Untitled Document
The first Springfield screening of the movie Stomp the Yard had a
certain air of excitement about it. The audience, filling maybe half the
seats in the theater, included small children, middle-aged parents,
canoodling couples, gray-haired elders, teenagers with jeans bagging and
caps askew. Some of these people were African-American; some were of a
lighter hue. All of us, though, were on our best behavior. Like kids who
had wheedled mom and dad into letting us stay up late, we wanted to make
sure they didn’t regret their decision. Of course, it probably helped that half the audience
had rolled into to the Kerasotes Parkway Pointe Theatre on the way home
from church. There’s a palpable difference between Friday night and
Sunday afternoon, and there’s a reason movies traditionally open on
Friday — but, in this case, getting the movie screened at all felt
like a victory. Leaders of Springfield’s black community had
used phone calls, e-mail, the media, and one large public gathering to
persuade Kerasotes Showplace Theatres CEO Tony Kerasotes to show Stomp the Yard. He had
originally planned to delay opening the film until at least Jan. 19, citing
a concern that it would attract the same violent thugs who had fired shots
inside his Parkway Pointe theater lobby, injuring one man, during the
Christmas-night screening of the horror flick Black
Christmas. “I was fearful the movie could become the
occasion for more gang violence, because I felt certain it would draw that
audience,” Kerasotes told the Associated Press. The only qualities shared by both the Greek
fraternities featured in Stomp the Yard and the hoodlums who shot up the Parkway Pointe lobby are
their approximate age, sex, and skin color. Stomp, after all, is wholesome, uplifting fare with an
undeniably positive message. Kerasotes’ refusal to screen the film
reeked of racial profiling, and the theater executive’s logic was
roundly condemned by everybody from LA Weekly to the State Journal-Register, which called Kerasotes’ decision “unfair,
illogical and indefensible.”
Kerasotes, however, is unpersuaded.
“I did have a little kernel of doubt as to
whether I had done the right thing, but when the SJ-R came out editorially
against what I did, I knew I had done the right thing. Because those
[opinion writers] haven’t gotten out from behind their desks in
years,” he says. “I think there’s a lot of people who
just want to stick their heads up their politically correct anuses.
That’s what that editorial said to me.”
Looking back over the events of the past week —
the angry e-mails and phone calls, the national media scrutiny, the
accusations of racism — Kerasotes says he wouldn’t change
anything. “If I had it to do over again, I’d do it
exactly the way I did it,” he says.
Rewind a few weeks to Christmas night. Parkway Pointe
is screening Black Christmas, a slasher flick set, ironically, in a (white) sorority house.
Suddenly a group of young men enter the Parkway Pointe lobby and rush past
the ticket booth and into the theater. Another group of young men runs from
the theater to the parking lot. Gunfire is exchanged. “The story I get is that two groups of gang
members were in the theater,” Kerasotes says. “There
must’ve been something starting up between them, because one group
called for backup.”
The gunshots were fired from the lobby into the
theater and from the theater into the lobby, Kerasotes says, acknowledging
that “my information is pretty third-hand on that.”
Sgt. Pat Ross, public-information officer for the
Springfield Police Department, says official reports aren’t available
because the investigation is ongoing. But if Kerasotes’s version of
events is accurate, the shooting had to be traumatic for his employees. “I would be terrified,” Kerasotes says.
“It’s not something you bargain for when you go to work at a
place of business. Would you want your kid working in that
situation?”
Julian Randle, 18, was shot in the pelvis. Police
arrested Henry Gayton, also 18, for armed violence and mob action, though
published reports say Gayton is not the person suspected by police of
shooting Randle. Kerasotes says the fact that this crime is yet unsolved
and the shooters are still on the street is the reason he decided to
postpone opening Stomp the Yard. “I thought that the film would be of interest
to the same group of people that caused problems on Christmas,” he
says. It’s not, he insists, that he doesn’t
understand Stomp the Yard. Even though he hasn’t seen it and doesn’t plan to
(Kerasotes calls movie-going “a little bit of a busman’s
holiday,” and says the last film he saw was The Prestige), he had watched a CBS
Sunday Morning segment featuring Greek fraternity stepping and the making
of Stomp.
“I wasn’t totally brain-dead on the movie,” he says. However, he says, a nonviolent movie doesn’t
guarantee a nonviolent audience. “Just because the subject matter is wholesome,
which Stomp the Yard is, it does not necessarily mean that people who could cause
difficulties won’t show up,” Kerasotes says. “We had
difficulties in several locations on [the movie] Drumline, and that’s about
marching bands, for Christ’s sake. If you don’t have
experience, you might scratch your head and say, ‘It’s PG-13!
Why worry about it?’ But we make decisions based on our
experiences.”
To prove his position, Kerasotes points to an
incident that took place in one of his Rockford, Ill., theaters last Friday
night as Stomp the Yard opened. Nine black males, ranging in age from approximately
14 to 30, caused such a ruckus in the lobby, the manager refunded their
ticket money and four off-duty police officers, hired by Kerasotes to
provide security, ejected them from the theater. Minutes later, as the
officers checked the parking lot, gunfire was heard. Jonie Davis, the general manager who was in charge at
the Showplace 16 in Rockford that night, heard “shots fired”
over her radio and immediately looked toward the parking lot.
“Customers who had just gotten out of a movie were running back
toward the building,” she says. “Customers who came for later
shows said they stayed in their cars because of what was
happening.”
Rockford Police Deputy Chief Greg Lindmark confirms
that disorderly patrons were ejected from the cineplex that night, and that
witnesses reported hearing shots fired. He says the incident is being
investigated. The men who caused the problems didn’t have
tickets to Stomp the Yard; they had bought tickets for Freedom
Writers, a PG-13 movie based on the true story
of a teacher who transforms a group of at-risk students. But the men had
initially asked for Stomp tickets, only to find it was sold out, Davis says. Like Springfield, the Rockford theater experienced
problems on the opening night of Black
Christmas. “People wouldn’t
behave. They stampeded into the auditorium and started jumping over the
seats,” Davis reports. At one point, the staff stopped the film and
announced it wouldn’t resume until the unruly customers left. These
“behavior problems,” Davis says, prompted the decision to hire
four security guards for the opening of Stomp instead of the usual two. Monitoring the mood of the moviegoing masses is an
art, not a science, that Davis seems intent on mastering, even though
there’s no ready-made lexicon to describe the shifts.
“Different nights, you get different crowds,” she says.
“I don’t know if it’s opening night versus not opening
night, Friday versus Saturday, or what. Like Saturday night, we had
behavior problems, but we didn’t think anybody had a gun. There’s a feeling .
. . ”
It’s not always bad. In fact, on the second
night Stomp the Yard showed at the Rockford theater, a group of young black
patrons gathered in the lobby and spontaneously started dancing. “It was definitely a better feeling,”
Davis says. “It looked like they were imitating the movie or doing a
cheer for their school. They came to see the movie and they had a good
time, just like they should.”
Stomp still wouldn’t be visible in Springpatch were it not for
the aggressive action of outraged black fraternities and sororities, who
called a press conference last week at the offices of the Springfield
Housing Authority. About 50 people attended, and though Tony Kerasotes was
not present, they had plenty of advice for him.
Ralph Williams, an attorney and member of Omega Psi
Phi, acknowledged that Kerasotes’ rights as a private business owner,
saying he has a “serious liability issue” should another
shooting occur at one of his theaters. “He had to take action — but he
didn’t take the right action,” Williams said. Others said that Kerasotes should have beefed up
security rather than punish the community for the acts of a few, or
consulted with African-American leaders on the best way to handle the
situation. If Kerasotes’ fear was that black boys might cause a
disturbance, one person suggested assembling a group of black men to serve
as volunteer chaperones. Though some were willing to work with the theater
owner, others wanted to tell Kerasotes
to step. The B-word came up more than once; there was
much talk of boycotting the capital city’s only movie theater chain.
Zeta Phi Beta member Tammy Lackland went so far as to call Sony Pictures to
see how much it would cost to bring the film here for an independent
showing (at least $10,000). Another call was also placed to Magic Johnson
Theatres — which operates movie houses in five states and is looking
to expand into “free film zones” in underserved urban
communities, according to information on the company’s Web site. But the discussion did not end there or when Kerasotes
relented and opened the film two days after its national release date. Activist Roy Williams hopes that people speak out as
loudly about violence on the city’s east side as they did about
Kerasotes’ decision to delay Stomp. “When a shooting happens on the east side, it
should be as important as when it happens on the west side — and
there should be as much of an outcry when there’s a shooting that
happens on the east side,” he says. “Shots have been fired on
the east side and at the mall before. If we start prosecuting when they do
it then, maybe crime wouldn’t make it to Parkway Pointe.”
Williams says.
Whatever anybody wants to say about Tony Kerasotes,
you have to give him this: He takes responsibility for his own actions. Asked whether Parkway employees or police suggested
delaying Stomp the Yard, he says no. Did he consult anybody before making this wildly
unpopular decision? No. Does he regret it? No. “I made the decision myself,” he says. He complains that many incidents that would explain
his stance — incidents such as the one witnessed by Jonie Davis in
Rockford — go unreported by the media and law-enforcement agencies. “It’s a conspiracy of silence,” he
says. “If you talk about it, you wind up in the newspapers like I
did, with everybody calling you racist.”
He rejects that label, insisting that his only
concern is the safety of his customers. “The decision wasn’t based on any bad
feelings toward the black population whatsoever. The man who got hurt [in
the Christmas shooting] was a black man. I’m just looking to protect
my audience the best I can, with my imperfect knowledge, based on my
experience. That’s all it’s about,” he says. “It kind of amazes me that there’s so
much public discussion about a film not playing and so little discussion
about the violence that happened at the Parkway on Christmas Day. I did not
receive a call from the NAACP offering to help me with that situation. I
didn’t get a ‘What can we do to help?’ call after that.
But a film doesn’t open on Friday, and it’s the end of the
frigging world,” he says. “There are people who have become too tolerant
of gangs and guns. It’s an accepted risk for some people. But I
don’t think it should be an accepted risk for my patrons.”
Stomp versus Dog
Kerasotes’ refusal to show a movie about the
traditional steppin’ rivalry between two black fraternities because
of a fear of “gang violence” takes on an ironic twist when Stomp the Yard is compared to Alpha Dog, a movie glorifying
white gang violence that opened Jan. 12.
Stomp the Yard
Rating: PG-13 for
one scene of violence, some sexual material and language Marquee star: Nobody
you ever heard of, but once you see it you’ll never forget Columbus
Short. Cast: Cousins of Cosby
spin-off A Different World
Plot: Hardscrabble kid
pulls himself up by his bootstraps — literally. Fairytale formulaic,
cheesy, soap-operatic; Boyz Bring It On in
Timberlands. Gang/thug life: The
frat brothers consider it low-class; protagonist DJ considers it tragic. Substance abuse: A
little beer, a couple of tequila shots,
no drugs The F-bomb: Did anybody
in Stomp the Yard drop
it? Not that we recall. Audience appeal: Preteens
and up, especially college kids Best part of the movie: The
finale! Duh! Worst: So sweet
that you might need an insulin shot. Controversy that has nothing to do with Springfield
gangs: The general president of the black
fraternal organization Alpha Phi Alpha urged a boycott of the film, citing
unauthorized use of its symbols, but endorsed the pic after Sony Pictures
Entertainment agreed to digitally remove APA symbols and donate a
percentage of the opening weekend grosses to the Martin Luther King Jr.
National Memorial
Project Foundation.
Who’s the real Alpha
Dog? Stomp the Yard came in
No. 1 at the box office, grossing $22 million in its opening weekend
Alpha Dog
Rating: R for
pervasive drug use and language, strong violence, sexuality and nudity Marquee star: ’N
Sync pretty boy turned Timbaland pop protégé Justin
Timberlake Cast: Hedonistic
suburban cousins of Beverly Hills 90210
Plot: Overindulged
brainless slacker brats squander privilege. Gang/thug life: highest
ambition of these misogynistic wannabes Substance abuse: Glorified
by every character, including parents; drugs and alcohol permeate virtually
every frame of
this film F-bomb: Used in
place of all adjectives, adverbs, and articles; also substituted for such
miscellaneous utterances as “like” and “um”
Audience appeal: Cynics,
realists, and the Natural Born
Killers crowd Best part of the movie: The
late, great Eva Cassidy’s rendition of “Over the
Rainbow,” heard during the opening credits
Worst: The
relentlessly and aggressively anti-minority, anti-female, anti-gay antics
of the main characters Controversy that has nothing to do with Springfield
gangs: Jesse James Hollywood, the real-life
inspiration for the lead canine character of Johnny Truelove, tried to get
an injunction to block the release of Alpha
Dog because of his pending capital-murder
trial. Who got Stomped: Alpha Dog came in No. 7 at the
box
ONE DEGREE OF SEPARATION:
Darrin Henson, who co-stars in Stomp the Yard as Mu Gamma president
Grant, was choreographer for boy band ’N Sync and taught Justin
Timberlake how to dance. Timberlake was Britney Spears’ boyfriend
from about 1998 to 2002. After their breakup, she was romantically linked
with her “In the Zone” tour choreographer and backup dancer
— no, not Kevin Federline — Columbus Short, star of Stomp the Yard.
— Dusty Rhodes, Marissa Monson, and R.L. Nave
Stepping 101
Amid the controversy surrounding the decision by
Kerasotes Theatres decision not to show the film Stomp the Yard in Springfield, the
burning question on the minds of many residents of the capital city is
“What the heck is stepping?”
Well, one thing stepping isn’t is dancing. Participants
aren’t called “step dancers,” nor are step shows
considered dance contests.
Modern stepping, depending on which
choreographer/historian you listen to, is derived from the movements of
either boot-clad South African laborers or American slaves.
Black Greek-letter organizations, founded in the
early 20th century, popularized the art form. With a complicated
amalgamation of clapping, stomping, and sometimes twirling and tapping of colorfully decorated canes, steppers
create music, whereas dancers perform to it. The atmosphere of a step show is electric, not unlike
that of a prizefight. The audience dresses to impress. Participants,
usually representing their fraternity’s or sorority’s college
chapter, are judged on originality, precision, and overall presentation on
the basis of crowd response or by a panel. As much fun as step shows are, however, black
fraternities and sororities, which participate in many different
community-service activities, stress that stepping is a very small part of
what their organizations are about.
— R.L. Nave
Contact Dusty Rhodes at drhodes@illinoistimes.com and
R.L. Nave at rnave@illinoistimes.com. Also showing . . .
While Tony Kerasotes was sweating out the potential
real-life consequences of booking Stomp the
Yard, a flick about black frat life, there was
plenty of mayhem showing in his theaters. Here are snapshots of a few of
the choices playing on Kerasotes screens. All of these films are rated R.
Alpha Dog — Sunny Southern California has never looked so dismal
as it does in this tale of white suburban gangsta wannabes who try to
collect on a drug debt. Along the way, there’s oral sex, gay-bashing,
broken bones, a woman yanked off a toilet, a man defecating in a living
room, nudity, profanity, and, oh yeah, the brutal murder of a youngster.
Based on the life of Jesse James Hollywood, one of the youngest men to make
the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List.
Apocalypto — Mel Gibson’s latest creation depicts the
advanced Mayan culture on its last legs, facing destruction. There’s
so much mutilation, rape, and carnage in this film, you’ll be hoping
that a boatload of Catholic Spaniards show up to knock some sense into
these primitives. You’ll especially love the severed heads bouncing down the temple steps.
Black Christmas —
Nope, it’s not an African-American version of the holiday. This
remake of the 1974 slasher flick finds sorority sisters dropping like flies
— being impaled, having their eyes gouged out, and their necks broken
— during Christmas break. Ho-ho-ho.
Saw III — The third in a series about a sadist named Jigsaw,
this film has plenty of grisly gore, torture, and terror, including a scene
in which a naked woman hangs upside down in a meat locker, shivering on her
way to death while being sprayed with water. We’ve been told that
it’s a morality tale.
— Marissa Monson
This article appears in Jan 11-17, 2007.
