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Hi, Mom!
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Hi, Mom! (1970) is a black comedy by Brian De Palma, and is one of Robert De Niro's first movies. De Niro reprises his role of Jon Rubin from Greetings. In this film, Rubin is a fledgling "adult filmmaker" who has an idea to post cameras at his window and video tape his neighbors, a la Hitchcock's Rear Window. De Niro's character, as well as the movie overall, may be seen as a kind of comic precursor to the later De Niro film, Taxi Driver.
Be Black, Baby
Its most memorable sequence is one where a black radical group invite a group of WASPs to feel what it's like to be black, in a sequence called Be Black, Baby. It is both a satire and an example of the experimental theatre and cinéma vérité movements. Shot in the style of a documentary film, it features a theater group of African American actors interviewing Caucasians on the streets of New York City, asking them if the whites know what it is like to be black in America.
Later, a group of theater patrons attend a performance by the troupe, wherein
soul food is served. The white audience is then subjected to wearing shoe polish on their faces, while the
African American actors sport whiteface and terrorize the people in
blackface.
Robert De Niro shows up as an actor playing an
NYPD policeman, arresting members of the white audience under the pretense that they are black. The entire sequence plays with natural sound, and is "unrehearsed" and in "
real time." De Palma's familiarity and collaboration with
experimental theatre informs the sequence and ratchets up the emotional impact of those who view it, simultaneously engaging their personal responses to
racism and commenting on the deceptive and manipulative power of
cinema. "If truth itself is plastic," the sequence asks, "then
filmed truth is deeply flawed."
The sequence concludes with a thoroughly battered and abused audience raving about the show, showering praise on the black actors, crowing "Clive Barnes [New York Times theater critic] was right!"
Be Black, Baby remains one of the most challenging and intriguing sequences from its era, and its use of an audience's willingness to become emotional accomplices sheds light on
De Palma's subsequent career.
