(Jessie Maple, USA, 1981, 83 minutes)
Jessie Maple's first feature, a true independent effort, was an unusual enough feat for a woman in the States in 1981, but doubly so for a Black woman.
Maple's husband served as cinematographer and the cast consisted primarily of nonprofesional Harlem actors. With the exception of the two adult leads, most had never acted before and would never act again, but they brought the authenticity the former journalist and news camera woman prized.
If Will wasn't widely seen at the time, that wasn't necessarily Maple's goal, but her film was never completely forgotten, and it's now making the rounds thanks to Janus, much like Zeinabu irene Davis's Compensation, an exceptionally fine film by another Black woman director, earlier this year.
Maple's debut opens on a long-limbed man (Obaka Adedunyo, who has the angular features and wide-set eyes of Raúl Juliá), wearing only his briefs, writhing and sweating as he goes through heroin withdrawal. There's no music, only the sound of his yelling and grunting, static from a portable radio, and retching after he runs to the toilet to throw up. This is Will.
Into this sequence, editor Willette Coleman intercuts glimpses of Will on a city basketball court in happier times. It's hard to miss the expansive length of his fingers–ideal for piano-playing and basketball-gripping alike.
While Will struggles to get clean, his wife, Jean (Loretta Devine in her first feature), does the cooking, cleaning, shopping, and working, and her patience is running thin. She recommends he seek help, but Will insists he doesn't need it. Maybe she believed him once, but those days are over.
It doesn't help that Will continues to hang with the same crew. If he was serious about quitting, he might put some space between them. Then one day, 12-year-old Delbert, aka Little Brother (Robert Dean), drops by. The men don't see a problem with a pint-size drug buddy, so Will raises a ruckus, they scatter, and he's left with a smart-mouthed kid who wants to cop.
He has to think fast, so he comes up with a way to keep Little Brother from getting high. It works once, but there's no guarantee it will work again. The orphan, who lives in a squat, lost both of his brothers to drugs and violence, but he's convinced he won't get hooked. Will, who knows otherwise, invites him to stay over for a couple of days. It isn't a solution, but it's something.
As nice as he is to the kid, who he entices with ice cream and a color television, Will could be nicer to Jean. Then he almost cheats on her with a former flame. Granted, employment officer LaVern (Mimi Ayers) started it. First, she offers him a basketball coaching job, and then she puts the moves on him, right there in her office. I didn't find that especially believable, though it ends in the least sexy way possible–heroin really is a hell of a drug.
Instead of getting darker, though, the film gets lighter and funnier–until it doesn't. Prior to that swerve towards the end, the playful moments were starting to accumulate, like the prickly exchange between Jean's teenaged sister Audrey (Audrey Maple), a basketball player, and Little Brother, who refers to all women as "babes." Audrey quickly sets him straight.
A blissful houseparty sequence also echoes and predicts similar sequences in Michael Schultz's Cooley High and Steve McQueen's Lovers Rock, two Black films with which it shares a few similarities, though it has even more in common with rough-hewn LA Rebellion films, like Charles Burnett's My Brother's Wedding or Billy Woodberry's Bless Their Little Hearts.
Though it isn't clear why Will and Jean don't have kids, it doesn't need to be, even as the role of father comes naturally to Will.
Nonetheless, Jessie Maple and her husband, LeRoy Patton (Brewster's Millions, Rosewood), who co-produced the film, had a daughter, Audrey Snipes, who has overseen Jessie's estate since 2023. Similarly, the role of mother comes naturally to Jean. Then again, she's been mothering her husband, as it were, for years.
Working with young people does Will a world of good, and in short order, he becomes the coach of Audrey's team, the Pacemakers, but he isn't a miracle worker or a saint, and despite his best efforts, not everything works out, though he appears to be finished with the junk, possibly for good.
Though it's easy to feel thankful when a worthy film gets a second life–it's just as easy to feel regret when the filmmaker is no longer around to appreciate it, but that isn't exactly the case with Maple as it has been for other woman directors, like Christina Hornisher (I wrote about her sole feature, Hollywood 90028, last year), and actors, like Carrie Hamilton (I wrote about her sole starring role, in Tokyo Pop, the year before).
Rather than theaters, Maple intended her film primarily for churches, schools, and community groups. After all, it was too gritty for the family film circuit, but not gritty enough for the grindhouse crowd.
Instead of waiting around for a distributor, she and Patton converted their home into a micro-cinema, 20 West, where they screened Will in addition to other works from independent Black filmmakers, including a young Spike Lee.
So, I don't think she considered her first feature a failure, not least since she was sufficiently encouraged to do it all over again with her followup, 1989's Twice as Nice, but after that, she retired from narrative filmmaking and moved on to other projects. Like Kathleen Collins, the multi-talented director of 1982's Losing Ground, Maple had many skills and interests, and filmmaking was only one of them.
Obaka Adedunyo, however, would continue to act, albeit in bit parts, while Loretta Devine began rehearsals for 1983's Broadway sensation Dreamgirls that same year. I would imagine her name was a factor in Will's resurrection, and she really is good, though not in a way that puts anybody to shame.
Afterward, Devine worked--and still works--regularly, though I'm more familiar with her work for TV than film, particularly A Different World, Roc, Boston Public, and Grey's Anatomy, for which she won a primetime Emmy.
Though Maple passed away two years prior to this year's long-delayed release, she was aware that a restoration was underway–and genuinely surprised that there was enough interest to make it happen.
There's a lot to be depressed about these days, but distributors, like Janus, and cultural institutions, like the National Museum of African American History and Culture, one of the three entities behind this restoration, willing to preserve unique voices, like that of Jessie Maple, gives me hope.
In 2024, the Library of Congress added Will to the National Film Registry. Maple may not have expected all this fuss over four decades after she made this $12,000 film, shot on 16mm, with her Harlem friends, neighbors, and relatives, but she deserves it.
Will plays Northwest Film Forum on Tues, July 15, thanks to Grand Illusion Cinema. Images from Janus Films (Loretta Devine and Obaka Adedunyo and Adedunyo and Robert Dean), Black Film Center & Archive (Adedunyo, Devine, and Dean), BLK MKT Vintage (Devine, Sheryl Lee Ralph, and Deborah Burrell, the original Dreamgirls, on the cover of Ebony in 1982), and New York Women in Film & Television (Jessie Maple on the set).
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