I was lucky enough to have actor and writer Danny Hoch on my live show in San Francisco. It won’t be podcast until tommorow, but it’s in the top ten of all-time TSOYA interviews, at least for me. His newest show, “Takin’ Over,” deals with gentrification in Brooklyn, and is currently running at Berkeley Rep in the long-since gentrified Berkeley, California.
There’s precious little of the new show available online, but his last major one man show, “Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop” was made into a film. The movie was financed by Rawkus Records, who were planning to use the film as promotion for an accompanying soundtrack album. Unfortunately, the label folded before the album could be released, and the film was thrown into limbo.
Eventually Danny and his associates managed to get the movie into DVD release, and thank goodness they did. Like Luis Valdez’ “Zoot Suit,” the film lives in the liminalities between staged performance and real life. Each character monologue is seen performed live in a theater, in public, in a prison and in the fictional world of the piece. The technique balances the needs of the show with the needs of the piece’s inherent theatricality beautifully. It’s one of my favorite films of all time. I cry several times every time I watch it. And laugh a lot, too.
Above, I’ve pasted a scene from the film, in which Hoch portrays a street vendor and hip-hop afficionado in Cuba. Unlike pretty much any other hip-hop art concerning Cuba I’ve ever seen, it’s insightful, balanced and humane, not just Castroist agitprop. Of course, those qualities are typical of Hoch’s work. Indeed, perhaps the most sympathetic character in “Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop” is a prison guard, the frontline soldier of the prison industrial complex.
Anyway, enjoy the above, check out the interview tommorow, make plans to see Danny’s show if you’re in the Yay Area, and cop that disc if you’re elsewhere.