"The Black List: Vol. 1" (8 p.m. Monday, HBO) features 22 prominent African-Americans talking about their lives and their work. Done in the Errol Morris talk-to-the-camera style, the 90-minute documentary culls the wisdom of dancer Bill T. Jones, Negro Leaguer Mahlon Duckett, Rev. Al Sharpton, author Toni Morrison and former abortion-rights activist Faye Wattleton, who reveals that her mother wanted her to be a missionary nurse "to bring enlightenment to the dark continent of Africa," something Wattleton says she did here instead.
The film, which premiered this year at Sundance, is partly the brainchild of Elvis Mitchell, the culture critic who prefers life behind the camera to being in front of it (or am I the only one who remembers his unhappy tenure on the Brandon Tartikoff late-night syndicated flop "Last Call"?). Mitchell interviewed the subjects off-camera; his subjects answer by looking directly into the camera -- a convention popularized by the great Errol Morris and quite compelling here.
For Vol. 2, I hope Mitchell and director Timothy Greenfield-Sanders (above, with Keenen Ivory Wayans) avoid the temptation to return to the well of the civil-rights and celebrity interviews, and instead delve more deeply into the realms of art, business, architecture and other fields where many outstanding African-American achievers have never been featured on a major TV network before.
Mitchell obviously doesn't like his radio show, either. I've given up on his KCRW podcasts--he knows nothing about microphones, talks in a whispery voice, and then will rudely break in on an interviewee mid-sentence to give the station ID. Hope he has found a silent role behind the camera.
Posted by: Erin | August 25, 2008 at 01:07 PM