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Oscar Memory

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Way back in the early aughts, the TTLA blogger wrote The Secret City column for latimes.com. During one Academy Awards season, an editor said, hey, go do a story about Oscar.

So, from the resulting column: "I'm sitting with Oscar Williams, his back to the wall, Yakuza style, at a table inside a trendy Marina del Rey Thai eatery. Williams directed four films released in the 1970s: "The Final Comedown," "Five on the Black Hand Side," "Death Drug" and "Hot Potato."

More from the piece:

He wrote the screenplay for "Black Belt Jones," a Jim Kelly martial arts flick, as well as for 1974's action piece, "Truck Turner." He was an associate producer on 1978's Academy Award-winning documentary short, "The Flight of the Gossamer Condor." These days, Williams lectures at USC's School of Cinema-Television and at Los Angeles Southwest College. SECRET CITY: In general, are you a fan of contemporary Hollywood films? OSCAR WILLIAMS: I do like the movies that are getting made, because as a filmmaker I know how hard it is to get a film made. But a good 80% of them are just formulaic nonsense. There are such big holes in some of them. But the technology is good. The bone I pick with [the industry] is that they have not gotten their hands around the digital revolution. They think that they are going to when it arrives at a state where they can make money from it [by just buying] their way in. SC: "Five on the Black Hand Side" was marketed as being different from other pictures of its era. You can see that on the theatrical trailer now that the film is out on DVD. OW: It was torture to get that picture made. The distributors we spoke to said our audience was buying blaxploitation, and therefore [why would they be interested in buying] a black family comedy? I said, 'because you're oversaturated with that, and people are not only going to get tired of that, but here's another side of the black experience.' SC: Much of your work is infused with social issues. For example, that television piece, "A Bridge Tomorrow," which you did in San Francisco. OW: It was about two little kids, about 8 years old, one black, one white. And they were trying to build a bridge on the beach, but the water kept coming in and washing it out. [In the end], they promise to come back and build another one. SC: That's pretty deep compared to some of today's Hollywood movies. OW: [Shrugs] See, my philosophy in teaching students is that you must want to get something from your heart, or your mind, to the audience's heart or mind. Otherwise, what are you doing? It's easy to throw a lot of stuff up on the screen and say 'Well, whatever goes, goes.' I don't think that's filmmaking; I think that's bull. Because if you're not trying to say something to me, why are you utilizing the time, the camera, the film or tape, the actors' time and somebody's money? SC: What films have reached your heart or mind? OW: The movie that had the most impact on me was [Akira] Kurosawa's "Yojinbo." I had never seen a director use film that way. And because I got into Kurosawa's "Yojinbo," I began to see the value of John Ford. I had always liked [Federico] Fellini, [but] the way Kurosawa used visual storytelling techniques got me interested in looking and re-looking at so many films. I once saw a Russian film that was shot entirely with a handheld camera. Every single frame. It was called "The Letter Never Sent." SC: Which of your own films has held up the best over time? OW: There is one that the students keep talking about. I wrote it and was the associate producer on it: "Black Belt Jones" with Jim Kelly. One time I had to go pick up my father from the airport, so I told the class I would be in about 15 minutes late. The TA had taken over and by the time I came into class, there they were, running the film. I said, 'Shut that thing off.' SC: What do you make of the coming together of hip-hop and martial arts during the past 10 years? Were you and some of your colleagues three decades ahead of your time? OW: I remember I went to see a movie on 42nd street in New York. It was a Chinese martial arts movie and it was dubbed into English. And the theater was packed. But that was New York; I doubt that would have happened in Osh Kosh or Butte, Mont. But then it spreads a little further out, and a little further out. Now, in Butte, you'll have kids who are hip to it--they know what Shaolin means. SC: At USC, you stress what you call visual filmmaking. OW: Unfortunately, most of our films are just plays that are photographed, from beginning to end--yak yak yak yak yak--and you don't get a chance to use the camera, use the kinescope, use the cinema to tell a story. It is motion pictures, not motion talk. And if you can get the filmmakers into that, you'll begin to see even better films, sweeter films, lovelier films, because the human heart responds to that visual sense. SC: At one of the video stores I phoned looking for films by Oscar Williams the clerk said, 'Ah, the blaxploitation guy.' How does that make you feel? OW: [Laughs] Well, look. OK, let's put this in context. I made films in that era, so you could call me a blaxploitation [filmmaker]. But the first film that I made, for Roger Corman, came out of a situation that I saw in San Francisco; that's when Huey Newton and the Panthers were forming, and that first movie had to do with that. The second movie I did was "Five on the Black Hand Side," a family comedy. The third movie I did, for Warner Bros., was "Black Belt Jones." The fourth one, which was also for Warner Bros., took place in the Orient, "Hot Potato," again with Jim Kelly. Nothing about blaxploitation. I did write one, "Truck Turner," but that was directed by Jonathan Kaplan, not Oscar Williams." SC: So your reaction now is to laugh and smile. The term 'blaxploitation' doesn't bother you? OW: No, it doesn't bother me, because I understand the thinking behind it. Most of these pictures that we call blaxploitation were made by studios putting up the money or white producers. I look at it this way: You take the same story, "Black Caesar," up in Harlem, and you give it to Al Pacino, it's not blaxploitation. [Laughs] You take "Dirty Harry," and give it to a black actor, it's blaxploitation. You have a white actor in a very high action film and it's not 'whitesploitation,' it's just a film. Of course, we all know where it originated, but what can you do?

Photo copyright and courtesy Jeremy Rosenberg

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