Black Gunn | movie | 1972 | Official Featurette - video Dailymotion

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A successful and popular nightclub owner who believes financial independence is the path to equality and success, must a | dG1fVWtqc1FMSzV1RGM

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00:00During this time, my mother was dating a football player named Reggie.

00:04So in an effort to score points with her, Reggie asked to hang out with me.

00:08Being a football player, he asked her, does he like football?

00:12She told him, no, he likes movies.

00:15Well, as luck would have it, so did Reggie.

00:19And apparently, he saw every Blaxploitation flick that came out.

00:22So late one Saturday afternoon, Reggie, who I had never met before, dropped by the apartment,

00:27picked me up, and took me to the movies.

00:29He took me to part of town I had never been before.

00:32I had been to the big movie theater districts in Hollywood and Westwood, but this place

00:36was different.

00:38This theater row had huge cinemas on both sides of the street, which went down for about

00:428 blocks.

00:43I realized when I got older, Reggie took me to the theater district in downtown Los Angeles,

00:47located on Broadway Boulevard.

00:49All of them were Blaxploitation films.

00:52Films I had never seen.

00:53The new movie on Broadway, having opened just last Wednesday, was Blaxploitation superstar

00:58Jim Brown's new motion picture, Black Gun.

01:01I had seen the TV spots a lot that week, and it looked really exciting.

01:04I even remember the radio spot proclaiming,

01:07Jim Brown's gonna get the mother who killed his brother.

01:12Well, Black Gun was definitely the movie Reggie wanted to see.

01:16One being the connoisseur that he apparently was, it was the only one of the movies playing

01:20he hadn't seen.

01:21Also, it was pretty fucking obvious he dug Jim Brown.

01:24This being the Saturday night showing of the brand new Jim Brown movie, the huge auditorium

01:28with probably 1,400 seats, wasn't exactly packed, but it was definitely busy and buzzing

01:33with anticipation.

01:35My little face was the only white one in the audience.

01:38This was to be my first movie in a, except for me, all-black movie theater in a black

01:43neighborhood.

01:44This was 1972.

01:45Then, on a downtown Saturday night, Jim Brown's new movie, Black Gun, began flickering through

01:52the film projector shutter gate for an extremely excited audience of about 850 black folks,

01:58800 of them male, and frankly, I've never been the same.

02:03To one degree or another, I've spent my entire life since, both attending movies and making

02:08them, trying to recreate the experience of watching a brand new Jim Brown film on a Saturday

02:14night in a black cinema in 1972.

02:17There was no comparison.

02:20When Jim Brown sat behind his desk, and Bruce Glover, Kristen's father, and his other white

02:25gangster henchmen threatened him, and Gun hits a button under the desk and a sawed-off shotgun

02:29dropped in his lap, the massive theater full of black males cheered in a way the nine-year-old

02:35me had never experienced in a movie theater before.

02:39At the time, living with a single mother, it was probably the most masculine experience

02:44I'd ever been part of, and when the movie ended with a freeze frame of Jim Brown as

02:48Gun, the guy behind Reggie and me proclaimed out loud,

02:50Now that's a movie about a bad motherfucker.

02:53Sadly, after that night, I never saw Reggie again, and to this day, I have no idea what

02:58happened to him.

Black Gunn | movie | 1972 | Official Featurette

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