What Are The Chances (Part 3 of 3) or Apocalypse... Now?

Portland, Oregon is an interesting town to say the least.  Coming from the East Coast, people tend to think of the Northwest as wet, picturesque, caffeinated, fairly “granola,” and very sleepy.  The Portland I arrived to was all of the above except for “very sleepy.”  Occupy Portland, which a few days earlier had just had more than enough interaction with local law enforcement.  The Occupy Portland folks made the ones in NYC and Philly look like Brownie Scouts and pikers.  In reading the AP Wire reports in my local papers, it seemed as if the city had the feel of the 1969 Doors concert in Miami.  All it needed was a Jim Morrison to get it really going. (For the record, I’m a huge Doors fan).  Unfortunately for our movie and me, Occupy Portland decided to have their full-scale riot on the same day as our West Coast/Northwest/College Premiere at Portland State University.  I would hear so many helicopters this day that I felt like I was in APOCALYPSE NOW and wanted to help Martin Sheen start looking for Marlon Brando.

Portland State University however, was a small oasis in downtown Portland.  A State-funded University, it is part traditional college, part commuter school, part urban office complex.  Thirty-thousand students attend PSU and the school has its own chapter of the College Republicans, led by a charismatic and energetic young woman named Julia Rabadi.  Julia is President of the PSU College Republicans and she put this screening together after one of her members, Isaiah Taylor, found out about our film from the original piece I wrote for Big Hollywood.  It took about six months to put this Screening together mainly due to PSU’s summer break.  But nonetheless, these great young students were affording us the chance to not only make our first “College” Screening happen, but also our Northwest and West Coast Premiere.  

These PSU College Republicans really busted their butts to make this happen, draw a crowd and pull it off.  Their campus community and the surrounding City aren’t really known for open-mindedness towards Republicans, Conservatives and other “non-Progressives.”  As a matter of fact, when I was interviewed by Cecil Prescod of KBOO (a very “Progressive/Pro-Occupy Portland” radio station), Cecil informed me that President George H. W. Bush called the city, “the Beirut of the Northwest.”  I did have high hopes given that we were lucky enough to be interviewed by three different talk show hosts on three different radio stations (including Victoria Taft on KPAM and Dave Bourne on KXL) and had a 4-Star Review in the African American newspaper THE SKANNER. 

We wanted a great and diverse crowd.  Having our film play in an academic setting in a completely different part of the country (2,877 miles from Trenton), I couldn’t wait to start the film for the PSU audience.  I had thought a good omen came about when I first arrived at PSU, put my bags on the ground and was promptly asked by a young man to sign his petition “against millionaires and billionaires.”  I told him that I didn’t live in Portland, but would be happy to talk to him more after our Premiere and handed him one of our FEAR OF A BLACK REPUBLICAN postcards.  He was stunned, in a good way.  I think this had to do with my telling him that Cornel West and Mitt Romney were in the same film, as I mentioned our cast.  Still speechless, he put the postcard on his clipboard and ventured off.  Twenty minutes later, I would meet a PSU College Republican named… “Michael Steele.”  Yes, his real name.

One note on the College Republicans and PSU.  From the get-go, the PSU College Republicans wanted to open this Screening up to the greater Portland community and they even tried to partner with other on-campus groups to do all this.  On my travels around the campus, it was very heartening to see our FEAR OF A BLACK REPUBLICAN posters in the windows of so many of other student organizations, particularly the various minority student groups.  Hope for the future, I thought.  Fortunately for me, Julia gave me a list of the different Academic Departments which I should visit before the Screening.  I dropped by the History, Political Science Departments and had a nice, quick meeting with Dr. E. Kofi Agorsah, Chair of the Black Studies Department.  He took some of our movie postcards to give to his upcoming class of students and said he would encourage them to attend our Screening that night.  Thank you, Sir!

The only personally negative moment of the whole trip came when I went to lunch at an interesting vegetarian/locally-grown food café at the PSU Student Union called FOOD FOR THOUGHT.  I’ve been trying to eat more healthfully for a while now and thought that I should give FOOD FOR THOUGHT a shot.  So I went to the counter and ordered my food and chatted with their Manager who, it turns out, has some New Jersey connections.  Having had such a nice conversation, I figured what the heck – I’ll ask if I could put some postcards on the counter for our Screening.  The Manager said “yes,” and I put about 20 FEAR OF A BLACK REPUBLICAN postcards next to the register.  The place was jumping with customers.  Given Portland’s image and what I heard about the lack of tolerance that the PSU College Republicans had been subjected to, I considered this little moment a positive achievement.   Well, it wasn’t even five minutes before one of their customers (a White, brown-haired hippie-chick with a hemp messenger bag and a bad attitude) went up to the counter (WITHOUT BUYING ANYTHING) and slid all of our postcards into her hemp bag.  Then ran off.  God knows what else was in that hemp bag with all of our poor, little postcards.  I was standing about ten feet away from her, on the other side of the counter, when this happened and I couldn’t catch up to her.  She must have ran track in high school or ran drugs for the Latin Kings or something.  I have no idea how she even knew our postcards were on the counter as she just zipped in, swiped them and left.  Wow.  At least my lunch was good.

Finally, the Screening at the Portland State University Multi-Cultural Center came. 

The Screening itself went great and was quite fun to be a part of and observe.  The College Republicans put out a great light refreshment and food table for everyone with lemonade, ice water and many healthy and usual “college” snacks.  Excellent job, PSU Food Services!  One funny thing I’d like to share is that in addition to the fifty or so people who came to the Screening, there were many foreign  students for whom English is not the first or second language who showed up and gorged on the free food.  While they may not have understood our film, it was neat to see that college students haven’t changed.  Free food is free food.  I remember those days well.  ; )

Technically, the Multi-Cultural Center’s screening space was very good for a wide and open conference room.  It had carpeting on the floor, a good projector on the ceiling and nice P.A. speakers in the back.  Watching the audience from the back, I could tell that they were “getting” the film and were as so many other audiences – fully engaged.  All except the one hard-core “I’m a Conservative, not a Republican” type who I guess has some kind of attention deficit issue and who kept checking his e-mail from the second row.  It finally got annoying enough about twenty minutes in, that I went up to him and asked him to do it somewhere else or consider leaving.  It is rude to do that during a movie anywhere, whether I am the filmmaker or another audience member.  He put away his I-Phone and I got thanked by several audience members as I moved to the back of the room.  Later on, he came to the very back of the room to turn on his laptop and work on it.  Weird.  Thankfully, there was a nice moment occurred just before this when a young, White female student’s jaw dropped and she blurted loudly (by accident) “Is that true?” when she found out that the Ku Klux Klan was co-opted by the Democratic Party in 1868.  I’m pretty sure that she was convinced it was the Republicans who did this.  Like so many.  Truth can be painful…

The Q&A produced some cool and moving moments like the young, White Ron Paul guy connecting with an older, female African American “99%-er” (her button said she was one of them) over the issue of whether the Republican Party should have special messages for separate demographic  groups.  She conversed with him during the Q&A from the front row about the Republican Party just showing up in her community, whether she agrees with their positions or values or not.  I think they ended up in some type of agreement on this and with the young guy saying that he wanted to bring the “Liberty” message to the urban areas.  This civil exchange of views was worth this 2,877 mile trip alone.  

I did get some good, tough questions on Michael Steele’s time as Chairman, the Southern Dixiecrats (had to correct the history presented on this by the questioner), the Media, social issues campaigning, getting our film made and “out there” into the World and how both Parties do not always know or care to know where/how they are rallying their troops.  I even got to sing a few bars of Garth Brooks, “Friends in Low Places” when I told the audience about a 2004 Bush rally in New Jersey where the organizers played Country music the most of the time we were there.   Fortunately, no one threw tomatoes at me. 

One African American lady did catch me by surprise when she spoke of how much racism existed in Portland and especially Oregon.  She said that “Oregon is the South of the Northwest.”  The “99%-er” agreed with her wholeheartedly.  I said that the state is well-known for being “Progressive.”  From these ladies, I got the sense that there are probably two Portlands and two Oregons.  Just like there is in most parts of Urban America.  One of them actually used the “n-word” in describing her treatment at times.  Obviously, I’m not knowledgeable enough about Oregon to comment, but that was a first for a FOABR Screening. 

The night ended with a number of folks wanting my e-mail address, many thank-you's for making the film and really getting these issues out there, lots of handshakes and plenty of smiles and encouragement.  It wasn’t a great crowd for selling DVDS since hardly anyone outside of downtown Portland could make the Screening.  This was because many of the streets and some of the major bridges were shut down because of the Occupy Portland riot.  I heard too many helicopters and police/ambulance sirens to expect a packed house.  But, a few of the African American supporters of Occupy Portland did show up and went out of their way to tell me they were happy that our film was “straight-up” and didn’t “Democrat-bash” the whole time.  They said they were definitely not expecting a movie or night like this night.  I wasn’t either.  Hopefully, we’ll make it back to Portland with FEAR OF A BLACK REPUBLICAN someday.

I’ll close with something from the heart, more than from the head.  Given all the challenges facing our even making this film and now getting it out there into the World, Occupy Portland and their riot wasn’t the biggest challenge we faced.  But, having “gotten through” to another very diverse audience (age, ethnicity, political affiliation) in an academic setting, this Screening is amongst our proudest.  Hope was renewed yet again, especially in partnering with the PSU College Republicans and seeing their outreach pay off against the odds.

I just wish I could get those darn helicopters and The Doors’ “The End” out of my head…