An Autobiography
To Be Young, Gifted, Black and Committed:
The story of a young Black man's rise from the
impoverished ghetto to the impoverished elite
Prologue:
I was surrounded by Black fear and White indifference. Black people feared the consequences of challenging the status quo. White society was generally indifferent to the counter narrative of a sub-national malcontent. As a young man, it was really hard to appreciate or understand this fear. I didn’t feel it deep down. I wasn’t concerned with making a living; wasn’t ready to accept that I would need “them” for a job down the road. I was a job: I had useful skills, I was resourceful, knew how to get things done. I knew nothing of the dependency. I didn’t understand low finance. I took serious the rhetoric of the day about the equality of our existence, the righteousness of our struggle to equality. I was sure it was just a matter of defining our own ‘I’s and T’s’ and that if people like me, “young, gifted and Black”, would just commit, we could end the dependency, claim our own voice, project our own power.
If I recounted the activities of J.Edgar Hoover and his COINTELPRO program to sabotage Black people involved in the Civil Rights/Black Power movement of the 1960's, you would nod your head and dream about how it would've been different with you; how you would've seen through the lies and half-truths and supported the Righteous! Well, you don't have to dream about what it would've been like back in the day.
The Black Lives Matter social activism is as much about protesting the police killing of unarmed Black people and the system that protects them, as it should be about the silent killer of Economic Marginalization, which is like a massive radiation leak, you can't see it, smell it or touch it, but it kills nonetheless. And the reality of this economic marginalization is that solutions to problems big and small become complicated and philosophical because so much is at stake. Simply advocating for a better Black future puts you on the wrong side of today's Job-Bots, the algorithms that scan resumes, analyze names, and life histories to eliminate undesirable, or "incompatible" people. And in a world that feigns indignity at the mere utterance of the phrase, "White Privilege" a Black advocate is automatically dis-qualified, meaning, 'you were qualified until we found out where you are coming from'.
We need to prove to ourselves that information like this, efforts like this, will not lead to individual despair; that we value genuine efforts by genuine and capable people to go forward, leapfrogging off the shoulders of those that came before and building the missing pieces that lead to the next level of progress.
We need to prove to ourselves that information like this, efforts like this, will not lead to individual despair; that we value genuine efforts by genuine and capable people to go forward, leapfrogging off the shoulders of those that came before and building the missing pieces that lead to the next level of progress.
The highlight of this biography for many will be the time I spent with KJM3 Entertainment Group, Inc., a film distribution and marketing firm started by four Black folks with an undying and visceral commitment to changing the dynamics of our existence. This is the story of the business behind the success of the film, Daughters of the Dust, and the people driving the business. In the heady days of Daughter's success, we traveled the world as the tip of the spear of Black redemption. We weren't just people in the film business, we were advocates for three-dimensional images and stories from the African Diaspora, which was like challenging Hollywood to a knife fight.
For others, most interesting will be my African exploits, particularly in Zimbabwe during the heady days of the Mugabe administration, complete with infiltrating US intelligence operatives, agent provocateurs, and other opportunist, but also including creative and enterprising and successful Zimbabwean entrepreneurs with vision and commitment.
And for some, the work I've been doing around the Next Iteration of Human Existence will be the most interesting because there is no one else talking about Transhumanism and a positive Black future! The Genetic, Robotic, Artificial Intelligence and Nano processes revolution is now and the implications for our survival are such that the Transhumanist community has been uncharacteristically quiet on the topic, save for the dystopian science fiction writers, and we all know how that ends for us. The Next It is a brilliantly conceived near-future drama featuring a Black scientist trying to flip the script on our demise through the secret distribution of advanced human enhancement technologies. Brilliant because it allows us to project a plausible, heroic Black future! Plausible because of the convergence of our biology with our technology and the ubiquity of the knowledge of how to manipulate matter and processes.
For others, most interesting will be my African exploits, particularly in Zimbabwe during the heady days of the Mugabe administration, complete with infiltrating US intelligence operatives, agent provocateurs, and other opportunist, but also including creative and enterprising and successful Zimbabwean entrepreneurs with vision and commitment.
And for some, the work I've been doing around the Next Iteration of Human Existence will be the most interesting because there is no one else talking about Transhumanism and a positive Black future! The Genetic, Robotic, Artificial Intelligence and Nano processes revolution is now and the implications for our survival are such that the Transhumanist community has been uncharacteristically quiet on the topic, save for the dystopian science fiction writers, and we all know how that ends for us. The Next It is a brilliantly conceived near-future drama featuring a Black scientist trying to flip the script on our demise through the secret distribution of advanced human enhancement technologies. Brilliant because it allows us to project a plausible, heroic Black future! Plausible because of the convergence of our biology with our technology and the ubiquity of the knowledge of how to manipulate matter and processes.
Well, anyway here we go with my KJM3 moment, the first of three planned installments.
KJM3
My early accomplishments in life had nothing to do with the amount of money earned by the films I distributed or how crafty I'd been in negotiating a client's music publishing deal. I internalized a different standard, one based on what needed to be tried, what needed to be said. As an educated 20th century Black man who has chosen to stand on the shoulders of runaway slaves who drew strength on the shoulders of kings and queens that weathered the defeat of Kingdoms, I was compelled to be about us, our growth, our self-sufficiency. KJM3 was the right thing to do, and the historically right time without being that moment. In historical terms, the effort to own our images and the scenes of our future was not new but resurgent in KJM3, yet another determined effort to take a big swing at the challenge of ascribing value to the stories and images that reaffirm our existence.
"Daughters of the Dust" was a beautifully shot celebration of our mythic selves. The us not consumed by them. A community of semi-free slaves living in limbo on the outskirts of the main engine of domination; people who defined themselves in relation to themselves and not to the crushing day-to-day pressure of physical and mental subjugation. This film also represented an opportunity to draw attention to the possibilities inherent in controlling the process and mechanisms for ascribing value to our images and stories. The story, the virtuosity of the production, KJM3’s involvement all conspired to elevate this whole experience into a cultural event.
Daughters experienced this flurry of success because theretofore, nothing like it had been popularized for this audience unknown to the mainstream movers and shakers. Daughters was like a cultural clarion call for the spiritual, intellectual, aesthetic and economic awakening of this subset of Black folks -- the Cultural Grassroots – that completely surprised the gatekeepers of Black “middledom”, and certainly shocked the indie media movers and shakers. This film, this company and this effort, was galvanizing a whole community of quiet resisters: proud people woven uncomfortably into the fabric of Black accommodation, a nappy head in a crowd of perfectly coiffed perms.
The Cultural Grassroots community in late 20th Century New York City represented some of our best and brightest committed to the social competitiveness of our own tribe. This is the place where regular people were creating and legitimizing whole lexicons, putting the drum to work in popular culture, spreading the word of not revolution, but of re-creation, a bastard creation – “my nigga” -- a mutation born out of an inclination to resist, but also to survive the here and now. I remember the scorn heaped upon those folks in the South Bronx with all those Q’s in their names, wearing those big, fake ass gold stenciled earrings, and those fly, fly hairdos that only the Ghetto-fabulous would dare wear to a job interview. And while the new be-boppers were leveraging their bare-asses to the masses, the sisters and brothers on the blocks of Brooklyn were locking their hair in the never ending struggle to unlock the subtle and complex realities of who we were, who we are now, and hoping like hell that somebody would say something about who we are going to be tomorrow. Out of this cauldron of cultural resisters came KJM3 Entertainment Group, “a distributor of Three-dimensional Images and Stories from the African Diaspora.”
In KJM3, you had four very distinct personalities, each a different but similar experience with the Great American Experiment. We had all been part of a concerted effort by post 60's America to acculturate and expose Black kids to the normalcy of White community life. An innocent enough social experiment meant to bring young people together and increase understanding. I suppose. Some folks reacted to this type of stimuli by becoming exactly what was presented to them; some of us, driven by the "why" in these circumstances, headed for something more reaffirming, something that didn't require so great a transformation. “Too Black, Too Strong”, is often how it is referred to on the street.
Here is a link to a good video of the 20th Anniversary Panel Discussion with KJM3 and Julie Dash -- I can be found about one-hour and six minutes in?
KJM3
My early accomplishments in life had nothing to do with the amount of money earned by the films I distributed or how crafty I'd been in negotiating a client's music publishing deal. I internalized a different standard, one based on what needed to be tried, what needed to be said. As an educated 20th century Black man who has chosen to stand on the shoulders of runaway slaves who drew strength on the shoulders of kings and queens that weathered the defeat of Kingdoms, I was compelled to be about us, our growth, our self-sufficiency. KJM3 was the right thing to do, and the historically right time without being that moment. In historical terms, the effort to own our images and the scenes of our future was not new but resurgent in KJM3, yet another determined effort to take a big swing at the challenge of ascribing value to the stories and images that reaffirm our existence.
"Daughters of the Dust" was a beautifully shot celebration of our mythic selves. The us not consumed by them. A community of semi-free slaves living in limbo on the outskirts of the main engine of domination; people who defined themselves in relation to themselves and not to the crushing day-to-day pressure of physical and mental subjugation. This film also represented an opportunity to draw attention to the possibilities inherent in controlling the process and mechanisms for ascribing value to our images and stories. The story, the virtuosity of the production, KJM3’s involvement all conspired to elevate this whole experience into a cultural event.
Daughters experienced this flurry of success because theretofore, nothing like it had been popularized for this audience unknown to the mainstream movers and shakers. Daughters was like a cultural clarion call for the spiritual, intellectual, aesthetic and economic awakening of this subset of Black folks -- the Cultural Grassroots – that completely surprised the gatekeepers of Black “middledom”, and certainly shocked the indie media movers and shakers. This film, this company and this effort, was galvanizing a whole community of quiet resisters: proud people woven uncomfortably into the fabric of Black accommodation, a nappy head in a crowd of perfectly coiffed perms.
The Cultural Grassroots community in late 20th Century New York City represented some of our best and brightest committed to the social competitiveness of our own tribe. This is the place where regular people were creating and legitimizing whole lexicons, putting the drum to work in popular culture, spreading the word of not revolution, but of re-creation, a bastard creation – “my nigga” -- a mutation born out of an inclination to resist, but also to survive the here and now. I remember the scorn heaped upon those folks in the South Bronx with all those Q’s in their names, wearing those big, fake ass gold stenciled earrings, and those fly, fly hairdos that only the Ghetto-fabulous would dare wear to a job interview. And while the new be-boppers were leveraging their bare-asses to the masses, the sisters and brothers on the blocks of Brooklyn were locking their hair in the never ending struggle to unlock the subtle and complex realities of who we were, who we are now, and hoping like hell that somebody would say something about who we are going to be tomorrow. Out of this cauldron of cultural resisters came KJM3 Entertainment Group, “a distributor of Three-dimensional Images and Stories from the African Diaspora.”
In KJM3, you had four very distinct personalities, each a different but similar experience with the Great American Experiment. We had all been part of a concerted effort by post 60's America to acculturate and expose Black kids to the normalcy of White community life. An innocent enough social experiment meant to bring young people together and increase understanding. I suppose. Some folks reacted to this type of stimuli by becoming exactly what was presented to them; some of us, driven by the "why" in these circumstances, headed for something more reaffirming, something that didn't require so great a transformation. “Too Black, Too Strong”, is often how it is referred to on the street.
The Gang's all here: Moi, Kathryn, Michelle, Mark
It could only happen in NYC. The four of us had a lot in common. There was only about a ten year age difference between the youngest, me, and the oldest, I believe Kathy. We were all educated at prestigious educational institutions and we all had the experience of dealing with White people as "exceptional" members of our race. The other significant thing we all had in common was our worldviews, more particularly, we shared in a certain rootlessness; we were abstract creatures uncomfortable in the Black world of mediocrity and "place sitting" that was the Black church and our employer of first resort, the “gubnit”.
Of course, for me, it didn't start in college. No, it started in third grade when my mom put me in the local Catholic school, which at that time, late 1960's, was still a place where the White middle class sent their children. I got to see then the stark differences in how we lived. Not just the large ranch house out in the suburbs, but the cosy neighborhoods and little single family houses in the city. Contrasted with being in a public housing project in the forgotten part of town, or even "moving up" to a semi urban "garden" apartment located on the fringes of White ethnic neighborhoods, where I began to meet more diverse groups of White people, those that lived in apartments and had only a mom or a dad. Yes, I had grown up in a transforming America where Black folks were now being "integrated" into mainstream White society. The experience left many of us feeling socially malnourished, but energized about the possibilities for self-transformation.
By the time I got out of college. I was like the Sidney Poiter character in "Raisin In the Sun", "White boys are doing big deals, Mama!". I was determined to take my shot. All of us, this "post affirmative action" crowd of Black folks wanted to take our shot, defined by most of us as working in Corporate America, or getting a good government job. However, out of this critical mass of newly ambitious Black folks, came another crowd that defined our ambition not in terms of getting a job with Corporate America but in terms of what we might contribute to the uplift of the race -- not out of altruism but out of self respect. We live on the fringes, unable to form a countenance comforting to the integrated mainstream. We reek of insurgency, noticeable even through the mask of glistening teeth and Pollyanna banter.
We were very conscious of what we were trying to do. It would be unprecedented for Black folks with such different dispositions, so we thought, to form a cohesive business. While our backgrounds were very different, what we shared was a collective sense that as a community, we had to be stronger and that our coming together was part of what needed to happen: the Corporate Negro, the Light-bright Bourgeoisie, and the Urban Angry Man, if we could make our collaboration work, then we could in fact, do this thing!
We Can Do This Thing!
"We can do this thing" was more than a company slogan, it represented an attitude, a mantra that would help us through the myriad of race-based distractions that make it hard for Black folks to collaborate: lack of access to investment capital, getting past our individual "specialness" enjoyed in the White social circles in which we each traveled. ‘We Can Do This Thing’, meant that we could get over all of the social-political-ideological baggage that stands ready to separate us. It meant that we could actually take what we learned from our individual mediation of mainstream society and combine to successfully challenge its control over our images and stories, both lived and recorded.
The idea of getting involved with the dissemination of this material was something Kathy and Michelle were actively working on before they met Mark and I. In fact, Kathy and Michelle already began talking with their friend, Joy Huckabee, who was also an attorney about starting a company. They felt strongly that a lot of Black talent and projects were not getting the marketing and promotions support that could help them succeed at the theatrical level. This was a time when there was a lot of activity from little, idiosyncratic boutique film distribution outfits that were cropping up with interesting films and creating a scene, along with Sundance, for indie films. People like Bingham Ray and the Lipsky brothers at October Films; Ira Deutchman and Lizz Mann at Fine Line, The Wiensteins at Miramax, and free agents like John Pierson, who wrote about a number such deals in which he was involved in the book, “Spike, Mike. Slackers and Dykes”, were spearheading a whole industry out of lower Manhattan and we were right there in the middle -- of Manhattan -- in proximity to their business. Kathy and Michelle, out of the four of us, were the senior people in this world through their work at two indie support organizations, Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers, and Women Make Movies. Mark and I were relatively new to the world of film making, although both of us were working around it, Mark in television syndication and me just getting started working in entertainment and getting most of my clients from the Columbia University run non-profit legal services group, "Lawyers for the Arts". In fact, it was Michelle Materre that referred my first paying client, video installationist, Shu Lea Chang, who had just received a half-a-million dollar film grant from the new PBS funding arm, the Independent Television Services Corporation (ITVS).
New York City was electric with film buzz in the 1990’s. All of the east coast based indie film startups were working right there in lower Manhattan, and even as a young company, we felt as legit as the rest of the lot because the indie film business is mercurial and unpredictable. One minute you are trudging along unknown, ignored, the next minute you’ve got the hot shit. What fundamentally separated us from the indie infrastructure that existed at the time, was our focus on the three dimensionality of the images and stories coming out of the African Diaspora. The fact that all of those companies making their mark, driving the early stages of this new thing called “Indiewood”, would opportunistically look for “Black audience” product that fit their self-serving understanding of the Black ethos, you know, those Coon Comedies, the Urban Malaise, and the Up-from-Slavery Panegyric, was affirmation of the business sense that it made to be in this space at this time just because of the attention Black film was getting. The films Indiewood would produce, however, were a direct refutation and in conflict with the consciousness of the effort we were making, serious differences that inevitably showed up when serious discussions about money were being had. What we understood as a competitive advantage, the Cultural Grassroots as an energized market opportunity for three dimensional images and stories from the African Diaspora, was a silent deal breaker in most meetings with money. Indiewood films, underwritten with Hollywood money and co-written by Black folks hawking a black ethos Hollywood understood and valued, set an inflated standard of financial investment and success that only their money and business infrastructure could facilitate. Smart people had a hard time thinking ouside this box, in particular, Black folks with money.
The day I remember most during our incipient stages was the day we were all sitting in the conference room belonging to the primary tenant of an office share that Mark was using. By this time we had all spent some time talking and had developed a good sense of each other’s style and temperament. Everyone was in the room except Joy Huckaby, who was the "J" in KJM3. Joy was rolling in the big leagues as general counsel to Maurice Starr, the maestro behind then boy group sensation, "New Kids On The Block", and ended up part of the company in name only, although she was the key figure in bringing Kino together with Julie. But we were there to talk about incorporating and finding a name for the company and to talk about what the company was going to be. Without a lot of fanfare, the initials of our names emerged as the choice for the company name, Kathy Joy, Michelle, Mark and Marlin (M3), primarily because it had a nice hip-hop flavored ring to it, giving us some connection to the then current cultural phenom that was hip-hop. The conversation about what we wanted to be took a little more time. Michelle and Kathy had envisioned a company in the nonprofit mold reflected by the companies they worked for. Mark and I were absolutely certain that we wanted to compete in the for profit marketplace. I was new to the business world but I knew I didn't want to get caught up in anything that reeked of begging for money, playing on White folk sympathy for Black under achievement.
Looking back at the experience of trying to raise Black money, going nonprofit would've been the smart thing to do. It would’ve put us in a mindset that would've appealed more to the sensibilities of both the commercial and philanthropic White world. They understood "helping" Black folks trying to "help" their plagued communities pick themselves from the floor of destitution and underdevelopment. They had no reference point, however, for "investing" in Black business people committed to making their communities competitive, turning our objective relationship into currency, the currency of independence and relevance; currency you could spend to influence the minds of men, women and children that had become accustom to seeing themselves as victims or perpetrators of pitifully small social no-no's.
Good example of what I'm referring to is a deal we were asked to be part of involving, ultimately, the Rockefeller/Ford Foundation. They were interested in some type of video diversity initiative and were apparently talking to a number of media companies that were in the space as potential partners, at least that is how it was sold to Michelle, who knew a Black woman high up in the world of philanthropy and who always seemed to be on the scene, particularly when we were overseas. In any event, we attended this meeting with high hopes of being in on this philanthropic foray because this money was untethered to the burden of a strict financial return. Mark Walton, our master of corporate presentation speak, would be our lead presenter, with Michelle adding color commentary. Kathy and I both tended to be reserved and quite frankly, not that interested in talking with these folks always looking for some "good minorities".
We arrived at the offices of, I believe, an established video distributor that was one of many at the time stocking the legion of video stores that occuppied every neighborhood in America. The job of being a video distributor was not rocket science, and most of these so-called distributors were, in reality, using a handful of essentially "rack-jobbers", operations that accumulate product from everyone calling themselves a distributor which can range from someone with a extensive library of titles to an independent video-maker trying to distribute his personal opus. In addition to the people from the foundation, our team and the host, there were two other people, both "ivy league", who were starting a new video group. So far so ok, but there is something about this meeting that doesn't seem consistent with what KJM3 came to do, which was pitch our services to be considered for this grant to distribute a new video line featuring classic films from the Black filmmography like, "Nothing But A Man". This room is set up for a workshop type of interaction, complete with an elaborately catered food table and butcher paper and markers, etc. This is not a "business meeting", this is a brain-drain!
As Mark went through what was a masterful presentation of our backgrounds, accomplishments and vision for this project, weaving in personal stories and references incorporating the college and early professional experience of certain members of this vain crowd of decision makers and money people (yes, we researched their backgrounds), it was starting to become clear that the decision had already been made to give the deal for this philanthropy funded video label intended to target a "diverse" marketplace to the two "other people" at the table. KJM3's contribution was to be this meeting and what could be gleaned from us about the Black market; our compensation: being in the room with the Masters of Culture and Money. The other folks with the startup video label would get the contract to release the first of these "diverse" classics, which helped them leverage that infusion of money and capacity to pick up the contract to distribute the biography series by Arts and Entertainment network.
It was very clear to the people assembled in the room that KJM3 did not think of itself nor was it involved in remedial education. We were a company with a sophisticated understanding of the business of images and stories that had succeeded in talking to a large audience of Black people the mainstream didn't know existed and in language they did not understand. By the time we took a break from all of the passive-aggressive jousting over issues of culture and hegemony, they had clearly gotten the message that KJM3 was not there to be brain-drained, that we took polite exception to the attempt to pat us on the head and pass the money onto their chosen few.
Kathryn and Michelle both knew the limitations of the non-profit world. They understood that the same thing that stands in the way of success for so many Black business plans, is the same thing that would hamper growth of a non-profit: the absence of capital, vision and courage from the Black elite. The money was really not the hard thing; the hardest thing was vision and courage. The Black elite simply do not have the courage to envision a world without a White paymaster. So many business ideas generated by Black entrepreneurs are ideas that are rooted in solving some aspect of the Black malaise. Black people like any other group, do want to make their communities strong, give their children better opportunities. These social-preneurs are not motivated by business for business sake. KJM3 was certainly no different in that respect. We were different in that we were not "scurred" to take on the task of infrastructure building. We were about to house a strategic asset; plotting to jack into the broadcast apparatus and operate a forward strategic offensive outpost in the high intensity war on the minds of Black folks. ... Part II.
Here is a link to a good video of the 20th Anniversary Panel Discussion with KJM3 and Julie Dash -- I can be found about one-hour and six minutes in? |
| The Gang's all here: Moi, Kathryn, Michelle, Mark |
It could only happen in NYC. The four of us had a lot in common. There was only about a ten year age difference between the youngest, me, and the oldest, I believe Kathy. We were all educated at prestigious educational institutions and we all had the experience of dealing with White people as "exceptional" members of our race. The other significant thing we all had in common was our worldviews, more particularly, we shared in a certain rootlessness; we were abstract creatures uncomfortable in the Black world of mediocrity and "place sitting" that was the Black church and our employer of first resort, the “gubnit”.
Of course, for me, it didn't start in college. No, it started in third grade when my mom put me in the local Catholic school, which at that time, late 1960's, was still a place where the White middle class sent their children. I got to see then the stark differences in how we lived. Not just the large ranch house out in the suburbs, but the cosy neighborhoods and little single family houses in the city. Contrasted with being in a public housing project in the forgotten part of town, or even "moving up" to a semi urban "garden" apartment located on the fringes of White ethnic neighborhoods, where I began to meet more diverse groups of White people, those that lived in apartments and had only a mom or a dad. Yes, I had grown up in a transforming America where Black folks were now being "integrated" into mainstream White society. The experience left many of us feeling socially malnourished, but energized about the possibilities for self-transformation.
By the time I got out of college. I was like the Sidney Poiter character in "Raisin In the Sun", "White boys are doing big deals, Mama!". I was determined to take my shot. All of us, this "post affirmative action" crowd of Black folks wanted to take our shot, defined by most of us as working in Corporate America, or getting a good government job. However, out of this critical mass of newly ambitious Black folks, came another crowd that defined our ambition not in terms of getting a job with Corporate America but in terms of what we might contribute to the uplift of the race -- not out of altruism but out of self respect. We live on the fringes, unable to form a countenance comforting to the integrated mainstream. We reek of insurgency, noticeable even through the mask of glistening teeth and Pollyanna banter.
We were very conscious of what we were trying to do. It would be unprecedented for Black folks with such different dispositions, so we thought, to form a cohesive business. While our backgrounds were very different, what we shared was a collective sense that as a community, we had to be stronger and that our coming together was part of what needed to happen: the Corporate Negro, the Light-bright Bourgeoisie, and the Urban Angry Man, if we could make our collaboration work, then we could in fact, do this thing!
We Can Do This Thing!
"We can do this thing" was more than a company slogan, it represented an attitude, a mantra that would help us through the myriad of race-based distractions that make it hard for Black folks to collaborate: lack of access to investment capital, getting past our individual "specialness" enjoyed in the White social circles in which we each traveled. ‘We Can Do This Thing’, meant that we could get over all of the social-political-ideological baggage that stands ready to separate us. It meant that we could actually take what we learned from our individual mediation of mainstream society and combine to successfully challenge its control over our images and stories, both lived and recorded.
The idea of getting involved with the dissemination of this material was something Kathy and Michelle were actively working on before they met Mark and I. In fact, Kathy and Michelle already began talking with their friend, Joy Huckabee, who was also an attorney about starting a company. They felt strongly that a lot of Black talent and projects were not getting the marketing and promotions support that could help them succeed at the theatrical level. This was a time when there was a lot of activity from little, idiosyncratic boutique film distribution outfits that were cropping up with interesting films and creating a scene, along with Sundance, for indie films. People like Bingham Ray and the Lipsky brothers at October Films; Ira Deutchman and Lizz Mann at Fine Line, The Wiensteins at Miramax, and free agents like John Pierson, who wrote about a number such deals in which he was involved in the book, “Spike, Mike. Slackers and Dykes”, were spearheading a whole industry out of lower Manhattan and we were right there in the middle -- of Manhattan -- in proximity to their business. Kathy and Michelle, out of the four of us, were the senior people in this world through their work at two indie support organizations, Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers, and Women Make Movies. Mark and I were relatively new to the world of film making, although both of us were working around it, Mark in television syndication and me just getting started working in entertainment and getting most of my clients from the Columbia University run non-profit legal services group, "Lawyers for the Arts". In fact, it was Michelle Materre that referred my first paying client, video installationist, Shu Lea Chang, who had just received a half-a-million dollar film grant from the new PBS funding arm, the Independent Television Services Corporation (ITVS).
New York City was electric with film buzz in the 1990’s. All of the east coast based indie film startups were working right there in lower Manhattan, and even as a young company, we felt as legit as the rest of the lot because the indie film business is mercurial and unpredictable. One minute you are trudging along unknown, ignored, the next minute you’ve got the hot shit. What fundamentally separated us from the indie infrastructure that existed at the time, was our focus on the three dimensionality of the images and stories coming out of the African Diaspora. The fact that all of those companies making their mark, driving the early stages of this new thing called “Indiewood”, would opportunistically look for “Black audience” product that fit their self-serving understanding of the Black ethos, you know, those Coon Comedies, the Urban Malaise, and the Up-from-Slavery Panegyric, was affirmation of the business sense that it made to be in this space at this time just because of the attention Black film was getting. The films Indiewood would produce, however, were a direct refutation and in conflict with the consciousness of the effort we were making, serious differences that inevitably showed up when serious discussions about money were being had. What we understood as a competitive advantage, the Cultural Grassroots as an energized market opportunity for three dimensional images and stories from the African Diaspora, was a silent deal breaker in most meetings with money. Indiewood films, underwritten with Hollywood money and co-written by Black folks hawking a black ethos Hollywood understood and valued, set an inflated standard of financial investment and success that only their money and business infrastructure could facilitate. Smart people had a hard time thinking ouside this box, in particular, Black folks with money.
The day I remember most during our incipient stages was the day we were all sitting in the conference room belonging to the primary tenant of an office share that Mark was using. By this time we had all spent some time talking and had developed a good sense of each other’s style and temperament. Everyone was in the room except Joy Huckaby, who was the "J" in KJM3. Joy was rolling in the big leagues as general counsel to Maurice Starr, the maestro behind then boy group sensation, "New Kids On The Block", and ended up part of the company in name only, although she was the key figure in bringing Kino together with Julie. But we were there to talk about incorporating and finding a name for the company and to talk about what the company was going to be. Without a lot of fanfare, the initials of our names emerged as the choice for the company name, Kathy Joy, Michelle, Mark and Marlin (M3), primarily because it had a nice hip-hop flavored ring to it, giving us some connection to the then current cultural phenom that was hip-hop. The conversation about what we wanted to be took a little more time. Michelle and Kathy had envisioned a company in the nonprofit mold reflected by the companies they worked for. Mark and I were absolutely certain that we wanted to compete in the for profit marketplace. I was new to the business world but I knew I didn't want to get caught up in anything that reeked of begging for money, playing on White folk sympathy for Black under achievement.
Looking back at the experience of trying to raise Black money, going nonprofit would've been the smart thing to do. It would’ve put us in a mindset that would've appealed more to the sensibilities of both the commercial and philanthropic White world. They understood "helping" Black folks trying to "help" their plagued communities pick themselves from the floor of destitution and underdevelopment. They had no reference point, however, for "investing" in Black business people committed to making their communities competitive, turning our objective relationship into currency, the currency of independence and relevance; currency you could spend to influence the minds of men, women and children that had become accustom to seeing themselves as victims or perpetrators of pitifully small social no-no's.
Good example of what I'm referring to is a deal we were asked to be part of involving, ultimately, the Rockefeller/Ford Foundation. They were interested in some type of video diversity initiative and were apparently talking to a number of media companies that were in the space as potential partners, at least that is how it was sold to Michelle, who knew a Black woman high up in the world of philanthropy and who always seemed to be on the scene, particularly when we were overseas. In any event, we attended this meeting with high hopes of being in on this philanthropic foray because this money was untethered to the burden of a strict financial return. Mark Walton, our master of corporate presentation speak, would be our lead presenter, with Michelle adding color commentary. Kathy and I both tended to be reserved and quite frankly, not that interested in talking with these folks always looking for some "good minorities".
We arrived at the offices of, I believe, an established video distributor that was one of many at the time stocking the legion of video stores that occuppied every neighborhood in America. The job of being a video distributor was not rocket science, and most of these so-called distributors were, in reality, using a handful of essentially "rack-jobbers", operations that accumulate product from everyone calling themselves a distributor which can range from someone with a extensive library of titles to an independent video-maker trying to distribute his personal opus. In addition to the people from the foundation, our team and the host, there were two other people, both "ivy league", who were starting a new video group. So far so ok, but there is something about this meeting that doesn't seem consistent with what KJM3 came to do, which was pitch our services to be considered for this grant to distribute a new video line featuring classic films from the Black filmmography like, "Nothing But A Man". This room is set up for a workshop type of interaction, complete with an elaborately catered food table and butcher paper and markers, etc. This is not a "business meeting", this is a brain-drain!
As Mark went through what was a masterful presentation of our backgrounds, accomplishments and vision for this project, weaving in personal stories and references incorporating the college and early professional experience of certain members of this vain crowd of decision makers and money people (yes, we researched their backgrounds), it was starting to become clear that the decision had already been made to give the deal for this philanthropy funded video label intended to target a "diverse" marketplace to the two "other people" at the table. KJM3's contribution was to be this meeting and what could be gleaned from us about the Black market; our compensation: being in the room with the Masters of Culture and Money. The other folks with the startup video label would get the contract to release the first of these "diverse" classics, which helped them leverage that infusion of money and capacity to pick up the contract to distribute the biography series by Arts and Entertainment network.
It was very clear to the people assembled in the room that KJM3 did not think of itself nor was it involved in remedial education. We were a company with a sophisticated understanding of the business of images and stories that had succeeded in talking to a large audience of Black people the mainstream didn't know existed and in language they did not understand. By the time we took a break from all of the passive-aggressive jousting over issues of culture and hegemony, they had clearly gotten the message that KJM3 was not there to be brain-drained, that we took polite exception to the attempt to pat us on the head and pass the money onto their chosen few.
Kathryn and Michelle both knew the limitations of the non-profit world. They understood that the same thing that stands in the way of success for so many Black business plans, is the same thing that would hamper growth of a non-profit: the absence of capital, vision and courage from the Black elite. The money was really not the hard thing; the hardest thing was vision and courage. The Black elite simply do not have the courage to envision a world without a White paymaster. So many business ideas generated by Black entrepreneurs are ideas that are rooted in solving some aspect of the Black malaise. Black people like any other group, do want to make their communities strong, give their children better opportunities. These social-preneurs are not motivated by business for business sake. KJM3 was certainly no different in that respect. We were different in that we were not "scurred" to take on the task of infrastructure building. We were about to house a strategic asset; plotting to jack into the broadcast apparatus and operate a forward strategic offensive outpost in the high intensity war on the minds of Black folks. ... Part II.
