This is my first web log on this very interesting and with hope, helpful, website. I've over 50,000 words on an alterative networking site. Once in a while, in periods of block or what have you, I may add previously written posts. This being said, I wouldn't think of having my first piece be anything but original for this page.
A few things have been occurring in my head, things of movies, society, and philosophy. Don’t be fooled, I’m not some stuffy academic. Hardly. I am a man of the people, so to speak. Movies are my hobby, literature is a wonderful pastime, and by society I really only mean a micro-microcosm of it – my society; how I operate in my world.
Now, I wanted to write about Sidney Poitier for a while, because he doesn’t get written about enough. I’m not being facetious in saying that, he really does not get his due respect. Like Rodney Dangerfield would say in his stand-up acts, “I don’t get no respect!” Now yes I know, and many are aware, that Poitier was the first black man to win the Best Actor Oscar. He won the Oscar for 1963’s Lilies of the Field, in which he plays a wandering black carpenter in southwest United States who, begrudgingly, builds a Church for some European sisters, that is Catholic nuns. Now yes the story, the direction and especially Poitier’s acting were top game. And yes he should have won the Oscar, and I’m glad he did. But have any of you stopped and wondered why every single movie Poitier made had to have some overt themes of racial tolerance? I am all for racial tolerance but these were the only roles Poitier, a fine Oscar-winning actor could attain. In every film he was this man who stood for all the right things, for truth and justice. This is admirable but using Poitier like this is almost akin as holding a puppet by its strings. Of course Poitier cared about civil rights, and racism and prejudice. But don’t you think once in a while he’d like to play a man where no one reacts to his skin color and just treats him as a man, and not a catalyst for a diatribe about the race in America today. White actors, of every stripe, were offered much more versatile roles. One day James Cagney was a ruthless gangster, the next he was flamboyant dancer/composer/singer. It was not until the 1970s and 1980s that Poitier could just play any character without moral codes attached to them. If you remember his role in 1992’s Sneakers, this is where I first saw Poitier treated simply as any other character on screen.
Now this being said, I did not dislike many of Poitier’s earlier roles in which he was more or less the same character each time. This was not Poitier’s fault; this was the writer’s and Hollywood possibly. Still in each role he was given (of the ones I’ve seen at least), Poitier delivered sensational performances. But do you know something? Poitier has only been nominated twice for Oscars – one of which he won. The other nomination was for 1958’s The Defiant Ones, where he plays an escaped prisoner from a southern chain gang who is chained to another prisoner, a white prisoner. The white prisoner was Tony Curtis (Spartacus, The Boston Strangler) in his only Oscar-nominated role. This film is very good, small and not very long. The performances are excellent. It won the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award in 1958.
But that’s it? Just two Academy Award nods?
Maybe some of you, unfamiliar with film or classic films, don’t know who Poitier is still, but I’ll throw out a title now and I bet all of that will be cleared up. In the Heat of the Night. Huh? Does this ring a bell for anyone out there? Well, it should. In the Heat of the Night was the monumental 1967 film about a black police detective from Philadelphia who is down south to visit his mother. While he’s waiting for a train, he’s arrested for suspicious behavior. In other words, because he’s a black man with a suit. He has his words with the local police chief, played by non-other than Rod Steiger. At one point, upon learning of him being a detective in Philadelphia, the local police chief has a chuckle and asks him what they call him there. He responds with such calm dignified strength, “They call me Mr. Tibbs!” This film was nominated for everything in that years Oscar ceremony: Sound Effects, Sound, Film Editing, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor (Steiger) and Best Picture. Out of those seven, it won five of them – Writing, Sound, Film Editing, Steiger won Best Actor, and Picture. The Academy nominated this for seven Oscars, gave it five, and didn’t think once about Sidney Poitier who really made this film, he and Steiger. Nothing for Poitier. I don’t get it. I’m not saying give him the award, but give him the respect of being nominated. Any film critic, cinephile, or average viewer will tell you Poitier is amazing in this role, in this movie.
A few things have been occurring in my head, things of movies, society, and philosophy. Don’t be fooled, I’m not some stuffy academic. Hardly. I am a man of the people, so to speak. Movies are my hobby, literature is a wonderful pastime, and by society I really only mean a micro-microcosm of it – my society; how I operate in my world.
Now, I wanted to write about Sidney Poitier for a while, because he doesn’t get written about enough. I’m not being facetious in saying that, he really does not get his due respect. Like Rodney Dangerfield would say in his stand-up acts, “I don’t get no respect!” Now yes I know, and many are aware, that Poitier was the first black man to win the Best Actor Oscar. He won the Oscar for 1963’s Lilies of the Field, in which he plays a wandering black carpenter in southwest United States who, begrudgingly, builds a Church for some European sisters, that is Catholic nuns. Now yes the story, the direction and especially Poitier’s acting were top game. And yes he should have won the Oscar, and I’m glad he did. But have any of you stopped and wondered why every single movie Poitier made had to have some overt themes of racial tolerance? I am all for racial tolerance but these were the only roles Poitier, a fine Oscar-winning actor could attain. In every film he was this man who stood for all the right things, for truth and justice. This is admirable but using Poitier like this is almost akin as holding a puppet by its strings. Of course Poitier cared about civil rights, and racism and prejudice. But don’t you think once in a while he’d like to play a man where no one reacts to his skin color and just treats him as a man, and not a catalyst for a diatribe about the race in America today. White actors, of every stripe, were offered much more versatile roles. One day James Cagney was a ruthless gangster, the next he was flamboyant dancer/composer/singer. It was not until the 1970s and 1980s that Poitier could just play any character without moral codes attached to them. If you remember his role in 1992’s Sneakers, this is where I first saw Poitier treated simply as any other character on screen.
Now this being said, I did not dislike many of Poitier’s earlier roles in which he was more or less the same character each time. This was not Poitier’s fault; this was the writer’s and Hollywood possibly. Still in each role he was given (of the ones I’ve seen at least), Poitier delivered sensational performances. But do you know something? Poitier has only been nominated twice for Oscars – one of which he won. The other nomination was for 1958’s The Defiant Ones, where he plays an escaped prisoner from a southern chain gang who is chained to another prisoner, a white prisoner. The white prisoner was Tony Curtis (Spartacus, The Boston Strangler) in his only Oscar-nominated role. This film is very good, small and not very long. The performances are excellent. It won the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award in 1958.
But that’s it? Just two Academy Award nods?
Maybe some of you, unfamiliar with film or classic films, don’t know who Poitier is still, but I’ll throw out a title now and I bet all of that will be cleared up. In the Heat of the Night. Huh? Does this ring a bell for anyone out there? Well, it should. In the Heat of the Night was the monumental 1967 film about a black police detective from Philadelphia who is down south to visit his mother. While he’s waiting for a train, he’s arrested for suspicious behavior. In other words, because he’s a black man with a suit. He has his words with the local police chief, played by non-other than Rod Steiger. At one point, upon learning of him being a detective in Philadelphia, the local police chief has a chuckle and asks him what they call him there. He responds with such calm dignified strength, “They call me Mr. Tibbs!” This film was nominated for everything in that years Oscar ceremony: Sound Effects, Sound, Film Editing, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor (Steiger) and Best Picture. Out of those seven, it won five of them – Writing, Sound, Film Editing, Steiger won Best Actor, and Picture. The Academy nominated this for seven Oscars, gave it five, and didn’t think once about Sidney Poitier who really made this film, he and Steiger. Nothing for Poitier. I don’t get it. I’m not saying give him the award, but give him the respect of being nominated. Any film critic, cinephile, or average viewer will tell you Poitier is amazing in this role, in this movie.
Another film also made in 1967, was Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (remade in 2005 as Guess Who with Bernie Mac and Ashton Kutcher). This was Spencer Tracey’s last film; he died of a heart-attack shortly after. This is a classic, in where a young white woman brings home her fiancé to her parents, her white upper-class parents. Poitier plays a young successful black physician. Since the white woman’s parents realize the black man is a physician their fears relax for a while. This was not the best way to accomplish the interracial-marriage concept, in that little detail. It’s like saying no black man can ever touch my daughter unless I have documented proof that he’s a very successful bright young cardiologist, trial lawyer or supreme court Justice. This isn’t completely fair, because if she brought home a nice young white man, being a doctor would only be extra to their enjoyment. A white fiancé for their daughter would not have to jump through academic and educational hoops just to be acceptable to some rich white folks. But I realize its time and I also realize that you wouldn’t want to make a movie about just an average Joe fiancé. This movie was nominated for 10 Academy Awards. It was nominated for four acting performances, and one of these performances was that of a very small role as the white parents’ priest. It was also nominated for Director, Picture, Film Editing, and Musical Score. It won Best Actress (Katherine Hepburn as the mother, her second of four) and Best Original Screenplay. Not one mention of Sidney Poitier’s performance with the Academy. I don’t get it. Not only was he deserving of an Oscar nomination, but he had two Oscar nod’s about five years ago. Does the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences get more racist with time? They awarded him in 1963, and then forget all his beautiful work afterwards. Did the Ku Klux Klan take over the Academy for a few years or something?
A picture Poitier did in 1965 battled two sources of discrimination and intolerance, blindness and racism. This movie was A Patch of Blue; my father seems to think this movie took place in Boston but I see no evidence of this, and it certainly wasn’t shot there. Possibly the source, Elizabeth Kata’s novel took place in Boston. Or my father’s just wrong. This movie was about a young woman, maybe almost 20 or so, who is blind. Her mother is a drunkard who hates her for somehow not helping out in their cramped apartment. Her mother is played by the great Shelley Winters. The young woman’s grandfather takes her to a park each day, guides her, and leaves her there the entire day where she makes beaded bracelets and necklaces to sell. At night, her grandfather comes and takes her home. One day Poitier visits the park and sees the young woman having some difficultly with something, and helps her. He learns she’s blind almost right away, but he is hesitant to tell her that he’s black. Although, as you’d guess, her mother spots her with this black man, goes ape and tells her daughter she’s a disgrace. Poitier, in the last scene, buys the young woman a bus ticket, headed to a school for the blind which he's taken care of also. Here she can learn Braille and make friends like herself, which her mother would never allow. A heartwarming, small film. It was nominated for five Academy Awards, with Elizabeth Hartman nominated for Best Actress as the blind woman, and Best Art-Set Decoration, Cinematography, and Musical Score. Shelley Winters won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Not one mention of Poitier at all for the Academy. That is a real snub.
A picture Poitier did in 1965 battled two sources of discrimination and intolerance, blindness and racism. This movie was A Patch of Blue; my father seems to think this movie took place in Boston but I see no evidence of this, and it certainly wasn’t shot there. Possibly the source, Elizabeth Kata’s novel took place in Boston. Or my father’s just wrong. This movie was about a young woman, maybe almost 20 or so, who is blind. Her mother is a drunkard who hates her for somehow not helping out in their cramped apartment. Her mother is played by the great Shelley Winters. The young woman’s grandfather takes her to a park each day, guides her, and leaves her there the entire day where she makes beaded bracelets and necklaces to sell. At night, her grandfather comes and takes her home. One day Poitier visits the park and sees the young woman having some difficultly with something, and helps her. He learns she’s blind almost right away, but he is hesitant to tell her that he’s black. Although, as you’d guess, her mother spots her with this black man, goes ape and tells her daughter she’s a disgrace. Poitier, in the last scene, buys the young woman a bus ticket, headed to a school for the blind which he's taken care of also. Here she can learn Braille and make friends like herself, which her mother would never allow. A heartwarming, small film. It was nominated for five Academy Awards, with Elizabeth Hartman nominated for Best Actress as the blind woman, and Best Art-Set Decoration, Cinematography, and Musical Score. Shelley Winters won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Not one mention of Poitier at all for the Academy. That is a real snub.
To Sir, with Love was a British film from 1967 about a black man from British Guinea in Africa. This man has a degree in engineering but cannot obtain employment. (The film does not speculate if this is due to racial discrimination.) So, the man finely played by Poitier answers a newspaper ad in London to teach at a local school, an under funded school, in essence to teach British slum kids. This movie was not recognized by the Academy at all. Now I’ll be frank, I don’t think this was Poitier’s finest hour but the movie was really something of a first. It was one of the first “inspirational teacher” movies, that I know of. These formulas work well in Hollywood and have for some time, with such movies as Stand and Deliver, Lean on Me, Mr. Holland’s Opus, Dangerous Minds, and my favorite: Dead Poets Society. Hollywood still churns out this formula, and some are forgettable and some every once in a while work. Two-time Academy Award winner, Hilary Swank just did the “inspirational teacher” movie, Freedom Writers, but since I haven’t seen it I cannot elaborate. Ex-“Friends” star Matthew Perry did one of these also, a TV movie called The Ron Clark Story. Again I have not seen it so I will not comment. “Inspirational teacher” movies go hand-in-hand with “inspiration coach” movies, for which there are a zillion of. From Gene Hackman in Hoosiers to Billy Bob Thornton in Friday Night Lights.
One other Poitier movie I’d like to comment on is A Raisin in the Sun from 1961. Lorraine Hansberry adapted her own wildly popular play into the screenplay for this film. Poitier is “Walter Lee Younger”, and he is amazing, but the whole ensemble, everyone in the movie from start to finish was amazing. This was a really great experience. Now Poitier had already been Oscar nominated three years prior, but he was not for this movie, and in fact no one was, which isn’t a surprise. This was an entirely black movie, except for the one white representative man from the town they wish to move to and the director Daniel Petrie, I believe is white as well. Now BAFTA, the British Academy Awards, nominated Poitier for his performance and Petrie won a Cannes Film Festival award for his direction. Very few movies with all black casts or predominately black casts receive many big Oscar wins. A Soldier’s Story from 1984, a film by Norman Jewison told the life of black soldiers in the beginning and midst of World War II, when the military was still segregated by race. It was nominated for Best Picture, and this is the only one I can think of that was nominated for Best Picture comprising of an almost all black cast.
Now I don’t mean to talk about the pitfalls of racism all day, and I’m sorry for this. One reason, besides racism, I can give as to why not many black movies and black actors were nominated for Oscars often must have been because a very small percentage of the film stars and such were black. Mathematically, they didn’t have much of a chance. Nowadays there are more black actors, directors and writers and I can only predict that there will be more Oscar winners who are black. Now let me say the Golden Globes nominated Poitier seven times, including for A Raisin in the Sun and with a win for Lilies of the Field. He also was awarded two Honorary Golden Globes (1969 – the Henrietta Award for World Film Favorite; 1982 – the Cecil B. DeMille Award). And in 2002, the Academy Awards recognized Poitier again with an Honorary Oscar for “his extraordinary performances and unique presence on the screen and for representing the industry with dignity, style and intelligence.” The American Film Institute, the AFI, awarded him a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1992. But I really do think Poitier deserves about two or three more Oscar nominations. Any film person would tell you that. Any.
Now since this has been a slightly long exploration of Sidney Poitier or his films, I don’t know if I should write so much more. At the current time, I am reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M. Pirsig. I’m about halfway right now, and I surmise I’d be done in about week or so. This is an insanely interesting book, but please understand, it is not a motorcycle manual. I am not reading how to repair motorcycles. This is much more than that, the author not only writes so well but the depth of his knowledge is so immense. From the inner workings of motorcycles yes, but also the cores of philosophy and metaphysics. Quotes and theories of analysis of Einstein to Kant to Hume, among others. This is not a novel, but an autobiography of Pirsig although certain situations are added for “rhetorical purposes”. This book first came out in 1974; my father read this book at age 25 and he loved it. My father got me the 25th Anniversary Edition a few years ago, but I never got around to reading it. Well, hey now I’m 25, and I’ll have read it at the same age as my father did. At least so far, in Part III, it is excellent. More on this soon, I hope.
In this book, one of the men drives a BMW R60 motorcycle; it’s just a work of art. Harley-Davidson's are awesome, but unfortunately, I'd say, are too much associated with the Hell’s Angels and “Biker Gangs”. These men were not those types of people. Henderson Motorcycles were the last great American motorcycles, although please understand I am a complete novice. I’m never even driven one. So I may be very wrong.
But check out this link to a picture of a 1972 BMW R60 Motorcycle, which very possibly could have been the model John Sutherland (the main character’s friend) drives in the book, and tell me that’s not a work of art: http://www.bmwmc.dk/images/Walls_3/BMW-R60-5-1972%20text.jpg
One other Poitier movie I’d like to comment on is A Raisin in the Sun from 1961. Lorraine Hansberry adapted her own wildly popular play into the screenplay for this film. Poitier is “Walter Lee Younger”, and he is amazing, but the whole ensemble, everyone in the movie from start to finish was amazing. This was a really great experience. Now Poitier had already been Oscar nominated three years prior, but he was not for this movie, and in fact no one was, which isn’t a surprise. This was an entirely black movie, except for the one white representative man from the town they wish to move to and the director Daniel Petrie, I believe is white as well. Now BAFTA, the British Academy Awards, nominated Poitier for his performance and Petrie won a Cannes Film Festival award for his direction. Very few movies with all black casts or predominately black casts receive many big Oscar wins. A Soldier’s Story from 1984, a film by Norman Jewison told the life of black soldiers in the beginning and midst of World War II, when the military was still segregated by race. It was nominated for Best Picture, and this is the only one I can think of that was nominated for Best Picture comprising of an almost all black cast.
Now I don’t mean to talk about the pitfalls of racism all day, and I’m sorry for this. One reason, besides racism, I can give as to why not many black movies and black actors were nominated for Oscars often must have been because a very small percentage of the film stars and such were black. Mathematically, they didn’t have much of a chance. Nowadays there are more black actors, directors and writers and I can only predict that there will be more Oscar winners who are black. Now let me say the Golden Globes nominated Poitier seven times, including for A Raisin in the Sun and with a win for Lilies of the Field. He also was awarded two Honorary Golden Globes (1969 – the Henrietta Award for World Film Favorite; 1982 – the Cecil B. DeMille Award). And in 2002, the Academy Awards recognized Poitier again with an Honorary Oscar for “his extraordinary performances and unique presence on the screen and for representing the industry with dignity, style and intelligence.” The American Film Institute, the AFI, awarded him a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1992. But I really do think Poitier deserves about two or three more Oscar nominations. Any film person would tell you that. Any.
Now since this has been a slightly long exploration of Sidney Poitier or his films, I don’t know if I should write so much more. At the current time, I am reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M. Pirsig. I’m about halfway right now, and I surmise I’d be done in about week or so. This is an insanely interesting book, but please understand, it is not a motorcycle manual. I am not reading how to repair motorcycles. This is much more than that, the author not only writes so well but the depth of his knowledge is so immense. From the inner workings of motorcycles yes, but also the cores of philosophy and metaphysics. Quotes and theories of analysis of Einstein to Kant to Hume, among others. This is not a novel, but an autobiography of Pirsig although certain situations are added for “rhetorical purposes”. This book first came out in 1974; my father read this book at age 25 and he loved it. My father got me the 25th Anniversary Edition a few years ago, but I never got around to reading it. Well, hey now I’m 25, and I’ll have read it at the same age as my father did. At least so far, in Part III, it is excellent. More on this soon, I hope.
In this book, one of the men drives a BMW R60 motorcycle; it’s just a work of art. Harley-Davidson's are awesome, but unfortunately, I'd say, are too much associated with the Hell’s Angels and “Biker Gangs”. These men were not those types of people. Henderson Motorcycles were the last great American motorcycles, although please understand I am a complete novice. I’m never even driven one. So I may be very wrong.
But check out this link to a picture of a 1972 BMW R60 Motorcycle, which very possibly could have been the model John Sutherland (the main character’s friend) drives in the book, and tell me that’s not a work of art: http://www.bmwmc.dk/images/Walls_3/BMW-R60-5-1972%20text.jpg
And this will end it for tonight.
