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The story of Ralph
Waldo "Petey" Greene Jr., A Black DJ of
Washington DC during the sixties
and seventies. Petey starts out as
an ex-con who decided that he needed to
be a DJ, after playing records over the
prison loudspeaker. He walks into
WOL-AM with his over-the-top girlfriend Vernell
expecting a job as a DJ from Dewey
Hughes, the brother of a former inmate,
who was the program director for
the radio station. Although he was
very unconventional, and rough around
the edges, Dewey risks his career to get
Petey on the air, who ultimately becomes
the voice of "Chocolate City".
I was thrilled to see
a film about someone's life that was
informative and entertaining, without
beating you over the head with facts or
contrived emotion. After reading
the production notes, I was even more
inspired by Petey's activism and
community outreach. I'm glad that
the film touched on a number of positive
and negative parts of his life but
didn't try to overdo it. Since you
only have two hours to express as much
as you can about a subject and still
make it entertaining, the trick is to
get people involved, and make them want
to learn more on their own. Talk
to Me definitely succeeds.
Everyone, especially today's troubled,
yet complacent and inactive youth, needs
to see this film and learn about a Black
man that forced his way into people's
lives to make a positive change.
The acting was
excellent and consistent. I really
believed in every character, and the
emotional circle that every character
moved through. Everyone was funny,
angry, sad and overjoyed at some point
in the film, as we all are in life...and
I believed and shared in their
sentiments every minute of the way.
One thing that
impressed me from the beginning, was the
set design and the costuming. The
production team really paid attention to
detail and made you go back in time.
We all know that in terms of style,
the 60's and 70's has cheesy written all
over it, but Talk to Me, captures the
flamboyance of the era, and of the
characters and makes it all work and
draws you in even more.
I'm happy that
someone made a film about this
extraordinarily regular man who "kept it
real" in the truest sense, because he
was real to himself. This film
brought his voice back, and can take it
to a place he wasn't ready to.
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