August 12, 2025 • 36 mins
George is joined by award-winning filmmaker Stephen Winter. Stephen talks to George about the soul-expanding journey that classic Black cinema can take you on; his own struggle to break through as a young Black and Queer director in the 1990s; and why going to the theater with your friends can still be a transformative experience, even in our digital age.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
What I'm trying to do is encourage folks to think
about the films that they watch as part of a healthy,
balanced diet for their lives. And you know how you
feel strengthened after you've had a nice, healthy meal, That's
what film can do for you.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Stephen Winter is a black queer filmmaker known for his
provocative and ground broken word. His films, including Chocolate Babies
and The good Son, explore issues of identity, race, and
sexuality with boldness and sensitivity.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
This is a space where Steven's.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Unapologetic vision challenges norms and sparks conversations about what it
means to truly break boundaries.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Really going into the history of things and what black
films we're doing in different eras. And my encouragement is
for you to fall into these dreams, to make space
to really bring yourself into another place. You find hope,
going to fight the singing in them heavy handed to
(01:08):
the world. Take as a brandy, you spoke the guy.
You know what the plan is? One to understand me.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
My name is George M. Johnson.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I am the New York Times bestselling author of the
book All Boys Aren't Blue, which is.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
The number one most challenged book in the United States.
This is Fighting Words, a show where.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
We take you to the front lines of the culture
wars with the people who are using their words to
make change and who refuse.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
To be silent.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Today's guest Stephen Winter. I am here today with mister
Stephen Winter. How are you doing today?
Speaker 1 (01:49):
I'm drink very well. George.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Yes, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I want you to introduce yourself and let everyone know
who is Stephen Winter.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Ah, thank you well, Stephen Winter. Is please as punch
to be on your show. I love this show and
I'm so happy to be a part of it. I'm
a filmmaker, director, writer and producer and occasional fiction podcast maker.
I'm from Chicago. My mother was an immigrant from Jamaica.
(02:20):
My father was an immigrant from Czechoslovakia. They met at
the Democratic Convention and made me and my brother and sister.
I always wanted to be a filmmaker. I got to
pursue it came up in New York in the nineties,
where I made a film called Chocolate Babies that was
described at the time nineteen ninety six as a gang
of HIV positive black and Asian drag queens. Become political
(02:44):
terrorists and kidnap a conservative closeted politician. And it was
based on my experiences being a kid an act up
in Chicago and being a kid who came up in
the Chicago oriented Black Afro centric revolutionary spirit. And since
(03:04):
then I've been bopping around and what me and my
friends like to sarcastically call the quality cinema game. And
right now I'm in an exciting moment career wise because
I am directing a documentary about the history and future
of queer Jamaica, starring the Man Booker Prize winning Black
(03:28):
Offer Marlon James. It's a marvelous, sacred, wonderful experience so
far of going into you know, not only just my
ancestral homeland, but Jamaica is a place that everybody pretty
much knows, but nobody knows a lot of things about.
And one of the things that people do sometimes recognize
(03:49):
when they think Jamaica outside of Sandy Beaches and reggae
music is, oh, aren't they really really homophobic? And the
answer is yes. In some they have been up there
with Uganda and Russia as being one of the worst
places for queer people to be. But on the other hand,
Jamaica is a complex and layered place, yes, and they
(04:12):
love their children as much as any other group of people,
and we're exploring that too.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Jamaica is a very complex, interesting country because they do
have a national hero who is a black queer.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Person, Claude McKay.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Yes, and I wrote about him, and I found it
very interesting, like Jamaica does recognize the contributions of a
black bear artist in Claude McKay and everything that he
brought to the not just the negrotude movement of the
Harlem Minossance, but the entire Harlem Renaissance. I think people
think of the United States in many ways it's just
like a safe haven, and it's like, well, no, it's
also very homophobic, as is most other countries. And so
(04:45):
it's like when we rank homophobia, it can be very
interesting because you know what I mean, it's like, what
does that mean to rank homophobia? Right, Like who's more homophobic?
It's like, well, it all could get us killed, so
we're not. I'm not quite sure how the rankings are
dibbied out. One of your things is the importance of
(05:18):
having a healthy diet for black film. Yes, what it
reminds me of is the Hurston Walker test, which is
a litmus test that many black creatives have started to use,
which essentially says, if a black cinema or black film
or black art is going to take you to a
place of trauma, then it also must have the solve
to heal your wounds. What does it mean to have
(05:41):
a healthy diet for a black film? Does it mean
like exploring all of it? From things that are as
oscar worthy as Moonlight to things that maybe like how
did Taraji p Henson get back on that boat in acrimony?
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Because I consume all film, right.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Yes, let me just simply outset that I'm a low brow,
high brow cat. I really enjoyed that Tyler Perry movie
where Taraji was holding up the bank. I thought that
was like surprising Annise. Yeah, I forget the name of
it was a solid, solid film and she was amazing
in it. And what I'm trying to do is encourage
folks to think about the films that they watch as
(06:26):
part of a healthy, balanced diet for their lives. You know,
it's great to have a sloppy cheese burger, yes, but
it's also important to you know, get your root vegetables
and they don't have to not be tasty. Film is
moments that embody sensation and experience and that they can
(06:47):
clear things up for you but also deepen the mysteries
of life. Film is telling you a story and bringing
you into a world. It's not like a TV show,
it's not like a video. It is something that you
can sit down and consus boom in a full way
if you sit down and consume it, and if you
sit and if you take to time to be mindful
(07:08):
of not just clicking anything that's on, but really going
into the history of things and seeing what black people
were thinking about in different eras and what black films
were doing in different eras. And my encouragement is for
you to fall into these dreams, to make space to
really bring yourself into another place you find hope. And
(07:33):
in a lot of ways, when I was coming up
in the eighties and nineties as a kid, black film
was so rare that each one was kind of like
a little minor miracle, you know, because you didn't get like,
let's just go back to the eighties for a second,
when black people almost completely left the movie screen outside
of Eddie Murphy buddy comedies. Until the color purple, there
(07:54):
were no black women starring in movies from like nineteen
eighty to so even a small strange film like a
film called Losing Ground, which is from nineteen eighty two.
It's the first film written and directed by a black woman.
Her name was Kathleen Collins, and Losing Ground is a strange,
(08:19):
lyrical movie about this college professor who is at the
crossroads of her life. You know, she's thinking about art,
she's thinking about love. She has all these different men
in her life who are trying to get different things
from her, and she keeps trying to hold her ground
as a black woman. That hence the title losing Ground.
And it was down on a shoe string. This is
(08:40):
before Spike Lee broke everything apart with She's Got to
Have It. It got liddle to no release wasn't restored
really until years after Kathleen Collins passed away. And on
the surface, although this looks pretty and perhaps a little strange,
but every time I've shown it to black students, they
lose their mind about it because every frame is deliciously
(09:03):
made and every part of the story is drawn from
this black woman's experience. It is not being filtered through
a white director. It's not being filtered through a male
director or writer. Is like I feel it should be
like required viewing in all high schools when they're seniors.
You know, there's a few adult situations like that. The
freshmen don't need to watch it, but on their way
(09:23):
out the door, all races should watch Kathleen Collins Losing Ground.
And the word that people always use with me after
I've shown them this film is I feel strengthened by it.
And you know how you feel strengthened after you've had,
you know, a nice healthy meal. Yeah, yeah, that's what
film can do for you. You know, people felt strengthened
(09:44):
when they left Sinners where they watch it for the
first or second or third time. And sometimes you can
watch a movie that's it's like you ate a box
full of oreos.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
So it's fun sometimes, but I think there's something to it.
I think the things that you put in your body,
the things you put in your mind and your heart,
and film has this way of representing things that matter
and bringing reality to life, but also deepens what the
mystery of life is, especially if you sit down and
like watch the whole thing without your phone and without distractions,
(10:17):
and like, you know, give yourself a treat, stressful day,
turn out the lights, put the phone away, put on
a black film of note, and maybe even one from
a different era, you know, like car Wash from nineteen
seventy five, which is twenty four hours of high jinks
and also strife in this South central car wash in
(10:41):
Los Angeles, starring almost every great black comedian who was
working in seventy five, including Richard Pryor, and was the framework,
was on the mood board for Spike Lee for Do
the Right.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Thing When we come back. Stephen reflects on black film
making as a tool of resistance and and why it
matters to watch movies with your friends.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Trying to play me.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
There ain't no no better hab me.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
You can call me.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
And now back to my conversation with Stephen Winter, You're
touched with something really important, like when it comes to references.
Right when I wrote All Boys Aren't Blue, my references
were several other authors had written these dynamic queer memoirs.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Darnall Moore, Michael Arsenal.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Saii Jones had all written like these really amazing, and
I was like, oh, I want to write one too,
and it but it kind of gave me like a
framework of where to go of what I could do.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
It is like a possibility model.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
So when you're talking about though, like black film and
like black cinema and even more specific like black queer cinema,
did you have reference points or did you feel like
you were as I guess, as they say, like.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Building the plane as you're flying.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
When you put out let's talk about like Chocolate Babies,
which was I believe it came out nineteen ninety six. Yes,
was there like references you were using until you know,
then people start watching it and they're like, I've never
seen anything like this, or this is like the first
time I've seen black queer people in film and LATINX
people in film like as the Leads.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Yes, okay, that's an amazing question. My heart is racing
and my mind is reeling because in a lot of
ways the answer is no. There were not specific black
queer films that I had in my repertoire as like
I am drawing from this outside of you know, I
was drawing from Paris is Burning in a certain sense
(12:37):
because that film has gone from being received in a
joyous like snap snap snapway to Oh my God, an
era later like fifteen years like this is dark, yeah,
this is a depressed.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Heavy it's heavy, it's heavy.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Yeah. And then now in the last few years again
Jen g is watching it and they're snapping and snapping,
so like it has all these different ranges. So I
was taking from that visibility of those transistors and such,
and I was drawing from little bits and pieces here
and there, like you know, Michael Jackson as a scarecrow
and the Whiz you know, is giving queer boy realness.
(13:14):
Prince you know in Purple Rain is giving queer boy realness.
But the nuts and bolts of the movie were coming
from Humphrey Bogart films, you know, and film noir and
heist pictures that were you know, white essentially, like the
way that you did things back then, because there were
so few comparisons. You said, Okay, so what if X
(13:37):
Y Z was with black people, you know, if that's
the starting point, and so Chocolate Bab's was, well, what
if those Humphrey Bogart movies plus these nineteen nineties queer
movies and the sort of maybe Latin American revolutionary movies
like Z, like Costa gravas and such were with black
(13:59):
queer people in a more fanciful way, living in a
semi fictionalized New York City that I was in the
middle of. And what if they were all joyful outlaws,
you know, prior to the will and grace of it
all in terms of overall gayness, Being gay was an
outlaw experience. When I first moved to New York in
(14:19):
the nineties, people didn't talk about it a lot. You
went to shady bars in different areas of the town
and you communicated with winks and looks and all this
kind of covert stuff. And that experience of like the
world has a huge closet was also part of what
I was putting in there as a kid filmmaker, conceiving
(14:40):
of all this. And I also wanted to make the
movie that I hadn't seen, and I wanted to make
a movie that reflected the friends of mine in Chicago
who were black and gay and older than me and
really fabulous and were teaching me all these things. And
most of the characters and chocolate babies are based on
queens that I knew in Chicago, in the Frankie Knuckles world,
(15:04):
and you know, when we weren't dancing and carrying on,
we were at the dinner table carrying on, or we
were at the protest carrying on. And I was the kids.
So I spent a lot of time listening and taking
it all in. You know, I'm eighteen, nineteen twenty, they're
twenty eight, twenty nine, thirty, but they felt much older
than me.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
When you go through something that traumatic, it's like in ages,
you wisdom wisest. Yeah, and you lose that many people.
And yeah, I understand that.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Correct. I was born late enough that I did not
see the majority of my friends dive ades. I was
a teenager in the eighties, but I was born at
the time that when I was in my early twenties,
most of the guys thirty five and up were gone. Yeah,
you know, sort of an orphan generation in terms of this.
So the people that I did know, I drew from
(15:54):
them heavily because they were hilarious, they were brilliant, they
were visionary, they were wise beyond that what my soul
could really appreciate. So I'm just really glad that my
younger self was paying attention.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yeah, and now you teach film.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
I do sometimes, yes.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Okay, so you teach film, and so what has that
experience been like, Especially with the current state of.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Television and film.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
I feel like art has Art has always been a
tool of resistance. Film has always been one of our
most powerful things to use to shift culture and as
a force of resistance. But what are you bringing into
how you are teaching film?
Speaker 1 (16:40):
What I try to do is and I'm trying to
do this in all aspects of my life these days,
because there's a thing about filmmaking. It's a big situation.
It needs a lot of resources, a lot of people.
You kind of got to barrel your way through it.
And sometimes you're asking forgiveness instead of permission, and sometimes
times that works. Yeah. But one of the things that
(17:01):
I have really taken the heart this year especially is
to really really embrace the humble and really keep in
mind that you are creating offerings for other people to
take in and make with it what they will and
try to illuminate something for the whole of the people.
(17:23):
And so when I start showing films in a classroom,
part of what I say to everyone is this is
not It's not required that you love this. I'm not
showing it to you because I expect you to love it.
I hope you do, you know, because I think it's wonderful.
But I'm expecting you to give it your full self
(17:46):
and think about what it is doing effectively. And in
the situation of teaching the history of black film, which
has been a lot of what I've been doing in
the last few years, especially since the pandemic in twenty
twenty and Black Lives Matter movement, people students come to
the class excited and perhaps a little nervous about what
(18:08):
it is that these black films are going to say
and do, and especially if they're coming to things from
a place of outrage or a place of anger and
bleak lessons. You know, the history of the twentieth century
in America is not a fun history when you're black,
and the nineteen fifties and sixties, the people who live
(18:31):
through those things much less making art in those times.
You can see the scars on their faces. You know,
Rubyd and Ossi Davis look different than Gabrielle Union does
today as of for instance, their lives were by a
magnitude harder. But what they also are presenting in these
films is this tremendous amount of love love for themselves,
(18:55):
love for blackness, even if they're struggling in trans apparently crappy,
stereotypical role, you know, on a set full of white people,
a director that doesn't understand them. There's still something that's
poking out from these performers and these particular artists in
those vintage films that can speak directly to a person's soul.
(19:17):
In twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Five, when we come back, Steven shares his future vision
for black art and filmmaking. And now back to my
conversation with Stephen Winter, what do you foresee as like
(19:38):
the pathway forward to the reintroduction of black art? Because
I do feel like there is a gap that we
all can easily speak to because of social media. Because
social media has created a parasocial relationship between celebrities and
their accessibility. And because they are so accessible, because they
(19:59):
can respet onto Instagram messages, they can respond to tweets,
they can like comments, they can do all these things,
the idea of celebrity has changed, which also then shifts
the idea of what it means to watch them on film,
because you're also getting to watch their daily lives. Right,
But what it also does is then you may not
be as willing to want to get up off the
(20:20):
couch to go see a movie by your favorite actually,
because you have so much access to them already, so
you could just wait till it gets on streaming. What
do you see as like that pathway of how we
reintroduce black cinema to the newer generation.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
I have a couple of friends who never saw Set
it Off, and I'm like, Lord, have mercy, Like, if
you miss it in the theater, that's one thing, but
there's been years to catch up on Set it Off.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
And had it been four white women, it would have
won at least four Oscars.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Would definitely have been nominated, as it should have been.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
But I was like, you switched that the four white
women that were Robin Banks, ok, And I was like, oh,
we're talking about Oscars all day.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
It would have been the most oscar made a movie
in history.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
And the stakes have been so much, so much anyway,
But here's the thing I think to tip into. When
you watch Set it Off at home by yourself, you
might lose a thread here or there. You watch you
with a couple of friends, yes, then you having an experience,
you know, and one of the things. I showed Set
it Off once in black film History, and there is
(21:23):
a sequence where Jada Pinquette and Blair Underwood are having
a subplot with having a relationship. Yes, you know, but
the problem is that Blair works at the bank that
Jada's trying to rob from, et cetera, and so forth.
But in a moment right before the third act, Blair
and Jada have sex. Yeah. And the sex scene in
(21:43):
those days was a feature of films and not a bug.
You want to go to movies for daring do and
fabulous costumes, and at some point you're going to have
a sex scene. And I remember, and I told the
kids this, I said when I saw Set Off in
the theater, and the sex scene began with a kiss
and a n Vogue song hits and big and triumphant,
(22:06):
and everyone in the theater applauded because they're getting to
see some sex A and B. Jada Pinquett, their warrior sister,
is getting to have pleasures beyond the oppression that her
character is experiencing, and then naked experience that vicariously. When
you watch that at home, it might miss If you
watch it with friends, then you might get you'll get
(22:26):
a taste of that experience of yay, sex is happening,
and then we're gonna go rob these banks. Everything's gonna
go well, you know how high schovies always go. And
so it's not just enough to say to your friends,
you got to watch this movie. It's about how about
on this date, we all get together and we watch
this movie. We have a group experience where we all
(22:49):
put our phones away and we all have a moment
to watch this thing and all like fall into this
world together. Because I think one of the things about
talking about pop culture and your favorite shows is that
it used to be that, hey, I've been watching this
great show. Have you watched it? No, sounds good, And
(23:11):
now it's like I watched this great show. Well, I've
watched this great show. And instead of being like an exchange,
it's a competition. Yeah you know, you're not watching Succession,
You're not watching X y Z you know. Oh, And
they're like, well, it's not about competition, it's about joy. Yeah,
it's not enough just to watch Sinners and White Bandy's
(23:32):
watching Sinners. You should go back into the mood board
of what Sinners had. Yeah, yeah, you know, and watch
black Horror from the old days.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Yeah, yeah, no, I totally agree. I tell people all
the time too about like the movie Beloved. I was like, well,
Beloved's a black horror, so yeah. Also, some of the
times I feel like with black art, we haven't done
a good enough job of teaching what lens we should
be watching it through as well, because it's like, if
you go into a movie that you know is a horror,
(24:04):
you go into it with a mindset of horror. But
if you go into a movie like Beloved and you're
not thinking about the fact that it's like, well, this
is actually a horror story. So looking at it as
the lens of any horror and kind of like placing
the way that you would place who's of the villain,
what's the killer, what's this, what's the that, what's the
precipitating points. I was like, when you look at it
through that, then you realize Tony Morrison is also one
(24:26):
of the greatest horror writers we've ever had as well.
And you know, like, you may not like something until
someone tells you to switch the lens of what you're
watching it through. Right, Yes, what do you feel is
I'm like, here we go, right, you got to really
jump into it. It's like, what do you feel is
(24:49):
the current like state of black queer film and TV?
Because I went and saw Moonlight. It was one of
my inspirations for writing my book. We got Moonlight and
then it green lit a lot of white crystal. Oh yeah,
Like there was a hope that like, oh now we
can kind of do more, and it was like green Light,
(25:09):
and all execs saw was, oh, queer stories can sell,
not black, but queer stories can sell, and they rolled
out a bunch of terrible It was just don't call
it what it is in my opinion, like stories like
that's not what anyone asked for after Moonlight, you know,
like no one asked for this. So what do you
feel now is the current state? It's like we had pose,
(25:30):
you know, which was I mean, but now that's like
years ago, Noah's our you know, just put out another movie.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
But it's like it just.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Feels so few and far in between that we're getting anything.
So what do you feel is the current state of that?
And how do we change it?
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Like what do we do to like.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Okay, well, let me say from the outset as somebody
who came to New York in the nineties to make films,
and it is still here. It is better than it
ever had been. I love that because in the nineties
there were a whole lot of gay, white movies in
the independent sphere that were getting greenlight and ten star
(26:12):
reviews and impacting the culture. And if you put black
and gay together, the blank stares I would receive the
frankly like, you're never going to make a movie ever,
because this is not what people want, this is not
what people do, this is not an important subject to
go into. And that opinion held sway more or less
(26:35):
throughout the industry until Moonlight, which is like you know,
last Tuesday in the grand scheme of things, you know,
if you go back to the beginning of film, but
is certainly recent enough to have made a real impact.
And the impact it made up through last year was
that you rarely saw a film or TV show about
(26:57):
young people that did not include, if not one, but
two black and or brown queer people. And the idea
of blackness and queerness as being part of the fabric
of the world and part of the fabric of movies
and television that changed in an elemental way. So it's
the best of times, and it still ain't good enough.
(27:18):
I love that it's nowhere good enough. And what people
can do to try to move the needle on this
thing is a watch more black films. Yes, b watch
more black films with intention Like, I'm not just going
to turn on anything which has a black person in it.
I'm going to put my dollar or put my streaming
(27:41):
moment into something that is intentional and then see when
something black and gay comes around. Give it a go.
If a black gay person comes to you and says
I want to be a filmmaker, help them out mentor them,
give them encouragement, contribute to their GoFundMe, buy a ticket
to their premiere. Any of the things that you can
do will really help incrementally move things forward. Art is
(28:05):
not a decorative pursuit. The reason why people in oppressive
power systems want to control and or ban and or
limit the art is because they can wake people up.
And every little bit that you do not just you, George,
but you the person listening. Yes, And I'm saying it's
also to myself because I got a big day ahead
(28:25):
of me of you know, fighting the power with this
thing is that every little bit is actually moving the
mountain and we may not see the likes of a
Moonlight again coming to you know, the Oscar stage. But
that isn't always necessarily the goal. And so think about
what it is that you really want your goal to be.
(28:45):
And if your goal is I want to see theaters
across the country filled with people who are ooing and
eyeing and shouting and maybe tearing up a little but
then feeling hope in the heart at the end of
the movie, that I want to make that is the goal.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
I love that that whole statement.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
It was extremely that was what I needed, Like I
was like, that whole thing. I mean, it's it's because
it's resistance. Yeah, art really can wake people up. We're like,
oh my god, I can talk to you all day,
but we're getting I know, this is where we're getting
closer to our time today.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
You know.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
I always like to just ask people.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
I feel like the current state of the country is
what it is, and it's just like every day there's
something and so I am tired of something new every day,
and so I think it's always like important to allow
ourselves to just be like, you know, I am tired
of this or I am tired of that right now,
I am just sick to death of whatever the hell
is going on.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
With the federal government.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
I just don't I just don't even understand like what
is happening anymore. Like for me, I think I'm tired
of like organized chaos, because that's what it feels like.
It just feels like a bunch of like chaos agents
who organize but don't really have end goal. I think
I'm even just tired of like people coming to realizations.
Then we're always present, uh, coming to realizations that were
(30:08):
there from the beginning.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Is there anything that you are tired of this week?
Speaker 2 (30:15):
This mom Well we just started August, but even though
we just started, still enough to be tired of.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Okay, well, I mean what you just said, I am
tired of that. And actually I made this decision yesterday.
I am tired of my own habit of getting up
in the morning and listening to the news. Yeah, and
I have been like, okay, so what I'm going to
do is I'm going to do that after lunch. Smart
(30:42):
I like that, I'm going to have my news moment
headlines or a deep dive into something for half hour
forty five minutes or so after lunch. May perhaps during
a walk. Yeah, you know, podcast style, And I'm going
to not start my morning thinking about these ghoules, and
much less all the people who voted for these ghouls,
(31:05):
who are going to be feeling a lot of pain
very soon, yes, because of their decisions. So I turned
that question back on me. And I'm tired of my
own habit of sort of self flagellating myself as an American.
I must know all the atrocities. I must get the
latest takes I must understand. I must and I will.
But I'm not going to subject my mornings to it. Yeah,
(31:28):
you know. I'm going to subject my afternoons to it,
you know. And I'm going to try to do it
in a way where I can focus on it and
then focus away onto the things that I can do
locally to help affect a positive change, even if that's
just smiling at my neighbor as I walk past while
listening to these people and their horseshit.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Yeah, final thoughts, I always say, I like to just
leave space for you to give any words of encouragement,
any like words or sayings that you live by, any
quotes that you live by.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Well. James Baldwin's birthday just happened. Yes, and I'm not
going to quote them directly, remember it. And he said
this a bunch of different ways in different times. It's
a documentary short meeting the man James Baldwin in Paris,
and he's got these pompous white filmmakers with them in Paris,
and they're basically, it would appear that these white filmmakers
(32:18):
are basically saying, like, tell us what it's like to
be oppressed in black and gay, show us on the
doll where the bad society touched you. And Jimmy Baldwin
is not having it. But he's also not walking away.
He is facing them, and he keeps countering their silly
statements and their arrogance, and then finally they break through
(32:42):
to something and Jimmy says something that he says a
lot in these instances, is like, Okay, well now we
can actually start. Now, we can start the conversation because
we've gotten to a place where you are now affirming
the fact that I am a human being. He does
this when he debates Buckley in that famous you see
on YouTube from the sixties. Yeah, he does it many
(33:05):
many times. It's one of his go tos. Now Finally
we can begin bring a bad impression right. And one
of the things that I have found useful in this
last year, when talking with friends and otherwise about the
facts of the day, is sometimes for you to me
or from me to you. Ah, Now we can begin.
(33:28):
Now we have found a base level. We're actually understanding
and looking at each other. And you know, my queerness
does not preclude me from my male privilege. You know,
my biracialness is not precluded me from racism, all the things.
My handsomeness is not precluded me from agism. It's just
a little plug from my handsomeness. And I'm trying to
(33:53):
enter this new season not every the end of the summer,
with more humility, less pedal to the metal, and more
leaning forward, but also putting leaning back and contemplating the
leaves and the sky as much as I'm contemplating, you know,
the backs of the matter, because that helps me at
(34:14):
least be with people more specifically, if you watch films
with people, if you watch more black films, if you
watch more black films that come from different directions and
different eras, you can see more of yourself within them.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
I always say our story is specific yet universal.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Indeed, and the more specific the story is, the more
universal universal becomes.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Yeah yeah, yeah, Well, Stephen, thank you for coming on
fighting wor us today. This was an amazing conversation. I
think a lot of people are gonna get a lot
out of this.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
I really do.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
You're fabulous and I feel really fabulous. We're all fabulous
after having had this experience of talking to you.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Oh, thank you, yes, thank you for being here. This
is great, all right?
Speaker 2 (35:05):
And today I'm leaving you with a quote by the
Jamaican writer Claude McKay. I know the dark delight of
being strange, the penalty of difference in the crowd, the
loneliness of wisdom among fools. Fighting Words is a production
(35:33):
of iHeart Podcast in partnership with Best Case Studios. I'm
Jeordian Johnson. This episode was produced by Charlotte Morley. Executive
producers are myself and Tweety Puchi Guar Song with Adam
Pinkins and Brick Cats for Best Case Studios. The theme
song was written and composed by cole Vas Bambianna and myself.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Original music by Covas.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
This episode was edited and scored by Michelle macklem Our.
iHeart Team is Ally Perry and Karl Ketel, following rap,
fighting words wherever you get your podcasts,
What I'm trying to do is encourage folks to think
about the films that they watch as part of a healthy,
balanced diet for their lives. And you know how you
feel strengthened after you've had a nice, healthy meal, That's
what film can do for you.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Stephen Winter is a black queer filmmaker known for his
provocative and ground broken word. His films, including Chocolate Babies
and The good Son, explore issues of identity, race, and
sexuality with boldness and sensitivity.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
This is a space where Steven's.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Unapologetic vision challenges norms and sparks conversations about what it
means to truly break boundaries.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Really going into the history of things and what black
films we're doing in different eras. And my encouragement is
for you to fall into these dreams, to make space
to really bring yourself into another place. You find hope,
going to fight the singing in them heavy handed to
(01:08):
the world. Take as a brandy, you spoke the guy.
You know what the plan is? One to understand me.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
My name is George M. Johnson.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I am the New York Times bestselling author of the
book All Boys Aren't Blue, which is.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
The number one most challenged book in the United States.
This is Fighting Words, a show where.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
We take you to the front lines of the culture
wars with the people who are using their words to
make change and who refuse.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
To be silent.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Today's guest Stephen Winter. I am here today with mister
Stephen Winter. How are you doing today?
Speaker 1 (01:49):
I'm drink very well. George.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Yes, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I want you to introduce yourself and let everyone know
who is Stephen Winter.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Ah, thank you well, Stephen Winter. Is please as punch
to be on your show. I love this show and
I'm so happy to be a part of it. I'm
a filmmaker, director, writer and producer and occasional fiction podcast maker.
I'm from Chicago. My mother was an immigrant from Jamaica.
(02:20):
My father was an immigrant from Czechoslovakia. They met at
the Democratic Convention and made me and my brother and sister.
I always wanted to be a filmmaker. I got to
pursue it came up in New York in the nineties,
where I made a film called Chocolate Babies that was
described at the time nineteen ninety six as a gang
of HIV positive black and Asian drag queens. Become political
(02:44):
terrorists and kidnap a conservative closeted politician. And it was
based on my experiences being a kid an act up
in Chicago and being a kid who came up in
the Chicago oriented Black Afro centric revolutionary spirit. And since
(03:04):
then I've been bopping around and what me and my
friends like to sarcastically call the quality cinema game. And
right now I'm in an exciting moment career wise because
I am directing a documentary about the history and future
of queer Jamaica, starring the Man Booker Prize winning Black
(03:28):
Offer Marlon James. It's a marvelous, sacred, wonderful experience so
far of going into you know, not only just my
ancestral homeland, but Jamaica is a place that everybody pretty
much knows, but nobody knows a lot of things about.
And one of the things that people do sometimes recognize
(03:49):
when they think Jamaica outside of Sandy Beaches and reggae
music is, oh, aren't they really really homophobic? And the
answer is yes. In some they have been up there
with Uganda and Russia as being one of the worst
places for queer people to be. But on the other hand,
Jamaica is a complex and layered place, yes, and they
(04:12):
love their children as much as any other group of people,
and we're exploring that too.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Jamaica is a very complex, interesting country because they do
have a national hero who is a black queer.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Person, Claude McKay.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Yes, and I wrote about him, and I found it
very interesting, like Jamaica does recognize the contributions of a
black bear artist in Claude McKay and everything that he
brought to the not just the negrotude movement of the
Harlem Minossance, but the entire Harlem Renaissance. I think people
think of the United States in many ways it's just
like a safe haven, and it's like, well, no, it's
also very homophobic, as is most other countries. And so
(04:45):
it's like when we rank homophobia, it can be very
interesting because you know what I mean, it's like, what
does that mean to rank homophobia? Right, Like who's more homophobic?
It's like, well, it all could get us killed, so
we're not. I'm not quite sure how the rankings are
dibbied out. One of your things is the importance of
(05:18):
having a healthy diet for black film. Yes, what it
reminds me of is the Hurston Walker test, which is
a litmus test that many black creatives have started to use,
which essentially says, if a black cinema or black film
or black art is going to take you to a
place of trauma, then it also must have the solve
to heal your wounds. What does it mean to have
(05:41):
a healthy diet for a black film? Does it mean
like exploring all of it? From things that are as
oscar worthy as Moonlight to things that maybe like how
did Taraji p Henson get back on that boat in acrimony?
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Because I consume all film, right.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Yes, let me just simply outset that I'm a low brow,
high brow cat. I really enjoyed that Tyler Perry movie
where Taraji was holding up the bank. I thought that
was like surprising Annise. Yeah, I forget the name of
it was a solid, solid film and she was amazing
in it. And what I'm trying to do is encourage
folks to think about the films that they watch as
(06:26):
part of a healthy, balanced diet for their lives. You know,
it's great to have a sloppy cheese burger, yes, but
it's also important to you know, get your root vegetables
and they don't have to not be tasty. Film is
moments that embody sensation and experience and that they can
(06:47):
clear things up for you but also deepen the mysteries
of life. Film is telling you a story and bringing
you into a world. It's not like a TV show,
it's not like a video. It is something that you
can sit down and consus boom in a full way
if you sit down and consume it, and if you
sit and if you take to time to be mindful
(07:08):
of not just clicking anything that's on, but really going
into the history of things and seeing what black people
were thinking about in different eras and what black films
were doing in different eras. And my encouragement is for
you to fall into these dreams, to make space to
really bring yourself into another place you find hope. And
(07:33):
in a lot of ways, when I was coming up
in the eighties and nineties as a kid, black film
was so rare that each one was kind of like
a little minor miracle, you know, because you didn't get like,
let's just go back to the eighties for a second,
when black people almost completely left the movie screen outside
of Eddie Murphy buddy comedies. Until the color purple, there
(07:54):
were no black women starring in movies from like nineteen
eighty to so even a small strange film like a
film called Losing Ground, which is from nineteen eighty two.
It's the first film written and directed by a black woman.
Her name was Kathleen Collins, and Losing Ground is a strange,
(08:19):
lyrical movie about this college professor who is at the
crossroads of her life. You know, she's thinking about art,
she's thinking about love. She has all these different men
in her life who are trying to get different things
from her, and she keeps trying to hold her ground
as a black woman. That hence the title losing Ground.
And it was down on a shoe string. This is
(08:40):
before Spike Lee broke everything apart with She's Got to
Have It. It got liddle to no release wasn't restored
really until years after Kathleen Collins passed away. And on
the surface, although this looks pretty and perhaps a little strange,
but every time I've shown it to black students, they
lose their mind about it because every frame is deliciously
(09:03):
made and every part of the story is drawn from
this black woman's experience. It is not being filtered through
a white director. It's not being filtered through a male
director or writer. Is like I feel it should be
like required viewing in all high schools when they're seniors.
You know, there's a few adult situations like that. The
freshmen don't need to watch it, but on their way
(09:23):
out the door, all races should watch Kathleen Collins Losing Ground.
And the word that people always use with me after
I've shown them this film is I feel strengthened by it.
And you know how you feel strengthened after you've had,
you know, a nice healthy meal. Yeah, yeah, that's what
film can do for you. You know, people felt strengthened
(09:44):
when they left Sinners where they watch it for the
first or second or third time. And sometimes you can
watch a movie that's it's like you ate a box
full of oreos.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
So it's fun sometimes, but I think there's something to it.
I think the things that you put in your body,
the things you put in your mind and your heart,
and film has this way of representing things that matter
and bringing reality to life, but also deepens what the
mystery of life is, especially if you sit down and
like watch the whole thing without your phone and without distractions,
(10:17):
and like, you know, give yourself a treat, stressful day,
turn out the lights, put the phone away, put on
a black film of note, and maybe even one from
a different era, you know, like car Wash from nineteen
seventy five, which is twenty four hours of high jinks
and also strife in this South central car wash in
(10:41):
Los Angeles, starring almost every great black comedian who was
working in seventy five, including Richard Pryor, and was the framework,
was on the mood board for Spike Lee for Do
the Right.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Thing When we come back. Stephen reflects on black film
making as a tool of resistance and and why it
matters to watch movies with your friends.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Trying to play me.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
There ain't no no better hab me.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
You can call me.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
And now back to my conversation with Stephen Winter, You're
touched with something really important, like when it comes to references.
Right when I wrote All Boys Aren't Blue, my references
were several other authors had written these dynamic queer memoirs.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Darnall Moore, Michael Arsenal.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Saii Jones had all written like these really amazing, and
I was like, oh, I want to write one too,
and it but it kind of gave me like a
framework of where to go of what I could do.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
It is like a possibility model.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
So when you're talking about though, like black film and
like black cinema and even more specific like black queer cinema,
did you have reference points or did you feel like
you were as I guess, as they say, like.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Building the plane as you're flying.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
When you put out let's talk about like Chocolate Babies,
which was I believe it came out nineteen ninety six. Yes,
was there like references you were using until you know,
then people start watching it and they're like, I've never
seen anything like this, or this is like the first
time I've seen black queer people in film and LATINX
people in film like as the Leads.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Yes, okay, that's an amazing question. My heart is racing
and my mind is reeling because in a lot of
ways the answer is no. There were not specific black
queer films that I had in my repertoire as like
I am drawing from this outside of you know, I
was drawing from Paris is Burning in a certain sense
(12:37):
because that film has gone from being received in a
joyous like snap snap snapway to Oh my God, an
era later like fifteen years like this is dark, yeah,
this is a depressed.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Heavy it's heavy, it's heavy.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Yeah. And then now in the last few years again
Jen g is watching it and they're snapping and snapping,
so like it has all these different ranges. So I
was taking from that visibility of those transistors and such,
and I was drawing from little bits and pieces here
and there, like you know, Michael Jackson as a scarecrow
and the Whiz you know, is giving queer boy realness.
(13:14):
Prince you know in Purple Rain is giving queer boy realness.
But the nuts and bolts of the movie were coming
from Humphrey Bogart films, you know, and film noir and
heist pictures that were you know, white essentially, like the
way that you did things back then, because there were
so few comparisons. You said, Okay, so what if X
(13:37):
Y Z was with black people, you know, if that's
the starting point, and so Chocolate Bab's was, well, what
if those Humphrey Bogart movies plus these nineteen nineties queer
movies and the sort of maybe Latin American revolutionary movies
like Z, like Costa gravas and such were with black
(13:59):
queer people in a more fanciful way, living in a
semi fictionalized New York City that I was in the
middle of. And what if they were all joyful outlaws,
you know, prior to the will and grace of it
all in terms of overall gayness, Being gay was an
outlaw experience. When I first moved to New York in
(14:19):
the nineties, people didn't talk about it a lot. You
went to shady bars in different areas of the town
and you communicated with winks and looks and all this
kind of covert stuff. And that experience of like the
world has a huge closet was also part of what
I was putting in there as a kid filmmaker, conceiving
(14:40):
of all this. And I also wanted to make the
movie that I hadn't seen, and I wanted to make
a movie that reflected the friends of mine in Chicago
who were black and gay and older than me and
really fabulous and were teaching me all these things. And
most of the characters and chocolate babies are based on
queens that I knew in Chicago, in the Frankie Knuckles world,
(15:04):
and you know, when we weren't dancing and carrying on,
we were at the dinner table carrying on, or we
were at the protest carrying on. And I was the kids.
So I spent a lot of time listening and taking
it all in. You know, I'm eighteen, nineteen twenty, they're
twenty eight, twenty nine, thirty, but they felt much older
than me.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
When you go through something that traumatic, it's like in ages,
you wisdom wisest. Yeah, and you lose that many people.
And yeah, I understand that.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Correct. I was born late enough that I did not
see the majority of my friends dive ades. I was
a teenager in the eighties, but I was born at
the time that when I was in my early twenties,
most of the guys thirty five and up were gone. Yeah,
you know, sort of an orphan generation in terms of this.
So the people that I did know, I drew from
(15:54):
them heavily because they were hilarious, they were brilliant, they
were visionary, they were wise beyond that what my soul
could really appreciate. So I'm just really glad that my
younger self was paying attention.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yeah, and now you teach film.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
I do sometimes, yes.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Okay, so you teach film, and so what has that
experience been like, Especially with the current state of.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Television and film.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
I feel like art has Art has always been a
tool of resistance. Film has always been one of our
most powerful things to use to shift culture and as
a force of resistance. But what are you bringing into
how you are teaching film?
Speaker 1 (16:40):
What I try to do is and I'm trying to
do this in all aspects of my life these days,
because there's a thing about filmmaking. It's a big situation.
It needs a lot of resources, a lot of people.
You kind of got to barrel your way through it.
And sometimes you're asking forgiveness instead of permission, and sometimes
times that works. Yeah. But one of the things that
(17:01):
I have really taken the heart this year especially is
to really really embrace the humble and really keep in
mind that you are creating offerings for other people to
take in and make with it what they will and
try to illuminate something for the whole of the people.
(17:23):
And so when I start showing films in a classroom,
part of what I say to everyone is this is
not It's not required that you love this. I'm not
showing it to you because I expect you to love it.
I hope you do, you know, because I think it's wonderful.
But I'm expecting you to give it your full self
(17:46):
and think about what it is doing effectively. And in
the situation of teaching the history of black film, which
has been a lot of what I've been doing in
the last few years, especially since the pandemic in twenty
twenty and Black Lives Matter movement, people students come to
the class excited and perhaps a little nervous about what
(18:08):
it is that these black films are going to say
and do, and especially if they're coming to things from
a place of outrage or a place of anger and
bleak lessons. You know, the history of the twentieth century
in America is not a fun history when you're black,
and the nineteen fifties and sixties, the people who live
(18:31):
through those things much less making art in those times.
You can see the scars on their faces. You know,
Rubyd and Ossi Davis look different than Gabrielle Union does
today as of for instance, their lives were by a
magnitude harder. But what they also are presenting in these
films is this tremendous amount of love love for themselves,
(18:55):
love for blackness, even if they're struggling in trans apparently crappy,
stereotypical role, you know, on a set full of white people,
a director that doesn't understand them. There's still something that's
poking out from these performers and these particular artists in
those vintage films that can speak directly to a person's soul.
(19:17):
In twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Five, when we come back, Steven shares his future vision
for black art and filmmaking. And now back to my
conversation with Stephen Winter, what do you foresee as like
(19:38):
the pathway forward to the reintroduction of black art? Because
I do feel like there is a gap that we
all can easily speak to because of social media. Because
social media has created a parasocial relationship between celebrities and
their accessibility. And because they are so accessible, because they
(19:59):
can respet onto Instagram messages, they can respond to tweets,
they can like comments, they can do all these things,
the idea of celebrity has changed, which also then shifts
the idea of what it means to watch them on film,
because you're also getting to watch their daily lives. Right,
But what it also does is then you may not
be as willing to want to get up off the
(20:20):
couch to go see a movie by your favorite actually,
because you have so much access to them already, so
you could just wait till it gets on streaming. What
do you see as like that pathway of how we
reintroduce black cinema to the newer generation.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
I have a couple of friends who never saw Set
it Off, and I'm like, Lord, have mercy, Like, if
you miss it in the theater, that's one thing, but
there's been years to catch up on Set it Off.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
And had it been four white women, it would have
won at least four Oscars.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Would definitely have been nominated, as it should have been.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
But I was like, you switched that the four white
women that were Robin Banks, ok, And I was like, oh,
we're talking about Oscars all day.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
It would have been the most oscar made a movie
in history.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
And the stakes have been so much, so much anyway,
But here's the thing I think to tip into. When
you watch Set it Off at home by yourself, you
might lose a thread here or there. You watch you
with a couple of friends, yes, then you having an experience,
you know, and one of the things. I showed Set
it Off once in black film History, and there is
(21:23):
a sequence where Jada Pinquette and Blair Underwood are having
a subplot with having a relationship. Yes, you know, but
the problem is that Blair works at the bank that
Jada's trying to rob from, et cetera, and so forth.
But in a moment right before the third act, Blair
and Jada have sex. Yeah. And the sex scene in
(21:43):
those days was a feature of films and not a bug.
You want to go to movies for daring do and
fabulous costumes, and at some point you're going to have
a sex scene. And I remember, and I told the
kids this, I said when I saw Set Off in
the theater, and the sex scene began with a kiss
and a n Vogue song hits and big and triumphant,
(22:06):
and everyone in the theater applauded because they're getting to
see some sex A and B. Jada Pinquett, their warrior sister,
is getting to have pleasures beyond the oppression that her
character is experiencing, and then naked experience that vicariously. When
you watch that at home, it might miss If you
watch it with friends, then you might get you'll get
(22:26):
a taste of that experience of yay, sex is happening,
and then we're gonna go rob these banks. Everything's gonna
go well, you know how high schovies always go. And
so it's not just enough to say to your friends,
you got to watch this movie. It's about how about
on this date, we all get together and we watch
this movie. We have a group experience where we all
(22:49):
put our phones away and we all have a moment
to watch this thing and all like fall into this
world together. Because I think one of the things about
talking about pop culture and your favorite shows is that
it used to be that, hey, I've been watching this
great show. Have you watched it? No, sounds good, And
(23:11):
now it's like I watched this great show. Well, I've
watched this great show. And instead of being like an exchange,
it's a competition. Yeah you know, you're not watching Succession,
You're not watching X y Z you know. Oh, And
they're like, well, it's not about competition, it's about joy. Yeah,
it's not enough just to watch Sinners and White Bandy's
(23:32):
watching Sinners. You should go back into the mood board
of what Sinners had. Yeah, yeah, you know, and watch
black Horror from the old days.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Yeah, yeah, no, I totally agree. I tell people all
the time too about like the movie Beloved. I was like, well,
Beloved's a black horror, so yeah. Also, some of the
times I feel like with black art, we haven't done
a good enough job of teaching what lens we should
be watching it through as well, because it's like, if
you go into a movie that you know is a horror,
(24:04):
you go into it with a mindset of horror. But
if you go into a movie like Beloved and you're
not thinking about the fact that it's like, well, this
is actually a horror story. So looking at it as
the lens of any horror and kind of like placing
the way that you would place who's of the villain,
what's the killer, what's this, what's the that, what's the
precipitating points. I was like, when you look at it
through that, then you realize Tony Morrison is also one
(24:26):
of the greatest horror writers we've ever had as well.
And you know, like, you may not like something until
someone tells you to switch the lens of what you're
watching it through. Right, Yes, what do you feel is
I'm like, here we go, right, you got to really
jump into it. It's like, what do you feel is
(24:49):
the current like state of black queer film and TV?
Because I went and saw Moonlight. It was one of
my inspirations for writing my book. We got Moonlight and
then it green lit a lot of white crystal. Oh yeah,
Like there was a hope that like, oh now we
can kind of do more, and it was like green Light,
(25:09):
and all execs saw was, oh, queer stories can sell,
not black, but queer stories can sell, and they rolled
out a bunch of terrible It was just don't call
it what it is in my opinion, like stories like
that's not what anyone asked for after Moonlight, you know,
like no one asked for this. So what do you
feel now is the current state? It's like we had pose,
(25:30):
you know, which was I mean, but now that's like
years ago, Noah's our you know, just put out another movie.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
But it's like it just.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Feels so few and far in between that we're getting anything.
So what do you feel is the current state of that?
And how do we change it?
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Like what do we do to like.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Okay, well, let me say from the outset as somebody
who came to New York in the nineties to make films,
and it is still here. It is better than it
ever had been. I love that because in the nineties
there were a whole lot of gay, white movies in
the independent sphere that were getting greenlight and ten star
(26:12):
reviews and impacting the culture. And if you put black
and gay together, the blank stares I would receive the
frankly like, you're never going to make a movie ever,
because this is not what people want, this is not
what people do, this is not an important subject to
go into. And that opinion held sway more or less
(26:35):
throughout the industry until Moonlight, which is like you know,
last Tuesday in the grand scheme of things, you know,
if you go back to the beginning of film, but
is certainly recent enough to have made a real impact.
And the impact it made up through last year was
that you rarely saw a film or TV show about
(26:57):
young people that did not include, if not one, but
two black and or brown queer people. And the idea
of blackness and queerness as being part of the fabric
of the world and part of the fabric of movies
and television that changed in an elemental way. So it's
the best of times, and it still ain't good enough.
(27:18):
I love that it's nowhere good enough. And what people
can do to try to move the needle on this
thing is a watch more black films. Yes, b watch
more black films with intention Like, I'm not just going
to turn on anything which has a black person in it.
I'm going to put my dollar or put my streaming
(27:41):
moment into something that is intentional and then see when
something black and gay comes around. Give it a go.
If a black gay person comes to you and says
I want to be a filmmaker, help them out mentor them,
give them encouragement, contribute to their GoFundMe, buy a ticket
to their premiere. Any of the things that you can
do will really help incrementally move things forward. Art is
(28:05):
not a decorative pursuit. The reason why people in oppressive
power systems want to control and or ban and or
limit the art is because they can wake people up.
And every little bit that you do not just you, George,
but you the person listening. Yes, And I'm saying it's
also to myself because I got a big day ahead
(28:25):
of me of you know, fighting the power with this
thing is that every little bit is actually moving the
mountain and we may not see the likes of a
Moonlight again coming to you know, the Oscar stage. But
that isn't always necessarily the goal. And so think about
what it is that you really want your goal to be.
(28:45):
And if your goal is I want to see theaters
across the country filled with people who are ooing and
eyeing and shouting and maybe tearing up a little but
then feeling hope in the heart at the end of
the movie, that I want to make that is the goal.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
I love that that whole statement.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
It was extremely that was what I needed, Like I
was like, that whole thing. I mean, it's it's because
it's resistance. Yeah, art really can wake people up. We're like,
oh my god, I can talk to you all day,
but we're getting I know, this is where we're getting
closer to our time today.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
You know.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
I always like to just ask people.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
I feel like the current state of the country is
what it is, and it's just like every day there's
something and so I am tired of something new every day,
and so I think it's always like important to allow
ourselves to just be like, you know, I am tired
of this or I am tired of that right now,
I am just sick to death of whatever the hell
is going on.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
With the federal government.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
I just don't I just don't even understand like what
is happening anymore. Like for me, I think I'm tired
of like organized chaos, because that's what it feels like.
It just feels like a bunch of like chaos agents
who organize but don't really have end goal. I think
I'm even just tired of like people coming to realizations.
Then we're always present, uh, coming to realizations that were
(30:08):
there from the beginning.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Is there anything that you are tired of this week?
Speaker 2 (30:15):
This mom Well we just started August, but even though
we just started, still enough to be tired of.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Okay, well, I mean what you just said, I am
tired of that. And actually I made this decision yesterday.
I am tired of my own habit of getting up
in the morning and listening to the news. Yeah, and
I have been like, okay, so what I'm going to
do is I'm going to do that after lunch. Smart
(30:42):
I like that, I'm going to have my news moment
headlines or a deep dive into something for half hour
forty five minutes or so after lunch. May perhaps during
a walk. Yeah, you know, podcast style, And I'm going
to not start my morning thinking about these ghoules, and
much less all the people who voted for these ghouls,
(31:05):
who are going to be feeling a lot of pain
very soon, yes, because of their decisions. So I turned
that question back on me. And I'm tired of my
own habit of sort of self flagellating myself as an American.
I must know all the atrocities. I must get the
latest takes I must understand. I must and I will.
But I'm not going to subject my mornings to it. Yeah,
(31:28):
you know. I'm going to subject my afternoons to it,
you know. And I'm going to try to do it
in a way where I can focus on it and
then focus away onto the things that I can do
locally to help affect a positive change, even if that's
just smiling at my neighbor as I walk past while
listening to these people and their horseshit.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Yeah, final thoughts, I always say, I like to just
leave space for you to give any words of encouragement,
any like words or sayings that you live by, any
quotes that you live by.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Well. James Baldwin's birthday just happened. Yes, and I'm not
going to quote them directly, remember it. And he said
this a bunch of different ways in different times. It's
a documentary short meeting the man James Baldwin in Paris,
and he's got these pompous white filmmakers with them in Paris,
and they're basically, it would appear that these white filmmakers
(32:18):
are basically saying, like, tell us what it's like to
be oppressed in black and gay, show us on the
doll where the bad society touched you. And Jimmy Baldwin
is not having it. But he's also not walking away.
He is facing them, and he keeps countering their silly
statements and their arrogance, and then finally they break through
(32:42):
to something and Jimmy says something that he says a
lot in these instances, is like, Okay, well now we
can actually start. Now, we can start the conversation because
we've gotten to a place where you are now affirming
the fact that I am a human being. He does
this when he debates Buckley in that famous you see
on YouTube from the sixties. Yeah, he does it many
(33:05):
many times. It's one of his go tos. Now Finally
we can begin bring a bad impression right. And one
of the things that I have found useful in this
last year, when talking with friends and otherwise about the
facts of the day, is sometimes for you to me
or from me to you. Ah, Now we can begin.
(33:28):
Now we have found a base level. We're actually understanding
and looking at each other. And you know, my queerness
does not preclude me from my male privilege. You know,
my biracialness is not precluded me from racism, all the things.
My handsomeness is not precluded me from agism. It's just
a little plug from my handsomeness. And I'm trying to
(33:53):
enter this new season not every the end of the summer,
with more humility, less pedal to the metal, and more
leaning forward, but also putting leaning back and contemplating the
leaves and the sky as much as I'm contemplating, you know,
the backs of the matter, because that helps me at
(34:14):
least be with people more specifically, if you watch films
with people, if you watch more black films, if you
watch more black films that come from different directions and
different eras, you can see more of yourself within them.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
I always say our story is specific yet universal.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Indeed, and the more specific the story is, the more
universal universal becomes.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Yeah yeah, yeah, Well, Stephen, thank you for coming on
fighting wor us today. This was an amazing conversation. I
think a lot of people are gonna get a lot
out of this.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
I really do.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
You're fabulous and I feel really fabulous. We're all fabulous
after having had this experience of talking to you.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Oh, thank you, yes, thank you for being here. This
is great, all right?
Speaker 2 (35:05):
And today I'm leaving you with a quote by the
Jamaican writer Claude McKay. I know the dark delight of
being strange, the penalty of difference in the crowd, the
loneliness of wisdom among fools. Fighting Words is a production
(35:33):
of iHeart Podcast in partnership with Best Case Studios. I'm
Jeordian Johnson. This episode was produced by Charlotte Morley. Executive
producers are myself and Tweety Puchi Guar Song with Adam
Pinkins and Brick Cats for Best Case Studios. The theme
song was written and composed by cole Vas Bambianna and myself.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Original music by Covas.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
This episode was edited and scored by Michelle macklem Our.
iHeart Team is Ally Perry and Karl Ketel, following rap,
fighting words wherever you get your podcasts,
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