Breaking Bread with Tom Papa - Episode 63 - Andre Gaines & Dr. Christian C. Gregory

Episode Date: July 20, 2021

Filmmakers Andre Gaines and Dr. Christian C.Gregory break bread and discuss the making of 'The One and Only Dick Gregory' on Showtime. Amazing people and an amazing film!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hey, everybody, welcome to another edition of Breaking Bread with Tom Papa. I am Tom Papa. Thank you so much for being here at the table. Once again, we have a great show for you. I don't know if you've seen the documentary on Showtime yet, the one and only Dick Gregory. It is a great, great documentary. have the filmmakers here with us. We have Andre Gaines, who is the director, and Dick Gregory's son, Dr. Christian Gregory, both of them, great people, great artists, and they put together

this film that is so perfect, so perfect. I mean, for our show, for a show that is into comedy and diet and food, this is perfect for us, because not only is Dick Gregory, this amazing, amazing character. He was such a amazing comedian and then just a pioneer and soldier in the civil rights movement. And then he transformed into, he had the second crusade, which were third crusade, which was helping people eat the right way

so they could live a full great life. And literally, if you put into Google, Dick Gregory, it comes up comedian, civil rights, and diet. Those are like the three ways that they want to take you. Three profound movements, three profound passions, and he was way ahead of his time. I mean, everything that he became a vegan after doing these fasts. And, I mean, veganism at that time wasn't even, it was weird when my, when my girlfriend did it just 15 years ago. Not technically. It was a 25 now, I guess. The math isn't important. The point is Dick Gregory is this amazing, amazing man, and it is captured in this film, and I'm so happy to

have the filmmakers with us today. Farms. So I want to direct you also. I have a couple things that you need to know about. July 30th, I will be in Las Vegas. July 30th, have a big show in Las Vegas at the win at the theater the encore theater there big big show very excited Lara Bites who is on our podcast a little earlier the hilarious Lara she's going to be on the show as well and it's going to be huge it's going to be great and we want you to come spread the word also the family reunion tour is now up on sale everywhere go to tompapa.com you to. There's a nice map there and you find where you live and you press the little button and there you go. That's where we will meet. Go to tompapa.com, the family reunion tour. Jersey coming up,

we added a second show in New Jersey on August 27th. We're going to Salt Lake City. We're going to the Fitzgerald. We're going to Atlantic City at the Borgata, Florida, Indianapolis, Chicago, Atlanta. going everywhere. Very excited and very excited to see you out there on the road. If you want to bring bread, go ahead. Also, I want to direct you to my YouTube channel, Getting Baked with Tom Papa. I just released a new video. We had a whole series of videos on how to make sourdough, and we also did, I think, pretzels. We have a bunch of stuff up there, and we took a little break from it when things got busy, and now we are back, and I show you how to, how to make a Chiambela. And this was perfect because we were literally filming it while Italy was

winning the Euro Cup on last Sunday. It was this big Italian moment and we were making Chiambela and we're filming it and sharing it with everybody. Very excited for you to see it. So if you listen to this and watch this broadcast on YouTube, you've probably already seen it. If not, if you just listen to these podcasts, go to YouTube, go to the Tompapa channel. That's where you get this podcast as well as the Getting Baked series, which we're going to be adding a lot more to. They're really fun to do. And, you know, I'm just figuring it out and learning it myself.

So we're trying to kind of share that experience and let you in. And if you want to try making some of this stuff, it's great. We also hit just a new one on olive bread. It literally is my favorite bread of all time. It is green olives, calamatta olives, herbs to provence, lemon zest in this use your sourdose starter. It is amazing. And we just filmed that also. That's going to come out in the next week or so.

So a lot going on. And how great was that Italy win? I apologize if you weren't rooting for them, but it was exciting. Look, I'm not going to pretend that I was watching all the matches along the way. I only showed up at the finals, to be honest. But if that's the way you should do it, you get a show for the big games. And not only did we make the Chiambela early in the day while we were watching, of course we celebrated after with this pepper and olive rigatoni,

made our own sauce, we made our own bread, we had, what else did we have, we had roasted broccoli with it. was just a big Italian fest. Oh, this bottle of Barolo, this amazing bottle of Barolo. I forget the name of it. I'll post it. So good. Such a big celebration. Just a little Italian pride, especially after the year that we went through. And especially, you know, it came down to a shootout. So at the end, I mean, it could have gone either way. England was right on the cusp of having a celebration as well. And it was at Wembley, so they were all dying for it also. But win or lose just to see 67,000 people in that arena having a great time, just that we're coming out

of all of this stuff and just able to celebrate. And then Italy winning on top, made it even better. So it was really, really, really great. All right. Let's get to the interview right away because these guys are so great. This film is so good. The one and only Dick Gregory. It's on showtime now. Go and stream it. He was such a cool. amazing comedian in a time when you didn't have black comedians talking to predominantly white audiences in this smooth, controlled, insightful way. And he just broke through the culture and he becomes this amazing, amazing comedian. And then puts it all on the line when the civil rights challenge was happening. His good friends, we'll

We're going to get into all this in the interview. But the amount of courage that, look, to be a comedian is kind of brave. To go then and take that star power that he had and put it literally at the end of a gun barrel and put everything he had on in the line for the betterment of humanity and the black culture in America. It's just, it takes a level of courage that is hard to really understand. And then he progresses and goes on to just try and help human beings and eat better and live better lives. It really, when you watch this documentary, you come into it. I came into it as a fan of comedy and I left as a fan of humanity.

He makes you see the good in people and he makes you want to be a better person. I can't express enough admiration. not only for Dick Gregory, but for also Andre Gaines and Dr. Christian Gregory, who put together this film, and now we get to sit down and spend some quality time with them. So enjoy. Thanks for being here. This is how I start off each of these podcasts. So I'm going to start off by jumping right in and asking you, what did you eat today? I had a Caesar salad from Trader Jones. I've had my ass in this chair literally since like, you know, 8 o'clock this morning.

And so just by virtue of that, I was able to hop on without any reservation. Nice. And that's literally all I ate. But I will say in the morning, I had some Dick Gregory Caribbean shake. Really? I mixed into my regular smoothie. Oh, man. And it's good.

It's good stuff. It's thick. You know, it gave me enough energy to last on only eating a salad. I can't tell you that much. Oh, man. I was, yeah, I have a follow-up question of that because when I saw the shake, I was like, man, is that still around? So that you're drinking it, that's exciting news. It's a new version.

Yeah, I mean, Christian can definitely be the best pitch man here, but it's a new version of of the Bahamian diet. Yeah. And yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's very thick, which, which was, you know, let me get this together. I was in my normal fruit smoothie with, uh, I use some, uh, super food in there and some other vitamins and it's fairly loose. But this is like, oh, this, this, this thickens right up.

Um, this is, this is the day and age we live in where we don't, we don't. communicate, you know, verbally, but I knew that because I saw Andre post it. And so it's like when my nieces and nephews come over, they'll be across the table from me eating the food my wife and I cook. They won't say a word, but I'll look at their Twitter account and I'll say, oh, most delicious pasta we've ever had. I knew Andre had the shake this morning, and it looked extremely thick in the picture that he posted. So I was a tad alarm. And I said, I got a back channel with my little brother to have him reduce some of the ingredients. Oh, God. Yeah. I tried to add it to my regular ingredients of, you know,

of the fruit, like frozen fruits and vegetables. And before I knew it, that thing was, I was like, man, this is going to clean out some serious stuff. Yeah, it's, it's supposed to hit the lower GI kind of heavy. That's the intent. That's the intent. Oh, yeah, it did it. Yeah, all I had room for was a Trader Joe's salad. I tell you, I'll tell you that. So mission accomplished. Good job. Good job.

And what did you have today, Christian? Well, again, and this isn't shameless plugs here, but I start every morning with the Caribbean shake. I drink. My dad has some delicious energy drink. So that's my pre-imposed workout routine. And then so I'm not, still not a hardcore vegan. I'd say 80 to 90% of my wife and I's diet is vegan. and the other 10% is what my dad used to always say, it depends who's watching.

So how far will you go into the non-vegan world? I mean, it really depends who's watching. I mean, that's full on. Oh, you've had some party time. It's Christian. It never goes over 10%. See, and I get that, you know, as we've mentioned before, my dad raised us on a farm as vegan. And so when most folks were experimenting with hard drugs, us Gregory's were experimented with hard candy.

So snicker bars, you know, Hershey's. And I would say that, you know, high fructose corn syrup, you know, I've never done heroin, but I would imagine a hit kind of the same when it's pure to your body. So we've traveled all over the world. And so I've seen some pretty unsavory kitchen. So my response is, show me the kitchen. I'll let you know my dietary restrictions. And so I never give them out first.

But it really all depends. I mean, occasionally some clean beef, occasionally clean chicken, poultry fit, not really a... That's really the key, though. I mean, honestly, that's the... It's clean eating. Yeah, it's like we used to joke all the time. I mean, I think sort of while I was working on the project, it's maybe like halfway through it, I said to Christian, I was like, your dad doesn't like.

food, does it? And he's like, no, no, if he could put it in a pill form and drink it, like, he just absolutely was happy. I was like, yeah, I don't know if I can roll like that, because I like food. I'm not a food addict. There's no foodie. Yeah, but I'm a foodie. I like trying a bunch of dough foodies. I like different cuisines, different, you know, cultures, all that type of stuff. I don't eat pork. I haven't eaten it since I was, I don't know, maybe. 12, you know, and but pretty much everything else, I'll try it at least once. And I was like, yeah, that, that's sort of struck me that he was not a, yeah. Yeah.

Because of that too category. And as a result of that, he doesn't like, my dad didn't like to do anything that interrupted with talking because he loved to talk. So he didn't like, he didn't like Christmas, didn't like movies, didn't like eating, didn't like parties, anything that would, okay, Dick, now you've got to be quiet because we're going to do this. He typically didn't like. That's so funny. My daughter actually pointed out that she said that I was talking with food in my mouth.

And as a comedian, it's like, well, I can't stop. I can't, I just heard someone say something. I have to jump in. There's no time to swallow. No, you just got to do it. I get on my dad who's an amateur comedian himself. He does that all the time. It's like you're talking with food in your mouth, you know, like just wait.

So I get to take... That's the funniest. It's the timing. The timing. I can't mess with the timing. Yeah. Well, congratulations on the film. You guys were on my radio show on Sirius a couple weeks ago, right when this was coming out.

And it's been really well received. I hear a lot of people, a lot of comedians talking about it. And you must be feeling some love since the release. Oh, definitely. Yeah, definitely feeling it, it was a blessing. It really was just like we couldn't have asked for a better response at all. I mean, the critical response was great as certified, fresh, you know, 100% on rotten tomatoes. And really for us, you know, Christian and myself in particular, we were like, you know, I,

made this film for the audience. I made it for the people and Christian would add on to that that Dick Gregory was a man of the people. And so we really wanted the people to love it. And they just have the outpouring of love and response to it has just been incredible. And it's still going because, you know, nobody watches anything when it comes on that way anymore. No sort of event television. It's all streaming. Totally. So people just like, yeah, I watched it. I watched the other day. Just stunning work. My God, it's just great. And just to

continue to get those is really, really, you know, fills my heart. Oh, it's so great. It really, it's inspiring. It really is inspiring. I mean, you know, I watched it for a second time. And man, you turn that thing off and you just want to be better. You're like, what am I doing with my life? How can I improve? This man did not stop. did not stop and we had to leave a lot of it on the cutting room floor. I mean, that's probably, you know, if we're lucky, representative of about 60% of it, you know, there's a good 40%, 30 to 40% of it that, from a storytelling standpoint that we could have, you know, dove into and made a whole other movie out of.

And so to get when, as a director, when you make something, particularly as a filmmaker, or when you make something and you specifically try to evoke an emotion from the audience. I mean, that's always the question when we're in the middle of something that I ask my team. Like, are we achieving that? Is that evoking that emotion? And it's hard to tell that when you're in the middle of it because you're working on it all the time. Right. But to get that response when somebody watches it who has no relationship to the project and is watching it for the first time,

and to hear them like yourself say, I watched it twice or I watched it three times or I watched it this. It's like, you know, wrap me up in a blanket and put me in the grave. I'm just as pleased as much punch. I can go die. Yeah.

We got too much work still to do. I didn't cry. Too much work to do. Christian, what? I mean, was there, was there a, you know, this is your father? So that's a, that's a, it's a heavy thing. It's a heavy thing to begin with.

to see, very rarely does anybody get to see their parents' life documented from beginning to end like this? That had to be pretty impactful for you. It was incredibly impactful, emotional. I don't proclaim that my ear is any closer to the streets than Andres, but handling my dad's social media, I see a lot of it on the front end and people are just elated over this film. I mean, my dad has some, you know, I oversaw my dad's Nike commercial, and that didn't, you know, everyone didn't love it.

It was a little split. They were like, well, Dick Gregory doing a commercial, Dick Gregory. So I always kind of, I gauge the response, and this has been so one-sided, which I'm pleased to say, and it speaks to the work. It speaks to the passion that Andre poured into this project in capturing the passion of the man,

which is not easy, As you may know, Joe Morton did a one-man play off Broadway based on my dad's life. And so that was, my dad was alive when that first came out. So I saw it once with my dad when he was living. I've seen it twice since he's passed. And so the gifts just keep coming from the, you know, my dad did a lot of remote raising of us, Gregory's. And it wasn't like an absentee dad situation. It was your dad's on the front line.

It was almost like if you had a dad, your dad. dad was in the space program and your dad's on the moon. Well, you knew he was loving you from afar. You just knew you couldn't reach out and touch him. But to now have so much, you know, tactile stimulation through all of these, you know, audio visual and live arts and stage arts, it really is. It's the gift that keeps on giving, as Andre can attest to. We're not done. And this is because, you know, this is just almost a cliff note to the man's life. There's so much more still to tell. As Andre said, there's 30, 40, maybe 50% that was left out. And it just speaks to you about people's egos. All of my dad's friends that knew him in a different section of life that we didn't

cover are the ones that are very critical. Like, when he was 84, we wouldn't sit in front of the CIA building. I said, well, you know what? We didn't quite get to that. But hold on. Hang in there. Hang in there. We'll get there. But no, it's just. been an awesome experience. For me, my mom, the entire Gregory family, this is a true blessing. We had a viewing party here in D.C., Eaton Hotel here in D.C. hosted us. It was about 100 people there. And as I mentioned to Andre, two other viewing parties in addition are, so three in total, we had real kind of bandwidth issues connecting to networks, connecting to Showtime streaming platform. So we were, we were hoping that was indicative of how many people on the 4th of July

were trying to show this man love. And we, we went to some other movies to see and they played just fine. So, you know, folks don't always let you in to see behind their inner matrix, but I'm pretty certain there was a some surges and Chicago. A little bit of a bottleneck. That example. We really were eager to see it. And so we were happy to wait, knowing that that was most likely the rationale behind the way. Yeah. Wow. It's a, even some comedians reached out. I mean, sorry. I mean, it's like I have to give like, you know, shout out. Judd Apatow reached out to me directly. I was, I sent Christian a screenshot of it and was just like so excited about that.

Jay Duplas, who I worked with and Lady in the Dale, you know, a great, great friend. Just of their reaction, you know, it's more of just like their reaction, like, wow, this is, this is really, really well done. Yeah. And, and just the, the being able to invoke that with your friends and then being able to evoke that with some high profile people yeah the coolest um it's really yeah it's really yeah no that's great shows you shows you the reach of of the arts and as i mentioned to andre um um um cooper hefner Hugh Hefner son reached out to me and was incredibly moved by it and I said well we're we're one generation away from two of our fathers that really created, you know, captured lightning in a

bottle together. So I told him, I said, we have some work to do, young man. I said, we need to get together and figure some things out. So, you know, making our generation look at it. Sold that Playboy Mansion too soon, man. Yeah. Get it back. That was an amazing story. I mean, it's very rare to have a someone who actually has a night that is the break, like the big break in their career. you know everyone's always like well it's around this time it was kind of like it all built on top of each other but when he was he was going around he was performing in clubs you know struggling as a as a comedian and then goes to chicago to the playboy club and goes up in front of mostly white southern audience and i didn't realize he stayed up on stage for almost three hours i mean it's uh

He was up for a while. He could have really crashed and burned. And everyone at the Playboy Club was expecting him to crash and burn. That's why they were pleading with him not to go on. And as he said, you don't know what I've gone through to get here. And so I think, and if you go back and you really look at that tape, you almost see that he's not really laughing at a lot of his material. I think he, like a technician, he knew, and I think he's,

thought if I laugh too much, they may view it as I'm thinking I'm one of the boys here. And that, it was a, I mean, to. Or laughing at them. Exactly. What a fine line. What, what, fine line. I mean, it's a line that most comedians would never have to fathom, you know, it's like performing for the Taliban, you know, it's a, yeah, but that's a thing now.

That's a, that's a, you know, Jimmy Fallon laughs at all of his own jokes. You know, it's like every, almost every one of the, uh, you know, it's like every, almost every one of the, uh, cast members of S&L. Yeah, laugh at their own stuff. Yeah. To like laugh at their own jokes so that you're kind of in on it to the point where I felt they are like using it too much. Laugh is contagious. Yeah.

It's like it's contagious. So it's like, well, it's like, well, maybe the skid is not as funny as it should be. So I'm going to kind of laugh at myself doing it and it would make you laugh. And it's like, well, we're kind of on to you at this point. But the ones that do it well, like Dave Chappelle, who, you know, sort of laughs, at his own jokes is doing it at very key moments in the arc of his comedy routine that are, you know, fall in line with the joke itself. It's not him, you know, standing up there, just sort of riffing. And Dick Gregory was, didn't do that. It was, you know, he was a consummate

professional. It was more like a wink. Like when you see the tape of that set and it's just like, it's like a little bit of a, I know what I'm saying. I know what I'm doing. But I'm, he's drawing them in but he's not going to go over the line it's so delicate he was so delicate i mean there was i mean the thing that everybody kept saying when all the comedians and chris rock and camille bell and everybody was anytime anybody was talking about him smooth smooth exactly that that joke about the cigarettes which is my favorite one it's like i i i uh you know made the mistake of writing off 180 cartons on my income tax and every time the irs saw me they said i've better be smoking. It's like him, him making, him smirking in between the, the delivery of that

setup and punchline is the, the new version of that is cracking up at that joke. Like, oh my God, it's so fucking funny. And it's like, he's, he's setting this thing up for you. And it's your job. So that's right. That's what we're here to entertain you as a comedian. So, yeah. And in fairness, I mean, especially, I mean, Tom, you know this as a comedian. My dad would always carve out the difference between being a humorous and between being a comedian. So Dick Gregory, the humorous offstage, it was almost off-putting how much he laughed at his own jokes.

I mean, so when you were just sitting around and kicking it with him, and he always, whether it was tea in his mouth, food in his mouth, it came out immediately, and it was some of the most hilarious stuff. And he would always say the funniest laugh you've ever had were not from, you weren't paying from. They weren't from a comedian.

They were from an uncle. They were from a big brother. They were something that was topable and just witty. And you just laughed uncontrollably. So he mastered both sides of that, the comedian side and just the humorous side. And it was just a blessing. Yeah. And so he gets the success and he's so dominant in the culture.

He's won over all of America. And he's making real money. And he has a real career. And he's got a family. And then when he starts. going into the civil rights. I mean, I don't understand. I don't think people know the impact how dangerous it was.

The thing it really struck me is that he, this wasn't just like, oh, my career might be in jeopardy if I start marching. Oh, my career, I might lose some money. I mean, between Eggers and Malcolm, I mean, I mean, people were dying around him. I mean I mean I mean he was

yeah I mean Med Greggers was his brother essentially is what it came out it was like right I mean he was that close with him and for him to be assassinated and then he's next

in the next clip he's walking with Martin Luther King and then he gets taken out I don't know if there's many people that have that fortitude to stand up and go stand in front of a mic

in front of America at that point point. And just to quickly say, my dad met Dr. King while he was at the White House in the Oval office meeting with JFK. JFK introduced my dad to MLK. And within a year of that time, Megger was dead. JFK was dead. Richard Jr., my dad's oldest son had died. So there was a profound amount of sadness and grief. And I've said this many times before and we alluded to it or stated it, but just didn't do a deep dive in the movie. But my dad has always credited the fact that he left Megger's side to go and be with the family when Richard Jr. passed. And that set him on a kind of different trajectory. Had that not happened, he was all but certain he would have been with

Megger the night that Megger was assassinated. And on many occasions, he said, that he wish he had. On many occasions, he had said he wish he had been there. It would have been an honor to have died with Megger. That's just how close the two of them were. But not at the time, but looking back on it now, I'm almost certain my dad had a little survivor's remorse after he died. And that caused him to be not reckless, but fearless. So a part of that fearlessness of just, you know, I'm kind of on borrowed time. Everyone around me later in life, You know, he was great friends with John Lennon, who was struck down by gun violence. Larry Flint, he was supposed to be with Larry Flint in Georgia when Larry Flint was shot,

assassination attempt, but shot and life devastated. So my dad was supposed to be with that day. So it was a, and looking at it now, people say, well, hmm, that's odd you around. But in the 60s and 68, that was like being in SEAL Team 6 together. A lot of folks around you aren't coming back. And that's what it was like. And he always would say he was a soldier, not a soldier killing people, but a soldier willing to die to protect the, you know, all of not just civil rights, but human rights, all of humanity. He actually says that in the movie to, you know, kill, not die, or mean, die, not kill, you know, for the movement.

He's like, you have to die for something. And it's just, that's, it's crazy. But if you're surrounded by that much death, though, we take a lot, we're very comfortable. Yes. you know, we're very, very, like, extremely so. We'll complain about the, you know, two degrees of the change in weather. Right. And let alone going down and marching somewhere where you can be lynched.

Yeah. No. That people complain that they got a bad reaction from a tweet. Like that's, like that's how sensitive we are now. And it's like you can get Gregory. Yes, the cameras were on, but cameras were also on George Floyd. you know, the cameras were on Eric Garner. You can still be killed with cameras on,

and you can especially be killed in those days with, all he had to do was get into the wrong car, you know, exiting out the back of a comedy club or, you know, yeah, yeah, he fought in an alley on his way to a restaurant after a protest or something like that. And that's the thing, is that people, the, we want, wanted to try to showcase some of that danger through the sequences, the imagery that we chose, but to understand it is just incomprehensible. It's like you just have to, you would have to have to have been there to really understand

the degree of danger that. Yeah. And the time. I mean, the time of where we were at in the country. I mean, to go from, we don't really understand how far we've come that you're able to stand up on these stages. That was a, that was a pioneer. I mean, when there were singers and there was actors, but comedian, a black man standing and just talking to people about what's going on, that was not, that was not even a thing yet. It didn't exist. And now look at it. Yeah. And my dad always

would point out, it's important to acknowledge the progress because to nod, yes, we still have work to do, a profound amount of work to do. The problems have shifted. They're different to Andre's point. We're incredibly comfortable. Folks are now being activists with, you know, the air set on 65 on a 92 degree day, strong Wi-Fi signal, some activists.

And it's profoundly different. And so, you know, just like we hear everyone talk about cancel culture. And then, well, the original cancel culture was the, you know, the slave trade, was the 60s and 70s, Jim Crow. We're teenagers being lynched because they were. they look the wrong way. So, you know, it's not that, you know, not, not sensitive to what's going on on that stuff. But the two, they don't compare.

So because you said something inappropriate in a tweet or something and you get shut down, you know, it's okay, well, you could, you live to move on. You know, times of pacifier. Those folks in the past, they didn't have that opportunity. And my dad would always say we were fighting to take, when they were fighting against the Klan and the movement against the clan to get their hoods off. And so when we looked at Charlottesville and we looked at all the things that the people's hood were off, we could see who we were dealing with. So it was no longer this fictitious boogeyman we were really dealing with.

We could say, hey, that's this person. We can hold them accountable. So that really afforded us. And it gave him great comfort. During Charlottesville, when the young lady tragically lost her life, there were two other deaths. It was two Virginia state police officers who died in a helicopter accident responding. And my dad, while he was in the hospital, his final week, he was pointing out that the difference, he said, the difference, champ, is in the 60s, those officers would have been coming to reinforce and to attack us too.

They were coming to help this time. And so, yes, we have a profound amount of work to do. We have not made it by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a quantum leap from where we were. that's for certain. It's amazing. I loved how the footage that you chose, when he would show up in these very dark times, in these very fraught moments,

like in the churches and stuff, he still used humor. He knew the power of a well-phrased line, and it wasn't meant to completely, you know, tear down the house and turn this into a party, but he knew that through this humorous line, even in this darkest, darkest moment, but I can say so much more than even just a long speech without that.

And just how comforting that must have been to the, so many times I look at these clips and I don't think about my dad as much because I've had the opportunity to unpack that with them. But I think about the folks in the audience. So I think about all of those, you know, afraid, black folks in the audience in the church that were uplifted. I mean, laughter is medicinal. I mean, all kind of happy things to creep from glands,

in our brain when we're laughing. So to think of all that fear that was there, to just for a moment to pause it and allow you to breathe for a moment. And I even think to the Playboy Club, I think what that meant for those white men, many of them because of the times, either were racist or knew plenty of racist,

to see this black, here they're coming to the Playboy Club, which is the biggest thing they could have ever gone to in their life, and suddenly this skinny black guy in a suit comes out with newspaper and smoking a cigarette. That was not the show they were coming. to see as the bunnies were walking around. So I wonder psychologically what that did to them and how they went back and thought differently of black people. And so, I mean, we could, you know,

a psychiatrist could spend quite a bit of time unpacking it, but that's kind of how my brain works thinking how that ripple, an ongoing ripple, just would have been. And whenever that group of men heard Dick Gregory's name as he rose to stardom, that just immediately had like a reflex almost to that moment when he had his breakthrough night. So it really is incredible. Incredible. And it's amazing how ahead of how ahead of the times he was. I mean, he like all that progress you're talking about like he was working towards that and trying to get to that stuff. But it was also, uh, it the, the whole diet thing that was he was literally 50 years ahead of where America was going to go towards towards their diets. I mean, he starts with this hunger strike.

and he just starts to reevaluate everything in his life of how he's eating. It was a huge change. Yeah, is that too loud in the background? No, I just saw your little note. No, I can't hear it at all. Okay, great. Yeah, that, what you just said, a lot of people had sent me private notes of reacting to. Like, I can't believe how he was 40, 50 years ahead of what was going, what's going on.

in America today. And that, that honestly was how I first came to know Dick Gregory was as a drink in the 80s. You know, it was the shake. Right. And I didn't know him as the contemporary comedian because he really wasn't doing a ton of comedy or he wasn't all the night shows or anything like that.

Yeah, you know, it was very rare. I think he had a rare like 1984 appearance we found on Letterman. Letterman. And I remember that's even commenting on how he's not doing comedy anymore, that kind of thing. So that's how a large number of people, you know, especially my age or younger, know Dick Rickory is as a health pioneer. And their relationship to him is as somebody as this health guru. And it really, I think, would be the legacy that will probably last even longer than

anything else, any of the other lives that he lived as a huge comedian, as this huge civil rights activists, and then, you know, ultimately as this health pioneer that taught people how to drink water, you know, that's just some basic, basic-ass stuff to try to stay alive. And I mean, my dad would, he would frequently say that, you know, I look back at old articles from the 70s and I always described him as a mystic, because as he explained it, he explained that he was always looking for the cracks in the fiber to see what was next. And so that was purposeful. So he didn't stumble into these things.

It was he spent tremendous amount of time just thinking about what's next. He was obsessed with electric automobiles long before anyone was talking about him. We would go to the Tesla dealership in D.C. And he would just let all of the sales folks in there know that he knew all this technology long before it came about. It's just the way that his brain worked. And so, you know, we were raised. as vegans. And back then, we were health nuts. I mean, we couldn't go any. We would, we would, we would go to friendlies on occasion when my dad was out of town to get like 20 orders of

french fries because that was they would, they'd hate it when they'd see the Gregory's coming because that wasn't the time you could call stuff in. So they'd see one of my big afro sisters coming in, you know, with a lot of cash for 20 orders of french fries and extra ketchup. So it was, so now you can go and even faggit saw where like little Caesar or one of them now has vegan pizza with pepperoni on it. So, I mean, we're at the other end of that spectrum. Not to say that any of that is healthy. No, it's bad.

It's like all to say that any of that is healthy. All the new vegan stuff is like he'd be flabbergasted. It's plastic. Oh, yeah. He would be angry that they're exploiting veganism. It's the same thing. They're like, oh, just because you're not eating meat doesn't mean that it's healthy for Christ.

I mean, you know, synthetic food is still, you know, processed synthetic food. And that's why it's so amazing in the movie where he's, you know, here he is at Soul Train talking to Don Cornelius. And he's talking about this thing called Whole Food. And so now this rolls off our tongue, but we didn't think about, we thought back then all food was food. We didn't know. He talked about genetically modified food and Frankenstein food long before I look at his old health and nutrition books. And so that's what he was trying to prove with his 4x formulas. that the human body needs whole food nutrition, not just food.

So when my dad and Michael Jackson went to Ethiopia to help out during the famine and brought his 4X formula, and the reason I point out they paid their self to distribute it, because when they got their craft, and if you remember that time, we were all donating money to craft, and if you bought something, they'd get back. Well, they had sent these massive barges of craft mini marshmallows.

And my dad was just outraged to say, you have starving children, you know, Americans can barely handle the high fruit toast corn syrup and many marshmallows. And that's how they were writing off the money and sending stuff. And so they were sending their products. So none of the, none of the infrastructure and vehicles and trains were made available to them because they were taking mini marshmals everywhere. So my dad and Michael Jackson bought a fleet of trucks and paid to distribute it all their cells. But it was when he came back from Ethiopia. He said, you know, I saw a lot of white businessman in the airport with bloated bellies and bald heads.

And that's when it dawned on him. You can eat yourself into malnutrition if you're not eating whole foods. And that was the whole premise. And that was the spark for we need to start making products and start helping people to be healthier. And so you never know how far reaching something you do today will be tomorrow. And his dietary efforts definitively proved that. Did he really put a lock around the refrigerator when you guys cheated while he was away? on more than one occasion.

So this is the thing, Tom. My older siblings, you know, they don't have good poker faces. So during a lot of the family fast, and I'm one of the babies, so I routinely would be under the table with soy butter and crackers, eating good as they're sitting around the table fast and talk and shop and meditate. So they wonder why I could hang so tough on these fast as they were getting weak. I was still ready to play ball and go for it. You know, right? You're still filling up.

Yeah. Yeah, you're for wheat, wheat fins. I'm putting on weight. I'm putting on weight during the past. No, he was, when my dad would come home, it was like, we normally knew when he was coming on because it was a big to do. But every once in a while he would slide in and all the panic of, wait, laying out the fridge, right?

Yeah, those stories when I interviewed all the, because I interviewed all the kids, I wasn't able to obviously put them all in the film, but though, like, I could make a movie just, just off of the, the life at Tower Hill. farm of the house of stuff that they had to hide from their dad. And it's like, you know, one of the, what was it? A couple of the older siblings, you can correct me if I'm wrong, Christian, had a room that was like in the, in the basement area of the house. And it was like the coldest room in the house.

And the closet was like a refrigerator. That was our 7-Eleven. They kept a little pan off the door. They have a whole commissary in there. Younger wins out. Yeah, it's like a whole bodega in this thing to help out everybody. And it was where the stash went. That's like that's where the stash was.

That's where that's where the stash was. So funny. I learned at a young age how to pick a lot. You know, when you know the goodies are on the, it was just too tempting to not have the key to it. So it was, no, you're right, Andre. That's a whole story within itself. It's such a funny image to see your father out there preaching, literally preaching.

to the world about how to eat and his kids are at home. He's looking for potato chips. I mean, he had it. He got a chance to have it. Yeah, he was right. By the time he turned vegan, he was probably 30, right? Oh, definitely. We had to learn the hard way.

We had to, you know, you can't just tell someone don't touch the stove. It's hot. We had to get burned a few times. The 20 year, what the, what the teenage body, with the 20, you know, 25-year-old body can take the damage that you can do to that body and it recover is pretty profound. So it's kind of like, yeah, let kids be kids for a little bit. I mean, literally, my dad's mother died when she was in her 40s. My dad's father died at 65.

So he literally reset the DNA in the Gregory family. I look at me and all of my siblings now. You know, everyone has varying diets, but they're all clean. We all still jog. We all still work out. No one's on medication. No one's sick. No one's diabetic.

And you look at the black community. That's a, we're outliers. I mean, when you look to statistically, we're outliers for where most black folks are. And it was a real blessing. I would tell my patients all the time that if you're going to take 20 years of your life to dedicate to really being healthy, you know, birth to 20 years old is the most important. That's when your immune systems being formed, muscle stable system, neurological system. neurological system. So it was a real blessing, especially for us younger ones, to go and have that

experience. And at Tower Hill Farm, you know, we didn't have any, you know, animals there. The roosters that woke us after every morning were my dad's juicers with the carrot juice, fresh carrot juice flowing. And we loved it. No one frowned when it was time to line up and get your glass up. My typical was beets, celery, apples, and carrot was my usual every morning. and I have a little carrot mustache as I was heading up to the door to the bus. So it was the gift that keeps on. Well, Christian, you really got to help Andre out. It doesn't sound like he's doing these shakes right at all.

If he's pouring this mud in to his system, you've got to give him some help. I would imagine that it's keeping him sustained. I mean, I would imagine. Today was the first day I cracked it open. I knew I was going to be locked down at my computer. I have a shake every morning. like, you know, we've got similar taste, Christian and I. That's generally my shake, you know, beats carrot juice, you know, some orange juice, apples, that kind of stuff.

And so I was like, all right, well, instead of letting, you know, me adding my regular superfood scoop, which is kind of nasty, you know, sort of tastes like grass. And I just gotten used to it over time. I was like, let me, let me crack open this shake. I got to reverse some damage I did to my body, partying too much in New York for the screening and the release and everything like that. Let me try to fix some of this stuff with the beginning of a fast. And yeah, man, before I was done, it was, it was glue. I thought you had put some of our leftover tequila in there when I saw just how coagulated it was. It was super coagulated, yeah.

And I was like sucking it, you know, it was almost the equipment. of like trying to drink a McDonald's milkshake, you know, back in the day. We're trying to suck that milkshake out. Just you suck your brains right out, trying to drink. Right out. Right out. No. But you're right, Tom, for me to help him.

And I would say, you know, I just put water. I put one part water, one past part cranberry juice. We're from New England, so I'm partial to cranberries. So one part. And then I still have my other juices a little later in the day. But it's loaded. It has everything in. It's about the time you need.

Yeah, I was totally. The heaviness comes from pea protein. So the Bahamian diet had soy in it, which we know now is quite bad for the body. So we've replaced that with green pea protein, which is the cleanest vegan protein. But it is, it is, it's thick. So I just use water and juice. I don't put anything else. All right.

Your poor bloated. I would say that. I was satiated. I'll say that. I was satiated. Oh, yeah. Maybe four a week. Up through, I don't know, maybe three o'clock.

or something. So this was like 8 a.m. And I didn't, I wasn't interested in food. So you'll lose some weight. Definitely. Were you, you mentioned meditation. Was your father ahead of the game in that as well? Definitely. I mean, as a, so as a family, we were raised, my dad would always say not on isms and osmns.

So it was no definitive denomination. But we all, all religions that were rooted in love and fairness, you know, we would sleep of our various friends' house and we would go and worship with them. But at the farm, it was, you know, sometimes 4.30 a.m. meditation call where all 10 of us and my folks would go and sit at the higher elevations on the land and just for sometimes hours. I mean, you'd feel like you were levitating. You were meditating. You were meditating so, so long. And some of just the fire breathing and the vibratorial tones that kind of, again, you start secreting things in the brain. So my dad, whenever he would, he had, I mean, it was almost like a circus how many tents he had. This man, you know, he was, you know, there's fast twitch muscle, slow twitch muscle than tendon strength. Dick Gregory was a ball of tendons. I mean, he could lift. He was like a dung beetle. And I say that respectfully with how much he could lift. So I would see him unpacking these massive tents. And it was like, you know, the whole family could have lived under there. And that's where he would do his very long fast, not starving himself, but medicinal fast.

and he wouldn't speak when he would fast. And so that was typically when we would go out and, you know, me and my brothers, we were knuckleheads. And so we knew he wasn't speaking, so we didn't have to hear him saying anything to us. So that's typically when we got in trouble. But we realized that my dad and mom, my mom could understand all of his grunts. It was the most amazing thing. So they would have full on conversations in person or over the phone of him grunting and her translating. I mean, so we would still get an earful when we'd get in trouble.

We'd say, wait, we thought he's not talking. He's not talking. He's grunting. So until you've been cussed out by your dad with him only grunting, consider yourself lucky. That sounds scary. Well, that's amazing. It is scary. Yeah.

So, Andre, you know, after making this film, did it, and you talk about the effect that it's having on people, and I'm one of them for sure. of how you just kind of like look at your life and you're like especially as a comedian you're like okay there's there's so much more you can do just as a human being and affecting people in your life it's it's that level of inspiration did it change you when you get spit out the end of this the uh the new york party the new york party aside yeah the new york party outside for sure it it changed me as a uh filmmaker and as a man for sure. Yeah.

And as the filmmaker, this is my directorial debut, the film. I've been producing and financing movies for a long time. And upon meeting Dick Gregory, went into it with the idea that I was going to direct it, but then upon meeting him was 100%, a thousand percent sure that this was right for me to do.

And it's the hardest project I've ever worked on. I mean, I had a filmmaker dinner showtime hosted for us the night before the screening and had to make a little speech in it. I talked about having, you know, filmed movies in the favelas of Brazil under legitimate concern for our lives with armed guards walking around. You know, having shot movies in the, you know, the coldest places on Earth in Manitoba. all of these types of places. And none of this stuff compares to the degree of difficulty that I experience and trying to make a movie about Dick Gregory. And the fact that there were three other filmmakers, very prolific ones,

whose names I won't repeat here, who made attempt to do this prior to me. And we made the announcement of the project, the first announcement of the project having reached out to me and showed their support to say that we want to see you. We're not in competition with you. There's no jealousy here. There's none of that. We want to see you succeed as we tried it before.

And we weren't able to do it through a number of different circumstances, the largest of which being financed, which is why my company's animation, which we finance films, we just went ahead and self-financed this with the support of my partner, Valerie Edwards. And went ahead and financed it until we ended up selling it to show time. and that that was a hurdle that we were able to get over it. But the other hurdle was this, the enormity of this life, the vastness of it, which I honestly was not aware of when I first jumped into it. Had I been aware of it, I might have said, I might have said, I'm going to sit this one out because six years, it seems like a long time, but documentaries take a while. And frankly, that was just a blip in the six decades.

of a life that Dick Gregory of a career that Dick Gregory had left us behind with this guidebook. And I know people working on biopics from, you know, I've been working on for a decade or 20 years or 40 years or whatever. So it changed me. It changed me substantially. But everything that I felt was amplified by, you know, going through Dick Gregory. And really the experience of making this film gives me a degree of confidence that I can really make anything. at this point. It was just that difficult. Amazing.

I can attest to that. I've seen the change. Met Andre, what, 2015? Yeah, 2015, yeah. And so I saw the initial, you know, intellectual hazing. My dad was giving them, you know, it was like tough love from your favorite professor. And then I saw him get over the hump. Then I saw, you know, I saw the rainbow. And so literally he saw the rainbow.

So it is, he's coming. And it is, it is, it is. very clear, just from the outside looking in to see Andres a change. And quite honestly, most of the people who work closely on this project, similar to what you were mentioned in Tom, have been changed in different ways. But the general consensus is everyone wants to see how they, they don't have to disrupt their life.

But what can I do just to do a little more? Yeah, to be a little more thought. I mean, that's what I need people with. Right, right. I have to thank my parents for that tough skin they gave me because, you know, frankly, when Dick Gregory beat me up with his words on that first day that I met him, I went to them whining about it and they said, oh, he's just trying to see what you're made of. They were totally unsympathic to me.

That's good. With me about this completely. My grandparents are just the same. He's trying to see what you made. It's like, you know, either you're going to go back in there or you're going to get it. up. And so I said, you know what, I'm not a, I'm not somebody that quit. So I'll be back in there tomorrow. And thank God I did. Oh, that's awesome. Congratulations. I mean, it really, it's, it's so great. And it's one of those things that you know, like, there are certain movies that you, when you're

going through the dial and it pops up, you just stop and you watch it, even though we've seen it a hundred times. This is, this is going to be one of those for sure. Oh, thank you. Congratulations. Thank you for making it. And thank you for spending some more time with me. really great. Thank you so much. Appreciate your time, Tom. Thank you. All right.

Take care. Fix that shake. Bye-bye. I will. I will. I have to. I'll call you. All right.

See you guys. Well, that's our big show today. I hope you enjoyed it. A big thank you to Andre Gaines and Dr. Christian Gregory. Two very cool human beings. And they made a great film. Go and check out the one and only Dick Gregory.

Thank you to our friends at Greensmith Farms. Make sure you go and check out their products, greensmithfarmshemp.com. And thank all of you for listening once again and joining us. Go to the YouTube channel. Check out the new Getting Baked on how to make Chiambela. Make sure you like and subscribe and spread the word, especially on the YouTube.

And wherever you get your podcast, go to Apple, wherever it is, and keep spreading love and we'll keep making great shows. You guys are the best. We'll see you next week. Thank you.