The Breakfast Club - Bill Duke Interview

Episode Date: April 9, 2015

Bill Duke stops through to chat with The Breakfast Club about his latest projects. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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What is that? Bullets. Listen to Escape from Zakistan. We need help! That's Escape from Z-A-Q-istan on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast

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Have grace with yourself. You're trying your best. And you're going to figure out the rhythm of this thing. Alicia Keys, like you've never heard her before. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dani Shapiro, host of the hit podcast, Family Secrets. How would you feel if when you met your biological father for the first time, he didn't even say hello? And what if your past itself was a secret and the time had suddenly come to share that past with your child? These are just a few of the powerful and profound questions we'll be asking on our 11th season of Family Secrets.

Listen to season 11 of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, my undeadly darlings. It's Teresa, your resident ghost host. And do I have a treat for you. Haunting is crawling out from the shadows, and it's going to be devilishly good. We've got chills, thrills, and stories that'll make you wish the lights stayed on. So join me, won't you? Let's dive into the eerie unknown together. Sleep tight, if you can. Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Real people, real celebrities, real talk talk join the breakfast club morning everybody is dj envy angela yee charlamagne the guy we are the breakfast club special guest in the building mr bill duke thank you you know you know you don't oh how many times do you hear that all the time every day 10 times a day i actually happened to say that to Envy previously this morning. Yeah, this morning you did, yeah. You did lie about something. You gotta say it for us one time.

Okay, you said you had the bottle of beer at what time? Now you know you don't fuck up, don't you? Damn. When you read that in that script years ago in minutes of society did you know it was gonna be as iconic never man never never ever all right huge brothers great great great directors man and they kind of give you the freedom to as an actor to do it so you come up with the feeling you come up with what you feel based on the words that they've written and you still look the same now as you do then oh man I wish my knees felt that way.

You always had a very intimidating presence, man. I know, I don't know. I guess, you know, big black man, you know what I mean? In America, you always look intimidating,

I guess. Now you're 72 years old? 72. No! Can't believe it. I mean, you look good. I mean, I don't know what 72 is supposed to look like,

but... You look great. Black don't crack, right? Don't crack., but... I don't think it's 72, except you look great. Black don't crack, right? Don't crack. But I think when you did Menace, you was in your 40s, late 30s? I think late 30s, late 40s, yeah. Wow. Many moons ago, man.

So what do you do? Do you work out? Do you drink your green juice? Tell us the secret. Oh, it's five days a week I'm vegan. I work out three times a week with a trainer. And I go to Bikram Yoga. See, I told you that, Bikram Yoga.

Oh, man. It's rough, but I love it. But I meditate every day. Translone Meditation. I've been doing that since, oh, in the 70s, man. So meditation really saves my life every day. Really? When you say five days a week, does that mean two days a week you eat meat if you want to or fish?

I eat a little fish or chicken because strength-wise, some of the proteins I get out of the vegetables is good, but sometimes I eat some fish, I feel a little stronger. Got you. All right, well, let's talk about these documentaries, Dark Girls and Light Girls. I was in the Light Girls documentary that you did. You did a very good job, by the way. And that actually was all over the place.

A lot of things like Amber Rose, her part of that movie, that documentary was everywhere when she said that her family had issues with her being with Wiz Khalifa because he's black. And, you know, they had a problem with that. So they didn't show up for her wedding. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's absolutely. And I was saying the same thing about in my family, I'm half Chinese and half black,

and that was an issue for the Chinese side of my family too. They didn't come to my parents' wedding for the same reason. But there was a lot of flack I got when I posted on Instagram, okay, make sure you check out Black Girls Documentary. It's coming on tomorrow night. We were promoting it, and people got into arguments on my Instagram over that. Like, why would you make such a divisive documentary?

People were saying things like this because they couldn't put it into perspective. There was a Dark Girls documentary that came out first. And let's talk about why you felt the need to do that one. Well, because pain has no color. The assumption is because you're dark-skinned, you have pain. But light-sk, people don't have no pain. The truth of the matter is, is that our internal racism is still alive and we are still putting each other down and making jokes about each other because of the color of our skin.

And with women particularly, it's difficult because the beauty business says if you don't look a certain way, God made a mistake. And so we're going to give you cosmetics and stuff and give you lengthen your hair with extensions and blah, blah, blah. Then we have, I think, Skin Bleach, which is globally a $50 billion business. Really? This is globally, man. Wow. I was in Ghana, Africa, man, last year, man, and one of the number one products there was skin bleach. When I say skin, I mean bleaching the whole body.

Wow. I need to get in on that since everybody think I'm doing it. Now, everybody thinks that Charlamagne, let's talk about that. Are you serious? Because everyone says that he's bleaching his skin because he said he had some skin discoloration. He's not even saying it.

You can see it. He went to go see a dermatologist, and now when people see him, he visibly looks lighter in pictures, and all the time they're like, Charlamagne's bleaching his skin he hates himself you know so on and so forth but let me let me ask you a question you know what do you do when somebody or how do you handle when somebody makes fun of your skin color because he's visibly beige this goes on every day every day every day waffle color Beige bitch. Every day? Waffle color Negro.

Oh, my God. What else do you call me? I call you Princess Boy. No, you never call me that. Have you ever worked with a light-skinned guy? Of course you have, right? I work with everybody, man. This is very divisive, guys.

I work with everybody, man. They can be a little difficult. Are you saying that you have evidence of that? Yes, this guy. Every day. Now, Charlamagne doesn't have the impression that because Envy is light-skinned, he's more sensitive. More emotional. More emotional than the average person.

Yeah, you would agree. He does. I don't know if it's because of the color of his skin. He is the most sensitive one in the room, but I can't say that that's why. And then Envy in return calls Charlamagne a big black bully. And I ain't even big, but because I'm dark-skinned, I got to be big and black and a bully. So I'm so glad you're here to shed some light on these issues that we have every day in the studio. Well, no pun intended, but I'd like to shed some light on the issue.

Because you haven't done light-skinned boys versus dark-skinned boys. You two are inspiring me to make that movie right now and y'all y'all should be starring in it you know what I'm saying

but no I think it's an issue internally and I know we're joking about it but then the thing is is that a lot of children

are suffering from this you know on the playground you know they're being bullied either they're they're kinky hair you look like a tar baby uh and why is this funny to you

little girls being calling tar babies and light-skinned girls have been taken into bathrooms held down and there's being put in their hair, and they're pulling their hair out by the roots. That's sliced to get their face sliced. Of course. Neck and face sliced, and earrings pulled through their earlobes so that people think they think they're too cute. It's madness. And I think if we could, my belief is that we can cure our internal rifts that no one can touch us from the outside. But until we learn to heal that,

you know, here's the ironic thing. While light-skinned and dark-skinned women are bickering about skin color, white females are going to tanning salons twice a day, twice a week, crinkling their hair, getting butt lips, lips, and... Lip injections.

Don't you find that a little ironic? Yeah. It's like they planted a seed to make us think that what we naturally have is bad. There you go. We argue with each other. We talk about my wife. My wife is light-skinned. She got cut in the face

by a dark-skinned girl and they called her Casper and they called her white ghost. It's a problem in our own community. At the end of the day, we're all black. You know what I mean? There's only one race, man, the human race, you know. Why are you laughing for?

You're just crazy, man. A dog skin girl. I can't have an impact on this. I never heard you say it was a dog skin girl. This is not going to change, right? Right. Not in this room. I'm telling you, it's very difficult every day.

But, yeah, no, that's why I was saying, and he did have an issue. You know, his wife did get her face cut because of the color of her skin, basically. And people do automatically assume, oh, she thinks she's cute. She thinks she's better. Where did these stereotypes come from, though? I mean, I even think of a movie like New Jack City when Nino, who is dark-skinned, stabbed Christopher Williams' character in the hand. Like, I never liked you anyway, you pretty motherfucker.

Who said light-skinned people were pretty? All light-skinned girls ain't pretty. And people would say things like, oh, you know, motherfucker. Who said light-skinned people were pretty? All light-skinned girls ain't pretty. And people would say things like, oh, you know, if you wasn't light-skinned, she wouldn't be cute. People say stuff like that.

Yeah, light-skinned people got good hair, yeah. Well, it goes back to neocolonialism, you know. Once we were slaves and the ruler was white and everybody wants to be like the person in power.

And so the lighter-skinned slaves were in the house because the master had sex with the female slaves. They were lighter, and he took better care of them than he. Do you know that the brown paper bag test, here's what's crazy, man. He just did that this morning. Somebody just did that this morning with Charlemagne. A brother, Tyrese. You know that until the 40s and 50s on the church, certain churches, there was a brown paper bag nailed to the church door. Wow.

If your skin was darker than a brown paper bag, you couldn't go to church. Wow. Well, I wouldn't be allowed in church. Is that deep? You might now. You'd be allowed in church. That is absolutely ridiculous. That's crazy.

But that's the reality that we've faced. And today it's still going on. When I travel, one of the, it's not funny, but one of the biggest consumers of skin bleach is Indian, Indian men. And because if your skin is lighter in Indian culture, it means you're working in the office because you haven't gotten to the sun. If it's dark, it means you're working the field. So Indian women want lighter men because it means

they have better jobs. So the house Negro, field Negro mentality is even in Indian, Goja? Yeah, and men are bleaching their whole faces and their whole bodies. Wow.

And that's toxic. Do I look like I'm bleaching? No. He doesn't. He's got to see the before and after picture. He's got to see the before and after.

There's a before and after picture. He does. If I didn't know him, I don't think he was. He had to bleach his entire body just so he didn't close his face. Duh. Thank you, Mr. Duke, for shedding some think he was. Brother, he had to be able to close his entire body to see him close his face. Duh.

Thank you, Mr. Duke, for shedding some light on the situation. Yeah, he had this coloration on it around his eyes. He looked like a raccoon, but it was so dark. Why do you have so much slander towards black people? It was so dark. No, he's just talking about the dark circles, the raccoons. Does this happen every day? Every day.

You know what I mean? It was so dark. Can you save us, please? You need a referee or somebody. Absolutely. There's some healing up in here, you know what I mean? I want to ask you about this article that a TV editor wrote on Deadline.com. She said that ethnic diversity, she said that the pendulum may be swinging too far

and that too many minorities and ethnic people are getting these roles and white people can't get roles now because they're purposely making these roles for ethnic people. Well, we're still looking for our 40 acres and a mule. Maybe this is it coming. You know what I mean? Did you get your 40 acres? Nope. You get your?

Nah, I ain't getting mine. Maybe it's my 40 acres and a mule coming. I mean, it's like, the fact of the matter is, man, is that percentage-wise, if you look at the number of television shows, and three or four of them are black and very successful. I'm not saying they're not. But in ratio to what's on the air and the number of films that are made yearly,

there's no comparison. I don't know what they're talking about, but there's no comparison. So we shouldn't even be jumping for joy right now. If for the next 10 years you see an increase in employment, we see images that reflect our humanity and not just our ethnicity. We see more directors, producers owning content. We see us getting into the gaming market, which we're not yet. That is like Grand Theft Auto made $2 billion in three days,

and we're not in the gaming business. I mean, we should be celebrating the fact that we're more exposed, but we're not in the film and television business anymore. We're in the media business. And until we get into that business, I say to kids, don't want to be Steven Spielberg, try to be Steve Jobs.

Because, you know, the thing is, and I'll say it this way, you know, we play in checkers in a chess game. Make any sense? Yes, sir. Do you feel like you were discriminated against because of the color of your skin? Are you kidding me? Big black bald. Big black bald-headed,

you know, mean detective. You play a lot of detective. You play a lot of cops. Yeah, but I got some good roles too in terms of some of the shows and my humanity was shown more. But in those days, there weren't many of us who were dark-skinned black men who were allowed to be in leading roles, et cetera. You know when you scared me too when you was in The Predator

and you was putting that stuff around your eyes and you was preparing to die and I was like, boy, The Predator. And you was putting that stuff around your eyes. You was preparing to die. And I was like, boy, The Predator's a bad man if he killed this one. He got me, so he must have been a bad boy. I'm still trying to get him to, man. He's evasive. He's evasive. Put it that way.

Now, you're doing the Mahalia Jackson movie. You're executive producing that. Well, that's the rumor. The producers are talking to me right now. They're still raising the funds, et cetera. But one thing that is happening, I's the rumor. The producers are talking to me right now. They're still raising the funds, etc. But one thing that is happening, I'm getting ready to go in a couple of weeks to Chicago, and we're

working on a television series called The Blexicans. The Blexingtons? The Blexicans. Blexicans. Black Mexicans? Yes. Black Mexicans. What happened, there's a black family and a Mexican family, and a Mexican family. And a young black man reaches out to a Mexican girl.

They get married and they have a young girl and she's a Mexican. But the black father hates Mexicans and the Mexican father hates black people. And so it's about, it's a comedy, dramedy type thing. And we'll start filming it in around three weeks. I'm going to tell you something. Black people and the Mexican make some pretty babies. I used to date this girl named Chicana Moderna. She was Mexican and black.

Chicana Moderna. Lord have mercy. She was so fine. And she used to give these great hand jobs. Okay. That's a lot of information. I know. I have a question.

That's a lot of information. I just thought about it when you said it. Oh, I'm sorry. Now, I have a question. I mean, the hand job part. I mean, up until that point, everything was good. Her full name and everything. Oh, okay. I might have to call it that next time. Her full name and everything? No, I used to call. I mean, the handjob part. I mean, up until that point, everything was good. And her full name and everything. Okay, I might have to call it that next time.

Her full name and everything? No, I used to call her Chakani Muterina. Oh, I didn't know that was her name. Oh, oh. I was like, that doesn't sound real. Chakani Muterina. I think that is. Now, Bill Duke, I have a question for you. Somebody wrote this in to me, right, from my ASCII just yesterday.

And I want to see how would you say one should respond to this. Is this offensive? Now, she's a black girl and she was out in Orlando and her girlfriend starts talking to a guy and he had two white friends and one of the white guys gave her a kiss on the cheek and called her his jungle princess. Now, she said, I'm open to all races.

I've never dated a white guy because of the ignorant ways they try to hit on me. She said, normally they call her things like chocolate queen or mocha latte. He took it too far and I had to put him in his place. I realized after he might not have meant it in a rude way, but why do white guys think it's appropriate to hit on a black

girl like that? She should have called him my cracker boo. How about that? Thank you cracker boo for calling me jungle princess cracker boo. How about that? In 2015 you would say

Crackabay Crackabay Crackabay Wouldn't that work out A little bit But then So I'm reading my responses To this question

And some people are saying Things like Well you know He probably might have Just not known Maybe he wasn't trying To be harmful How do you tolerate

That kind of ignorance I mean my jungle what Jungle princess Look man that kind of ignorance? I mean, my jungle what? Jungle princess. Look, man, you know, that kind of ignorance, I don't know how she can even tolerate it as, oh, he didn't mean that. Yes, he did. What does he call his white girlfriend?

What? My what? Cracker Bay? Cracker Bay? I'm just simply saying it's just like... Probably Nubian White Queen. That's what they say. Yeah, sure. I think it's just

insulting and ignorant. That's all. It's stupid. Okay. You know Bill Duke has to go. I know. I just want to ask one more question.

Do you think that other... Because I always say I don't want to see any more slave movies because I want to see other stories told about the black American experience. We've had successful stories.

Why does it always have to be about slavery or the butler or stupid stuff like that? Well, I mean, those movies have their meaning, too. And I think that they have their validity. For me, I agree with you. Our humanity should be displayed on a much broader panel and a much broader platform. And I think it's up to us right now, you know, the traditional ways of distribution and movies are part of the reality of

media. But at Sundance this year, they had this film celebrated that was made by three iPhones and it's got major distribution. So if we want to tell our story, those of us who have those skills, there's nothing stopping us, but we're waiting for somebody to save us or somebody to give us permission,

discover ourselves. Right. Does that make any sense? Absolutely. That's what has to happen now, man. We appreciate you joining us. Thank you for coming.

Well, God bless you. Thank you. And by Mr. Bill. Well, God bless you, man. Thank you. And by the way, mention that, you know you done f***ed up by asking that, you know. I'm gonna be in your hometown this weekend, too.

Oh, yeah? Yeah, I'm gonna be in Poughkeepsie. What you doing up in Poughkeepsie? I'm doing a show in Poughkeepsie. Yeah. I'm doing Poughkeepsie this weekend. Great, great, great, man. Thank you.

Bonnevon Theater or what? Something called the Midtown. Okay. Or Main Street. Yeah, yeah. His next question is gonna be where's the weed at? But you tell him you don't roll Main Street. Yeah, yeah. His next question is going to be where's the weed at?

But tell him you don't roll like that. Oh my, I wouldn't. I don't roll like that. There you go. I can't tell you where the weed is at.

I don't know. But my cousin can. Ladies and gentlemen, it's the Breakfast Club. Oh, by the way, last thing, buy the Dark Girls book. Dark Girls book,

yes, I have that at home. I love that book. It's right on my, it's like my coffee table book. Yeah, amazon.com or in Barnes & Noble, the Dark Girls book. It's a coffee table book, just pictures of beautiful women. Who Peter Neon goes undercover. Yes.

That's a beautiful girl. Check it out. Yes, very true. Had enough of this country? Ever dreamt about starting your own? I planted the flag. This is mine. I own this.

It's surprisingly easy. 55 gallons of water, 500 pounds of concrete. Or maybe not. No country willingly gives up their territory. Oh my God. What is that? Bullets. Listen to Escape from Zaka Stan.

That's Escape from Z-A-Q-A-S-T-A-N on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast Post Run High is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you trying your best. And you're going to figure out the rhythm of this thing. Alicia Keys, like you've never heard her before. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dani Shapiro, host of the hit podcast, Family Secrets. How would you feel if when you met your biological father for the first time,

he didn't even say hello? And what if your past itself was a secret and the time had suddenly come to share that past with your child? These are just a few of the powerful and profound questions we'll be asking on our 11th season of Family Secrets. Listen to season 11 of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, my undeadly darlings. It's Teresa, your resident ghost host. And do I have a treat for you. Haunting is crawling out from the shadows, and it's going to be devilishly good. We've got chills, thrills, and stories that'll make you wish the lights stayed on. So join me, won't you?

Let's dive into the eerie unknown together. Sleep tight, if you can. Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.