Wattstax is a 1973 film directed by Mel Stuart.
It is a concert film documenting the 1972 Wattstax concert. The August 1965 Watts riots
in Los Angeles had already inspired a yearly celebration, the Watts Summer Festival. Executives at Stax Records, a major label distributing black music (and a rival to Motown), came up with the idea of putting on a benefit concert to coincide with the festival.
The concert was held on August 20, 1972, in the LA Coliseum. The lineup featured all of Stax's best artists, including Kim Weston, The Staples Singers, Albert King, Rufus Thomas, and Isaac Hayes, who closed the show. The film also includes performances outside of the concert: gospel trio The Emotions perform in a church and Johnnie Taylor was filmed at the Summit Club a month after Wattstax. Richard Pryor, a Stax artist, introduces the film and also does some comedy bits scattered throughout the movie. The film also includes interview segments where black people talk about the black experience in America, segments that were mostly pre-arranged with actors. Ted Lange, who soon would appear as Isaac the bartender on The Love Boat, appears as one of the interview subjects.
Tropes:
- Big Entrance: Isaac Hayes is brought into the stadium in a motorcade, lights flashing. Jesse Jackson, the MC, announces to the crowd that if anyone penetrates the security fences around the stage, "Mr. Hayes" will leave. Then Jackson screams "DO YOU WANT TO SEE ISAAC HAYES?"
- Concert Film: A film of the famous Wattstax concert.
- The Ken Burns Effect: Pans and zooms on still photos (a drawing of a slave ship, portraits of slaves, portraits of early black leaders like Frederick Douglass) during a photo montage.
- Male Gaze: One camera shot shows a woman outside the stadium before the concert, then pans down to focus on her behind, snugly encased in yellow shorts.
- Manipulative Editing: Luther Ingram did not appear in the concert. His performance was shot on a soundstage, and cut together with crowd shots to make it look as if he had been at Wattstax.
- N-Word Privileges: Discussed Trope. Most of the interview subjects use the N-word freely, but one talks about when he went to his father after a white person called him the N-word. His father's advice was, when someone called him the N-word, "Kick his ass. Don't ask questions."
- Portmanteau Couple Name: In-Universe, the title of the movie! "Watts" plus "Stax" equals "Wattstax."
- Real Life Writes the Plot: Rufus Thomas asks the crowd to leave the stands and come onto the field while he's performing "Do the Funky Chicken". Then he tells them to go back into the stands. Why? Because Stax Records had made an agreement with the Los Angeles Rams not to damage the turf, something that Thomas didn't know until a Stax executive told him.
- Starbucks Skin Scale: Discussed Trope. One of the interview subjects talks about his brother, who was "high yellow" (a lighter skin tone) was hanging out with his white friends, when the brother called the interview subject the N-word.
- Stock Footage: Stock footage of the Watts riots, as well as stock footage of civil rights leaders as part of a montage about the history of black people in America.
- Talking Heads: Interviewees talk about various subjects, including the aftermath of Watts, racism from white people, and relationships between black men and black women. Ted Lange, one of the interviewees, made his film debut.
- Trashcan Bonfire: One of the non-concert performances features Little Milton performing "Walking the Streets and Crying" (lip-synched), on the railroad tracks next to Watts, a trashcan bonfire setting the mood for a song about the blues.
- Where da White Women At?: Discussed Trope. One of the male interviewees admits, regarding white women that "they do a brother right." This is followed by a series of female Talking Heads scornful of black men who date white women, saying that white girls will let men get away with stuff that black women won't stand for, and that white women don't really understand black men.Ted Lange: Some n——-s I know like Chinese women.
- Your Mom: One of Richard Pryor's comedy bits has him in the character of a man trying to get past a bouncer in a nightclub. The man says to the bouncer, "I knew your mother when she was whorin'!".
