Welcome once again to "Your Favorite Movie," a regular feature here where we talk to a friend about what movie hit him or her the hardest, and why.
I was able to wrangle an interview from Vernettia N*****, my coworker. We would never hang out at a bar while on the clock, no sir, so on a certified day off, we sat at Con Murphy's and talked film. I seem to have kept my social life and my work life separate over the past five years, but count Vea as one of the exceptions. We were in training together, and by chance ended up in adjacent units as newbies. But beyond random circumstance, I count Vea as a friend due to her sunny disposition, which must have come in handy during her previous life a military bomb disposal unit (true story!).
Vea was the first person to tell me about her favorite movie when this project started, and she is also the first one now to talk with me about a movie I had never even heard before. Mahogany, a 1975 drama starring the impeccable Diana Ross, is her favorite movie of all time. It's a movie that is sometimes a love triangle drama, sometimes a social commentary, and sometimes pure 1970s schlock. All that to say, I was really excited to talk about it. And I think we hit on some really salient points in our discussion, which you'll be able to read for yourself (if you have the stamina to wade through around three hours of discussion about how sexy Billy Dee Williams is).
The conversation is below, with Vea's permission, and is lightly edited for clarity. I'm really paranoid about having too many people from my place of employment discover my blog, so I certainly edited out any specific references to our employer. In fact, how about we say this: go ahead and assume that none of this is true, Vea and I don't even work together, and the film Mahogany doesn't even exist.
Actually, that last bit is false. It exists. I'll even embed it below, for as long as YouTube allows it to stay.
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Joe: Right, I enjoy talking about movies over beers...
Vea: [laughter]
Joe: So I am drinking the beers. It is not a work day! For any bosses who are reading this. It's not a work day at all.
Vea: ...For neither of us!
Joe: So, alright... so this is definitely the first movie that I had to watch for the first time for discussing, so—
Vea: Had no background history on—?
Joe: No, I had never even heard of it.
Vea: Wow!
Joe: So I guess it would be helpful if we talked about, very briefly, what the movie was about. In your opinion.
Vea: It's a young woman in Detroit, with this great amazing talent, who's trying to find her way out of Detroit—the ghetto, definitely the Detroit ghetto [laughter]. She finds her way out, and lives this amazing life, but in the end—and has a great love in between in there too, but loses that love—and then in the end, finds that love again, and finds Detroit again.
Joe: So you see this as a romance movie?
Vea: It's... I dunno. It is, but it's also about her living her life, and experiencing her life in Italy, in Europe, something—ya know, living that life she [could] never even imagine when she was in Detroit, she couldn't see herself in that kind of life. But she knew she wanted to get out of Detroit. Then, she had this man who was... who was fire [laughter]. They had something really great. And they both messed it up a couple times. I've just always loved it.
Joe: Talking about... this is Brian, just to clarify. Sean is the villain here.
Vea: So I don't even [remember] her name... well, her name is "Mahogany," but her [actual] name was something else. Diana Ross. The character has a real name.
Joe: Ahhhh. Shit.
Vea: That's so sad, that I don't remember her real name.
Joe: And I don't think I wrote it down either. [laughter]
Vea: I can't even remember.
Joe: Well I'll put a footnote here somewhere when I'm writing it. [Editor's note: We eventually remember it.]
Vea: Anthony Perkins['s character, Sean,] named her "Mahogany," because he named all his women by inanimate objects.
Joe: Which is definitely fucked up.
Vea: He's crazy!
Joe: I will definitely—we'll definitely touch on that. But I guess, I definitely want to say that I agree with you in that I see it more than a romance movie. I saw it as more as the female protagonist's self-discovery. Ya know, it's what's in the movie's main theme song—
Vea: "Do You Know Where You're Going To?"
Joe: Exactly. Like, questioning: "Who am I?" More so than a romance, I kind of saw it as, the two guys who are fighting for her attention, kind of representing the two paths that she could've taken in her own life... and she chose correctly, in the end.
Vea: In the end, she did, because in the end, when she got everything that she wanted—that she thought she wanted. What did he say? "Success is nothing without someone you love to share it with." She's up there on stage, and everyone's clapping, and she's at that fashion show at the end. And... she didn't want that! She didn't want that old guy, that old Italian guy—
Joe: Oh yeah! The third guy?! Alright...
Vea: But he was in love with "Mahogany," he wasn't necessarily in love with her.
Joe: What the fuck was up with that guy? Like...
Vea: She was this famous model at that point. She was this beautiful model. Think about it like nowadays, like Naomi Campbell or somebody like that, someone's is just watching her, but doesn't really no her.
Joe: Like, just some creepy piece of shit?
Vea: [laughter] Listen...
Joe: The movie didn't really portray him as a villain—
Vea: No. He gave her everything. He was really in love with her, but that wasn't real love, that was more of an infatuation. Eventually, she was real tired, he was real tired... and he never really had her. But again, he was a person that just wanted to possess her. He didn't really know her—Tracy! Tracy was her name! [laughter]
Joe: ...We should've known that. [laughter]
Vea: It just popped into my head!
Joe: So [were] Christian and Sean two sides to the same coin? They were both trying to possess her?
Vea: Yeah, but I mean, they thought they loved her, but again, they didn't really know her. Sean was just too cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. And he did that to everyone! When he drove them off, and hated them for it. She was probably the girl he was most obsessed with. The way he acted at the end... But it's dark. When she comes to his apartment, she [sees pictures] of the other girl, that were on the walls when she first came.
Joe: Like, his ex.
Vea: Yeah, and it's not like he was in love with her, he didn't even have sex with her.
Joe: So, it was implied that he was gay, I guess? There was that scene that was, like, "Does that happen all the time?" But it wasn't a commentary on his gayness.
Vea: He may have been. You knew he loved her. Was it an obsessive love? Yes. But sexual? Um...
Joe: That's true. All different kinds of love! I mean, just going back, how we were saying how they were "possessive" of Tracy. And I guess it felt around the middle, or the end of the first third of the movie, that Brian was also a little possessive of her?
Vea: He was. He was.
Joe: And that made it frustrating, which I guess was the point, for us as the viewer. This is supposed to be the "male hero" of the movie, but he's also acting like a dick!
Vea: [laughter] You mean when he comes to Rome, and him and Anthony Perkins get in a fight?
Joe: No, when—
Vea: When he's running for alderman?
Joe: Yup! Which, I had to look up what "alderman" meant.
Vea: Maybe that's a black thing, because Good Times, they used to have the guy who was the alderman, and I was like, "is that a city councilman or something?" But... he had a different kind of love for her, but he was so self-absorbed also—
Joe: And he eventually came around! I'm not trying to say that he was a bad character too.
Vea: No, and I don't think Christian was a bad character, or a bad person. Sean was crazy—
Joe: Like, legitimately crazy! With the gun?!
Vea: That was too much.
Joe: [laughter]
Vea: But that shows you how obsessed he was with her. Just, having her for himself.
Joe: He was the villain, but do you feel like any of the scenes [in which] was objectifying mean something different here in 2019? With Me Too. He was kind of her boss—I mean, I don't know, I'm not too familiar with photographer-model relationships, but, to me, that would seem like a Me Too situation. He hires her, and then kisses her before he leaves. That seems fucked up.
Vea: You mean when they were in Detroit?
Joe: Yeah, like, towards the beginning. Maybe from our modern day perspective, that scene seemed even more messed up than how the movie was portraying it at the time.
Vea: But you could look at it like this too. So, in Detroit, she was enamored with him. He was more her muse. He gave her—he was like, "I believe I can get you out of Detroit." Gave her all these hopes and dreams about what she could do. He was like, "I'm gonna give you a call," and she was like, whatever. And she was still like... she met this guy, he was a photographer... But then when she got to Rome, it switched. Because he became obsessed with her, she was the one on top. He was like, "I created you, they don't know anything about 'Mahogany.'" So it was almost like what we always say about men—what women say about men—you guys are attracted to something about us, like, "Oh you're so strong," or something like that, but in the end, some men turn around and hate, like, "You're too independent, you're too strong." What drew him to her, he got jealous of in the end. Everyone else was drawn to the same thing too. But why wouldn't they be? Because he's taking the pictures. He's showing them how he's there. So it kind of switched around. He was more her muse, and she was in love with him, and then got to Rome, and she got famous. He wanted to take credit for it, and felt like she belonged to him.
Joe: It's probably for the best for her that he switched because at that point, she realized: this is not who I want to be. I don't want to be a fucking object.
Vea: Remember, she wasn't model. It wasn't that she wanted to be a model. She wanted to be a clothing designer. And even though she was having fun, she was like... well, that's when she had her "accident." [laughter] That's when she had what she really wanted, she [had] said, "I really want to design clothes." And Christian gave her that opportunity. [Editor's note: we really didn't get back to the subject of Tracy's "accident," but we should've. Basically Sean purposefully crashes a car with both of them in it, just to get a good reaction shot from Tracy. And then he dies in that crash?! It's a fucking wild '70s set piece.]
Joe: But then, I guess, she didn't realize that it wasn't... I don't want to say that it wasn't her "calling," but she herself became an asshole when she achieved what she always wanted. What does that say about—are they trying to comment on the fact that you change when you get what you want?
Vea: She changed during it, and then when she got there... you're gonna make me go back to the theme song! [laughter] I think he says it twice in the movie—"Success is nothing without someone you love to share it with." She got everything she wanted. She wanted to be this clothing designer, she had this great fashion show, everybody was clapping, everything was great! But she was like... "Something's not right. I want to go home." [Christian] says, "Okay, we'll go back to the villa," and she was like, "No, I want to go home."
Joe: Go back to the warm embrace of Brian.
Vea: So even for me, as a kid, watching this movie, it was always—I dunno, maybe that was the reason I always wanted to travel, travel, travel, because I always felt like... I didn't know who I was as a kid. I'm the youngest daughter, but I'm the third kid, so I'm right in the middle there. I didn't know what my identity was, and I knew I wasn't going to find it in Philadelphia. So "Vea" wasn't born in Philadelphia, I became "Vea" once I was in the service, once I started traveling. I remember being in Rome one day. Say the Vatican is here, and St. Peters is here [gesturing on the bar], and there was this cafe right [in the middle of them], I remember sitting there drinking wine. [laughter] It was probably 11, 12 o'clock in the morning, drinking wine, smoking cigarettes, no kids, in Rome, and I'm like... wow, ya know what? This is... I was never like, "I want to be nurse," I was never like that, I just knew I wanted to travel. See the world. And I was like, "Wow, I'm finally doing the things I wanted to do." Becoming who I wanted to be. And... I started to think about Mahogany. I was like, "Why did I always want to go to Rome?" I feel like it was from that movie. Just watching her go to Rome, seeing things she'd never seen—
Joe: So you see yourself in Tracy?
Vea: Yeah, I definitely think so! Because in the end... I came back home. [laughter] And now I want to leave again. [laughter]
Joe: Is Philadelphia your "Brian"?
Vea: My family is my "Brian."
Joe: Do you feel like—and this is why I'm glad you picked this movie—do you feel like your, and our, being social workers, does that have anything to do with your love for this movie? Brian was a politician, but the way he was speaking seemed to me to be [coming from] a social work perspective. How does your current profession tie into your love for Mahogany, if at all? ...Or have you not thought about it?
Vea: I have not thought about that! I don't know.
Joe: I saw a lot of our work in the Brian scenes where he was talking about when the homeless person got roped into the modeling scene, and [he was] like, "How much is this person getting paid?"
Vea: Or when he's at the unemployment office, and he's trying to get people registered to vote?
Joe: And how his main thing was, "Unlike you, Tracy, I don't want to leave. I want to stick around and help these people." That's—not that that's why I'm sticking around in Philadelphia, but it's definitely [part of it].
Vea: Because he had the option to leave. Anybody has the option to leave where they were born and raised at. To me, it was like he always judged her that she even wanted to [leave]. Everyone's dream and everyone's path is not the same. It may end up the same, you might start here, or here, and end up the same, but the way you go is going to be different. You have to respect people for that, and I don't think he did. He thought that whole modeling world was a joke... especially with crazy Sean.
Joe: I mean, [Brian's] personal experience was that he got a gun pulled on him, in the modeling world, so... he has a point.
Vea: He was fighting for his life! And would've killed Sean if that gun was loaded. Because he shot him, but the gun wasn't loaded!
Joe: [laughter]
Vea: And Sean was like... are you crazy?
Joe: Oh my god.
Vea: I just wish—if he hadn't judged her like he did, it would've ended sooner.
Joe: The weird thing is, Brian is ultimately right, because Tracy eventually realizes that she wants to go back. So, he was bullheaded about it, and judgy about it, for sure—
Vea: But is he right?
Joe: Well, I mean, if his whole point is that, "You should stick around, and we'll make a home here," and she disagrees, and goes away, and deals with a homicidal maniac, deals with her[self] becoming an irritable person, and pretty much, uh, a slave to a rich nothing of a character—
Vea: Was she his slave? Because they weren't having sex or anything. He was just supporting her dream.
Joe: But, like, she becomes this person that she—and the audience—clearly didn't want her to be. So when she goes back to Brian, it's her admitting that Brian was—he was an asshole about it, but he was indeed right the whole time.
Vea: Now I wonder what happens after that, when she does that whole scene again, ya know, "I just want my man back," and they finally see each other. How does that work out for them in the end? Does she move back to Detroit and he wins the mayoral race? Mahogany 2?
Joe: We ask ourselves: does Tracy get frustrated with her life again? Will she ever be satisfied? I'm not judging her in that question! But...
Vea: I think, just like me, I'm like, okay, I'm having kids, that kind of stuff. And I'm fine with that... for a while. Then you get antsy, like, "Wait a minute, is this what I'm supposed to be doing? No." And then you go do this. Now that [the kids] are a little older, it's like... that's why I said I'm going to go to school for nursing now, because I said, they're gonna leave. Back on my own! Doing what I wanna do! I better be doing something where I'm living my life how I wanna live it. You know what I got from this movie? And I feel like I do live my life like this—I don't want any regrets from things. I never want to feel like, oh, you never did that, because you were scared. Or you didn't do this, because somebody told you not to. I'm always that person, like, "Nope, I'm gonna go do it." I joined the military, no one in my family wanted me to join the military. And I was like, "Nope, I'm gonna do it." I joined the bomb squad, and they were like, "Oh my god, what is she doing?!"
Joe: [laughter]
Vea: And I'm like, "Nope, I'm gonna do it." Now they just kind of look at me, and are like "Okay..." When I was in Iraq the first time, I had to lie and tell my grandfather that I was going to Puerto Rico. Everyone's like, "You better tell him the truth," and I was like, "I can't!" I didn't want him to salt me out on this, so I didn't tell him the truth. They all said, "Whatever, just go do what you wanna do." It's my life. You're only gonna live once... that I know of. That's why I can't see me being here. I can't spend twenty more years here. It would kill my soul!
Joe: I don't think there's anything wrong with, like... it's not always a choice for your whole life, between [being] a person that stays and a person that leaves. I don't think there's anything wrong with doing both, with switching it up.
Vea: Because you're gonna have those times where you're like, "I have to stay still to raise my kids." But they're growing. One's going to high school, one's to middle school. Before you know it, they're gonna be in college. And then I'm gonna sit around and be like, I have no life? I'm still stuck here at [our place of employment, which will not be written here]!
Joe: [laughter]
Vea: I'll be making this great money, but I'll be fat and bitter like the rest of them. Like, nah, I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that. So... I dunno. I just love the whole going to Europe—and I love Europe. I was gonna go there as a kid, because of this movie. Once I got there, I loved it. That's probably my favorite place to go.
Joe: They do make it seem pretty romantic I guess.
Vea: It's clean, the trains are so easy to [use], and the boys are so cute. [laughter] The wine is so good, all these things that make it so interesting. Just when I hear that song... I had it as my ringtone a month or two ago.
Joe: "Theme from Mahogany"?
Vea: Yup.
Joe: That hit number one on the Billboard charts.
Vea: Did it? It's a really good song.
Joe: So, let me ask you this. I've been trying to think of how to word this question. I guess one of the points of doing this movie project is that I want to enjoy the movies on the same level as you do. Do you personally feel that I, as a white boy, would have any barriers to enjoying the movie?
Vea: I don't think there's any barriers to enjoying the movie.
Joe: And I don't think so either.
Vea: I'm a huge Diana Ross fan. I used to call her my "second mom." Like, "That's my real mom." My mom took me to see her at—when did I go to see her in concert? I can't think of it. Academy of Music maybe? I was eight or nine years old. It was like... jaw-dropping. I was like, "Oh my god! Diana Ross!"
Joe: She did a really good job in the movie. I mean, I guess I was just curious... for example. When we were talking about this a few weeks ago, and I had mentioned Billy Dee Williams, and you said, "Well we had him first."
Vea: You're talking about, um...
Joe: About Lando.
Vea: Yeah, Empire Strikes Back. I was like, "Empire Strikes Back?!" He became famous through these movies. Especially Lady Sings the Blues. That's like... Billy, he's the man in that movie, like, woo!
Joe: But the implication was that—and I'm not trying to call you out or anything—
Vea: Not even as a "black thing," like, "we had him first," but, like, we had him as sexy Billy Dee. Not that Empire Strikes Back shit.
Joe: Okay! So you were speaking more from a female perspective than a black perspective.
Vea: Yeah! He was our leading man, like a Denzel. Back then. And then he does some stupid Star Wars movie, and all you guys are in love. Guys know him from Star Wars. I forget that he played that, I didn't even know the guy's name. Women know him from Lady Sings the Blues. He was known for being sexy. He used to do a Colt 45 beer commercial. You might have to look it up on YouTube. He was all about sexiness. It wasn't that he was black. Don't even...
Joe: Or! Was it that you were speaking from a cool person's perspective versus a nerd's perspective? [laughter]
Vea: No! You gotta understand his sexiness!
Joe: Sure. Okay.
Vea: It had to be Colt 45 that he was the spokesperson for. And he would have this commercial, he was, like... he was just sexy, oh my god. But like, in Lady Sings the Blues, she's a singer, and she first starts out, they had these clubs that you would—it was kind of like stripping and singing. And men hold the dollars out, and girls walk up, and they have to catch the dollars between their legs—
Joe: This is the Colt 45 commercial?!
Vea: No, this is Lady Sings the Blues.
Joe: Okay. [laughter]
Vea: And so he's holding the money out for her to come get it, and she's scared—she's a new person, so she's scared to come get it, and he says, really sexily he says, something like, [inaudible, fuck the out-of-town obnoxious bros sitting behind us. —Editor]. But he was like... mmm mmm. What was his name in Empire Strikes Back?
Joe: Lando.
Vea: I knew it was something like that.
Joe: I mean, I'm not the biggest Star Wars fan!
Vea: [laughter]
Joe: I guess when you had said that, I took it wrong.
Vea: No, because there are plenty of white women who understand sexiness... you wouldn't understand sexiness and Lady Sings the Blues. You're too young to understand the Colt 45 commercial!
Joe: [laughter] [in a mock indignant voice] I've drank my share of Colt 45!
Vea: No, I'm saying to remember the commercial. I want you to YouTube it.
Joe: I'll embed it in this conversation.
Vea: Now it's sad to look at him, like, "Oh my god, you're like an old man!"
Joe: And his sexiness... is why this is your favorite movie! I'm just kidding.
Vea: Part of it... well, I was just a kid watching this, so...
Joe: [laughter] As a six-year-old, "I love this movie because Lando is sexy."
Vea: As an adult, I think I love it for different reasons. One, when I was younger, it was because of her. Diana Ross, and her going out and experiencing the world. And me, knowing, I just wanna go out and travel. Go, go, go, go, find out who I am. As adult, I'm like, ya know what... what you were saying about, how she came back and she realized that he was right. Yeah, she did, so sometimes you have to be like, listen, I went out and did all these things, but in the end... there's no place like home.
Joe: I knew you'd tie this to Wizard of Oz with something!
Vea: I'm telling you, that's like the model movie.
Joe: So that's all Diana Ross does, is movies that comment on Wizard of Oz? [/s]
Vea: No, she's only done three movies...
Joe: She's only done three? Her IMDB page is not very extensive. [Editor's note: I mean, it is pretty extensive, but only because her songs are featured everywhere. As an actress in a fictional role, there's barely anything.]
Vea: She's got tons of songs.
Joe: Oh yeah, as a musical artist, she's unimpeachable. She's one of the best.
Vea: You would think you were see her out more now. I guess she's like, "Listen, I've done enough. I have enough money." [laughter] I don't think she's too concerned with performing anymore. Or even doing guest appearances on different TV shows.
Joe: Okay, so getting back to the point that I wanted to talk to you about. Do you see this as a "black movie"? And is that okay for me to ask?
Vea: Yeah. Well, one, the reason I would say no is because Diana Ross had a more universal appeal than most Motown stars. I remember, in the last year, talking to my dad about different artists, and he was like, "black people didn't embrace Diana Ross as much as the whole world did, because..." Who's somebody else that was better? Oh, I think it might've been Martha, um, what was her—
Joe: Vandella? [Editor's note: Martha Reeves was the lead in Martha and the Vandellas, so I'm wrong on multiple levels here.]
Vea: No... maybe her. She had a couple Supremes behind her too. They thought she was a better singer, but Diana Ross became more popular because white people and everybody else liked her too. But [in] the black community, it was the other lady who was more popular. Diana Ross, of course, she had the baby with Berry Gordy. I don't think it was a "black movie" just because she had this universal appeal. And you had Anthony Perkins in there, who was—that was after the, um, the motel one... he was the killer?
Joe: Anthony Perkins?
Vea: The Bates Motel?
Joe: Oh yeah, the fucking...
Vea: The Bates Motel, right?
Joe: Nah, what's... no, that's not what it's called, is it? Um... Jesus, what the fuck is that movie called?
Vea: Oh, Psycho!
Joe: Psycho! With the shower scene! He was the villain in that?
Vea: Yeah!
Joe: I've never seen that movie.
Vea: You've never seen it?!
Joe: No one's said it's their favorite!
Vea: You gotta see that, because then you'll understand how fucking creepy he is! Like, he's real creepy.
Joe: So Mahogany was after Psycho?
Vea: I think Psycho was first. Because, well, it's in black-and-white, but that doesn't mean anything. He's real young in that movie... yeah, Psycho was first. In Mahogany, he's in his 40s, at least.
Joe: So I guess I lacked that context in that... while watching the movie, considering who was the villain, Brian or Sean—clearly by the end it's obvious, but I guess it would've been more obvious to me earlier on, had I seen him stab a chick in the shower.
Vea: He was crazy!
Joe: It was pretty funny.
Vea: So, what I was saying, I don't think it's a "black movie," because you have him, who was a very popular actor... I don't know [what] else he did besides the Psycho movies. There was a total of three of those maybe? But he's been around a long time. And Diana Ross was at the top of her game musically at this point. I'm trying to think, did Motown finance [this]? They probably did finance the movie.
Joe: I feel she [had] split from Motown by '75. [Editor's note: Wrong, as always. She had split from the Supremes by 1970, but was still under Motown when this movie came out. Mahogany is financed by Paramount and Motown jointly. And it must be said, whether Ross was "at the top of her game" in 1975 is HIGHLY debatable, but we'll leave that for "Your Favorite Album."]
Vea: So another movie that kind of ties into this movie is Dreamgirls, which is a play, and it's supposedly about the Supremes. The movie's with Beyoncé, and Beyoncé plays the Diana Ross part. Jamie Fox is the Berry Gordy person who's, like, controlling her. Again, another person who wasn't really in love with her—
Joe: And he [Gordy] was the director of Mahogany?
Vea: I think he was the director. But in the movie you can see how Berry Gordy was another one like Sean, wasn't really in love with her, but was more obsessed with the Diana Ross persona, but not really in love with her as a person.
Joe: That's actually pretty layered, that you could connect the dots between the director of a movie and villain of the movie he's directing.
Vea: If you watch Dreamgirls—all those scenes where Sean's taking pictures of her, in Mahogany, and you hear the theme song playing—all that they did in Dreamgirls too, with Beyoncé playing Diana Ross. It's same exact scenario, with a man that's in love with her, but not really in love with her... they had a baby together in real life, Ross and Gordy, though they never got married.
Joe: So how daft to you have to be to be directing this movie and not seeing yourself in the villain?
Vea: He's not the villain, he loves her! [laughter]
Joe: But you're comparing Berry Gordy to Sean, who is definitely the villain.
Vea: Right, but Berry Gordy doesn't see himself as that!
Joe: Right, that's what I'm saying—
Vea: —how daft do you have to be. Who's going to see themselves as the villain? Do you think these men in history thought of themselves as villains? Who sees that about themselves? That takes a lot of reflection, to be like, "I'm fucked up." [laughter]
Joe: You know what? It's something that I strive to achieve. I want to know when I'm a hypocritical egomaniac. And I hope that people call me out on that.
Vea: And that's good if you hear it! If Pam called you out on it, you'd be like "Oh, she's just crazy." But do you really here her saying that, like, "Joseph, you have become an asshole," and you really take it to heart? Who the hell's doing that? I ain't doing that. If my friend tells me I'm an asshole, I'd be like, what?! We were actually talking about this the other day at work, like, you have your actual self. You have the self you thought you were gonna be. And you have how you see yourself. And so those are conflicting identities, all the time. Like, "I think I'm this great person," my kids may say something different, I thought I was gonna be another time of person. Ya know?
Joe: It's so interesting that you bring that up in the conversation about Mahogany, because that is what Tracy is going through. It's like, how does she see herself, versus how she actually is, versus how she becomes when she gets certain means. It's... it's definitely a movie of discovering yourself.
Vea: Right, because she didn't know who she was or what she wanted, and then she got it all, right? She wanted to be able to put her fashion out, and she got a man to finance her fashion line, and it still wasn't what she wanted.
Joe: Isn't that what we're all always going through? Like... "Who am I?" and "What the fuck am I doing?"
Vea: But if you do it in... self-reflection is great, you're supposed to self-reflect. Like you said, always trying to improve who you are, always trying to be the best person you can be. That's a good thing. Some people do it with material things, some people try to do it by making their status different, thinking that's going to make them happy. And maybe that will! But I don't believe it will. I believe that you really have to work on yourself, and know who you are. So if you're the same person in every situation, like, "I'm the same person everywhere I go," because I know who I am. But it took me leaving here—just like with Tracy!—it took me to leave Philadelphia, and spend all those years away, and just come home to visit, and meet all these different people, and do all these different things, to really know who I am. As a person. Because you gotta know who you are. The true value of who you are. And some people never know that. I have an aunt, she's a little older than me, she says, "I didn't know what you needed as a little kid, but I knew you weren't going to find it here!"
Joe: That's cool that you found this personal note in Mahogany.
Vea: It's my movie!
Joe: Yeah.
Vea: I'm so mad you had never seen it.
Joe: [laughter]
Vea: And I think it's an age thing more. Maybe if you were in your 40s or 50s you would've seen it, just because of Diana Ross, and how popular she was. I don't think it's a color thing, or a race thing, I think it's an age thing. And you've never seen Dreamgirls?
Joe: No. [laughter]
Vea: There might be too much singing for you.
Joe: What? No! I've done musical theater!
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