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In the run up to summer movie season, Fametracker has seen the trailer for Gone in 60 Seconds at least seven times. Amid all the predictable Bruckheimer spectacle -- cars smashing through showroom windows, catchphrases being coined, stuff exploding, Nicolas Cage...existing -- there's a two-second shot of Delroy Lindo sitting in a (presumably) stolen car and laughing lustily. It is by far the most compelling moment in the trailer, and yet it has no context (why is he laughing? who is he? is the car, in fact, stolen?), and as the trailer winds down with a barrage of stars' names -- Angelina Jolie! Robert Duvall! Giovanni Ribisi! -- the name of Delroy Lindo is nowhere to be seen.
The issue is not that Delroy Lindo is not receiving adequate credit in undeniable shite like Gone in 60 Seconds -- or, rather, that isn't exactly the issue. For Fametracker, the outrage exists on two fronts: first, that an actor of Delroy Lindo's calibre should have to prostitute himself in a puddle of cinematic sputum like Gone in 60 Seconds; and second, that -- having been forced to prostitute himself -- he didn't even get his due in the trailer.
So what exactly is Delroy Lindo's due?
As far as we're concerned, Lindo shouldn't have to fight for work at all. He's undeniably an excellent actor, losing himself in roles ranging from gang overlords to law enforcement officials to angels (in the otherwise execrable A Life Less Ordinary) to historical figures like Satchel Paige and Clarence Thomas. He's not exactly what you'd call hard on the eyes, for a middle-aged man: He has a nice smile and a great physique, and his restless intelligence is apparent in his lively eyes.
But he isn't white.
We've seen him outperform megastars John Travolta (in Get Shorty) and wipe the floor with fine young actor yet charisma-free zone Tobey Maguire (in The Cider House Rules), and yet the only time he's ever been rewarded with critical acclaim was when he played a jovial but ultimately menacing gangster in Clockers. Fametracker supposes it was the rapturous praise he received for that performance that led him to reprise it this year in Romeo Must Die (where, in a trailer-related indignity perhaps greater than having been ignored entirely in Gone in 60 Seconds, he was billed fourth, behind Aaliyah and DMX, whose performances were little more than glorified cameos). And so, even though he's not necessarily too old to be an action/suspense star -- Arnold Schwarzenegger, after all, will be fifty-three this year -- there just aren't enough roles in the genre for African-American men, and the ones that do exist tend to be split between Denzel Washington and Samuel L. Jackson.
So, in effect, every outrage visited upon Delroy Lindo stems from a single cause: There isn't enough room in Hollywood to accommodate as many talented, non-white actors exist, which leaves Delroy Lindo -- along with Alfre Woodard, Isaiah Washington, Debbi Morgan, Bill Nunn, Harry Lennix, and countless others -- taking fourth billing, and being glad to get it.
We're sure Samuel L. Jackson will make a great Shaft this summer. We just wish we could have seen what Delroy Lindo would do if he'd had the same opportunity. We wish he could have played a role in The Cider House Rules that didn't require him to play a knife-wielding committer of incest. We wish we could travel back in time to 1994 and tell Quentin Tarantino to cast Delroy Lindo as Jules Winnfield, because if he had, the world would be a very different place.
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