Hello, my name is Justin Clooner here today with Will Sloan.

And you're listening to The Important Cinema Club.

And today, we're going to be talking about Bill Gunn.

Who?

He's the director of Ganjin Hess, personal problems, screenwriter of the landlord.

He's a playwright.

He's a novelist.

Ah, so that must be why I've never heard of him.

That's right. I'm kidding. We've both heard of them. We're serious cinefiles here. But most people

haven't heard of them because, you know, there was that period in the early 70s where there were

certain African-American filmmakers who were emerging in the studio system and independently,

people like

Melvin Van Peebles, Ozzie Davis, Gordon Parks, Gordon Parks Jr.

And this guy, Bill Gunn, should have been one of them.

He was all primed to be one of them.

He was because the Learning Tree came out and right after Bill Gunn directed Stop.

And then after that, I believe Ozzie Davis directed Cotton Comes to Harlem.

The difference between those two other films is that his film was never released.

Never released.

It was slapped with an X rating.

It was recut by the studio Warner Brothers.

And then they just went, I don't mean, we don't even want to bother.

...