Page 7 - Pop History: Pam Grier

Episode Date: March 16, 2021

We explore the life and legacy of Pam Grier.Want even more Page 7? Support us on Patreon! Patreon.com/page7podcastKevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Page 7 ad-free.Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, listeners, just a heads up at the beginning of this episode. This is a trigger warning for sexual assault. We do, upon 110th Street. It's across 110th Street. I had no idea. Until the subtitles of Watching Jackie Brown. Across 110th Street. That is the only line I know of this song.

It's such a good song. And every time I forget, watching Jackie Brown, across from 100th Street has been stuck in my head for days. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Are we talking about Blacksploitation Cinema's first female action hero? Yes, we are. Welcome to the episode on Pam Greer. Man, she had a rough go of it.

She has, she, there, um, there are reasons behind how amazing of an actress as well as how angry of a person she was. and you know what, she did it well through the black exploitation years as well as afterwards, and she brought her amazing performances to many different. Not only black exploitation, but sex exploitation films as well. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. And you know what? She looked great while doing it.

And unfortunately, it came from drama. And we will deal with that. But first, let's gush about this amazing female action hero. You know, I don't think I really, yeah, I never really went through my like black Exploitation 70 cinema phase. I think it was something more that I learned about academically in like a film class in college more than anything else. But I sure as hell, still in my Tarantino phase.

And so, of course, when Jackie Brown first came out, I think I actually ended up seeing it on VHS, I didn't see in the theater. And I think like a lot of people, it's that Tarantino movie that is oddly overlooked, I think, at first. And then you go back and watch it again. It's so. It's so good. It's so good.

I have the dark confession. to make dark confessions. I like this. Can we all have dark confessions? I've got dark confessions too. All right. You start. Okay. So I love Pam Greer very much and I know her more so from the 70s, 60s exploitation movies because I love I'm a big Jack Hill fan. Dark Confessions. And I also love Quentin Tarantino. Very much. I know he gets under people's skin but he's one of my favorite filmmakers. Gotta love those feet. I had never seen Jackie Brown. Wow, dark confession. Not until now. How fun was it?

It was transcendent. It's pretty great. I don't know why. I never saw it. I think it just came out in a year where I wasn't paying attention. Again, it was weirdly overlooked. Like, Tarantino was on fire

at that point in his career too. He puts out this movie that I guess was understated compared to maybe Pulp Fiction. It was more in the genre. And it was just a couple years after Pulp Fiction. Yeah, it had this noir vibe. It's sort of black exploitation meets film noir.

Well, I feel like it was also one of the, things that like with Mars attacks, another Pam Greer movie that when people went to go see it, they thought that it was going to be more like Independence Day. And so therefore, we're let down. And I think that Quentin Tarantino had such crazy, violent, over the top and yet weirdly grounded movies that this movie, I remember seeing it in high school and thinking it was boring. It's very delicate compared to his other stuff. It's hard to, and I think it came right on the heels of Pulp Fiction. Am I? Yes.

About three years later. So nothing was going to like compare to Pulp Fiction and I think the audience is mine. And so it's aged very much like a fine wine. That is one of my favorite Tarantino movies now. Oh my God. It's so, so good.

And so it's still, there's still violence in it, but it's not to the level of some of his other films. And man, is she just so ethereal and so strong in this movie? and just I love her character so much. Strong, but with, but the vulnerability comes through,

which it actually adds to the strength. Yes. That's what's so great about her. De Niro and that like loser skumbag jail guy, he's so good. Everybody's so good. Everybody's so good in it. The dialogue's amazing. That whole final sequence is just fantastic.

And a sweet love story on top of everything. Yes, totally. It really is such a cool, such a cool film and such such an awesome story for her to get to... I know. Not for nothing. In the 90s, women in their 40s and 50s weren't getting to do roles like this. No.

I mean, she is such a badass queen in any age, but she was almost 50 when she shot this and she is just the coolest. Yeah. Such a powerhouse. That hair, too. When she just, like, lets the hair out in that film. Oh, my God. She's just amazing.

She, yeah. She is incredible. And then it was cool. to go back and watch coffee and delve into her early era of film. Well, especially watching them now with knowing the background of her story. Makes a lot. It adds so much more depth to what she. And also knowing that she was studying Stanislavski and was reading the Strasbourg and was learning all of these.

Because she didn't want to just be an action star. She wanted to be a star. Even though she's the best action story? Yes, and on her own terms. But then goes off and does theater, sold out, Sam Shepard play performances. I was like, because there was such this time period between the black exploitation movies and Jackie Brown and the L word. And it was like, no, if you look at her filmography as well as the theater years that she, she's been working her ass off her entire life. She even said that there's a quote that she's.

She's like, my career is older than lots of people. That's true. And it's hard. Sometimes you forget her that she's been around for so long because she always seems so like vital and vivacious and full of life that you just feel like, oh, she's just, she's pretty young probably. But when you go and read her story, you realize, I mean, she was born in 49. She grew up in the worst of segregation and had to experience that.

And, man, I didn't really think about it in that way until I read her book. And also generations of strong black female frontiers women. She described her great-grandmother as a black calamity Jane. She comes from generations of badass women. She is not the first in her fucking family, which is part of the reason why the issues that she had at a young age, she felt she couldn't talk to her family about it because she knew that they would hunt them down and kill them.

And she didn't want to destroy her family. Right, because they were on top of anything else. They would be charged, you know, with being black in that time. They would have probably been killed by a copse or something. Oh, yeah, easily. It would have just been a death wish for everybody. And I do love this quote to start it off from Warrington Hudlin, who is a producer and the president of the Black filmmaker Foundation.

Ms. Greer's Blacksploitation films are now considered groundbreaking for their depictions of powerful black women. It took Ms. Greer's winning combinations. of sex, sass, and talent to pull it off. She exists in the American imagination in a way that is permanent. She represents a self-reliant, dynamic female figure that doesn't have to forego femininity for potency for militant power. Because that was part of what I think is so interesting is when people ask her, like, did you feel exploited?

Did you? And she's like, no, that is part of my power. My body is a large part of my power as well as my brains, as well as how I fight, as well as everything else, that is where she gets some of her power from and she didn't feel like it was being used in an exploitive way. Right. And that is one of the big conversations around exploitation films because there's a certain sect of feminists who would say that this is anti-feminism

or this is exploiting women, but somebody who's worked in indie film and to an extent exploitation stuff, in most surroundings, the women actually hold quite a bit of power in those. in those movies behind the scenes as well as on screen and they're doing if the people are being respectful if it is done in the right way and that's not always the case of course but a lot of times mainstream movies will actually be much shittier to women than those those you know those I don't know if people out there have seen Jack Hill movies I love them there's the big bird cage the big dollhouse Pam Greer's in both of those women in in prison yeah and so

it's very sexual it's very There's scenes that make you feel uncomfortable, but in a way, for certain people, like myself, my feminism feels stronger through seeing images like that because it is showing women in vulnerable places and then them taking charge in like filled with rage. So it's a feminism that I connect with. And it was something that I used to have huge debates with other like women's studies majors at my college because I would get into big art, like, fights with them. Because to them, the sexual side of it in the, you know, the aughts of the 2000s, it was not really,

they didn't really see sexuality as feminists. And I always did. And I always kind of stood behind that. Like, if a woman, to say a woman is only sexual because she is imprisoned into it is anti-feminism, because that's not why a lot of women do it. And Pam Greer goes on to say, what the feminist movement was saying was to be independent on your own. And I realized that is what I was going to have to do, no matter what trauma went on in my life. Women could still survive and they must have independence and not be codependent, which is

what society was teaching women to be at the time. And yeah, and some, sorry, I won't go on this fucking rant any longer, but you're allowed. This is where, this is what we're doing here. This is the platform. Dark confessions. As we'll learn through her story, she experienced. you know, body trauma, sexual trauma, and some of us who've gone through that, some of the power comes back to us by being able to do what we want with our bodies. And sometimes that means showing our tits or doing a sensual thing or doing a thing that isn't modest or proper. And that is taking the power back to your body. And that's not for every woman, but or man, but that is how some people. Thank you for including men as well. My body is my power as well. I'm proud of you.

And I'm proud of myself as well for saying that. Brave. So my God. You're going to get an award. Everybody can't wait to hear my hot takes on Pam Grier today. You're going to win. You're going to be so. You're welcome.

Ahead of time for my Pam Greer hot takes. No, no, no. I'll keep it clean. I promise. No, you're doing good. I can't imagine how scared you are right now. I'm a little frightened. Oh, God.

I don't want to say it. I don't want to stop. I'm not going to say I had a dream where a pair of tits chase me through an alleyway last night, but I made that may have happened. Big rounders. Wow, that's kind of nice. Did you call your mother this morning? Is this a mother issue? I called her in the dream. I called her the next day to apologize for calling her in the dream. It was a whole situation. She's very groggy and upset right now. But either way, getting into the life and legacy of Pam Greer, we start with her birth. 1949 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was born as Pamela Suzette Greer. Her mother was a homemaker

and nurse. Her father was a mechanic and technical sergeant in the United States Air Force and has a sister and a brother. I will also say she was very close to her extended family as well and she says, my grandfather was the first feminist in my life from Wyoming who taught all of us girls how to hunt, fish, and shoot. So I could bring that to every show I work on, every element and it just kind of fit. He had this glow, this peace and this unbelievable calm about him during the day after working sun up, sun down, doing some labor. And he was just so spiritual and enjoyed life. And he would always say, you know, if you wake up breathing, you're going to have a good day.

And so that's been my mantra since I was a little girl. That's fantastic. So her father is a military man. And this is going to be a thing that moves her around a lot and causes some issues. So she was at one point in a military base in Swindon, England. And this is where she receives her first bout. of trauma. She has a sexual assault by a group of boys, right? Oh, that was not in England. That was in America.

She was at her aunt's house. And she was raped by two boys. And she says, it took so long to deal with the pain of that. She was six years old, by the way. She says, you tried to deal with it, but you never really get over it. And not just me, my family endured so much guilt and anger that something like that happened to me. And this is something that was discussed in her book that came out not too long ago, because again, she didn't tell her family. She kept it all quiet, which is why she ended up,

her trauma came out through a stutter. And she became stuttering. And she became very quiet. And also very worried that being pretty or being sexy was, quote, a magnet for being attacked. Yes. And yeah, can you imagine how would you deal with that at six years old? Yeah.

Even the concept of being pretty wasn't in my head at six years old. No. And so she had this stutter. And even as a young girl, which it's interesting. A lot of the people I think that we do this show about have wanted to be in Hollywood since they were very small. And she was actually very shy, very quiet. And she said, my life is probably more dangerous and interesting than most of the movies I've done. But she said, when I was a young girl, I never thought of acting.

I never thought of television, of fans, movie stars, signing autographs. It never crossed my mind. She wanted to be more possibly in the technical side of things, but eventually we'll learn. She goes to medical school. But part of the reason of how she overcame her stutter was by riding horses. She says, my grandfather, Daddy Ray, taught me to be self-sufficient. One day I went alone to the pasture. See, this is a big part.

She actually refers to this horse in many of her interviews. She says, one day I went alone to the pasture and climbed a post fence to reach a huge draft horse. Big horse could have killed me. Instead, he moved slowly and I fell asleep on his back. When Daddy Ray and my uncle came looking for me, I told them big horse and I were just napping. For some reason, I didn't stutter when I was on the horse. And even to this day, she lives in Colorado and she has therapy horses that she trains. We'll get into that later on.

But horses were a big and stunt work and starting eventually learning how to do that is what she used to help protect her from her emotional trauma. I don't know anything about that. I bet you don't, Natalie. She also was really close. She has a lot of connection to animals, which is something I also really relate to. One of the saddest things I read from that era in her life was it was a different time, so it wasn't exactly the same as now how people would feel about it. But she had a dog that her dad, the dog tore a couch up, and the dad was like, we can't have this dog.

So they just took the dog and left it in a field. and she was literally traumatized. Like she was screaming and going like, don't, we can't leave. How's the dog going to eat? Where's the dog going to go? This poor Cocker Spaniel was like bonded with her, I'm sure. And they just left the dog. I know the dog is not the most important part,

but I was like heartbroken when I read that part of the blogger. The dog was just left in a field and she was devastated and the dog was probably devastated. Don't worry. Auntie Jackie will come in later on and she works with rescuing dogs. Yeah. And she is called Auntie Jackie. Okay, I was funny. I was like, are you just writing yourself into her story right now?

It's me. It's me. That's my name. You know what? I will say, in watching Jackie Brown, I did say, that's my name. Right, quite a lot. Of course you would. And it was very, it was great.

I mean, you got to claim that Jackie. That's the cool of Shacky. So do we get... Other than you, you're the coolest Jackie. Thank you. Well, I don't know. I think she actually makes a cake. So she eventually ends up settling into Denver, Colorado.

by high school and starts appearing in several stage productions. And she also played organ and piano for the school's gospel choir. And I think that a lot of times when I read about people who develop a speech impediment at an early age, usually find a nice outlet through school theater and school stage productions to help them work through that. Maybe that's kind of how she ended up just ending up in. Because as you said, she had very different interest. she ends up going to Denver's Metropolitan State College in 1967. She wanted to go into medicine, as Jackie mentioned.

She was in pre-med, which is crazy. Yeah. And she also, just before we get off of childhood real quick, I found it really interesting and really relevant to who she is, that she had such an interesting life, especially for being a black girl at that era, because her father could pass as white, they had a little bit more of an inn in certain ways.

and also he traveled so much for the military that this girl who didn't come from money or influence got to see a lot of the world and she actually and made me, I didn't even think about it this way ever she experienced of course deep racism in America but when she would go to Europe she'd see the other side, she'd see how it was not

in any way like that yet. It's not everywhere. They weren't, they didn't have, even though the UK has its own problems, they didn't, they didn't see that in the same way that Americans treated black people because they weren't dealing with the shame of the slave

the most so recent slavery that we were using our country. Oh, this doesn't have to be a reality. Interesting. Yeah, and then she would go back and forth so she would be fine. And then she'd go back to the States and be like, oh yeah, they hate me for being alive here. I forgot. But she like learned how to

adapt to all these different scenarios and situations and I thought that was really interesting. Speaking of adapting to a different scenario and situation, she now needs to raise tuition money. in order to go to college after, I believe, her first year, she entered and got second runner-up in the 1967 Miss Colorado pageant, after which an agent approaches her and encourages her to pursue acting. So you have a couple things going on here.

A, she's clearly beautiful and regarded as such by the general population if she's winning second runner-up in a beauty competition. She also won third in the Miss Universe beauty page. So there you go. So she's clearly, you know, has set apart as absolutely gorgeous. It's one of her strength. And I think that that is such a cool thing to look at what a strong young woman she was, that even undergoing that trauma because unfortunately she was sexually assaulted again at the age of 20,

that seeing her beauty not as a curse, but realizing how can I own it and what can I use this for to further me as a strong human being. And second, she obviously has that spark, that thing that's going to make an age and approach her to pursue acting. She's got this natural talent potentially. And she does the thing that one should actually do in this situation. It's so ballsy, it's so difficult. But she ends up moving to Los Angeles in 1968. She lives with her aunt and cousin for a stint while working as a receptionist and switchboard operator at the American International Pictures Studio. This is also at the same time that she started doing backup singing for she got in with Bobby Wilmack.

And she also did a short stint of singing backup for Sly and the Family Stone and Stevie Wonder. at this time period. So she just went in and was like, I'm gonna work. Reminds me at Elvira a little bit. Yes. Yeah. That she is a woman of all trades.

She's just, yeah, singing, dancing. I'm sorry, is she a Jackie of all trades? Oh my God. That's your fucking stupid name. And at this point, Aunt Jackie comes in and says, I'm going to make you a big star, right? Yes, and she's immediately a star, and she never has to worry about anything ever again for the rest of her life.

And Aunt Jackie then just uses magic powder on herself to disappear and return in a modern era. Oh my God, you're welcome. Thank you for her. I grace you. I grace you. Thank you for gracing us right now. This is so amazing.

But in reality, this is around the time. She does meet Jack Hill. Yes. Well, she takes acting classes. She gets a role in 1969 in this exploitation film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. This is directed by Russ Meyer, who is a leader in the genre.

I believe we've talked about Russ Meyer on pop history before, but regardless. I think we have. I forget for who. Yeah, but also director Jack Hill is credited for discovering Pam Greer. And he does say that the first time I met her was kind of on what they used to call a cattle call of actresses coming in. And I had actresses reading in groups because I had an ensemble film. Because they're cows. No, it was called the big dollhouse.

I mean, basically, that's where cattle calls are. You're like, you fucking cows. Hey, all right, come in here. Moo like a... No. All right, never mind. They had a cattle call for the big doll house, which is a woman in prison story, which kind of kind of started that genre, such as it was. And she just came in, and the role was not specifically written for a black character, but I was interviewing black actresses. And this was before the actual black exploitation movement started.

But I just recognized something in her, even though she had never done anything in film at all, other than a walk-on in a Russ Meyer film. And she just had what we used to call authority, in my opinion, and presence. So I gave her a chance, and she came through just great. And then after that, I wrote scripts specifically for her as I got to know her abilities and made the most of them. All, so you've got, yeah, the big dollhouse. You've got women in cages, the big bird cage and black mama white mama.

Oh, yeah, black mama, white mama. It is awesome. But can I, this is crazy. So both of the movies, the big doll house and the bird cage were filmed in the Philippines. Oh, yeah. I've heard some pretty fucked up stories about those. She was there. She contracted a deadly.

tropical disease that almost took her life. Oh my God. She says it was some kind of virus or amoeba that went into my brain and paralyzed me. They were going to send me to Hawaii because they didn't know how to treat me. Luckily, a doctor for the L.A. Rams who had previously treated Greer decided to quarantine her and then try to freeze the infection to kill it. They literally wrapped her in bags of ice. Oh my God.

She says, I still think today something's going to come crawling out of me. There was dangerous stuff down there. Those rice patties were full of bacteria and leeches and larva that will go into your eyes. I drank a lot of Jack Daniels trying to kill it off. Yeah, those sets, I've seen some pretty, I forget what the documentaries are called, but there's some really great grind house documentaries. And those movies, they shot in the Philippines because there was literally no rules. She went temporarily blind.

They're just in the jungle and bikinis. But one day in the jungle, a man named Uncle. Uncle Holden appeared. And he was so big and he was so good that she said, I love you, Uncle Holden. And he said, you're welcome. And then he disappeared.

Did you become Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? Is that what happened? That's right. I made a mistake. I read Uncle Holden here. In fact, it was actually Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. This is around the time she gets pretty serious with him. He,

his name was different when they met. This is, which kind of comes into play in the story. I forgot his original name. But while they're dating, he converts to Islam. And she, while this is happening, she's studying Gloria Steinem and the women's movement at the time. And so fundamentally they disagree on issues related that as Muslim culture had it via Kareem Abdul-Jabar that she needed to be submissive and all these sorts of things.

And she wanted to go back to school to get the education that she wasn't able to finish because this time period she's technically making money so she can go back to college. She's doing it's not because she wants to be a big star, but to go back to college. And she even said, like, when asked, like, did you guys have anything in common? She's like, we love jazz, we loved sports, we're both inquisitive. I just didn't find Islam for me. She said, but essentially it's one of those things where, I mean, this has kind of happened to me before, where you're actually, it happened kind of with my drummer and my high school band. But where you're with somebody and then all of a sudden, like, overnight seemingly, maybe because of like a trip to Mecca or whatever it is, they get back and they're just like a different person.

Yeah. And that's kind of what happened here. it seems like, Greer said, he wanted me to give up my life to show my love for him. He called me on my birthday to ask if I would commit to Islam. Wait a minute. Being under his success, being a wife of him, I'd lose my identity and my education. Can I go on to say that the reason why he called her on her birthday to do this is because at 2 p.m. that day, he was going to be married to another woman who had converted to

Islam for him. And she said he would keep the date unless Greer agreed to marry him and embrace his religion. So she said, he said, if you don't commit to me to become a Muslim, then I'm getting married this afternoon to someone else, a woman who has been prepared for me. She said, prepared like a sandwich? It hit me like I was going to lose. It hit me that I was going to lose my identity. But who am I to judge? So I said, I can't make you happy. That makes you happy. Safe travels. Yeah. And so this is not a disparage. Islam at all. It just, it didn't work for her. Yeah. Yeah, totally. And it does kind of change the dynamic. I mean, it is very important

to, you know, mad all that out. Like, I've had rough birthdays with partners before, but I will say no one's ever called me up the morning of my birthday and said I had a woman prepared for me unless you decide you will prepare yourself for me. You were just dumped. That's all. Dumbs on my birthday. Yes, I have been dumped on my birthday. This is more of it. And it was Jeff, so maybe hit him up. No, it wasn't. It wasn't, Jeff. I'm just kidding. This is more, this situation is more of a favor to Islam because Pam Greer would have come in and just bulldoze.

It would have been hard to put her in that position. Yes. So instead of converting to Islam, she ended up making coffee in 1973. God, coffee's so good. I noticed you didn't have any salad when she takes that salad bowl and throws it at the woman and then they just start a cat fight. Throw it a salad on. is my favorite move. Throw a salad on her.

It was, of course, written and directed by Jack Hill. And it really puts her on the map as an actress, albeit in a very specific, not so revered genre by like the snooty people, whatever with them. But at this time period, she was noted as the first African American female to headline an action film, which is, like, because as protagonists of previous black exploitation films were males. So she, in the genre, which technically had not been called the black exploitation. movement yet was the first female action star. Yes. In fact, she says that it really didn't become black exploitation until she started

until a woman started doing it. And then they had to put it in a bottle. Whereas before it was just like a black lead in an action movie situation, at least according to her. It's very interesting. Her opinion on the genre, the genre in general is very fascinating. This time in 70 cinema is very fascinating because it's like what's bad, what's actually empowering and good. you know what I mean? What's taking advantage of the... It's very sticky and fascinating.

And I love her takes and we've got some good quotes about it coming. Oh, yeah, but even one of the questions was given your personal history, was it hard to act in movies that often featured the threat of sexual violence? She said, it's in a lot of black exploitation films, sure, but by being nude in those movies,

I was trying to help men understand. Society created this mystery about the vagina, the breasts. When you create a mystery, people want to see it and attack it. they can't have it. So I was like, here's the mystery.

I hope I bore you and you'll never get a hard on again. Yeah, no, rape culture definitely is connected to puritanical thought a lot of the time, even though it's pushed on the idea like, oh, women are too, just too, they asked for it, and the men can't help. It's like, no, you push the idea of you can't be aroused, and then it becomes this dirty thing, and then you're like suddenly a piece of shit. So, the Duggers. Oh, yeah.

So the film, we mentioned AIP before, was under the production studio American International Pictures, which is known for its low budget double-feature films meant to entice the younger audience. And they operated on the Arcoff formula. That stands for action, revolution, which means like controversial themes or ideas, killing, or just general violence, oratory,

which is literally just taglines, you know what I mean? Fantasy, fulfillment for audiences, and fornication, which is, of course, sex appeal, Arcoff. They also had a strategy called the Peter Pan syndrome. I found this to be very interesting.

This states that a younger child will watch anything that an older child will watch. An older child will not watch anything. A younger child will watch. A girl will watch anything, a boy will watch. A boy will not watch anything.

A girl will watch. Therefore, to get the most folks watching it once, one must zero in on the 19-year-old male. Well, that, and it makes so much sense because part of Pam Greer and what Jack Hill immediately realizes that she had crossover appeal. That he said, Jack Hill said,

my films with Pam Greer and a few others attracted a much wider audience. They called crossover audience, meaning that white audiences were interested in black characters and lifestyles. And the result of that was ultimately the mainstream films picked it up and incorporated those characters

and lifestyles into their films and black exploitation as a genre was no longer necessary. Even though I do think that this was an old interview and I think that maybe he thought that things were going to be better by this time, but unfortunately it's not. Nothing's changed.

So they want to make their female shaft essentially, and they were going to do that with a film called Cleopatra Jones, but they end up losing the rights to it. And so they end up, and this is, by they, I mean AIP and the execs there, they end up approaching Jack Hill to make a film that would rival Cleopatra Jones and even beat it to market, get it out first. So Hill ends up scrambling together this. movie cast Pam Greer and quickly pulls together coffee. Coffee, of course, is a, it's about a woman named Flower Child Coffin, who is a nurse who seeks revenge against the mobsters and gangs that caused

violence and mayhem in her town, and were partly responsible for her sister's heroin addiction. Coffee ends up beating Cleopatra Jones in the box office, and Greer says she was able to tap into a guttural rage as an actor that translated beautifully on screen, and this came from her experience and from working with Jack, apparently. Greer said, Jack Hill had told me that I needed to reach into my gut, not my mind, to find the real emotion. I tapped into my intensity,

and Roger was thrilled that I could bring so much organic frustration and anger to my performance. She said it came from, quote, being attacked as a child by a patriarchal society that said it was okay to slap your mom or push women around or berate them. You would see that in many families, and as a child, male or female,

that abuse was just frightening. You feel it in your gut. You can't, and you can't say anything. That was the nature of the beast back in the 50s and the 60s. And then here comes Pam, motherfucking Greer coming in because even during coffee, she did her own stunt work. And that was part of the appeal of Pam Greer is that she came in. She had taken like a bunch of martial arts classes.

She knew how to ride horses. So she rode horses. She had weapons experience. And she had weapons experience. And so in coffee, she did all. all of her own stunt work. And eventually they would introduce the first black, uh,

black female stunt people as well, working with Pam Greer specifically. And one of the horses that she worked with in coffee was named Donatello. And he was a black stallion. And she knew that stallions are very dangerous. And she said, there's not going to be any mares around, right? Because the stallion, if he smells a mare in heat,

they'll run through fern. They'll jump into traffic. Just like Holden. All right, please. But so she goes on to say, when she was on Donatello, she said, A crew member popped a towel on the horse's flank to spook him and make him run. So the horse takes off and everybody's behind his following on horses. I thought for sure there were going to be people with broken necks.

I tried to ride out his energy for at least 10 or 15 minutes because he had smelled a mare. Just to stay on. make sure he doesn't hit on anybody or get killed himself. And I rode his energy out and rode him through Felini's set. Is this Andrew Cuomo? Until while they were, I guess, Felini was shooting something nearby. The Italian avant-garde director, phenomenal.

So she rides a horse through Felimi's set. And she said, I thought for sure they were going to deport me. I don't know if I ruined the shot or not, but they loved it. They thought it was funny. There I was running through on a wild horse with my leopard skin, my fro, and I'd run through the cardboard ocean liner of Ameriorn. Anyone would appreciate that moment, it would be Falini. He's like, I'm living in the dream I created.

What ended up happening is that he was like, he tried to immediately like, do you want to be in one of my movies? And she's like, I'm in the middle of like, when I just signed like a five movie deal, I got other things to do. That's amazing. Again, like Elvira, by the way, who ran into Felini on the street and he put her in a movie.

But, yeah, so after that she appears in Foxy Brown. Baby and Friday Foster for AIP, all in that similar black exploitation vein. Here's my quote from Greer, by the way, about how she sort of feels like black exploitation became the genre once she got involved. It wasn't called black exploitation until I put my feet in the men's shoes. Men had done the same type of formulaic films before I did. It wasn't until I stepped in their shoes that they said, well, these movies are for a black audience.

I was creating the market for films about women fighting back and using sexuality, and they're trying to say it's like a black thing and it's not. It's actually a sex thing. and a feminism thing. In fact, she even said that she based coffee, her character in coffee, on her mother, and Foxy Brown was based on her aunt. She said, my mom was a nurse,

always caring for the neighbors who couldn't get to the ER. Many of the nurses took care of people in the kitchen because I watched this long interview with her where she was talking about growing up in the Jim Crow days where an ambulance wouldn't come to her neighborhood. So her mom also worked half of the time

in her own, house. She said, we'd come home and there'd be someone in the bathtub giving birth to a baby. And my aunt, she was a political radical. She wanted to ride motorcycles and she wanted to be a pirate. She wanted to be an architect. Because of inequality, she just couldn't do those things. And it was very frustrating for her. She had a fabulous Harley and she was in a club of people who had Harleys and people would say, get off that. You're a girl. It'll hurt your innards. Yeah, that's true. And she comes in and she bashes open the door. And she's like, hands up, motherfucker. And B, b'b, b'b, b'b, b'bh, b'bh, b'h, b'h.

Here's some salad. You know, anyone who's been to medical school will tell you that a woman's innards can be rattled very easily. I mean, they can't they explode the hymonds. Yep. I think that that might be, I don't know anything about hymonds, but I think that might be a fable. I don't. Horse riding and hymonds? I can't, I don't really.

Horse riding in hymins. Oh, now on the track, get me a buttlight. I don't know. If anybody out there can let us know if they had that experience. I really don't understand the correlation, frankly, because you're not getting penetrated when your horse riding. My pussy hurts on a saddle. I mean, my pussy does hurt on a saddle.

It's true. It does. I don't know. Transition from that. Go ahead. Something's speaking of horses. Speaking of sore pussy. Something that Quentin Tarantino would later talk about a reference to Jackie Brown

was that Pam Greer was one of a kind and didn't have a female equivalent in white cinema. Greer feels that she was making movies, like I said, for women fighting back using sexuality. She said, Gloria Steinem was talking about liberation. Get a job. Get your education. You don't need to be validated by a man or your uterus. So I was like, there's so much going on. Who am I?

I said, I don't want to be in love. I don't want to be married. I need to get an education. I saw a lot of the personal needs that are fundamental and that create your happiness. I chose happiness. Hell yeah. And she was asked, was it difficult early in your career to have so much attention paid? to how you looked and relatively little paid to your mind.

She said, that's human nature. I've had boyfriends in the past who were appalled when I cut the grass. I was torn between how I was raised and how modern society wanted me to be dependent on a man. We have to have sex and I'll pay your rent and buy you a car and pay for your baby. And when you have stretch marks and you're not attractive anymore, I'll find a new wife.

Snap, fashion, snap, orgasms, snap, babies. These things are temporary. Intellect is forever. I want to marry Bamar. I know. She also, though, speaks towards how in a such a predatory industry that is Hollywood, especially someone as beautiful as her that so many people would want to take advantage of. She speaks very fondly of her agent at APA John Gaines, who also reps Steve Martin, John Candy,

Tamara Dobson, who played Cleopatra Jones, and Isaac Hayes. Until his death in 1992, Greer said, I called John my fairy godmother, because the way he protected me and guided me. me. If you go to meet someone on a business deal, your lawyer, manager, agent, someone must always be with you. John always set those rules for me and created a comfort zone. He just had seen so much. He knew. When he took me to clubs and someone would hand me a drink, he would say, don't drink that. See the sediment at the bottom? You drink that. You won't remember the next week. I became comfortable not accepting the imitations. Sammy Davis Jr. and even his wife,

Alta Viz, invited me back and I declined. The stories about Sammy Davis Jr. That's coming. That's coming later for sure. If I didn't have John the agent to go with me to the industry dinners or cocktail parties, I stayed away from them. I didn't really experience the sexual harassment you might think. I wonder if they saw my films and thought that I probably could beat them up. And, you know, I could. Because I studied enough martial arts seriously that I probably could have really hurt someone.

But also, you know, this is so long before Weinstein, so long before Me Too, that she's speaking about how you can't just go meet up. with someone in the business and alone. And people heard these stories back then and were like, yeah, I guess you can't. Right. Rather than, can we make a difference?

Can we change this? Just now starting to sort of address this issue. 2021. That was always on the lady to avoid the situations. But that is also how her second rape happened when she was younger because a guy refused to take no for an answer about going on a date.

She didn't want to go on a date with him. And finally she was like, okay. And then guess what? He raped her. and then she wasn't allowed to tell anybody about it because it would have fucking, that was the time whenever she didn't want to tell her family because they would murder him

and then they'd all go to jail or whatever. Yeah, so that's just like, literally the last like five, six years been like, oh, maybe we should look outside of telling the lady to just avoid all the rapists. It's also, unfortunately, in the 70s too, she knew damn fucking well that if a white man regular, her, there's really nothing she could do about it. And isn't that fucking disgusting?

Yes, it's the worst. Holden, I'm looking at you. Holden. I'm upset about it. God, no, I'm upset about it. God, strike me down if I'm not upset about it. Strike me down. If I'm not upset.

Okay, you didn't do it, so I'm upset about it. I'm a good guy. You're a good man. You are a fine man. You're very scared of women. You're appropriately scared of women. I'm okay. All right.

Well, speaking of difficult men or maybe okay men or not okay men, we have to talk about her romantic relationship with a couple of comedians because it's definitely, I think, a defining part of her story. And then she's kind of through with men after this point. Fuck, yeah, man. First she's got Freddie Prince, who she met while promoting coffee in 1973. They soon began dating. And that year he got his big break on the tonight.

night show starring Johnny Carson at which he got the game-changing couch invited. People don't know. Johnny Carson invited you to the couch. It was like the Roman Coliseum. It was like the emperor. Wasn't it? Didn't we? Wasn't in Joan Rivers?

Was Joan Rivers the first female he called over? Yes. He got called over. Yeah. Joan Rivers' pop history episode if you'd like to go over. Yes. He ended up getting to guest hosts and all that good stuff. Then they ended up hating each other.

But either way, Prince also had a tough time with depression and drug addiction. He soon became surrounded by an entourage and industry types that clearly were taking advantage of him, despite Greer trying to hook him up with her protective-ass awesome manager that clearly had people's best interest in mind based on at least what she says. And she was actually ended up being one of the last people to talk to him before he ended his life. Greer said, his voice, there was so much sadness and disappointment. He was alone almost ranting. He was in a hotel room with a gun.

Yes. Calling her before he committed suicide. Talk about how he's lost his house. It was, 76? It was abrupt. He doesn't know where his money is. He's got all these people and he can't make his own decisions and just was lost in this depression and surrounded by the wrong people. 77, 97.

Okay. Sorry, I know that this is very important, but I'm just like correlating it to Freddie Friends Jr. Because I grew up in the 90s. So it was right after he got the baby and the woman. Yeah, it must have been. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's weird. Freddie Prince Jr. is definitely his son.

Yeah. And he and Pam Greer had a relationship, but then they broke up. He got together with someone else, I believe, and then ended up just going awall at a point in a hotel room. One thing she said that she did get from Freddie Prince. He said, Pam, you got to do Broadway. You have so much potential. He gave me that. He shared that.

He wasn't afraid of me doing that. It's really nice when your partner. Your man says, hey, I ain't afraid, baby. You being a star. Go ahead. Make more money. I support you. You find the gems in one another. It broke my heart to see his suicide because Freddie didn't have anybody to talk to and he didn't have peers and he was alone and by himself. And he reached out to me, but he had a gun and I love myself more. I said, I'm not going there and have him shoot me. I took care of my family. I'm paying a lot of mortgages, putting people through college. I'd been given a purpose and I can't have him take my life. I wasn't taught that. So she was worried because he wanted her to come over. to the hotel room and she didn't go.

And this is part of what I think that she probably has dealt with the guilt of not going over there. I mean, it was the right decision. Yes, because you don't know. What if he had shot her? And she said time and time again and we're about to get into this

yet again with Richard Pryor where it was like there was only so much she could do. He was just surrounded by all these shitheads and blames a lot of it on like this kind of this industry and the men in this industry that can take a soul like that. Yes. Yeah, later she ends up dating Richard Pryor.

of course, also battled hard with drugs. They met, yeah, they met while they were both cast and greased lightning in 1977. Yeah, that's when they began their romantic relationship. Greer said, they didn't do the drugs around me. They were trying to change themselves to keep me in their lives, but I couldn't change them. I struggle with that, with letting go. When you love someone, you let them go, and they're not going to come back.

With Richard, he said he did want to go cold turkey, and he liked the fact of going to Colorado and being pure. And I said, but you're in a world of men. You're not going to listen to me. I knew that. It's crazy that, like, Prior apparently confided in Greer, which, as someone that has battled addiction many times in my life, that he said, I'm afraid if I don't do drugs, I won't be funny. And it is a scare. Once you get into that addiction cycle, you worry that you could lose everything if you stop.

And she helped him face his fears and try to clean up his act. She helped him learn how to read. She helped him learn how to read because she. Yeah, he had been learning the lines to his films phonetically before then, because he didn't know how to read. And apparently, this is an interesting story. Infamously, Greer stated that a relationship with Pryor caused her to have a buildup of cocaine residue around her cervix and vagina. I thought you were going to tell the story about the horse, not the cocaine pussy story. Oh, I am talking about horse.

Yeah, but a different kind of horse. The cocaine pussy story is also very interesting. Cocaine, pussy story. He said, so she goes to the doctor and he says, Pam, I want to tell you about an epidemic that's prevalent in Beverly Hills right now. It's a buildup of cocaine residue around the cervix and your vagina. You have it. Are you doing drugs?

And Pam Greer said, no. And he said, well, it's really dangerous. Is your partner putting cocaine on his penis to sustain his erection? Do you know where this is going, Natalie? And she says, no, not that I know of. It's not like he has a pile of coke next to the bed and he dips his penis in it before we have sex. And then she said, I had a nauseating flash of one of Richard's famous lines. Even my dick has a cocaine Jones.

And the doctor asks, are you sure he isn't in the bathroom before he comes to bed? And she said, that's a possibility. You know, I am dating Richard Pryor. And he says, oh, my God. We have a serious problem here. If he's not putting it on his skin directly, then it's worse. because the Coke is in his seminal fluid. The doctor then asked of her mouth went numb

while performing oral sex on prior, which she says it did, and which he links to the novacane-like effects of cocaine. He was doing so much blow. It was in his gush, man. And so then it was inside of her. How fast are the swimmers, though? Crazy.

Probably, yeah, right? Blast not your fucking belly. That's nuts sauce. Does that get, so she was, that sauce, get it? So if it's going up in her cervix, does she not receiving the effects of cocaine from that? Man, well, she did say her mouth went numb and stuff for me a little bit.

So I imagine she probably, I think, I got a little coffee buzz. She's like, man, I feel great. No, I think actually going up to it, the reason why she ended up going to the doctors because, like, her pussy was losing sensation. And she didn't know why. And it's because all the blow.

I also didn't know that you could put, did you know that you could put blow on your dick? I did not. Keep it hard. Literally, I've never done cocaine. I don't understand. Why would I know that? I guess cocaine does a lot more than I thought it did.

Yes. Well, I knew about the numbing effect in that because that's, you know, they always put it on their gums and they get all. Not that I've ever ever tried it. Mom? All right, guys, please. Your liar's voice is terrible. Well, at least I didn't do it enough that it was in my pussy too.

I thought she was going to talk about was this another amazing story with, with Prior where he had a little pony horse that she got him, I believe. Yes. Got attacked by dogs. and then he was freaking out in his bathroom. He's, like, sobbing as he loved this horse. And so she had to go drive his Jaguar, I believe it was. So it's Pam Greer in the driver's seat.

He's in a bathroom. In a yellow jaguar with the horse in the back. Close the back, tail out the window. Oh, man. Apparently all the people came outside of the veterinary hospital just to see them pull up. God, I wish I could have seen it. Because it was such a wild scene. But she also talked about how she was like, I knew in that moment, like, there was nothing I could do to fix him.

I couldn't be his keeper. And then one day after she did leave him, she gets a call from a mutual friend. And Pam said, he says, Richard wants to talk to me and I need to fly there. So yet again, she's in this situation. He may not live through the night. And I ended up saying, well, you know what, Jim?

Richard did some things that disrespected me. And he always said, if you disrespect someone and they hang around, that means they have no self-esteem and you can do nothing to them. Lie and anything to them. Lie and steal. I said that if I came back to his bedside and back into his life, he's just going to have to get out of his bed alone, walk by himself, and find himself. And I remember Jim saying, wow, that's cold, Pam.

And I went, yeah, it is, it is cold. But maybe this tough love will help him to change. I don't know. And I remember going back to my apartment and just sobbing. Like, why, why? It gets to a point, unfortunately. A few days after that. Whenever, yes, you are surrounded by someone with addiction that you just can't help anymore.

And it is all right to wash your hands up. So a few days later, Richard Pryor pours 151 proof rum all over himself and lights himself on fire. Did you know about that? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, remember in Scrooge? Dang, I was having to make one of y'all go, what? No, don't you remember in Scrooge? That's why they had the thing in Scrooge where he lit himself on fire.

Yes. Greer said, just as I couldn't change the attacks or the people who attacked me, I couldn't change Richard. I couldn't change Freddie or Kareem. And I realized it's not about changing other people. It's about changing myself. And that is what I want to tell people with this, that there will be pain in life, but you can survive it and it will make you stronger and protect you from other

instances. I wanted to save their lives, but I had to save my... Yes, Pam. Yes, Pam. I love it. She's so great with her words. She's so eloquent. That's why I watched so many interviews with her because watching her speak is amazing.

So now we can get past this fucking stupid-ass men in her stupid-ass life. Yes. And get past this black exploitation phase in her career. By the 1980s, Greer was looking for more diverse roles. and character parts, wanting to move past her certain typecast from the 70s. Greer said, they wanted me to continue and I said, the story is over. There's so much more. There's Mary Fields, the first black female stagecoach driver from the mail route in Montana.

I want to play her. The studio said no one would believe there was a black female stagecoach driver, even though it's in the books. They said Bond girls are more interesting and bikinis. The needs of Hollywood are different than what my needs are. I love it. Apparently she went in for Octopussy, the James Bond movie. She said, I remember the meeting for Octopussy.

The role was like, I just walk around in a bikini. When I read this script, I said, is that it? And I didn't mean to insult Cubby Broccoli and everybody who was there at MGM meeting me, but I said, you know, I'm bringing a huge audience, and they're going to want their money back. They're not going to find you. They're going to find me. So I'll pass. So she ends up doing Fort Apache the Bronx, starring Paul Newman, about a hard drinking veteran cop who works

a crime-ridden precinct in the Bronx. Greer had a supporting role as a sex worker. She got to play a witch in the film produced by Disney productions called Something Wicked This Way Comes.

I completely forgot about her performance in this movie. And she's like a dust witch. I never saw it. It's great. That's her getting more into that character stuff.

And amazingly, in 1985, she makes her theater debut and Sam Shepard's Full for Love at the Los Angeles Theater Center. And it was sold out for nine months. She also did a production of August Wilson's The Pee's the piano lesson in Denver.

She is like legitimate motherfucking theater actor all through the 80s which is such a cool, such a cool path for her. And I think amazingly, I think it's so kismet, I feel like sets her up

for her big, big role in Tarantino's Jackie Brown. I think that that like probably really honed her acting chops to get her to this prestigious level. Well,

and she was studying too. Again, like she was like working and taking acting classes and really trying to hone her craft. And she really did say that she started to feel confident in her performances when she started theater. She said in the early days, Sid Haig helped her a lot and said, Pam, you're a natural.

She said, sometimes I was just so strong I wouldn't be hired because I was so dang good. And there was no audience for a black woman. But then with Fool for Love, she wasn't frustrated about getting these smaller parts at this point in time because she says, my work spoke for itself. There's no such thing as a small role. When I was doing the Sam Shepard play Fool for Love, it sold out for nine months. I love doing it, and film directors would come and watch us. And this is when she became up for the role in the Witches of Eastwood.

A little bit of a crossover. She almost had Shares role. She almost had Shares role. And when she was asked why she didn't get it, she didn't know. She said, I tested for it. She said, I think the studio was basically trying to make a deal with Bill Murray to star in it. And they couldn't close it. So the next person was Jack Nicholson, who was dating in jail.

Houston. She was dark and exotic, so they tested her, and it didn't work out. And then there was Cher, and they gave her the role. That was the one mainstream film that would have given me a broader audience. But there's no bad feelings. She said when people wouldn't see me for a role, it was a recognition of the power of the beauty and women, of something that's so captivating it can be distracting against the work. What a positive way of seeing such a huge disappointment. I have a couple more quotes that inspire me in terms of handling rejection in Hollywood and turning it into a positive. I don't know why you need that because everybody in this family and in this group handles rejection really well.

I'm not. Yes, I'm never devastated. I never hold myself up in a room for days crying by myself. So she made her return to film alongside the, ew, ew, disgusting. I hate him. Steven Seagall's detective partner in the film Above the Law in 1988. And she's regularly doing TV through the 80s and 90s. She's on Miami Vice, Martin, Nightcourt. The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, just a great guest star for TV shows. She's also in Jawbreaker. Getting those steady, steady jobs, absolutely. Also in 1988, she is diagnosed with stage 4 cervical cancer and is told she has 18 months to live.

However, through a lot of treatment, she has made a recovery and has been in remission ever since. Because at the time, she was like, I was at the best shape of my life. I was running six miles a day. And to go in at such a young age and be given such devastating news. I mean, that's horrid. 18 months? Yes. She had 18 months.

to live and she beat it. She put it, but she had to drop everything to go and deal with their cervical cancer. And some say it was also due to the bonding of a certain horse. That's right. One day she ran into a horse and she said, hi, what's your name? And the horse said, hi, my name's Uncle Holden. Oh no.

Wait, did this come from the cocaine? Did the cervical cancer come from? Seriously. No, I don't think so. I think that, no, because I think that her I believe she said that her aunt had died of the same thing. Oh, okay. Okay, okay. On Jackie? It's just a little bit of the presence.

We talked about her cervix twice in the stories of work. We'll get into the service one. We'll talk about. Well, let's talk about the big, amazing comeback. Well, before we get to the big comeback, we have to remember that she was in Mars attacks. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was very upset you didn't include Mars attacks.

I didn't. I didn't wrote down don't include Mars A Tax. You, I know, she's in Mars A Tax. If you go check out our Mars A Tax Pop History episode. It's so good. And in it, which I was watching this interview with her, I didn't realize, which we didn't even speak to in Mars A Tax episode, that her older son in it, because she plays that, like, no-nonsense bus driver, her older son in it is Ray J. Oh, yeah, that's right.

In an interview, she was asked if she ever saw the infamous tape. And she was like, no, no, he was my son in a movie. I can't watch the tape. She's like, well, I may have watched a second of it. I think they were acting. I think they were acting. She's like, they weren't sweating. When you're doing the do, you be sweating.

Or else, hell, you ain't doing it right. And that is such an amazing line. If you're not sweating, when you're doing the do, you ain't doing it right. And she ain't talking about drinking mountain dew, I'll tell you that much. No, but please, now we're talking. Sex. That's my name. Sex?

Yeah. Also, I know you just, I mentioned it briefly, but she's in the movie Jobbreaker, which, if you've never seen Jobbreaker, it's one of the best, like, teen exploitation horror movies. Oh, yeah. So here we go. This is the story is weird. tells it. Pam Greer tells it. I'm in a car driving in L.A. and my passenger is Warrington Hudlin. We're trying to develop some projects through HBO and were stopped at a light on Hollywood

Boulevard. I see this guy leaning over talking to this woman. I don't know if he was macking or talking to an old friend. Warrington says, hey, that's Quentin Tarantino. Rumor is he's writing something for you. He says, hey, Quentin, it's Warrington and I got Pam Greer in here. Quentin goes, oh, Pam Greer, oh my God. He comes over to me and says, I'm writing something for you based on Rum Punch, the Elmore Leonard book, and I'm going to send it to you as soon as I finish. And I went, yeah, right, sure. And he said, no, no, seriously, seriously. He's in tennis shoes, shorts and a T-shirt, wild hair, and he's just filled with excitement.

He says, you're badass. You stand up for women. You get up and you put your neck on the chopping block. You know you really try to set examples. Show people that it's okay to win. It's okay to fight. And I said, wow, okay, I look forward to seeing the script. What I was really thinking was, oh, please let it be true.

Greer also goes on to say six months later, I'm in, New York, and I get noticed there's an envelope with insufficient postage where you get that sticker. Back home in Colorado, they trust you and deliver the package, but in New York, they want that diamond nickel. So it's from Tarantino, and it's Jackie Brown, and I'm speechless. My face is just wet from crying. I'd done four years of theater and was so grateful because I was ready. I had never felt so observed by anyone in my life.

He has broken down every film I'd ever done. I just, I love it so much, but when she first read the script, she thought that the part that Bridget Fonda plays was written for her. Yes. She didn't realize he wrote the Jackie Brown, like Jackie Brown the character for her. So she read it and was like, oh, this is really great. I'll totally do this. He's like, no, no, no. I want you to be Jackie Brown and that blew her.

But he's like, you wrote the whole movie for me? I mean, it makes sense. he is very openly influenced by those exploitation movies. And she showed up for the audition and there were a ton of her movie posters all over the walls. And she was like, oh, right, you just put all these up for me, right? And he was like, actually, I considered taking them all down because I was embarrassed. I think that you were coming. I'd feel real weird.

If I walked in, it was just posters of me everywhere. Just such a, but then you'd also be like, if I don't get this fucking part, I'm going to burn down a fucking studio building. So yeah, Greer said about shooting with Quentin Tarantino, you are liberated. You were just free to fill up the scene. We rehearsed two weeks to prepare ourselves for this style, for his style, prepare ourselves for his craft, and we would collaborate all of us together. It was extraordinary. How he works with you and makes it so that your heart is beating through your chest,

that's what he does to you when you work with him. Man. And Pam. I know, again, he has really controversial. People have a lot of talks about him, but some. Some of his, like, some of the female characters he makes are the best female characters, in my opinion. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, death proof too, I know is not one of his most favorite, but.

Awesome stunts. I digress. Either way, check out two-parter on Quentin Tarantino over in The Wisden the Bruiser in. If you want to know more about his career, we're going to focus just more on Pam Agaday. I know, I know. It makes me sad, though, that she did know. And just things just haven't changed fast enough. And I hate that it still is the way that it is.

It's really depressing. For Jackie Brown, I had the best PR person who taught me everything. She said, Pam, the reality is you're a black woman. You're not going to be on the magazine covers. You're not going to sell to the masses. You're not going to appeal to the little farm girl in Idaho. So I'm not going to make you pay me just for the rejections. She said, it's like in martial arts.

You don't keep hitting your head on the wall trying to move it. You don't keep getting angry, saying you don't accept blacks. You don't do this. You don't do that. You don't have black television shows. You know, I leave that to Al Sharpton. And it sucks that she knew she could see what she could get done. Yeah.

And understood that she couldn't push for much more. But what she did do is lay the groundwork for people to keep fighting. Yeah. And I think that she knew that unfortunately our country needed that. But she did it in my opinion, one of the best ways, which is it's important to yell and scream and fight, but her doing it in a way that's like, this is sugar on the medicine. I'm just going to give you something you really like and then you go, oh, I guess I like, black people are cool too. I wish there were more. I wish there was more of this. And this is

around the time period that she moves to Denver full time. She buys a huge farm near the site of the Sand Creek massacre where 500 Cheyenne women and babies were slaughtered by the cavalry for their land. In an effort to promote awareness about clean eating, she opened the Pam Greer Community Garden and Education Center at Fort Worth, Texas. Greer strongly believes many diseases are preventable through healthy eating practices, and she wants to help make organic foods accessible for every budget. Now, she goes on to talk about being an owner and a, and the sole worker of her own farm. And she's so cool. That many people in Colorado were like, you're one of the first black people I've ever met. And we love you. And she's. And she's.

She loved being that. She's like, as much as, like, I feel like people would get upset about those comments. She's like, I loved it. And part of her life starting then, and still to this day, is rehabilitating horses. And she founded the Tame Foundation, which stands for therapy animals mean equality, providing horses, blazers, and boots for the charity horse riding program for disabled children. She said, I've been given so much. I'm a cancer survivor.

I have success at work, belief in self. a supportive audience. So she lends her horses to the program and even buys the kids all of their outfits as well. She even bought an extra car to drive kids to events. She says, horses can really calm the anxiety. I'll pick up the children and take them home because I know how overwhelming it can be for families with children who have special needs. But the kids don't want to be called disabled. They schooled me on that. They want to be called different abled. And it's just, what an amazing. She works so, I mean, she also, works with pilots and paws, which is an animal advocate program that transports dogs from kill shelters and fosters to a permanent homes.

She also works with dining out for life, which helps those with HIV and AIDS by enlisting 6,000 restaurants in 60 cities to donate profits one day a year. It raises between 4 million and 5 million annually. She's also involved with pals, which is people and animals living synergetically, a Colorado-based organization that partners unwanted animals with forever. I wonder if that's why. You know what I woke up with in my head this morning? Maybe this is why. Goodbye horses. Get out of here.

I was just like, why is this fucking song in my head? I'll put you in the ocean on it. In science of the lambs, the dog was treated the best of many of us. I tucked my penis between my legs and I dance the dance of the night. Either way. In the morning, by the way, no less. Either way. And before her memoir, she heads up, she received her honorary doctorate of humane

letters from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. The same year she received an honorary doctorate of science from Langston University. Also, you've got all those roles she did after Jackie Brown notably showtimes the L-word as Kit Porter.

Can we talk about the L-word just for a second? Please. And real quick, also the hit series Smallville as the villain Amanda Waller. I mean, she kept working She was working the entire time. So yeah, let's talk about the L-word a little bit. Jackie, I know my wife is a massive, was a massive L-word.

Love the L-word. Absolutely love the L-word. And it also created a lot of conversation because a lot of people, and specifically she talks about black women were scared of, or some of the black women that she had talked to that had been in ties with possibly being an L-word, were scared of committing to something that is seen as upsetting, especially as she's not a homosexual. So the question was, I know you got a great deal of feedback from viewers during your time on the L word. Was there a common thread that stood out to you? She says, well, the common thread was from a certain community, the African American community, asking why I would want to be in a show about lesbians. And I said, oh, well, it's a community and it's well written.

It's just about people. And they would be like, are you afraid people are going to think you're a lesbian? And I'm like, is that fear? I should be afraid that people might think I'm a lesbian. You should really ask yourself, why would I be afraid? Why do I have a fear? It's not like you can put on a shirt and then you would suddenly be a lesbian. But I said, I need to know about other people, other communities, other cultures.

If I had a gay child, I'd want to help them, guide them, and I'd want them to be the best person they could be. Because life isn't going to be easy. It could be, I don't know, we'll have to navigate. And I also have many friends that are gay. I have to know how they feel. They're just people. It's you guys who are the fear mongers, the ones who create the distinction. Everyone else is comfortable.

And I think it's a very interesting, because in it, she plays like the sister of a lesbian. And that's why everyone just seemed like, oh, aren't you so scared of being a part of this show? It was such a good show. She's so good at every. What an amazing, I mean, I'm not going to get into it. I love the fucking up. What you're doing? Elward episode. I would love to do.

Oh, cool. Yeah. An episode on the L word. Hell yeah. So yeah. Continue to act, act, act. And also in 2010, she wrote her memoir, Foxy, My Life in Three Acts. And based on this in 2018, she announced a biopic. And that's in the works. And it's totally based on the memoir.

And Greer said, all I wanted to do was show how I survived in my family as a woman. Yes, I was raped at six. And I didn't curl up and die. Then it happened again at 18. It was a horrible attack. So I wanted to let women know, you might be raped once or twice. I don't wish not anybody, but I'm okay. That was the greatest gift I could give back to people who followed me in movies.

Because my story may not be told in movies because I'm not, quote, box office. White women are box office. Be it. Yeah, I love it. But then she's also still doing movies like bad grandmas and palms, which she gets a lot of flack for. She said she's always wanted to play a badass grandmother because those types of women run in her family. She said, and I brought this up earlier. My grandma and great-grandma were from Black West, the Underground Railroad.

They settled in Wyoming where all the women were hunting and shooting. They were black Annie Oakley's, black Calamity Janes. My great-grandma was sassy. She had money and didn't need a man. And this is what she's trying to now represent as she has grown. So she's not trying to hide and she's openly, she doesn't use her. Botox. She loves that she's gained weight because it gives her more of a spectrum of characters that she's able to play now. And I love that she's, again, she sees these things that a lot of

our society tells us are supposed to be negative, like gaining weight or getting older, and she embraces them. And she sees it in such a positive perspective. What a beautiful way to live. She said, she like might be my favorite person ever. Yes. And also, which, Holden. She's a big gamer. Oh shit. So she isn't, I don't know if you play, I don't know anything about Call of Duty, but I guess she has. Yeah, play a little COD.

She has a character in it. Play a little war zone. She describes her character. She's a Shaolin sister in it. She said, red beans and rice, don't miss her. She's a force and she has wisdom and she's a sensei. And the person asked what kind of gaming do you usually do? because I guess she is a known gamer.

Gaming human, yes. Is that what they call them? A game-stir, I believe. She said, I started with Atari before then chess. That's how I started playing games. Because I love checkers, chess back in the day. When it became electronic, Atari was the first one, of course. I had a hissy fit.

Then they made a Game Boy. They didn't make a game girl. You know I was upset. I raised the roof. I even called them up. You know what it is? Do you know who this is? And they asked, did you really call?

Nintendo? I did! She said when the Wii came out, you couldn't get it. I got one in Vancouver and gave one to all of my castmates in the L word. In my motor home, when they couldn't find me on set, they'd say, that damn we, we're going to take it away from her. I was playing everything. I have a PlayStation 1, 2, 3, 4. I have so many.

It's like, can I keep up with this? I play with my nephews when it's cold and snowing. We play Call of Duty in Grand Theft Auto. I was in Grand Theft Auto V. She's five. Five. No, it's V Holden as Mama G. She said, I love Tomb Raider because I want to be her.

Hell yeah. At least I can play the game. I'm fascinated by the illustrations, the art, the art direction is amazing. The explosions and the movement. It's just, I just like to look at the set design. And I just love how she looks at this. She's also huge into pinball machines. She has a bunch of pinball machines in her house on her farm.

I can't really make me want to go to her place. Right. Can we hang out with you, Pam, for air, please. Please. Please. Please. So I have a couple more quotes to round out on my end. I do want to talk about the possibility of what her, the screenplay that she's working on right now because she would like to feature a female director of the movie.

It's called Pam. It's called Pam. And so she tweeted a pitch towards Ava Duvornay, the Oscar nominated director of 13th. And she just tweeted at her a quick pitch that was like her Twitter fantasy. It was a 70s woman puts herself before a man's fame and fortune and focuses on finding her own agency and self-empowerment in a patriarchal society. The soundtrack would be anachronistic, but there would ideally be music from Missy Elliott, Alicia Keys, and of course, Cardi B. Of course there would also be a scene in which real-life friends Greer and Cleopatra Jones, Tamara Dobson, would strut down Rodeo to skin tight by the Ohio play. She wants Teresa P. Henson to play her mother, and she's already set Jay Farrow to play Richard P. P. P. P. P.R.

Super cool. I'm all about it. I hope it does get made. Maybe COVID slowed things down. I hope because there was big talks in 2018. But the movie business it can take some weeks. It takes a while. Speaking of the movie business, I love this quote about Hollywood rejection. When people wouldn't see me for a role, it was a recognition of the power of the beauty and women of something that's so captivating, it can be distracted. against the work. That's just such a great way to look at. God damn. She's so positive and powerful.

And then this is my final quote personally to wrap things up. Jackie, I don't know if you have anything else on old Pam Greer. Natalie, any final words, but I will just say my final say is from Pam Greer herself. It took that 70s explosion so that now we feel comfortable enjoying each other's culture. This could go on. The reality of people being much more open and free. The harmony of the human sense. song is going to be what people listen to.

The soul is going to win. Hell yeah. And she also does frequently talk about how she's not afraid of dying. She says a lot of people are afraid of death. If people own it, like, I feel good. You can survive cancer. Divorces, death. Your mother's sickness,

hospice care. You feel pretty good. I think that's a glow from the inside. If you show that, I don't think anybody cares what your age is. You bring the work and passion. That's what people respond to. if you're like, oh, I am afraid, then people will notice that you have a fear of being rejected. And that I, I'm so happy that we've learned so much about Pam Greer because it really did

change my perspective on not only my career, but how I live my life, that she's undergone so much trauma and so many different hardships. She's still smiling. And she runs her farm and she's doing it. She's born in 49. She's, and she's killing it, man. I learned that I'd like to be a horse named Uncle Holden. I love it.

I'm okay, Uncle Horzen. Horson? Wow. Uncle Huck yourself. I accidentally made that. I didn't need to say it, but I'm great. And Natalie, what did you learn today, damn it? Oh, just to live and be three.

And to love and to love and to eat and to pray. Yes, and all of that. and find yourself in Rome. But no, I think she is such a good role model, just in general. Just a great role model in the most fun, awesome way. It's not like, I was just talking about, you know, she's like the sugar with medicine. That's, I think, how you get things to move in the world. And I think she is literally like, she serves medicine, but it's like the sweetest medicine.

And like medicine, you're like, yeah, give me more. Give me mah. And just a great, you know, inspiration for any of us. And we learned a lot about dick cocaine. So either way. Man alive, did we? All right. I think that's our episode on Pam Greer.

Thank you so much for joining us. If you'd like to support us further, patreon.com forward slash page seven podcast is a good way to do it. Also check me out on Twitch. Twitch.com. Check me out on TV forward slash Holdenators Ho. Jackie and I do a fun stream on Fridays. I have smiles before while doing that stream. Oh, my God.

And my name is Jackie Zabowski. Follow me on Instagram, but Jack, that word. I am Natalie, Gene, and you can follow me at The Natty Jean, and my new show with Amber Nelson someplace underneath is officially coming out on March 17th, and you should listen to it if you like traumas. Take it from me, Uncle Holden. It's a good listen now. Yeah, he's our spokesmodel. I hate Uncle Horstyn. Please refer to yourself as Uncle Horstyn.

All right. Never mind. I take it. back. We love you guys. Thanks so much for joining us. We'll see you soon. Bye, everybody. This show is made possible by listeners like you. Thanks to our ad sponsors, you can support our shows by supporting them.

For more shows like the one you just listened to, go to lastpodcastnetwork.com. Some place underneath. Neath is a planet gone missing into time. A moon believed to be in the orbit around Venus. The moon was named Neith after an early Egyptian goddess who, according to the lore is the birth mother of the universe.

Astronomers spotted any 30 times since it was discovered but it went missing, and it has not been seen since the late 1700s. Where did it go? Poor women, trans women, women of color, women in French religions. What do they all have in common with this ancient missing moon? They go missing. A lot. I'm Natalie Jean and I'm joined by Amber Nelson every week to look into a case where we

answer the age-old question. Where them hose at? Let's talk about it and see how we can help. Some place underneath, a show about them missing. Missing from home, missing from justice, missing from the conversation. Plus, there are dick jokes. Listen wherever you get your pods.