Summary: NOTHING BUT A MAN: (1964, Michael Roemer) “Baby, I feel so free inside.” But not in Alabama, not in the 60s. On a night out, while stogey-puffing co-worker Yaphet Kotto (Alien, Blue Collar, Homicide: Life on the Street) memorably plays pinball to the beat of Martha Reeves' "Heat Wave”, railroad man/single dad Ivan Dixon meets preacher’s daughter Abbey Lincoln (the legendary jazz singer in her first acting role) and tries to build a dignified life. But after getting fired from a mill and a filling station by racists, shunning a $2.50 a day job picking cotton, a difficult visit with his embittered, boozing dad Julius Harris, rejecting a reunion with his little son, and a physically painful argument with Lincoln, what’s he gonna do? Made on a shoestring by independent Roemer, with rich b&w photography by his producing partner, Robert M. Young (see also: The Plot Against Harry on Jan. 27), a vintage Motown soundtrack, low-keyed performances by a soon-to-be-eminent cast including Gloria Foster (“Oracle” in The Matrix) and Moses Gunn – and only a year later, Dixon would become nationally famous as co-star of tv’s Hogan’s Heroes -- Man was a sensation at the Venice, London, and New York Film Festivals: at the end of its screening at the second NYFF, the audience of 2,000 broke out into spontaneous applause. This podcast episode is a recording of a Q & A with NOTHING BUT A MAN director MICHAEL ROEMER, recorded Nov 9, 2012, at a screening of the film at Film Forum.
