In 2017, American film researchers recovered “Something Good – Negro Kiss,” a short film depicting a playful kiss between a Black couple which had not seen the light of day for more than a century. A long-forgotten artifact from the earliest years of American film, the sweet, humanizing vignette, produced by the Selig Polyscope Company, makes a startling contrast to the overwhelmingly racist and blackface-ridden contempory portrayals of African Americans. Four years later in 2021, archivists in Norway, halfway across the world, identified a sister short in their collections—an extended alternate cut which reveals more of Chicago stage performers Gertie Brown and Saint Suttle’s vaudeville-like routine, a theatrical, hot-and-cold romantic dynamic between two lovers which parodies the popular and controversial short “The Kiss” (1896).
Both films, which had previously been lost, were known from entries in old motion picture catalogs but had been assumed to be era-typical, anti-Black “race films” until their rediscovery in the 21st century. Together with its more famous sibling, which has since been inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, this alternate version of “Something Good” represents the first-known instance of Black intimacy ever captured on-screen.
SOMETHINGGOOD [Alternate Version] (1898) Directed by William Selig
“There is an impulse in moments like this to appeal to self-interest. To say: These horrors you are allowing to happen, they will come to your doorstep one day; to repeat the famous phrase about who they came for first and who they’ll come for next. But this appeal cannot, in matter of fact, work. If the people well served by a system that condones such butchery ever truly believed the same butchery could one day be inflicted on them, they’d tear the system down tomorrow. And anyway, by the time such a thing happens, the rest of us will already be dead.
"No, there is no terrible thing coming for you in some distant future, but know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience. Who cares if diplomatic expediency prefers you shrug away the sight of dismembered children? Who cares if great distance from the bloodstained middle allows obliviousness. Forget pity, forget even the dead if you must, but at least fight against the theft of your soul.”
i consider evil dead to be honorary nonfiction because i think if sam raimi had the ability to do all of that stuff to bruce campbell for real he would have
When I attended Bruce-o-Rama a while back, Bruce told a story about an experience he had with Raimi. Raimi was directing The Quick and the DeqdC and Bruce had just stopped by to visit the set, resulting in a bit of distraction. Raimi pulled him aside and insisted he shoot a scene. Bruce tried to refuse, to no avail, and was dragged off to makeup and costuming. Raimi instructed the artists to make him look like “the ugliest, saddest tramp you’ve ever seen.” Bruce was then dragged onto set, where star Gene Hackman was told that Raimi had added a new element to the scene; a man who had attempted to assault his daughter, who he was to kick in the ass till off-screen. They shot the scene, Raimi called cut, and told Hackman to really give it his all with the kicking. They did this several more times, till Bruce was sore and Raimi seem satisfied. After everyone left set, Raimi pulled Bruce aside and whispered in his ear. “
*begins to undergo a horrifically painful looking American Werewolf in London style transformation sequence with bones snapping and joints rearranging but at the end of it I stand up and I’ve just turned into Elvis*
guy types out a rage filled response on the internet. but before posting it goes on a long walk to calm down. during his walk he gains a new appreciation for life and his role in it. he comes home, rereads his pending response, and clicks post.
Woah mama it depends on whether you’re filling or emptying
Endless optimism is a foolish way to look at the world, unable to see the strife and suffering. Endless pessimism will never make anyone happy, especially not you. You need to take the good and the bad, the dark and the light, the full and the empty. Hummina hummina hummina
