This weekend the first buffoon comedy of the New Year debuts at a theatre near you. Perhaps First Sunday isn’t as idiotic and threadbare as the trailers make it look, although the early interviews I’ve read with Tracy Morgan don’t leave me much hope for the subject. While everyone has the right to earn a living and I’m sure there are plenty of fans out there who’ll be attending this one, it saddens (but doesn’t amaze) me that in 2008 the easiest way for any artistic property involving Black people to get made either in films or television continues to be accent the mugging, physical comedy, vulgarity and idiocy.

Frankly, until and unless enough people go out and support those things that don’t play to that type of audience there won’t be much, if any change. Without wanting to get into a lecturing mode, two of the finest films that I’ve seen in recent years (Akeelah and the Bee, The Great Debaters) haven’t exactly been huge box-office sellers. We can go up and down the line for hours about outstanding films that didn’t do much box office, but the sad fact is that buffoonery made money in 1958 and it’s still making it in 2008 (will probably be doing so in 3008).

My fondest wish would be for some genuine variety to emerge within Black cultural circles. Contrary to what some would like to believe, no one is asking that the only things out there for Black audiences be documentaries and period piece material. Some intelligent comedy would be welcome, as well as entertaining mystery, great science-fiction, a good piece with a sports or music theme, in general a series of shows and/or films that truly reflected the diversity of the Black experience on every level. There are Black folks who ride motorcycles, swim, ski, fly airplanes, attend classical concerts, hunt and fish, ice skate, etc. Why that can’t be reflected on film and television on a regular basis astounds me, but then it also baffles me that there can’t be dramas with Black leads.

You would think this type of dialog wouldn’t be necessary anymore, but if you look at the images and the numbers things seem to be going steadily backward. The fact that Kelsey Grammar of all people would be expressing amazement and indignation about the lack of Black faces on television speaks volumes about the problem. I’m not going to blame the audience for this because in many instances people will support almost anything when they don’t get much offered as an alternative.

I won’t be going to First Sunday, but even if it bombs that won’t really address the problem. Right now one thing all of us who care about integrity and quality in programming can do is insist that cable systems around the nation as well as both Direct TV and Dish Network satellite systems pick up TV One, The Africa Channel and the various BET music channels. These are outlets offering viewers something else besides the same old stuff. When viewers have a chance to really see something different, some of them will be inspired and informed.

1408John Cusak
Samuel L Jackson
Dir: Mikael Håfström

It sounds like a horror film written by Jerry Seinfeld. “Hey, you know those hotel rooms? Man, what’s up with those hotel rooms?” That, and a maudlin sub-plot involving a child who’s passed into the beyond, are about all there is to the new Stephen King adaptation 1408. Then there’s John Cusak, the eternal young rebel kicking and screaming into middle aged responsibility. As a one note joke, King’s oft repeated treatise on the fear of commonplace inanimate objects being given a malevolent soul, the film could have been a dreadful bore. However, Cusak’s presence morphs the drudgery into an interesting look at a man forced to modify his outlook on life.

Cusak plays Mike Enslin, author of a series of cynical non-fiction books that investigate and debunk ghost stories. He was at some point, a “serious” author, whose one failed literary novel gathers dust in used bookstores, much like his ghost hunter books gather dust in bargain bins. Enslin receives a lead on a possible haunted room in the Hotel Dolphin (a nod to Murakami Haruki’s Wild Sheep Chase). With the number of grisly deaths that took place in room 1408, it sounds like a good story, so Enslin decides to check it out. However, the hotel manager (a non-shouting role for Samuel L Jackson)warns him not go to in that mother fucking room in that mother fucking hotel (I made that part up), warning him that no one has lasted more than an hour without going bonkers. Cusak, being the lead White guy in a horror film, steadfastly refuses the warning. Madness ensues.

Cusak lets us know from the very beginning that this is less a Stephen King adaptation than a John Cusak film. When his character tosses his belongings on a hotel bed in the opening scene, a Chicago White Sox hat is one of the items. The “White Sox” on the hat is blacked out, a reference to Cusak’s role in John Sayles fantastic baseball movie Eight Men Out. In that film as in 1408, Cusak plays an everyman imbued with a healthy dose of cynicism and distrust of authority. It’s Enslin’s cynicism, rather than society’s mores, that is questioned here. Enslin is an atheist faced with the possibility of life after death. He doesn’t believe in the work he does, and so it’s suggested, doesn’t believe in himself.

It’s too bad that the film mixes its messages. Cusak’s character is given a dead daughter to mourn, suggesting he’s not chasing ghosts, but a specific one, hoping that someday he’ll be proven wrong. The ghost story where the protagonist is communicating with a dead child has become a staple of modern horror and should be avoided, especially when the psychological and philosophical territory 1408 opens up lies there unexplored.

Like too many of today’s horror, there aren’t many reasons to be scared. There are a few “Boo! Gotcha,” moments, however the overall tone of the film, especially in the first few minutes of Enslin’s adventure, seems comic. The director goes easy on the effects and gore, and wisely sits back and let’s Cusak do what he does best. It’s really up to Cusak to make the audience feel the tension in the situation, and that he does.

When we see Enslin before the fireworks begin, he’s surfing, or dressed in a ska-style porkpie hat and dark shades. It’s an outfit that Cusak’s probably felt at home in over the years, him being the cat who doesn’t understand why Fishbone wasn’t the biggest band ever. While the film overturns Enslin’s cynicism about ghosts and God, Cusak’s rebellious stance remains. It’s fitting that a Clash fan and George Bush hater would wield a Molotov cocktail as a solution to his problem. Still, in a somewhat conventional genre film like this one, what is Cusak rebelling against?