Retroactivist: The Black Power of Petey Greene

(By Lucian Perkins -- The Washington Post)

"His take on things was very street level, just real, which is why I think people loved him so much. He'd be the one to say, 'The emperor has no clothes.' "

This bluntness is what attracted director Kasi Lemmons, who also directed "Eve's Bayou." She said she "fell in love" with Greene's story.

"I guess the major thing for me," Lemmons says, "is that we're in a time now where people are afraid to speak out. It's all about conforming. This story shows there was a time when you could use your voice and be completely uncensored. It's a beautiful thing. In some ways, I see this as an anti-censorship movie."

Lemmons was thrilled when Cheadle agreed to take the part and become a producer. "When he's got the wig on and the clothes and the voice comes out of it, I don't see Don Cheadle, I see Petey," says Lemmons. "He wears this flamboyant clothing and he's just fabulous. There's this quality about Petey where he's always at the center of a whirlwind, and [Cheadle] totally captured that."

Also starring in the film is Taraji P. Henson ("Hustle & Flow") as Greene's girlfriend Vernell, while Martin Sheen, Cedric the Entertainer and Lemmons's husband, Vondie Curtis-Hall, all play characters at the radio station.

The film begins late in Greene's term at Lorton and is centered around his friendship with Dewey Hughes (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor of "Kinky Boots"). Hughes, then the program director at WOL, is the man who put Greene on the air and became his life-long friend. Very little film and tape remain from Greene's shows, according to Cheadle and Lemmons, though they were able to view and listen to some of it. A lot of the famous Petey-isms and Petey stories they learned from old newspaper clips. Like the infamous story of Greene's visit to the White House where maybe he stole a spoon or maybe he didn't. Or the fact that he liked to refer to himself as having a "PhD in poverty." How he liked to brag about overcoming protests at all-white Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda to his invitation to be commencement speaker.

They also got a lot of help from Hughes, who now lives in Los Angeles and served as a consultant on the film.

"Oh, my God, I'm in love with him," Lemmons says of Hughes, whose former wife is Cathy Hughes, the owner of Radio One. "He really moves me. He's a very beautiful, elegant, intelligent man. He has a certain presentation that is immaculate. It's a great contrast to Petey, who's flashy and coming apart at the seams all the time."

Cheadle says that it's been unique filming a movie about a "very male, brotherly relationship" through the lens of a female director. Lemmons, he says, sometimes sees things that would never have occurred to him. She laughs at that.

"When I went in to pitch myself as a director, I said that as a black woman, I know black men better than they know themselves," she says.

Most of the film was shot in Toronto, and the stop in D.C. was brief -- three days in town, with five scenes shot yesterday. One crew shot some local color (including the obligatory scene at Ben's Chili Bowl), while Lemmons and the leads shot at various locations around the Mall, including the Washington Monument and the carousel outside the Smithsonian.

Cheadle, who himself speaks up on issues, made the most of his scant time in the city, but he did it in that other time-honored Washington way: He set up meetings with the important and the powerful. Deeply concerned about the genocide in Darfur (he's making a documentary on the subject) -- he met Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Thursday. On Friday, he was late for an interview because he was with Sudanese rebel leader Minni Minnawi. He also spoke to a group at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Asked how successful these meetings were, the actor says, "No one's for genocide. But it's really the bureaucracy and the very real question and challenge of international diplomacy/pressure, especially at a time like this. There's a really high bar to vault."

It's the kind of careful, measured response that never would have passed Petey Greene's lips.