Steve Krantz was reminiscing about an experience nearly two decades ago that proved to be a landmark in his successful career as a TV and movie producer, and for black filmmaking.
Speaking from his Los Angeles office last week, he described it as an
”extraordinary amalgam of disparate people, a time which brought a white producer from New York into the black situation in a very warm and
affectionate way.”
That experience was the filming of ”Cooley High,” the warm and humorous coming-of-age story about black teenagers living in the housing projects of Chicago in the early 1960s.
”Even today when black writers and directors come into my office and they see the posters, they are knocked out to learn that I produced it,”
Krantz said.
A day later, Rick Stone sat in a leaf-shaded sidewalk cafe several blocks from the Cabrini-Green housing project that`s his home and recalled the same experience, though with more ambivalence.
”I can tell you I even cried sometimes, and I would think: `Is this it?
Is this as far as I`m going?”` said Stone, once a leader of a street gang, averting a reporter`s eyes as his own misted over.
”People lionized me like never before, and they would keep asking me why I didn`t take it further, and I would just make up stories, say I wasn`t interested and stuff, like I really didn`t care. The truth was, nobody ever called me to do nothin` else.”
Those two perspectives underscore the double-edged realities that marked the first reunion last weekend of some of the cast that convened in Chicago in 1974 to shoot ”Cooley High.”
Released by the now-defunct American International Pictures in June 1975, ”Cooley High,” touted then as a black ”American Graffiti,” is regarded by many critics and film historians as a classic.
Todd Boyd, a professor of critical studies of film at the University of Southern California, believes ”Cooley High” tapped into ”cultural nuances as only a film written by a black writer and directed by a black director can do.
”There is no doubt that `Cooley High` has influenced the proliferation of films since the mid-1980s directed by black directors such as Spike Lee and John Singleton,” Boyd said.
”It gave them something to draw from; it is a reference point. For all of these young and talented directors, `Cooley High` set the table.”
Putting it together
That the film was made at all is testimony to the fact that luck, timing and sheer nerve are probably the most important factors in the complex and frustrating business of making films.
”I needed a writer for a sequence in the sequel to the animated feature film `Fritz the Cat,` which I had produced,” said Krantz, husband of popular novelist Judith Krantz.
”Norman Lear recommended Eric Monte, a young black writer who had created the successful Lear-produced television series `Good Times.”`
”One day, Eric and I were talking about what it was like to grow up poor. Eric had grown up in the Cabrini-Green housing project; my experience was in New York. Later, we went into a recording studio and Eric repeated his story on tape.
”I edited the tape and took it to Universal Studios and said, `Here is a story with great color, texture and characters that other black films don`t have.”`
Universal offered only a development deal, so Krantz took the project to American International Pictures, a studio that specialized in low-budget films.
It, too, offered a development deal, but Krantz persisted and walked out with a production deal that same day.
What American International granted Krantz was the modest sum of $675,000 to accomplish the following: Film a movie in a distant location-Chicago-that had not hosted a movie company making a feature film in its entirety in many years; recruit most of the cast and scores of extras from a seriously deficient talent pool of black actors; ensure the safety of the cast and mostly white crew who would be working much of the time in and near Cabrini-Green; and bring the film in on budget, and on time, including a six-week shooting schedule during a fickle-weather period of early and mid-autumn.
”Chicago really didn`t have a film office as such at the time,” Krantz said. ”There was just an office set up to issue street permits for filming. As the office was operated under the old Daley regime, you could say it was basically obstructionist.”
Creative writing
Mayor Richard J. Daley, Krantz said, did not want strangers coming to his city and taking away a negative image of ”the good people of Chicago.”
Krantz feared that Monte`s gritty script would face a hard time getting approval from ”bureaucrats and political hacks” nervous about offending
”the Old Man.”
In a ruse that was rumored on the set and that Krantz last week confirmed for the first time, Krantz rewrote significant portions of the script-including parts that portrayed the police as buffoons-simply to submit to the mayor`s office for approval to film here. Needed city permits were acquired based on the bogus script.
As his director, Krantz picked Michael Schultz, a black theater director from New York who had one unreleased feature film to his name, and cast major roles with New York actors Glynn Turman, Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs and Garrett Morris, also theater veterans with little or no film experience.
Krantz and Schultz were delighted to discover the availability of energetic and talented, though mostly inexperienced, young actors, and even neighborhood people, to fill important roles, including the coincidence of casting the parts of two gang members with two members of the Cobra Stones gang: Rick Stone (who is listed in the film`s credits as Sherman Smith, his legal name) and his real-life sidekick, Norman Gibson. They were
”discovered” in a run-down coffee shop near Cabrini-Green.
American International sought to protect its investment by hiring one of the best first assistant directors in the business, Frank Beetson, a tough Hollywood veteran with the well-deserved nickname ”the Field Marshal,” to supervise activity on the sets.
Beetson, in turn, quietly inserted other veteran filmmakers into the production to augment the required, but woefully slim, supply of union film-craft people with feature-film experience in the then-nascent Chicago feature-film industry.
After a hectic month of pre-production, shooting on ”Cooley High” began early one day at a Lincoln Park location when Beetson interrupted the sweet stillness of a warm and sunny morning with his deep, raspy shout, ”Quiet on the set!”
Grueling filming schedule
What followed was a grueling nine-week filming schedule crammed into six weeks, ameliorated by a kind of Murphy`s Law in reverse: Almost everything that could possibly have gone right did at the best possible moment.
Charles Geocaris, director of the Chicago Film Office, chuckled last week when he learned of Krantz`s deft sleight of hand in the script-approval process.
”It`s much different today,” he said. ”The present Mayor Daley is very supportive of the film industry here.”
Geocaris has overseen the film office, founded in its present form under Mayor Jane Byrne in 1980, since early 1990 when it was moved out of the city`s Cultural Affairs Department and became part of the Mayor`s Office of Special Events.
”We really have to make it happen on the streets for them,” he said of the services his office now provides for feature and TV film producers.
”We pride ourselves in being able to cut through red tape for them, and provide access to everything they need, and we have an open door to the mayor.”
In the years since the filming of ”Cooley High,” Chicago has become a mecca for film producers. In 1991, according to Geocaris, they dropped $75 million into the local economy, much of it on the huge acting and production talent pool that has grown along with the burgeoning Chicago film business.
An unavoidable irony is that were ”Cooley High” to be filmed today in Chicago`s state of the art filmmaking environment, it would most likely lack the spontaneity, love and raw energy that resonates through the film.
`Cooley` reunion
The same spontaneity, love and energy resonated through the Clique Entertainment Center, a Near South Side night club, last Saturday when some
”Cooley High” cast members, who now range in age from their early 30s to their mid-50s, were reunited for a question-and-answer session with clubgoers and a party.
Only four of the cast members, the three from New York with professional acting experience before the film and Steven Williams of Chicago, have gone on to successful careers as actors in New York and Hollywood:
Turman, who played Preach, a Cooley High student and budding writer, is a regular on NBC-TV`s ”A Different World”; Hilton Jacobs, who played Cochise, a school basketball star, had a prominent role in TV`s ”Welcome Back Kotter,” among other shows; Morris, who played Mr. Mason, a teacher, was a fixture on NBC`s ”Saturday Night Live”; and Williams, who played Jimmy Lee, a street hustler, is a regular on Fox`s ”21 Jump Street.”
One local actress, Jackie Taylor, who played student Johnny Mae, is now a Chicago actress, producer and writer.
Maurice Marshall, who played Damon, also a student, is a dancer and tours the world with his troupe. Joseph Carter Wilson, who played student Tyrone, toils in the music business.
Corin Rogers, a student cutup named Pooter in the film and the man who, along with his business partner, Richard Carter, orchestrated the reunion, has had several parts in films and now has a cartooning business.
The fame they achieved by appearing in the film has proven to be a sad counterpoint to the difficult circumstances some of their fellow actors have encountered.
A real tragedy
In at least one case, there was real tragedy. Norman Gibson, the gang member who played Robert in the film, was shot to death on a street corner near Cabrini-Green two years after the film was made.
Last week, Rick Stone reflected on the death of his best friend. ”You can`t imagine what it did to me,” he said. ”He was my brother, we were each other`s strength.”
Stone, 40, has served time for armed robbery, and he said his disappointing experience with films followed him into prison.
”The lowest time was when I was in the joint and someone brought me a copy of Jet magazine, with a little story about me serving time, and it was the only press I got after all the excitement and publicity and stuff had died down after the movie came out.”
At the ”Cooley High” reunion, the cast members sat together once again, on a raised stage, beneath glaring lights, laughing, high-fiving and taking questions from a small crowd of still-smitten fans.
Someone asked Stone what he is doing today.
Stone, who still dreams of a career in acting, stood up, grinned sheepishly and said, ”I work in Cabrini-Green with kids in a youth program, and I`m an umpire for their baseball league.”
”You might say he`s a roooooole model,” Corin Rogers crowed from the other end of the panel.
In the laughter and applause that followed, Stone bowed deeply and acknowledged his first standing ovation since the June 1975 Chicago premiere of ”Cooley High.”