Talk To Me, an affecting biopic from director Kasi Lemmons, details the real-life story of Ralph Waldo “Petey” Greene, an ex-con who became one of Washington D.C.’s most popular radio deejays during the height of the ’60s Civil Rights Movement.
Greene (Don Cheadle) first encounters radio executive Dewey Hughes (Chiwetel Ejiofor) as he visits his brother Milo in prison. Shortly after Greene is released from prison, he tracks down Hughes in search of a job. He eventually wears down Hughes enough to take a risk, and the pair begins a working relationship and friendship that spans decades.
Cheadle plays Greene with an outrageous abandon not seen since his scene-stealing role as Mouse in Devil in a Blue Dress, while Ejiofor (Dirty Pretty Things), disarming as usual, ostensibly plays the “straight man.” Hughes, however, brings his own internal conflicts as the lone black professional attempting to integrate the white-owned media, confounding assumptions from both white colleagues and black friends.
Biopics can have a tendency to overstate their cases, and a scene illustrating the differences between buttoned-down Dewey and straight-talking Petey looks eerily like a clip from the The New Odd Couple. Lemmons seems to gloss over Greene’s lifelong struggle with alcohol and drug abuse with a couple of short montages.
Thankfully, moments like this are rare and when the film reaches the second act, it finds its footing when portraying Greene’s role as a “voice of the street” and Hughes’ equally pivotal off-air role in providing a public sounding board for African-American D.C. residents during the turbulent ’60s. Greene’s off-the-cuff remarks and candor were particularly welcome at a time when popular radio routinely shied away from controversy.
When Hughes becomes Greene’s manager and attempts to take his socially conscious, non-PC humor to a mainstream audience, Greene’s additions and his ambivalence with the prospect of fame nearly destroy their friendship (echoes of David Chappelle’s professional meltdown from a couple of years ago are seen here).
Lemmons takes advantage of the rapport and chemistry between the two actors by focusing on the friendship between Greene and Hughes, which brings the film’s liveliest moments, particularly a barroom pool-wager-turned-trash-talking contest.
After her 1997 directorial debut, Lemmons struggled to recapture the magic — and the buzz — of her first film, the haunting southern noir Eve’s Bayou. Her follow-up, The Caveman’s Valentine (2001), was a muddled mess that tanked at the box office, and afterward, Lemmons moved into television acting work.
Ten years later, Lemmons the director has returned with a film that, at its best moments, paints a picture of radio at a time when it largely fulfilled its great potential to unite and entertain communities. In a note of irony, WOL-FM, Greene’s radio home, eventually became the flagship station of the highly formulaic Radio One, Inc. urban broadcasting company.
In watching Talk To Me, one can’t help but wonder if an deejay like Petey Greene could ever reach such heights in today’s sanitized radio market.
-Keidra Chaney
Talk To Me
Director: Kasi Lemmons
118 minutes Focus Features
www.focusfeatures.com/talktome
Opened nationwide 7/13/07