- [Jourdain Searles] You can just see him just like, oh,
he's like getting so close to Jesus. He's going to Jesus.
He's going to Jesus.
And then there's the release and he's gone.
I like to refer to that sequence as edging towards Jesus.
(laughter)
- Look at Kevin,
he's like you guys are ruining my reputation.
(laughter)
- [Jourdain Searles] Hello and welcome to Black Film School.
This is a video series where we talk about the cinema Canon
and suggest black films to be added to it.
(upbeat music)
- [Jourdain Searles]This episode,
we're going to be talking about
Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde from 1967
and Bill Gun's Ganja and Hess from 1973.
You absolutely need to watch these films before you hear us
talk about them because number one, they're great.
And number two, we're going to be discussing spoilers.
So stop the video now, watch them and come back.
- [Kevin Wilson, Jr.] Bonnie and Clyde
is starring two of the greatest
Oscar presenters of all time,
Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty,
it is about a couple who are on the run together
and robbing banks during the Great Depression.
- [Bonnie] What's it like?
- [Clyde] What cha mean? Prison?
- [Bonnie] No. Armed robbery.
- [Jourdain Searles] Bonnie and Clyde
is based on a real story.
Bonnie Parker, just kind of like,
a board waitress living with her mother.
Clyde Baron,
a guy who has been to jail before
and is looking for trouble,
but in a very casual way, look, it's weird.
He doesn't seem like super greedy or anything.
He's just like, this is what I have to do.
- [Clyde] You just wait right here
and you keep your eyes open.
(scuffling)
- [Bonnie] Hey, what's your name anyhow?
- [Clyde] Clyde Baron.
- [Bonnie] Hi, I'm Bonnie Parker.
Pleased to meet you.
- [Jourdain Searles] One of the most
interesting things about this movie
is kind of like how Clyde uses his gun
in the robbing banks as his way
of romancing Bonnie in lieu of actual sex,
because he has trouble getting it up.
I just think that that's so fascinating.
(birds chirping)
(breathy laughter)
- [Sarah-Tai Black] I think a huge part of like
the mythology around Bonnie and Clyde,
centers more around like the kind of ride or die vibe and
forgets about like doing right by everyday folks, you know,
and being kind of a folk hero.
- [Kevin Wilson, Jr.] Yeah,
I think the thing that makes this different is that,
you know, we see throughout the film,
if they ever came across someone
who they felt was screwed over by the bank,
they empathize with them.
You know what I mean?
And I think that's really important to know as well,
probably because they could align with that struggle.
(motor running)
- Hey
(motor running)
(gunfire and screaming)
(gunfire)
- [Jourdain Searles] That ending is so,
oh my God, because it,
cause it's the end of the movie and that is so especially
when they swing the camera around and it's like through the
bullet hole and you can see, oh my God.
- [Sarah-Tai Black] Yeah,
and in terms of film school proper,
it's just a really, really impactful way
to literally show on screen the Hays Code,
which is the set of 36 industry guidelines
that were put in place from 1934 to 1968.
And it prohibited nudity scenes of sexuality or violence.
Just anything that could be immoral,
even like the scene that we were looking at earlier
in Bonnie and Clyde,
where she's kind of having this oral fixation
with a Coke bottle and also like the phallic gun
like that, that's already a no-no.
Nevermind this like total guns blazing ending,
but things that had not been seen before on screen were
really going to start being shown after this movie is just
kind of flipped the bird at the code
that was in its last legs.
- [Jourdain Searles] So if you like hot outlaw couples,
you're going to love the film that we're talking about next.
It's 1973 is Ganja and Hess, directed by the king Bill Gunn.
- [Sarah-Tai Black] Ganja and Hess,
is a 1973 experimental horror film
written and directed by the great Bill Gunn.
And it stars Duane Jones as Dr. Hess Green,
who after being stabbed with an ancient ceremonial knife
becomes a vampire.
Green then falls in love
with the wife of the person who stabbed him
and comes to learn his secret,
which is his insatiable desire for blood.
- [Dr. George Meda] To be adored on this planet
is to be a symbol of success.
And you must not succeed on any terms
because life
is endless.
- [Kevin Wilson, Jr.] I have a great deal of respect,
even more respect sometimes for actors
who direct themselves in performances like these,
they're able to stay in the zone.
You know what I mean?
Stay in this moment and be aware of everything else
that's going on around and in the world that they've built.
It's incredible.
- [Sarah-Tai Black] Yeah. It's very much like,
not like a winking little cameo.
It's a very vulnerable, very,
just like beautiful performance
to watch that kind of transcends that aspect
of seeing a director in their own film.
For the most part, what we are given over to,
with Bill Gunn's character,
is the fact that he is self declaring himself as unwell.
And he doesn't know what it means to be a person
like him in the world.
And what has been happening literally before this scene
is he's been kind of threatening to kill himself.
(heavy breathing)
(brass instrument)
(gunshot)
- [Jourdain Searles] So Ganja is Dr. Meda's wife,
and of course he kills himself. He dies.
And then she shows up to figure out what's going on and
there's Hess and he's played by Duane Jones and he's hot
and there is a whole attraction there.
And then they kind of have like a bonding ceremony
where like he's already a vampire
and he was stabbed with the artifact. And so he stabs her.
(stabbing and upbeat music)
- [Kevin Wilson, Jr.] I saw this movie,
I was just completely blown away.
And it kind of goes back to like my love for like
experimental movies are not,
where the filmmakers are not afraid to be daring
and gory and sexual.
And all of those things like are brought together
in a really kind of interesting and artful way here.
- [Sarah-Tai Black] In a scene, we see Ganja,
having sex with a young man,
that the couple brought to their house
for the purposes of vampiric delights.
(ghostly music)
(screams)
- [Sarah-Tai Black] I think,
that the way Ganja is portrayed here
in terms of someone who has intense desires,
the fact that she is neither desexualized,
nor punished for her sexuality.
I think it's, it's something really rare.
Especially at this time.
- [Jourdain Searles] The way that she's treated
and in the way that the camera sees her,
reminds me a lot of like women's pictures of the thirties.
Like the camera loves her,
the camera adores her,
and the camera respects her.
- [Dr. Hess Green] Come with me.
Please, please come with me.
- [Jourdain Searles] I like to refer to that sequence
as edging towards Jesus.
(laughter)
And you can just see him just like, oh,
he's like getting so close to Jesus. He's going to Jesus.
He's going to Jesus.
And then there's the release
and he's gone.
- [Sarah-Tai Black] Look at Kevin he's like,
you guys are ruining my reputation.
- [Kevin Wilson, Jr.] Not at all. Not at all.
Nah, I was going to ask you kind of like
what you all think about
the role religion plays in this whole thing?
- [Jourdain Searles] For Hess, Salvation
is a return to a version of blackness
that he has been cut off from.
And so much of that is wrapped up in the church.
- [Sarah-Tai Black] If anything,
it feels a bit like Hess has to repent
or be saved from his vested interest in like
Pagan African civilizations,
which have been literalized through his
formation into like a vampire. There's some,
there's some godly shame to him.
I feel, but Ganja doesn't feel that way at all.
And that's why we love her.
(upbeat music)
- [Jourdain Searles] How would you define blaxploitation?
- [Kevin Wilson, Jr.] There's a period of time
where Hollywood wasn't doing so well financially
and black movies would come out
and because of black people flock to the theaters
to support these movies,
it was very lucrative for Hollywood.
Groups of executives would put together small budgets
for black filmmakers to go out and make their own version
of whatever movie that did well.
- [Jourdain Searles] One of the coolest,
like bits of trivia about this movie is that like
Bill Gunn was given this money to make the movie
and he was supposed to make a blaxploitation movie.
And then he made this instead.
And that's just such a power move.
- [Kevin Wilson, Jr.] I would want to see the look
on the studio execs faces when they screened this movie.
- [Sarah-Tai Black] Especially when it was like
the specific movie that the producers were wanting
to go up against was Blacula.
It's not even night and day. It's like outer universe.
And then earth.
- [Jourdain Searles] Also, I think a really important thing
is that a lot of blaxploitation movies
are related to black people and their relation to whiteness,
like getting the white man, fixated on the white man.
The thing about Ganja and Hess,
that I think really sets it apart,
is that it's just about blackness.
It is investigating that
without really having to include white people at all.
Like, I think there's like some white people in it,
but they're not part of anything.
They're just like side characters.
- [Sarah-Tai Black] I feel like
also just in the context of the early seventies,
I think it was well received by, you know,
black folks who were moving in like arts and avant-garde
circles. But in terms of like a mainstream audience,
it's just,
it's just never going to happen because the people who are
the gatekeepers of what the mainstream is going to want
to see are just not equipped.
- [Kevin Wilson, Jr.] It also has a lot to do with
the opinions of the people who financed it sadly.
And then they tried to recut it numerous times.
They gave it multiple titles,
The reason why I think it's so important
that we talk about giving black filmmakers opportunities.
It's not just about hiring a black writer,
hiring a black director,
but like also getting capital from black investors and like
putting black people in positions
to be able to Greenlight movies and market movies.
Because if someone doesn't know
how to market that movie
or they don't understand it,
you know what the filmmaker is trying to say,
they're going to sabotage it.
And this is a perfect example of that.
(upbeat music)
- [Jourdain Searles] Do you think
that Ganja and Hess belongs in the Canon?
- [Kevin Wilson, Jr.] Yes.
Ganja and Hess absolutely belongs in the Canon.
I'm always going back to process and how things are made.
Does Bill Gunn taking the money that's meant, you know,
to create one thing and to, you know,
push back against people who try to pull him back
the other way, every filmmaker should want to do that.
Every filmmaker should be bold in their storytelling.
And this is the perfect example of that.
- [Jourdain Searles] This is not only
a unique black vampire movie.
It's a unique vampire movie period.
Not only can you make this like fascinating erotic core,
but you can do it with black people
and you don't have to include
any white people in the equation.
Like that's real.
It's really important to know that.
- [Sarah-Tai Black] I also agree a hundred percent
that Ganja has to be included into the film school Canon.
Even in the present,
it's so striking and so urgent and necessary,
and it's nothing, nothing else can compare.
Nothing else can compare.
- [Jourdain Searles] Thank you for watching
Black Film School. Now go watch some black films.