They Came From Within - October 1991 Movieline article

https://lebeauleblog.com/2020/03/18/they-came-from-within/

The “they” in the title of the article are film producers George Jackson and Doug McHenry. Unlike some other black film makers in the early nineties, Jackson and McHenry came up through the Hollywood studio system. When Michael Angeli interviewed the duo (awkwardly) for the October 1991 issue of Movieline magazine, they were promoting House Party II.

It worked, Spike. By design or by the logic encapsulated in the bumper sticker homily of New Age man (“Shit Happens”), it worked. Because now when I look in the mirror, staring back at me is a superfluous man, an image of self-contempt and inertia. I see not a soul on ice, but one thawed and spoiled. I see a stammering, backtracking field mouse unable to talk to hep cats. I hear myself reworking Honkette Doris Day’s “Que Sera, Sera”: “Will I be racist? Will I be patronizing? Here’s what Spike says to me…” I thought I was fine until you came along.

I booed The Birth of a Nation. I lost my lunch watching C. Thomas Howell looking like a Coppertone orgyist instead of a black person in Soul Man. I rooted for the Bulls in the championship series. Okay, I lied about the Bulls. But you have made conversation with black filmmakers no less daunting than the rope ladder climb at the county fair. It looks easy until you take that first step and suddenly find yourself on your ass. I, in my titanium whiteness, am your hand-wringing monster, Spike. You pulled the switch that sent the 10,000 volts of hyperconscience screaming through my arhythmic body. And so, as I venture into a hot corner of the Warner Bros. lot, you will be my racial guardian angel. You are my Henry Higgins, as in Say The Right Thing, as in The Psyche of Spikey makes a Honky out of Mikey. Speak to me, Spike. Get my mind right!

With the rose tint all but sucked out of the stucco, Producer’s Building #2 has to be one of the most rundown structures on Bugs and Daffy’s whole lot. And you have to ask if these are indeed the offices of New Jack City and House Party II producers Doug McHenry and George Jackson, because the door is unmarked, although, unlike the other doors, this one is wide open, spilling noise out to the parking lot. Inside are two peeling, faux wood desks that look like they were once a bargain on someone’s front lawn. A Martin Luther King “I Have a Dream” calendar hangs askew from its tack on a louvered door missing slats. The carpet’s spots look like they’ve been there since the last time Langston Hughes was in town. An old coffee maker stands in the corner, facing the wall like a disobedient child.

The conspicuousness of the squalor here is pretty remarkable, especially since these guys just had a $50 million hit. Frankly, I’ve never before met a pair of producers who were too busy or too unpretentious to bother with appearances. I’m wondering what Spike’s offices look like. But shoddy decor or not, the three-room suite Jackson and McHenry work out of is crackling with energy. And someone is having fun here, because the laugh track is louder than a TV set in a retirement home.

“I LOVE LUCY!” Doug McHenry booms, when I start out by pointing at the statuette of the high priestess of cross-eyed comedy on the middle of his desk. “It’s cooler to have Desi, but I gave Desi away.” McHenry turns to yell through the door, “GEORGE, YOU READY?” We’re waiting for George Jackson to get off the phone in the other room.

Meanwhile, a female photographer and her assistant are busy packing their gear.

“We hate to see the women go,” Doug teases them. “So, where you girls going now? You goin’to deal with MARIO, right? You’re going to see MARIO, aren’t you? Yeah, Van Peebles gets all the glory.” Doug is referring to the director of New jack City.

One of the women spots something in a trash bin. Dredging up a hosiery egg for Doug’s appraisal, she smiles. “Someone’s got a funky attitude.”

“Yeah, well, it ain’t me–this is George’s office. GEORGE! GET IN HERE!”

When the women have left but George still hasn’t arrived, Doug leans back, facing me with a 70-millimeter smile, his balding, polymer-shiny scalp in the cradle of his fingers, prisonerstyle. I have just asked him about his request for a black interviewer. In my mind, I’m seeing Spike form that tiny, condemnatory lemon shape with his lips.

“We heard that you actually were black,” he says, having fun with me. “Seriously, we don’t know anything about black interviewer requests. HEY GEORGE!”

Something between a shriek and a howl sounds from the other room and precedes George through the door. It seems the man has just managed to get a date.

“I’m happy. Put it in print! I’M HAPPY! She said yes!”

“She’s gonna go with you, then,” Doug congratulates him.

“She’s gonna go with me. Wow. She’s not my girlfriend yet,” George admits, “but if I have anything to do with it, she’ll come around.”