Week 2: Post 1

Slam is an independent film written, directed and starring musician, actor, poet and author Saul Williams. The story line for Slam is set in the ghettos of southeast Washington, D.C. It is a tale of a drug dealer/aspiring rapper, Ray Joshua (Williams) who is able to find meaning in him and life through poetry. Ray finds himself in jail after getting caught up in a drug deal gone bad. It is there he meets Lauren Bell (Sonja Sohn), a writing teacher who embraces him and shows him the path of his salvation.

The extraordinary idea of this movie is that it really isn’t meant to captivate you by its plot line. There are no twists and turns, and it ends with many questions unanswered. But this is okay. The movie draws you in through its raw emotion and poetry. This movie was shot in southeast, D.C., in a southeast D.C. jail and very few people knew there was a film being shot. There are a handful of true actors in the sense; many of the characters were real inmates and people just grabbed off the street.

This movie is a fresh take on a tired theme. For example, in one scene, Saul Williams explodes into a freestyle poem in the midst of hundreds of inmates, who at the time had no idea what was going on. The looks on their faces are true and real and could not be mimicked by actors. Play the video below to see this scene.



I recommend with all my heart that everyone watch this movie and then watch the director’s cut, which gives all of the movies secrets away. While you’re at it, read some of Saul William’s poetry, here is a clip from the movie below in which he recites one of his poems. On a side note, it is through one of Saul Williams books, She, that I became aware of Bob Kaufman (see two blogs down).