There’s only three things that’s for sure/Taxes, death and trouble/This I know, baby...
- Marvin Gaye, from the theme to the motion picture Trouble Man, 1972
All the conservative teabaggers who suddenly found Fiscal Jesus on Wednesday after staying silent for eight years while a Republican president and Republican-led Congress turned the biggest surplus in American history into the biggest deficit in American history could do themselves a big favor by listening to Marvin. Marvin spoke the truth. Marvin spoke prophecy on his own life. You see, for all his artistic genius, Marvin had a bad habit of failing to pay his taxes, so in 1981, one of America’s greatest songwriters fled to Europe to escape his tax problems. Marvin Gaye learned the hard way that taxes are the membership dues we pay as American citizens. Membership has its privileges, so as you upgrade from Gold to Platinum Club status, expect to pay a little more in dues, because you’ve reaped more of the benefits of the relative peace, stability, safety, and opportunities afforded by living in this country.
Look, it’s not that I like paying taxes. Nobody likes paying taxes, because we feel that it’s hard-earned money out of our own pockets that could be better spent on candy, gum, DVDs, or booze. But, if you claim to want a strong military, secure borders, educated kids, bridges that don’t collapse underneath you in the middle of rush hour, reliable electricity, food that won’t kill/maim/ mutate your children, and a non-barter based economy subject to the whims of Master Blaster and Auntie Entity, then expect to put a little in the plate so we can all pool our resources to pay for it. Except for certain Oxycontin-addled blowhards and the Fox “News” talking heads who pushed the idea of Teabag Parties, most of us can’t afford to pay for that stuff a la carte!
Who Run Barter Town?
That’s it for now. Thanks for joining me for my first big week. See you next week with a new strip and a look at Cadillac Jones’ “The Big Takedown.”
Four months into WORLDOFHURTONLINE.COM, and I’m finally posting my first review of a Blaxploitation movie. This may contain some heavy spoilers, so be warned.
Without a doubt, my favorite Blaxploitation film is Trouble Man. The film continues the fine Blaxploitation tradition of hiring some of the best Soul music and R&B artists of the day to score the movie. Like Isaac Hayes on Shaft and James Brown on Black Caesar, Marvin Gaye delivered a stand out musical counterpoint to Trouble Man’s onscreen action. The movie’s title theme song, “Trouble Man,” is a slow burning Soul masterpiece that has been covered by artists like Neneh Cherry and Alicia Keys, and no matter what song list I create, it never leaves my iPod. Also, I’ll be the first to admit that I shamelessly stole the template for Pastor from Robert Hooks’ portrayal of the movie’s steely-eyed, no-nonsense lead character, Mr. T. (Robert Hooks’ Mr. T preceded the bejeweled, mohawked , fool-pityin’ public persona of Laurence Tureaudby several years, so I’m inclined to believe he was influenced by the movie as well.) As the movie’s trailer boasts, Mr. T. is a man who is “street smart and steel hard” and “was a man ever since he was a kid.” Below is one of the trailers for Trouble Man, courtesy of YouTube. Many of the lines from the voiceover were lifted from, and re-used, in the original teaser trailer for the soon-to-be release Black Dynamite.
In Trouble Man, Mr. T is an freelance trouble shooter based in Los Angeles, who is hired by two mid-level criminals, Pete Cockrell and Chalky Price, to find out who has been ripping off their floating craps games. The entire tale is a ruse to eliminate their competition, a crime lord named Big, and frame Mr. T for the murder. Unfortunately for Pete and Chalky, Mr. T gets wise to them and unleashes Hell on the two crooks, tearing down their organization and leaving a trail of corpses in his wake.
At the start of the film, after returning home from an evening with a lovely young woman, Mr T is greeted at his door by one of Chalky’s men, Billy Chi, a slow-talking, sinister goon who dresses in cast-offs from Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone. He’s there to deliver a message that Chalky needs to talk to him. Mr. T doesn’t appreciate the invasion of his personal space and dismisses Billy off with the message that Chalky can “kiss my Black ass.” (Billy Chi turns out to be an entertaining foil for Mr. T, who, despite his cruel intentions, can never quite get the upper hand on T. When Mr. T finally comes around to dealing with Chalky, Billy Chi mocks him by saying, “You some kinda ho, baby. Tellin’ the man to kiss your ass in the mornin’, and workin’ for him at night.” Mr. T.’s response: a stiff, sharp punch to Billy’s gut and a warning for him to keep an eye on T’s car. Stone cold, baby. Stone cold.)
Later that day, Chalky and Pete arrive at Jimmy’s pool hall to speak to Mr T themselves. Chalky, who is Black, and Pete, who is White, prove that crime and greed are the keys to racial harmony, because together their growing criminal empire can serve the discriminating gamblers in either community (pun intended). Chalky and Pete allege that a group of masked crooks keeps busting into the craps games and robbing the gamblers. They want to hire Mr. T. to find out who is behind the robberies. Mr. T. agrees to help, laying out a basic plan to surveil their next game as “just another (craps) shooter,” but his price of one night’s take is too steep for the duo. When Chalky and Pete try to lowball him on the fee, Mr. T refuses to budge on his price, and kicks them out of his Lincoln with the memorable line, “Now get out. You two are fuckin’ up a perfectly good day.” You gotta take an icebreaker to find a vein in Mr. T’s arm.
Chalky and Pete’s “problem” turns out to be an elaborate ruse to lure Mr. T into eliminating their only competition in the vice rackets, a crime lord by the name of Big, played by Super Fly and Shaft’s Big Score veteran, Julius Harris. When Chalky and Pete finally accept Mr. T’s price, the men stage a fake robbery and make it appear as if it was committed by an operative of Big, specifically a big, hound’s-tooth jacket wearing debt collector named Abbey Walsh, whom they had kidnapped earlier in the day. As the masked “robbers” flee, they switch out one of the plants with Big’s man. Chalky shoots Abbey Walsh in the back before Mr. T sees the switch or has the chance to stop him. Chalky and Pete’s men dispose of Walsh’s body, but call in an anonymous tip to the cops that tells a) tells them where to find the body, and b) implicates Mr. T in the murder.
After a series of machinations by Chalky and Pete, Mr. T gets wise to their plan and sets a plan in motion to get his revenge on Chalky and Pete, and claim his fee. Mr. T stages a one-man assault on the respective hideouts of Pete and Chalky, culminating in a brutal, close-quarters fight in an elevator and a well-staged penthouse shoot-out. The best part of the finale is, even with police bearing down on him to investigate the gunfire, Mr. T still takes the time to calmly change into a fresh suit before leaving the scene of the melee. Mr. T is colder than cold.
Although Shaft is the standard bearer for Black action movies of the 1970s, I think Trouble Man is imminently more watchable. Although Blaxploitation movies get a bad rap for their low production standards, Ivan Dixon’s direction is crisp and economical, and the movie itself is a taut action film with a lean running time. There are a few clunker moments, like Mr. T’s need to reclaim his gun from the property room of the LAPD before he can exact his revenge, but mostly the story moves along at a nice, brisk pace. Shaft, as a character, is more approachable than the stoic Mr. T, but T comes closer to the Blaxploitation Hero Ideal. The Ideal Blaxploitation Hero is a lover and a fighter. He’s a ruthlessly driven one-man army who always comes out on top. He’s an independent man who lives a comfortable lifestyle, yet never sweats where his next paycheck is coming from. Shaft was cast somewhat closer to the hardboiled Raymond Chandler private eye. As a private detective, Shaft has to be surreptitious, stealthy, and unassuming at times, but Mr. T owns every room he enters the minute he walks into it. He’s the Alpha Dog, and his bearing and demeanor demand respect and attention.
The movie is chockful of quotable lines and memorable moments. When Mr. T squares off with a pool shark named Wesley at the beginning of the movie, T inquires if the young man can cover his bets, to which Wesley glibly remarks, “Is an elephant heavy? Is pig pork? Then it won’t hurt me.” I love that line.
As Wesley makes a strong showing against Mr. T, Jimmy, Mr. T’s confidante, whispers, “He’s good, but he ain’t got no cool.”
“Then he’s not good, Jim,” Mr. T replies, in a perfect encapsulation his philosophy: Mr. T is so damn good at everything he does, because he’s that damn cool.
Trouble Man gets my highest recommendation. If you’ve got a NetFlix account, don’t bother using it. You need to BUY this one, Jack!
