Courtesy of the Parkway Theater
Pam Grier
Without a big Marvel movie on the docket, for the first summer in a long time, summer 2024 doesn’t look like it’s going to be a superhero summer. With this market correction, comic book junkies could be down bad. But as the old saw goes, not all superheroes wear capes, and it seems as if a real life hero will be making an appearance at the Parkway Theater on Wednesday night, when Pam Grier will introduce her cult classic, 1974’s Foxy Brown.
Over the course of her 50-year acting career, Grier demonstrated the moral code of a working class hero. And she has her own exciting origin story: After being born in the Jim Crow South to an Air Force sergeant and a nurse, Grier spent part of her childhood on an Air Force base just outside of London, before moving back to be close to her grandparents, on their sugar beet farm in Wyoming. She still considers herself a “Black cowgirl,” but after attending high school in Denver, and winning a couple beauty pageants, she became interested in film school. She attended some classes in Denver before deciding to take a risk, moving to Los Angeles in the hopes of earning California residency and being admitted to UCLA film school. But after being discovered by the low budget maestro Roger Corman, she was cast as an action star in a string of so-called Blaxploitation movies, like 1973’s Coffy and '74’s Foxy Brown. She became a movie star by playing physically imposing, self-reliant, street-wise vigilantes, out for revenge on the pimps, drug dealers, cops, and politicians who hurt the people that she loved. She’s considered the first African-American woman to star in an action movie.
I reached Grier, now 74, by phone on her ranch in Santa Fe. She told me she’s confident her work will continue to be studied by film and sociology classes for the next 50 years. “Coffy was the first time audiences saw a Black woman’s maturity and sexuality,” she says, “and Foxy Brown took it to another radical level—she knew how to handle a gun, and she was a tactical strategist.” Grier says she was guided by the feminist thinkers of that era—women like Gloria Steinem, Barbara Jordan, Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug—to base her characters on the heroines in her own life. She based Coffy on her own mother, and Foxy on her aunt. “You could see it in the confidence that Foxy had—her cheekiness, her playfulness,” Grier says. “Women weren’t allowed to joke back then.”
Grier says her characters were role models for the curious and courageous women emerging from the 1960s to make their own choices. “We didn’t have to be married or to have children to be accepted,” she says. “Nor to be defined by the men we married, or their husband’s jobs. Like my grandfather said, 'If a woman can do something, she’ll get respect.' And that’s all I had.”
In your memoir, Foxy: My Life in Three Acts, I loved reading about your bond with the basketball hall of famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. You dated him when he was just out of UCLA, just beginning his career in the NBA, right before your acting career began.
Courtesy of the Parkway Theater
Foxy Brown
I was just trying to get into film school at that time. And he was converting to Islam. And he enjoyed meeting me for my independence coming from the heartland—a farmer from Wyoming’s wild, Black west, a character from books that weren't in the library. He was as fascinated by me as I was by him. But there were certain things about his religion that made him happy that were not going to make me happy as a woman. Being an intellectual, I said, "I can't make you happy, so I have to let you go." We're still friends, and he respects highly what I've done.
You had a lot in common with him intellectually—you watched Kurosawa movies together. But was dating Kareem your first exposure to real fame?
No. Because his fame was different. I wanted to go to school and get an education and a degree so I could take care of him if we married. But he was saying, Oh, no, you don't need to get an education, you can be a basketball player's wife. But this was the birth of the women's independent movement, and I said, "I have to get my education, I have to see who I am. You've had three years to explore Islam and you've given me three months—that's not fair."
You went on to became one of the most resilient heroes in Hollywood history.
When people ask me, "Pam, you’re from the Black west—how do you feel about Beyonce wearing a cowboy hat?" I can't make any judgments on how people want to describe themselves. All I can say is with cowboys and a cowgirls—one of them shaves and the other one waxes.
Didn’t you almost trample Fellini on a horse?
I was riding a black stallion at Cincetta studios in Rome. I had on this fake leopard skin bikini—no stirrups, no shoes, nothing. I was just hanging on by my sheer gluteus maximus. And I stopped the horse in front of Fellini and he said, "Oh! My fantasy has come true!" I exposed the Italians to American culture. For them to see a woman of color not being pampered and not needing assistance—an air force rat who could ride a horse, drive a tractor, ski, hike, canoe, fish…
You were first discovered by the late, great Roger Corman.
I was discovered on one of my five jobs. The first job was a receptionist at a theatrical agency. And then my afternoon gig was [receptionist] at [Corman’s] American International Pictures. And my night gig was a DJ at a sports club for the Kareem Abdul-Jabbars. And on weekends, I did the accounting for a drugstore.
You were busting that gluteus maximus.
I came into LA with $33 dollars and a bucket of chicken. My aunt drove out with me and when we hit the UCLA campus the world opened up. I wanted to go to film school and film the evolution of the Women's Movement. We had Kent State, we had student unrest, we were fighting for civil rights and voting rights, and I wanted to capture it on film. Now, I come from a place in Wyoming where they think you're a hayseed, but it’s not true. Farmers share their lives and their food, they build each other's furniture, chop each other's wood, take care of each other's children. The cities were supposedly more liberal, but to a certain extent, there was just more classism. The Great Migration from the South happened because people wanted more work.
And many of them preceded your own migration to California. There was a Black bourgeoisie class in Los Angeles that you first encountered there in the '70s. You had experienced another version of Jim Crow in Denver—you weren’t allowed to try on clothes in department stores. In LA, you were surprised you were allowed to try on suits in the boutiques.
It was an eyeopener. I could try on clothes. I can try on all of these skirts, really?
And then Roger Corman saw you behind a desk and asked, “Why aren’t you acting?”
Courtesy of the Parkway Theater
Pam Grier
I didn't want to act. When you’re hired to act, it's how you look, not how you perform. And I'm tall, and a lot of the actors were 5’6”—they could rest their head on my shoulder. My agent asked, "Pam, you're working so hard, you ever thought of being an actress?" Well, I could read a script, but no. And they said, well there's a producer down the street, he's looking for characters to play women that live in a prison in a jungle. [American International Pictures shot some of their movies in the Philippines.] I don't know, snakes, bugs—all I know is I needed tuition. And so I walked in with my $9.99 Sears Timberlands, and my 501 Levi's and my blouse, no makeup, wearing a ‘fro like Angela Davis.
So you stuck out in the office?
When I walked in, Roger just looked at me and said, "Where are you from?" And I said, Colorado and Wyoming. He was just fascinated. He said, "You want to be an actress?" I said, "No." So he was like, Well, why are you here? I don't know—they said I might inspire you. He says, "Well, I want to hire you for you to be an actor on a film. I'm giving you $600 a week." And I'm working all these jobs bringing home $140. Soon Roger was saying, "Pam is edgy, authentic, a street fighter, she can handle guns."
I love that little anecdote about how you were a shitty secretary because you refused to lie and cover for your agents. You had this working class superhero code—truth, justice, etc—before you ever played a superhero.
I was one in real life! Back home, I saved a white woman. I was doing a play at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, and I went on lunch break to go to the store, and there was a woman being attacked. A young man had punched her in the face, knocked her down and was kicking her in the head, trying to pull her purse off of her. Not even six feet in front of me, and I was, like, There's nobody here, okay, she's going to die. So I got the jack handle out of my car and I jumped the guy.
Back then, a woman did the job of a man and all the men felt bad. [When my dad left] my mom and myself, we got to go to the hardware store and fix the roofs and the holes and the doors, we got to keep our house. Our families worked too hard to get that first mortgage that was denied by the banks forever. My mom was ridiculed when we got a lawn mower, when she put on pants to cut the grass. She says, "I’m going to cut the hell out of this grass—we're going to have the nicest lawn in the neighborhood. We're going to learn how to take care of this house and keep it." And that's what was instilled with all of us—her kids, my cousins, neighbors—and we grew up that way.
Didn't you base the character of Foxy Brown on one of your aunties?
Yeah. She wanted to be an architect and she rode a Harley motorcycle.
The director that you worked with for Coffy and for Foxy Brown was Jack Hill, who was a product of UCLA. What kind of a director was he?
He asked me if I wanted to collaborate. He asked for my cultural ideas because he said, "I haven't gone into the hood, I'm not familiar." In film school, I learned you have to write of what you know. He was being very fair, and I said, "If I'm going to be a part of it, this is the truth and it'll look good." These are the moves, the cars, the clothing, the music, the pop culture, here's everything. We have our comedians, we have our music, our style. And the pop, hippie culture is a reflection of Jimi Hendrix and Sly and the Family Stone. But we also have James Brown and Motown.
Ambition is this big theme in Foxy Brown—the American dream being thwarted by crooked cops and judges and dirty politicians.
That’s not original! That’s as old as the trains coming up across America. Rich, white men shutting down each other’s oil fields.
But you bought into these scripts.
As much as I could as a female. I said, "That's great, there's so much history not told, so if I can be a part of it, I'm there." And 50 years later, that's why I'm still here. If our audience isn't interested in our history, it's very difficult to continue. So I thank the audience who go out to all the Comic-Cons that I'm invited to all around the world. I always say, "Okay, you've got a responsibility—it's not like everyone's running to finance a Black film."
Was the term “Blaxploitation” cooked up by the American International Pictures marketing department?
Absolutely. They coined it. And they said, "We don't know what happened because we thought it would be positive." But I said, "You have to understand: Black magic, Black hole, anything Black is negative."
Quentin Tarantino loved Blaxploitation movies.
He loved the courage.
He considered you a hero. But did you ever feel fetishized working with such a super fan?
Well, he opened a coffee shop on Sunset Boulevard called Pam’s Coffy in honor of me, and in honor of the women who created me. I get my foxiness from the women in society that I meet every day, and I share that. And when I saw it, I was just so honored. And he said, "It's for your courage, your feminine, womanly courage, and I wanted to give you that." He wanted me to be in Pulp Fiction, but it didn't work out, playing the wife of Eric Stoltz. And then he said, "But I'm going to work with you." Next, he was adapting Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch into Jackie Brown. And Jackie just used her wits—she doesn't have to fight, she doesn't have to kick and scream. Okay, I admit, I used Ordell’s [Samuel L. Jackson’s character’s] gun.
I thought it was Max Cherry’s gun.
It was Max Cherry's but I had to use his against Ordell and then take his. And not a bullet was fired [by Jackie Brown], no blood was shed, which was great. But the fact that [Tarantino] said, "I'm going to show the antithesis of the energy in action that you had to show. You've done that, so let's do the opposite—you’re just a crafty person who uses her wits to survive."
Jackie Brown is another working class hero—a flight attendant, like your emergency room nurse in Coffy. I rewatched Jackie Brown a couple nights ago, and now that I'm in my late 40s, I felt its soul that much more. Your romance with Max Cherry—these middle-aged people who have worked so hard and finally maybe have found somebody else, but can’t trust it. So in your heart do you think Jackie Brown ever sees Max Cherry again?
I think she would take off, come back around the block, and he gets in the car and they take off together, okay? That's what everybody wanted. Max gets in the car and they look at each other longingly, probably kiss. And then Max starts talking incessantly—he won't shut the fuck up—so she kicks him out of the car and leaves him at the curb! [Laughs.] That’s just my cinematic sarcasm. Sometimes when you meet people, there's this magnetism and I think he would've just said, Just give me a minute. He didn't have a cat, he didn't have a dog, she had a car full of money and so let's just go and hang out. Maybe it's just Vegas, and see what it's like. But he wasn't ready to be adventurous and she was, and that just said everything about her.
Life is too short. You're a man, you get everything offered to you—way more than I'll ever get. I got this opportunity to go to Spain where a dollar means $10. I'm going to go there and meet other people and just live. [Jackie Brown] wants to live. And that was his comfort zone, and he stayed with it, honored it, and she had hers.
You’re adapting Foxy: My Life in Three Acts with Little Marvin, the Black filmmaker behind Them: The Scare. Has the work felt different than working with a white director?
There's no difference. They’re all reflecting a life. Today, you just have better equipment cinematically: digital cameras, special effects that can bring it. There's a lot of Black filmmakers that make white movies. But it's how he responds and respects and reflects the script. Guillermo del Toro did The Shape of Water. A Black cinematographer shot it under water with cameras and fins. So you see what I'm saying? It's not class or culture or gender, it’s filmmaking.
Has the Pam Grier role been cast yet?
I don't know who's going to bring it, all I know is we got a list, and they'll tell me about their lives. She has to have a cultural curiosity. I think for Pam Grier, culturally, it has to represent the hardship of Jim Crow, racism, the obstacles to achieve, walking into the fire, fast forward 50 years, still saving lives. See, I was a radical being pushed into a very domesticated life and I could see all worlds, and it was interesting. Until a woman walks in a man's shoes, you don't know what he goes through. Nothing's monolithic, everything's culturally diverse and different. But it brings good flavor to a film if you're a good filmmaker.
