrote some intricate material. They were so talented! I had one soliloquy that I had to do that took two months to memorize. It was so intricate the way it was written that if I got one word wrong it would make everything else not work. So I had to remember every word. I couldn't ad lib, I had to do it exactly as it was. That's how well they wrote. And also I didn't know that minstrels were actually a caricature of the ruling class in the South. So here you had this plantation system of rich people who got rich off of all the natural resources that came off of the black labor during the time... cotton, sugar, tobacco, even rice. And took these traits of this upper class who now imitated the European upper class - so they had mansions and they had balls, and you know, orchestras and they were society now. And they were "Sir". And so that whole minstrel thing was a caricature of this. "Sir, ah yeah, we need to gawn down and take ah carriage" and it was classical because when I looked at all of the pictures of all the minstrels, they had a certain way they had to stand. They had a certain way you had to walk. They had a certain gesture, certain hand gestures that you had to use. I mean, it was like kabuki, man. It was a really really stamped out form. And I didn't know that. I thought it was just, put it on and that wasn't what it was at all. It was very thought out and it was very successful. It was very successful. They made a lot - well, they didn't make any money, but minstrel shows made a lot of money.

Q: What type of reactions have people expressed when viewing the film?

You get very dense truth in this movie and you get to deal with what's going on inside of you. One of the things that I think that nobody in the audience could escape was the last montage of all the images where they show the cartoons, (See: Minstrel Show Clips), where they show the Bing Crosby movie with the white woman putting on the make-up and she says, "I was going to be pretty tonight but I guess not" and she's putting on this blackface. And I'm going, like, damn. The thing I got out of it was that you mean to tell me that our image has been distorted for so long, on this level for so long, that generations of children have grown up thinking in the back of their mind and being taught that we're less than human, that we're less than pretty. That we're less than beautiful people. That we're less than intelligent. And then it makes a lot more sense when you have a mob attacking a little black girl trying to go to school. It makes sense. It all makes sense because of what image do they have of this little black girl? I mean, she's not really a little girl... she's a little black girl... she's subhuman so grown men attack her or blowing up that church with the little kids. Those kinds of atrocities come out of ignorance and racism.

Q: The poster that is out with you and Savion in full blackface regalia is kind of taken out of context as people haven't seen the movie yet. Don't you think that people have been told for so long that they can't laugh at this that it will affect how they view the movie?

I think the basic flux of the movie is that minstrel show. The Man Tan New Millennium Minstrel Show. That's way in context. The movie is about the victims of an atrocity. It was an atrocity - minstrel shows. It was an atrocity - racism. It was an atrocity the oppression that blacks had to go through the last 100, 200, 300 years in this country. To take a picture that is totally accurate about a time period and as a visual not be willing to deal with it or not be willing to show it to other people is the same as taking victims of the Holocaust and saying "We're not going to run that in the Times. We don't want people to really see that. People don't need to be seeing that these days."

Q: But the Times - being the New York Times - has decided not to run the ads, right?

Exactly. So if they decided not to run that ad, then no more concentration camp ads. No more ads of anything that's negative. You know what I mean? I mean, last I looked, there were some movie posters with, like skeletons and like a guy with blood all over him with a damn chainsaw! What?! I mean, they ran that! That was kinda cool to run that! In the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I bet you if you look back, when that movie was out, I bet you the Times had that poster. With the guy and the mask was made out of some lady's skin. Or some craziness like that. Alright? The mask that he had on was actually some human lady's skin. But here is an accomplished director, two accomplished actors, you have a world class tap dancer, a world class comedian I might add... and we're on the front of this movie poster and we're selling an idea and you're not going to run it? That's not only censorship, that's racism too.