Question: Did Bill Cosby Really Launch Afro-Squad?
Michael Peters
Kantuerry, Ohio
Answer: That is a good question. The indirect answer is yes! Bill Cosby was credited with funding the movie Sweet Sweetback’s Baasasssss song, which is often times credited as being the first blaxploitation movie. That movie spawned movies like Dolemite and Blacula. Without those movies, there would be no Afro-Squad. So yes, indirectly, Bill Cosby helped launch the Afro-Squad!
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Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song is a 1971 American independent film, written, produced, scored, directed by, and starring Melvin Van Peebles, father of actor Mario Van Peebles (who was also in the movie). It tells the picaresque story of a deprived African American man on his flight from the white authority. Van Peebles began to develop the film after being offered a three-picture contract for Columbia Pictures. No studio would finance the film, so Van Peebles funded the film himself, shooting it independently over a period of 19 days, performing all of his own stunts and appearing in several unsimulated sex scenes. He received a $50,000 loan from Bill Cosby to complete the project. The film’s fast-paced montages and jump-cuts were unique features in American cinema at the time. The picture was censored in some markets, and received mixed critical reviews.
The musical score of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song was performed by Earth, Wind & Fire. Van Peebles did not have any money for traditional advertising methods, so he released the soundtrack album prior to the film’s release in order to generate publicity. Initially, the film was screened only in two theaters in the United States. It went on to gross $4.1 million at the box office. Huey P. Newton celebrated and welcomed the film’s revolutionary implications, and Sweetback became required viewing for members of the Black Panther Party. The movie is an important work in the history of American cinema because it created a market for independent black films. According to Variety, it demonstrated to Hollywood that films which portrayed “militant” blacks could be highly profitable, leading to the creation of the blaxploitation genre, although some do not consider this example of Van Peebles’ work to be an exploitation film.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Pamela Suzette “Pam” Grier (born May 26, 1949) is an American actress. She became famous in the early 1970s, after starring in a string of moderately successful women in prison and blaxploitation films such as 1974’s Foxy Brown. Her career was revitalized in 1997 after her appearance in Quentin Tarantino’s film Jackie Brown. She is one of a few African-American actresses to receive a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress. She has also been nominated for a SAG as well as a Satellite Award for her performance in the iconic film Jackie Brown. She received an Emmy Award nomination for her work in an Animated Program Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child. Rotten Tomatoes has ranked her as the second Greatest Female Action Heroine in film history.[1] Director Quentin Tarantino, in an interview promoting Jackie Brown on Charlie Rose, remarked that she may have been cinema’s first female action star.
Early life
Grier was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the daughter of Gwendolyn Sylvia (née Samuels), a homemaker and nurse, and Clarence Ransom Grier, who worked as a mechanic and Technical Sergeant in the United States Air Force. She has one sister and one brother.[2] Because of her father’s military career, her family moved frequently during her childhood, to various places such as England, and eventually settled in Denver, Colorado, where she attended East High School. While in Denver, Colorado she appeared in a number of stage productions, and participated in beauty contests to raise money for college tuition toward Metropolitan State College. Contrary to previous reports she states that she is not the cousin of National Football League great Roosevelt Grier or to National Hockey League player Mike Grier.
Grier moved to Los Angeles, California in 1967, where she was initially hired as a receptionist at the American International Pictures (AIP) company. She was discovered by director Jack Hill, who cast her in his women in prison films The Big Doll House (1971), and The Big Bird Cage (1972). While under contract at AIP, she became a staple of early 1970s blaxploitation movies, playing big, bold, assertive women, beginning with Jack Hill’s Coffy (1973), in which she plays a nurse who seeks revenge on drug dealers; her character was advertised in the trailer as the “baddest one-chick hit-squad that ever hit town!” The film, which was filled with sexual and violent elements typical of the genre, was a box- office hit, and Grier was noted as the first African-American female to headline an action film, as protagonists of previous blaxploitation films were males. In his review of Coffy, film critic Roger Ebert noted that Grier was an actress of “beautiful face and astonishing form” and that she possessed a kind of “physical life” missing from other actresses.[3] Grier subsequently played similar characters in the AIP films Foxy Brown (1974), Friday Foster, and Sheba, Baby (both 1975).
With the demise of blaxploitation, Grier appeared in smaller roles for many years. She acquired progressively larger character roles in the 1980s, including a prostitute in Fort Apache the Bronx (1981), a witch in Something Wicked this Way Comes (1983), and Steven Seagal’s detective partner in Above the Law (1988). She made guest appearances on Miami Vice, Martin, Night Court and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and also had a recurring role in the TV series Crime Story between 1986 and 1988. She also appeared on Sinbad, Preston Chronicles, The Cosby Show, The Wayans Brother Show, and Mad TV. In 1994, Grier appeared in Snoop Doggy Dogg’s video for Doggy Dogg World.
According to The Lives of John Lennon by Albert Goldman, she was at the famed Troubadour night club in Hollywood the night Lennon was ejected for drunkenly heckling the Smothers Brothers.
In the late 1990s Grier was a cast member of the Showtime series Linc’s. She again appeared in 1997 with the title role in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown, a film that partly paid homage to her ’70s blaxploitation movies. As of 2004[update], she appears in the cable television series The L Word as Kit Porter and occasionally guest-stars in such television series as Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (where she is a recurring character).
In 2010, Grier began appearing in a recurring role on the hit sci-fi series Smallville as the villain Amanda Waller, also known as White Queen, head agent of Checkmate, a covert operations agency.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Born in New Rochelle, New York, Richard Roundtree graduated from New Rochelle High School in 1961 and starred on New Rochelle High’s undefeated and nationally ranked football team in 1960. He attended Southern Illinois University.[1] Roundtree was diagnosed with the rare form of male breast cancer in 1993 and underwent a double mastectomy and chemotherapy.[2]
Roundtree was a leading man in early 1970s blaxploitation films. He also played a role in the 1977 television series Roots, in the role of the slave Sam Bennett. He portrayed Dr. Daniel Reubens on Generations from 1989-1991. Prior to becoming an actor, he was a football player and a model. Although Roundtree worked through the 1990s, many of his more recent films were not well-received, but he was able to find success in stage plays.
Since 1990, however, he reemerged as a cult icon. Roundtree appeared in David Fincher’s critically acclaimed 1995 movie Seven, the 2000 remake of Shaft as John Shaft’s uncle, and guest-starred in several episodes of the first season of Desperate Housewives as an amoral private detective. He also appeared in 1997’s George of the Jungle, as well as playing a high school vice-principal in the 2005 movie Brick. His voice was also utilized as the title character in the hit Play Station game Akuji the Heartless, where Akuji must battle his way out of the depths of hell at the bidding of the Baron.
In 1997, Roundtree had a leading role in the short-lived FOX ensemble drama 413 Hope St. He portrayed Booker T. Washington in the 1999 television movie Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years.
He has appeared in the television series The Closer as Colonel D.B. Walter U.S.M.C. (retired) father of sniper and in Heroes as Simone’s terminally ill father, Charles Deveaux. Next, he appeared in an episode of Lincoln Heights. Most recently, Roundtree has a supporting role in the 2008 Speed Racer film as a racer-turned-commentator who is an icon and hero to Speed.
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Rudy Ray Moore (March 17, 1927 – October 19, 2008) was an American comedian, musician, singer, film actor, and film producer. He was perhaps best known as Dolemite (the name derived from the mineral dolomite), the uniquely articulate pimp from the 1975 film Dolemite, and its sequel, The Human Tornado. The persona was developed during his earlier stand-up comedy records.[1]
Moore, who was raised in his birthplace of Fort Smith, Arkansas, as well as Cleveland, Ohio, began his entertainment career as an R&B singer and continued singing through his comedy career. He developed an interest in comedy in the Army after expanding on a singing performance for other servicemen. Moore released many comedy records throughout the 1960s and 1970s, developing a rude and explicit style similar to Redd Foxx and Richard Pryor. This kept him off of television and major films, but cultivated an enduring fan base.[1]
It should be noted that some of Moore’s X-Rated comedy records were recorded at his home with personal friends in attendance as the audience. This is where the term party records comes from, with Rudy Ray Moore creating the format.
He appeared on Big Daddy Kane’s 1990 album Taste of Chocolate and 2 Live Crew’s 1994 album Back at Your Ass for the Nine-4. He also reprised his Dolemite character in an appearance on Snoop Dogg’s 1999 album No Limit Top Dogg.
In 2000, Moore starred in Big Money Hustlas, a movie created by and starring the Insane Clown Posse, in which he played Dolemite for the first time in over 20 years.
In 2008, Moore reprised the character Petey Wheatstraw on the song “I Live For The Funk,” which featured Blowfly and Daniel Jordan. This marked the first time Blowfly and Rudy collaborated on the same record together—and the 30-year anniversary of the movie Petey Wheatstraw and was also the final recording Rudy made before his death.[2]
On October 19, 2008, Moore died of complications from diabetes.[3]
Popularity: 5% [?]
Vonetta McGee, an actress whose big-screen heyday during the blaxploitation era of the 1970s included leading roles in “Blacula” and “Shaft in Africa,” has died. She was 65.
McGee died Friday at a hospital in Berkeley after experiencing cardiac arrest and being on life support for two days, said family spokeswoman Kelley Nayo. Although McGee had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age 17, Nayo said, her death was not related to the disease.
McGee was described as “one of the busiest and most beautiful black actresses” by Times movie reviewer Kevin Thomas in 1972, the year she appeared opposite Fred Williamson in the black action movie “Hammer,” and had starring roles in the crime-drama “Melinda” and the horror film “Blacula.”
She went on to appear with Richard Roundtree in “Shaft in Africa” (1973), and co-starred with Max Julien in “Thomasine & Bushrod” (1974).
McGee also appeared with Clint Eastwood in the 1975 action-thriller “The Eiger Sanction,” prompting The Times’ Thomas to write in his review: “Her parrying with Eastwood, verbally and otherwise, is enough to scorch the screen.”
“I was pleased to see her get a role with Clint Eastwood,” said Williamson, who knew McGee before they made “Hammer.” “Not many black actors had that opportunity to be in a movie where color doesn’t matter.
“Vonetta McGee was like a lot of actors and actresses at that time, like myself, Jim Brown, Richard Roundtree, Billy Dee Williams and Pam Grier, in that we had more talent than we were allowed to show because everything was perceived as a black project. Once they categorize you, your marketability becomes limited.”
McGee was no fan of the “blaxploitation” label that was attached to many of the films featuring black casts in the ’70s.
That label, she told The Times in 1979, was used “like racism, so you don’t have to think of the individual elements, just the whole. If you study propaganda, you understand how this works.”
Although The Times reported that McGee “calls herself one of the lucky graduates of the black-film genre,” she pointed out that there was a difference between someone like Diana Ross and other potentially marketable black actresses.
“She has had the luxury of a studio behind her,” McGee said. “This is where a lot of us fell short. We all needed a certain amount of protection. But we were on our own.”
Among McGee’s other film credits are “The Lost Man,” “Detroit 9000,” “Brothers” (in which she played an activist based on Angela Davis), “Repo Man” and “To Sleep with Anger.”
In the ’80s, her career turned primarily to television.
That included playing Sister Indigo on Robert Blake’s short-lived 1985 dramatic series “Hell Town” and playing a social worker who takes a con man played by Jimmie Walker into her home in the syndicated 1987-88 sitcom “Bustin’ Loose.”
She also played a recurring role on “L.A. Law” and appeared in several episodes of “Cagney & Lacey” as the wife of detective Mark Petrie (played by Carl Lumbly).
McGee and Lumbly were married in 1986 and had a son, Brandon, in 1988.
Born Lawrence Vonetta McGee in San Francisco on Jan. 14, 1945, she was attending what is now San Francisco State when she got involved with a local acting group.
She launched her film career in 1968 in Italy, where she appeared in the spaghetti western “The Great Silence” and played the title role in the comedy “Faustina.”
In addition to her husband and son, she is survived by her mother, Alma McGee; three brothers, Donald, Richard and Ronald McGee; and a sister, Alma McGee.
A memorial service is pending.
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times
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The Afro-Squad News Universe is a division of www.Afro-Squad.com, a humor based site dedicated to fighting the Man. As you know, we have huge afros and an immense distaste for the system.
Some of our “Army” work in the adult film industry, and were so inspired by our work that they decided to make a “big butt” movie with the Afro-Squad theme in mind. Already being called the cure for impotence, this movie is already one of our favorites.
Special thanks to Ivan for making it happen! www.iamivan.com
Click this link for the PG-13 rated trailer on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdJDQiT8fBo
Popularity: 8% [?]
One of our favorite bloggers is a girl named ”Redneck Mommy.” Check out her instructions on how to be a blog superstar!
When I first started blogging four years ago, I had no clue what I was doing. None. My vast experience as a blogger could be summed up quite literally as a blog lurker for two months. Which, you know, darn near made me an expert.
Heh.
I had no expectations when I started this blog. I had things I hoped for, mostly finding a reader or two who would snicker at my jokes and remind me that life indeed does go on even if one’s son drops dead unexpectedly in the middle of the night but other than that, I didn’t really know what the hell I was doing.
I just did it anyway because it felt good. Like sex, but without having to worry about getting knocked up. Again.
I’ve learned a lot, mostly through trial and error over the course of time when it comes to the ins and outs of blogging. But I’ve never blogged about blogging because (yawn) meta-blogging is so not my thing. Nobody reads an instruction manual, so why write one?
(My apologies to the people who actually earn their livings writing instruction manuals. Also, my sympathies.)
But recently, I’ve received a plethora of private emails asking me if I had any tips for a shiny newbie blogger dreaming of success in the big bad bloggie world. I admit, this is rather novel to me. Most of the time I just get a tonne of emails from horny losers asking if I will send them a picture of my boobs.
(The answer to that question is generally no. FYI.)
It seems that since I’ve won an award or two, and landed on a list here or there, my readers have confused me with someone who is a professional, someone who actually knows what they are doing and someone who doesn’t spend most of her days surfing the net in hopes of finding a funny cartoon to read.
Silly chickens.
However, I am nothing if not a people pleaser so I thought I’d share with you my vast wealth of blogging knowledge. Here’s your chance to either mock me or click away to someone who actually wrote a real post.
You want real advice, please direct your attention to Problogger. See? Even the name is more professional than Attack of the Redneck Mommy™. Which, leads me to my second tip: Don’t over-think how your are going to christen your corner of the internet. Don’t bother with a google search. Heck, if I had done that, I would have missed all the fun of people accidentally finding my blog instead of the rat farmer in Alabama they were looking for.
Try to find interesting blog fodder, say, the opposite of writing a post about how to be a better blogger. Don’t have anything of interest to write about? Well you should do what I do in times of blogging blankness. Write about your boobs! Or better yet, write daft posts about dying your cooter hair blue.
The internet is over-run with thoughtful, well-written posts. It’s over-rated. Don’t be afraid to be the google perverts’ best friend. This way you’ll know your blog really reached out to touch someone.
Nothing you write can ever come back to bite you on the ass. The internet is shielded from reality by the blood droplets of geeks everywhere. It is a magical force field.
So if you want to write a post about your mom, she will never find it and subsequently disown your arse for the following two years. You want to chronicle a lengthy and troublesome adoption process as you endure it? Go right ahead. I promise, the case supervisor in charge of determining your family size will never discover you called her a soulless bureaucrat sucking the hope out of good parents everywhere.
Go ahead and feel good about calling your psychiatrist an insecure fruit loop before he has rendered his professional opinion about your ability to function as a responsible parent. He’ll never find it. And if he does, he won’t be pissed at all. I mean, who doesn’t enjoy having their sexuality questioned publicly now and then?
Other bloggers will warn you not to over-share, but personally, I’ve developed a taste for toe jam. And when someone tells you not to publish anything you aren’t willing to have your arse kicked over, they clearly have never endured the joy of that particular experience.
I say grab a bulls-eye and bend over. Let the fun begin!
For the love of bloggers everywhere, remember that every blogger started out with the same origins. Just a lonely geek behind a computer screen hoping someone would find and read their blog. Except Dooce. Heather Armstrong is the exception. She fully popped out of her mother’s vagina with a huge internet readership. Her family still talks about it at holiday get-togethers.
And if you believe that I’ve got a chicken over here that shits out gold eggs. Email me if you are interested in purchasing her.
Having said that, just know, if you don’t have at least one hundred daily readers, you are clearly failing and not contributing anything of worth to the blogging community. Screw quality and originality. The only thing that counts for anything here in the blog world is the number of readers you can brag about.
The most important blogging lesson I can teach you, is always remember you are a STAR. Do not let your husband, your wife, your in-laws or your children forget this fact. Screw house cleaning and family time. You have a blog to update dammit, and twitter followers waiting to hang on your every word.
You must never disappoint them. It’s the price of blogging fame. Didn’t you know? Once you hit 50 readers a day you have to trade in your life and any real life obligations you may have for more server space. It’s the law.
My last tip of the day? Read Mr. Lady. She has a great section on her blog called techstalk where she dumbs down the actual intricacies of blogging. Ftp, platforms, bedazzled vaginas er, blogs, you name it, Shannon covers it. And she makes it readable. She is hands down one of the best writers on the internet.
(And no, I’m not just saying that because she occasionally lets me sleep with my face buried in her boobs, although that doesn’t hurt either.)
There. My blogging advice to you all. I feel pretty good about this post. I mean, not only did I directed you to a couple of actual pros thereby successfully shirking all responsibility for the success of your blogs, but I managed to mock blogging in general and avoid folding the laundry this morning.
That’s how a blogger does it.
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I saw this soda for sale in a Texas grocery store today, and I had to take a picture. It is 2010, and negative black racial stereotypes (such as a black kid eating a watermelon) are frowned upon. So who thinks this picture is a little off?
It did really make me laugh though… in that look over your shoulder before you laugh kind of way. Who made this stuff?
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I took this picture outside of the Family Dollar. I’d like to title it, “No shit. Dart guns are unsafe.”
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We are the Afrosquad
