Speaker 1: Oh he is, folks, it's showtime.
Speaker 2: People say good money to see this movie.
Speaker 3: When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas,
Speaker 3: hot popcorn, and no monsters in the protection booth.
Speaker 2: Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring, don it.
Speaker 1: Off, turn it so listen, phyllis been a long ride.
Speaker 1: How about to smoke my friend back here?
Speaker 4: There's a fine here stop.
Speaker 2: A cough.
Speaker 3: Riverbend, Georgia, nineteen sixty six. A timeless community where nothing change.
Speaker 2: There'll be some.
Speaker 3: Trouble if you come to town this morning, bikers, I'm wanting.
Speaker 3: You can't just go on killing negroes.
Speaker 2: Times you change.
Speaker 3: Three Vietnam combat hero is falsely accused of war crimes.
Speaker 3: Are hiding out in Riverbank.
Speaker 2: It's just a place to stay for a few days,
Speaker 2: that's all. You can't stay here.
Speaker 1: We're only a mouth in town here. I don't have
Speaker 1: time to play.
Speaker 2: Where's the gun?
Speaker 5: No, we all know what happened to Marcus now as
Speaker 5: the example of a man going to the laws and
Speaker 5: god damn it, look what happened to him.
Speaker 2: Now, come on out here, boy, I want to talk.
Speaker 1: I'm doing the talking. I'm take care.
Speaker 4: It is narrow there's only one way to save this problem.
Speaker 1: That's to put a bullet in his head.
Speaker 2: All right, God damn it, get back. I swhere I can.
Speaker 2: I don't ever ever want to hear the words boy,
Speaker 2: nigger or color to use again. Understood, I'm talking.
Speaker 1: About probably of you. Sound like we're about to have
Speaker 1: a revolution.
Speaker 2: Only one man can teach them to fight. That's the
Speaker 2: time we need to The town will be ours. The
Speaker 2: people are now our hostages. We rather don't know what
Speaker 2: the uh situation in the town is.
Speaker 1: We can't get close. En'll find out.
Speaker 2: We get work from you that you have located the hostages.
Speaker 1: You gonna know one of that front line.
Speaker 6: Try.
Speaker 4: I've located and freed the hostages. They're in the big church.
Speaker 1: They're all safe.
Speaker 2: You can move in now, Margaret Avery. You don't get
Speaker 2: out of here killing Steve James, Tony Franks. Two men
Speaker 2: locked in combat.
Speaker 1: You Brad, it's been alone, Tom trummin.
Speaker 2: Riverbend. The battle for freedom has just begun.
Speaker 1: Hey boy, I want to talk to you so many.
Speaker 7: Hey folks, Welcome to a special episode of the Projection Booth.
Speaker 7: I'm your host Mike White. On this episode, it is
Speaker 7: the return of director Sam Furstenberg. He's talking about the
Speaker 7: film Riverbend from nineteen eighty nine, which is getting a
Speaker 7: new revival thanks to the efforts of Michael J. Dennis
Speaker 7: from Real Black Cinema. That's our E E L B
Speaker 7: L A c K dot com. Film is available for
Speaker 7: pre order now through Real Black dot com. Thank you
Speaker 7: so much for listening, and I hope you enjoyed this interview.
Speaker 7: Before we even start to talk about Riverbend, I want
Speaker 7: to know a little bit more about Steve James and
Speaker 7: when you first met him.
Speaker 1: Here is the story of the relationship between Steve James
Speaker 1: and myself. At some point was nineteen eighty five, we
Speaker 1: decided the company Kennon decided to do the movie American Ninja.
Speaker 1: It was sequel to another kind of equal to another
Speaker 1: three Ninja movies that they produced in the previously, and
Speaker 1: we started. We worked on a script, myself, producers and
Speaker 1: a writer, and those two characters emerged in the script,
Speaker 1: the American Ninja, Joe Armstrong and his sidekick Curtis Jackson.
Speaker 1: So and there are soldiers in the military and both
Speaker 1: of them martial artists. Once the script and the character
Speaker 1: was clear in our mind, what we want to do.
Speaker 1: We started with the casting, so we decided on American Ninja.
Speaker 1: So we decided on a casting which is called opencasting.
Speaker 1: Not only agents usually casting auditioning in the movies, messages
Speaker 1: being sent to agents, agents sent candidates, but we decided
Speaker 1: to open it. Anybody who wants to come in audition
Speaker 1: for these two parts American Ninja and Psyche can come
Speaker 1: in martial arts school, amateur actors, agents, people to represent
Speaker 1: by actually whoever wants to come. About four hundred young
Speaker 1: people came. We had two stages of First they had
Speaker 1: to meet Mike Stone. Mike Stone was the choreographer of
Speaker 1: the movie Famous Martial Artists. So first they had to
Speaker 1: meet with Mike Stone, and Mike Stone has to determine
Speaker 1: if they are fit to do the part. As I said,
Speaker 1: they didn't have to be necessarily martial artists, because if
Speaker 1: somebody feits and you know, Mike Stone can teach them
Speaker 1: the moves, et cetera. So first they had to go
Speaker 1: to Mike Stone. If Mike Stone approved, they moved to
Speaker 1: the second room, which was to meet me, the casting director.
Speaker 1: But lines et cetera, et cetera. The process of choosing
Speaker 1: American Ninja was lanthy to couple of stages. But the
Speaker 1: part of Jackson, I must tell you, Mike, when Steve
Speaker 1: James walked into the room, you know he's built. He
Speaker 1: was built like a like an Atlas. What a build.
Speaker 1: And he came and he introduced himself, and I asked him,
Speaker 1: are you martial artists? Yeah, he was a martial artist,
Speaker 1: Steve James. Probably we talked a little bit and maybe
Speaker 1: we read we read some lines together. I don't remember
Speaker 1: that much, and I knew right there and then we
Speaker 1: don't have to look any farther. This is Jackson. This
Speaker 1: is the character we are looking for. Probably the company
Speaker 1: made an offer money offer. I don't know how how
Speaker 1: this this side of it goes, and he accepted it.
Speaker 1: And we liked him right away, even before we had
Speaker 1: the finalist American Ninja. So this was Steve jack now
Speaker 1: Steve James now in a low budget movies. As you know,
Speaker 1: we don't have time. We don't have usually paget a
Speaker 1: hot time for pre rehearsals to meet and read the scripts.
Speaker 1: Usually we don't. And I was already sent right away
Speaker 1: to the Philippine to start to prepare once once we
Speaker 1: we also choose chose Michael Dudikov. The second time I
Speaker 1: saw Steve James was in the Philippine in Manila when
Speaker 1: he arrived, and this was the first time also that
Speaker 1: he met Michael Dudekov and Michael Ludykov met with him.
Speaker 1: The chemistry, as we know today, were fantastic, was fantastic,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know this, this this duo of American
Speaker 1: Ninja and Jackson, you know, Armstrong and Jackson worked fantastically.
Speaker 1: So mean you know when when when the movie did
Speaker 1: well and the company you you know, Mike, we did
Speaker 1: not do American Ninja number two right away after General,
Speaker 1: but rather we we shot the movie. We filmed the
Speaker 1: movie Avenging four in between them and Avenging Force also
Speaker 1: called for a similar situation in New Aleans political so
Speaker 1: a black candidate for city and the hero, the Michael
Speaker 1: the hero, so that it was perfect. So Menacham Golan
Speaker 1: actually asked me, gave me the script and asked me,
Speaker 1: do you think can you read this script? It was
Speaker 1: while we were mixing the sound one day. Menach Golan
Speaker 1: came to the mixing stage and he gave me the script.
Speaker 1: I didn't know anything about it at that point. I
Speaker 1: did not know that Chuck Norris already rejected the script,
Speaker 1: and he said, can you please read it and tell
Speaker 1: me if this script is good for Michael and Steve,
Speaker 1: because by then they already saw the chemistry. I read
Speaker 1: the script over a night that came back next next
Speaker 1: morning to the office. I said, I said, menagaan Golan,
Speaker 1: this is a fantastic script, a fantastic script and good
Speaker 1: for both of them. So we traveled to a to
Speaker 1: New Orleans and we filmed the movie. While we were
Speaker 1: in New Orleans, the explosion of American Injia happened. It
Speaker 1: was distributed all over the world. So as we came
Speaker 1: back from New Orleans, I was in the editing. The
Speaker 1: company already knew that they're producing American India Number two.
Speaker 1: The day after we finished the sound mixing with the music.
Speaker 1: The next day, I was already on the plane my
Speaker 1: way to South Africa to prepare for our American India
Speaker 1: Number two and Steve. One day, Steve, Steve James calls
Speaker 1: me and he said, listen, you know South Africa apartheid,
Speaker 1: how is it? Tell me I'm reluctant. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I should come or not. By then it was
Speaker 1: kind of the end of apartheid in South Africa. So
Speaker 1: I told him Steve, first of all, it does not
Speaker 1: apply to America, of course, but nonetheless being in a
Speaker 1: part of it is not a pleasant situation. But it
Speaker 1: was winding out. It was already the end of apartheid. Actually,
Speaker 1: the week that I arrived was the last week of
Speaker 1: different identity cars. They used to have three different identity
Speaker 1: cars according to the races, but this was canceled. The
Speaker 1: week I arrived was the last week of the three
Speaker 1: different So I said, no, save the atmosphere is excellent,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera, h relaxive. And he came to
Speaker 1: South Africa and the first weekend we decided to go
Speaker 1: out on the street to a market. It was Sunday,
Speaker 1: the market. Now, the minute we walked out with him
Speaker 1: in the street, we didn't realize he was already a
Speaker 1: hero because the kids already saw the movie American Ninja.
Speaker 2: We didn't know.
Speaker 1: We couldn't walk with him in the street because in
Speaker 1: South Africa he was this African hero, you know, in
Speaker 1: American African, but nonetheless for them it was this African hero.
Speaker 1: We just couldn't walk with him in the street. He
Speaker 1: was mapped by the children, the kids who just saw
Speaker 1: the movie America Ninja. So this was so we became.
Speaker 1: It was friendly. We were you know, we lived not
Speaker 1: far from each other here in Los Angeles during the
Speaker 1: time we were in South Africa. He married in Israeli.
Speaker 1: His wife, Nava, was an Israeli. So there was a
Speaker 1: lot on kamen, a lot of camen between me and
Speaker 1: Steve James. We liked the same type of movies. We
Speaker 1: were crazy about Akira Corosawa movies, both of us. So
Speaker 1: there was a lot of camen, and we became very
Speaker 1: good friends. But you know, sadly enough, as you know,
Speaker 1: he passed away two to too young, too early.
Speaker 5: And how did Riverband come about?
Speaker 1: So those three movies are out, you know, a big deal,
Speaker 1: America and Ninja one and two. Riverbend was not as
Speaker 1: successful as American Ninja by any means, but maybe I
Speaker 1: directed a few movies in between one or two. One
Speaker 1: day I received from my agent script. It was called
Speaker 1: The Night of the Eagle before Reburban. Night of the Eagle,
Speaker 1: big script, one hundred and sixty pages, one hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty pages, and I read it just you know offer
Speaker 1: through my agent. Somebody sent you a script. I didn't
Speaker 1: know anything about it. They want you to read it
Speaker 1: and see if you would like to direct it. I
Speaker 1: read the script. I'm dying to direct this movie. This
Speaker 1: is fantastic material, unbelievable, and so I gave my positive, real,
Speaker 1: you know, affirmative. I want to do it, and I
Speaker 1: had a meeting. It turned out the producers are from Texas.
Speaker 1: It's money, it's the investors from Texas. Producers are from Texas.
Speaker 1: And my agent told me they will come to Los
Speaker 1: Angeles to meet with you, and indeed they There were
Speaker 1: four producers, two couple, and they came to Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: They came to my house. You know. We arranged the
Speaker 1: meeting in my house. And while we were talking, they
Speaker 1: wanted to sense me out if I if I understand
Speaker 1: the material. I guess and then they while, how do
Speaker 1: you know about me? So they saw the movies, especially
Speaker 1: Avenging Force. They saw Avenging Force the main the writer,
Speaker 1: he was more knowledgeable, the writer, producer Sam Vance. He
Speaker 1: saw the movie and the movie deals with white supremacy,
Speaker 1: it deals with the racial subject Avenging Force. And then
Speaker 1: they turned to me, they say, do you think you
Speaker 1: can bring in Steve James. We want him for the
Speaker 1: lead part. I told him, I'm sure Steve James will
Speaker 1: be more than happy to do the script this movie.
Speaker 1: He will be more than happy. So it was, you know,
Speaker 1: we parted, and then I learned to my agent that
Speaker 1: they want me to direct the movie. They want to
Speaker 1: cut a deal and and at the same time they
Speaker 1: want me to bring in Steve James into the project.
Speaker 1: And I think, I don't remember the detail like contact Steve,
Speaker 1: you know, gave him the script. Of course he was
Speaker 1: very very happy to do such a little They know,
Speaker 1: they didn't even need me. They could have contacted him
Speaker 1: directly because for him this this movie was and that's
Speaker 1: this was the initial contact between me and the producers
Speaker 1: of the of Riverband eventually Ribband. At the time, it
Speaker 1: was Night of the Eagle, and that's how we started
Speaker 1: to work on the project.
Speaker 5: Mister Davis, I would love to get a little bit more.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I'm a filmmaker by train, but I
Speaker 4: have a YouTube channel called Real Black TV, and a
Speaker 4: little bit before the pandemic, I started uploading movies that
Speaker 4: I thought were falling into the digital divide, you know,
Speaker 4: because we from a black film in Philadelphia. You know,
Speaker 4: things that if they weren't preserved or shared, they would
Speaker 4: be forgotten. And one of those movies happened to be Riverbend,
Speaker 4: which is a movie that I didn't really know that
Speaker 4: much about until I met a gentleman named Charles Woods,
Speaker 4: who's sort of my mentor. He does many lectures on
Speaker 4: the channel about black film history, and it was one
Speaker 4: of his favorite films. In fact, he had five VHS
Speaker 4: copies in his collection, right, So that alone impressed me, Like,
Speaker 4: why do you have so many? We had this at
Speaker 4: the video store, we had like one copy. Why do
Speaker 4: you have five? And he said, watch it and you'll understand. Right,
Speaker 4: So when I saw it for the first time, after
Speaker 4: you know, being tutored by Charles, you understood this is
Speaker 4: a very special film. It's one of the few films
Speaker 4: where black characters have agency over their own fate. Most
Speaker 4: of the films made up until that point and even
Speaker 4: to today, that have black themes or majority black casts,
Speaker 4: there's always some white savior or some sort of a
Speaker 4: character where they don't really get to determine their own fate.
Speaker 4: Even a movie like say Queen and Slim or juice,
Speaker 4: you know, the characters meet their fate through accident as
Speaker 4: opposed to deliberate decision, you know. And it just seemed
Speaker 4: like this was one of two movies that I can
Speaker 4: think of. And I know a lot about movies that
Speaker 4: show black people standing up for one another, teaching one
Speaker 4: another what they know to empower themselves. It's this movie
Speaker 4: and one from nineteen seventy three called The Spooky Sap
Speaker 4: of the Door. It's a very important film to me,
Speaker 4: and I wanted to share it. I had on a
Speaker 4: YouTube channel, and about a year later, it's twenty nineteen,
Speaker 4: well about a year and a half later, I get
Speaker 4: an email from Sam. The header is like, I am
Speaker 4: Sam Furstenberg, director of Riverbend. So I'm about to open
Speaker 4: it up. And I'm like, oh, this is gonna be
Speaker 4: a cease and desist, you know, I'm ready to take
Speaker 4: it down. And he said, no, you're doing this film
Speaker 4: a great service. It was produced independently and it needs
Speaker 4: all the exposure it can get. And from there we
Speaker 4: started talking about how the film was made, how does
Speaker 4: this movie even exist? And we started to talk. In
Speaker 4: the process of our conversations, a thirty five millimeter print
Speaker 4: shows up as a listing on eBay, and at the
Speaker 4: time I had never bought a thirty five millimeter print
Speaker 4: of anything, you know, but I knew this was important.
Speaker 4: It might be the only print that exists, is what
Speaker 4: I was thinking. So I put a bit on it
Speaker 4: and we won. It was in South Africa, so it
Speaker 4: was during the pandemic in twenty twenty one when this
Speaker 4: was happening, and it took about three or four months
Speaker 4: for the show up. I wasn't even show it was
Speaker 4: going to make it here, and then when it finally
Speaker 4: showed up, it took another six months or so for
Speaker 4: me to raise the money to get it transferred to
Speaker 4: case Scan and it had every scratch known a man.
Speaker 4: It must have sam it must have played through every
Speaker 4: projector every crappy grindhouse theater between New York and Johannesburg.
Speaker 4: But fortunately found Preig Rodgers at Deaf Crocodile and he
Speaker 4: cleaned it up. It looked beautiful. We had to replace
Speaker 4: some scenes that were missing, but we premiered it in Denton,
Speaker 4: Texas in January twenty twenty four, and from there a
Speaker 4: whole bunch of series of serendipities happened. That led us
Speaker 4: to be able to obtain the negative from MGM Amazon,
Speaker 4: not the least of which was meeting Valerie Vance, the
Speaker 4: widow of Sam France and co producer Sam.
Speaker 5: Can you tell me a little bit more about the
Speaker 5: actual filming of the movie, because it's I mean, it's
Speaker 5: so ambitious that it's actually a period piece and it
Speaker 5: looks fantastic, really recalls the nineteen fifties, nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned earlier, the money the investors were from Texas,
Speaker 1: from the Dallas area, and they put the money privately.
Speaker 1: The whole movie was financed privately, and they had one stipulation,
Speaker 1: we must shoot, we must film in Texas. They were
Speaker 1: not willing to move with any other Now, the story
Speaker 1: takes place I think in Georgia in the south, so
Speaker 1: but this was okay. We very quickly we found out
Speaker 1: that there is an area in Texas south of Dallas
Speaker 1: which is called Wak Sahachi. The main town is Waxahachi,
Speaker 1: and the entire surrounding of this Wak Sahachi has very
Speaker 1: much the look of the South of Georgia. I mean, anyway,
Speaker 1: it's the same type of more or less characteristics architecturally
Speaker 1: and atmosphere, so it was good enough, actually more than
Speaker 1: good enough. It looks exactly like the South. And the
Speaker 1: other time. The other thing they stipulated the crew must
Speaker 1: be Texans. They to hire local people cast and crew.
Speaker 1: So the only people that came from outside was myself
Speaker 1: and Steve James. Obviously. They had also a production manager
Speaker 1: that came with us, Norman Stevens. That's it. All the
Speaker 1: casting was done locally through theater, theater from all over Texas,
Speaker 1: not only from the Dallas area, from all over Texas.
Speaker 1: And of course the crew, including the cameraman. The cameraman
Speaker 1: he was a Hollywood camera man, but he was a Texan.
Speaker 1: He worked television in Hollywood, but he was local. He
Speaker 1: was Textan. And then only the only other thing that
Speaker 1: came up was the leading lady. They wanted, obviously that
Speaker 1: the best thing for a movie is a name, somebody
Speaker 1: recognizable name, and they started, we all agree that we
Speaker 1: want once the name came up, we want Margaret Avery
Speaker 1: from Color Purple, and they started dealing with the agents
Speaker 1: in Hollywood. She agreed and she came. So except those
Speaker 1: I think four people, everybody was locally and we started
Speaker 1: scouting for locations. We don't need. There is not many
Speaker 1: locations in this movie. It's basically this little town. There
Speaker 1: is the bridge, there is the house where she lives,
Speaker 1: Margarette lives. They are about six or eight locations, all
Speaker 1: of them we found and they were modified to look
Speaker 1: you know. Of course, we had our department production designer,
Speaker 1: everybody local, everybody from Texas, so they modified everything to
Speaker 1: look ninety sixties. The vehicles, you know, there was a
Speaker 1: vehicle managers, somebody in charge of vehicles. He found all
Speaker 1: the correct vehicles that we look. Of course, the wardrobe,
Speaker 1: the uniform of the National Guard, and the uniform of
Speaker 1: the sheriff. Everything was modified like we do in movies,
Speaker 1: to look period, and that's basically it. It was not
Speaker 1: difficult at all to modify this Waxahachi area, the few
Speaker 1: towns that we found. The main city is called Venice, Texas,
Speaker 1: not far from Waxahachi, and everything was modified at just
Speaker 1: twenty years big because the movie or thirty years back.
Speaker 1: The movie was shut was filmed in eighty nine. We
Speaker 1: were talking about the movie in nineteen sixty six, ninety sixties, nineties,
Speaker 1: so it was not difficult at all.
Speaker 5: It was easy when you have a hero as good
Speaker 5: as Steve James. You need to have a villain who
Speaker 5: is pretty darnk good as well. Can you tell me
Speaker 5: about Tony Frank who plays a sheriff.
Speaker 1: Tony Frank is a local actor, Texan actor, and he
Speaker 1: was in movies before. He was a television movie actor
Speaker 1: established in this area, in the in the Texas, in
Speaker 1: the Dallas area. And he came in into the project
Speaker 1: I did. I did not even I was not involved
Speaker 1: in casting him when when I came to I was
Speaker 1: recruited and hired a little bit late at the stage
Speaker 1: of production. Most of the local actors were already part
Speaker 1: of the cast before I came, before I arrived in Dallas,
Speaker 1: and and Tony was was already in I never met
Speaker 1: him before the first day of shooting. As customery in
Speaker 1: low budget movies, we don't have money in time for this,
Speaker 1: and and he was just right on spot on. Now
Speaker 1: for people who see the movie, people who saw the movie,
Speaker 1: or people who are going to see the movie, you
Speaker 1: know how mean or you will know how mean he
Speaker 1: is in the movie. So mean, you know, Bustard Hima.
Speaker 1: But Tony Frank himself as a personality was completely the opposite.
Speaker 1: He was the sweet gentle man who was friendly. Everybody
Speaker 1: loved it, joking and jokes, and he was the exact
Speaker 1: opposite of the character of the sheriff in the movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when we are looking today the movie and most of
Speaker 1: people that look at the movie, they're really commending his performance.
Speaker 1: His performance is magnificent. How villain villain is performance he is,
Speaker 1: But that's what he is. He was a local guy.
Speaker 5: When you ran across that YouTube channel that mister Dennis
Speaker 5: runs and you see that he's got the movie up there,
Speaker 5: I mean, what is that when you guys start talking
Speaker 5: and especially start talking about this restoration, the scanning process,
Speaker 5: I mean, what's that feeling for you?
Speaker 1: Like? The movie was distributed by Paramount as a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, big company, you know, Paramount, the major dissolution company,
Speaker 1: but they were had very few prints, never screened in
Speaker 1: the West Coast. I hear that there were a couple
Speaker 1: of screenings in the West Coast and in Texas and
Speaker 1: in New York. That's what I hear. Never in the
Speaker 1: West Coast. And then they distributed the movie. They came
Speaker 1: up with with VHS cassettes for the rental business, and
Speaker 1: the VHS cassette was of a very poor quality. I
Speaker 1: must say that the visual quality of the of the
Speaker 1: cassette was really really poor. And I had a copy,
Speaker 1: one copy, and you know this, and the movie disappeared,
Speaker 1: you know, after initially, so I don't think they printed
Speaker 1: or what do you call the copy too many cassettes.
Speaker 1: There were very few cassette you know, rental places that
Speaker 1: had it, very few and with no campaign. They didn't
Speaker 1: put any campaign, nothing. They just threw the cassettes to
Speaker 1: the stores. I had one copy, probably they gave me
Speaker 1: one or whatever. They send me one, and I had
Speaker 1: to contractually they had to give me one, so Paramon
Speaker 1: sent me one. Now I remember they send me one
Speaker 1: copy and the copy was, as I said, poor quality.
Speaker 1: And this always bothered me, you know, movie disappearing like
Speaker 1: one month two months after it's coming out, completely disappearing
Speaker 1: from the market, from the from the knowledge of the
Speaker 1: knowledge based nothing that and this thing bothered me for many,
Speaker 1: many years. What can we do? At some point I
Speaker 1: took this v Ages cassette and I digitized it. By
Speaker 1: the time it computers. At that time, there was no
Speaker 1: home computers, and there was no Internet, of course, no YouTube.
Speaker 1: So at some point I took it to digitize it,
Speaker 1: and I loaded it to my YouTube channel, and I said,
Speaker 1: let's see what happened. Let's see if anybody. Usually, when
Speaker 1: you load the copyrighted material or material that has a
Speaker 1: contractual distribution, immediately the complaints are coming within day. So
Speaker 1: I said, let's I'm going to upload it and let's
Speaker 1: see what happened. And no complain, nobody, nothing. And one day,
Speaker 1: while I'm searching googling, I see somebody else. I realized
Speaker 1: there is another copy of Riverbend in the Internet. I
Speaker 1: follow this route and I arrived to Reel Black dot
Speaker 1: com or Real Black TV. That there are a couple
Speaker 1: of channels of Real Blake I never heard about before.
Speaker 1: So I start to investigate. I look who they are,
Speaker 1: a website, et cetera. I said, this is a kind
Speaker 1: of an institute, kind of organization which are restoring and recovering,
Speaker 1: restoring black cinema, black history cinema. So I just wanted
Speaker 1: to thank them first. The first thing, I wrote a
Speaker 1: little letter I didn't know, like Dennis, just a general
Speaker 1: Real Black dot com thank you very much for loading
Speaker 1: you know, doing the I did you know, I recognize
Speaker 1: I identify myself, like Michael told you, and I did
Speaker 1: the same thing there. Now there are two copies in
Speaker 1: the internet. This was our meeting. That's how our path
Speaker 1: merged together. And at that point we only agreed that
Speaker 1: something has to be done about this movie. Further, I
Speaker 1: didn't know which way to go because on my investigation
Speaker 1: through the years didn't bear any fruits. I couldn't follow.
Speaker 1: I knew that there was a company, the company went bankrupt,
Speaker 1: and this is it. Michael, of course much more knowledgeable
Speaker 1: and experienced than me, and he took it much much
Speaker 1: farther than I could.
Speaker 5: Can you tell me a little bit about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's interesting. I was just checking the date. Our
Speaker 4: upload was November twenty nineteen, and Sam he uploaded in
Speaker 4: January twenty twenty. So within a month the Seren Deputies begins,
Speaker 4: you know. But the scanning, you know, the first print,
Speaker 4: you know was, like I said, it was just terrible.
Speaker 4: It was missing scene means. But Sam and I collaborated
Speaker 4: to put together the best possible version for the festival circuit.
Speaker 1: Extuly, Mega, I must tell the story that one day
Speaker 1: you contact me and you told me, wow, I found
Speaker 1: a print in South Africa. Oh, that's true. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: pursued it, you were you were actively looking for a
Speaker 1: print one thirty five millimeter print because of the quality
Speaker 1: of the VHS was so poor.
Speaker 4: Well, I it just was serendipity. I don't I don't
Speaker 4: know if I was looking to buy it. I think
Speaker 4: I was just searching eBay for Riverband and one day
Speaker 4: a print showed up, and I didn't know what to
Speaker 4: do with it, but I knew I should bin on
Speaker 4: it just to preserve it, you know. So it wasn't
Speaker 4: It wasn't like intentional, like oh I need a thirty
Speaker 4: five of Riverband. It was more like, this seems like
Speaker 4: it's a very rare item and if I don't get
Speaker 4: on it, it's going to get lost.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: So so when we got to transfer, the had every scratch.
Speaker 4: I mean, I could show you the original scan and
Speaker 4: before the restoration that Craig did, and it was just
Speaker 4: it was unfathomable how bad it was. But we were
Speaker 4: able to clean it up digitally and remove the majority
Speaker 4: of the scratch, isn't it It was?
Speaker 1: It looked good.
Speaker 4: I think we were happy with it, but we knew
Speaker 4: it wasn't marketable, Like we couldn't just put it on
Speaker 4: Blu Ray and have people happy with it because it
Speaker 4: was transitioned to VHS or this that. But we were
Speaker 4: still taking at the festivals. And I happened to be
Speaker 4: at a screening with my students of a movie called
Speaker 4: Naked Acts by Bridgette Daniel in Philadelphia. And I didn't
Speaker 4: know when I brought the students to the screening that
Speaker 4: it was the world premiere of the restoration, and that
Speaker 4: the person who restored the film, Milestone Films. Dennis and
Speaker 4: Amy were sitting literally two seats away from me the
Speaker 4: whole night. But afterwards, you know, I was introduced to
Speaker 4: and I told him about the premiere we had in January.
Speaker 4: This is March of twenty twenty four, and you know,
Speaker 4: Sam and I we hit all kinds of walls. You know,
Speaker 4: we tracked down to a certain extent. We knew that
Speaker 4: the film was an orphan film, but we didn't necessarily
Speaker 4: know if we had the permissions to be able to
Speaker 4: distribute it properly. Dennis has been in the business forty
Speaker 4: years and I told him the story and he said,
Speaker 4: you know, I think, I said, where's the negative. I said, well,
Speaker 4: we've been calling labs the Labs went out of business.
Speaker 4: They became other companies. No one seems to know what
Speaker 4: happened to any film elements. He said, well, you know,
Speaker 4: I think I can track that down and within i'd
Speaker 4: say less than a week by the if it was
Speaker 4: Tuesday by Friday said I know where the negative is,
Speaker 4: but you can't have it. So fortunately we had met
Speaker 4: Valerie Vance in Denton, Texas at that time, and eventually
Speaker 4: we worked out an arrangement where we could reclaim all
Speaker 4: the elements. And then we went to another gentleman named
Speaker 4: Austin Squatieria Real Revival, and he did an immaculate transferring
Speaker 4: six K and did the restoration, which was basically light
Speaker 4: dust removal. I mean, because the think about it, the
Speaker 4: film had never been touched. It had literally been sitting
Speaker 4: in a vault being paid for by MGM for almost
Speaker 4: forty years and no one had ever touched it. So
Speaker 4: it was minimum work needed to bring it to the
Speaker 4: level that we have now, which is going to be restored.
Speaker 4: It's been restored.
Speaker 2: We'll have.
Speaker 4: A debut of the DCP probably in February March of
Speaker 4: twenty twenty six, and then the Blue Rao hit stores.
Speaker 4: It'll hit people's hands. People have been pre ordering it
Speaker 4: through shop dot real Black dot com. It'll be in
Speaker 4: their hands on June teenth, twenty twenty six.
Speaker 5: Tell me about the screaming that you guys just had
Speaker 5: and what was that print that you showed.
Speaker 4: We found one print that had never been played and
Speaker 4: it's premiered at the Aero Theater on October fourteenth, twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Five, presented by the American Cinematic.
Speaker 4: It was amazing. Julius Tennant, who's one of the co stars,
Speaker 4: along with Margaret Avery and Alex Morris were there and
Speaker 4: Debbie James, the daughter of the late Steve James, were
Speaker 4: there along with Sam to participate in the panel. And
Speaker 4: then we had a big surprise. You know, Julius is
Speaker 4: married to and it has a production company with Viola Davis,
Speaker 4: and she does such a great gesture by coming out
Speaker 4: and giving literally handing Margaret Avery's a bouquet of white roses,
Speaker 4: and that surprised the whole audience and everybody's.
Speaker 2: Like, wow, you know, this is so the spirit is great.
Speaker 4: The other night, what excited me most was just to
Speaker 4: be I would say, of all the things that we've
Speaker 4: done for Riverband, to bring it back to life. That
Speaker 4: night was the best, and this whole experience was the
Speaker 4: best because it's almost and Valerie Advants couldn't be there,
Speaker 4: but just hearing the stories and seeing how much they
Speaker 4: love one another everybody has been amazing for me. I mean,
Speaker 4: that's the way I'm having right now.
Speaker 1: It's rare anyway to see a thirty five millimeter print
Speaker 1: screening nowadays. You know, there are a few places revival
Speaker 1: houses in many cities around the country. American Cinema tech
Speaker 1: are trying to show movies in thirty five milimeter print,
Speaker 1: not always. Sometimes it's a digital screening. And Mike and
Speaker 1: we went to few screenings there were all digital screenings.
Speaker 1: We didn't have a print with us. So we went
Speaker 1: to a Denton Film festival, the Denton Black Film Festival
Speaker 1: in Texas. We showed the movie digitally beautiful and they
Speaker 1: were missing scenes in the digital print that we had.
Speaker 1: There were missing scenes. And then we went to another
Speaker 1: festival in Boston, right Roxbury Film Festival, and it was
Speaker 1: but that night that you were talking about. Not only
Speaker 1: it had the stamp of the American Cinema tach on
Speaker 1: it that says, okay, we recognize we want to show
Speaker 1: this movie to present it. It was from a thirty
Speaker 1: five minimeter print in a pretty historical theater. Eero Theater
Speaker 1: in Santa Monica is a famous revival house and four
Speaker 1: hundred seats. So you see the movie running like the
Speaker 1: way we used to see it when we were kids
Speaker 1: or you youngsters, with the grains on the screen and
Speaker 1: all the scenes. There were no missing scenes. So all
Speaker 1: the scenes, all the missing link the scenes that we
Speaker 1: didn't see before, some like six or seven scenes that
Speaker 1: were missing. Everything was there and it all makes sense. Beautiful,
Speaker 1: glorious colors from a brand new print.
Speaker 4: It was a very time the movie played in Los
Speaker 4: Angeles and it was the very first time in over
Speaker 4: thirty five years that the entire film was projected on
Speaker 4: celluloid in front of an audience.
Speaker 1: It was quite Michael. One more thing that occurred to
Speaker 1: me after we saw the movie. There was a very
Speaker 1: important scene is a meeting of the heads of the
Speaker 1: little town Riverbend, the segregated town mayor, etc. And the
Speaker 1: other important people in the town and the sheriff, which
Speaker 1: is an evil sheriff, you know, bigot sheriff. He comes
Speaker 1: into the meeting and he claims that things are changing.
Speaker 1: We are too reluctant about our black population of the town.
Speaker 1: And some of the people in the in the meeting
Speaker 1: tells him, you know, Sheriff, times are changing because this
Speaker 1: is sixty six during the Civil rights movement, and he
Speaker 1: rejected this idea. The times are changing, and maybe this
Speaker 1: sprint that we found in South Africa was there during
Speaker 1: the apartheid. They couldn't show a scene like this. There
Speaker 1: is a white people who are rejecting apartheid, you know,
Speaker 1: so maybe perhaps Michael, they cut out this scene because
Speaker 1: it was censored.
Speaker 4: My understanding is in nineteen eighty nine. You know, this
Speaker 4: is Chris Poggiali, who has a book I called These
Speaker 4: Fast Break Bricks. He's also a researcher. He did a
Speaker 4: lot of research for US and he said that in
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty nine all American films were contraband. So it's
Speaker 4: hard to know when the edit the editing was happening,
Speaker 4: but I feel it was more to make the film
Speaker 4: streamline so it could double feature or a triple feature.
Speaker 4: But yeah, we don't know when it was cut or
Speaker 4: who cut it or why.
Speaker 5: What kind of reactions are you guys getting at these screenings.
Speaker 5: I'm so curious.
Speaker 4: The beauty of Riverband is that it's a period piece,
Speaker 4: right even though you know the music is very nineties,
Speaker 4: It's set in the sixties, and it's dealing with an
Speaker 4: issue that's still relevant to today, and it was relevant
Speaker 4: in nineteen eighty nine. So when people have the distance
Speaker 4: of time and perspective, they say, wow, this is still
Speaker 4: going on, you know, the racial aspects, the fact that
Speaker 4: police are still terrorizing us. There's very few movies offer
Speaker 4: a solution. So this I think gets people thinking in
Speaker 4: terms of how can we empower one another to face
Speaker 4: some of these issues that continue to this day, the
Speaker 4: racial oppression, the suppression of all voices right now. But yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean it's been tremendous. I've not heard. I mean,
Speaker 4: when people have a chance to see it, they kind
Speaker 4: of expect like Rambo with black people, and what they
Speaker 4: get is a little bit more. And I think it
Speaker 4: turns on a switch in the udience's mind that they
Speaker 4: weren't expecting they have to turn on. But Sam does
Speaker 4: it in such a way it was entertaining and you
Speaker 4: get a little bit of a message, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean.
Speaker 1: The movie came out was finished nineteen ninety, let's say
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety, and it was out there. Nineteen ninety were
Speaker 1: kind of quiet time in racial tension the way I
Speaker 1: remember it. So the movie was, you know, okay, we're
Speaker 1: telling us a story about the civil rights movement time
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six. You know that's fine. Yeah, it still
Speaker 1: exists today. But the restoration our first screening was already
Speaker 1: after all the few things that happened in the last
Speaker 1: three or four years, George Floyd, the other killings, and
Speaker 1: Blake's like matter. So suddenly the subject became much more
Speaker 1: intense than it was in nineteen ninety, much more intense.
Speaker 1: And we showed it to young people. We went to
Speaker 1: a college and we showed it to the leg Cinema
Speaker 1: Club of the university. So those young people you're talking
Speaker 1: know about nineteen eighteen, nineteen twenty, they were shocked when
Speaker 1: they saw the movie. Am I right, Michael? Those young films.
Speaker 1: And in another screening in Roxbury, there was a bunch
Speaker 1: of teachers in the crowd and they came to us.
Speaker 1: They said, wow, you know, we must have a copy
Speaker 1: and show it in schools, etc. How come we never
Speaker 1: heard about this movie?
Speaker 4: That's to the credit of Sam and val Evans. I
Speaker 4: think they spent ten years trying to get this movie made,
Speaker 4: and then the opportunity presented itself when they met the Dales.
Speaker 4: They could have easily made some pablem you know, but
Speaker 4: they chose to do something that was direct from their
Speaker 4: experiences and had something to say, you know. And I
Speaker 4: think that's that's why the film stands attest the time,
Speaker 4: because they were very brave and in terms of wanting
Speaker 4: to say something. You know, it could have been if
Speaker 4: it was just disposal entertainment. Yeah, what, I'm gonna straight
Speaker 4: the video and yeah, nice that it's cleaned up. But
Speaker 4: you know, especially after George Floyd, people see this and
Speaker 4: they're like, why don't I know this already? How come
Speaker 4: I don't know this movie? You know, Do the Right
Speaker 4: Thing came out in nineteen eighty nine. This movie came
Speaker 4: out a year after a few months after and it
Speaker 4: just went away. Whereas Do the Right Thing is Champion,
Speaker 4: it's in the National Registry and all that other stuff.
Speaker 4: It deals with the same issues in a way. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean, everybody's been super positive about it. I think
Speaker 4: it's about the rediscovery of something that was lost and
Speaker 4: I think it's very important that people understand that we're
Speaker 4: not done yet. We still need help, and the way
Speaker 4: to help is to go to shop that Real Black
Speaker 4: dot com and support us financially by either pre ordering
Speaker 4: the Blu ray or buying some cool merch, you know.
Speaker 4: And it's it's it's a limited edition a lot of
Speaker 4: this stuff, So they got to act.
Speaker 1: Now, Pin, there is a beautiful pin.
Speaker 5: Mister Dennis, do you now have a flavor for this?
Speaker 5: Are you going to start looking for other films to restore?
Speaker 4: Being in Los Angeles for this premiere, I've had a
Speaker 4: couple of meetings with people that have orphan films and
Speaker 4: or films that are rare, i should say, And we're
Speaker 4: looking to create an opportunity to build the label Real
Speaker 4: Black Renaissance around this this idea. You know that there's
Speaker 4: work that needs to be seen, that needs to be
Speaker 4: resurrected and restored. And Riverband is just the tip of
Speaker 4: the iceberg. You know, there's a lot of black cinema
Speaker 4: that's in danger being lost if we don't take care
Speaker 4: of it now, you know. So, you know, but that's
Speaker 4: that's that's another step or two away, you know, But
Speaker 4: right now, Riverband June nineteenth, twenty twenty six. That's what
Speaker 4: we're trying to get to.
Speaker 5: Mister Furstenberg, What are you working on these days?
Speaker 1: I'm not working. I'm not in the movie anymore. But
Speaker 1: my main effort, my main is preserving the legacy of
Speaker 1: those movies that I was involved in and other directors,
Speaker 1: because in the eighties there is now we recognize a
Speaker 1: chunk of movies or pie or slice of a pie,
Speaker 1: which is called the independent law budget genre movies of
Speaker 1: the eighties and the beginning of the nineties, and it
Speaker 1: kind of it became a group by itself, Toby Hooper
Speaker 1: movies of Toby Hooper, Josito, Sam Fursenberg, Sheldon Laditch, et
Speaker 1: cetera group of directors who made law budget independent movies
Speaker 1: for those companies like Kennon Shapiro, Gligans, all the other companies.
Speaker 1: Nowadays it's a body of work, mostly mostly action, some
Speaker 1: of them sci fi. Of course, there was horror. Horror
Speaker 1: was a big deal by itself, so that belongs to
Speaker 1: another group. So I'm I'm I'm kind of busy, and
Speaker 1: I see so much interest in it. I'm getting so
Speaker 1: so much attention and question and podcasts like you and
Speaker 1: interviews dealing with this subject. A couple of books already
Speaker 1: came out, the book about the History of My Movies,
Speaker 1: a book about Sheldon Ledite history, and et cetera. There
Speaker 1: are more and more interest in this group, and and
Speaker 1: nowadays it's recognized that those movies they have the look,
Speaker 1: you know, the early Van dam movies, the early Schwarzenegger movies,
Speaker 1: the early you know do the Michael Luddikov movies, and
Speaker 1: they have a look. It's called the look of those eighties.
Speaker 1: And and this look comes out of the fact that
Speaker 1: all the action that we have done this group. Certainly,
Speaker 1: I can tell you my movies never used any optical effects. Never.
Speaker 1: Every piece of action that you see in those action
Speaker 1: movies were actually performed, physically performed. And this is nowadays.
Speaker 1: This is rarity when we see the today's action which
Speaker 1: obviously everything is blue screen and AI could never generated
Speaker 1: the CITYI or whatever. So it has a group. So
Speaker 1: that's what occupies me most of the time, the preservation
Speaker 1: of this legacy of this group of movies, including the
Speaker 1: movies that I've directed. And I'm busy with this. I'm
Speaker 1: not about to direct any other movie from this genre
Speaker 1: that any way disappeared. There is no filmmaking of this
Speaker 1: type of mid budget movie. We were privileged because it
Speaker 1: was the time of the beginning of the video video
Speaker 1: cassette business, the home viewing, so there was enough money
Speaker 1: to make movies which did not have the budget of studios.
Speaker 1: Obviously we didn't have budget of James Bond, but we
Speaker 1: had good enough money, good enough budget that we could
Speaker 1: film for eight weeks, six days a week, all whatever
Speaker 1: we needed. And the and the movies have been there,
Speaker 1: they look good enough. So this was this group. So
Speaker 1: that's what where I put my energy.
Speaker 4: Sam literally is the pied piper for American genre action movies.
Speaker 4: At the screening, he had people coming with I don't
Speaker 4: even know where they found that revenge in the ninja poster.
Speaker 1: And America ninja posters, Ninja posters, I.
Speaker 4: Mean, they come, they come from miles around and uh
Speaker 4: To to experience this, you know, and we want to
Speaker 4: bring this one to to people's homes, you know, in
Speaker 4: the best possible way. So if you're watching, send it,
Speaker 4: send an email to Real Black Ink R E E
Speaker 4: L B L A C K I n C at
Speaker 4: live dot com. You know, let us know that you
Speaker 4: watch Mike White and the first person to do so,
Speaker 4: I'll send one of those enamel pins.
Speaker 5: This is not your only gig restoring incredible film films
Speaker 5: and taking them around the country. Can you tell me
Speaker 5: a little bit more about your organization and what you're
Speaker 5: doing for the community there in Philadelphia.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm just starting to get back.
Speaker 1: We just did.
Speaker 4: We just started to do some screenings again. But for
Speaker 4: about sixteen seasons, I hosted a monthly screening series. Then
Speaker 4: the pandemic hit. Right before the pandemic, we stopped the
Speaker 4: series because of you know, just aging out of the
Speaker 4: audience and more people were wanting to see things at home.
Speaker 4: And then eventually, you know, and then during the pandemic,
Speaker 4: the YouTube blew up and then blew back down.
Speaker 1: Michael is trying to be modest. He has one and
Speaker 1: a half million followers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, on the YouTube channel, and you know, but right
Speaker 4: now it's it's real Black Renaissance and teaching adjunct film
Speaker 4: studies classes at Temple University. So you know, everything I
Speaker 4: do is about film, you know, and I love it
Speaker 4: that way.
Speaker 5: Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker 5: This was so great talking with you.
Speaker 1: Thank you, and thank you listeners and the viewers, and hopefully,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure it will happen that this movie Riverband
Speaker 1: will be viewed and seen by many many movie lovers
Speaker 1: all over Steve James fans. There are so many Steve
Speaker 1: James fans around the world that want to see what
Speaker 1: he has done. Sam Furstenberg followers movies, but in general,
Speaker 1: I really I'm confident that this dream is about to
Speaker 1: be materialized. Once the Blu ray comes out and streaming,
Speaker 1: eventually this movie will be seen the way it deserves
Speaker 1: to be seen by many, many people around the world.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you, gentlemen, this was so great.
Speaker 1: Okay, thank you for having.
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