Brands: When Spike met Mike

A span of four weeks in summer 1986 was important in reshaping the shoe endorsement for good. When future music mogul Lyon Cohen helped take Adidas executive Angelo Anastasio to Run-D.M.C’s Madison Square Garden leg of theirRaising Hell tour on Saturday, July 19, it led to a pioneering hip-hop and sportswear endorsement deal that resulted in its own series of shoes and apparel. It was a particularly high-risk move, not least because of the controversy after violence during the tour’s stop at Long Beach Arena on August 19. 11 days earlier, Spike Lee’s confrontational indie film about sex, empowerment, and identity was released. This wasn’t the squeaky-clean brand connection of old — as with Anastasio’s Adidas work, it was something of a step into the unknown.

She’s Gotta Have It would earn a staggering $7 million at the domestic box office. The Jordan fixation definitely didn’t end there. Lee’s next film, School Daze, was made for a comparatively colossal $6.5 million and shot in the spring of 1987. An unorthodox musical drama about racial divisions and college life, it’s a confrontational piece of work. Eagle-eyed viewers will spot Nike Dunks (it is set at college after all) and, in a scene set in Larry Fishburne’s character dorm, one of his friends is seen lovingly cleaning his Air Jordan IIs.Wieden+Kennedy’s legendary copywriter and creative director Jim Riswold was key to bringing Spike and Mike together to advertise the next Air Jordan — a pivotal reboot of the line that would help send the franchise global. According to Riswold’s account of the project’s genesis on W+K’s blog last year, seeing a commercial for She’s Gotta Have It in 1986 piqued the attention of he and producer Bill Davenport enough to make them make a trip to the cinema to see it a little later. Those shots of Mars’ feet made enough impact for them to phone Spike to see if they could potentially work together.

Filmed in December 1987 and debuted in February (the same month that School Daze was released), the commercials featuring Mars, now a hyper enthusiastic super fan, and his hero were uniquely irreverent and integral to showing viewers a side of Jordan that might have gone unseen. A perfect accompaniment to the Air Jordan III’s offbeat looks, it offered an extension of the She’s Gotta Have It universe that assumed the viewer was, as Mars would put it, already down.

A year later, a TV spot ahead of the February 15, 1989, release of the Air Jordan IV even brought Nola back. The other object of Mars’ affection was seeing Michael Jordan — a twist ending of sorts, three years after that movie ended.

Speaking to an African-American audience rarely acknowledged, but integral to turning performance shoes into must-haves, Spike’s work with Jordan set the standard culturally. We exist in a world where constant social debate regarding the money that Kanye West’s influence brings to a burgeoning brand shows no sign of stopping. There were, by all accounts, numbers to back up the impact of the Jordan and Spike ads. That blitz of late 1980s campaigns that Riswold was key to (including Bo Knows) were reportedly key to expanding an industry market share that was 3 percent ahead of Reebok in 1990.

Looking back at She’s Gotta Have It, that it would sow the seeds for something that would ultimately shift a lot of shoes was no surprise. Tracy Camilla Johns, who was so magnetic as Nola, only having six acting credits to her name on the  on the Internet Movie Database is a total mystery. Hollywood’s subsequent preference for hood-took-me-under cliché over angry auteurs or creativity when it came to black American cinema was a depressing inevitability. But Spike Lee’s impact on what kids lineup for today is entirely understandable.

The Word on Weed #2: Anslinger's War

 Marijuana has been in an “official” state of prohibition since 1937-s Marijuana Tax Act (in the United States). Because, among other reasons, it made supposedly white women desire black men.

Maia Szalavitz has a great takedowen of pundits like Tina Brown and David Brooks, who recently made specious claims that marijuana makes you stupider. Brown actually said Americans who smoke pot won't be able to "compete" with the Chinese. Her moment of xenophobia wasn't out of keeping with the history of anti-pot rhetoric.

Writes Szalavitz:

The truth is that our perceptions of marijuana—and in fact all of our drug laws—are based on early 20th century racism and "science" circa the Jim Crow era. In the early decades of the 20th century, the drug was linked to Mexican immigrants and black jazzmen, who were seen as potentially dangerous.

Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (an early predecessor of the DEA), was one of the driving forces behind pot prohibition. He pushed it for explicitly racist reasons, saying, "Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men," and:

"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others."

The main reason to prohibit marijuana, he said was "its effect on the degenerate races." (And god forbid women should sleep with entertainers!)

Although it sounds absurd now, it was this type of propaganda that caused the drug to be outlawed in 1937—along with support from the Hearst newspapers, which ran ads calling marijuana "the assassin of youth" and published stories about how it led to violence and insanity. Anslinger remained as head of federal narcotics efforts as late as 1962, whereafter he spread his poisonous message to the world as the American representative to the U.N. for drug policy for a further two years.

Before marijuana was made illegal, the American Medical Association'sopposition to prohibition was ignored, as was an earlier report on marijuana in India by the British government, which did not find marijuana to be particularly addictive or dangerous. That "Indian Hemp Drugs Committee" reporthad concluded way back in 1894 that, "The moderate use of hemp drugs is practically attended by no evil results at all."

Black (Trail) Blazers: Red Tails

It seemed that for much of 2011, Terence Howard was absent from movie screens. Sure, he was a lead voice  in "The Princess and The Frog" he helped to talk a man down from a window ledge (a well-worn theme that recurs in Hollywood this year) in "The Ledge" and one or two other small features.

But the release, this year, of the George Lucas-produced WWII flyboy drama must be a special case of deja vu for Howard, as well as for co-star Cuba Gooding Jr. Both previously played members of the Tuskeegee Airmen, the pioneering Afro-American aerial combat unit, Gooding for HBO's "The Tuskeegee Airmen" and Howard in "Hart's War" (2002).

This time around, they're commanding officers, with Howard as Gooding's superior. The feature is not, however that concerned with rank. Its areas of focus are three-fold: the prejudice faced by the commanders and their charges from the all-white top brass and political system (albeit a system hungry for successful anti-Nazi strikes to parade in PR newsreels); the personal travails - fear, love (including inter-racial), alcohlism etc - of the flyboys, anxious to prove their mettle, and the dogfights.

Its unfortunately  - but understandably - the latter area which gets the most attention from director Anthony Hemmingway. Having taken the journeyman route, as assistant and second unit director on several notable films ('Ali", "Changing Lanes") one might expect that Hemmingway, given his first full feature at the helm, would have a better sense of balance.

Disappointingly, he doesn't. One certainly expects a bit (or more) of Top Gun-type aerial razzmatazz, but in this department, Mr Hemmingway proves no real match for Tony Scott and his crew. Added to that, the film spends so much time in the sky that the other issues don't quite get the full development they require. Oneexception is the uneasy bond between squadron leader "Easy" Julian and the brash but gifted ace Joe "Lightning" Little. Actors Nate Parker and David Oyelowo (try saying that 3 times fast) make the interplay eminently layered and credible.  

So too, do the two veterans. Its clear though , that Howard  is in the driver's seat of this narrative and, without exception, his scenes crackle with unforced intensity and that barely suppressed rage in the face of injustice. R n' b star Ne-Yo also turns in a creditable performance. But, its not quite enough to take Red Tails into the stratosphere. This is no doubt a story that needs telling and repeating, and it is, of course,  timed to perfection. But, echoing the complaint of the  young flyboys and their superiors, it needs a better vehicle.