The Butler

I don't actually compare every movie I see to “The Godfather”. That would be pretty pitiful if I did, because what has a chance of meeting that measure of greatness?

But here's one thing (there are MANY) that make this a gold standard of movies – you got to know the family – and that helped you identify with them. That's what is missing from a lot of movies that are supposed to be family dramas – the relationship part is rushed – that's the only thing that I see that may hold “Lee Daniels' The Butler” back.

The story opens up as a tear jerker – a young boy whose family is torn asunder and he is displaced. There are many cash crops in this country – corn, wheat, sugar, rice – but is there any as closely associated with and murder as cotton? Cecil Gaines has more reasons than most to spend his life wearing polyester.

But the boy learns his lessons well and becomes the only thing that he has been taught to be – a butler to the Leaders of the Free World. One thing about it, though, he had to be the best to get the job, so you can't be mad at that. I've always been told that no matter what you decide to do for a living, be the best at it.

So Cecil rises to recognition through a series of positions and finds himself summoned to the White House to interview for the job. He actually raises the standard, and they already thought that they were pretty hot stuff. He is at the right place at exactly right time – Cecil is a silent witness to the great upheaval that is the Civil Rights movement. From the school integration of the “Little Rock Nine” at Little Rock Central High School to the first celebration of Martin Luther King's birthday as a federal holiday, Cecil is nearby the seat of power with a knowing glance.

The main conflict appears to be between Cecil and his son. Although it is clear that Cecil is proud of his son for going to school and he explains that he will be the first in the family to go, it's not clear that he has ever explained to him how far their family has come, and how easily all of that progress can be wiped away. The son has different ideas about what his newfound freedom will bring – and he spends most of the movie fighting in every battle of the Civil Rights movement he can find – while they may not detail every single battle he takes part in – they make sure the audience knows that he has been arrested more than ten times. I'm pretty sure than anyone's parents would be angry if they sent their child to college and they spent the time behind bars – they could have done that for free.

The other on-going conflict seems to be that black service workers are paid less than their white counterparts. A lot of people may be aware that there is still disparity between male and female workers all over the counry, but most people take for granted that race and color have been taken out of the wage wars. This is possible because the man responsible for selecting the service workers is careful to select only those who would be considered “responsible”, definitely wasn't looking for the uppity kind. Cecil breaks ranks and does the unexpected here.

And that brings us to Cecil's wife, Gloria. Gloria worked at a hotel with Cecil. She is played to the hilt by Oprah Winfrey. While there were some who were disappointed in her performance, I liked Gloria's saucy personality. After the attention brought to the anticipated love scene between she and the next door neighbor (played by Terrence Howard), I guess we'll all have to wait for the Director's cut to see what all the fuss was about.

Gloria is drinking, smoking, and cheating while her husband is working hard to make sure the current occupant of the White House has all of the creature comforts. You know that Gloria is frustrated, but, really, what is she upset about? Her husband has a job – there are a lot of sisters out there who wish they could say the same! What's the point of having an affair with the next door neighbor when he's about thirty cents away from having a quarter?!

I enjoyed the movie, but there were things that were missing – we need to see more of the family interaction – more about the dynamic – and more about the Civil Rights struggle. In “The Godfather” (sorry, there goes that comparison again) when Michael tells Kay about how his father got a famous singer out of his contract with a well known band leader, isn't that everything you need to know to set the family dynamic in place? When Don Corleone tells Michael that women can be careless but men can't be, and when he tells him that he wanted him to be Senator or Governor, not carry on the family business – doesn't that tell you what you need to know about how close they are and the size of his ambition? You don't get that sense and development from this movie. The movie just seems rushed from beginning to end.

You can't cover that much history in two hours. I know that movie makers want to maximize the film's earning potential with frequent showings. I know epic films are almost impossible to make, especially for African American directors, but this is a film that could have really benefited from an extra half hour – even more from an hour. Can you imagine “Malcolm X” being two hours long?

Tell me what you thought....

Step Away From the Cell Camera

In the last year I have witnessed a trend that I find incredibly distressing – people voluntarily entering nude photos of themselves on the Internet. They are saving sex tapes, sending photos of their bodies, and in general adding to the porn industry and sex market, a market that Heidi Fleiss, the famous madam. said was a market that is never saturated. Why??? Are you sure you want to do that??? You already have the story of a former Congressman who learned the hard way that this isn't the best idea, but let me take you back to a simpler time and a larger lesson. I hope that this will help some of us to remember that you don't know what God has in store for you – try and be careful out there.

About thirty years ago, I was getting my first real job and across the country a woman of humble beginnings named Vanessa Williams was about to blast into a superstardom she could never have really anticipated. That summer, the word around the campfire was that we were going to have our very first black Miss America. During the contest it was clear that the two top contenders were both African American – incredibly beautiful and talented and role models for brown skinned women all over the world. At that time, that had never happened. Everyone watched that contest and heard Vanessa Williams belt out “Happy Days Are Here Again” and win the swimsuit competition. She was great, it was amazing and when she won, people all over the world were doing flips and popping champagne bottles. She represented the community and the Miss America Pageant with verve. She was the most popular person to hold the title, unfortunately, she was also peppered with death threats and her security was beefed up like the Presidents. Yes, the Devil is always busy....

Years before Vanessa Williams was the toast of the globe, she took some nude pictures with a photographer who took advantage of her naivete and beauty. He saw a payday and shopped the pictures around, even though he was asked to refrain, and be a human being – no shot of that happening. The photographer found a willing buyer in Bob Guccione, the owner of Penthouse magazine. Guccione paid the photographer a few pennies for the pictures, placed them in Penthouse over the course of two magazines, and made $14 million exploiting this young woman. She made a mistake, it wasn't fatal, she hadn't killed anyone. He purposefully humiliated her, and she was pressured to relinquish the crown. The magazine literally sold like hotcakes, they couldn't print enough copies to meet the demand. It was a real take down, and it seemed that she would never recover.

Thankfully, Vanessa's beauty, talent, and charm eventually took her beyond that tragedy on to the superstardom she had earned and so richly deserved. She didn't know that she would be the first black Miss America, she had no idea what God had in store for her. But God also restored everything that she was meant to have and more. Her tale has a happy ending, but that chapter of despair could have been avoided.

Don't let that happen to you. One day when I'm collecting the Academy Award for writing the Best Screenplay or Producing the Best Picture, made the head of the Department of Labor of the United States of America, named Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, earn the Nobel Peace Prize, receive the Congressional Medal of Honor or the Presidential Medal of Freedom (Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,. Or what's a heaven for?) I want to make sure I'm not caught up like that. You don't need to recreate all of the mistakes – you can learn from the past and benefit from this cautionary tale.

Is Your House Underwater?

Chances are that your mortgage was backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac – let's hope.

If your mortgage is now underwater and you've sucked up all of the equity like Dracula on a fresh vein, let me walk you through the process of getting out from under, getting some real sleep, and ending the fantasy loop running in your mind of taking a blow torch to your mortgage company – no violence necessary. You can even wrap this up in less than a month – it's true.

HARP – the Home Affordable Refinance Program actually began in 2009 and was put in place by the Obama Administration to help home owners find relief instead of abandoning their life long dreams in the middle of the night. Whether your original mortgage is with Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citibank, or Chase, it's probably backed by Fannie or Freddie and was sold to a much smaller mortgage company you never heard of. You may still qualify for a HARP. And guess what? If your lender won't process your HARP, you can do it with another lender – don't lose heart, all is not lost. If you have an FHA loan, you may qualify for a Streamline Refinance Loan, which is similar.

One requirement is that you be current on your loan. This is to make sure you have a chance to make your payment more affordable and allow you to save for your other dreams – retirement, college for your children, and the continued quality of home ownership.

Banks are creating their own subtle changes into HARP, so be prepared to shop for the best rates and the qualifiers that relate to you. My advice is to gather all of the material and research before you jump in paying fees and losing time filling out voluminous forms. My other advice is to seek the help of your banker. They've got your money, make 'em work for it. You're a customer, not a vagrant, and if they don't appreciate you – dump them. If no bank makes any loans, they are going to go out of business.

If you need to be pointed in the right direction, please give me a call.

The Great Gatsby

When I was in fourth grade, my teacher already knew that I wrote plays on my own. She also knew that I was particularly fond of one of the stories in our 4^th grade reader. She asked me to take the story and turn it into a play that the students could perform. Since, at the time, the extent of my research library was the Encyclopedia Brittanica in our hallway, I didn't know that there was more to adapting a story to a play or screenplay than translating it into a group of scenes and turning the quotes into lines. I didn't write to the head of MGM as I would write to the President of Johnson Products in high school to ask how relaxers make your hair straight. I learned while watching the Oscars many years ago that there was a science to translating a story to a play or screenplay. Baz Luhrman didn't watch that telecast.

“The Great Gatsby” was a studied translation of F. Scott's Fitzgerald's fantastic ode to the Jazz Age. The decandence, the music, and the heart breaking idealism that you read about in the book are nonetheless brilliantly portrayed in this movie, and I recommend it. I recommend that everyone read the book at least. But you have to read it twice. When I read it in high school, I was appalled by the cavalier manner that Daisy treated her long lost admirer. When I read it recently, all I could think was this guy is a sap. Since the story hasn't changed, I guess that means that I did.

Since Baz Luhrman is famous for his way, way, over the top productions that would make Busby Berkeley cover his face in shame, he was actually the perfect choice to bring this story to life. His depiction of the parties, the clubs, and the opulence of another era where money was spent like water and nobodies became millionaires overnight was actually good. While it's true that Leonardo Di Caprio's Gatsby was no improvement over Robert Redford, Carey Mulligan is a better Daisy. I thought the money was well spent for the most part, but I would have done more with the 3D than Luhrman did. If you're spending that much to make a movie 3D – WORK IT!

You'll want to see the party scenes over again, the preparation for the afternoon tea, and that big yellow car sailing into New York. There was a lot of criticism of the use of Jay z's music, but that music is only briefly sprinkled through the movie – most of the music is true to the time, and I'm pretty sure Jay Z could have written more that could have seemed true to the times also. You will hear more in the previews than you will in the actual film. I suggest seeing the 3D version over the flat – you may as well see what the Director intended, right?

In high school I wrote about “The Great Gatsby”, “Tender is the Night”, and “This Side of Paradise”, so I had no intention of missing this balleyhooed remake. Since the Jazz Age very much resembles the squalor that preceeded the recent downturn that we are still suffering through, I think the story of careless and wanton revelry was well placed. People, especially young people, should see it. It will remind them that people didn't start partying the day after they were born, something I recall my parents telling me back in the day. I showed my neices some “Ed Sullivan Show” tapes so that they could see how Tina Turner sang “Proud Mary”. Some lessons never get too tired to teach, and that's what makes the book a masterpiece and the movie a welcome interpretation.

How to Reject a Job Offer

I have a friend who found himself in a bidding war. Two companies claimed to want him. He wanted one company. He wanted to be the Division Manager for Operations at a food giant. One company had him on their private plane visiting midwest locations while the other drove him around in a town car and placed him in a corporate apartment they have overlooking Lake Michigan and Lake Shore Drive. I wanted him to take the corporate apartment – it was so gorgeous, I wanted to move into it myself. It was 4,000 square feet with an uninterrupted view from the Bahai Temple to the Gary Steelmills. He even had a private elevator. He wanted the private jet so he was pulling the other way – until one of the managers told a very off color joke that made my friend very uncomfortable. He was worried about working there after that. He didn't want to be affiliated with something that he knew might limit his growth at that point.

My friend decided to take himself out of the running by sending a letter to the recruiting manager indicating that he didn't think he was the right fit for the company. He hadn't gotten the offer from the company I liked, but he said he was sure that he wouldn't like spending all day with that guy at the first company, private jets or not.

I mentioned this to my manager at the time, and she couldn't believe what he had done. She explained that a move like that is not the move of a professional at that level. She said he should have kept his options open, gotten the offer from both companies and expressed regret but taken the offer from the company he wanted, after an offer was provided. I had been proud of him for standing his ground. Now I was afraid he would never get an offer that he could accept.

Eventually, he does get the offer from company B along with the apartment, the town car and the driver. Things go very well there and he moves up the ladder to head Operations. At that point the President of company B spends some time with him and explains that they had been hesitant to hire him after the way he blew off company A. This was very surprising to my friend because he had certainly never mentioned that the other company was interviewing him for fear that they would lose interest. The President explained that the interest from the other company was exactly the reason they liked him so much. The two companies were rivals, they traded employees back and forth all the time. My friend explained how he became disenchanted with company A.

The President of company B explained that he was aware of the ploy. It was apparently done at several companies with facilites in areas of the midwest that are not as liberal, or as prepared to see diversity at the senior management level. My friend was a little floored to think that people are still being tested in this day and age, but there it is. The President was a little more gentle than my manager was, but he explained it this way.

It's naïve to think that senior managers in the same industry aren't friends. They went to school together, traded info, hook-ups, discussed philsophies, and definitely trade stories on employment candidates. Since you never know who knows who, it's best to assume that everyone knows everyone and treat everyone with the care you would a close relative. The interview you blow today may lead to problems down the road from companies that you don't even have on your horizon right now. Take a longer view of your career, you'll be stuck with it for decades.

Even Recruiters Get the Blues

Last weekend I had dinner at Joe's with some of my recruiter friends that I mentor. They need assistance finding what they want and are getting desperate. On the other hand I have client applicants who are looking for the right job and they are getting desperate also. I asked a couple to drop by the dinner so that we could all see why nothing was working.

My recruiter friends are experiencing a hard time reaching the qualified candidates and making sure they understand the process of obtaining a job. That's right – recruiters get the blues! It's not like the old days – now a prospect places their resume online and companies call you – but you don't give you the job right away – there are steps:

Screening – usually a recruiter screens the applicants by phone. In my day you talked to them in the evening or over the weekend when their boss was out of ear shot and you could get to heart of their responsibilities. You got to know them – we used to place bets on which of our candidates a client company would hire because we sent the best we found after beating the bushes like the Weather Girls on a manhunt. Now, applicants are contacted by robocall or several assistants who leave messages with your family members. Please make sure the family members are prepped – a lot of family members can make it hard on the applicant if they fail to take a message or don't contact the applicant when the recruiter calls. It's first come, first served, and the applicants who answer their own phone and are able to talk about their experience usually are the first through the door and the first to have the interview and get the job. Back in the day parents took a call from a prospective employer much more seriously – I don't see that as much anymore.

Resume – make sure that resume is polished – ask some other people to look at it. They will notice the typos that you passed over. Ask someone in your field to read it. Not only can they help you polish it, but they might know of a job that you never heard about.

Group appointment – this is usually a test or an elimination tactic to root out those who are really qualified and may do well. Come early, not on time. If they ask you to bring verification material – bring it! If you come in saying your dog ate it or you forgot, the ejector button on your seat has already been pushed. If you're looking for a job, you should have the following at the ready: proof of identity – a state issued driver's license or ID card, proof of eligibility to work in the US – the list was recently expanded, but you can't go wrong with the old stand-bys – your current or expired passport, or a copy of your certified (that means government issued) birth certificate and social security card, proof of education – a bonded copy of your transcripts, your college degree, your high school diploma, or your GED certificate. Many companies are still hiring on the spot, so don't get left behind. Use this time to gather these items and have them ready to present. Don't be the one standing outside with your nose pressed to the glass.

Personal appointment – if you get this far, the situation is yours to lose, so don't lose it. Please go in with the right frame of mind. There has been a recent rash of applicants coming to interviews intoxicated or in some other state of ill-preparedness. You shouldn't have to be told that coming to an interview with a hang over or coked up is a losing proposition. I realize its rough out there, but you can't win if you don't play. You cannot afford to be afraid to go through the interview process.

Now, let me get back to that resume for a second. My friend's daughter, who is looking, and has been for several years, gave me her resume and it was literally incomprehensible. I don't have enough room to list all the things that were wrong with it – she has it posted everywhere from ladders.com to Snagajob.com and she then mailed it all over the globe. It assaulted my eyes like a zoot suit! I tore it in a million pieces and had the waiter bring me a plate so that I could burn it.

It's no joke out there, and some of these mistakes can be avoided. I'm happy to help anyone who needs it – just give me a call.

Everyday Should Be Jackie Robinson Day

 

 

I had a chance to see an advanced screening of “42”, the story of how Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball in 1947. My advice is to go without hesitation, but take your tissues, and plan on having a glass of wine afterwards – it's a great movie, but it is hard to watch that special brand of hatred that just never seems to be subdued...

This account of just SOME of the things Jackie Robinson endured is a lesson in restraint the likes of which we can't really imagine. The fact of the matter is that Robinson was truly a diamond in the rough. I don't even know anyone who could have endured the taunts, the endless indignities that he suffered to take away all of the excuses that had prevented baseball from being a sport all Americans could participate in. As you look around the baseball parks of today and see a rainbow coalition, remember that one man made it possible – before the bus boycott, before Brown vs. the Board of Education, before the Military was integrated, way before Title IX, someone convinced Jackie Robinson to take one for the nation. He should be on everyone's gratitude list.

Put yourself in his place for just a second -

You want to get married, you are barnstorming with the Negro Leagues making the most of your talent in the only place you are allowed to play, you're doing minor league football in the off season, and you've just given up track. Suddenly you are asked to take on one of most incredible tasks of all time – integrate white baseball, and hold your tongue and turn the other cheek when ridicule rains down on you like a flashflood – what would you do? I'm sure that even with the thought that he would be able to make a decent living, he also had to think that this task was too big for him....

You will note that there are no complaints about the liberal use of the “N word” in this movie. I saw “Django Unchained” and it's a toss up which movie used the word more. Between that, being tossed out of restaurants, being threatened with arrest, and with being barred from hotels, I really don't know how he dealt with it. You hear stories about how ethnic stars had to seek shelter in the home of friends and in little known motels that dotted the highway when they travelled because they were about as welcome as a plague of locusts at the five star hotels of the day. I remember BB King telling us that he stayed at the Palmer House because Hilton hotels were among the first to allow blacks to stay there.

The man who got this experiment in deferred appreciation going was Branch Rickey, the General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Haunted by the realization that he could have done more to help minorities in the past, Rickey decides to try and make amends, and at the same time win some more ball games by searching for the right person at the right time. Only Central Casting could have created a better candidate than Jackie Robinson. While he was a surprising candidate to some, Robinson hadn't been known for turning the other cheek as much as he was known for standing his ground. He understood, however, that if he didn't learn how to call on his better angels, it would have only fueled the fire that has kept us out of the mainstream for far too long.

Recently, the First Family hosted a screening of the movie and invited Robinson's widow, Rachel, who was also well depicted in the movie. Michelle Obama stated that she didn't know how the Robinsons endured in the face of such hatred. If you think like I do, you want to ask Michelle the same question – right?

April 15^th is Jackie Robinson Day – please join me in wearing a #42 jersey in honor of a real American hero.