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Quentin Tarantino's new book,

(Reservoir Books), is out January 26.

In the early '70s my mom was dating a professional footballer named Reggie.

He, in an effort to score a point with her, offered to spend some time with me.

As a soccer player, he asked my mother:

-He likes football?

"

," she answered.

Anyway, as luck would have it, Reggie also liked movies.

And, apparently, she watched all the

movies that came out.

So one Saturday afternoon Reggie (whom I didn't know) stopped by the apartment and picked me up and took me to the movies.

We went to a part of the city where I had never been.

He had visited the big movie theater areas of Hollywood and Westwood;

but this was a different place.

On that avenue

.

(When I was older, I realized that Reggie took me to the movie theater district of downtown Los Angeles, located on Broadway Boulevard, which included, among others, the Orpheum, the State, the Los Angeles, the Million Dollar Theater and the Tower).

Not only were the theaters big, with wide canopies in front, but also gigantic (25 feet tall, or so it seemed to me) were the movie posters above the canopies.

And, except for the martial arts classic

and (oddly enough)

, they were all films in the blaxploitation genre.

Movies I had never seen, but knew about from the commercials I saw on TV (especially on Soul Train) or heard on the radio on 1580 KDay - the Los Angeles soul music station - or from the fascinating advertising presented in the form of comic he was reading in the "Agenda" section of the

.

The sun was beginning to set and the neon of the brightly colored canopies was already lighting up with its characteristic buzz.

My new friend told me that he could choose the movie I wanted to see the most (except

).

On that Saturday night,

, with Bernie Casey (a

with black actors of the British film

), and

, which would soon become a classic, starring Max Julien and Richard Pryor, were on that street.

-How

?

-I asked for.

"Well,

, I've already seen her," she informed me.

-Is it good?

-Is amazing!

he answered.

And, if that's really what you want to see, I can watch

again, but let's move on to see what else there is.

Cinema

Cinema.

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There was also

,

,

(a

black

) and

(the sequel to

), and he had seen them all.

But the new film on Broadway, just opening the previous Wednesday, was

, the latest film from blaxploitation

superstar

.

I had seen a lot of commercials on television that week, and it seemed very interesting.

I even remember the radio commercials, which proclaimed: "Jim Brown is going to catch the bastard that killed his brother."

The thing is,

was the movie Reggie wanted to see at all costs.

For starters, being the connoisseur he apparently was, he had seen all the others.

On the other hand, he looked a league away from being into Jim Brown.

I asked him who his favorite actors were.

He said: Jim Brown, Max Julien, Richard Roundtree, Charles Bronson and Lee Van Cleef.

He asked me who my favorite actor was.

"Robert Preston," I said.

-Who is Robert Preston?

-The one of

!

(By then I was a big fan of

).

Since it was Saturday night and they were showing the latest Jim Brown movie, the huge room (it would have a capacity of about 1,400 seats) wasn't exactly packed, but it was certainly very busy, and the anticipation was palpable.

My little face was the only white one in the audience.

Jim Brown, in a scene from 'Black Powder'.

That was going to be my first movie in a theater with an all-black audience (except me) in a black neighborhood.

The year was 1972. Around 1976 I ventured to go alone to a cinema where almost all the audience was black, the Carson Twin Cinema (in Carson, California), where I caught up on all

that I had missed in the first half of the decade (

,

,

,

,

,

), plus of all the other

that came out around that time. And, in the early '80s, I happened to go back to those theaters on Broadway.

But at that time the neighborhood was much more Mexican than black, and in general the 35mm tapes they showed contained Spanish subtitles.

Also, in my late 70s, I spent many weekends at Jackie's (an old roommate of my mother's) house, who lived in Compton.

By then, Jackie was like my second mother, her daughter Nikki (who was four years older than me) was like a sister to me, and Jackie's brother Don (we called him "Big D") was like my uncle.

And Nikki and her friends would take me to the movies in Compton, where I saw

, and

(we didn't just watch black movies; we also saw

and

). Also, Nikki and one of her friends took me (when I was 14) to the Pussycat Theater on Hollywood Boulevard to see

, the classic double session that was shown in that room for eight years.

(We didn't understand what all the fuss was about with

. But

We thought it was a pretty good movie.

How did I get in at 14?

First, he was a tall kid.

He would only have given me away the whistle voice.

So I just let Nikki do the talking.

Second, the cinema was open all night.

So we showed up at two in the morning.

I doubt the Pussycat Theater would ever turn away a woman who came to the box office at two in the morning.

Later, at 16,

at the Pussycat Theater in Torrance.

But back to me, Reggie and Jim Brown.

At the Tower Theater they were

in a double session with another film, a somewhat amateurish social drama about the plight of blacks called

.

We entered the room when there were still about three quarters of an hour left before

ended .

As I have already made clear, as a child watching stimulating movies in the company of adult viewers, I was quite a sophisticated person.

I had seen many different adult audiences react to many different types of film.

And he had even witnessed situations where the public was against a film and booed against the screen (this happened with a Crown International film called

).

But I didn't know anything like that audience's reaction to

.

Damn, what hostility of yours.

And

for the remaining three-quarters of an hour of the movie.

The first time I heard the expression "suck me!"

it was when a spectator yelled it at a character that appeared on the screen.

Having never come across anything like it before, I didn't know how to take it at first.

But his insults to the characters became increasingly risqué, and as the film progressed, the audience's contempt seemed deeper and the insults more comical.

Until I laughed.

And

.

I am sure that my reaction and my uninhibited and high-pitched laugh as a nine-year-old child must have been as amusing to the soccer player who was accompanying me as the public was to me.

-Are you having a good time, Q?

she asked.

-These people are the funniest!

I said, and I didn't mean the movie.

He smiled at me and patted me on the shoulder with his huge hand.

-You're a cool kid, Q.

And from there, emboldened,

.

I instantly glanced sideways at Reggie to see if he was making any qualms.

But Reggie, seeing that I felt comfortable enough to participate, just laughed.

So I participated.

To the point that I uttered my new favorite expression at the screen: "suck me!"

And at that exit, Reggie and the other adults sitting nearby began to crack up.

What a night that!

Don't see!

But the evening had only just begun.

The last thing I remember about

is the final scene, when the bus appears and the 12-year-old black boy who has been waiting for it the entire movie (the bus must have been a metaphor, I think) starts yelling over and over the phrase that gives the film its title ("The bus is coming" ["The bus is coming"]).

Moment at which a spectator answered in a loud voice: "Okay, then get on, and go and fuck you!".

When the lights came on in the huge room, I had to wipe away my tears because I was crying with laughter.

I was beginning to understand that in order to win over my mother, Reggie was trying to ingratiate himself with me.

So I asked him if he could buy a Coca-Cola and some candies at the bar.

But instead of leading me to the booth, he reached into his wallet, pulled out a $20 bill, and said, "Buy whatever you want."

For me, my mother could well marry that guy.

The fact is that, in a huge cinema practically the size of the Metropolitan Opera House, I made my way to the bar.

Then, laden with ten dollars' worth of goodies, I returned to my seat as the lights dimmed.

Right away, on that Saturday night downtown, Black Powder, the latest Jim Brown film, began to flicker through the projector window to an extremely enthusiastic audience of about 850 blacks, 800 of whom were men.

And to be honest, I've never been the same since.

Since then, to a greater or lesser extent,

, in an effort to recreate the experience of seeing a newly released Jim Brown movie on a Saturday night in a theater with black audiences in 1972. The closest I had come to that experience was the year before, when I saw my first James Bond,

, while the audience knowingly responded to Sean's every joking comment. Connery.

And maybe I should add the audience's reactions to Clint Eastwood in

.

Still... there was no point of comparison.

When Jim Brown is sitting behind his desk, and Bruce Glover (Crispin's father) and the other white henchman are threatening him, and Gunn presses a button under the desk and a sawed-off shotgun falls into his lap…, the Black spectators who filled the room erupted in cheers in a way that the nine-year-old boy that I was had never seen in a movie theater.

Back then—living with a single mom—was possibly

.

And when the movie ended with a freeze frame of Jim Brown as Gunn, the guy sitting behind Reggie and me declared out loud, "This is a movie about a bad asshole."

Unfortunately, after that night, I never saw Reggie again.

And today I still don't know what happened to him.

From time to time I would ask my mother:

-What happened to Reggie?

She shrugged and said:

- Oh, there you go.

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