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The Unsung Badmotherf****** Award recognizes Outstanding Achievements In The Field of Badassery Deserving Wider Recognition.  The Unsung Badmother****** is the guy who made a splash and kicked some ass, but remains unappreciated, or largely unknown, by the masses.

The UBMF Award is named after the oft-quoted moment in the “Theme from Shaft” when Isaac Hayes is abruptly interrupted by his backup singers before he can fully extol the badass virtues of his man, Shaft.  If people remember nothing else about the movie “Shaft,” or Blaxploitation in general, they remember that line, and it immortalized Hayes and made John Shaft a cinematic icon.

In the annals of Blaxploitation heroes, characters like John Shaft, Foxy Brown and Youngblood “Super Fly” Priest loom large, however, Dan Freeman is the textbook example of one of Blaxploitation’s Unsung Bad Mother******s.  Dan Freeman is the lead character in the Ivan Dixon film, The Spook Who Sat By The Door.  The 1973 film was adapted from the novel of the same name by author, Sam Greenlee, who also served as a co-writer for the movie.  At some point, I’ll provide a full, and proper review of The Spook Who Sat By The Door, but I’ll just try to hit the most salient points below to give you a better idea about Dan Freeman.

What makes Dan Freeman such a bad motherfucker?  I say this without a hint of hyperbole:  Dan Freeman is Batman, Tyler Durden, and the best intentions of (and the worst fears about) The Black Panther Party combined into one of the most ingenious, and dangerous, characters to ever grace the silver screen.

The Spook Who Sat By The Door is the fictional story of Dan Freeman (played by Lawrence Cook), a college-educated Korean War veteran who becomes the first Black agent of the Central Intelligence Agency after a grandstanding senator launches a cynical call-to-arms for minority recruitment within the CIA.  The CIA also knows a good public relations stunt when they see it, so they go along with the senator’s plan.  In reality, the CIA expects no one to pass, or at best, they’ll just select one Black candidate to create the illusion of diversity among their ranks.  With his studious, quiet demeanor and surprising physical acumen, Dan Freeman emerges as the final candidate.  Despite surviving a rigorous training course that includes everything from counter-insurgency theory to demolitions and martial arts, after graduation, Freeman is shuffled off to the bowels of Langley, where at first he serves as their “top secret reproduction center section chief,” which was little more than a glorified copy boy.  Freeman is well aware that his presence within the CIA is little more than a token nod to affirmative action, but he patiently bides his time, learning, studying, and observing how the agency operates.  Finally, after five years, until he decides to leave the agency and return to his hometown of Chicago to become a social worker.

Freeman uses his position as a social worker to gather intelligence about the poor Black community he serves, including information about its criminal element.  Freeman lays a trap for the members of his old street gang, The Cobras, physically bests them and taunts them about their directionless, ineffective jabs at the authorities.  He uses The Cobras as his first foot soldiers and recruiters in his efforts to build a urban army that actually has a chance to force the U.S. government to accept the Black communities demands to be viewed as equals.  Freeman knows how his opponents operate, and despite one pivotal misstep, his plan is largely successful.  He funds his operation through a daring bank raid, successfully steals a cache of heavy weaponry from a National Guard armory, builds an ever-expanding network of operatives in several American cities, and subsequently uses this network to launch simultaneous guerrilla assaults against the authorities.  Like Grant Morrison’s Batman, Dan Freeman has plans built on top of contingencies to confound a much more powerful, and well-equipped, opponent.

“He’s one of them quiet kinda cats that people just don’t mess with…I know that if I got in trouble, he’d be in it. I think he be real bad once he got going, too.”

- Paula Kelley as the prostitute, “Dahomey Queen,” discussing Dan Freeman in The Spook Who Sat By The Door

Dan Freeman is the thinking man’s action hero, and actor Lawrence Cook, perfectly portrays him as such.  Dan’s style is to fade into the background, watch, listen, observe and then strike at the most opportune time, even if he has to endure some humiliation in the short-term to achieve his long-term goals.  Freeman’s confrontation with Calhoun, a CIA martial arts instructor who wants to run him out of the program, perfectly encapsulates this approach.  Freeman takes his lumps in the early moments of the fight before he figures out a way to counter, gain the upper hand, and ultimately choke out the bigoted instructor.  He also relies on a cultural tendency to ignore servants to have his army move virtually invisibly among his targets in order to gather intelligence.  We can find shades of this theme in modern works like the films Dirty Pretty Things (2003) and Fight Club (1999).  In the latter work by Chuck Palahniuk, Tyler Durden’s Project Mayhem strongly mirrors the structure and intent of Freeman’s underground army in The Spook Who Sat By The Door.

Lawrence Cook, with his square, blocky glasses, pronounced forehead and sleepy eyes, does a masterful job of capturing all the nuance and hidden fire of Dan Freeman.  Early in the movie, Freeman is invited by the other Black candidates to join them for a night on the town.  Dan politely begs off in a shy, bookish manner, but their discussion quickly reveals reveals that at least one of the candidates harbors long-simmering resentments toward Dan Freeman.  When the verbal confrontation threatens to become physical, Cook instantly, and seamlessly, shifts his demeanor from one of reserved detachment to quiet menace.  Also, to the credit of Greenlee, Dan Freeman is not a perfect man.  He not only frequents a prostitute, but it is implied that he is involved in an affair with his married former girlfriend.  He is not a bloodless warrior, but it is his intense passion which he harnesses and uses as fuel his quest for social justice. Cook’s voice rarely rises above its naturally hoarse, raspy whisper, but in those rare moments when Dan Freeman lets his mask slip, Cook uses it as a wonderful tool to pull the lid off the slow-boiling rage of a man who has made significant personal sacrifices, and swallowed no small amount of pain, to make his dreams a reality.  In this regard, Cook perfectly embodied the attitudes of millions of Black Americans, particularly successful middle-class Blacks, who had fought for every rung they climbed on the ladder of success.

What I find rather interesting about The Spook Who Sat By The Door, and what resonates even today, is that the character of Dan Freeman is basically the celluloid embodiment of every Fox News and TeaBagger theory about President Barack Obama.  Dan Freeman is an intellectually curious, accomplished, and outwardly passive college-educated Black man who spent time working as a community organizer in Chicago.  No matter how much crap is piled on him, he remains unflappable and strangely reserved, but secretly he is using his knowledge, and position of authority, to foment a well-organized and brilliantly executed insurrection against the  United States government itself.  Heck, at one point, the CIA speculates that the entire insurrection is the handiwork of a Communist infiltrator.  I’m certain that if Dan Freeman had used a teleprompter anywhere in the film, The Spook Who Sat By The Door would be on constant rotation on Hannity accompanied by a chiron that read “I’m Not Sayin’, I’m Just Sayin’.”

- JEP