Paying homage to Blaxploitation films that came before them, Scott Sanders and Michail Jai White bring us Black Dynamite. The recently released feature film, which stars White as the crime-solving, hood-protecting, kung-fu knowing, and Black Panther-leaning character of the same name was shot to resemble the aesthetics of the 1970’s sub-genre. The duo did this so well, that early trailers of the movie had people thinking that Black Dynamite was a re-release rather than a new film. “The whole thing, I think it’s fun. The confusion is fun,” director Scott Sanders told us while in Chicago for a screening of the film. I met Sanders as well as the film’s star and writer, Michail Jai White for an exclusive interview. Read on as they talk about Black Dynamite’s character, the making of the film, and how to shoot a 1970’s style film in 2009.
RubyHornet: I didn’t know what to expect going into the movie. I wasn’t sure if it was a re-released movie, or new. The first trailers I saw weren’t clear. I want to know if other people have been saying that to you.
Scott Sanders: Yeah, there’s been a lot of confusion. We had a trailer that was released even before we did the movie and that incorporated some footage that Mike shot in super 8 with an Adolf Caesar narration. People were kind of conscious of the movie then, and then we did the new trailer and some people think it’s a remake of the movie that we shot the original trailer to. Why would somebody just remake Black Dynamite?!… The whole thing, I think it’s fun. The confusion is fun.
RubyHornet: I understand the whole character came from a picture of Michail Jai White.
Michail Jai White: I thought of the character, and then I pretty much thought of the movie and shot the picture of myself. That pretty much started the ball rolling. It’s really hard to sell an intangible so I thought I at least had to begin with the image.
RubyHornet: In superhero comic books and movies the name of the character is important. It’s their image and what they embody. For example, we have The Flash, and Superman, Batman, what makes up Black Dynamite? What’s at the core of him?
Michail Jai White: There’s charcoal, there’s gunpowder, and Black… And some sulfur. He’s the embodiment of “Black Super Hood”, haha… That doesn’t make any sense. He’s like Superfly, The Mack, and Shaft all rolled together, that’s basically the ingredients of Black Dynamite… With some of Bruce Lee’s dopeness.
Scott Sanders: With the title, it was originally called Superbad until some movie came along and took that title from us.
Michail Jai White: Some movie and the title didn’t even fit it. But it’s OK.
Scott Sanders: Black Dynamite has the same type of title to where it seems like there should have been a movie named Black Dynamite. It fits well.
RubyHornet: Is there any type of lens you want the audience to watch the movie through? Do you want them watching it through the lens of what someone may know about the true Blaxploitation films, or is that not necessary?
Scott Sanders: It was always our goal for people to watch it and be able to watch it in two ways. One, if you had seen every Blaxploitation movie ever made then you would really appreciate our references to all these other movies. If you hadn’t seen one Blaxploitation movie, we still wanted you to think it was funny. Luckily I think we were pretty successful. We showed the movie in The Czech Republic and none of those people have seen any Blaxploitation movies. I get there and there are 1,300 people at the screening and all these people trying to get in and they’re totally into it.
Michail Jai White: That was our first standing ovation.
Scott Sanders: I was like, ‘OK, I think we might have done it here.’ If you have a whole bunch of Czech people digging it, then…One of the things that transcends Blaxploitation movies is that Black Dynamite is a badass. A lot of our humor derives from him being a badass. But it’s not a jokey ‘haha’ goofy thing, no this guy is just so badass that it makes you laugh. It’s like that nervous laughter like when he closes the door and turns his head to that whole gang of guys, it’s like ‘oh my g-d, this dude is going to kick all these guys asses.’ I think that part of it is fairly universal.
RubyHornet: Talking about the Blaxploitation genre, and like you said, you throw in little things from various films, were there luxuries that go into revisiting this genre that you might not get to enjoy doing a regular movie in 2009 with the techniques audiences expect.
Scott Sanders: It offered luxuries and it offered challenges. The luxuries are we wanted to do it in the style they did it, so you don’t need to worry too much about continuity errors, which you can kind of tell in this movie. Somebody will drive a Porsche, and then it turns into another car, and then that car explodes. You don’t have to explain stuff, you just go. The challenge is that it’s 40 years ago and to block out the modern world during a production is a real challenge, and probably why nobody has done it the way we’ve done it. There have been many riffs on Blaxploitation, but there haven’t been any riffs on Blaxploitation set in the 1970’s when they actually made Blaxploitation movies. That’s probably because they haven’t been able to block out the outside world and create a 70’s world.
RubyHornet: Was there any hesitation at all as far as Black Dynamite’s actions, such as kicking Richard Nixon’s ass, or times when someone thought, ‘oh man, maybe we should not do this…’
Michail Jai White: No. Oh, no, haha. That was decided before the picture.
RubyHornet: You’re in Chicago for a screening. Based on your careers in film making and acting, what place does the city of Chicago hold? If this screening goes really well and you get another standing ovation, is there any extra importance or meaning because this is Chicago?
Scott Sanders: We have a character named Chicago Wind.
Michail Jai White: We don’t have L.A. anything or New York anything. We only have one character with a city in his name. But, Chicago is the big city that got it all right. I’m from New York. I love Chicago cause I think it’s the balance between New York and L.A. It’s clean, it’s got its own swagger. I always enjoy coming here. New York and L.A. might be close to me because I was born in NY and I happen to live in L.A., but I can’t think of a negative thing about Chicago, besides maybe the cold. As far as the city, and as far as the people, it’s first rate here.
Scotta Sanders: I also DJ and a couple nights ago I played a juke set in L.A. and people were wondering, ‘what is this?’ haha….
Michail Jai White: A lot of places lose their culture. For L.A., that’s the worst part of it. New York is a bit too much, I feel like I’m a warrior every time I step back in there. This is a city that got it right.
RubyHornet: You just mentioned your DJ career, and I read about that as well. In making this movie, did you go back through your collection? I’m also a DJ as and I noticed that a lot of my day-to-day thinking is kind of filtered through music and the way I put together a set, planning a mix. As far as making this movie, did that come up with you?
Scott Sanders: Absolutely. I think this movie, the time I spent DJing, and the editor and composer is also a DJ, that’s how we think. We also love this music. We think about it in terms of samples, and hooks, and even with the acting, matching the two was so much fun. We composed a lot of music, but we also sampled a lot from these funk libraries…Taking little bits and pieces and trying to go with the flow, that definitely played a role in the movie.
