From 1989 to 1995, I spent a great deal of time in Los Angeles, California and, more precisely, in a Hollywood state of mind. I worked on three screenplays, produced a movie out there, and struggled to figure out if this lifestyle was my future. I was in the City Angels in the aftermath of Magic Johnson’s announcement he was HIV positive in 1991, for the uprising of 1992, and the trial of O.J. Simpson for the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman in 1995. Throw in the Crips, Bloods, Daryl Gates’ LAPD, the wave of studio financed black films, and the rise of West Coast rap, and that sprawling metropolis seemed to me a hell hole of black trauma and an oasis of creative possibility. For me, no one defined that complex town like Orenthal James Simpson.
My first vivid memory of O.J. was in 1973. I was thirteen years old when my mother’s boyfriend took to frigid Shea Stadium to see “the Juice.” He was a few yards short of cracking 2000 yards in 14 games, a mark no running back in NFL league history had ever reached. We sat way up in the upper deck as O.J. dashed across the hard, icy dirt of Shea behind an offensive line called “the electric company,” ‘cause they turned on the juice. In old NFL film footage the Bills carry O.J. off the field on their shoulders and I can see myself, a small dot, way up in that snowy stadium. (Somewhere I still have my ticket from that game.)
O.J. was definitely a black hero of the ‘70s. Why else would my mother’s boyfriend risk giving me pnuemonia? Simpson represented black excellence. But this athlete was destined to be more than a star in the ghetto. Much like Sidney Poiter in cinema, the running back was a post-civil rights era crossover star, who’s easy smile, good looks, and charm made him a pop celebrity who played beautifully in the suburbs. Between movie roles, TV appearances, sports reporting, and those ubiquitous commercials, there wasn’t an aspect of ‘70s and ‘80s mainstream media that O.J. didn’t conquer. In so doing, he divorced his black wife, married a blonde waitress, and evolved from being a product of San Francisco’s Potrero Hill housing projects to a welcome presence in all American households. To a great degree O.J. showed a pathway to black athletic crossover success that was followed quite explicitly by Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan.
One of the things that became clear during my visits time in Los Angeles was that there was black L.A. and there was black Hollywood. Black L.A. existed in a largely segregated city where red lining and aggressive policing kept the majority of its African-American residents at arms lenght from the glamour people associate with Tinseltown. Black Hollywood, which wasn’t very big, was where pre-murder O.J. resided. That meant you lived in Westwood and Brentwood or, if you were older or had more money, in Beverly Hills or Bel Aire. You likely had a white wife or husband and moved in social circles where you were a fly in very white butter milk. I know this lifestyle well since I carefully weighed the cost of entry before basing myself back in New York full-time in late ‘95. The world O.J. lived in was a seductive one, a place of inclusion where you could make serious money by making white gate keepers comfortable and not offering too many aggressive arguments for black empowerment.
I was sitting in my regulate seat in section 319 of Madison Square Garden for game five of the 1994 NBA finals, my Knicks versus the Houston Rockets, when the jumbo-thron above the court flashed video of a white Ford Bronco followed by a legion of police squad cars. It wasn’t until half-time, with the white Bronco on all the screens by at concessions stands, that I found out that the passengers were ex-Buffalo Bills’ teammates Al Cowlings and O.J. Simpson. A great many of the white fans ordering beer and hot dogs chanted “GO O.J.! GO!” as if this was a real life Hertz commercial. In a short time those cheers turned to jeers.
The trial began on January 24, 1995 and wouldn’t end until October 3, and I spent much of that time coming in and out of L.A. for meetings. Before Court TV, news coverage as talking head debate time, and social media mania, “the trial of the century” was also a foreshadowing of the media saturated, conspiracy ladden, factually questionable “news” we consume today. This trial would not be the last time American would have opinions about someone named Kardashian.
The night of the verdict, I had a dinner set with one of the few black female executives at Creative Artists Agency. We’d decided to meet at an upscale black owned eatery, Georgia’s, on Melrose Boulevard. When I arrived there was a serious LAPD presence outside as well as several TV news crew setting up. Inside I spoke to Brad Johnson, one of the owners, who said the attorney’s for O.J. were having their victory dinner there. More ominously all manner of threats were being phoned in. First Barry Scheck arrived and then Johnny Cochran and his wife. The energy in the room was as electric as the bright blue suit Cochran still wore from the court room. My dinner companion and I had the same thought: could there be a more dangerous place to be in L.A. at that moment? So we split for a much less high profile venue.
Over the ensuing decades the trial and its fall out has proved fodder for countless movies, books, articles, and pod casts. There are been award winning docs and mini-series. There has been a mole hill of cash generating trash projects. Now that O.J. Simpson is dead we’re still trying to find meaning in his life and his actions. Was this Othello come to life? Was this a cut and dry murder case fumbled by a clueless prosecution? Did Cochran dazzle the majority black jurors with tales of police brutality that had nothing to do with facts at hand? Did O.J.’s fall reveal the trauma behind being Hollywood’s favorite Negro or was there always an insecure, violent anger behind the image?
I don’t know that’s there any simple answer that sums up O.J. Simpson except to observe no one is as easy to understand as their public image. They are all fictions written in flesh.