african-american directors series/film fatales #219: love & basketball (gina prince-bythewood, 2000)
geezer cinema: wicked (john m. chu, 2024)

african-american directors series: rodney king (spike lee, 2017)

This is the seventeenth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2024-25", a "33-week-long community challenge" where "you must watch one previously unseen film that fits the criteria of the theme for the week." This is the 10th annual challenge, and my sixth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", "2022-23", and 2023-24). Week 17 is called "True Crime Week":

If you listened to any podcasts over the winter break, there's a good chance some of them were true crime. Truman Capote's groundbreaking non-fiction novel In Cold Blood is generally credited with creating the modern true crime genre, and the genre has seen a resurgence in the past decade, particularly with podcasts like Serial and My Favorite Murder. They've gotten so popular that we're now seeing fictional stories about true crime podcasts, like the show Only Murders in the Building or the novel Devil House. There have also been countless new movies and shows, as well as controversy regarding the sensationalizing of real tragedies. Murders, crimes, journalism, and investigations fascinate us, and this week we're on the hunt for the best examples in film. This list may be a good place to start.

This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen true crime film.

This film has the imprimatur of Spike Lee, but it's not clear how much he "directed" Rodney King. The film documents the one-man show, written by and starring Roger Guenveur Smith, and it's Smith who appears to be the real auteur. There's no point in evaluating it as a film ... it's a stage presentation with few frills. Smith's powerful performance makes it all worthwhile. He adopts several voices over the course of the film while relying on research he did about King, the case, and the social ramifications. We don't really get to know the man Rodney King ... in fact, Smith shows that "Rodney King" is almost a blank slate onto which people project their opinions. It must be hard to be that blank slate, and King is a sympathetic figure here, but Smith goes at it from the outside, which is how most people reference Rodney King to this day. Smith opens with the words of Texas rapper Willie D, from his song "Rodney K":

Fuck Rodney King in his ass
When I see tha mothafucka I'mma blast
Boom in his head, boom, boom in his back
Just like that

People who don't recognize this as the lyrics to a song will be shocked into the film's beginning, as Smith doesn't specify that he is quoting from someone else. It's use here shows that Smith is going to look at King from a variety of perspectives. All the while, Smith's work as an actor is superb, as he works up a sweat, gets emotionally involved, puts us in the shoes of King and everyone else. At these times, the lack of artifice in the film making might actually help.

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