White's favorite blaxploitation films
Trouble Man (1972) Robert Hooks, a self-assured L.A. private eye, "is the coolest leading man ever."
The Mack (1973) Max Julien is a big-time pimp. "You could re-release it today, and I think it'd get nominated for an Oscar."
Three the Hard Way (1974) Jim Brown, Jim Kelly and Fred Williamson team up: "How can you go against three of the predominant black action movie stars of the day?"
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Breaking into Hollywood doesn't always come down to connections. For actor Michael Jai White, who has black belts in seven martial arts, it was combinations.
White, 41, literally spin-kicked and kung-fu-chopped his way into the movie business in the '90s as a fight coordinator and stuntman. Since then, he has played "a lot of macho-type characters," as he puts it. A partial list includes a heavyweight champ (Tyson), the first black comic-book movie superhero ("Spawn"), a Gotham crime boss ("The Dark Knight") and a street-fighting ex-con ("Blood and Bone").
But people who know White say he's not just one bad brother. He's also a funny mother, the kind of guy whose voice mail greeting directs callers to "speak unclear and with absolute nonsense after the beep."
That sounds like something you might hear in White's latest film, "Black Dynamite," a hip and hilarious blaxploitation spoof opening this weekend. The title role, played by White, is a righteously angry, Magnum-toting ex-CIA cat who uncovers a wicked plot by Whitey to sell poisoned malt liquor to the ghetto. Directed by Scott Sanders, "Dynamite" pokes fun at a range of attitudes and trends that defined black urban movies in the '70s. It has flamboyant street characters, racist cops, chintzy special effects, bad zoom-ins and a retro-cool theme song that introduces the hero.
"I want to give people that feeling back when blaxploitation movies came out," says White, sitting at a Mediterranean-style bistro near his home in L.A. "People were made of different stuff back then. The average actor went through something. I think that's one reason so many of our leading men are imports now. I want to celebrate the American action hero. Hopefully, 'Black Dynamite' will be considered one of them."
White, a 6-foot-2 brother with rippling muscles and a deep voice, is surprisingly disarming. He digs chess, Monty Python and Cameron Crowe movies. He doesn't drink or smoke. "Deep down," Sanders says, "he's really a nerd."
Growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., White was an early fan of blaxploitation flicks, which had bold, irresistible-sounding titles such as "Super Fly," "The Spook Who Sat by the Door" and "The Big Doll House." "I've probably seen 95% of what's been made," he says, smiling.
For every classic, there's a spattering of clunkers made on puny budgets with amateur actors giving bizarre line readings while the mic boom is drooping into the shot. Once Hollywood saw blaxploitation as a cash cow, White says, "they cranked 'em out in two weeks." For laughs, White used to edit the mistakes together. He also threw blaxploitation-night parties, where guests like Quentin Tarantino were encouraged to heckle. "I gotta tell you," he says, "it's hours of drop-on-the-floor laughing, funny moments."
A lot of those bits are revived in "Dynamite," a film that, were it made a generation ago, could have starred Jim Brown or Fred Williamson. Archetypes for black manhood in their day, they did it all: sported the finest threads, bed the baddest babes and stuck it to the Man for cheering black audiences. But then, White is sort of a throwback to that time, too.
"The funny thing about Mike," Sanders says, "is he's more of a born-blaxploitation star than any of those guys were. He has the body of a football player, but he can do karate like Bruce Lee."
He also looks cool in a $100 leisure suit.
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