Questlove Supreme: Tommy Oliver & Mike Africa Jr.

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. Mary.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
It looks like you won the Man Alive on Mars
or war Man on Mars Alive.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to West Love Supreme. You know,
I'm trying to refrain.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
I think I start every episode where I say, like
a special episode of Quest Love Supreme, like it's a
you know, a special, a special family.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Times or whatever.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
This is definitely yes, this is probably a very this
is a very personal episode, at least for me. It's
a Philadelphia, and I think that you might claim you
might want to claim your city for once, like.

Speaker 4 (00:50):
Oh yeah, all day, especially when it.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Comes this episode.

Speaker 4 (00:54):
Okay, good, especially when it comes to this topic.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yes, yes, we are all Philadelphians now. Yeah. I know
that Quest Love Supreme is normally our.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
Source for pop culture, Easter eggs and education edumentcation, But
because of the times that we're living in right now,
I felt it was only apropos for us to focus
on a very powerful documentary that as a Philadelphia this

(01:24):
is very near and dear to my heart. I'm speaking
of the powerful story that is forty years a prisoner
coming to well. Now at HBO, you can get on
HBO Max as well. This is a tale, of course,
the black lives of injustice, of police, brutality, of murder,

(01:46):
of corrupt politicians, of an imbalanced system. A lot of
questions and hardly answers that can't come fast enough. But
you know this is also this isn't just uh torture porn.
This is this is a story of determination uh and
a story of hope, really a bond of a black

(02:10):
family whose spirit cannot be broken no matter what opposition
comes its way. And we have two key members of
this very powerful documentary director of forty Years a Prisoner
uh in Philadelphia, Tommy Oliver, and I guess I could
say the star and the hero of forty Years a Prisoner,

(02:34):
the very very patient Mike Africa Junior.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Welcome, gentlemen, to Questlove Supreme.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
Yeah, I feel like Don Cornelis want to say that.

Speaker 5 (02:46):
You actually I've always wanted to be on soul train,
so I'll take it.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
I'm actually, I'm actually proud that, you know what, I'm
becoming more aware. I've been listening to a lot of
old episodes and I Obama itis a lot of uh ah,
So I'm trying to do less ah and gaps as
I think in free time. So there's a lot to

(03:13):
uncover here, gentlemen. I'll start by saying, how gut wrenching
and amazing this documentary is. When mister Oliver first came
into my radar about this project, the first thing he
asked me was what do I know about Move? And
instantly I thought, hell, yeah, I'm gonna be a talking

(03:34):
head because I lived on O Sage Avenue and at
that I considered like May thirteenth to be like one
of the worst days of my high school life. Not
even to make light of that day, but like you know,
like just imagine like that morning my ninth grade girlfriend
just dumped me in the most like embarrassing way in

(03:55):
front of the class, and then like my sister got
to go to the Cosby Show taping without me, and
literally like I came on in puffing, and then exactly
at like four pm like this, I lived on fifty
second of No Sage, so I'm like eight blocks away
from where this particular move incident happened, and you just

(04:15):
heard this explosion and Tommy just stopped me instantly, he
was like, this isn't about May thirteenth, nineteen eighty five,
So then I thought about Paleton Avenue and then I said, oh,
I remember commissioner at the time, Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo
lining up a bunch of African American males outside their

(04:37):
home butt naked.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
And then he stopped me again. He's like, no, that
was the Black Panthers.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
And I was like, wait a minute, Okay, I know
about Mumia, I know about May of eighty five, and
I thought I knew about move.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
I'm like, how many how many.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
Stories of the Philadelphia police system versus black people are there?
And he just looked like, oh, you need to sit
down and watch this, and he showed me this is
so much to unpacked.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
I'll throw it out to you time before I get
to you.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
Brother, Mike, why did you even think that this was
the story unpacking?

Speaker 1 (05:13):
And I don't know, like, are we going to kind
of give the ending away?

Speaker 5 (05:17):
Because for me that I did, Yeah, we did ending
a way at this point. I mean because I don't
know when this will come out, but it'll come out
and then yeah, it's all good. We can we can
definitely talk about it.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
Okay. Well, the thing is is that going into it,
you you know you're doing this in real time and
you don't know what the outcome.

Speaker 5 (05:37):
Is, no idea whatsoever.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
And you wouldn't have told me in a bajillion years
that what we concluded with was going to happen. So
even then as I'm watching this, so watching when arms folded,
like okay, more more torture, porn?

Speaker 1 (05:58):
You know, wait, let me let.

Speaker 6 (05:59):
Me just ask this job because he asked you what
you know about Move? But Tommy, not to judge, but
you obviously a little younger. First of all, what did
you know about Move? And why? I'm just learning that
there are multiple move attempted massacre stories, but why this
particular story.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
More than the two that we know?

Speaker 2 (06:18):
Did?

Speaker 6 (06:18):
You just said no, I didn't even know because I
was waiting for the bomb to drop. And I was like, wait,
so can you explain that, Tommy.

Speaker 5 (06:25):
So I grew up and I sort of heard about Move,
but not really. So I'm thirty six and I was
one when eighty five happened, and wasn't alive when this
event happened. But nobody really talked about moving any with
any clarity.

Speaker 4 (06:44):
It was phi least tricky that way.

Speaker 5 (06:45):
Philly's really tricky that way, and so it's like move
and there was this thing and there was a bomb
and there was just you know those just what it was.
And so I never really understood it. But I'm a
complete research junkie, and at some point I just went
down a rabbit hole and so I read every book
that I could final Move, I've read every article I

(07:06):
could find. I went down to the Urban Archive at
Temple where there are seventy two boxes of content, and
I threw so much of that stuff. But I realized
that there was still more stuff that was missing. And
so I had my buddy who used worked for the mayor,
Maxwell Brown. He introduced me. So Max is the homie,
is like, look, anybody anything that I meet and feel
anybody I need to get to him? Like Maxwell was

(07:27):
like can you? And so I'm like can you? Is
like yeah, of course I got you.

Speaker 4 (07:30):
You're my guy.

Speaker 5 (07:31):
Done. And so he made an intro to to Mona,
to Romona, Africa, and then she brought along Mike and
I was like, who is this dude? It was like
I was there to meet Ramona and Mike and I
we just hit it off like very very quickly, and
I learned so much at that point that I didn't know.
So at that point two of the MOVE members who

(07:51):
were in prison because of seventy eight had passed away
in prison. Seven of them were still in prison. Two
of those seven were his parents. And the fact that
he was born in prison I had no idea about,
and the fact that he was fighting to get them
out and that's all he was doing with his life.
That he was just a kid who wanted his parents

(08:12):
home and despite all of what he went through, there
wasn't a shred of bitterness about him was just incredible.
And then to talk some top of that, the fact
that to really understand that what MOVE was fighting against
and seventy eight police brutality, wrong co incarceration, systemic racism,

(08:34):
and piece of power, same shit we were fighting against
at that point three years ago or so, and same
shit we're fining against right now. And so for me,
it was the idea of trying to just do whatever
I could to be around him and sort of to
just even just as a friend, because he was just
doing something. He's wanted his parents home, and as somebody

(08:54):
who grew up with a difficult childhood. My dad wasn't
around all those things. I just wanted to see this
guy get his parents home. And then, from a storytelling perspective,
people knew about eighty five kind of nobody knew about
seventy eight, but it was also specifically related to what
his journey was into what was going on with his parents,

(09:15):
And so that put me and the rest of my team,
which is really three of us. It was me, my
EP Slash Racibo producer Keith g Nutt, my co editor
Joe Kiyo, the three of us just research the hell
out of it because there was no definitive account of
what happened in seventy eight, and so we just sort
of went from there.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
I already know that this is going to be the
Snoop Dogg Doggie style episode of Quest Left Supreme where
the star of the episode doesn't even come in until
the second song.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
So that's it. I'm like, we didn't even talk to
Mike yet.

Speaker 4 (09:53):
I don't even know Mike we're talking.

Speaker 3 (09:56):
Just start three songs later, like everyone gets on Snoops
record before Snoop does, and we're like eleven minutes into
this episode. Just hit me that we left the train
station without even talking to Mike. Mike, first of all,
man I'm extremely honored that you're doing us this solid

(10:17):
by giving us this interview. I guess for the non
Philadelphians and the non connected people to your story, I
would like to definitively ask you. Could you please tell
us what does move mean?

Speaker 1 (10:36):
And what do they stand for?

Speaker 2 (10:38):
Oh? That's an easy one. Yeah, I mean, I know
a lot of people don't really know what move means.
They a lot of people think of it as an acronym.

Speaker 1 (10:46):
I thought it was an acronym.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
Right Listen. Growing up, I heard a lot of acronyms
that people made up about us. Man, listen, I'm gonna
were interesting ones. The best one that I've ever heard.
It makes me laugh every time I hear it. Now
they say it stands from monkey's own vines everywhere.

Speaker 1 (11:02):
What you gotta be kidding?

Speaker 2 (11:08):
But what?

Speaker 1 (11:08):
Wait?

Speaker 3 (11:08):
Can I ask you a question though? And this is
going to pay me to ask because I know what
the answer might be. Did you first hear that from
a black person?

Speaker 2 (11:17):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (11:18):
Yo, we got to talk.

Speaker 3 (11:21):
I want you to answer that question first, and then
I need to explain how move was explained to me,
and then we can really uncover the dirty secret of
Black America's conservatism, and.

Speaker 5 (11:36):
Then I'm going to explain so much of how much
the media drove all of that in the seventies. You're misinformation.
There was so much misrepresentation about who they were and
there was no place else to go but to watch
the news, and so we can dig into all that.

Speaker 3 (11:55):
Okay, So for starters, Mike, could you please explain to
us what is MOVE and what does it stand for?

Speaker 2 (12:04):
The Move organization's name Move It came from the founder
John Africa because he said that all life moves, and
in order to be in harmony with life with nature,
you have to move too. And we have a system
in place that is stagnant and it causes people to

(12:26):
stop or be stopped, and we are anti that establishment.

Speaker 7 (12:30):
So we are completely opposite. So that's why we are called.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
Move and our mission is to encourage people to protect life, people, animals,
and the environment. That's it. The water moves, the trees move,
the air flows and moves, the people move, the animals move,
All life moves, and that's how we got the name
pre epa.

Speaker 1 (12:54):
Yo.

Speaker 3 (12:55):
You know what saddens me about this whole thing is
because okay, you know for us that for a lot
of us.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
That are on social media, and.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
You know, you always see like you know, twenty twenty
and a twenty twenty Bengo card, and surprises are abounding,
and a lot of things are unfurling that you know,
manages to shock you, even though I think nothing is
shocking in twenty twenty. But the one revelation that came
to be that really threw people for a gut punch

(13:31):
was how conservative a sect of black America is, especially
in the light of the election that has recently passed.
And I say that because in nineteen eighty five, especially

(13:52):
let's say, like five or six days before the Osage
Avenue bombing.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
What what I'm saying is that.

Speaker 3 (14:02):
I grew up with uncles in the police force of
the Rizzo era under under Frank Rizzo. For the for
those that don't know, I was about to say, Frank
Rizzo is not the character from the Jerky Boys.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
Frank Rizzo is.

Speaker 3 (14:23):
You know a lot of what's happening now in the
Trump administration to a lot of Philadelphians, Uh, that is
nothing shocking or knew. Frank Rizzo was probably one of
the most vile UH politicians in the history of America.

Speaker 5 (14:40):
The dude once said that I'm going to make a
till of the hunt look like a faggot. That is
a direct quote from the person who was the mayor
of at the time the fourth biggest city in the country. Yeah,
he that is a direct.

Speaker 6 (14:58):
Also one of the issues that's even trying to pull down.

Speaker 5 (15:02):
And he was somebody who he started as b cop,
made his way all the way up to police commissioner,
two term city mayor, and he basically operated under the
principle of you're gonna have safe streets or you can
have civil liberties. Pick one.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:20):
He again a lot of the code talk that or
the you know, the the hidden he didn't even hide
the code because I think at one point I remember
my father being upset at that he I think he
directly told white people to just rail against black people
because they were taking your jobs. Like whatever the I

(15:43):
think it was the garbage union or something like that,
but like he just directly told white people, fight for yourself. So,
I mean, everything that we're experiencing now with Trump, we
had to deal with that. He's been mayor since I
was born.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
I believe his time ran down seventy eight or seventy
nine I'm not certain, but his.

Speaker 6 (16:04):
Mum was long though, right, because he was police commissioner first, Yeah,
he was. And then his family is in the government
as well, right, Like he had a brother.

Speaker 5 (16:14):
Brother who was in the fire department, who ran the
fire department, and they were all over.

Speaker 7 (16:19):
His father was a fire department was in a fire
department too.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
Yeah, so they were involved for a long time, and
he ran the city like a mob boss exactly. You know.
The thing of like like the racism in him, it
wasn't even he didn't try to hide it.

Speaker 7 (16:36):
I mean, it was how he felt.

Speaker 2 (16:38):
And you know, one of the examples I give about
Frank Frizzo and his ways, like in the city of Philadelphia,
where there's over two thousand statues or monuments in the
city that is mostly black, there's only three that are
of black people. One is Martin Luther King and is
only eighteen inches high. One is Octavius That just we

(17:01):
just got that statue outside of city Hall just a
few years ago. There is no statue of Bernard Hopkins,
who was a heavyweight champion at the age of fifty, however,
but there's a statue of a fictional character named Rocky
Velo right, so, and that's because of Rizzo Italian. He

(17:23):
was pushing the whole Italian thing, and he wanted people
in the city to be with this Italian thing, so
he pushed it, and he, like you said, he said
he wanted to urge white people to fight black people
for better jobs and all that kind of stuff. So
his and his racism spilled over on everyone, and Move

(17:45):
got it really hard. A lot of it was because
of Paltain Village and the gentrification of that community, a
lot like what you're seeing now in a temple and
pen and a lot of it had to do with
the fact that Move was very much before our time.

Speaker 7 (18:02):
We didn't see dread locks in nineteen seventy whatever.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
And the first time I ever saw locks outside of
my family was Whoopy gold Bird and that was in
the eighties.

Speaker 4 (18:15):
And then they were demonized before they were celebrated, exactly.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
And so the raw food thing, we were long before
the raw food restaurants that are popping up all over
the country.

Speaker 1 (18:27):
Vegan in the wrong place. You were trying to be
vegan in the city.

Speaker 7 (18:33):
The exercise, i mean, Move women having the babies at home.

Speaker 2 (18:37):
We were so before our time, and the you know
it was it was we were demonized because of it,
and people you know, discriminated against, and that was in large.

Speaker 7 (18:50):
Part what led to them accepting what happened to us.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
You know.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
The thing that perplexed me was that a lot of
my I a lot of my thoughts on what move
was came directly from black people, older black people. And
that's when I realized that at the time, I think
when the roots first started, and this is when we

(19:16):
were like busking on the streets of like West Philadelphia,
like we do something at Clark Park or whatever. We
did this thing at Clark Park. Once I think of
like ninety one and I met Ramona. There was on
Baltimore Avenue, like a farmer's market or something like that,
and she was.

Speaker 1 (19:34):
There and it was kind of like my us weekly.

Speaker 3 (19:38):
Oh she's just like us, Like, oh, she talks proper
English and she's eating salad.

Speaker 1 (19:45):
I don't see her eating more. I'm telling you. I
was told the worship about that.

Speaker 4 (19:51):
This is a dress, and this is addressed in a
documentary day that.

Speaker 3 (19:55):
Y'all were heavens that it was like a cult that
you know, like raw foods, And now I get what
the raw means as in a vegan lifestyle. But when
it's nineteen eighty five and people don't understand the contextualization
of a cleaner, healthy living. I mean, this is stuff
like Eric Abadu taught me in ninety seven. But you

(20:16):
guys were just twenty years, not twenty thirty years ahead
of the game. And you know, once I talked to her,
I walked away. I was like, wait a minute, that's
not what my uncles or my grandmam or like anyone
that was older said, right, And it just that was

(20:37):
the that was the moment where I realized, how you know,
if you kind of go against I hate to say
it like this, this conservative Christian.

Speaker 5 (20:50):
And black people.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
Go yeah, like it's it's against God. And what God
do they worship? They don't worship my God and dah.

Speaker 1 (20:55):
Da da And.

Speaker 7 (20:59):
That's not even and that's not even necessarily accurate.

Speaker 2 (21:02):
The original A lot of people don't notice, but the
original name for the move organization was the Christian Movement,
the American Christian Movement for Life. That was their original name.
The people black people were ashamed of us.

Speaker 7 (21:21):
They thought that even though.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
The message was cool, when we talked to them one
on one, because we didn't come in a suit like
Martin Luther King and delivered that message. They didn't want
to accept it because we didn't come in a suit
like Malcolm, you know, and these were the heroes that
had just been honored and celebrated, so they thought of

(21:46):
it as this is how you're supposed to look. If
you're going to be a revolutionary or if you're going
to be radical, then you need to look like the
Black Panthers. So move come along with different than all
of those groups, different than anyone has ever even seen before.
And it just made people question it from the beginning.

(22:07):
And it didn't help that the news media was saying
things like we eat out of garbage cans, and we
don't bathe, and we don't the children don't, the children
are not schooled, and just they made it worse by
just you know, inflaming people's minds and their passions with

(22:30):
these lies. You know, they demonized us, and that just
gave them like justification.

Speaker 3 (22:36):
Okay, So at the time, I mean, how aware were
you of the osh Avenue incident and what effect did
that have on your life? Like were you going by Mike?
You were born as Mike Africa right.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
So you know, if you've researched move history, there's a
lot of confrontations and incidents with the police that you'll find,
but there's a lot that you will never find. One
in particular that you it's a footnote within the history
on paper, but it left a major impression on the
children in the seventies. In the very early eighties, John

(23:20):
Africa sent the children to our sister chapter in Richmond,
Virginia was called the Seat of Wisdom. And I was
one of the kids. After I was born in a jail,
my grandmother took me to the Seat of Wisdom in
Virginia too. Bertie was there. All of the kids that
were in the house made thirteenth. They were all there.
We were all together, and a bunch of other kids

(23:42):
were there too. It was about fifteen of us. You know.
It was like you never really got any peace. You
could never really feel safe or secure. Every time you
started to like feel that things were going to change,
they just they didn't.

Speaker 7 (24:00):
I mean, I can remember times where neighbors black and
white would walk up to us and just like pull
as much mucus out of their chest and out of
their throat and just spit on us. I remember, like
like the police come by. They're not even doing anything.

(24:20):
They're not coming by to raid our house or anything.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
They just walk in the beat and as they're walking
they see, you know, one of us, and they just
pick us up by our hair and throw us across
the street. That that's the kind of stuff that happened
throughout my childhood as children. Yeah, I mean, you know, three,
four or five, seven, you know, and so like we

(24:45):
always like stuck stuck together and like try to fight
for each other. But you know, we were all kids.
The oldest one was only eight or nine years old
of the fifteen of us. And so like when we
were in Virginia, there was this thing that happened where
they pull the police raided our house and uh they
said that there was some housing co violations. The children

(25:06):
were said to be abused in all of this nonsense.
So they put us in an orphanage. We were in
the orphanage for eleven days. And while we were in
the orphanage, we were like neglected, I mean totally abused.
Like I mean, look I was I was I was
almost three years old, and they didn't, you know, the caretakers,

(25:29):
the nuns that was running the place. They didn't change
my diaper for eleven days. I had a diaper rash
that was near my knees and up to my neighbor.
And when my when my family and I wasn't the
only one, and I was not the youngest, and you know,
I mean they they like my cousin. My cousin had

(25:53):
locks down to his almost down to his shoulders, and
like the nuns like were trying to comb his hair,
and they combed his hair to the point where like
his head was bleeding. He had went by the time
they finished, by the time we were you know, by
the time our family got us back, he had half
of an afro and the other half of his head

(26:15):
was still locks, you know, and he has sores all
over his head. You know, they were they you know,
when we didn't cooperate, they try to throw us.

Speaker 7 (26:23):
They actually threw some of the kids down basement steps.

Speaker 5 (26:26):
You know.

Speaker 2 (26:27):
We would hide behind hot water tanks to try to
try to get away from them. And we went through
all of that for that eleven days. Our family rescues
us and then they bring us back to Philadelphia, and
you're thinking, wow, this okay, finally we're home. The worst.
It can't get any worse than this. Right, it's over.

(26:50):
The worst has to be over because we just survived
something that we shouldn't have and then, you know, it
just it never it didn't get better for them. You know,
we were I remember hearing about the confrontation is gearing up.
The cops were always around our houses, flying helicopters. I mean,

(27:10):
I was terrified at the sound of any siren. It
could have been an ambulance going to rescue somebody, but
the sound was so terrifying, and when I would hear it,
I would run home. It doesn't matter where I was
or what I was doing. I would run home as
fast as I could. And then one day I went
outside the house and I turned I walked down the steps.

(27:35):
I'm about four miles away from Osage Avenue on Reno
Street in West Philly, and one of my friends he
looked at me and said, they dropped the bomb or
move And my first reaction was, no, they didn't. And
he pointed up to the sky. And when I turned
around and looked up, the entire sky was black and

(27:57):
I didn't know what that meant. And I was six
years old. I ran in the house, and I asked
my grandmother, I said, and before I couldn't even ask
her anything. Her and my aunts were huddled around the
television with tears just pouring out of their faces. And

(28:18):
you know, and I said, that looked like our house.
And I looked at me and said it is. And
I wonder. I didn't know if anyone had died. I
didn't know who was in the house. I just knew
that our house was on fire, and it didn't look
like it was being put out.

Speaker 7 (28:35):
It took me a lot of years to find out
who was actually in the house.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
I had no idea that all the children that I
was in Richmond with was in the house. I would
ask my grandmother where they are? And you know, how
do you tell a six year old your family was
just killed? Right, So with having the belief of life
and believing that all life is one and connected and

(29:00):
we all need each other, and we all depend on
the same sources for life, and we don't believe in death, right,
We believe that life is continuous. When an apple falls
from a tree, it goes into the ground and it
provides with more apples, more seeds, you know, So we
just that's how we think about everything in life. So

(29:22):
when I would ask my grandmother where the people were,
where the kids, where's Tomaso at? She would say, look
out the window, and you know, I might see a cardinal.
At the time I asked her that question, I saw
a cardinal land on the branch and she pointed to
the cardinal and said, there he is. If you want
to see your family, you want to see your brothers
and sisters, look out the window and see the life

(29:43):
you'll see them. And that's the way.

Speaker 7 (29:46):
It was for about eight years.

Speaker 2 (29:50):
And when I began to understand who was in the house,
that came when Ramona came home and eineteen ninety two,
I asked my mom, who was at the prison with
her before she came home. I said, I said, Mom,
can you can you have Ramona come and get me
when she come home? And Ramona the day she came home,

(30:11):
she came and got me and we were Ramona went
straight to like a speaking thing where she was on
the radio or something, and I was with her and
she was telling the story to the audience. And as
she's telling the story, I'm learning what happened to my family.
As she as the audience is learning it too, so

(30:32):
there was a lot of catching up that I had
to do. I didn't know who. I knew my parents
were in prison, but I didn't know what they were
in prison for. I didn't know that they had a
hundred year sentence. I didn't know that they were in
prison for killing a cop. I didn't know what was
going on really, because again, how do you explain to

(30:54):
a child that his family is in prison and he
won't see them until he outside on the street.

Speaker 7 (31:01):
He won't see them until he's at least thirty years old.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
So you know a lot. I was just learning as
audiences were learning. I traveled with Ramona throughout the country.
We went on I mean, she went on tours, speaking
tours all around the country, and I'm just soaking up
as much information as I can from her and from Pam,
and I listened to Mumia speak a lot.

Speaker 7 (31:24):
Mumia talked a lot about move.

Speaker 2 (31:26):
I listened to his recordings and his commentaries, read some
of his writings. That's how I learned about May thirteenth
and the and the depth that I that I was
able to understand it in and about what happened on
August Epe that sent our people to prison.

Speaker 6 (31:47):
I got to ask, is this from the after watching
the documentary after you just listen to your speech just now,
and I think that ameor mentioned this in your in
the intro.

Speaker 4 (31:57):
Your patience is is.

Speaker 6 (32:02):
And you're just wherewithal to just push through is amazing,
and knowing it is astounding, and knowing just a piece
of the story makes you feel that way, but then
knowing the totality, like not just about your parents, but
just life outside of that and the.

Speaker 4 (32:15):
Things that you've seen.

Speaker 6 (32:16):
So I got to ask you as a man, like,
as a black man, like.

Speaker 4 (32:21):
How do you maintain this?

Speaker 2 (32:23):
Like?

Speaker 6 (32:23):
And I'm just pointing to mind because at such a
beautiful level that it seems to exude from you.

Speaker 7 (32:30):
You know, I was asking this question earlier today. Oh damn,
people ask me this.

Speaker 2 (32:37):
People ask me this, I mean, because.

Speaker 4 (32:39):
It's kind of like advice too.

Speaker 6 (32:40):
We want to know, we want to know if you
can do it, we can go through anything we got
going on.

Speaker 2 (32:45):
One of the I was doing an interview with a
reporter from the Guardian newspaper. He asked me what was
your what was the thing that you disliked about the
film the most? And I said, I didn't dislike the
film at all, I said, But there was a comment
that was made by one of the officers, Bob Hurst.

(33:08):
Bob Hurst made a comment that said he said something
like they took move to jail, but they should have
took him to the morgue. And that was probably more
disappointing than it was angering, because how you know, if
we're going to move forward and grow as a people, right,

(33:31):
how do you still harbor the same hate in your
heart that led to one of his fellow officers being killed.
I mean, what happened on August eighth, nineteen seventy eight,
when a cop where a cop was killed. That didn't
happen because people were loving each other. That happened because

(33:53):
people were fighting each other because of a system that
one was trying to protect and the other side was
trying to get rid of. Because of the danger. It
calls for people, the animals, the environment, and everyone, including
the cops. So you know, it's just I have enough
understanding of the mission, and I'm clear enough to understand

(34:15):
that we're not going to get in anywhere carrying hate
in our hearts. We're not.

Speaker 7 (34:21):
It doesn't get us anywhere.

Speaker 2 (34:22):
You know where hate gets you, It gets warse, it
gets violence, the hatred that you must have in you
to shoot a brother down in his back in front
of his mother, kneeling on his neck while he's calling
for his mother, crying for his mother, pleading for his mother.
That is what hate breathes. And I'm trying to get

(34:44):
as far away from it from that type of activity
as possible because it doesn't get us anywhere, it doesn't
help us in any kind of way. And it is
exactly what like like Trump Trump was saying that Trump
made a statement about Frank Rizzo himself. He said, we
need more mayors like him, you know, and we see

(35:04):
the type of person he is and the type of
the type of evil that is evoked by his mentality.
You got people walking around shooting protesters because protesters are
trying to make a better way, because they're just trying
to say stop killing black people. And you got anti
protesters protesting the protests because they want to continue to

(35:28):
kill black people. So, you know, I do a lot.

Speaker 6 (35:32):
It ain't easy about That's why I'm asking you, like,
do you meditate, like Guly, asking you, like.

Speaker 4 (35:38):
How the spirits?

Speaker 7 (35:40):
Yes, right.

Speaker 4 (35:43):
In the life you know.

Speaker 5 (35:44):
It means you.

Speaker 2 (35:46):
You know, I am. I had a lot of time
to think. I just I've had a lot of time
to process what happened. Tommy talked about he's a research junkie.
I'm a research junk as well. I have files. I
have boxes and crates and filing cabinets and storage bends.

(36:06):
Tommy's been to my basement. He's seen the towers of
storage bins. In fact, you can see it. You can
see a portion of my archives in the film. I'm
sitting in front of it. That is ten of the
information that I have.

Speaker 3 (36:23):
Okay, so there's a part of the film that our
mayor from eighty five W. Wilson Good, very transparently says
that it's it's most likely that friendly fire was the

(36:43):
cause of the death of the office. I forget the
offers his name, James Grant, James Rand. Okay, sorry, now
I do know that because of the bulldozing of the

(37:04):
compound and whatnot, I assume that a might assume that
the evidence that would have officially exonerated them was that
in the rubble and the pile of mess like, because
it's so obvious that it was friendly fire, and I
know that you know forensics and you know the whatever

(37:28):
the grass you know, magic bullet JFK theory thing couldn't
be been proved proven because of the of the watch
job of the Philly Police Department. But how I mean,
how close were they to kind of reaching that conclusion?
Like it was there was that ever introduced in court?

Speaker 1 (37:49):
That hey, it was.

Speaker 5 (37:51):
It was introduced in court and it was a mess.
There were so many things that happened, from evidence disappearing
to the official footsiographer not taking any photos in the basement,
to him saying that when he was in the basement
he saw no guns in the basement, to the there
was a time where they changed the trajectory of the

(38:14):
bullet in court and so they said that oh it
was going this way. Oh no, I'm sorry, it's actually
going this way in court on the official coroner's report
they just said, oh no, no, sorry, it's supposed to be
the other way. And the judge allowed it. And so
there were so many things. I mean, if you just
stopped to think about it for a second, why would

(38:36):
anyone destroy a crime scene hours after Why Olkham's razor?
Like why like why would somebody do that?

Speaker 6 (38:48):
Tommy, how did you not lose your shit during these interviews?
Because I know that Mike is superhuman. However, I in
these moments from the moment of the with Mike just
reminded us of what the officer said to Yeah, Bob
Hurst to buy her, to Rendell, to Wilson, good, to
all of them coming back and now being like, well,
you know.

Speaker 4 (39:09):
Maybe they should be they shouldn't be in jail.

Speaker 6 (39:11):
You know, everybody forty years later, like how do you
how did you keep your cool during the taping of
these moments that were just like the fuck?

Speaker 5 (39:20):
What you mean?

Speaker 4 (39:20):
Like forty years ain't shit. I'm sorry, That's how I felt.

Speaker 5 (39:25):
I mean, so much of it came down to, like,
I set out to tell a story that was open,
honest and unbiased, and there are no frank In bites
in this. I'm not misrepresenting what people say, I'm not
taking it out of context, and in many ways it
was giving people enough rope to hang themselves because.

Speaker 6 (39:44):
I'm surprised you got some of those people. I was
surprised you got Rendell and married They're good.

Speaker 1 (39:49):
Yeah, I was Jesus Christ.

Speaker 7 (39:50):
How hard or easy was that?

Speaker 3 (39:53):
That was the last that watching Wilson Good speak on
move Yd, So wait, can I can I can I
assume that you had to assure them that this was
not about nineteen eighty five and that he was only
going to speak on nineteen seventy seven, that.

Speaker 5 (40:07):
He's soool that actually came through Mike, and so speaking
of the idea, and I know it really came down to,
in his case, the ends justifying the means and the
only thing and not to put words in your mouth,
you can speak for yourself. But he went in his
parents home, and as such it was about whatever it

(40:30):
took to do that, and the idea of sitting with
the men who was significantly responsible for what happened to
his family. Even the idea of that wasn't too much.

Speaker 4 (40:43):
Oh you were there, you were there, Mike was there.

Speaker 3 (40:45):
Let me put it in context for people that might
not get it. W Wilson Good was mayor of Philadelphia,
our first black mayor in nineteen eighty five, kind of
a source of pride. Not Obama esque, but it was
kind of like okay, you know, okay.

Speaker 4 (41:02):
If you wasn't no Marion Barry.

Speaker 3 (41:04):
Well, you didn't smoke crack at least no, it was
it was. It was a quasi I mean, if you
were into that sort of thing. I mean, I've never
got the quote Obama, whatever the feeling. I guess the
idea of something supersedes the actual reality. So yes, I
would say that the idea of the first black mayor

(41:25):
of Philadelphia was kind of a source of pride, especially
for a city that was under the under the thumb
of you know, Rizzo for so long, and then eight
years later you have your first black mayor. But this
incident May thirteenth, nineteen eighty five really tarnished his legacy.

(41:49):
And I guess we need to also explain that that,
you know, in addition to what happened in nineteen seventy eight.

Speaker 1 (41:58):
Has explained earlier.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
Nineteen eighty five, the city of Philadelphia flew a helicopters.

Speaker 5 (42:05):
I'm sorry it did it though, like you say, it Tarrens' legacy.
Yet they he got re elected, and so he got
re elected after that, and and so see, part of
the problem is it's there's so much more to that
where when you dehumanize a people, which is what the

(42:26):
media did to move it makes it really easy to
justify what's what happens to them insert whatever them you want,
whether it's move or immigrants or natives or or whatever
group you want to insert, because they've been dehumanized, and
as such, it becomes easy to justify it, because how

(42:47):
then do you not get confused by the idea of
this man gets re elected the next year.

Speaker 3 (42:53):
But it's for me, there's always going to be an
asterisk there, like or maybe you know, I'm just in
the right mind of things. You know, of course, if
you were to ask an older black person or a
conservative person, I don't know. I just think that the
stain of what happened to fifty two to the sixty

(43:17):
two hundred block of Osage Avenue and the subsequent blocks
that also got destroyed, that was way way too There's
there's always going to be an asterisk on.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
His entire legacy that.

Speaker 3 (43:32):
Is not going to be there for Rendell or Nutter
or any other mayor which and.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
What's what's even weirder is that Rizzo was way worse.

Speaker 3 (43:47):
And I yes, I think he's one of the worst
politicians of all time, but I think generally in history,
like there isn't a statue of Wilson Good up in Philadelphia,
you know, there Now, if you were white, I'm certain
that there would have been a lot of erasure and
you know, a kind of.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
A revisionist history of his legacy.

Speaker 3 (44:08):
But you know, I mean, Wilson Good has actually been
in I still consider in hiding. Like besides this interview,
I can't recall ever seeing a Wilson Good SoundBite or
an interview or anything in the last thirty five years.

Speaker 6 (44:25):
Now I'm interested to see about Mike and his relationship
since he was the one that introduced him to the project.

Speaker 1 (44:31):
Because also, how did how did that? Well, yeah, I'm
shocked to hear this. How did that even? How was that? Broker?

Speaker 2 (44:41):
Well, it wasn't easy. How it started was Wilson Good
was honored with the street sign called Wilson Good Way
on his block where he lives. And when that happened,
some members of the community who are also move and
move me is some porters were enraged by it, and

(45:03):
they talked about how they take their kids by that
street on their way to school every day and they
do not want to see a street sign of a
murderer on their block. So the pressure was so intense
and Wilson it drew, it drew Wilson Good out. He
got on the radio.

Speaker 7 (45:23):
He talked about how you know he was he was
sorry for what happened.

Speaker 2 (45:28):
He had apologized multiple times he would be willing to
support MOVE and John Africa for the rest of his life.
And so at the time, the MOVE nine were still
in prison except for my mom. And when my mom

(45:48):
got out of prison, the head of the FOP, John mcnesby,
made a statement that said one of the MOVE members
slipped through the cracks, but the next man up, the
next person up, we're gonna be waiting for.

Speaker 7 (46:02):
He pointed and said this Michael Davis was just my father.

Speaker 2 (46:07):
He said this, Michael Davis, We're gonna make sure that
he never sees the light of day. We're going to
make sure that he stays in jail. And if that
means that his he said, we want him to serve
the full term. And if that means he dies before
his terms are up, we want his body, his corpse

(46:28):
to occupy.

Speaker 1 (46:29):
A sell for interrupting. When was that said?

Speaker 2 (46:32):
That was in uh June twenty eighteen, right when she
came out, right, all right, my mom got out. So
when that happened, I knew that the pressure that we
had applied and all of the work that we had
done to get my mom out, I knew that we
were going to need more. The way people see women

(46:53):
as opposed to how they see men, it would be
harder for my father to make parole than my mom.
So Wilson said he wanted to help. So I called
him and I told him, I said, you said you
wanted to help help. So he said, okay. So he
said he wanted to set up a meeting. He said

(47:14):
there was certain information that he could help with. There
are certain things that he knew, and he said he'd
be willing to provide that information. He'd be willing to
provide support letters, He'd be willing to provide jobs. All
of the things that the parole board needed you to
have to make parole. He said he'd be willing to supply.

(47:35):
So the first meeting that we had.

Speaker 4 (47:38):
Sounds like modern day mister. I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
It was great, but I didn't know this part of
the story.

Speaker 4 (47:46):
That's crazy. I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
The first meeting that we had was I tell you so,
just to give you a little bit of understanding about me,
my family, the children that were in the house. I
think about them every day. There is not a day
that goes by in the thirty five years since I've
seen them last that I don't think about him every day.

(48:11):
And the women and the men that were in the prison,
they were the parents of the kids that were killed.
So going into Wilson Good's office it was the hardest
thing I ever had to do in my life. It
was I felt like I felt so dirty, Like just

(48:33):
having a conversation with him and not jumping over the
table to strangle him, I felt so I felt like
I was betraying my family just looking at him and
looking at him looking back at me.

Speaker 7 (48:46):
You know, I left the first meeting vomiting after.

Speaker 2 (48:51):
You know, it was it was really tough. But if
you know anything about me, you know that I don't
love anything more then I love my family, my whole
MOVE family.

Speaker 1 (49:04):
And so with.

Speaker 2 (49:06):
One of the members of the Move nine dying in
prison in twenty fifteen, you know, I just didn't want
to see any other MOVE member come out of prison
feet first. So I was willing to do whatever it took.
It didn't matter how hard it was, it didn't matter
how gut wrenching it was, it didn't matter how controversial
it was. Because it was definitely controversial. People didn't like

(49:30):
the idea of me going and sitting down and talking
with Wilson Good but to bring my family home.

Speaker 7 (49:37):
I was willing to do that, and I don't regret it.

Speaker 3 (49:41):
Can I ask something a tom? So this documentary is
what one hour and forty five minutes?

Speaker 5 (49:50):
I believe an hour and forty nine.

Speaker 1 (49:53):
Okay, so under out under two hours? One slight left turn.

Speaker 3 (49:59):
And this could have easily have been It could have
been a short docuseries, like just just for us to
conduct this interview and just unwrap twenty percent of the story,
you know, is a lot to.

Speaker 5 (50:18):
Have, no idea a mirror do.

Speaker 3 (50:21):
Okay, not even I'm not even trying to self promote
because I'm doing a documentary that at the same time,
like cutting your kids is one of the hardest things.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
I gotta keep this in and I gotta keep this in.

Speaker 3 (50:32):
All this too important, This is too important, and I'm
hearing a lot of things that now I'm like, well, wait,
why wasn't that in the die? And then I realized
that if you open that can of worms, then suddenly
you're dealing with a three hour film. So talk about
the storyline structure, like how hard was it? What was
your original director's cut and how much did you have

(50:54):
to cut on the floor just to get the sustinct
start to finish story that you ended up with.

Speaker 1 (51:02):
Now that's just as powerful.

Speaker 5 (51:04):
So interestingly, I actually thought of this as a multi
part piece to begin with, and that's what I started
talking to HBO about. And they thought that it was
a feature. And actually what I said to them was
if it was anybody but HBO, Manswer will be hell no.
But let me think about it. Okay, That's what I

(51:27):
said verbatim, And so I thought about it and I
I agreed, And then when I turned in the first cut,
they were like, oh, I see what you were talking about.
You want to have a conversation about this being more
than one part, and we can have that conversation. And
at that point I was like no. And it was

(51:47):
about figuring out how to be disciplined and tell the
story in a way that that really worked, because there
are so many things that we could dig into. We
could dig into August eighth for two hours by itself,
and I'm not exaggerating. We have so much footage around it,

(52:10):
we have so many perspectives and there's so much archival
you can really dig into all of the details in
so many ways. But for me, it was about understanding
what the story was really about, understanding what the emotion was,
which is this guy trying to get his parents home,
and then the context around that, why are his parents

(52:33):
in and how do we be laser focused on that.
There's a reason that the film moves the way that
it does, that it looks the way that it does.
That the cutting the shoe, Like I shot the entire
film myself, I cut it with a partner, and part
of it is the idea of stripping away. I lit
the film out it, all of it, and so it's
just stripping away all the things that take you away

(52:56):
from the emotion and the story, and that's it. Mething
that does not fit on that you pull away.

Speaker 3 (53:04):
So the the scene in which Mike is about to
hear that his mother is about to be released, you
were there.

Speaker 1 (53:16):
How much FaceTime were you so?

Speaker 5 (53:19):
So so here's the thing, that's the one thing that
I didn't and Mike and I had So Mike and
I talked about this because we can imagine that scene
image scene.

Speaker 7 (53:32):
So tell him about how you threatened me. You don't
forget that part you.

Speaker 4 (53:36):
That you had to be there when it happened.

Speaker 5 (53:38):
So I was in La. I live in La. He's
in Philly and and so, but I didn't. We had
no idea when it was going to happen. So you
can tell HI about the threat, right, So.

Speaker 1 (53:48):
I told you.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
I said, Tommy, I don't know when this is gonna happen. Man,
if it's gonna happen, I said, what happens. If it
happens and I just go pick her up? He said,
if you pick her up without calling me, I will
kill you.

Speaker 6 (54:03):
Yeah. I felled him on that because that was such
a beautiful moment, like it was theatrical like just.

Speaker 5 (54:11):
So that that actual phone call I wasn't there for.
But it was interesting because I was in I was
in Miami at ABFF and I was there with my
wife and our kids. And when he called me, we
were actually planning on shooting a Black Love interview the
following day, and so I had equipment with me which

(54:31):
we had to cancel and they've never forgiven me since
because I cancel it them. I couldn't tell them why.
It was Juwan Howard and his wife and they just
thought we blew him off. But anyway, so he called
me at I think it was like ten am. I
was on literally the first flight out of Miami, and
I got there and that evening and we drove. It

(54:53):
was a seven hour drive because they were up in
Cambridge Springs and so wait where Pennsylvania And so it's
about as far as you can get and still be
in Pennsylvania. And so seven hours drive driven.

Speaker 2 (55:07):
Hour from from uh what two hours from Niagara Falls.

Speaker 5 (55:11):
But so it's a drive that we made a bunch.
But that was one of the times where it was
just like, okay, it's like there are I went back
and forth a lot. I was probably in Philly. I
was flying back to Philly at least once a month,
sometimes twice a month, and more than that sort of
woul needed, and so I was there as much as
I could. But something like that where we had no
idea when it was going to happen, we couldn't plan for.

(55:32):
I had to rely on him where it was, Hey,
I don't know what this is going to happen, but
can you please make sure you captured and can you
please make sure you captured widescreen? But that didn't happen.
But it's all.

Speaker 1 (55:47):
It was like, wait, so this twenty eighteen, so that means, yeah,
it couldn't happen.

Speaker 2 (55:54):
Okay, well I wasn't the one shooting. Somebody else was
shooting and they didn't you know, even the whole sight.

Speaker 3 (56:04):
Well no, it just made it more authentic. And you know,
now I got to go back and relook at it.
But you know, I definitely I remember being floored watching it.

Speaker 1 (56:14):
And that's the.

Speaker 3 (56:15):
Thing, like I knew that Tommy knew that I didn't know,
and you were so quiet that day and when it
came I my heart dropped.

Speaker 4 (56:28):
I was like, oh, you didn't know that. You didn't
know how it ended. You didn't know. Is that what
you're saying.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
I thought I was going to just watch.

Speaker 3 (56:38):
If I thought watching it, what I thought I was
going to get out of it was how corrupt Rizzo
was as a mayor.

Speaker 4 (56:48):
Not a beautiful kind of love.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
I didn't know. I wasn't expecting them.

Speaker 4 (56:55):
I guess it isn't. It's a themeon.

Speaker 1 (56:59):
It's just I didn't see it coming.

Speaker 3 (57:02):
If anything, I thought, okay, well maybe the statue will
come down or better.

Speaker 1 (57:06):
You don't know how many times I go past that mural.
I just wanted to egg the shit out that mural,
like that's what I thought I thought the endinge was
going to be. And then we took there is a
mural down that's not the.

Speaker 4 (57:17):
Right Africa way, and mirror this is what we're learning
right right.

Speaker 1 (57:21):
Yes, but I didn't know about any of these things.

Speaker 7 (57:24):
I mean, we had no idea that they were going
to come home.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
During the filming, we talked about it and like this
was supposed to be something that could like bring you know,
life to the case and help get people motivated to
support them coming home, but there was no you know,
we were doing all of this other stuff.

Speaker 7 (57:43):
I mean, there's a lot of stuff that did not
make it.

Speaker 2 (57:46):
To the film. The work that we were doing, the
meeting with the different politicians and the investigators, and we
traveled to we almost got arrested, and.

Speaker 5 (58:01):
So I've got so there were several times, like actually
several times. There was one time where we got I
got chased off of the prison grounds and they followed us.
There was another time where I was surrounded by four
cop cars and about eight cops and it was insane. Also,
every single time you see any footage at prison. I

(58:21):
was probably this close to getting arrested because they do
not allow cameras of I was going to but I
didn't give a fuck. I needed for time and.

Speaker 2 (58:34):
I had to and I had to play that like
the bad guy. I was like, Tommy, puts your phone down,
but I was like, yeah, you know, but you know,
but there was a lot of like really close calls
when he when he was at the prison. We went
to the prison to see delb where Delvil was beating
the prison. He was beating it that he went to
after he was beaten and all of that, and while

(58:56):
we were there, Tommy calls me and there's there after
you know, they're questioning police are questioning him because of whatever.
And then when they get off the phone, they come
to my car and they're like bringing their troops to
snoop around. And none of that makes it to the film,
But there was a whole lot of crazy moments where like,

(59:18):
you know things ship was about to go down, like and.

Speaker 5 (59:22):
Some of it I have and I have it and
you can see them, and I was sort of discreet
about it, but I was still going to be like,
you know what, in case something happens. Actually when I
got stopped and there were five cops around me. I
called Sean King and I called him and I texted
and They'm like, just in case some shit goes down,

(59:43):
I want you to know where I am. And so, yeah, whoa, yeah,
they were not playing around, yo.

Speaker 6 (59:51):
Can I ask y'all since y'all mentioned Delbert because not
for nothing? You know, we talked about and we said
it as a sport. We were spoiling the end, and
we've said that Mike's parents were both released. Beautiful ending,
but at the same time, it was a multi kind
of layered emotional ending, right because as we're seeing mice
parents reunite and we're seeing Delbert home, you have this

(01:00:13):
moment of like he was in his twenties, he got
his ass beat for no fucking reason, Like, can y'all
talk about Delbert in his life that we things that
we may have, you know, we didn't.

Speaker 4 (01:00:25):
Y'all don't get a chance to show in the story.

Speaker 5 (01:00:26):
And I've actually never talked about this part I am.
So Delbert got out in January of this year, and
he did almost forties years, and I'd gotten now Delbert
pretty well went to see him in prison. A couple
of times, and he was just a sort of like Mike,

(01:00:49):
just a positive, happy, good guy. Actually he kind of
reminded me of General Iro from Avatar.

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
Yeah, there you go, there you go.

Speaker 5 (01:01:03):
And I'd gotten to know him and he was just
a good guy. And then he finally got out, and
I was there when he got out, And which is
if I don't know if you've I hope you have,
but if you haven't, watched to the very end of
the film, because there's a very small clip of him.
But the thing that was so hard for me was

(01:01:24):
I was just about done editing the film, and the
ending was really hard because I wanted to figure out
the right balance of things. And then as I'm doing that,
Delbert again forty two years in prison, got out in January,
less than six months, like five and a half months afterward,
he died. He died, and it broke my heart and

(01:01:48):
the balance, the dance of trying to figure out how
to make sure that I was honoring him, my friend,
this man who went through so much, but also not
at It's just there was a lot, because you go
through this roller coaster of emotions and and like Mayor

(01:02:09):
was talking about, it's like as you watch the film,
it's sort of there where you're like, you want them
to get out, but you don't want to allow yourself
to believe that it's going to happen, because the disappointment
of that happening after allowing yourself to believe is a lot,
because it's it's typically what happens. And so after sort
of that a juggle, and then you finally do you

(01:02:32):
get there and it's this fairy tale ending, it's this
thing that's happier and better than you could have ever
hoped for. And then to show, oh, but Delbert died.
I didn't see I didn't. I didn't because I could
not figure out the yo yo of it. Yeah, I
couldn't figure out how to go from here to here

(01:02:54):
to here to hear without it feeling weird, which is
why it's a here he's there, you see him, you
hear him. And so that was my way of figuring
out how to honor who he was and sort of
what he stood for while still balancing the emotion and
the journey of the film.

Speaker 6 (01:03:15):
And you answered a question for the viewer because as
of viewers and see was such a pivotal part of
the story. You wanted to know what happened to Dover
and it was just you came. It was just so
perfect in his face. Oh and this in years on
his Oh, it's just so rest in peace.

Speaker 5 (01:03:30):
That was also one of the happiest things for me
because I had been I'd seen this guy for so
long in archival footage and photos and that's all I
knew him ass And the first time I saw him
it was plus thirty five years, like there was no gradation,
there was nothing in between. It was just, oh, yeah,
here's this, you know, thirty year old man, here's this

(01:03:53):
sixty five year old man. And it was trippy.

Speaker 3 (01:04:01):
Can I ask I guess at the time, when you
officially have the green light and you're you're doing this project,
in your mind, are you like this project is over
when they are released or you know, okay, so say

(01:04:22):
their bail gets denied back in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen,
for you, is it just like back before you knew
there was a chance for it to really happen? Is
there an alternative ending in your mind that would have

(01:04:42):
completed this documentary if they had never gotten out out
of prison.

Speaker 5 (01:04:47):
So it's a good question, and it's I'm the personal
greenlit this film, and so HBO came on as a distributor.
But I paid for this film out of my pocket.
And so it was not about the idea of, hey,
let's do this as a piece of business that needs
to make sense and we have to know what these

(01:05:07):
things are. I did it because I what Mike was
doing was important and who he was was somebody that
I wanted to be able to capture and showcase and
be around. And that's what it was. And so it wasn't, hey,
these things need to happen in order for this to
make sense. It's like, no, it's like I was spending
my own money. I was doing whatever I needed to

(01:05:28):
do to capture it without an HBO, without anybody, and
you know, that was just what I wanted to do,
and so it and so in many ways, it's sort
of running over a cane while building a bridge at
the same time, and it's just like, you know what,

(01:05:48):
I'll figure it out. I'll figure it out. And in
the end, if it doesn't make sense, it's all good.
It's all good because it's.

Speaker 6 (01:05:55):
Still information that nobody had too for for sure, Right,
you're still educating the masses.

Speaker 3 (01:06:02):
Yeah, so so much to unpack here, because is there
is there more story to tell?

Speaker 1 (01:06:12):
Like now that this is over, can you officially put
this behind you?

Speaker 3 (01:06:19):
Or is there are there other fights that we don't
know about or that we're not aware of. So, first
of all, Mike, are you kind of a qualified paralegal?

Speaker 1 (01:06:31):
I mean do you?

Speaker 3 (01:06:34):
First of all, what was day What was day one
for you when you decided I have to get them home?
Like what do you remember the day where you're like
hand on table, Okay, I gotta do this, and I'm
gonna find go to city hall, find some papers, Like
what year was it when you were like all right,

(01:06:56):
I gotta do this myself twenty fifteen.

Speaker 2 (01:06:59):
But you know, I think what it was is when
Romota came and got me, when I Askedally to come
get me. That was in nineteen ninety two, and she
threw me right into I'm in lawyers' offices and learning
about the case, and the lawyers are quizzing me. They're

(01:07:19):
telling me, listen, this is your parents. You need to
know this information. And I've been around lawyers ever since thirteen,
fourteen years old, so learning and hearing the language that
they use and creating strategies and learning about the different

(01:07:40):
ways in which that you can insert information to judges
where they accepted. If you don't do it the right way,
you don't use a certain language, you don't enter it
into the right court, it won't be accepted. I was
learning all of.

Speaker 7 (01:07:54):
This type of information since then.

Speaker 1 (01:07:57):
I think as a teenager. Correct, I was fourteen years old.

Speaker 7 (01:08:02):
I was fourteen years old when I first started in that.

Speaker 2 (01:08:05):
Yeah, I was falling asleep and lawyer's offices because it
was boring information I didn't want to hear. I mean,
it wasn't that I want to, but it was boring.
I'm fourteen years old.

Speaker 7 (01:08:14):
I got a namagy I shouldn't play ball, right, So I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:08:18):
Falling asleep and all that kind of stuff, and they're like,
you know, sometimes they let me sleep, but sometimes they
woke me up and made me pay attention. So as
time went on, I was always around Ramona, I was
always around Pam, involved them with me and stuff a lot, right,
learning about his case and the illegal the illegalities of it,
and the ways in which to try to support him.

(01:08:39):
And I've always been involved in it. So in twenty fifteen,
when Phil passed away in jail, and Ramona had gotten
sick herself and we found out later that she had
stage four can answer and she had had a massive

(01:09:02):
stroke too, So she really was like kind of the
person that was kind of driving the Move nine information,
and she was out of the picture because she couldn't
do it anymore. And she told me, she.

Speaker 7 (01:09:15):
Said, I said for MoMA. I said, listen, I said, Lona,
people are.

Speaker 2 (01:09:19):
Calling me this investigator he's calling and the lawyer wants
to know something, and we need to pick a lawyer.

Speaker 7 (01:09:24):
We don't need to have a lawyer for the Move
nine And what are we going to do?

Speaker 2 (01:09:29):
And she gave me a sit down and she said, listen,
she said, you've been around this information long enough. You're smart.
Do of those people are your parents, one is your uncle.
You know all of the people. You know the case,
and you have plenty of move belief in your head.

(01:09:52):
You are going to have to take the lead on
this stuff and you're going to have to have the
confidence in yourself to know that you can do it.
I know that that you can do it. You need
to know that, so you need to just go ahead
and do it. So when she told me that, I said, okay.
And you know, I had my own ideas about what
I thought should happened, and my dad had been giving

(01:10:13):
me information and my uncle Chuck, who was who's wanting
to move nine too, my mom's little brother, and they
fed me information and I used what I had and
Tommy was part of it, you know, with him, we
talked about different things, and then we just kept on
pushing and eventually we developed a strategy that proved to

(01:10:35):
be true, too, proved to be right.

Speaker 7 (01:10:38):
So that's how it happened.

Speaker 1 (01:10:42):
Slight sidebar. I do want to know like human moments,
like did you get to go to your prime?

Speaker 7 (01:10:47):
Do you so so amazingly enough?

Speaker 2 (01:10:53):
I asked me. When my mom first came home, I
told her, I said, Mom, you spent forty years in prison.
I don't have a lot of money, but whatever you
say you want, I will make it happen. I know
a lot of people. I don't care what it is.
Whatever you say you want, I'll make it happen. And

(01:11:13):
she was living with me at the time, and Mom
said to me, she said, honey, I'm just happy to
be home with you. She said, you gave me everything
that I wanted, and now I want you to be
free and I want you to fly.

Speaker 7 (01:11:26):
So I'm like, all right, cool. So when when my
dad came home.

Speaker 5 (01:11:30):
Wait, wait so quick, quick sidebar. The song that you
hear when the film ends, fly Baby, that's him. That's him,
fly Baby.

Speaker 2 (01:11:41):
Right, based on that conversation we had, So when my
dad came came home, he says, I say the same
thing to him. Dad, you've been in prison forty years.
You can have I don't care what you asked for.
I don't have a lot of money, but I'll make
it happen. What do you want, he said, Mike, I

(01:12:03):
only want one thing, he said. I want to marry
your mom. Wow, he said, He said, I want to
marry your mom like I should have done forty years ago.

Speaker 6 (01:12:16):
Oh tom oh, Tommy, is it gonna be an episode
of Black?

Speaker 4 (01:12:19):
What are we doing? So you?

Speaker 5 (01:12:22):
I got you because what I did. Sorry to cut
you off with what I did. There was so much
footage that did not fit, and had so many interviews
with Mike and with his mom and with Mike and
Debbie and so it's just a lot of really cool things.
So I cut a thirty five minute epilogue and it
looks at them and it is just so sweet. I'll

(01:12:46):
actually send it to you. I'll send it to you tonight,
and it's actually going to be on HBO as well,
and so it'll be so like additional content.

Speaker 4 (01:12:54):
They are so TV ready, they're so gorgeous.

Speaker 5 (01:12:56):
It is so I sent it to Mike and his
parents a month ago.

Speaker 2 (01:13:02):
To see the wedding. You get to see the wedding.
And so the wedding cake, that the four tier wedding
cake we made. We made my mom. So my mom
is a I'm a fifties man like at heart. My
mom is a thirties woman at heart. She when they
said fifteen hundred dollars for cake, what I'm not paying fifteen.

Speaker 8 (01:13:24):
I'm not letting you paid fifteen. So I'm like, she said,
we can make that cake and it'll be a great moment.
I said, yeah, okay, let's do it. It took us
eleven hours. In the song, I said, we spent the
night making her wedding cake.

Speaker 7 (01:13:36):
Wow, And that is in the thing.

Speaker 3 (01:13:41):
This is now about to turn into reality show. Tyler
Perry's the Africa's.

Speaker 4 (01:13:47):
Yes no, but don't let Tyler touch it, don't are you?
Tommy Africa.

Speaker 1 (01:13:57):
From one inspectrum to the other in inspectrum.

Speaker 3 (01:13:59):
Yes, you guys mentioned something that I personally wanted to know.
You know, there was a there was a moment in
the mid nineties, uh, the late the early aughts in
which a lot of conversations about Mumia's future was up

(01:14:21):
in the air, you know, stay of execution. All these
things haven't heard much since, you know, like I guess
two thousand and four, two thousand and five. Occasionally when
when I talked to tom Arello, he'll give me an
update in general, is there and I don't mean the

(01:14:47):
kind of hope where you like, we hope this happens.
Where where does Momia stand right now as far as
this case concerned. Is there any hope or for his
eventual release or total exoneration or just the general story.

Speaker 7 (01:15:08):
Definitely, So that's what we're working on now.

Speaker 2 (01:15:10):
So you know, it's funny like the HBO poster has
a picture of me and the Move nine above me,
and it says he will never be free until his
family comes home, right, And that's such a true statement.
Mamia I've been I've known Mamia since I was a kid,
and my work around the Move nine doesn't end with
trying to get them. Trying to get them home is

(01:15:33):
equally distributed, and probably even more so with Momia, Like
I have just as many files on Mamia as I
do on the Move nine. And so my work has
been in large part to help with his case too.
And in the early part of this year, in January,
he was granted by Judge Leon Tucker the right to

(01:15:58):
appeal his case and a PCR post conviction relief appeal
was granted, and so it was in Larry Krasner's hands.
Larry Krasner was then attacked by Marie Faulkner as being
saying that.

Speaker 7 (01:16:13):
She was saying that he was prejudiced. He was on
the MIA's side and all of this.

Speaker 2 (01:16:18):
So she created this thing that got it pushed into
the Supreme Court's hands. And so now it's kind of
in limbo and with COVID things are moving much slower.
But the answer to your question is, yes, there's a
real chance that Mumia Abu Jamal could be free, and
we're working on that very hard and if we can

(01:16:41):
get the result that we're that we expect that we
can get. Ironically enough, he could come home. During that
forty year mark too.

Speaker 4 (01:16:50):
Wow, Where's where's he at now?

Speaker 5 (01:16:52):
Ye?

Speaker 2 (01:16:53):
Right, he's at uh In on December ninth, This December ninth,
March year thirty nine. Yeah, okay, so next year is
year forty and we expect that we can get him
home within that year forty Okay?

Speaker 3 (01:17:09):
Can you are you allowed to speak at all? What
your personal theories are? Similar to good sort of saying
that it was most likely friendly fly fire and this
was a setup?

Speaker 1 (01:17:25):
Is what is the story on that particular with Daniel
Faulkner and right that case, the.

Speaker 2 (01:17:34):
Story is Mumia was a cab driver who was dropping
off of Fair and thirteenth and Locusts at the time.
His brother was His brother and his brother's friend were
bending and they were when he pulled up on the scene.
When Moumia pulled up on the scene, he saw his

(01:17:54):
brother's brother being beat by policeman Daniel Faulkner with a
right He was beating in with a flashlight, a police flashlight.
Mamia goes over to intervene. The officer shoots Mamiya and
Mamiya is shot, unconscious and ben and taken to the hospital.

(01:18:16):
And when he wakes up, he's handcuffed to a bed
and he's told that an officer was killed and he's
the one being charged.

Speaker 7 (01:18:25):
With the murder. That's what happened.

Speaker 2 (01:18:27):
And there's so much like so many witnesses who said
that Mumiya did not do it, do it. He was
not the shooter. But there are so many like they're
specifically Veronica Jones was an eyewitness said that Mumia Abu
Jamal did not shoot this cop. We saw the man

(01:18:48):
who did it. We saw him run away. There were
more than more than her, and who said that the
security guards that were intimidated into they were intimidated by
the officers into changing their stories to say Mumia Abu
Jamal was the one who killed the cops. So there's
all this evidence that proves that Mumia is innocent. But

(01:19:11):
you know, because he supported moved the way he did,
Rizzo threatened him. He actually said it in the press conference.
These reporters blah blah blah blah blah. We need to
get that death penalty back. Then I'll be there to
pull switch that kind of thing. So uh me a
supported move and that's and and so he was he
was a target because of it.

Speaker 3 (01:19:29):
Any other political prisoners in Philadelphia that we might not
be aware of.

Speaker 2 (01:19:33):
Yeah, Russell, Maroon Shows, Joseph Jojo Bowen, Fred Muhammad Burton.

Speaker 7 (01:19:39):
There's a lot of political prisoners in Pennsylvania, and then.

Speaker 2 (01:19:42):
There's a lot outside too, Motulu Shakur stepfather of tupac Uh.
And then some people are not even political prisoners, but
they're exiled because of the tyranny of this country, like
a side of Shakur. So you know, there's a lot
of a lot of a lot of repair that needs
to be done. But my focus specific typically is on Mamia.
We we have a real shot to get him out.

(01:20:04):
And I mean I focus on Maroon two and freyd
Mohammed Burton too, and I speak their names and everything
and I support them one hundred percent too. But Mumiya
is a very very personal battle for me because of
how he was there for my family when no.

Speaker 7 (01:20:22):
Other news media was there for my family.

Speaker 4 (01:20:25):
The Philadelphia police.

Speaker 3 (01:20:27):
Yeah, the things I learned, man, what can I say, Like,
I really want to thank you guys for doing this,
just that you know, as as as a black man,
as a as a Philadelphian, definitely, this is this is

(01:20:47):
one of the kind of the unanswered questions that I've
had in my life that I didn't know about. And
I'm so glad that the world will finally get to
see this documentary.

Speaker 4 (01:21:04):
Can we just mentioned the mirror. You're not gonna plug it,
but I will.

Speaker 6 (01:21:06):
This is the first project that I've seen your name
black thought comment, John forgot that Jackson.

Speaker 4 (01:21:13):
I'm just saying saying about me, man, I'm just saying.

Speaker 6 (01:21:16):
But that's dope that y'all saw that there was a
reason there was a.

Speaker 1 (01:21:19):
Need for Yeah, I totally forgot.

Speaker 3 (01:21:21):
Yes, we're also we did music for the project as well.

Speaker 1 (01:21:23):
Forgive me, I mean, like no.

Speaker 3 (01:21:26):
For me, Like the story is so the story is
so important that you know, I kind of forgot that
I played a part in this as well, and I'm
glad to be included because I was feeling a certain way.

Speaker 9 (01:21:40):
Might say that I really appreciate your involvement because you know,
it wasn't a lot of people are really afraid to
talk about this story. A lot of people were really
afraid to get on board and support move, even though
they may have been sympathetic. So I really, you know,
was thrilled to here Tommy tell me, like, hey, guess

(01:22:02):
who guess who we got to help with the with
the film, and I'm like, oh, he's like the biggest
Dan you can think of.

Speaker 2 (01:22:10):
And I'm like, what do you mean, the biggest thing. No,
the biggest Okay, Philly, Philly, Like yeah, I'm like, no,
you didn't, you know, So like yeah, man, I just
you know, really appreciate you, you know, and gave Tommy

(01:22:32):
a chance to show it, to see the film, you know.

Speaker 7 (01:22:34):
So I just want to thank.

Speaker 1 (01:22:35):
You, no, thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:22:37):
When I got admit when it was happening and my
manager Sean g told me about it, he was like, yeah,
you know comming and John Legend.

Speaker 5 (01:22:48):
Wait a minute, wait a minute, you did me or
I would have did the same thing.

Speaker 4 (01:22:51):
They can't happ on it before me full time.

Speaker 3 (01:22:53):
I mean technically, look, you know a lot of a
lot of a lot a lot of John's education and
oakness and right now he's a soldier. Yes, it was
was acquired and learned.

Speaker 1 (01:23:07):
At University of pen No, dude, right now.

Speaker 4 (01:23:10):
John, I'm not cutting John down at all. I was
just saying that you.

Speaker 3 (01:23:14):
Created the toxicity that's happening right now with a lot
of my heroes and hip hop. Yeah, John Legend is yeah,
he trust me, he's frontline.

Speaker 1 (01:23:26):
Yeah. I was like, yo, we gotta get somehow get down.
But I'm very.

Speaker 5 (01:23:32):
Happy as somebody who is from Philly who grew up
on the roots, and there was just there was nothing
better than that. And shout out to Derek Dudley, who's
the person who actually introduced me to Sean, and he
was like done, I got you. Sean came to the
office watch and he's like, yeah, yeah, we need to
do this, and it was just it's just been nothing

(01:23:56):
but love the entire time.

Speaker 3 (01:23:58):
And I got it. I got admit that this was
probably the perfect platform. Sean couldn't have been happier to
have made this happen, because, you know, we had we
had a passing of like our manager, Richard Nichols was

(01:24:20):
like you know, he was he was like our fifth Beatle,
and when he passed away in twenty fourteen, the Lukema
it was kind of an unspoken thing, even though I
never believed it in my heart. It was sort of like, well,
I guess we're not going to make records anymore. And
you know, I spent a lot of time since you know,

(01:24:41):
late twenty thirteen, early twenty fourteen, thinking of, you know,
other ways to be creative, and that's when I like
started writing a lot of books and doing like a
lot of other things besides making like any excuse to
not make an album. So you know, I couldn't, I
couldn't think of a better way, uh, for us to

(01:25:01):
get back in the studio six years, seven years after
having not created anything inside of the studio with each
other than this project. So you know, again, I thank
you both because this, like once we started this, then
this really just unleashed a flooding. You know, we're subsequently

(01:25:26):
working on three records right now.

Speaker 4 (01:25:28):
So well, thank you, Mike.

Speaker 1 (01:25:31):
Yeah, that's what I said, you too.

Speaker 5 (01:25:34):
I am very happy to have played.

Speaker 1 (01:25:42):
From the far.

Speaker 5 (01:25:42):
Yeah, absolutely, I'll take it. I'm putting that in my bio.

Speaker 2 (01:25:48):
Like that.

Speaker 4 (01:25:51):
You can, I can.

Speaker 5 (01:25:53):
But I can't wait for the world to actually hear
the tracks.

Speaker 4 (01:25:56):
Because I don't know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 5 (01:25:58):
Because nobody's heard of me. And so you can hear
him the trailer, you can hear one of the instrumentals,
and then one of the things, one of the songs afterward,
which is just fire and Tarik. So there's this line.
First time I heard it, I just it stuck with
me so much. And what he says is every time
I fight, the reason I fight is to not fight again.

(01:26:19):
And yes, somebody who grew up in Philly fighting, you
don't fight because you want to fight, I gues that's
not what it's about. And so he just captured it
so succinctly. And to understand what Mike's doing, what we're
doing in this movement, it's not about fighting for the
sake of fighting. We want to fight to get things
into a better place for us but also for kids.

(01:26:39):
And so the music is just it's fire. So I
cannot wait for people to actually hear all of the tracks,
the whole ep, and it's just.

Speaker 1 (01:26:52):
I gotta say that, you know, for a lot of
for a lot of them.

Speaker 3 (01:26:58):
I never said the Roots Army before in my life,
but I guess I'll see now at a lot of
people that have history with the roots, you know, for
the longest they they've put us under. You know this,
I guess, you know, socially conscious or political rap thing,
which you know I used to joke a lot and

(01:27:21):
say like, well, okay, I know we're politically correct, but
you know, just because you know we aren't cutting keys
and drug deal in our songs doesn't necessarily sarily mean
that we're a political group per se. And then there
became a point when we were like thirty five, like
all right, someone's gonna call us out one day and

(01:27:41):
realize that we're not as political as we were. So,
you know, a lot a lot of our post two
thousand and eight material, especially you know the time in
two thousand and eight when the murder rate in Philly
was astounding and we were under what we thought was
the worst presidency of all time with a Bush. You know,
it's like, okay, well, we can only go for so

(01:28:03):
long talking about you know, how how diggity dope our
stickity styles are in riggity rapping, and so you know,
we kind of had this streak of like the last
four albums of like these like dark political records, which
I don't think was performative at all, but really like
represented where we were at the time, because you know,
you can't turn your back on no matter like how

(01:28:24):
much success you have, like you still have a cousin,
like you might the same with your fight, Like okay, great,
you got your parents out, but you know there's more
fight to go you know, I kind of thought that
we were going to close the chapter on the darkness
of roots albums with our last album and then you
shoot your cousin basically because that was the album that

(01:28:47):
we were making as our manager and co producer Rich
was dying. So if anything, that album was more of
our very dark goodbye to him. So I'd sort of
forgive roots fans for like, that's way too dark for me.
I can't take this shit. But you know, if you
knew Rich, that was like the perfect send off. So
the thing was in my mind, I thought, Okay, well

(01:29:10):
we are gonna I'm gonna shock the world and just
return to the first four records, like the Sunday Afternoon
House Cleaning Roots album that everyone wants us to do.

Speaker 1 (01:29:23):
But we're living in you know, this time now and.

Speaker 3 (01:29:27):
You know, since twenty sixteen and utter Madness in the
upside Down, and I was like, yo, man, it's not
time to make a lighthearted record like we got one,
more like this is our chance to make our statements.
So if anything, I feel like this this album really
puts in context of what the last five albums have
been about. So yeah, I'm excited for people to hear it,

(01:29:51):
you know, and again we're making three records, so this
is this is just one of three of us unpaid
bill What do you think? Oh no, I'm babe bills
on Sesame Street. This is Sugar Steve. Wait, damn sugar Steve. Yeah,
you know, I'm just I'm just here together for sure,
report back to white people.

Speaker 7 (01:30:10):
So he said.

Speaker 4 (01:30:15):
That he did, he did?

Speaker 8 (01:30:19):
How long?

Speaker 7 (01:30:19):
How long did it take for the I'm sorry to
extend the sorry I didn't know.

Speaker 3 (01:30:25):
Steve has lived with this project enough because he's engineered
the record for us, So.

Speaker 7 (01:30:31):
I mean I haven't I haven't seen the documentary in full.

Speaker 2 (01:30:34):
But uh, my one question was how long did it
take for you to make this this documentary from start
to finish?

Speaker 5 (01:30:43):
It took about three and a half years until about
two and a half years or so of shooting and
about a year of editing.

Speaker 1 (01:30:52):
I haven't a fully archival question.

Speaker 3 (01:30:55):
Once again, yes, also because of what I'm working on
right now now, I just discovered did you use any
of the archival footage?

Speaker 4 (01:31:06):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (01:31:06):
Do you know of this woman in Philadelphia whom I
guess her backstory is that she did not trust the government.
I actually thought she was down with move. She did
not trust the government, a Philadelphia woman. And what she
did was she purchased five Beta Max machines. Yes, and

(01:31:28):
she obsessively, she obsessively recorded.

Speaker 5 (01:31:32):
The problem it was I found I came across her,
I saw an article and I looked her up. The
problem was her recording started I think four months after this,
and so she recorded everything. She has this incredible database

(01:31:52):
of everything that happened. It was insane.

Speaker 3 (01:31:56):
But we think, think of think of a put she
would have. She would have been a perfect fit for
a quest Love Supreme, like she was a pop culture hoarder.

Speaker 1 (01:32:06):
Like she recorded. She recorded.

Speaker 3 (01:32:09):
I don't know how she I don't know if she
had a job or anything, but she literally recorded whatever
was on television.

Speaker 1 (01:32:17):
What thirty seven years in a row?

Speaker 5 (01:32:20):
Yes, I believe that was.

Speaker 1 (01:32:22):
She started what seventy seven I think.

Speaker 5 (01:32:25):
I think it was sometime in seventy eight.

Speaker 3 (01:32:28):
Okay, yeah, she got five Beta Max machines. Said I
don't trust the government, so I'm gonna record everything on
NBC ABC. So she brought five VC, five Beta maxes,
and five televisions.

Speaker 1 (01:32:41):
And all she did was she would change tapes every
four hours like clockwork. Is insane, but like over not help.

Speaker 3 (01:32:52):
I think like four thousand tapes at the end of
the day. So yeah, I wanted to know if you use.

Speaker 5 (01:33:00):
Then honestly, if we start actually talking about our travel process,
we'll be here for.

Speaker 4 (01:33:05):
Another for process. I'm sorry.

Speaker 5 (01:33:09):
The name of the film, do you who do you
think it's referring to?

Speaker 1 (01:33:13):
I assumed that it was about Mike, because.

Speaker 5 (01:33:20):
So see, that's the thing where some people will be like, oh, yeah,
it's it's it's parents, his parents, and like, no, it's
it's Mike. Oh it's Mike. It's Mike. And if you
and a mirror.

Speaker 4 (01:33:32):
God, because he's he's a yes exactly.

Speaker 5 (01:33:37):
And and his dad is the one who really brings
that home in the end where he talks about us
being home freed him and it took the burden off
of him so he could actually live his life.

Speaker 2 (01:33:51):
That's funny about that. I never knew my dad felt
that way until I saw that interview.

Speaker 3 (01:33:56):
Again, when we have a question of supreme we think
you Mike, God, Africa Junior and Tommy Oliver for joining
us on behalf of Fontigelow and Unpaid Bill and Sugar,
Steve and Layah and Philadelphia.

Speaker 1 (01:34:11):
Zone from Melis Avenue, Quest Love. This is Quest Love
Supreme signing off. We will see you on the next program.
Thank you yo.

Speaker 5 (01:34:21):
What's up? This is Fante.

Speaker 2 (01:34:22):
Make sure you keep up with us on Instagram at
QLs and let us know what you think and.

Speaker 1 (01:34:26):
Who should be next to sit down with us.

Speaker 5 (01:34:28):
Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast all right peace.

Speaker 1 (01:34:40):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 3 (01:34:45):
For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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Episode Transcript

Hosts And Creators

Laiya St. Clair

Questlove

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Questlove Supreme: Tommy Oliver & Mike Africa Jr.