Afraid of that Book Cover?

I penguin shuffled out of Theater No. 4 at the Angelika Film Center Friday night, my eyes focused on no particular spot on the carpet as the exit line moved in hushed tones. A bow-tied usher, propped up near the concessions, peered at the faces of those who’d just seen “Fruitvale Station.”

 “It looks like that was a serious movie, “he dutifully announced.

I ignored him and kept walking, wrestling with my own emotions and shaking my head. Almost reaching the up escalators, I stopped and turned my face away from the crowd lining up for the next showing. My eyes welled up and I wept.

“Fruitvale Station” is one movie you are going to hear a lot about because it is a movie you will see and then feel a lot about.

It’s an unspoken fact of life that all humans are pre-programmed to make snap judgments  - sizing people up, profiling each other  - based on class: where you live, how you dress, the manner of your speech, the type of work you do, the type of car you drive; gender: if you pee standing up or sitting down;  orientation; who you prefer to spend your private time with; age: how wrinkled is your skin or how gray is your hair; and from what neighborhood, race, or religion do you come?

All people do it. Some people more than others. Others do it and allow it to influence their behavior; some suppress it and try to give unfamiliar individuals the opportunity to be just that: a unique individual.

In Ryan Coogler’s controversial true story about Oakland resident Oscar Grant, we accompany him on a cinematic reenactment of the last 24 hours of Grant’s life. We make no snap judgments but complex and layered ones; we learn he is a doting father, a son, a grandson, a nephew, a friend to friends, strangers and animals. He also has been to prison, has sold and smoked marijuana, and he has unresolved and gnawing angst about how to make his family’s future more stable.  He’s struggling to not be pushed any closer to the edge.

And just like how Spike Lee portrayed Brooklyn in “Do the Right Thing”, and how Albert Hughes portrayed South Central LA in “Menace II Society”, Coogler grittily captures the stores, the music, the streets of East Oakland and the omnipotent BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) train that sleekly rumbles across The Town, that’s what locals call Oakland, a reference to Oaktown.

Oakland is seven miles east of San Francisco (The City) via the Bay Bridge or a quick ride through the underwater train bubble on BART.  This part of Northern California is called God’s Country because of the beautiful scenery, no humidity summers,  the mountains, hills, oceans, bays, the Redwood trees, vineyards etc. one of the most beautiful places on Earth.  I feel in love with this area when I first visited in the summer of 1989 and later lived there three different times since college.

Many know that Oakland, it’s hills, and nearby coast towns of Alameda, Berkeley, San Leandro , Richmond and Hayward all have better weather and  views than much of San Francisco, which is often cold and foggy. But people stay away. They don’t visit Oakland much because they are afraid of its reputation for gangs, gun violence and “scary’ black people. 

But I grew fond of the East Bay. I lived near Lake Merritt in Oakland not far from the real Fruitvale Station in the racially-diverse Fruitvale part of town. I enjoyed the ‘healthy” food, the festive people; the fun of being in cool California; the dread of earthquakes and forest fires but the joy of living and appreciating the environment.

Every Sunday morning (10 a.m. is kickoff time on the West Coast) for years, I watched the NFL games at the Golden Bear sports bar with guys just like Oscar Grant. I’ve laughed and cussed the screens and even bet against “him and Da Raiders” when my Tampa Bay Bucs faced them in Super Bowl XXXVII. I helped coached a Pee Wee football team of 25 black, Latin and Asian boys who all resembled Oscar – and his environment -  when he was probably 11 or 12 years old. I cheered their successes and helped try to mentor when their mothers got overwhelmed.

But I also was constantly aware of Oakland’s underlying gun violence problem that seemed to crash in - sometimes randomly, sometimes not - at any time, at any place:  political assassinations of news reporters on downtown sidewalks, corner street store owners blasting disrespectful customers or even police officers killing innocent unarmed people, like what the BART police did to Oscar Grant.

I was not emotional Friday night because of how the movie “Fruitvale Station” ended; I felt it because I intimately knew the place the film depicted and I felt I personally knew that young man. He had promise, he had hope, his life had value.

And I know a lot more of them; they look like my nephews Michael in Orlando, Chris and Ben in Morristown; and my friends’ teenage boys in Dallas, D.C. and Atlanta;  and the other hundreds of young men I see every day on the streets of the Bronx, Harlem, Brooklyn and Queens.

Or like the one in a hoodie we all learned about last year who died in Sanford, Florida: Trayvon Martin. As that murder trial jury now continues to deliberate George Zimmerman’s fate, the comment pages and posts on social media sites are spewing with venom: “that boy was TRASH” “Zimmerass is a punk loser”, “Trayvon deserved it” etc. etc.

There were plenty of observers, pundits and other “keyboard cowboys” that said all the same things in 2009 about Oscar Grant when he was killed and about the officer that pulled the trigger. (I ask you to closely watch the one scene of humanity and dignity between the two of them at the end of the Fruitvale movie; once both realized the preciousness of life.)  

In the Grant incident, a city’s consciousness was outraged. One man died and one man did go to jail for 11 months. But what did we learn from that? What has really changed about handguns, police tactics with unarmed people, with how we value life, or how we profile each other?

I was reminded then, and now with the Martin incident, that you can’t always judge – or be afraid of - a book by its cover.  That little saying is known and said by all of us. What’s sad though is too many people still don’t even bother to open the book and look at any of the pages.

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