I’ve long been a fan of Blaxploitation movies. Whether it be The Mack, Uptown Saturday Night, Across 110th St, or Cotton Comes To Harlem. These movies were everywhere when I was a kid, and they even had a bit of a resurgence in NY clubs in the late 80s/early 90s, when underground parties like “Soul Kitchen” would project Black Caesar and Coffy on the wall over the dancefloor.

When the opportunity arose to combine my love of Blaxploitation with my love of AMC’s Mad Men, it was too good to be true. While working at Leroy & Clarkson, Ben Cruz & I pitched this to AMC, as a buzz-worthy promo for the final season. They thought it was hilarious, but said they would never touch it with a 10 ft pole. They did, however, hint that they might not sue us if we made it on our own dime. So we did just that, scrambling like crazy to get it done in under six weeks, ahead of the season premiere. Leroy & Clarkson ECD, Daniel Fries, was our director and the creative brains behind the whole thing. We had a stellar cast, amazing costumes, and an awesome location in Westchester, pretty much been left intact since the 1970s.

 

I am immensely proud of this piece. My role was Creative Director, poster designer, music supervisor, & head writer, getting lots of input and ideas from Daniel Fries, Ethan Christy, David Evans, Paul Caiozzo, Keith Saunders , & Ben Cruz . Ethan especially did a lot of work on the first draft of the script. I also did the pitch posters you see in the piece with the help of Jeremy Shires, who was our storyboard artist. Daniel Fries directed. My old Punk Rock comrade Adam Santelli flew into town from LA to DP. Corey Weisz was the editor. Ronn Lueang and Jon Smith did the compositing. My man Jose Luis Pardo, aka DJ Afro from Los Amigos Invisibles, did the music – for free, and in ONE day, no less. He’s a one-man Venezuelan Kool & The Gang. Fellow Burner Nick Montgomery at Plush Sound was kind enough to do the sound mixing for free. Seth Ricart did the vintage color correction, which really pushed it over the top.

We got a lot of good press, including a shout out from John Hamm itself, who called it "Outstanding!". We got some goo social hits via sites like Gothamist, FastCo, Creativity, BuzzFeed, Slate and Complex, generating more views and mentions than we could track– even Brazil , Serbia and France loved it.

 

It also generated some interesting debate about race, specifically: ‘should a predominantly-white creative studio be spoofing black culture of any kind?’ Being one of the authors, my position on that is clear. If people are mandated at birth to only write comedy for people of their own race, the world would be a very dull place.

 

As the years go by, I still get people praising this piece, so I think we did something right(on).

 

 

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