Larry Cohen

by Michael Doyle

  Tommy refers to himself in such derogatory terms as “nigger,” “jig,” and “jungle bunny.” Were you concerned at all about using that kind of language?

  No, because that was the language that the Black people used up there on the streets. That is exactly how they talked. They literally referred to themselves that way all the time. Of course, they didn’t like outsiders referring to them with those words, but it was the accepted vernacular of the street.

  It is also a way for Tommy to knowingly disarm his White adversaries.

  Yeah, I understand what you mean. There’s the scene when Tommy is talking to the White Mafia guys where he clearly does that. Fred had no problem saying those lines and there was no problem with any of the other actors either. Everybody seemed to be comfortable with it. I know that today, in our era of political correctness, people get very uptight if they hear The N Word. Dick Gregory, who was one of the first Black comedians, actually called his autobiography Nigger. [4] He was quoted as saying that, “Every time people use the word ‘nigger’ they will be advertising my book.” In those days, it was totally acceptable to use that term — not as a means of attacking someone in real life, but within the framework of a dramatic form. It was used not only by me but by many other writers, including Black writers who wrote Broadway plays, off-Broadway plays, and movies. The people who made The Legend of Nigger Charley obviously had no problem using that word in the title of their picture.

  At one point, Grossfield [Patrick McAllister], the first of Tommy’s white Mafioso victims, coldly declares: “Nobody likes to lose like the Negro — they are born losers.”

  Yeah, but that was his point of view. Back in those days, that comment was a perfectly valid one from the perspective of the Mafia and the mob bosses. They felt that Black people were there just to be victimised. Cardoza gives Tommy his big break but then, later on, he himself is victimised by Tommy. It’s his time to lose.

  Do you think the ear-cutting scene in any way influenced Reservoir Dogs?

  I suppose so, yeah. It’s quite possible that it could have done. I know that Quentin Tarantino is a big fan of all those blaxploitation movies.

  Tommy commits these acts of violence without remorse. He rapes his own girlfriend and seeks power and money at any cost. In spite of this, Fred Williamson still makes him an engaging, even sympathetic character.

  I think that’s true. All of the actors who played gangsters in the movies, whether it was Paul Muni, Robinson, Bogart, and particularly Cagney, they always seemed to make this apparently heartless character appear terrifically attractive. Even though the gangster was violent and vicious and cruel, audiences still liked them. People seem to gravitate towards the bad guys, but also those kinds of characters can be star-making parts for actors. I mean, in Kiss of Death Richard Widmark plays a crazed, cackling killer who throws a disabled lady in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs, and he became a big star! In fact, more stars have been made playing villains than probably any other characters. Robert Mitchum was at his best in Cape Fear playing an absolutely unrepentant psychopath who is terrorising Gregory Peck’s family. It was one of Mitchum’s best performances and it was also the part he most liked playing. He once told me that he would much rather play a bad guy than a good guy.

  Do you think Black Caesar in any way articulates the Black experience as it was for certain people in the early 1970s, or were you principally concerned with simply making a commercial entertainment?

  Black Caesar was always intended to be an entertaining action picture, but it did have a lot to say about the relationships between Blacks and Whites during that period. Like Bone, it was another exploration of racial conflicts in our country and the manner in which racism was so deeply embedded in the psyche of American life. Interestingly, I did find out later that a lot of what happens in the movie turned out to be actually true. There was a lot of illicit activity occurring between the police and the underworld in terms of pay-offs — particularly in the drug trade. At the beginning of the film, we see Tommy as a twelve-year-old boy being used to make a pay-off to the police. I later found out that in reality criminals were in fact using children as couriers to deliver drugs and money. I did not know that when I wrote the scene, but it turned out that my instincts were absolutely correct. I was right on the nose there.

  Did you experience any negativity from members of the Black community in regard to the portrayal of the Black characters in the film?

  The only problem we had was when we previewed Black Caesar at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. The movie went over just great but then, at the end, when we came to the final scene where Tommy is killed by a gang of Black teenagers, the audience did not like that at all. Some of the people in the theater, and in the lobby, objected and started screaming and hollering. They basically said, “Black people would not do that to each other!” Of course, they were completely wrong about that as the largest number of crime victims in the Black community are Black people who have been killed by other Black people. There was no question that they were, and still are, being incredibly violent towards each other. There are drive-by shootings out here in Los Angeles all the time and the victims are almost always Black kids. Even though in films like The Public Enemy and Little Caesar you see the gangster getting killed at the end, I felt the Black audiences did not want to see their gangster suffer the same fate. They wanted Tommy to live.

  That reaction must have concerned you.

  Yes, it did. I called up Sam Arkoff and told him that the preview audience did not like the ending. He said, “Well, I told you not to kill him.” I said, “Okay, you were right and I was wrong. Now we have to do something about it.” Sam said, “The picture opens in five days at three major theaters in New York. There’s nothing you can do about the ending now.” I said, “Yes, there is. I’ll go back to New York and I’ll cut the last scene of Tommy getting killed out of the picture before the movie opens.” Sam said, “If that’s what you think should be done, then do it.” So I visited the first theater in New York and introduced myself as the director of Black Caesar. I then went upstairs to see the projectionist in the booth and physically cut out the last scene and tacked on the closing credits. I then travelled to the next theater and did the same thing, before moving on to the third theater and repeating it again. The projectionists had never met an actual director before. They were overwhelmed by the experience of having somebody come up to the projection room and literally re-cut the movie in front of them. Black Caesar opened later that very same day — just a few hours later — and was a huge hit. I mean, Bone was a good movie but it didn’t do any business. Black Caesar was my first hit and there were lines right around the block and it was such a success that they were opening the theater at nine o’clock in the morning and running shows right through until four o’clock the following morning. They raised the prices (and this was in the wintertime in New York, when it was seven degrees outside and was a freezing cold February) but people still lined up in the streets, waiting for the next show to begin. I kept driving by the theaters, looking at the crowds that had gathered to see my movie. I thought, Wow, this is fantastic! After that, I really believed that every movie I made subsequently would be a hit, but of course, life doesn’t always work out that way. Sometimes you are wrong.

  Why did you restore the original ending for the home video release?

  I didn’t restore it. What happened was this: when they were preparing the DVD release of Black Caesar, they went back to the original negative which had never had the ending removed. So, as I’d always intended, Tommy died at the climax, murdered by the street gang. I was much happier with that conclusion as I thought it was better and stronger. Although we had removed that ending from the domestic release, it was accidentally left in the foreign release, which, like the home video release, was also made from the original negative. By the time they put Black Caesar out on DVD, I think attitudes had changed considerably. People were now more willing to accept a bleak ending, so aud
iences were not as furious and condemning as they were at the time of the film’s American theatrical release.

  Can you relay to me a telling anecdote about the shooting of Black Caesar?

  In the course of making this picture, there were a lot of stunts that had be done, like when Fred Williamson had to throw himself out of a moving taxicab and onto the sidewalk. I would say, “Okay, Fred, we are going around the corner here. I want you to open the door and then throw yourself out of the cab.” He’d look at me and say, “You do it first!” So, then I would say, “Okay, I’m going to show you there is nothing to be worried about.” Then I would go and throw myself out of the moving taxicab and onto the curb. I’d get up, brush myself down, and say, “See? There’s nothing to it.” Then I’d calmly walk around the corner and start screaming in agony, but I’d never show Fred that I was in pain. Fred would say, “Yeah, you’re right. There’s nothing to it.” Then he would do it, get up on his feet, walk away and start wincing in pain, too! [Chuckles] Neither of us wanted to show the other one that we couldn’t do something. Anything that Fred had to do in the movie I had to do it first.

  It sounds like it was an eventful shoot.

  Oh, it was. Those who worked on Black Caesar were just amazed at what we were getting away with each day. We stole all kinds of shots in New York City and were literally chasing people through the streets with guns. That whole sequence we shot in front of Tiffany’s on Fifth Avenue, with Tommy getting shot by an assassin and collapsing on the street, was filmed with hidden cameras. Everybody thought that situation was real, that a guy was actually lying in the street, seriously wounded. People were stopping and trying to help Fred at one point because they thought he really was injured. I mean, here was this nicely dressed man lying on the street with blood on him and they believed that something terrible must have happened. They had no idea whatsoever that they were in the middle of a movie and this was a complete fantasy. In fact, if you watch the film again, you will notice how the people react to what is happening. It’s pretty incredible, but we stole that whole sequence. We would shoot the scene on the street and then we’d go away for half an hour until all the spectators had drifted away. Then we would go back and do it again, shooting the action from a different angle. It was interesting seeing what reactions we would get from people as they saw these events unfold. I was like a mystical figure to the crew because they did everything I asked them to do. They figured, Hey, this guy can do no wrong — he owns New York City! [Laughs] I mean, we were actually driving taxi cabs on the sidewalks and running through the streets with guns. If we did that today we would all be arrested or shot down by the cops as suspected terrorists. It would be impossible to do that now. Nobody will ever do anything quite like that again.

  How did you go about staging the poolside massacre sequence where Tommy annihilates the Cardoza Brothers in California?

  We shot that entire sequence at my house using the roof and my swimming pool. We threw all of those people into the pool along with all this fake blood as well. We had to drain all of the water out afterwards and fill the pool back up again. That ended up costing me a lot of money. We could never have done that to somebody else’s swimming pool so we had to do it to mine, I guess. Anyway, that scene worked out okay so it was all worth it.

  What are your memories of working with Gloria Hendry who plays Tommy’s girlfriend, Helen?

  Gloria was and still is a lovely person. I see her occasionally around town and she still looks great. She remembers the experience of making Black Caesar as being a positive one and she was treated well. I think it was one of her best opportunities as an actress and led to her getting the part in the James Bond movie, Live and Let Die, as well as a lot of other work at the time. I had no trouble with any of the actors on the picture. Everyone was extremely cooperative and did everything I asked them to do. It was a pleasure working with people like Gloria, Val Avery, and Art Lund.

  As McKinney, the bent cop who torments Tommy, Lund makes an impressive adversary for Williamson, doesn’t he?

  Oh, Art was great. He had once been a very famous singer. I believe Art had played with Benny Goodman and other bands, and had also performed in Broadway musicals. He had enjoyed a lot of success, but then came to Hollywood to be an actor and appeared in films like Martin Ritt’s The Molly Maguires. [5] Art was not only a good actor, he was a very big man with a tremendous physical presence. He was six foot four, and had these huge hands, and I knew he would make a formidable opponent for Fred. I mean, Fred is a big guy, but Art was even bigger than him! He had that white Scandinavian look to him that seemed like the perfect counterpoint to Fred’s blackness. It made their confrontation all the more visually dramatic as it seemed like they were coming from two entirely different worlds. I was very pleased with Art’s performance and used him again in The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover and Island of the Alive. He was wonderful.

  The most ferocious scene in the film is when Tommy blackens McKinney’s face with boot polish and makes him sing “Mammy” before killing him. That was a far more savage comment on racism in America than anything found in Bone.

  I was tremendously happy with that scene because it really had operatic pretensions. It was written in the script and was always very, very strong. We just decided to go ahead and do it. I thought it turned out to not only be the most powerful scene in the film, but one of the most powerful scenes in cinema actually, certainly during that period. I mean, it was pretty hot stuff back then to have a Black man blacken the face of his White adversary and then make him sing like Al Jolson before killing him. The 1960s had only just ended with all the civil unrest and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, but we still went all the way with that scene. There was never a problem with anybody on the movie objecting to what we were doing. I think they knew it was something special. Fred and Art really got into it and they loved playing the scene because they saw that it worked. They realized that it had so much expiation of anger and fury; that the Black man was finally turning the tables on the White man. I thought Fred’s acting was fabulous and that scene was probably the best thing he ever did. We played it with the American flag clearly visible in the background as it really said a lot about racism in America and its inevitable consequences.

  It is certainly a bold statement.

  Yeah, and still a very valid one. It’s interesting that in America we had all of these race riots and unrest happen to us about twenty or thirty years ago and now you guys in the UK are only just starting to get it. I noticed that the same thing happened in England recently with the riots that took place in London. [6] I think the disturbances all started in the Black communities and spread to the White communities and people were looting the stores and stealing stuff and getting away with it. Then everybody else decided to join in, too, but it all started because a Black boy got shot by the police and the Black community felt compelled to rise up in anger and protest. Some used it as an excuse to vent their rage and it’s always some individual incident that occurs, which then becomes an excuse for people to release their fury and frustration — whether that anger is directly linked to race relations or some other grievance that people have. One incident can trigger it all and explode into violence and death.

  Unlike Joe [Philip Royce], who wants to invest money in community projects and improve living conditions in the ghetto, Tommy is only interested in acquiring more money and power. He is not interested in social reform.

  I suppose that Tommy’s neglect of his community and his pursuit of wealth and power is why he gets his comeuppance at the end of the movie. In the traditional gangster pictures like The Public Enemy and Little Caesar, such behaviour inevitably results in the gangster taking a fall. I guess that the truest relationship Tommy had with anybody was with Joe, who had been his very close friend from childhood. Tommy ended up breaking off with Joe after he discovers he has been having an affair with his woman, but then Joe gets killed and he feels terribly guilty about that. In
the cut version of Black Caesar, the last thing Tommy actually says is Joe’s name. He looks up at the window of the old building they once lived in and says, “Joe,” and that was the end of the film. Of course, in the complete version, the teenagers then come out of nowhere and murder Tommy to steal his wristwatch, but the last thing he is thinking of before he dies is his friendship with Joe. I guess that’s our rosebud! [Chuckles]

  How did James Brown become involved with scoring Black Caesar?

  I wanted a name to score the movie, a composer that really meant something in terms of Black music. First we approached Stevie Wonder and screened the film for him. It’s hard to believe that we actually screened the picture for a blind man, but that’s what we did. Stevie came to the screening room with his assistant, who sat next to him and explained exactly what was going on. Stevie listened carefully to the movie, but he thought it was just too violent for him and so he passed on doing it. Our second choice was James Brown. He agreed and went ahead and did a fabulous score. James later adopted the name “The Godfather of Soul” directly from this picture. The full title of our movie was Black Caesar: The Godfather of Harlem and after James did our score, he advertised himself as “James Brown: The Godfather of Soul,” which he continued to use for the rest of his career. Our picture really brought him back to people’s attention and the album was a big success. I think it really helped to turn his career around.