Reflections on Blaxploitation

Excerpts from an interview with Michael Campus

After a stint in the U.S. Army (He was stationed in Germany, where he was responsible for scheduling the nation's railway), Michael Campus went to work as an executive at CBS. In 1969, Campus quit his job to pursue his lifelong goal of becoming a motion picture di­rector. Campus then convinced a Las Vegas casino boss to finance his di­rectorial debut. The casino manager forked over $100,000, which would result in Campus's first film, Survival (1970). The heavily improvised film was shot entirely in one location, a friend's home in Palm Springs, and was constructed around a screenplay penned by Shaft (1970) scribe John D. F. Black. This led to Campus's second feature, ZPG, or Zero Population Growth (1971). The film, which featured the late great Oliver Reed, is a sociological study of a futuristic society in which human reproduction is outlawed. In 1973, Campus crafted the film for which. He is best known—the blaxploitation classic The Mack. Although Campus states within this very interview that he does not consider

The Mack to be blaxploitation, the film is one of a handful of titles that are always, without fail, listed or mentioned as one of the most representa­tional entries of the cycle. And, intentional or not, The Mack's influence on subsequent films in the blaxploitation genre cannot be ignored. The film, starring Max Julien, Richard Pryor, and Carol Speed, depicts the rise and fall of an Oakland hustler. The following year, Campus made his sec­ond black film, this time on the East Coast. This acclaimed film, The Education of Sonny Carson (1974), is a gritty biopic of gangster turned political activist Sonny Carson. At the time of this interview, Campus was putting the finishing touches on the film Thomas Kinkade's the Christmas Cottage (2007), starring legendary actor Peter O'Toole. Next Campus hopes to write and pro­duce a feature film about the making of The Mack.

ANDREW BAUSCH: The term blaxploitation means a lot of different things to different people. As a filmmaker, does it offend you to have your work labeled as blaxploitation?

MICHAEL CAMPUS: From the beginning I have always said that the label minimizes the accomplishments of the genre. In my mind, you have to separate The Mack on one side and a lot of other films on the other side. Because The Mack was the only film of that era that was totally based on the truth. I lived in Oakland for two months under the wing of a man named Frank Ward, who kind of ran the Oakland under­world. It was because of Frank Ward that Richard Pryor, Max Julien, and I rewrote the original script. The original script was by a man named Bobby Poole, who wrote it in prison on toilet paper. His script was the ba­sis of the film—kind of an early blueprint. It was by going to Oakland and living that life with Frank Ward that I got to really understand what was happening. The real story. So I have always resisted the label blaxploitation. It’s not blaxploitation me. It isn’t. It wasn't. Unfortunately it got lumped into that category

AB: Blaxploitation has sort of become an all-encompassing term for anything was black in the cinema in the 1970s.

MC: You’re. Right and it's sad. There was some very good work. Now, its true there was also some very mediocre work and there were a lot of peo­ple who jumped on the financial bandwagon and said, "Let's make a lot of money." Some of those films are pretty terrible. But there are also some very good films under this blanket. Under this umbrella of blaxploitation, there was some very good work done,

And there was another key factor. That era provided opportunities for allot of African Americans to act, to direct, to write, to work behind the camera. It was a great learning experience. A lot of people and a lot of opportunities came out of this. But again, I do feel that the terminology is completely wrong. I don't think it reflects what was really going on.

AR: The Mack has also been labeled misogynistic by a lot of people. Do you feel that that’s true, and is it possible to make a film like The Mack without being somewhat misogynistic?

MC: Well, I think so. My private joke about The Mack has always been that this is a film about sex that has no sex in it. It's a film in which there literally arc no sex scenes. This is a character study, and it's a character study not only of the man but of a very violent and turbulent world. And as such, I don't think it can be accurately labeled as being misogy­nistic or anything else. It just doesn't fit any category because it really is Frank Ward’s story. It's a story of a man who lived and died--he got murdered at the end of the film—and it really is a reflection of all the things that were happening in Oakland at the crime: the rivalry between the Black Panthers and the black underworld, 50 percent unemployment for black people. This was a terrible time. It was a time of desperation and fear and Unemployment, and despair.  And the course that Frank Ward and the Ward brothers took was one course. In their minds, it was the only way out. Obviously it wasn't. And Bobby Seale and Huey Newton and the Black Panthers were suggesting     a whole other way to rise above this. In fact, because of my interaction with them, Goldie's brother in The Mack speaks for the Black Panthers. His character reflects their way of thinking. Their belief in the war to drive the pimps and the pushers off the streets was a very strong theme of the picture—this war between the two sides over how to best save the black Community.

AR: I've heard that the Black Panthers were somehow involved with lining The Mack. What was the story behind this?

MC: Well, you should probably know there is a film being prepared called Making the Mack, which is the story of a young white director [laughs coming to Oakland to make this film. The whole concept is being dis­cussed by the studios right now, with a young actor playing me and an Ed­die Murphy or a Jamie Foxx playing Richard Pryor.

But to answer your question, part of the war between the Wards and Bobby Seale and Huey Newton was because the Panthers came to us and said, "You can't operate in our territory." Every time I started the cameras, the chairs and glass bottles would come flying from the roof tops. We had to stop filming several times. And what became apparent was that we were not going to be in business unless we made a deal with the Panthers. So eventually my producer, Harvey Bernhard, who was the producer of the Omen series, made a deal with Huey and Max and another deal with Robby Scale, and they controlled the extras. The money literally went to the Black Panthers and they portioned out the money to the extras. As you might know, at the end of the picture when all hell had broken loose in this war, Bobby Seale made it pretty clear to me that we were going to have the opening in Oakland with benefit to their cattle. And Max and I agreed. We felt that was the only thing to do to keep the peace. So the opening of-The Mack in Oakland---this so-called exploitation picture----was for the benefit of the milk fund.

So again, it's not arrogance or ego that makes me separate The Mack from those other pictures. It's simply that we were different. We were the only picture that was based on a true story.

AR:  The Mack is one of the few films of that era that stays popular and con­tinues to find a new fan base. To what would you attribute this?

 

MC: I really believe that there are two factors. One, when the film opened that first night in Oakland, when the film came on, something happened that I had never seen before and have rarely seen since. Literally, in the opening scene when Max Julien and Richard Pryor are in the shootout opening with the police, the audience got on their feet. I'm not talking about later in the film. From the first moment the film came on, the audience was on their feet. They were screaming, yelling, and talking to the characters. This was repeated all across the country. And this was at a time when there weren’t-t that many so-called "black” theaters. We were in 17 cities and 22 theaters. That's all. But the fact is that somehow the audience totally re­lated to what they saw on the screen. This was part of the Oakland that they knew and understood, and somebody was finally making, something about their lives. Or at least a portion of their lives. They could see that these were things that were happening on their streets, in their homes, in their alleys, in their clubs.

 

When we eventually got back to Oakland and were developing Making The Mack four or five years ago, Max Julian and I were treated like royalty. By the time we reached the airport, the word was out that we were there. And everywhere we went, we were mobbed. We went to a club, we were mobbed. We went to the hotel, we were mobbed. So there is something there that the population relates to that I don't even think occurs with films like Shaft (1971). That doesn't happen with those other films. So that's got to be reason one.

Max, by the way, was a crucial factor in this film. He wasn't just the lead actor. He was my sidekick, my soul mate oil this film. He was very much a part of the film in every aspect, all the way. And that was a very unusual collaboration at that that role. It was a directorial/close friend’s relationship.

 

The second factor is the music. Everyone front Snoop to Dre to 50 Cent to Usher--you name it—kind of made this film an anthem of sorts. It al­ways had this following. So I think the combination of the initial reaction and the spread of the lore about The Mack through music and people like Quentin Tarantino, who championed the film, had a great deal to do with it. Through the years, at times when the film was not intensely popular, it stayed alive through music. We sold 500,000 videocassettes before the ar­rival of DVDs and without any publicity. That's amazing.