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An affectionate spoof of Shaft, Dolemite, and just about every other blaxploitation film from the 1970’s, Black Dynamite fumigates the much-loved genre with a healthy dose of nitrous oxide.

Michael Jai White stars as the title vigilante – an Afro-sporting, shamelessly womanizing kung fu master who is investigating the death of his brother and discovers a nefarious plot involving the distribution of Anaconda Malt Liquor in seedy Los Angeles.

Directed by Scott Sanders, Black Dynamite apes the low-budget, threadbare quality of blaxploitation cinema, down to the bad dialogue, crude editing, and occasional intrusions of the boom mic. In tone, the movie alternates between Tarantino-esque homage and Naked Gun-style site gags.

Sanders and White, who collaborated on the screenplay (with Byron Minns), answered questions following a packed midnight screening.

Q: Michael, did you have to go through martial-arts training for the movie?

White: I’ve been doing martial arts for 27 years, ever since I was a kid. The style was a little different from what I’m used to. But the ’70s style choreography is straight-on and easy.

Q: Where did you shoot the film?

Sanders: We shot it all in L.A. We really lucked out. There’s an area around Crenshaw and Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. that looks like it hasn’t been touched since the ’70s. We also shot in Ladera Heights where there are still a lot of ’70s houses. It was a 20-day shooting schedule during the Christmas season. It was tough on Michael.

Q: Did you reach out to people like Richard Roundtree to do cameos?

White: We didn’t want to go in that direction. Roundtree would take you out of the movie. It would disturb the faux truth we were trying to create.

Q: How do you think the movie should be marketed?

Sanders: I think there are a lot of people out there who will love it. But it’s definitely a comedy. We were cracking up the whole time we were making it. It’s really just a little idiosyncratic comedy.

Q: What was the most difficult scene to shoot?

Sanders: The penis scene. That was a pacifier from an erotic store and I had to adjust it.

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