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Mm hmm. Yeah. Take this hammer. This is a film report on a visit to the city of San Francisco by the novelist essayist playwright James Baldwin. My name is Richard Old War, and I am considered to be one of the founders of the KQED film. You

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know, in 1960 I received a CBS fellowship to spend a year at Columbia and was then that I encountered Al Mazel and the other pioneers of cinema verite team. And I brought that concept back to KQED and made a remarkable arrangement with Jim Day, who was

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the manager at the time that I could set up an independent unit independent of KQED s Daily Broadcasting, an independent unit which would make documentary films. We had grander plans as well. I mean, I wanted to do a series of programs on the black experience in

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America. Take this hammer. This was a film about a man named James Ballroom, a novelist and essayist who had just written a very important essay which was published in The New Yorker, called The Fire Next Time. And we had the idea when I found out that

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Baldwin is going to be in the Bay Area of having James Baldwin take a look at San Francisco and the way San Francisco attempts to, uh, present itself to the world as a cosmopolitan, liberal city. We wanted to look behind that public veneer to see what

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was going on in those areas within San Francisco, which were predominantly or exclusively black, Don't you think it was would have been my responsibility to become interested in the black experience, whether or not I had thought of it or not. It was there, and it was

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a very, very important historical movement. Uh, at that time, and not to pay attention to the dominant themes of ones. Euro is, you know, it's it's immoral. It just seemed like a good premise, uh, to wander around the city, particularly in the Bayview Hunters Point areas

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of San Francisco, with James Ballroom to record what happened. We had no idea what we're going to happen. As a matter of fact, early on in the film, Baldwin himself is very surprised at the anger, the level of anger among these black kids and and also

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surprised and delighted how are how articulate they were. All right, they talk about the south. The south is not half as bad as San Francisco. You want to tell you about San Francisco? I'll tell you about San Francisco, the white man. He's not. He's not taking

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advantage of you out in public like they're doing down in Birmingham, but he's killing you with that pencil and paper brothers. They were controversial scenes, but I make it. I'd like to make the point that controversial for whom they weren't controversial for us because they were

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happening in front of our cameras. They were real. They were immediate one of the kids that we've got to let a little blood and and people would take that seriously. So you think the only thing we can do, let's get together, have an armed uprising, really

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just put blood, you know, let everybody bleed a little bit because I realized what a dog White man was when he got jumping on me and putting me in jail and everything you know, right here in San Francisco. It has to do with Baldwin's concept that

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the film should consist exclusively of the anger and the multiple expressions of these angry kids. Negro President in this country in this country. What do you say? That you can't get jobs? How are we going to be a president you got there? Mhm. But I I

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want you to think about this. There will be a new president of this country. It will not be the country that we that we are sitting in now. But if you say to yourself, there never will be a Negro president of this country. And what you're

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doing is agreeing with white people who say you are inferior. We took a Corvair station wagon. Now Corvair station wagon had the engine in the rear. And so we were able to take off the hood and a small cameramen would fit into the into that space.

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Looking through the windshield in the rear of the the station wagon. We had a whole set of batteries running the whole apparatus and mounted on a plywood sheet. Above that was this huge. Magnus Inc Real, the real sound recorder and then next to the magnificent Phil

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Green was lying on his stomach with a camera. And so we had a shot through the windshield, a shot over over the shoulder. For the most part, we were filming from a car we were from from from from that same station wagon. In making these films,

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you have no idea what you're going to end up with. And so then finally, you take a look at everything you've shot and and you put it together and it's a coherent story as you can. We spent a very, very strenuous day trying to elude the

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increasing number of people who had caught onto the fact that James Baldwin was around. And I called my wife and said, Well, I'm going to bring James Baldwin up for dinner Uh, and, uh, which was surprised to her because she hadn't expected. But she responded unbelievably,

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with unbelievable generosity. And so we went up to our house and Baldwin was exhausted, and my wife said, Follow me and she took him up the stairs, do a bubble bath, put James Baldwin in the bubble baths with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black label Scotch

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on the on the master, and he came down quite refreshed as a result of that. So that's why he looks so fresh and has this bandana around his neck and and But he's also a little loopy. If you look carefully and he delivered this 45 minutes

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monologue of which there's only eight minutes or so in the film. I've always known that I'm not a ***. But if I am not the *** and if it's true that your invention reveals you and who is the ***? I'm not the victim here. But you

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still think I gather the Negro is necessary? It was unnecessary to me. They must be necessary to you. I'll give you your problem back. You're the *** baby isn't me, which was eloquent. It was pure ballroom. And now, from my point of view, that was valuable

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footage. The only instance the only instance where anyone brought any question whatsoever relative to the films as to whether that should be broadcast took place with with respect to the ball run film. And it had to do with the preponderance of black rage being expressed. Look

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at you learn from the world you live in, brother. But what you want to know you ain't got no nothing, not even teaching me about the future of mouth. You're going to school for them. We don't even have a country. I know that We have a

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country for the board of directors of KQED, for example, who in a violation of the First Amendment from my point of view, um, were reluctant to broadcast. The program is originally filmed. Um, and and all of this resulted in a very painful compromise of cutting out

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about 15 minutes from the film. They didn't want to project the fact that there was a great deal of unrest in the black ghettos in San in San Francisco. I you know, the the aftermath, The reason I'm so uncomfortable in talking about this, is that it?

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It did have an effect on my friendship with Ballroom because his concept of the film and my concept of what was necessary to get the film broadcast deviated. What he was interested in at that moment was what the what the scenes and hunters point in them.

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But a film entirely of that wouldn't work, even for black audiences. Perhaps what is really crucial is whether or not the country, the people in the country, the citizenry are able to recognize that there is no moral distance, no moral distance, which is to say, no

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disk between the facts of life in San Francisco and The Facts of Life and Birmingham. We got a call. No one's gonna tell it like it is, and that's where it's at. He felt that his under his his unspoken agreement with me to use exclusively the

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foot is shot. And with the kids, uh, was that I had violated it. We simply didn't correspond after them, which I, from my perspective, was a tragic loss from my point of view from his It was good riddance, probably. Who knows, this was a minor incident

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in his life, whereas it was a rather important incident in the life of the say, the KQED film here. The significance of the Baldwin film is simply that it that attacks the myth of San Francisco as a cosmopolitan, liberal city. Period. What do you think about

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the police? I think they have a purpose. But then again, the way some of these people do you sometimes when they pick you up and stop you well, like a couple of times would be downtown just walking around. They they look at you. If you look

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suspicious, they would just stop you when they see these. The black kids and and and their statements. There's a visceral response to that. There is an equally visceral and intellectual response to what Baldwin has to say when Negro last tries to make love or eat Oh,

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dances. It's kind of total action. I don't mean this way. White liberals are really going to think. I mean, I don't mean they're most more sensual, more primitive, more more spontaneous. And all this ethnic jazz, I mean, I mean, they they live on another level of

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experience, which doesn't allow them as much room as much room to make believe as white people have. So there are two very strong elements at play in what is really a very simple film. Racism is a profound issue today, as it was then, um, and and

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I think the ballroom film tends to indicate what little change meaningful change has occurred over the years. Like I was going to show one night. Yeah, my wife and we just happened to go around Market Street, and we've seen this police car go by. All right.

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We could turn the corner the next corner, they meet us and they stop us. Show starts at 7. 45. We were out there to nine o'clock. Well, then they didn't have any excuse to stop it. But they stopped us to search your car and call in.

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And this and that. What is the purpose of that? We wouldn't do anything wrong. Surprisingly, And this, Perhaps there's a commentary on both the film and public broadcasting. There was no significant response when you complete a film, what you think it makes a significant contribution to

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our understanding what's going on and you get almost no response. That's a little disappointed, and that happens over and over and over again in the making of films. Sometimes it happens with respect to very significant films, the importance of which is not realized until years later.

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Let me ask you one thing. What the police do when they get mad, Please do when they get now. I mean, we ordinary citizens, we get mad. We can do things to hurt people in Robin. Still, what do they do when they get married? Who? They

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take this team off? I think you know the answer to that question. Well, I couldn't ask that because the police has never bothered me in that way. But I read newspapers and I have been living around here all my life and I see things going on

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Mhm well, when the policeman gets mad, he's got a gun and he's got a club. You get to know. Yeah, it's difficult to get funding for a film today. That doesn't reassure the viewer that all is right with the world. One way or another, it's putting

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together a highly polished protective veneer against reality. Now that's a big, foolish statement to make against realities if I knew what was really going on. But I have an instinct that there is something behind these polished screens that we're presented with today. We have no flag.

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No, no. Tell me what you need to tell me what you mean. How do I feel about this process that we're undergoing of recording my comments about films of the 19 sixties? I look at this project is as one that I'm very happy that other people

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are going to put together because I would probably throw out 98% and maybe you'd end up with one or two minutes of film at best. Does that answer your question this morning with my Yeah, Mhm Yeah, Yeah, I do