Does every new African American director have to walk a mile in Spike Lee's Air Jordans? Or do some of them get to wander off the identity politics path? It was inevitable that Christopher Scott Cherot, HAV PLENTY's NYU-schooled first-time-filmmaker success story, would have to bear the burden of comparison ("Not since Spike Lee hit in 1986 with SHE'S GOTTA HAVE IT have we seen a romantic comedy with the ... laugh-out-loud nerve," announced the Toronto International Film Festival last fall). The wit and no-budget hubris of the project written, directed, produced, and, yes, performed in part by Cherot recalls the pre-X Lee. But even as he was being outfitted in Mars Blackmon's hand-me-downs, Cherot was defying expectations. When someone in a Toronto audience Q&A session asked Cherot what director he would most like to model himself after, he answered "Billy Wilder."
Maybe we shouldn't have been surprised. Cherot's mordantly romantic comedy debut is one of the driest takes on class consciousness and romantic delusion to come from a first-time filmmaker's reels. Cherot, playing a version of himself as the lead in a story based on a strange weekend in his own life, has the deadpan charm of William Holden in SUNSET BOULEVARD and the fecklessness of Jack Lemmon in THE APARTMENT.
Cherot's character, Lee Plenty, also happens to be stuck in an absurd Wilder-type situation. Asked down to a cozy suburban D.C. abode by the woman of his dreams for New Year's Eve weekend, "Plenty" a man of little means finds himself with an abundance of sexual offers, none of which actually sound too good to him. The problem is that the object of Lee Plenty's desire an appropriately allegorically named character called "Hav Savage" (Chenoa Maxwell) is so cash-conscious and passion-deprived that she can't seem to realize the emotional goldmine sleeping on her couch. She also happens to be engaged to a distant but solvent rap/R&B star. As the penniless New York writer Plenty pines for the acquisitive careerist Hav, various kinds of hell break loose. Misunderstandings begin to ricochet around the catalytic Plenty, but he doesn't exactly put the damper on. More Buddha than old-school b-boy, he opts instead to fatalistically wait it out.
Cherot's acting is as disarmingly frank and understated as his approach to film is skeptical and literate. He doesn't actually consider his film to be a "romantic comedy." He says, "There's very little romance, and it's not that funny."
Like most new directors, he's trying to stay away from labels and be cautious about comparisons. "I definitely tried to make it like nothing that's ever been out there before."
If Cherot succeeds in that, it's because his film doesn't have that safe feel of a film made by focus group. Unlike some of the recent, tepid attempts to capture black demographic dollars, HAV PLENTY reads as personal. Its social issues are not tattooed on with sterile precision; Wilder scion Cherot just wants to tell a story, well. It probably helps that it's a story Cherot actually experienced in real time.
The script and cast (who were, for the most part, enjoying their first speaking roles in a feature-length film) are good, but the film's most obvious charm is Cherot's own acting. His asides to the camera (in at least one odd encounter, he throws his hands in the air and states that this actually "happened to me") are so thankfully un-ironic they don't elicit the postmodern gag reflex.
But the acting part apparently didn't come easily. "If I looked like I'm comfortable in front of the camera and I was just rattling off lines, that's good," he says. "That's what I want. But I was not comfortable in front of the camera. I wasn't sure if I was doing the job correctly. I only knew that I had to get it done."
And so he did. Two weeks before the shoot, the leading man dropped out to pursue a more high-profile opportunity. Cherot didn't want to abandon the project he was, in fact, already taking a break from the other feature film he was trying to make, using that film's finishing funds to jumpstart this one. So he used himself as a life raft. He claims he had no previous acting experience (though the press kit says he did do the Tin Man in an elementary school production), but it doesn't show.
Or maybe it does. HAV PLENTY's authenticity comes in part from its claims of truth, and Cherot thinks he's passed the point where he can act like he made it all up. "It would be hard for me to stop saying that it's a true story. People have accepted it now. I even changed the writing credit to make myself the author." But he says, "I'm always amazed at the willingness of an audience to believe what they're seeing on the screen. They want to believe this is how it is in real life. And when it does feel like how it is in real life, they love it."
The film was getting lots of love in Toronto, where Cherot signed on with Miramax to fund his next two films and distribute this one. He hasn't decided exactly what those films will be, but he basically knows how they should proceed.
"I have more of an obligation to create stories for African Americans as opposed to representing them. I think you get locked into representation an the creative process gets blocked and you stop telling stories and start preaching."
"Instead of representation," Cherot says, "I always look for dedication."
Susan Gerhard is film editor at the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Courtesy © 1998 The Sundance Institute. All rights reserved.
