Mother Earth Is In Pain And Ailing

Those Titles, Executive Producer Or Actor, Are Unimportant. I Always Try To Approach My Role As An Artist. The First Thing You Want To Do, That You Attempt To Do As An Artist, Is To Have Some Sort Of Input Into The Material That You Are Working On. That Is How My Process Begins; I Say To Myself: "i Want To Do This Kind Of Work Or I Want To Do That Kind Of Work."

In 1967, The Students At San Francisco State Invited The Poet Amiri Baraka To The Campus For A Semester. He Attracted Other Influential Black Writers Such As Sonia Sanchez, Ed Bullins, Eldridge Cleaver. What Emerged Was Something We Called The Community Communications Program. That's How I Got Involved; I Got Involved In A Little Play

I Was Able To Do The Saint Of Fort Washington, On The Relationship Between Two Homeless Men.

I Remember When Langston Hughes Used To Write A Column In Black Newspapers Around This Character Jesse B. Semple. He Always Used That As A Voice, Sometimes In Comic Ways, Of Having Everyday People's Voice Come Through This Common Folk Hero, Who Was An Ordinary Working Guy. He Would Talk About Anything From Police Brutality To The Korean War. Those Kinds Of Expression And Identification Are No Longer Prevalent In Our Popular Culture.

Hollywood Is Designed To Check The Box Office On Monday Morning And See: "how'd We Do? How Much?" It's Another Facet Of This Whole Culture Of Accumulation And Consumption. Black People Are Caught Up In It, White People Are Caught Up In It, White Actors, Black Actors, Female Actresses - Everybody's Caught Up In It.