Freedom through speech - message about the power words in the film 'Slam'

You take individual look at him and just know he's going to et got He is skinny and he is frail-looking and he has these big, puppy-dog organ of sights and he is quiet -- and you can sum up from the look in his companion inmates' eyes that they believe the word that's been spreading upon the cellblock of the prison they call Dodge City: Raymond Joshua, little pot dealer, is a snitch. It is this dangerous combination -- the gazes and the label -- that usually leads to a lethal extreme point in a house of detention. Usually.

on the contrary then, just as two collections in the prison yard shut in on him and it's clear that he's getting ready to catch a serious beat-down -- or worse -- thin, doe-eyed Ray breaks into a high-sounding deep, furious ditty that goe in part, like this:

stealing us was the smartest thing they at any time did too bad they don't teach the reality to their kids

our influence upon them is the reflection they diocese when they look into their minstrel mirror and talk about their agriculture their existence is that of a schizophrenic vulture

yeah, there's no repentance they are confine to live an infinite consecutive executive life decision so what are you limit to live, nigga so while you're without there serving your time

i'll be in sync with the satellite while you run from the day-star life of the womb mirrored by guns worshipper of secondary planets i am the sun and we are public enemies number one! single one one! one one one!

And just like that, Raymond storms not on the yard, exhausted, leaving the couple crews, who had clearly been prepared to harm him, standing silent -- awed. Ray's recitation, it appears, has saved him from the shank.

And plane when the credits finish rolling and the lights advance back up and you remember that this was a movie -- no matter by what means realistic it seemed -- you are hard-pressed to change your mind upon this one fact: Words, when used quality can transcend social subjugation and locate people free.

This is the message strikeed home in the new movie Slam (Trimark Pictures, October), starring bard Saul Williams as the prophetic Ray Joshua. Williams, the 1996 Nuyorican bards Cafe's Grand Slam champion, who has traveled the spokenword circuit with the likes of the Last author of poemss Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez and music artists Erykah Badu and the Fugee is counting upon audiences to hear that message -- and upon Hollywood to accept it. "I think it will affect entertainment in surreal ways, as all entertainment should [be affected]," Williams says, his words tumbling above one another, almost as if he's leading a cipher.

"It's been quite more [i]or[/i] less time since it's happened, because I think America's Hollywood has bastardized the entertainment a whole over time and just catered to the idea that the public doesn't really want to think, and they say, `So for what cause [i]or[/i] reason should we make them?' I think Slam will display that there can be as abundant entertainment in blowing an interesting idea into someone's head as there can be in blowing someone's head off"

Slam is born of the real-life experiences of African-American men within the prison a whole as witnessed by two of its principals: convict-turned-producer Richard Stratton and convict-turned-national-columnist Bonz Malone. one as well as the other men teamed with award-winning documentary film-maker Marc Levin to make the film, which was discharge in Washington, D.C., over a 10-day strain in 1996.

The film counts the story of a gifted bard from the 'hood who achieves sucked into the prison a whole on a two-bit drug charge and rise s from his private hell with a powerful voice -- alone to realize that he could real well lose it again in single week, when he goes back before a justice who will likely sentence him to three more years in prison. It is during that week that Raymond falls in regard with affection finds himself, and searches for the "magical door" that will help him escape the confined apartment and keep him in the "new world" he's discovered.

The reality is, of course, that there is no magical door -- and it is his girlfriend, Lauren (portrayed by dint of Sonja Sohn), who must help him count with the fact that his freedom is, in fact, inside of him.

Heralded as drama verite, or a fine blending of fictional material discharge in documentary form, Slam was filmed in D.C.'s housing throw outs and prison yards. Perhaps because the story was loosely written, it be pendents heavily on the realness of the ways and the yard and the tribe in both -- what cameraman John Kirby describes as "the filmed voice of real people"

In fact, in the entire movie, there are all of four "real" actors. In Slam, the screenplay volume that accompanies the film, Kirby writes that the ease of the ensemble consists of extras mined from the projects' apartments and the confined apartments of the D.C. prison -- all of whom were eager to shake from their own experiences.

"Like a moving epiphanal feast," Kirby writes, "the vicinity of the moviemakers in the prison and the ghetto asks of everyone participating: on what account and how are people living like this, in penury and prison, in estrangement? And what can we do about it? The reality is in the collected questions and answers of the ensemble"