Blackening Film History: Friday The Great American Comedy Classic.

I remember it like it was yesterday or maybe a good month ago. The details around it aren't so clear except for one phenomenally inept lapse in judgement and taste. I went to see a double feature of two movies I hadn't seen (now in their second run because we at that time could rarely afford to see a movie in its initial run as a family of nine). The theater was small, cramped, and dingy. The kind where you can smell the breath of the last patron in your seat still hanging in the air because there is no ventilation. The double feature was Sylvester Stallone's “Judge Dredd”, and “Friday”. Understand that by this time Friday was already a cultural phenomenon where it mattered...amongst black people. Whether at work, play, or school you couldn’t go anywhere with out someone quoting a line,with or without context. Amongst black folk at the time, Friday was the kind of movie that would’ve caused a tectonic shift on Black Twitter had it existed. In every and all sense of the word, Friday was an event movie for us, one you had to see it, or be banished to the realm of the obsolete, of the woefully out of the loop, an ignorant 411 leper. But there was me blissful in my ignorance, hardened in my tastes, saying to myself without saying to myself.. “It didn’t matter”. My feeling was “Friday” might turn out alright, but Judge Dredd though!” it was disgraceful, borderline unforgivable, one of my most regrettable moments of poor judgement, and I am not proud of this. I have no clue what white people were doing thinking , or saying about Friday at the time. All my education about their collective input on Friday comes in retrospect, and I still care very little for it- I’ll come back to this later. Amongst the non movie-goer and movie-goer alike in my community Friday only a few months into its birth into the American cinematic lexicon was already knee deep into its journey to ubiquitousness . Then and now the film was in many ways incomparable, while in others it shares distinguishing traits with a great deal of other classic American comedies. Thing is though, I wanted to see Judge Dredd more. Yes I said it, let that sink in for a moment.. I’ll wait , because it's still hasn't sunk in for me yet. I not only wanted to see Judge f***ing Dredd more than Friday, I sincerely thought it would be the better movie….

This the inside of my brain every time I think back to the fact that I would’ve rather watched “Judge Dredd”, than anything really, much less “Friday.”

I remember so acutely the feeling in the pit of my stomach as trailers went on that I wanted this appetizer of Friday to be over as soon as possible so I could get the main course Dredd. A wonky, ridiculous, uneven, over-the-top, if not fun comic book movie about a criminally bad cop in a “distant” future where the police functioned as branches of government . A few minutes later I would legit forget there was a double feature at all. From "You half dead motherf***er" to "And you know this man" Friday was not only quakingly funny, but smart, well directed, and ingeniously played by almost all of its actors. It was a welcome interruption to the trend of hood dramas that portrayed the agonizing and tragic aspects of living in the inner city, the importance of which cannot be overstated not only because of the way it reupholstered, and reconstructed tropes about growing up in the hood, but for its impact on the future of comedy in Hollywood. The 1995 comedy came out on the heels of an explosion of films about the hood, and the scourge of the crack cocaine drug epidemic. From one of my favorite films “New Jack City” to Boyz in the Hood”, “South Central” and “Menace to Society”, these films announced the coming of several important black filmmakers, actors, and actresses, provided scathing and insightful political commentary, and served the important task of informing a country blinded to the violence, suffering, and activism by blacks without aide of whites going on in the hoods of America. Nevertheless these films also had the unintended impact of dehumanizing the more unsavory aspects and role players in our neighborhoods, and reducing them to archetypes of evil. These tropes and characters helped assure racist foreign white eyes (that had no context) of our animalistic nature. Whites (misinterpreting either obliviously or intentionally) were encouraged and emboldened to interfere the only way they seemed to understand, (state sanctioned violence) and those whites who found sympathy would condescendingly paternalize that sympathy, which could be seen in a cinematic call and response that created movies like “Dangerous Minds”. Friday was different, crude, endearing and refreshing, and according to many of the major players involved in its making , this was by design. While previous films had turned crack heads into mortifying zombies, hated, sometimes feared, living in the crevices of the neighborhood on the outskirts of the humanity bereft of any will to eat, converse, connect, Friday gave us “Eazel”, who jokes, hustles, “works” and who is ultimately apart of the patchwork of personality that is any neighborhood. Rather than make him a stain on the neighborhood, the focus on Eazel was in fact on his personality, not his addiction, and other than maybe Bubbles (Andre Royo) from the Wire it is the most humanized version of a homeless addict we’ve seen, and representative of the reality of who these people were to us, in our hoods. In the other films drug dealers were ruthless, and only ruthless. Servants to nihilism, hawks of capitalism, they could care less about their own lives so even less for yours. In the pursuit of money, they were almost entirely lacking of any empathy. They were America’s worst nightmare in Menace to Society, willing to shoot a rising football star with no affiliations over an exchange of words in Boyz in the Hood, or use a small child as a shield in a failed attempt on their life in New Jack City. In Friday “Big Worm” was these things for sure but also a big personality, farcical even. Learning into the need for such folk to be seen and heard, Worm wore his hair relaxed, with rollers, and drove around in a 60 something dreamscicle orange Chevy Impala, and an ice cream truck on daytons. He is a ruthless business man, but he is also a character. He wants smokey to “apply himself,” “doesn’t want to have fuck smokey up” but he will…

Playin' with my money is like playin' with my emotions...

The point being Friday didn’t defend or upend the earned negativity around gang violence or drug dealers, or crack addiction, but it did provide a fuller picture of the black and brown neighborhood, and the role these people play in it. The good and the bad times. The individual, and the community, the dark, and the light hearted. Its authenticity is inextricable from both its success, as well as any of its strengths and weaknesses. Black people understood it all too well. White folk (sometimes imprecisely alluded to as the “mainstream”) I don’t think still quite get Friday. There is no point of reference for them, and if you have no point of reference , no historical or familial context for the brilliance of these characters, the purposeful lack of focus so aptly depicted in what it feels like to just want to get to high, and free your mind in the inner city, you run the risk of mistaking them for some brechtian accumulation of caricatures with no real connection as did Gene Siskel in this small review of Friday…

“For all of the shouting, mugging and rap music, a surprisingly dull comic yarn about a young man (Ice Cube) trying to survive in the ‘hood. Colorful characters abound, but nothing ties them together. I knew the picture was in trouble when its first gag involved an old lady spewing obscenities. ”

— Gene Siskel writing for the Chicago Tribune

Yet Siskel’s words reveal something more problematic about the expectations of black filmmakers, black people, and suffering. Friday is and was not merely a stoner comedy although that is most definitely part of its charm, but it was also not about “surviving in the hood”. Most importantly, why is/was there no space for a movie about black people taking a day off from “surviving”, from preaching, and self important messages to be great? Why can’t/couldn’t we be as “Dazed and Confused” as whites on film? Friday didn’t and doesn’t have to be some meditation on black frustrations in the hood, it was a thoroughly entertaining “day in the life” film featuring top notch characters, (not to be confused with caricatures) a legendary comedic debut, (Chris Tucker) sure direction from a first timer, and brilliant humor. The humor or as my comedic acting teacher called it “The Funny” (Like in the bathroom scene with John Witherspoon’s “Pops” and Ice Cube) is not merely found in the toilet, it was found in the familiar and singularly recognizable way black parents of a certain generation have no respect for boundaries, doors, or space. Embarrassment and time are luxuries for rich people with jobs, and no children. The very specific way many of our parents saw their off-spring (no matter how grown) as children, and as owing them a debt in this world…”I smelt your shit for Twenty Two years, you can smell mines for five minutes”. The joke or gag Siskel references is not simply that an “old lady is spewing obscenities” it is the hypocrisy of the church, and its members, and the sass, seniority and verve of older black women in the community. Beyond the authenticity of its father figures, or matriarchs, and even bullies, Friday is incredibly well put together, and succinct in what by all accounts was a gargantuan undertaking by a first time feature filmmaker. F. Gary Gray managed to reign this plethora of personalities into one film in a way that never felt like it let any actor get too carried away, and take the movie away with them. It is a comedy that through fantastic editing had a crystal clear idea of what it wanted to be and confidently expressed itself as intentionally irreverent, and it was many of Gray’s directorial flourishes that enhanced, and cultivated the viewing experience, and subsequently the indelibility of Friday…

This bottom up view of Smokey’s face after witnessing Redd get knocked out is integral to what makes “You got knocked the fuck out!” so memorable. The joke as a conjured memory itself is seen from an impossible point of view considering the storyteller is Smokey himself, because it is meant for us, as told to us, and upon recollection the punchline is always accompanied by Gary’s distinct manipulation of Tuckers face.

Gray’s choice to speed the scene up as Smokey trips out on PCP laced weed in post is another simple but perceptive instinct that gives insight to what is funny, but also what gives the audience an empathetic sense of what the character is going through.

The approaching of the character Deebo, from the bottom nothing but his feet on the bike bears some resemblance to the sharks fin in Jaws, and with accompanying music is a wonderful bit of parody intentional or not on the Jaws theme as well as the “Imperial march”

Additionally, Gray, Kimberly Hardin, and casting Legend Jaki Brown (in a very particular and acute bit of genius born of necessity, knowledge, and perception) brought together one of the greatest casts in history. I say that with no hyperbole. You’d be hard pressed to name one cast member who isn’t at the very least a perfect fit, if not in the throws of an astoundingly instinctive, intelligent comedic performance, especially the women. It is almost spiritual to watch Anna Marie Horseford embody both a very general and specific kind of black mother. Loving, warm, no nonsense, and direct without being combative. That smooth transition from “She oughta be ashamed of herself looking like that” to Hey Girl!” The ability to communicate what one feels without necessarily communicating what one feels was not only the work of a natural actor, but one who drawed as deeply from from the well of ancestry and tradition of black motherhood, as Denzel did black suffering in his single tear scene in “ Glory. When you hear Horseford yell “Okay” from across the street. It’s the truth in the look she gives in concert with the way the word “okay” trails and shrills itself into befuddled sarcasm, and inaffection that spews comedy gold from about 1:26 to 1:40 mins in…

http://www.taranets.net/movies/friday-1995.html http://www.taranets.net/movies/best-ice-cube-movies.html http://www.taranets.net/movies/best-chris-tucker-movies.html http://www.taranets.net/movies/best-bernie-mac-movies.html a clip from Friday with Kathleen Bradley as Mrs Parker

Of maybe all the great performances in Friday, Angela Means work maybe the most noteworthy. Her interpretation of another character in the arms of addiction, who is yet still a full human being, features the most transferable traits, intelligence, and instincts from the world of comedy to drama. The fact is that Felica has become an icon of comedic cinema, and her entry into the slang lexicon of american pop culture is a representation of that by way of extension from the character Means so finely molded. The “Felicia” Means created, connected to the “Bye” in the popular phrase is inextricable from the terms pejorative nature. It conjures both its mean spirited punch, and its relevance from the memorable nature of the character Means created. Means instincts as an actor are on full display, it's in Felicia's walk - wide, and sloppy, lacking in any grace whatsoever. A subversive walk, it is not meant for the male gaze, and Felicia doesn’t care. Means chosen gait and stride is both psychological, and physical in its intention, it implies not only her lack of desire to perform for men, but also that Felicia has no respect for space....

Felisha asking to borrow smokeys car.

This quote from the actress solidifies both Means’s talent, and intention..

“During the scene where Craig says “Bye, Felisha,” Gary was going to break down the set and do a reverse shot of me. I was supposed to walk up to the porch where Chris and Cube were and face the camera when I spoke to them, like everyone else did. I was like, no. If Felisha is going to invade people’s space, then she is going to invade people’s space. She’s oblivious to personal space and boundaries. I told Gary, “Why don’t we just save a whole hour and let Felisha’s ass just sit down in between them?” Neither Cube or Chris knew I was going to sit down, and when I did Chris wasn’t even acting, he was like, “DAMN!” He was pissed at me. [Laughs.] It made the scene better, and broke up the monotony of everyone coming to the porch. Her sitting down was a moment that we found together. Not that it was that big a deal, but it did save like a good hour, and it created that scene, the three sitting on the porch like that.”

— Angela Means from the "Oral History of Friday"

There is also a clear eyed sincerity in Means creation of Angela that sets it apart from the darty eyed contemptibility of Halle Berry’s “Vivian” in Spike Lee’s “Jungle Fever”. Felicia earnestly sees nothing abnormal about her frequent requests despite their absurdity. In every scene she asks for something more ridiculous than the last, and the cluelessness as to the size and uncouth of her requests is so deeply genuine it becomes part of her charm and as well as her repulsion. Means like all great comedians doesn’t play Felicia for jokes, she plays her for truth even when the set up itself is ridiculous or over the top, and especially when it’s not true…

Neighbors always wanting to borrow stuff.

Paula Jai Parker’s Joi is equally memorable, and equally representative of Jai's dedication to her character. In contrast to Means, Parker went for the large and overt. Both Joi and Felicia take up considerable amounts of space, but whereas the jewel of Mean’s performance is in the subtle details, Parker’s Joi is a great deal more over the top with intention. Partly owing to the traditions of camp, Joi is meant to be not only grandiose , but exaggerated, and hails from the imaginative spectrum of creation as well as the inspired…

“I’d lived in Washington D.C. when I was going to college and I had seen girls that reminded me of Joi. The blonde dookie braids became popular and, Lord, those nails. I did the nails, I created those and put those on. I don’t know where I got that from. I was just young and inspired.”

— Paula Jai Parker from the "Oral History of Friday"

There is deliberateness in her cadence, and in the walk. She means to get where she’s going and she means what she’s saying. Quick to get from point A. to B. whether that’s walking from her car to the porch, or changing moods from sweetness to anger..

What Paula Jai and the rest of the cast are committed to, what they created along with Ice Cube, DJ Pooh, and F. Gary Gray is too big for just the label Cult Classic ( fitting though it is). The label does not encompass this movies impact on American culture at large or American comedy. Friday is the unrecognized but rather obvious antecedent of Judd Apatow films and all their offspring in structure, outlandish characters, and raunch. It is an African American film that captures the rebellious spirit of John Hughes films like “The Breakfast Club, and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, the aimless youthfulness of “Clerks” or “Slacker” , and the crassness of Animal House or Caddyshack. The only thing that keeps it from being mentioned alongside these films ..whiteness. The weird obsession with finding comparable films that feature black people for black films, white people for white films. This is propelled forth from a “pretty good for a black film” attitude adapted by many connoisseurs, and gatekeepers of film academia and cinephelia, and white people’s disinterest ( and in certain aspects inability) to truly understand the material, the frame of reference, and thusly the craft, and art of what was created. Nevertheless we dont need white folk to validate the indelible nature of this film. The intent of deliberately obtuse people is unimportant here, the legacy of Friday is unimpeachable. Endlessly quotable, fondly remembered, independently created, massively popular with several characters whose names have published quotes in the comedic almanac of american cinema. It is without exception one of the great American comedies, and I will do my part to see it continue its legacy as it should be - a classic worthy of the criterion collection, if not for any other reason than to pay penance for the fact I thought Judge Dredd would be a better f***ing movie.

Revisiting : 1992's Deep Cover

There are often times where the political, thematic, or cinematic, values of a movie are at odds with the society upon which it is thrust. On other occasions, aesthetics, general techniques, methodology,  the generally accepted filmmaking style, or genre, trend, and style of an era may conflict with the same attributes in a given film if it strays too much from the norm.  It is always a complicated mixture of exhilaration,  and anguish,  revisiting a film that was not only under-appreciated by its time, but by me personally.  A "How did I miss this?!" or “How did WE miss this?!" 1992’s “Deep Cover” is such a film for me. As directed by Bill Duke Deep Cover is a poetic, warm lit, cold hearted jazz/hip hop infused thriller with the same kinetic energy as the underworld it seeks to portray. Oozing the same distilled cool as its star (Laurence Fishburne) out of every frame. Simultaneaously reinforcing and under cutting hyper-masculine energy out of almost all of its dialogue and almost every interaction. The hero's journey is not a journey to be a better drug dealer, or cop (not in most of the ways typical to the genre anyway), definitely not a hero, but becoming in fact more open to his emotions, to what he is perpetuating, (even as an officer of the law) and to what end he is being used.  It is noir conventions as political commentary on the black experience in America. Doubling as both a great under cover thriller, and a great allegory for the way in which black people must adjust themselves in the world.. in effect going “undercover”.   While many times revisiting a film we are imbuing it with qualities it was not born with,  in this case, with the specific aspects of this specific film, I think this is its original intention.  An intentional about face from the narratives most presented on screen about men,  and most certainly black men in 1992, and it is this discovery that made re-watching  Deep Cover  so emphatically satisfying.

Upon first arriving on camera Fishburne's Russell Stevens is the prototypical noir male protagonist, unwittingly out of his depth, but unflappable in his confidence. In fact he is praised by his superior for possessing some of the very same qualities common to a noir protagonist. It is pointed out to him that while being a cop, he is also the ideal criminal ( A powerful under pinning commentary itself).   “A man with a rigid moral code, with no underlying sense of values,  repressed violence, rage” - Special Agent gent Carver reads off to him from his file. These qualities extend undoubtedly from the trauma of watching his father shot and killed in a drug store robbery as a child,  which in Agent Carver’s mind makes Stevens a ready made tool for the job.  In this way the film has no different a set up than most noir films, or even thrillers about going undercover.  It reads like a cinematic want-ad for the hard boiled anti hero. “Wanted: Pent up, amoral seeker of a strict code of justice,  to be set loose into ( add at least encouraged) unto an slowly unraveling rampage of violence and corruption in the name of the law, and/or in defiance of it. Like other noir films Duke’s film undermines the philosophy of any dualist ideological separation between cops and robbers, order and chaos.  But as Deep Cover glides along on its wings of effortless swagger, it becomes clearer and clearer that of these supposed criminal sensibilities, it is Stevens's "insufficient sense of self",  that it most desires to examine. That instead of glorifying these qualities it wants to condemn them. Like its cinematic sibling Carl Franklin's “Devil in a Blue Dress”, Duke’s film gives its protagonist the agency of self -discovery. Undeniably implying that Stevens has: A. not found himself, and thusly that B. self discovery is the underlying  impetus of the character.   It's through Hull's journey as a character that the audience will arrive at the ultimate prognosis of the film.  The Drug war is a play,  and African Americans and Latinos, are confined to strict roles on either side of justice as the antagonist in their own demise,  therefore introspection,  community, and character are key to our survival in a white supremacist country.

““White privilege is a manipulative, suffocating blanket of power that envelops everything we know...It’s brutal and oppressive, bullying you into not speaking up for fear of losing your loved ones, or job, or flat. It scares you into silencing yourself: you don’t get the privilege of speaking honestly about your feelings without extensively assessing the consequences...challenging it can have implications on your quality of life.” ”

— Renni Eddo-Lodge

It is this conceptualization of privilege and hegemony that I think writers Michael Tolkien and Henry Bean encapsulate so well through the two white characters in the film.  For instance, Agent Carver (played with fiendish charm,  ego, and smarm by Charles Martin Smith) is an avatar of this very aspect of whiteness.  Throughout the movie his character remarks several times  (Much to his own delight)  that "He is God"., and indeed he seems to be everywhere, and yet invisible to Fishburne’s Stevens,  much like a god, much like whiteness.  Carver is only interested in the plight of Hull (and subsequently the plight of black people) in as far as it can boost his career. At every turn where it might impede,  stagnate,  or ruin Carvers career,  Carver is not only disinterested,  he is actively hostile towards it.  As Eddo-Lodge's quote asserts, Carvers avatar of whiteness and white supremacy also actively silences and suffocates others. At once made glaringly apparent in an early scene where he uses the “N” word under the guise of seeking to find a man that “understands” the job. As if these black men require a lesson in the scourge of the crack epidemic in the communities they came from, or by way relation to the contagion? Carver (and Smith in his performance) makes it clear he knows he can get away with this not only because of his not so veiled rouse, but because he knows his position and privilege protect him from being seen as in the wrong, cruel, or as the aggressor,  and subsequently he is safe from any recourse or punishment.   This, as well as his clear apathy in the face of so many destroyed lives (like his reaction to the murder a young black male in service of Hull’s cover, right in front of Hull)  prove his privilege, as well as the fact that he is actually not as concerned with the moral end game as he proclaims. This is  made even more abundantly clear in the final scenes of the movie.  Charles Martin Smith's gleefully amoral portrayal and ultimately the character of Carver is a spot on example of the ridiculousness of a drug war that was almost solely created to wage war on black people and people of color by the same government that had no problem trafficking in the drugs themselves if it funded their goals,  and of the audacity of white privilege. And it's pretty readily identifiable in this era or that.

Uploaded by Alex Gonzalez on 2016-07-16.

I want to digress a bit to talk about Jeff Goldbum. Jeff Goldblum in Deep Cover gives a performance that is indicative of all that makes Jeff Goldblum a favorite among so many. His patented rapid fire cool, constant state of faux confusion, and ability to make almost any scene seem completely improv, color and empower his character to rare heights even for Goldblum.  In this role, surprise and unpredictability are built into the character even without Goldblum, so that Goldblum's inhabitation of the character is a perfect marriage.  No one knows who David Jason is, including David Jason.  Is he a lawyer,  a drug dealer,  a house husband, a killer?  So we get to watch Goldblum as David, mold David into who it is he wants to be through Goldblum's sly and intelligent reading of the character and his trademark histrionics. What we learn along the way, is that in a way David is a mirror image of Russell.  Both David and Russell begin the film on a journey of self discovery, but where they end up, and the particulars around how they arrive there are entirely different .   David Jason's biggest weapon against those that undermine him is that they never see him coming.  To the point Felix Barabosa (Gregory Sierra) the cartel boss for whom Jason supplies - believes that he can cruelly bully,  pester,  and belittle David for years and nothing would happen.   There is a wonderfully complex understanding of the intersection of privilege to dissect here, where Balboa possesses a specific structural privilege through the nature of his rank and authority in the Cartel over David, but David (who himself is used to being a victim of racism as well) possesses a more macro structural privilege himself through the inclusion of his ethnicity as white. . I don't find it hard to believe that this is a contributing factor to why David chafes working under Balboa.    Reinvigorated by the appearance and attitude of Laurence Fishburne’s Johnny Hull (His cover)   and propelled by his own inflated but bruised ego , David Jason morphs into the kind of men he has always incorrectly seen himself as better than, and quite possibly the man he always wanted to be.  This newfound menace is conveyed with incredible skill. By the film’s end the transformation is complete, Goldblum is a werewolf, his fangs fully bared, his predatorial nature on full display no longer in hiding. Physically everything from his hair to his walk, and body language has morphed into a man who is now confidently himself, or at least the man he envisioned himself to be. And it's both jolting, and surprising to see Goldblum turn his almost magical charm and likability against and on us. David Jason is the embodiment of the hypocrisy of moral high ground, and absolutes in a capitalist society.  Greed is good,  and white is good,  and everything else is a tool or a waste.   There is no limit,  and as soon as David gets a taste of this (as suggested by Barbosa) in his first kill,   he is possessed by his own avarice and bloodlust.  In a way David Jason is a white version of Tupac Shakur's "Bishop" from Ernest Dickerson’s "Juice". Hopped up on violence as an extension of his power,  derived from his sense of powerlessness as an undervalued member of a criminal enterprise, and a undervalued minority in America.   Goldblum from start to finish sculpts the mannerisms, and attitude,  of a covertly racist, white male  on a destructive journey of revenge and megalomania.

““To be white, or straight, or male, or middle class is to be simultaneously ubiquitious and invisible. You’re everywhere you look, you’re the standard against which everyone else is measured””

— Michael S Kimmel

As the other avatar of whiteness in the film, Goldblum like Carver puts on the airs of some version of what we know today as white liberalism,  or at the very least libertarianism.  He consistently refers to himself as an ally to Johnny.  One could imagine him relating his own Jewish American experience to that of Hull's as an African American, or repeating the oft quoted line from Jordan Peele’s Get Out, “I would’ve voted for Obama a Third Term if I could”.  He keeps company with African Americans,  he understands the basics of what troubles the black community in a racist hierarchical society,  but he also feigns ignorance of his privilege by coalescing our struggles,  while fetishizing and demeaning a black woman wantonly in Johnny's presence (purposely) All of which is calcified in a scene where he’s challenged about his inherently racist analogy of Johnny as “A panther,  a jungle storm,  and a magnificent beast” and his retort is "I can say anything I want". He like Agent Carver talks a great deal about the struggle of black people while unempathetically performing as a cog in a wheel that runs over those that either can't afford him, or challenge his privilege, and/or lifestyle.  David's privilege is as invisible to him as he desires it to be because of his standing.  He can “say what he wants” unapologetically because he at least in passing and coding is the standard.  He (as Goldblum says with piercing conviction ) "Wants to have his cake and eat it too". Climbing the stratified ladder of hierarchal oppression can cause the best of us to develop conscious and unconscious blind spots.  To pick and choose what we see and who we see based upon whether it first benefits us.  To prioritize our comfort as Tim Wise once said in a CNN interview over someone else's pain.  This in essence is the story of David Jason in Deep Cover as magnificently performed by Jeff Goldblum.  His journey is parallel, and in opposition, along its track to that of Fishburne’s Stevens.

Russell Stevens aka Johnny Hull (Laurence Fishburne) is one of the more unique characters produced in the 90's. As with any great character this is in part great editing, writing,  and direction.  The result of this collaboration is especially unique because of the results and the era in which they were produced.  As I stated before, Stevens is the rare hard boiled male whose journey is not about hardening but softening, and that journey of softening is not affixed to his introduction to a woman.  It is a softening to the woes that go on around him.  The movie is never about his slow descent into the acceptance of the violence perpetrated by gangsters, his own amoral superiority, or the apathy of his superiors,  but his growing intolerance of it.  Starting from his acceptance of his superiors behavior in the beginning, evolving, to his repulsion at a severe beating he is witness to in a pool hall...

Continuing through to his reluctance to kill a rival drug dealer, and the pain and hurt of watching a young drug addicted mother deteriorate with her son in tow.

Kicked in the chest

When the drug addicted mother of the young boys dies of an overdose it is not apathy but compassion and hurt that the film chooses to center. "I wanted to think about it,  I didn't want to look at her but I couldn't get up off the bed".  Fishburne’s Stevens says in one of the films many poignant voice overs.   There is constant talk about the pain and subsequent trauma of killing another African American man even if he was a sadistic drug dealer.  And of watching another father figure die in his arms in the same way his father did, as when an honest cop who has been tailing Hull throughout the film unaware of his cover is shot by the newly transformed David.  There is where Hull has reached his breaking point,  from the violence,  the avarice,  the apathy.  Here in the films denouement,  is where the film cements its fundamnetal difference in approach.  Fishburne cries profusely in a gut wrenching emotional release both for him and the audience " You shouldn't have done that David,  you shouldn't have done that"…

My favorite scene from the Movie.

It’s a resounding exclamation mark on both the depth of Fishburne’s performance (which was truly Oscar worthy) and on the films own unique niche in defiance of one of the most common, and defining conventions of the Noir film. Fishburne’s character finds a compass, and he accomplishes this through embracing his emotions not shutting them off,  or hardening them, and only moments after the murder of another black man he mutually respects,  he realizes what he has to do, as well as who he really is. This is in distinctive contrast to other under cover films like Serpico where Pacino's character knows who he is from the outset and it is the outsiders who struggle with the acceptance, or Donnie Brasco,  and the Departed which are about losing your compass on the way to the end.  It is cathartic in a way few noir films can be or have been, which I think was necessary in the case of the African American community as portrayed on film. The no-holds-barred fatalism, and nihilism that engulfed a great deal of not only noir films , but the explosion of black cinema in the 90’s as it pertained the hoods and barrios - were more than enough. A film that celebrated self growth, and a renewed vigor to not only reflect on ones self , but through one’s own emotional journey - to realize the inherent flaws of a broken system, and refuse to make allowances, or further the myth of a good FBI, that ends by most observable measurements happily for our hero? …That was something new for the time, and necessary.  Fishburnes performance like the film itself is a anomaly in the undercover detective genre,  in noir,  and in African American crime films of the time in how it reconfigured the hard boiled detective as a subversive counter to the idea that being tough is about excluding or containing emotion, and ends with a denouncement of the institution.   A man telling his secrets, talking about and confronting his past, looking out for others,  caring for others in an endeavor for justice,  rather than just doling out wanton violence as a stand in justice, was and still is refreshing.   Whether that be on crime or on an individual level as a man, Fishburne’s stark cool, and Dukes direction (political swagger rooted in the finest traditions of black music) enabled Deep Cover to remain appealing, engrossing, and thrilling, while it adeptly tackled and confronted various issues ailing men, the African-American community, and our justice system.  It's a film with many faces,  and layers as deep as the cover Fishburnes Hull is under and it is well worth re-consideration as one of the all time great Noir detective films in cinema.