Was downtown in Brockton today on Fredrick Douglass Ave and traffic was a mess due to filming. I was there about three weeks ago and was able to see some of the vintage signs they've put up to capture the look of the 60's. Pretty cool.
shareI thought it looked fantastic, all circumstances aside. I live 2 min up the road, right off Court Street which essentially runs parallel. I met a few of the cast, mostly lesser-known for obvious reasons but Big Man Jay was a good dude. Gave a shout out later that night. And in all honesty, I just love the Process of Filmmaking, so I was all over the place. Talking to Grips, the Asst DP(Although I'm now embarrassed I can't remember his name) and few others. It was a cool experience. Politics aside. I love Cinema so that Wins everytime
shareSucks that they couldn't actually film the entire movie here in Detroit, but whatever. For the last couple of years, there have already been community forums here in the D about the riots, what caused them in the first place, how the city has changed since then, and even more so this year (there's at least two exhibits about the riots opening up at two museums---the Wright Museum (the African-American museum) in particular. Can't wait for the film to come out August 4th (same day as The Black Tower, dang it, lol.) There's also going to be a local tour given by Detroiters to places where the riots started, which is being preceded by a community forum with activists who lived through the riots themselves. Basically anybody who's well over the age of 50 that grew up in Detroit during that era (and still lives here,or moved away for a long time and came back) has a story to tell about the riots, and where they were when it happened. There was also an indie documentary made earlier this year called 12th & CLAIRMOUNT (the area on Detroit's west side where the riots first started) which consists mainly of 8 or 16-millimeter home movie footage from people whose families grew up in that era.
Some books to read about the riots:
THE ALGIERS MOTEL INCIDENT by John Hersey-----a book about the incident that seems like it will be depicted in the film, in which some white police officers thought they heard shots from a hotel as the riots jumped off (the police were getting shot at some points, so they thought that's what was going on) and ran up in the Algiers Motel. To make a long story short, three young black men barely out of their teens (the oldest was only 21) wound up dead, and the three white officers who shot them claimed self-defense (sound familiar?) The book tells about the incident from all points of view---the surviving people from the motel incident, the parents of the victims, people who knew the teens, and even the officers themselves.
ORIGINS OF THE URBAN CRISIS by Thomas Sugrue---written by a former Detroiter (I think) this is considered one of the definitive books about why Detroit collapsed after the riots, and the social, racial, and economic factors that led up to how said riots got started in the first place. I forgot to mention that there's also been a great deal of community forums about the riots that have been going on this summer, too. Detroit has moved and had a good comeback after the 2008 economic crash (which devastated a lot of neighborhoods, forcing many homes/churches into foreclosures) and coming off a recent bankruptcy. And, yeah, the city has changed since the riots---there's always some idiots making nasty comments about the city as if it froze in time after the riots or something. It still has its problems like any other big city (crime, bureaucratic headaches,blighted neighborhoods, etc.,) despite the downtown area having bounced back big and strong, and more suburbanites moving back downtown or to the good neighborhoods. But it's a good place to live depending on what part of the city you're living in, that is.
There's also a book which is a guide for people who are just moving to the D, called HOW TO LIVE IN DETROIT WITHOUT BEING A JACKASS by Aaron Foley (yeah, he's a Detroiter, born and raised here.) There is a chapter in it called, "How To Be White in Detroit", which is a must-read for white folks not used to being the minority anywhere---it'll give you some helpful tops on on how to act,lol.