Again, I understood the initial discomfort and disbelief of the audience within the film. But, for me, the build into audiences buying this TV show was blurry. How did you want us to respond to audiences ultimately going wild for it?

I think the initial break comes when the black people start to applaud. I know you remember the shot where there are a couple of white people looking around like, "Oh ... " and seeing whether it was OK to clap. Now, mind, if the black guy next to them is clapping, they feel it's OK to clap -- and then we see the applause signs and people respond and it just catches fire. I mean, who knew that "Survivor" or "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" would catch fire? You can't plan that stuff. So in the world I created, we made blackface the rage. You know, it just [slap] catches fire and takes off.

Which is also what happens to the country singer's TV show in "A Face in the Crowd." And I see you dedicated this film to that film's writer, Budd Schulberg.

Budd Schulberg and Elia, they had the crystal ball on this. Even the sponsor of the show in that film, Vitajex -- what's Vitajex but Viagra? And Budd wrote this back in 1956. The jingle went "Vitajex, what you doin' to me?" -- they really had the crystal ball on that, too. Budd told me a story that before "Network," [screenwriter] Paddy Chayefsky called him up and said, "Look, we're gonna try to leap-frog what you did with 'A Face in the Crowd.'" That's another film I've always liked. And that's what Paddy told Budd.

So at that point in "Bamboozled," blackface becomes part of a media steamroller.

Television is the opiate. The Opie-ate.

When you have the white people looking to the black people in the audience to see how to react, you also seem to be making an analogy to the way suburban white kids, looking for cutting-edge pop culture, go for hip-hop and gangsta rap and all that.

Yeah, and they might be looking in the wrong places. I think I've said this before: Culture is for everybody to enjoy. But if these young white kids want to emulate black people -- I think there are better things that they could take from hip-hop than wearing their pants below their ass and calling each other "nigga." You know, "Whassup, my nigga?" I mean, I don't condemn all of hip-hop; I've used a lot of it in my films starting, back in '89 with "Do The Right Thing" and Public Enemy. But I do feel gangsta rap has evolved to a modern day minstrel show, especially if you look at the videos. You ever watch BET?

I confess, I don't watch a lot of music videos on TV.

When you get an hour, just turn on BET and watch these gangsta rap videos, for your own education. It's sad.

When you make a movie like "Bamboozled," are you particularly intent on addressing the African-American audience?

It's for everybody. It's for everybody. I think this film deals with our shared history. Earlier you used the word "heritage." I mean, people can sing "Hooray for Hollywood" and talk about the "Golden Age of Television" all they want. But a large part of that stuff is what we put in the final montage of this film. Every year at the Academy Awards they have this guy Chuck Workman do these little [compilation] films. I say, at this year's Academy Awards, get rid of Chuck: Show the final montage from "Bamboozled" instead. A lot of people don't want to deal with the images in this montage. But we're showing them. And we're showing that these images didn't just spring from the warped mind of D.W. Griffith, but reflected accepted behavior. Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Bing Crosby, they all did the black minstrel thing. This was accepted behavior. And people don't want to deal with this as part of the legacy of these two powerful mediums -- television and film. In both, people were doing this from the beginning -- from the very beginning.

One of the most effective scenes in the movie comes when Mantan and Sleep 'N' Eat are at their minstrel peak. They do a bit where they anticipate each other's moves without saying anything, and it's so beautifully worked out between the two of them that you really do laugh, despite this terrible context. Even when you watch your montage at the end, you feel that there are these immense talents that are --

Marginalized.

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