Column: 1989 was a pivotal year for Black film. A new podcast goes deep and looks back.

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Journalists Len Webb and Vincent William’s latest podcast installment, “The Class of 1989,” takes an in-depth look at six pivotal films from that year. The pair joined Tribune critic Nina_Metz to discuss why they singled out 1989 as a watershed year.

But even looking at “Do the Right Thing” and “Driving Miss Daisy” from that point of view, we still have to take the time to honor — regardless of what we might think of “Driving Miss Daisy” as a whole — that it does feature two very outstanding performances by Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman.I’ll speak for myself: I’m the “Driving Miss Daisy” hater. Len just said it features two great performances and I’m going to go along with that for the sake of solidarity.

This has been an ongoing conversation Vince and I have had as we’ve reviewed Spike Lee’s movies and, to be honest, it has been a bit of “Huh, that’s interesting,” because maybe we didn’t think about it the first time we were watching. Superficially, it’s a white film. It’s a film about South Africa and it stars basically an all-white cast . But this is the first Black woman who directs a studio-backed film. So you have this important thing that also happens in this same year.There are six episodes and they are themed. The second looks at Spike Lee and Eddie Murphy, two boys from Brooklyn who put seminal work in their filmographies that year.

Q: I was re-watching the “Beverly Hills Cops” movies recently and it’s striking that Eddie Murphy’s character is surrounded by white people. You can see that once he had enough clout in Hollywood, he started making films like “Coming to America,” “Harlem Nights” and “Boomerang,” which are such intentional rebukes of that.That is absolutely a recurring theme we discuss. We joke and say Eddie Murphy has white films and he has Black films.

 

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