![]() And he had shopped this book around for years and wasn’t able to find a U.S. She’s one of the first black British publishers. I was in London back in August, and I had a chance to check with Margaret Busby, who was Sam Greenlee’s first publisher. It was also announced in August that Lee Daniels Entertainment had secured an option on The Spook Who Sat by the Door to develop it as the basis of a series with Fox 21 Television Studios, so we’ll see how that goes. And this year commemorates the 45th anniversary of the film adaptation. reprint, of the novel The Spook Who Sat by the Door. Next year celebrates the 50th anniversary of the original British publication, and subsequent U.S. You can’t remember his face, or what he looks like, or what he has said, even minutes after you spoke to him.” He has a way of fading into the background. In fact, the director of his CIA training program says, “I somehow forgot that the man existed. ![]() This is an idea that Dan Freeman uses to his advantage in The Spook Who Sat by the Door. It’s the refusal of the larger society to see and acknowledge black people, especially black men. For example, the scene in the film where the janitor goes in and steals the pipes of the CEO. This is something that Ralph Ellison argued in his novel, Invisible Man, where he talked about the places where black people are regularly seen, like domestic spaces. The other side of this is the long contended invisibility of black people. So there are blacks in the Secret Service and Foreign Service of various nations. In fact, Sam Greenlee himself, back in the 1950s and early ‘60s, was a spook. The other is the indisputable existence of “spooks,” which is the intelligence community parlance for spies. Then I saw this YouTube posting with the African American comedian Ryan Davis, who argued-in a funny way, but maybe convincingly-that black men’s hyper-visibility in places where they aren’t meant to be would mean that the minute a black James Bond showed up on a case, somebody would call the police on him. This, despite the backstory of James Bond’s Swiss origins and the undeniable fact that Idris Elba is an Englishman of African descent. A dear old friend who carries a British passport and has lived in London for the better part of his adult life insisted that James Bond was always meant to be an Englishman. Some of the opposition even came from black people. In fact, one of them argued that Idris’s persona was too “street” for the urbane and sophisticated James Bond. And the reactions to this rumor varied from white outrage, especially white Brits who have this investment in the whiteness of James Bond, and what they considered an attempt to appropriate one of their icons. ![]() Sometime ago it was rumored-I think this has actually been in conversation for maybe a decade-that Idris Elba was being considered as the new James Bond, Agent 007, when Daniel Craig, who’s the current 007, steps down. I’m a storyteller, so I like to tell stories, and this one is about, interestingly enough, Idris Elba. I want to start out the conversation just by sharing a little. I’m so glad to see you here, and so glad to be on this panel with David and Jamilah Lemieux. Chicago’s Black Arts Movement in Film is funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art. Chicago’s Black Arts Movement in Film is part of Art Design Chicago, an initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art exploring Chicago’s art and design legacy, with presenting partner The Richard H. ![]() The event was presented by South Side Projections and Chicago State University’s Gwendolyn Brooks Library as part of South Side Projections’ film series Chicago’s Black Arts Movement on Film. ![]()
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