Voir (2021) s01e06 Episode Script

1
[film projector whirs]
[whistling]
[Walter] I saw 48 Hrs.
at a local multiplex in December, 1982,
when I was nine years old.
My parents dropped me and a buddy off,
and as was the custom,
we snuck into it
after buying tickets for something else.
It was the talk of the third grade,
and seeing it was a rite of passage.
48 Hrs. was developed
at Michael Eisner's Paramount Pictures,
hardly the gold standard
for socially challenging fare.
It was meant to be
a conventional action comedy
and expedient bit
of holiday counter-programming.
But somehow,
director Walter Hill's film
landed in theaters as this edgy,
even dangerous, conversation
about race and identity in America.
It was a conversation I was ready for.
A conversation about us.
A conversation about you and me.
It was the best movie I'd ever seen.
[man]
Police. Open up.
An entry into a forbidden world
of the profane and the violent,
and I didn't understand
even a little bit of it.
But I knew Reggie.
I recognized the defense mechanisms
he'd developed
in coping with the racism
of his day-to-day
as ones I was beginning to develop.
And as the only Chinese kid
in an all-white area of Colorado
I knew guys like Jack too.
You are real stupid for a cop, man.
You're following this guy too close.
Well, most cops are pretty stupid,
but since you landed in jail,
what the hell does that make you?
[Walter]
48 Hrs. is considered the headwaters
for the wave of interracial buddy films
that exploded throughout the '80s and '90s
and continue to grab
big box office numbers today.
Would you stop that?
Essentially staking out this ground
as its own sub-genre.
[man]
S ure that's him?
Yes, I'm sure that's Ellis Brittle.
[Walter] And it was also the flash point
for Eddie Murphy's superstardom.
My name's Reggie Hammond.
The film was his big screen debut,
and after this, Murphy would never
be second billed again.
I believe in the merit system. So far,
you ain't built up no points, boy.
Oh, well, then I'll be real good
from now on, Mr. Cates.
[Walter]
But what 48 Hrs. is not often seen as,
and it should be, is a landmark.
A challenging, even at times progressive
treatise on race relations
in the United States.
Come on, boy, hit it now.
- Boy, hey?
- Yeah, hit it.
[Walter]
There are obvious antecedents for 48 Hrs.
Sidney Poitier's The Defiant Ones and
In the Heat of the Night on the one side
Virgil's a funny name for a nigger boy
from Philadelphia.
What do they call you there?
They call me Mr. Tibbs.
Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder's
Silver Streak and Stir Crazy on the other.
- What are you doing?
- I'm getting bad. Better get bad, Jack,
because if you ain't bad, you're fucked.
That's right. We bad.
[chuckles]
Uh-huh.
[Walter] The genius of 48 Hrs.
is it occupies a middle space
between Poitier's socially responsible
to the point of self-serious pieces
What's the matter?
You afraid of catching my color?
and Richard Pryor's
more audience-friendly racial schtick.
Look at that. Al Jolson
made a million bucks looking like that.
Directed by Walter Hill,
one of the most successful action
directors this country has produced
48 Hrs. is a violent collision between
commercial and inflammatory elements.
Let me explain one thing to you, nigger.
[Walter] The result is something
that feels fresh, unpredictable.
A buddy comedy
that is neither about buddies
- Jack
- nor at the end, a comedy.
tell me a story.
Fuck you.
Oh, that's one of my favorites.
[Walter]
Shaggy dog Jack, played by Nick Nolte,
is a good cop willing to bend the rules
to get convict Reggie Hammond
released on a 48-hour pass
to help him catch
a vicious cop killer named Ganz.
- Thought you were locked up.
- I want the money, asshole.
The money that Reggie hid.
[Walter]
Reggie and Ganz have history together.
They were part of a crew on a heist gone
wrong that landed them both in prison,
and Reggie is the only one
who knows where the money is hidden.
- That's the money, Jack.
- Right.
[Walter] It's a master plot
spiced up with a time limit.
The cop only has 48 hours before he has
to take the convict back to prison.
From the very start,
Jack and Reggie are at odds,
but it's the unique
racial dynamics at play
that elevate this cops-and-robbers tale
into something else.
- What happened?
- Just read the fucking report.
[Walter] Early in the film, we see Jack
and his fellow cops at a police station,
which Hill has taken pains to paint
as multiracial and multi-gendered.
There's nothing from your gun.
There's no racial division.
It's diverse before the concept
gained cultural momentum.
They're all members of the nation of cop,
and aligned in their prejudice
against those they see as enemies.
The "not cops."
- Is any of them walking around?
- One of the gang's still in the slam.
Good.Good.
Get in here, Cates!
[Walter]
Even Jack's boss, Captain Hayden,
played by Frank McRae,
is African-American.
There's tension between Jack and Hayden,
but it's not racial tension.
[Hayden]
You better watch your ass.
If you screw up,
I can promise you, you're going down.
[Walter] Jack's not a guy
we would characterize as racist,
though he will quickly be established
as someone who is not above using
his systemic entitlement as a cudgel.
Jack crosses the Richmond-San Rafael
Bridge on his way to San Quentin.
For most directors, this kind
of establishing shot is just that.
A way to mark a location
with a familiar landmark.
But bridges hold
a special meaning for Walter Hill.
They appear in his films at moments,
like in Crossroads or Streets of Fire,
when his heroes are coming together
or pulling apart.
[Reggie]
Roxanne ♪
[Walter]
Hill introduces Reggie singing "Roxanne,"
by a band that I'm sure is
just coincidentally called The Police.
Roxanne ♪
An ad-lib by Eddie Murphy, it was
the first take of many that spoke to Hill,
despite the expense of licensing
a song from the top of the charts.
And it's the first hint of the movie star
Eddie Murphy will become.
In a different version of this movie,
he'd be singing a racially coded song.
But in a Walter Hill film,
he's singing a song about a prostitute
being saved from a life of sex work
by a man who won't share her
with someone else.
- Roxanne ♪
- Hey!
[Walter] Whether a connection
is intended here or not,
Reggie will soon take the role
of indentured servitude
under Jack's rough hand.
I thought maybe you were a smart boy.
Throughout their scenes together,
Jack keeps Reggie down
with plantation language, violence
But I own your ass.
and physical restraints.
[Reggie] Ain't no goddamn way
to start a partnership.
Now get this. We ain't partners,
we ain't brothers, and we ain't friends.
I'm putting you down and keeping you down
until Ganz is locked up or dead.
And if Ganz gets away,
you're gonna be sorry you ever met me.
He states his role as that of "The Man,"
whose job it is to keep him in check.
Established as not a racist,
Jack nevertheless comfortably slides
into the role of violent oppressor.
Hill sets the stage here
for 48 Hrs. to be a loaded conversation
You just hang on.
about who literally holds the keys.
The obvious move might have been
to make Jack the hero of the story
to involve us in his romantic failures
and his rebellious streak
his motivation of wanting
to avenge the murder of his friend.
But I always and immediately
identified with convict Reggie
the bad guy, who, for me,
was not only never bad,
but deserved every penny
of the money he stole.
Reggie is clearly the oppressed,
but also clearly able.
He's unapologetically horny, self-aware,
and the smartest guy in the film.
We see this quick-witted agility
when he apprehends Luther
while handcuffed to a steering wheel.
What's happening, Luther?
I'm sorry about the door. Did that hurt?
- [Jack] Hammond!
- [Walter] Jack isn't ready to concede.
[Jack]
Hand me that gun or you're dead.
[Walter] He expresses his humiliation
by calling Reggie "watermelon,"
an instant response to Reggie
gaining power in their relationship.
I don't know what you're smiling at,
watermelon.
[Walter]
Reggie fights back.
He understands Jack's power.
How a badge is permission
to transcend every barrier,
physical and cultural.
[Reggie]
So you a badass?
You know, it's amazing how far
a gun and a badge will take some guys.
[Walter] Reggie goads Jack,
teases him about his personal life.
Yo, man, tell me about this girlfriend.
Tell me something about
what's her problem besides you?
[Walter] He sleuths out clues
when Jack hits a dead end.
Speaking of moaning,
my stomach is starting to growl.
He's constantly distracting Jack
from his true motivation.
Getting his money back.
There's your goddamn dinner.
It works, because Jack can't bear to be
in a subservient position to this convict,
this Black man.
Remember, Jack's a good cop
but he is still helpless to the systemic
racism hardwired into his behaviors.
Reggie is using
Jack's programming against him.
All right, where to, convict?
Mission District, catch us an Indian.
[tires squeal]
I wonder what reservation
they let him off of.
[Walter] Hill predicts this strategy
in the opening scene,
in which chief villain Ganz
and his partner in crime, Billy Bear,
use a chain gang boss's racism
to facilitate their escape.
Maybe you should have stole
a better truck, Tonto.
[Walter] The plan presumes
that the guard is as casually racist
as Ganz appears to be viciously racist
- Take it easy, chief. He's only joking.
- a llowing for the exchange to escalate.
- Can I have the water, please, sir?
- Firewater, Tonto.
- Is that what you mean? Firewater?
- Right!
- [grunting]
- Hey!
[Walter]
Billy and Ganz stage a brawl.
It's possible the guard
can't even conceive of Billy Bear
being a confederate of Ganz.
I know, for nine-year-old me,
it came as a complete surprise.
It wasn't until decades later
that I realized how my own biases
had been indicted by this ruse.
The guard's racism
ends up getting him killed.
[man]
Let's go!
[whinnies]
- In Walter Hill's films
- Cribbs, you take point.
from Southern Comfort to his late Western
cycle, Broken Trail, Wild Bill, Geronimo
and his pilot for David Milch's Deadwood
Is there any other godless thing that
these godless, bloodthirsty heathens do?
systemic racism
is the white man's greatest tool
and also the place
where he's the most vulnerable.
Fugitives are driving
Race is America's Achilles' heel.
- [officer] Two men, one of them's Indian.
- Come on.
[Walter] Ganz and Billy Bear are the first
of the film's two interracial couples.
48 Hrs. is a contest between them,
a mirror for the other.
Ganz and Billy are friends from the start,
and Hill indicates that closeness as Ganz
procures a prostitute for his friend.
Now, make her an Indian.
No, not with a turban. You know, a squaw.
Jack doesn't facilitate sex for Reggie
until almost the end of the movie.
I got a 20. Have fun, huh?
I'm gonna have sex, Jack.
[Walter] If there are buddies in this
buddy picture, it's Ganz and Billy.
[tires squeal]
Then there's that scene, the centerpiece,
which occurs at almost exactly
the halfway point of the film
as Reggie enters a honky-tonk,
a satire of whiteness.
Yeehaw!
[upbeat country music]
Not a very popular place
with the brothers.
Always liked country boys.
They're sure as hell gonna like you.
[Walter] I heard about this scene
long before I saw it.
Howdy.
Audiences at the time started laughing
before it even began.
The excited vocalizations
on that long lead-up
to the first fall on a roller coaster.
- [Reggie] I'd like something to drink!
- Maybe best have a Black Russian.
- [laughs]
- Screenwriter Larry Gross describes it
as a toss-up in the early going
as to whether it would stay or go.
That's a funny joke. I get it. I'm Black.
[Walter]
Early test audiences were torn as well.
But when the dust settled,
here is this legendary moment where
Eddie Murphy emerges as Eddie Murphy.
I'm looking for Billy Bear.
You know where to find him?
I don't give a shit what the fuck
your badge says, nigger.
It's all based on an African-American man
assaulting an entire bar
full of racist, redneck idiots.
In an action movie filled with exciting
set pieces, this is the showstopper.
Set in a caricature
of regressive whiteness
dropped in the middle
of the most progressive city in America,
48 Hrs. is many things,
but it's about race.
- I don't like white people.
- [Walter] It's worth stating again
That means I'm enjoying this shit.
this is Eddie Murphy
in his very first screen performance.
[laughing]
Oh this is so fabulous. Ain't nothin' like
having a good meal with family.
Younger audiences may only know Murphy
as a shape-shifting,
family-friendly performer.
In fact, Murphy himself
has long driven the narrative
of being a Black performer
white America can agree on.
He's not Black or white. He's Eddie.
But if you backtrack through Shrek
You cut me deep, Shrek.
- Dr. Dolittle
- Come on!
Mulan, The Nutty Professor
and Coming to America
Halt! When you think of garbage,
think of Akeem.
you get back to the sharp edges of films
like Beverly Hills Cop, Trading Places
- You don't know who you're messing with!
- May I suggest using your nightstick?
and especially 48 Hrs.
Before the movies, he was a young stand-up
known for his blue routines
and building heat as the first Black
breakout star of Saturday Night Live.
This is how you answer a door
in my neighborhood.
Who is it?
He idolized Richard Pryor,
who also talked dirty and influenced
people with sharp, polarizing material.
'Cause if you're in an argument
with another man, he may be white,
but it's man-on-man for a minute,
and the shit get rough,
he end up calling you "Nigger!"
You gotta go, "Oh, shit.
Now, I ain't no man no more."
Which, like Eddie, led to edgy, socially
responsible films such as Blue Collar
Everybody know what the plant is.
The "plant" just short for "plantation."
Right on!
before similarly ending up
in humiliating product
as literally a toy for a rich white kid.
I wonder if it's the price
of any kind of real success
in the United States for minorities.
Dial back the angry to keep the men
signing the checks happy.
But in the scene at Torchy's, Eddie Murphy
is still at his most dangerous.
What the hell kind of cop are you?
You know what I am?
I'm your worst fucking nightmare, man.
A nigger with a badge. I got permission
to kick your fucking ass whenever I want.
[Walter]
And in this moment,
he became the most important
Black actor since Sidney Poitier
and for many of the same
norm-shattering reasons.
- Where the fuck did you get this?
- Tax refund.
Bullshit. You're too fucking stupid
to have a job.
He's an existential threat
to the ruling order
in a way he arguably never will be again,
not to this extent, on screen.
Hill and Murphy are invested in discussing
race in ways that are frank, unadorned.
[glass shatters]
Profane and profound.
He's representative
of a threatening kind of Blackness.
The kind that is aware of the tactics of
the white ruling class that hate his guts.
There's a new sheriff in town.
And he uses it
as his righteous sword and shield.
And his name is Reggie Hammond.
Y'all be cool. Right on.
[Walter]
Reggie has assumed Jack's power.
And for that transgression,
Jack must reassert his.
[Jack] I want to know
what the fuck this is all about.
Maybe I don't like the way you asked me,
all right?
Who gives a goddamn what you like?
You're just a spearchucker
with a number stenciled
on the back of his prison fatigues.
[Walter] They get into a fistfight,
and it must be said
that there are few directors
who tell character better through action
than Walter Hill.
Their fighting styles are different.
Jack's is wild and ungainly.
Reggie's, is staccato and sharp.
Reggie keeps his cool throughout
You little fucker.
until Jack throws him
on a pile of garbage.
[Reggie]
You pushed me in the fucking garbage?
[Walter] He recognizes the gesture
as condescending.
A line has been crossed.
It's outside the normal race-baiting.
Reggie will not be demeaned
during the course of this 48 hours.
[siren wailing]
[tires screech]
[Jack]
They saved your ass, convict.
[Reggie] That's what you tell 'em
at the station house.
Yeah, right.
I'll even put it in my report that way.
Yeah, I bet you will.
[Walter]
When Jack tells Reggie
that he's going to put in his report
that he won the fight,
it's an acknowledgment
that though Jack has lost,
he has the institutional power
to control the narrative.
Right, partner.
But one of the marvels of Murphy's
performance is his ability throughout
to imbue Reggie with,
of all things, dignity.
Get this, man. We ain't brothers,
we ain't partners, and we ain't friends.
If Ganz gets away with my money,
you'll be sorry you ever met me.
[Walter]
I have aspired all my life
to have Reggie's confidence and dignity
in my own racial identity.
[upbeat pop music plays]
Later, in Vroman's,
the exact mirror opposite of Torchy's,
the pivotal scene in the movie
occurs as Reggie is in his element.
Vodka with a twist,
and I'd like to run up a tab, please.
[Walter] You can tell,
because he's allowed to open a tab,
and Hill, in another hallmark, gives
the band plenty of time to do their thing.
Hammond, where the hell are you?
Vroman's in the Fillmore.
Yeah, I know you don't know about
this place. The brothers hang out here.
[Walter] 48 Hrs., already an impeccable,
lean vehicle
in this moment becomes something
very much like an important film.
- [music ends]
- [applause]
At this moment, it doesn't matter what
48 Hrs. set out to be. At this moment
Hammond!
for an ostracized kid
looking to make sense of the senseless
- Candy, this is Jack.
- Hello.
And goodbye.
48 Hrs. is truly great.
Jack apologizes.
"Nigger" and "watermelon,"
I didn't mean that stuff.
I was just doing my job, keeping you down.
Yeah, well, "doing your job"
don't explain everything, Jack.
Yeah, you're right.
[Walter] And Reggie tells him,
in an almost offhand way
[laughs]
that Jack is not, in fact, forgiven.
Even as a nine-year-old kid,
I recognized the grace
of this practiced, measured dismissal
of a buddy's blindness to my pain,
and the lengths I would go
to make these uncomfortable moments
as invisible as I felt.
When I first saw this film, I was too
young to unpack all of my reactions to it,
much less begin to unravel
the riddle of race and representation
in the United States.
I'm not sure
it's a knot we'll ever fully untangle.
I got five deaths related to Ganz,
and you blow it
for a lousy nigger convict!
That's right! I called him a nigger!
You bet I did!
There's no hugging it out
between Jack and Reggie
but there is devastating indictment
of how white and Black Americans
circle around
these hyper-charged racial divides
that are embedded in our country
without ever bridging that chasm.
Now wait a minute, goddamn it! I'm gonna
tell you something about this man.
He has more brains than you'll ever know.
Got more guts than any partner I ever had.
You go fuck yourself, convict!
[Walter]
At the end of it all,
Jack goes back to his corner
and Reggie goes back to jail.
Wait a minute.
Ganz got away with all my money,
and you gonna take me back to jail
in my own car.
Somehow, this shit don't seem right.
Yeah, a lot of things don't seem right.
They aren't friends, but they are closer
to what Ganz and Billy Bear were
at the beginning of 48 Hrs.
Co-conspirators in a crime.
Maybe that's as close as we ever get.
When Reggie and Jack make a deal
about the money that Reggie's stolen
This what you wanna talk about?
it's predicated on trust, and there's
a feeling, confirmed by the sequel
It's your money. It'll be there
in six months when you get out.
that Jack's not to be trusted.
I'm gonna be an honest man
from now on, right?
Reggie isn't to be trusted either.
Can I have my lighter back, Reggie?
[chuckles]
[Walter] 48 Hrs. isn't a buddy comedy,
because they're not buddies.
And more than not being a comedy,
it's a tragedy
in which whatever brotherhood discovered
by these men is abandoned at the end
by the circumstances
of our shared reality.
Maybe it's the great American tragedy
that however long
we spend in one another's company,
I will only ever be one thing
in your eyes
and you will only ever be
the thing who doesn't see me.
[dramatic music plays]
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