rasx() on film: 2000–2006

Hey, I’m no Greg Tate but this first collection of writings on film spans six years with 17 articles with names like Floyd Webb, R/Kain Blaze, Stanley Kubrick, Ursula K. Le Guin, Beah Richards, Dr. Julius W. Garvey, Will Smith, Sam Neil and many others.

It is important to highlight that Floyd Webb starts on the timeline for this collection. His association with Julie Dash, the first Black woman to release a feature-length film in the United States (and probably more regions of the Diaspora), is of great symbolic significance to me.

The table below will date and direct us to the articles. It will also have article excerpts and pictures. The table summarizes:

2000/10/04: “Floyd Webb: The World Wide Floyd Webb”	“The graphical interface of the Macintosh brought me back… I played with Charles Burnett’s machine back in 1984 on the balcony of his Slauson apartment [in Los Angeles, CA]… Time folded on me as I played with it… And here I sit today, yet again at 4:00 a.m., with a nine-year-old, sax-playing, computer-literate, Flash-game-playing, capoeira-learning, Pokémon/Dragonball Z/Lego Maniac asleep in the next space anxious to consume and utilize e-commerce for his own self fulfilling whimsy…”
2002/01/10: “Blazed Up with The Undefined”	“Long story/medium: As I continued to do film, I wanted music crafted to the stories which led me to playing. That was something that I could do by myself and was less time consuming to get a finished result. I got a taste of that sweet sticky thing that The Ohio Players spoke of from a lady with a Parliament booty and I’m certain that I haven’t had a clear thought since. I interned at TriStar and it galvanized the fact that that was no way to get my film thoughts out—and they had a cap on how many men they could have around in the industry, especially Black ones. So anyway, I had to wait for the technology to come down since my gear had been stolen by a crackhead and make more money.”
2004/10/18: “Floyd Webb: The World Wide Floyd Webb 2004”	“That demo reel was contracted work. Things we have done individually and collectively. I of course am attracted to work I can feel and get excited about. But I shared it with my young son who is in school in Oak Park, IL. He was studying Egypt and needed a supplement for his class so I did up a website for him and gave him access to all of the Egyptian materials I used for the project. He was able to show the class the information at school on their computers. The Egyptian work was done for Wesley Snipe’s company for a documentary he financed on Dr. Ben. It was directed by St. Clair Bourne.”
2005/02/27: “2001 Console Shots”
2005/03/10: “FullOnBrawl.com Prop Room Shots”	“Another production project at FullOnBrawl.com is a campy sci-fi flick that requires thrilling headgear and ray guns to go with luscious space vixens with other-worldly space faces.”
2005/03/29: “rasx() Screenshots: The 1980 Adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven”	“This article about a campy science fiction flick, the 1980 Adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven, is inspired by a more serious issue now archived at DemocracyNow.org under “How the Far Right Built a Media Empire to Manufacture Consent.” I am confident that pro-liberal voices can successfully argue that liberal bias in private, corporate media is almost entirely legendary. They might have a problem arguing for public media—namely, public television. I could see even as a latch-key kid of the late 1970s and 1980s that PBS was well-stocked with idealistic, condescending, undereducated hippies. And The Lathe of Heaven is a very fine specimen of such hippie media now long gone because of the revenge of the children of the Reagan revolution.”
2005/04/09: “2005-04-08: Beah: A Black Woman Speaks Wins Peabody Award”	“And, oh, of course this film was edited by none other than Academy Award winner Kate Amend. A very extensive technical article (that badly needs to be updated) on SonghaySystem.com mentions her—an indulgence that still does not go unappreciated. And speaking of mentioning, I do not find my name or company listed on the full credits of this film.”
2005/07/08: “Bryan Wilhite Listed at imdb.com”	“I am a guy with very high expectations so it’s ‘easy’ not to impress me. But I never expected to be listed on imdb.com—even when it is my right to be acknowledged for full credit for hard work done. As a student of history—African history—my education informs me to expect injustice—even from other so-called Africans. Egocentricity knows no color lines…”
2005/07/30: “rasx() Screenshots: Freestyle—The Art of Rhyme”	“Freestyle—The Art of Rhyme directed by Kevin Fitzgerald is another professionally made ‘home’ movie from my big African family, spreading from the enclaves of Los Angeles throughout the world. It is one of the few hip-hop “culture” films that pays serious respect to the West coast outside of the context of ‘gangsta rap.’ It’s focus on the freestyle form of flow renews the symbolism the ‘wild’ West represents to many an escaped slave who does not want to play cowboy. Since I was born and raised in Los Angeles and was involved personally with many of the subjects shown in the film, I am more than motivated to bring DVD extras to this feature.”
2005/08/11: “Black Comedy Online”	“Deen Ipaye, author of our first prose presentation, ‘Fela at the African Shrine,’ here at kintespace.com inspires today’s Blog entry. In his much appreciated efforts to maintain positive communications here in the kintespace.com, he sent me a link to http://www.negrospaceprogram.com/ back on 7/20/2005. I apologize for taking such a large time to respond—but I am catching up.”
2005/10/04: “rasx() Screenshots: Shots out at Slavery”	“From jump, he has a nickname with meaning. He is called Ashy Larry. The accuracy and precision of his nickname means he probably was called that name since he was child. It also implies that he did not name himself with a degree of egocentric inaccuracy—like many rappers and Afro-centrists do (so his nickname is not Ladies Love Larry or Cool Larry or Sexy Larry or Hotep Ra Larry God X).”
2005/12/30: “Dr. Julius W. Garvey: Letters to the Editor about a PBS Documentary”	“My two major areas of criticism are (1) Factual inaccuracies and slanderous statements without even attempting to substantiate them and (2) The absence of any in-depth analysis of what Marcus Garvey stood for or was trying to do. I will attempt to deal with some of the former that I consider to be of major importance.”
2006/01/09: “Does Stanley Nelson Have Negro Problems?”	“You know that title up there is coy and uncalled for… I have no idea who Stanley Nelson is. All I know is that he is a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” recipient (which places him in the company of the likes of Kara Walker) and that the son of Marcus Garvey finds his work markedly inferior. When you make a film about Marcus Garvey and his son finds gross factual and logical errors (which are to be distinguished from simply not liking the film), then I grant myself the permission to be coy. Thanks, Bryan. You’re welcome.”
2006/03/01: “Sophisticated, White-Liberal Ways to Criminalize and Marginalize Blacks: The Will Smith Role in Six Degrees of Separation”	“My recent interview with Ed Dunn of Fooky.com provides me with the perfect opportunity to Blog about being accused of playing the Will Smith role in Six Degrees of Separation. I first began to think about this character almost a decade ago when my number-one IT headhunter (who is a Black female) began dropping little hints to me about the number of times certain clients would check, and re-check my background. This behavior was clearly distinguished from her other (white) candidates. Evidently, my ‘BS’ in physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara stood for ‘Bull Shit’—let alone my actual, real, genuine work experience.”
2006/05/26: “rasx() Screenshots: More Shots out at Slavery”	“There is a prostitution scene in Gummo with a mentally handicapped girl that eerily resembles a scene written by Toni Morrison in her novel Beloved where a father and son keep an adolescent African girl as a sex slave. Hey kids, you don’t need pornography and prostitution when you have cows and chattel slavery… White liberal Hollywood formalism needs to explain why this would be happening or such a scene would be “too problematic” to translate to film. Harmony Korine shows how such a scene should be done.”
2006/08/14: “Christmas Unwrapped”	“Just in time for Christmas is my mini-review of Christmas Unwrapped. In order to tell the verifiable story of the history of Christmas, you have to reveal ‘unflattering’ details about pre-Hollywood Europe. The people who actually live in Europe should not find many problems with this—but, when you are trying to fill the Disney-white pews with colored folk here in the New World, you should have a serious problem with these truths. This may explain why, in part, this History Channel DVD is of such poor quality and enjoys little or no promotion (okay: over 14,000 Google hits is not ‘no promotion’).”
2006/10/12: “Famous Passers”	“It was Reilly, by the way, during the Russo-Japanese war, who innovated in the concept that warfare was a time to make vast amounts of money on the stock market. It was Reilly who was at the center of the origin of oil wealth for the powers of Europe—namely Britain. You will understand the origins of the mentality ruling the Bush family, Chaney and all those other impoverished rubes by watching the BBC series Reilly—Ace of Spies starring Sam Neil. You will probably never see this series broadcast on public television ever again—without the hippies being back in power.”

rasx()