Entertainment

Wanda’s Picks: Interview with Nick Cannon, Star of Spike Lee’s New Film Chi-Raq

Published

8 years ago

November 27, 2015

By Wanda Sabir

Power couple, Demetrius “Chi-Raq” Dupree (Nick Cannon) and Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris) have all any young couple could want, fame and power, the kind of power won, maybe even earned through fear.

With money, fame and notoriety, which come from Chi-Raq’s prowess on the bandstand and battlefield, the couple strides fearlessly on Chi-town streets. Spartan nor rival gangsters, Trojans, headed by the one eyed Cyclops (Wesley Snipes), know what defeat looks like until a girl-child is killed.

This senseless death shakes Lysistrata from her perch, her flight setting in motion a series of events Greek playwright Aristophanes couldn’t have imagined nor her lover and other misguided Black men, all infected with a disease which promotes self-destruction and annihilation, rather than self-determination and progress.

Spike Lee’s “Chi-Raq,” with co-writer, Kevin Willmott, rated R, is a discussion those who care about Black lives need to address. Teyonah Parris as Lysistrata and Nick Cannon as Chi-Raq hold the space, an urgent and necessary space for this kind of dialogue. No one is born a killer, killers are man-made. The film opens in Bay Area Theatres, Dec. 4.

In a recent interview in San Francisco with Nick Cannon, he told me he went to a funeral a week earlier for a child killed in the same neighborhood where the film was shot. He talks about such unnecessary violence as misguided manhood rites, rites of passage emptied of crucial and necessary values which come from knowing one’s history.

NC: Tyson Lee was executed. Intentionally shot 7 times. A 9 year old. It was hard to look at the [child] in the casket. This is where we’re at. This is where we’ve come as a people? This is a heinous act.

Demonic. There is no reason that this should ever occur. I understand, we have lost the code. I understand being a warrior, being a soldier, wanting to be that as a man, [but] when you take the code out of that, take the true principles of protection out of that—then what are you?

I hear the young brothers and their music, being killers and savages, beasts. We’re not that. We’re kings and queens, not savages. Our ancestors did way too much for us [come to this].

WS: How does Chi-Raq wrap his mind around ending a war, putting down the gun, and having a conversation with Cyclops, the fierce Trojan leader portrayed by Wesley Snipes?

Nick says, “Wesley is a caricature. I think he purposely did that. He didn’t want to glorify the negativity – what a gang leader could be. He plays him in a comedic way. I actually had to come from the opposite end of the spectrum and stay true to foundation and the dark side of what this life actually can bring and the journey my character Chi-Raq [takes].

“[Chi-Raq] is stubborn, bull headed, egotistical. [He] has this idea of what [he] thinks manhood is, because [he] didn’t have a man in [his] life to show [him] the proper way to be a man. Ultimately, [Chi-Raq] gets to stand up and be held accountable for what [he] character puts himself through, put others through.”

WS: The violence was not something we did to each other, it was something we experienced as a people. We held onto our values as human beings. Dr. Wade Nobles speaks of African personhood often, and notes that when we kill someone that looks like us, it is suicide, because we are killing ourselves.

NC: Genocide, that’s what it is. Violence begets violence. Hurt people hurt people.

WS: Right right, so the healing needs to happen.

NC: Yeah. It is a cry from pain, that’s why we need to recondition our minds. We have to recondition our souls. It only takes one person. That’s the beauty of this film.

It was one sister who stood up and started a movement. When you look at the poster, you say, that’s a strong black woman that represents a tale that is over 2000 years. For my daughter to see that poster and say, that’s Lysistrata.

It’s a beautiful thing. It’s how we begin to recondition our minds. It is going to take time but we all want it, we all yearn for it. We want people to focus in on it to demand respect for life.

With long time musical collaborator, Terrence Blanchard, at the helm, here, who knows? There might be a few lessons we can hum on our way from the theater.

For more by Wanda Sabir, go to wandaspicks.com

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Oakland Post: Week of April 17 – 23, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of April 17 – 23, 2024

Published

4 days ago

April 19, 2024

Oakland Post

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Entertainment

O.J. Simpson, 76, Dies of Prostate Cancer

Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson, who rose to fame as a college football player who went on to the NFL and parlayed his talents in acting and sportscasting, succumbed to prostate cancer on April 10, his family announced.

Published

6 days ago

April 17, 2024

Oakland Post

Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson. Wikipedia photo

By Post Staff

Born and raised in San Francisco, the Galileo High School graduate was recruited by the University of Southern California after he was on a winning Junior College All-American team.

At USC, he gained wide acclaim as a running back leading to him becoming the No. 1 pick in the AFL-NFL draft in 1969 and joining the Buffalo Bills, where he had demanded – and received — the largest contract in professional sports history: $650,000 over five years. In 1978, the Bills traded Simpson to his hometown team, the San Francisco 49ers, retiring from the game in 1979.

Simpson’s acting career had begun before his pro football career with small parts in 1960s TV (“Dragnet”) before “Roots” and film (“The Klansman,” “The Towering Inferno,” Capricorn One”).

He was also a commentator for “Monday Night Football,” and “The NFL on NBC,” and in the mid-1970s Simpson’s good looks and amiability made him, according to People magazine, “the first b\Black athlete to become a bona fide lovable media superstar.”

The Hertz rent-a-car commercials raised his recognition factor while raising Hertz’s profit by than 50%, making him critical to the company’s bottom line.

It could be said that even more than his success as a football star, the commercials of his running through airports endeared him to the Black community at a time when it was still unusual for a Black person to represent a national, mainstream company.

He remained on Hertz team into the 1990s while also getting income endorsing Pioneer Chicken, Honey Baked Ham and Calistoga water company products and running O.J. Simpson Enterprises, which owned hotels and restaurants.

He married childhood sweetheart Marguerite Whitley when he was 19 and became the father of three children. Before he divorced in 1979, he met waitress and beauty queen Nicole Brown, who he would marry in 1985. A stormy relationship before, during and after their marriage ended, it would lead to a highway car chase as police sought to arrest Simpson for the murder by stabbing of Brown and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994.

The pursuit, arrest, and trial of Simpson were among the most widely publicized events in American history, Wikipedia reported.

Characterized as the “Trial of the Century,” he was acquitted by a jury in 1995 but found liable in the amount of $33 million in a civil action filed by the victims’ families three years later.

Simpson would be ensnared in the criminal justice system 12 years later when he was arrested after forcing his way into a Las Vegas hotel room to recover sports memorabilia he believed belonged to him.

In 2008, he received a sentence of 33 years and was paroled nine years later in 2017.

When his death was announced, Simpson’s accomplishments and downfalls were acknowledged.

Sports analyst Christine Brennan said: “… Even if you didn’t love football, you knew O.J. because of his ability to transcend sports and of course become the businessman and the pitchman that he was.

“And then the trial, and the civil trial, the civil case he lost, and the fall from grace that was extraordinary and well-deserved, absolutely self-induced, and a man that would never be seen the same again,” she added.

“OJ Simpson played an important role in exposing the racial divisions in America,” attorney Alan Dershowitz, an adviser on Simpson’s legal “dream team” told the Associated Press by telephone. “His trial also exposed police corruption among some officials in the Los Angeles Police Department. He will leave a mixed legacy. Great athlete. Many people think he was guilty. Some think he was innocent.”

“Cookie and I are praying for O.J. Simpson’s children … and his grandchildren following his passing. I know this is a difficult time,” Magic Johnson said on X.

“I feel that the system failed Nicole Brown Simpson and failed battered women everywhere,” attorney Gloria Allred, who once represented Nicole’s family, told ABC News. “I don’t mourn for O.J. Simpson. I do mourn for Nicole Brown Simpson and her family, and they should be remembered.”

Simpson was diagnosed with prostate cancer about a year ago and was undergoing chemotherapy treatment, according to Pro Football Hall of Fame President Jim Porter. He died in his Las Vegas, Nevada, home with his family at his side.

He is survived by four children: Arnelle and Jason from his first marriage and Sydney and Justin from his second marriage. He was predeceased son, Aaren, who drowned in a family swimming pool in 1979.

Sources for this report include Wikipedia, ABC News, Associated Press, and X.