The spirit of Rudy Ray Moore’s cult action hero Dolemite lives on in “Black Dynamite,” a comedic nod to the blaxploitation movies of the 1970s, written by and starring Michael Jai White as a righteous crime fighter.
Before establishing himself as an actor — in films ranging from “Spawn” and “The Dark Knight” to “Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married?” and its upcoming sequel — White was a competitive martial artist (with black belts in seven different styles).
He first broke onto the Hollywood scene as a stuntman and fight choreographer on movies like Steven Seagal’s “Exit Wounds” and Jean-Claude Van Damme’s “Universal Soldier.”
White, 41, spoke about his latest project during a recent publicity stop in Atlanta.
Q: Did you grow up watching genre movies like “Dolemite”?
A: Absolutely. The first movie I ever remember seeing as a kid was one called “Monkey Hustle,” with Yaphet Kotto and Rudy Ray Moore. That was the whole inspiration behind “Black Dynamite.” Those ’70s movies reflected a very interesting time period, not just culturally or socially, but they were politically potent, too. We were coming off a war in Vietnam that nobody wanted. People had a distrust of government. Nothing like it is now, with Iraq and all that, right? (He laughs.) I loved the movies and the music of the ’70s, so “Black Dynamite” was all about trying to recapture that time, that energy and essence. The blaxploitation era marked a new day in filmmaking at the time. It had the absurdity, the love, the brotherhood, the fashion, the sexuality, the violence — all mixed together.
Q: Most movies are aimed at younger audiences. Are you at all concerned that a lot of the jokes or references in “Black Dynamite” might be lost on the kids of today?
A: Not necessarily. Look at the popularity of something like “That ’70s Show” on TV. I mean, when you look at something like “The Simpsons,” things are set up in layers. There are elements that an older crowd will get, and other elements that are fun for the younger audience, even if they don’t exactly get all the references. By the same token, we’ve screened the movie at film festivals in France and Germany and the Czech Republic, and the response has been incredible. In a way, the movie transcends the blaxploitation genre itself.
Q: Talk about walking the fine line between playing it straight, basically, and yet also poking fun at the genre.
A: Those movies really ran the gamut. Some of them, like “Shaft” or “The Mack,” were really good. It was only later, as time went by and the movies started performing well, that the exploitative nature of them started coming out more. People started making so many crazy, ridiculous variations. The main thing was setting the right tone, and then maintaining it.
Q: Although the story is set in the ’70s, you wrote the script in 2008. How hard was it throwing any sense of contemporary political correctness out the window?
A: Looking at it from a modern perspective actually brought more comedy to it. It’s like, when you see movies done in the ’70s that refer to the future, where by the ’90s everybody’s going to be driving around in flying cars or whatever. The black paranoia that existed in those movies is pretty funny, when you look at it now. One of the most predominant movies of that era was “Three the Hard Way,” about a white scientist who comes up with a plan to poison the water supply with a drug that kills black people. Back then, that wasn’t even a joke. It was treated seriously. It’s like, wow, look how far we’ve come. Especially now, with a black president in the White House, that makes it even funnier.
