Latest / Cinema Yūgen / KENT'S CLASSICS: The Hammer Strikes!
Transcript
- 0:00G'day, that's right, it's that time again. Time for CINEMA UGAAAAAY!
- 0:06Music.
- 0:17Yes, Uganites, Kent's Classics for this month, the fan-requested classics,
- 0:23Fred Williamson. The Hammer!
- 0:25Fred the Hammer Williamson. If you've seen movies like Black Caesar,
- 0:30Hell Up in Harlem, Bucktown, Me and Johnny Barrows, No Way Back,
- 0:36One Down, Two to Go, and of course, Dust Till Dawn, and a whole lot more.
- 0:44I sat down for a cigar with the man, the legend.
- 0:49He really needs no introduction But in case you don't know him There will be
- 0:54a link in the description And go check out the work Of the Hammer Fred the Hammer,
- 1:02Williamson here he is Dude what else would I be doing Oh man I don't know I
- 1:09suppose if you were down under We'd be sitting having We'd be sitting having a cigar together,
- 1:14I'm having a cigar on the patio right now Because it's raining so
- 1:16I love smoke on the patio when it's raining man it's like
- 1:19takes me back to good old Melo days man back in Chicago and relaxing and when
- 1:24I'm in Rome when it's raining I love rain I'm a Midwestern I just love the sound
- 1:30of the rain it's very calming oh yeah well I suppose we'd have to we'd have
- 1:35to have a cigar somewhere where it is raining because in Australia we don't get too much rain.
- 1:41I live in Palm Springs. We don't get too much rain here. That's why I'm so excited.
- 1:44It rains maybe once every two years here, man. So I'm excited by seeing the rain.
- 1:50Yeah. So that's why I'm excited. Palm Springs is a desert. We get no rain here.
- 1:54Wow. Yeah, Australia's a bit the same.
- 1:57But, yeah, that's awesome.
- 2:00I'm glad I'm sitting down, Hammer, because this is a real honor for me,
- 2:06man. I love all of your movies.
- 2:10Is you didn't you didn't mention from death to dawn dude that's
- 2:13that's the latest that's everybody seems to be getting a kick out of that
- 2:16sucker yeah no i mean i i i love i
- 2:19i love that too but i mean i you know i
- 2:22love uh you know all of the the pitches where
- 2:24you were you know you can't get them all you can't get them all man there's
- 2:27like 60 65 of them you can't get them all i know i know so i figured maybe just
- 2:33just to kick off i know that there's always people who who listen to the show
- 2:38that aren't as cinema savvy as others.
- 2:42So I was wondering if you might just very briefly, to start off,
- 2:47just give people a little bit of history of how you came.
- 2:52A lot of people know that you played football before you were an actor.
- 2:57Right. If you could give people a little bit of a backstory of how you came to the film business.
- 3:02This well first of all i was
- 3:05i'm a college graduate from northwestern university with an architecture engineering
- 3:08degree so being in the movie business was far best far best for my mentality
- 3:14also playing pro football was not something that i had saw in my future but
- 3:19at northwestern i was good at it so i was fortunate enough to uh to take it off into the pros,
- 3:25and it gave me an inroad because i created an image and my image i'm very lucky
- 3:31that my image that I have on the screen is close to my image in real life,
- 3:35and what I portrayed on the football field as a badass.
- 3:39And a lot of movies that I make are like Eastwood, Bronson combination would always have a badge.
- 3:44So when he booked me like in Black Cobra, I'm a badass with a badge.
- 3:49So I have an image that works for me and I'm lucky that the fans see it the same way.
- 3:55And that sort of helps, keeps me working, keeps me going.
- 4:01Being in the movie business is something that happened once I stopped playing
- 4:04football and went full-time as an architect.
- 4:07I could not make the transition comfortably. Sitting behind a desk doing 9 to
- 4:135 at an hour for lunch just did not fit my personality.
- 4:17So one night I'm looking at television and I see Diane Carroll,
- 4:21first black actress to have her own television series. It was called Julia.
- 4:25And I noticed that the guest star role each week was a new boyfriend. friend.
- 4:30And I said, wow, man, I'm better looking than any of those guys.
- 4:32I'm going to Hollywood to become Stanfield's boyfriend on the Julia show.
- 4:36It took me three days to accomplish that. They signed me to a three-year contract
- 4:40to play her boyfriend on the Julia show.
- 4:44Fortunately, it was at 20th Century Fox. I was sitting in the commentary one
- 4:49day and a guy walks by and he says, you're the Hammer, right? Yeah, I'm the Hammer.
- 4:52He said, I'm doing a movie. I got a football scene in it. I don't know anything about football.
- 4:56Would you direct or cast all the football players so I could have a legitimate
- 5:00football game in the movie. I said, yeah, no problem.
- 5:03The guy was Robert Altman and the movie was MASH, my first movie.
- 5:07Fantastic. What a beginning.
- 5:10Yeah. You got to have a beginning at something. When you go for something,
- 5:16the worst thing somebody can say to you is no.
- 5:18But no is a good thing because no gives you an opportunity to go back and correct
- 5:22your faults and come back again.
- 5:24And every time they say no, you get better and better.
- 5:27So pretty soon, that no gets tossed out of the window. Yes will eventually take its place.
- 5:32Yeah. Now it's...
- 5:35And there's so many incredible stories about how people come into the film business.
- 5:41Some, you know, it's like that old saying, isn't it? Like some are born to greatness,
- 5:46some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them, don't you think?
- 5:51Yeah, a combination of all of that would be perfect. But being thrust upon you
- 5:56doesn't work in Hollywood.
- 5:57You have to bring something to the table that has some financial value.
- 6:03You and don't think it's all about you love
- 6:06them and they love you it's not about that the moment you stop
- 6:08making their money you no longer exist so i
- 6:11didn't want to wait for that to happen that's why i started
- 6:14making my own producing my own i learned
- 6:17the business of the business while i
- 6:20was working i absorbed everything around me i
- 6:23watched what they did i i bugged the crew what do you call that
- 6:26thing why are you putting that over there what is that over there i bugged
- 6:29them by the time I got ready to do my own I was
- 6:32qualified technically to make a
- 6:35film so then I had to learn the business of the
- 6:38business so the first thing I did was I went to con I went to
- 6:41con France I sit on the patio of the Carlton Terrace because I heard that's
- 6:44where all the big high rollers hang out I gave them a to be $50 a day to save
- 6:49me a table the middle of the patio but the Carlton Terrace yeah I just shit
- 6:53and I watched and I learned how to deal yeah because that's I mean And really,
- 6:58at the end of the day, after all the filmmaking is done,
- 7:02it's all about selling it, isn't it?
- 7:05It's all about selling, but then you've got to know who you're making the movie for.
- 7:08Making a movie is maybe simple to some people, but you better know who your market is.
- 7:14You better know that guy on the corner. When you pass by him,
- 7:17ask him, I'm getting ready to make a movie.
- 7:19It's going to be in here. It's going to happen. Would you go see it?
- 7:23If he says, what? You're going to do what? What kind of movie?
- 7:26Forget about it. Change your movie. do something different, or cast it different.
- 7:30You've got to talk to the people on the street because that's who you're making it for. Yeah, exactly.
- 7:33They're your audience, and the people are going to line up and buy movie tickets,
- 7:38as is commonly... But unless it's a Hollywood film, right?
- 7:44They make it for $90 million, then they spend $10 million with TV ads making
- 7:47a lot of noise on television.
- 7:49They make you run to the TV when you hear all this noise. You run to the TV and see what it is.
- 7:54You certainly realize after a few years that's the
- 7:58that's the heart of the movie that noise that you hear
- 8:00for 10 seconds is a damn movie yeah and
- 8:04then of course it's on bus sides and billboards and
- 8:07and everywhere else yeah yeah they spend so much money on the independent independent
- 8:13the mentality of an independent filmmaker has to be much more different than
- 8:18the hollywood guys because we don't have the money to have the special effects
- 8:22because today special effects is the star of the movie.
- 8:25You have to have a story that people are interested in, keep their interest.
- 8:29Special effects, you don't have the money, you better have a good story.
- 8:33I like the story you told once that when you made one of your first independent
- 8:38pitches, No Way Back, and you went to the Cannes Film Festival and you put little
- 8:43girls in tight t-shirts long before it was popular,
- 8:46and you sold the heck out of No Way Back.
- 8:51After I learned I learned how to get the financing.
- 8:54I sold the film with just a poster because I didn't have the money to make the
- 9:00film, so I sold it with a poster.
- 9:02And I did it by doing the t-shirts with the girls.
- 9:06I took the contracts from the foreign buyers back to the bank here in America.
- 9:10They loaned me money against the contracts.
- 9:12I made the movie and I delivered the movie to the buyers. That's the way I first
- 9:17started making my movie.
- 9:19Totally. So, Hammer, I wonder if we might just take a little trip down memory
- 9:23lane before we talk about the latest and greatest film that you're in,
- 9:27that we're talking up today, which is Nazi Doomsday Device, also known as Atomic Eden.
- 9:34I just handpicked a couple. These are some of my absolute personal favorites of yours.
- 9:41And if you could maybe tell us a little bit, if you have some reminiscences or something like that.
- 9:49The first one I love. I absolutely think this is a great film.
- 9:53And it also puts you alongside some of the other legends, like Jim Brown and
- 9:58Richard Roundtree, and, oh, the other Jim.
- 10:04Kelly. Yeah. Jim Kelly. Jim Kelly, yeah. And it's called One Down and Two to Go.
- 10:12Man, I love that movie. It's just like the ultimate cast.
- 10:17There's you know you Jim Brown and and
- 10:20Richard and Jim and it's just
- 10:23wow I mean what a lineup right it's almost
- 10:26like in modern times where you have like the big like George
- 10:29Clooney and Brad Pitt and all that sort of stuff but it was it was you guys
- 10:32all together in this movie what was that like it was actually a sequel it was
- 10:37actually a sequel to Greta Hardway to put put us back together again this is
- 10:41the majors didn't see seize the idea they didn't see it as a profitable thing to do.
- 10:48So I seized it upon myself to bring a sequel to Three the Hard Way,
- 10:52which is one down, two to go.
- 10:55Now, these guys are my friends, personally. So it was easy for me to write their
- 11:02character as I know them.
- 11:04I know Jim Kelly is a martial arts.
- 11:07Roundtree is a cool-looking guy that shoots a gun.
- 11:10Jim has this facade of being an angry young man who can kill you with a look.
- 11:16And I'm the dandy Don. I'm the smooth, sweet-talking one to make this combination
- 11:22work because we all can't be tough guys. Somebody has to be different.
- 11:27Personalities have to be different to make it work. Everybody can't be heroes.
- 11:31So I didn't write it for them to be heroes.
- 11:34Each guy got caught in his own situation. Each guy had to defend himself the
- 11:39way he thought was best to do it, and that's what made the movie work.
- 11:43Yeah, it's awesome. some awesome stuff another
- 11:47one that i'm very partial to a lot of
- 11:50people are well aware that early on
- 11:53we australians haven't been too influential worldwide or you know back during
- 12:00this film's release anyway weren't too influential but we did make one film
- 12:05that broke through and became such an influence through europe and america it
- 12:10was a film called the road warrior,
- 12:12and in the wake of the Rogario there were all kinds of,
- 12:16spoofs and rip-offs. One of them was Warriors of the Wasteland,
- 12:20which was an Italian production, which you're in.
- 12:23Can you tell me, man, that's a wild, like, I mean, it takes the road warrior to a whole new level.
- 12:31What was it like making Warriors of the Wasteland?
- 12:35That's an Italian philosophy. They like to copy things and put their Italian touch on it.
- 12:42And that's really kind of what they did because they don't have the money.
- 12:46Really to have all those machines and all those cars and all those things that
- 12:49they had in Road Warrior.
- 12:52Yeah. But they try to give you characters like Road Warrior did. Yeah.
- 12:57So I played this character who fits my image.
- 13:03I sell a brand. I don't just come into a movie as an actor. I sell a brand.
- 13:09Like, you can't kill me in a movie. Yeah. I have to win all my fights in a movie.
- 13:13Yeah. And I get the girl at the end of the movie. Now, these are the things
- 13:17I demand, but I give in to one of them because I know they're not going to do all three.
- 13:22And the one that I know they're not going to give me is guaranteed that I can
- 13:25have the girl at the end of the movie.
- 13:28But I know damn well I can guarantee they can't kill me and I have to win my fights.
- 13:34So as long as I keep that standard and that image, I'm not surprising my fans.
- 13:39They know when they see me in a movie, they know what they're going to get.
- 13:44I don't sing. I don't dance.
- 13:46It's not that I can't. I may do it in private. I may do it at a party,
- 13:51but I'm not doing it on the screen.
- 13:53So I sell an image, and I don't deviate from it. And this film fit my image perfectly.
- 14:01That's great. That's great. I just I've seen it since It's been restored There's
- 14:10been a different transfer made of it Recently Because for the longest time it was just.
- 14:17Very very gauzy sort of old vhs but
- 14:20they they recently did a bit of a must had
- 14:23a transfer from a master tape or something on it and
- 14:26it's it's really something to see it is completely bigger
- 14:30it is it is completely wild but it was wonderful you know of course being a
- 14:35fan of of yourself to see you in that kind of movie i guess the other one the
- 14:42i actually watched this last night in preparation for our little chat was The Inglourious Bastards,
- 14:49not to be confused with... Oh, yeah.
- 14:51Yeah, not to be confused with Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Bastards.
- 14:55Well, our movie was a fun movie.
- 14:56Quentin was a more violent movie. Our movie was a fun, pleasant action kind of film.
- 15:02Yeah. Quentin was after the blood, the guts, and the glory.
- 15:06Luckily, the Italians didn't go for that in their Inglourious Bastards.
- 15:10It was a story about three guys who are trying to get away from the war,
- 15:15trying to get out, and all of a sudden they discover they can do something to
- 15:19help the war by destroying this train that had a bomb.
- 15:24That's why it's called Inglourious Bastards because on the way from escaping
- 15:28from the war, we decided to change and do something positive for the war.
- 15:34So we became Inglourious Bastards.
- 15:37Yeah, that's great. What was... An actor I always admired, But,
- 15:43of course, he's long passed away now.
- 15:45What was Bo Svensson like to work with?
- 15:49Bo was still alive. Bo was still around. Was he? Oh, okay. Wow. Yeah.
- 15:53Yeah, I mean, it's kind of hard to kill. It's hard to kill an asshole.
- 15:58But he's still around. Oh, wow. Okay. Wow, I take it back.
- 16:05You know? No, no. His career may be dead, but unfortunately, he's still around.
- 16:11Oh, really? Okay. Fair enough, enough said Anyway,
- 16:15let's talk about the movie in question It's a wonderful action picture Which
- 16:20you're headlining From Nico Centner It is known as Atomic Eden But it's also
- 16:27being dubbed Nazi Doomsday Device Hammer,
- 16:33how did you come to be involved with the movie?
- 16:37Well, I try to help.
- 16:41Independent young directors or producers helped them
- 16:45out get into the business and he brought this project to
- 16:48me and i said okay i'll help you do
- 16:51it you know you don't have to pay me any money to do this i'll i'll help you
- 16:54because the character you want me to play is definitely not destructive to my
- 17:00image as long as the film adheres to my image my my what i'm selling then
- 17:08I can help you because I have a philosophy in all the work that I do, not just in this one,
- 17:14which is I may be in a bad movie,
- 17:17but I would never be bad in a bad movie.
- 17:20So I didn't know where he was going with the project, but fortunately it turned
- 17:24out to be a fairly decent project.
- 17:26It turned out to be pretty good. It turned out to be interesting.
- 17:28It didn't have the special effects, but you'll never know that based on all
- 17:32the people that we shot up and all the fighting and shooting that we did,
- 17:35blowing up a building. I mean, all that stuff was available to him.
- 17:39I think that's where he got the idea. He had this building that he could blow
- 17:42up and that we could shoot in.
- 17:44And so he decided to make this kind of movie. And so that was very interesting
- 17:48to me to be involved in this kind of project.
- 17:51And I love working in Europe anyway. I mean, I love working there probably more than in the U.S.
- 17:56I have more fun working out of the country than I do in America. Right, right. Right.
- 18:01And, I mean, again, I mean, it's good solid territory for you because,
- 18:08again, it's like Inglourious Basterds. It's men on a mission, right?
- 18:13Yeah. You know, it's men on a mission.
- 18:14Yep. And it's a mission to, you know, you're there trying to survive,
- 18:22but you're also still trying to...
- 18:24You know, you're still trying to accomplish the mission. That's the good thing about it.
- 18:27All the people that were involved didn't know what the mission was.
- 18:31I was the only one who knew what the mission was.
- 18:33And then when the mission started to, you know, get dangerous and the bad guys
- 18:38started to close in on us, I had to reveal what the mission was.
- 18:42I actually had a chat with Nico yesterday and he said that you had some interesting
- 18:52stories he said one involves him he says tell Fred.
- 19:00Nico says I hear traffic I
- 19:03hear traffic this way well you see that's what makes it work fun in Europe because
- 19:12they assume that American actors are more polished because they have more experience
- 19:19and more exposure to things and so they always like
- 19:23to look at us as a learning process, you know.
- 19:25So every foreign actor wants to be in a movie in America so they can have worldwide
- 19:31popularity, which is understandable.
- 19:33So they watch me, and when I'm in a character, I'm into the character totally.
- 19:39So we did this big explosion scene and fighting scene, and we're walking through
- 19:44a field as everything is over.
- 19:48And finally we hear, we stop to say something. and are you okay?
- 19:53Everybody's all right? Yeah.
- 19:54Then there's some trucks and some horns blowing.
- 19:57There was no way in the script. There was no way in the story.
- 20:00And I immediately said, I hear traffic. Home is that way.
- 20:05We started walking to where we heard the traffic.
- 20:09I mean, that's just being improvised and being totally into the character and
- 20:13understanding that you have to do something to wipe out this background that's
- 20:18not in the script and it's not in the story, so you better make it happen.
- 20:23His other one was Ask him how it was to shoot in a real bunker,
- 20:29To do what? In a real bunker. In a real bunker. Being in a real bunker. Yeah.
- 20:34Yeah, well, this weapon is in a suitcase type thing, and it has lights in it.
- 20:42When you open it up, it lights up, which means you better close it up real quick.
- 20:46Yeah. But he didn't hide it very well.
- 20:48It wasn't, it was like a spur of the moment, where do I put this thing, right?
- 20:53So when we shot this thing, he took us in this little cave. That was pretty
- 20:57nice. It was a Hitler bunker, and everybody's tearing things down and pulling
- 21:01things out, and I decided to go sit in a chair.
- 21:05And as I'm sitting in a chair, I look over to my right, and behind this desk was the suitcase.
- 21:11And I picked it up, and I looked at it, and behold, it was the atomic Eden weapon.
- 21:17That means I had to play it like, wow, here it is, man, we discovered this thing,
- 21:22right? but it was so much in the open that I had to play it and make it like
- 21:28I had discovered this thing by accident. Yeah, that's great.
- 21:33I was recently watching the documentary they made about Larry Cohen,
- 21:40King Cohen, which you feature in, and you, of course, were in his film Black
- 21:46Caesar, and they also made the sequel.
- 21:49Was it Hell Down in Harlem, or was the sequel to that?
- 21:53Hell up in Harlem. Hell up in Harlem. Harlem, sorry.
- 21:57But what struck me as interesting and still does today, they talk about films,
- 22:03the diversity in cinema today and how movies like Black Panther are a big deal because it's starring,
- 22:12written and directed and everything by people of colour.
- 22:17And I was thinking about when you came up through the business and they had
- 22:25what, you know, they asked Larry the same question, you know,
- 22:28what do you think of blaxploitation?
- 22:30And he says, I don't know what blaxploitation means. He said, exploitation.
- 22:35Yeah, well, he got that from me. Yeah, he said all... He got that from me.
- 22:38I don't understand what it means anymore. Yeah, and he said,
- 22:41you know, all films are exploitation.
- 22:43But, you know... Let me explain this to you, that blaxploitation means nothing
- 22:49to me and I explained it to him, but it means nothing I think,
- 22:51because who is being exploited?
- 22:54The actors are now making more money than they were before.
- 22:58They're now winning some of the fights. The black guy doesn't always die in the movie.
- 23:03The audience are being very satisfied because now they have an opportunity to
- 23:08have some black heroes or some black strong male images.
- 23:11So the audience is in love with these characters. So exploitation word was used
- 23:16by the media that was white, that was trying to destroy what was going on.
- 23:22Simple reason, it's a business thing.
- 23:24It's a business thing. I play a film, we play Black Susan in New York on 85th Street, it was, say.
- 23:31And our movie cost less than a million bucks.
- 23:34We got lines around the theater three times. Yeah.
- 23:38Across the street is a 90 million dollar movie made by a major and there's nobody
- 23:44there. Right. It's not full.
- 23:46There's nobody there. So we became competition.
- 23:49To the majors. So what happened, it became much more difficult to find money
- 23:55to fund the kind of films that we wanted to make.
- 23:58Right, right. So that, it only lasted four years, the so-called black exploitation thing.
- 24:04Yeah, yeah. Only lasted four years. Yeah, yeah.
- 24:07Yeah, no, I was, I've always been intrigued. I mean, because,
- 24:11looking, when they look back now, like even in it, when our industry,
- 24:16when we had a big sort of grindhouse our genre filmmaking industry back in the 70s and early 80s.
- 24:22They look back now and call it Ozploitation.
- 24:26You know, I've always just wanted to ask you, like, you know,
- 24:30I know that that period was very brief.
- 24:33How do you see it today as opposed to then, you know, with movies like,
- 24:40you know, Spike Lee's films and Black Panther and all that sort of, those movies?
- 24:45Well, I mean they're remaking superfly as well stuff like that,
- 24:49you know, how do you see it today?
- 24:51Right right Right a back page and put me on the cover in March end of March
- 24:59Right and it had a full picture of me sitting smoking a cigar They pulled out
- 25:05of the files and under the picture.
- 25:07It said Fred Williamson is not a black actor.
- 25:11Fred Williamson is an actor yeah they
- 25:14before black panther that was the
- 25:17hammer right variety did this on their
- 25:20own that page would have cost me 7500 but they see
- 25:23what's going on what's going on is they're becoming more business oriented because
- 25:29they are now realizing all these years they have missed a market totally and
- 25:35that market has been black audience black audiences don't you can't you can't sells him Tom Cruise.
- 25:42There's nothing that black guy can relate Tom Cruise with, you know?
- 25:47So they now understanding that they have to make film,
- 25:51if they want to extra money on top of the money that they are going to get,
- 25:56if they want to put some icing on the cake,
- 25:59then you give them something or someone in the movie that the black auditors
- 26:05can relate to, and then they come, and they see it.
- 26:08If it's all Tom Cruise, and it's all the so-called white superstars.
- 26:13They're not interested. They don't want to see that.
- 26:16They'll watch it on TV, but they don't want to plop their money down to see
- 26:19that. They want to see somebody else.
- 26:22Unfortunately, unfortunately, Hollywood only sees three black actors.
- 26:28They have no black friends. They don't communicate with the black people in public.
- 26:34They ride in limousines. They don't ride in streetcars. They don't ride in buses.
- 26:38So they have no black men.
- 26:39So when they read a script and on page six it says, a black man walks in the
- 26:44door, it's Samuel Jackson.
- 26:46Black man walk out of the door, it's Denzel Washington. Or somebody else running
- 26:51down the street, it's Will Smith.
- 26:53So that's their mentality. Their mentality is limited about all the other actors
- 26:58that are available for the counterpart.
- 27:01Samuel Jackson has been in every goddamn movie.
- 27:05He's a good actor, but he ain't great for all the parts that he plays.
- 27:09There's a lot of parts that he's in, it's miscast. It doesn't fit.
- 27:14But they're limited to their knowledge. What's available?
- 27:17That's all they know real like, you know, Samuel Denzel Will Smith the kid who did Black Panther.
- 27:26Yeah, that's you in two years.
- 27:28You won't even remember his name Because he didn't make the picture he didn't
- 27:33make the picture the special effects made him make the picture right?
- 27:38Yeah. Yeah No, I totally I totally agree with you.
- 27:42This is There's this, with those kinds of films, there's a very,
- 27:46very much a biodegradable quality that doesn't, they don't, they're like bottle
- 27:52rockets, you know, they fly very high, explode brilliantly, and then vanish,
- 27:57vanish on the wind.
- 27:59It's like a Marvel, it's like a Marvel comic, it's like a Marvel comic, man.
- 28:01You know, you can't keep selling that character all the time.
- 28:06Sooner or later, he's got to be a normal human being. and once he starts becoming
- 28:10a normal human being nobody's going to remember his name nobody's going to remember
- 28:14what he did and nobody's going to care I mean and you yourself know from you
- 28:20know being a writer, director,
- 28:21producer, actor all of the hats that you wear.
- 28:24If the hero of the story if you don't root for him if you don't care about him
- 28:31then you're out of the story right?
- 28:34You know you're not going to care if he wins or loses I appreciate it is that, what is a He-Man?
- 28:41Does that really mean? A He-Man to me means a guy who gets caught in a situation
- 28:47and has to think his way out of it first, and he has a lot of adversities.
- 28:52If he goes this way, that's the wrong way. If he goes that way, it's the wrong way.
- 28:56But he finds a way to win the situation and get himself out of the situation.
- 29:00That is a He-Man, not the guy who can fly and who's bulletproof and has good
- 29:05muscles that he can hardly keep his arms from touching each other when he walks.
- 29:11And that is a different kind of He-Man, you know. A He-Man is a guy who handles
- 29:15a real situation and overcomes it and deal with it and wins it. That's a He-Man.
- 29:21Yeah. Couldn't have said it better, Hammer. Couldn't have said it better.
- 29:25Of course I can't say it better because I'm not the Hammer. But you're the Hammer.
- 29:31And, Hammer, it has been a lifelong dream fulfilled for me today to talk to
- 29:39one of my heroes, Fred the Hammer Williamson.
- 29:41About a wonderful film that is currently streaming VOD in the UK and some other territories.
- 29:51It is Nazi Doomsday Device, also known as Atomic Unit, stars Fred the Hammer
- 29:57Williamson, directed by Nico Centner.
- 30:01It's a wonderful movie.
- 30:03And of course, if you haven't heard of Fred the Hammer... It's an entertaining movie.
- 30:08Entertainment sit there with your popcorn and a
- 30:11coca-cola or brew or beer yeah enjoy
- 30:14it have a great time and of course if you haven't heard
- 30:17of fred the hammer williamson you've probably been living with
- 30:20your head stuck in the ground for a long time he's a man he's the legend it's
- 30:25been absolutely fantastic fred i have one more humble request before we sign
- 30:31off i said i i was wondering You mentioned from Dusk Till Dawn earlier.
- 30:38I wonder if you could sign off by doing the line from Dusk Till Dawn.
- 30:44Yo, Monkey Man, anything you want to say to them, say to me first.
- 30:49No problemo. Okay. Yo, yo, Monkey Man, anything you got to say to him, say to me first.
- 30:58That's fantastic. Thank you, Hammer. It has been a real, real,
- 31:03you've got no idea what sort of pleasure. Absolutely astronomical.
- 31:08Yes, that was Fred the Hammer Williamson. Check out a link to Fred's,
- 31:12all of Fred's work in the description.
- 31:16Go check him out. If you don't know the man, you should know the man.
- 31:19And as always, thank you, little Eugonites, for listening to us on Spotify or
- 31:26wherever you choose to listen to your favorite podcasts. podcasts i'm kent hill
- 31:30and we'll see you next time on the one and only cinema.
- 31:36Music.