One of the interesting new quirks of being able to watch movies from home is that I always do so with the subtitles on. In so doing, I’ve learned all kinds of things that would otherwise slip by unnoticed. Like the time I found out that the lyric to Nirvana’s “All Apologies” was “choking on the ashes of her enemy,” and not the (far superior, imo) lyric I’d always assumed, “choking on the ashes of a renegade.” (Ashes, because they’d burned her at the stake! For being a renegade! Come on!).
This week, while watching Judas And The Black Messiah, director Shaka King’s film about the killing of Fred Hampton, I noticed that one of the off-screen police officers involved in the raid on Hampton’s headquarters was credited as “Blart.” No one in the film ever refers to this character by name, and it would be impossible to identify him as Blart otherwise, but I checked the IMDB credits, and sure enough, there he was:
That’s right: it is now canon that Paul Blart killed Fred Hampton. Maybe that’s why he got busted down to mall cop.
I’ve been researching the Hampton raid and don’t believe I’ve ever come across a real police officer named Blart who was involved. But perhaps the filmmakers discovered such and included it. Or, they simply stuck it in there where most people wouldn’t notice. It was co-written by comedians after all — specifically Keith and Kenny Lucas, who are also identical twins. And there’s your free idea for The Deuce season four.
Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.
