Freedom through speech

American Visions, Oct-Nov, 1998 by Denene Millner

You take one look at him and just know he's going to et got. He is skinny and he is frail-looking and he has these big, puppy-dog eyes and he is quiet -- and you can tell from the look in his fellow inmates' eyes that they believe the word that's been spreading on the cellblock of the prison they call Dodge City: Raymond Joshua, petty pot dealer, is a snitch. It is this dangerous combination -- the looks and the label -- that usually leads to a lethal end in a house of detention. Usually.

But then, just as two groups in the prison yard close in on him and it's clear that he's getting ready to catch a serious beat-down -- or worse -- thin, doe-eyed Ray breaks into a loud, deep, furious ditty that goes, in part, like this:

stealing us was the smartest thing they ever did too bad they don't teach the truth to their kids

our influence on them is the reflection they see when they look into their minstrel mirror and talk about their culture their existence is that of a schizophrenic vulture

yeah, there's no repentance they are bound to live an infinite consecutive executive life sentence so what are you bound to live, nigga so while you're out there serving your time

i'll be in sync with the moon while you run from the sun life of the womb reflected by guns worshipper of moons i am the sun and we are public enemies number one! one one one! one one one!

And just like that, Raymond storms off the yard, exhausted, leaving both crews, who had clearly been prepared to hurt him, standing silent -- awed. Ray's recitation, it appears, has saved him from the shank.

And even when the credits finish rolling and the lights come back up and you remember that this was a movie -- no matter how realistic it seemed -- you are hard-pressed to change your mind on this one fact: Words, when used property, can transcend social subjugation and set people free.

This is the message pounded home in the new movie Slam (Trimark Pictures, October), starring poet Saul Williams as the prophetic Ray Joshua. Williams, the 1996 Nuyorican Poets Cafe's Grand Slam champion, who has traveled the spokenword circuit with the likes of the Last Poets, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez and music artists Erykah Badu and the Fugees, is counting on audiences to hear that message -- and on Hollywood to accept it. "I think it will affect entertainment in surreal ways, as all entertainment should [be affected]," Williams says, his words tumbling over one another, almost as if he's leading a cipher.

"It's been quite some time since it's happened, because I think America's Hollywood has bastardized the entertainment system over time and just catered to the idea that the public doesn't really want to think, and they say, `So why should we make them?' I think Slam will show that there can be as much entertainment in blowing an interesting idea into someone's head as there can be in blowing someone's head off."

Slam is born of the real-life experiences of African-American men within the prison system, as witnessed by two of its principals: convict-turned-producer Richard Stratton and convict-turned-national-columnist Bonz Malone. Both men teamed with award-winning documentary film-maker Marc Levin to make the film, which was shot in Washington, D.C., over a 10-day stretch in 1996.

The film tells the story of a gifted poet from the 'hood who gets sucked into the prison system on a two-bit drug charge and emerges from his private hell with a powerful voice -- only to realize that he could very well lose it again in one week, when he goes back before a judge who will likely sentence him to three more years in prison. It is during that week that Raymond falls in love, finds himself, and searches for the "magical door" that will help him escape the cell and keep him in the "new world" he's discovered.

The reality is, of course, that there is no magical door -- and it is his girlfriend, Lauren (portrayed by Sonja Sohn), who must help him reckon with the fact that his freedom is, in fact, inside of him.

Heralded as drama verite, or a fine blending of fictional material shot in documentary form, Slam was filmed in D.C.'s housing projects and prison yards. Perhaps because the story was loosely written, it depends heavily on the realness of the streets and the yard and the people in both -- what cameraman John Kirby describes as "the filmed voice of real people."

In fact, in the entire movie, there are all of four "real" actors. In Slam, the screenplay book that accompanies the film, Kirby writes that the rest of the ensemble consists of extras mined from the projects' apartments and the cells of the D.C. prison -- all of whom were eager to pull from their own experiences.

"Like a moving epiphanal feast," Kirby writes, "the presence of the moviemakers in the prison and the ghetto asks of everyone participating: Why and how are people living like this, in poverty and prison, in estrangement? And what can we do about it? The truth is in the collected questions and answers of the ensemble."

And there is truth in the pivotal prison yard scene in which Raymond uses his poem to escape his captors: Only 16 of the 150 prisoners in the scene know that a movie is being filmed. Can't get much more real than that!