From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell.

So in 1992, a movie came around that was basically sui generis.

It was a black film noir, which may seem redundant, except for the fact that there were so few black people in film noir.

Black's rotation films call themselves that a few, but they really weren't.

The film, of course, is Jews celebrating its 25th anniversary, and the film's director and co-writer Ernest Dickerson is sitting across me.

Ernest, thanks so much for being here.

Oh, it's an honor to be here.

It's an honor to have you.

And I guess one of the things I've always thought about the movie is that it feels like this kind of weird intersection to be between Manchile and the Promised Land and city.

A city across the river.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. city across the river. Yeah. Yeah. Which was, I think, was adapted from a book called the Amboy Dukes.

Absolutely.

Herring Shulman's Amboy Dukes.

Yeah, I think it, you know, I think that story definitely was in the back of my mind.

I saw it one time late at night on the late show back in New Jersey when I was a teenager.

And Man Child of the Promised Land is definitely a book that I always wanted to adapt to the motion picture.

It was required reading when I was in high school.

All young African-American guys in my high school had to read Man Child in the Promised Land,

had to read the autobiography of Malcolm X, had to read, Brecht of the Earth by Franz

Fanon, you know.

These were the books we had to read when we were kids.

...