The Spook Who Sat By The Door (Full Length Movie)

I don't know who uploaded this movie to the web, but I thank them for it.

The Spook Who Sat By The Door is easily one of my favorite films. Its about a guy named Dan Freeman, who joins this program the CIA has started to increase "diversity" as they like to say now. He is selected out a group of Black males that will serve as the agency's token Black. After he learns all of the CIA's secrets and practices, he leaves the agency, returns to his home on the south side of Chicago and teaches all of the youngsters on the street, including the drug dealers and the gang members, all that he has learned, training them to be Freedom Fighters. That's all I want to reveal now, I want you to watch the movie...

What's even more interesting about the movie is its backstory. Its based off of Sam Greenlee's 1969 novel of the same name (Greenlee also directed the movie). The movie hit theatres in 1973, right in the middle of the Blaxploitation era. To seduce the public into going to see the movie, the trailers only showed explosions and "jive turkey" talking, concealing the real plot of the movie. When the movie came out, it scared the hell out of people, alarmed the government and wound up being removed and banned from theatres after just two weeks of showing.

Greenlee and all of the actors in the movie (except for Paula Kelly) were esentially black balled from Hollywood after this movie came out. The movie itself pretty much disappeared as well. But then in 2004 Tim Reid and Robert Townsend got in contact with Greenlee and obtained the rights to the movie and put it out on DVD.

I happened to be in Washington D.C. at the 2004 Congressional Black Caucus where the three of them made this announcement. They also showed the film there. It was interesting to see the mixed reaction the movie got. Of course, since I'm around all Black folks, I thought that everybody would jump up and applaud. Instead, alot of them were actually upset by the movie, saying things like "this movie solves nothing," "this movie makes us look bad." The reaction wasn't so surprising when I realized that I was in room full of corporate Americans and "Black leaders" who capitalize off keeping other Blacks uneducated and uninformed.

Greenlee peeped this too and proceeded to cuss all of them out. I got a chance to chop it up with Mr. Greenlee afterwards and he was cool as hell. I told him I loved the movie and that my aunt had read me some of the book when I was little. The DVD deal had just got completed, but it wasn't in stores yet. He said he had the movie dubbed on VHS and would sell it to me for $15, on the spot. Of course I copped it. He said I was now 1 of no more than 4 people to have the movie at the time.

I kept in contact with Mr. Greenlee for a little bit, but wound up falling out of contact with him over the years. I ran into him again in Atlanta when Rolling Out hosted an event with him.

But yeah, when you some freetime on your hands, check out this movie. Everybody that I've told about the movie gets anxious to see it, and everybody that I told about to movie that actually checked out said they dug it. Alot of things have changed since then, but alot of things have stayed the same only now its not as blatant. Oh yeah, its still for sale too.