In 1993, I played a small part in the movie Rising Sun, starring Sean Connery and co-starring Wesley Snipes. The director of the film, Philip Kaufman, flew me down to Hollywood and had me driven to the movie set. There Phil introduced me to Wesley Snipes and Sean Connery.
Sean was wearing a Giorgio Armani suit. I asked him what he was wearing. “Giorgio?” Sean replied. We all laughed, and Sean laughed harder than any of us, because the Giorgio Armani Company paid for all of his wardrobe in the film.
Phil introduced me as a writer, a friend, and a professor at UC Berkeley. All of these statements were true. What drew Phil and me together was that we were graduates of the University of Chicago. We were very proud of our education, which was rooted in a love of literature. For a long time, Phil had aspired to be a writer. When he was complaining to his wife about how bad films were, she suggested that he make films.
After introducing me to Sean and Wesley, Phil gave me the script with the lines for “Big Guy” underlined in yellow. I realized as Phil prepped me that I was going to have some lines with Sean Connery himself.
Back in those days, when Phil would take on a big book, like Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, he would send a copy of it to me to read. I would read the original. Then, he would write a screenplay for it and send that to me. After I had read the screenplay, we would meet in North Beach, have lunch or dinner, and talk about it. I eventually worked on The Right Stuff, too. I did everything, like being a driver who picked up the actors and brought them to the set, and handled their daily stipend of spending cash.
With the Michael Crichton novel, Rising Sun, the character in the novel which Wesley ended up playing was written as a White character. Phil flipped it and made out of it a wonderful Black character for Wesley to work with.
After introducing me to Sean and Wesley, Phil gave me the script with the lines for “Big Guy” underlined in yellow. I realized as Phil prepped me that I was going to have some lines with Sean Connery himself.
In a few days, we were shooting my scene down in Long Beach, a town outside of Los Angeles. But today was special. I had been on the set before and had met the set people, the camera people, and all the rest.
I remember waiting for Sean Connery to arrive. I was sitting on a rail and a big Lincoln rolled up slowly. I knew that he was inside that big Lincoln, and I knew that when it stopped—as it did right in front of me—he was going to get out.
What I did not know was that he was going to get out and come and sit down beside me.
But I was ready for Sean. As I waited, I remembered something that I had not thought about in a long time.
• • •
We would go to see Uncle Lofton, or “Daddy” as we called him, line tracks on the Southern Atlantic Coast Line.
I would go with Daddy when he went to work as a “gandy dancer,”—a gang of Black men who worked on the railroad as section men on the Eastern Seaboard Railroad.
Daddy was one of four men who were called Section Hands, or “gander dancers,” because they worked the railroad in the six-mile section of the track that came through our part of North Carolina, outside of Wilmington.
My brother and I would sit on a rail and wait for them to get ready for Mr. AJ Harris, the White man, who was the section leader. Mr. AJ Harris would sit at the end of the track forty feet away and look down the line. Daddy and the three other men would have rail rods, called “lining bars,” on their shoulders.
I knew that he was inside that big Lincoln, and I knew that when it stopped—as it did right in front of me—he was going to get out. What I did not know was that he was going to get out and come and sit down beside me.
They would say, “Huhn!” and, with the rod on their shoulder, they would move the whole track a fraction of an inch.
The lead man, or “Caller,” would call out a song. Typical songs featured a two-line, four-beat couplet to which members of the gang would tap their lining bars against the rails, as in this example:
1 2 3 4 “O joint ahead and quarter back”
1 2 3 4 “That’s the way we line this track”
When the liners were tapping in perfect time, he would call for a hearty pull on the third beat of a four-beat refrain:
1 2 3 4 “Come on, move it! Huhn! (pause)”
1 2 3 4 “Boys, can you move it! Uhmm! (pause)”
And so on until the foreman signaled that the track was properly aligned.
As one can imagine “Lining track was difficult, tedious work, and the timing or coordination of the pull was more important than the brute force put forth by any single man. It was the job of the Caller to maintain this coordination,” according to the internet. But in those days, for me and my brother Cornelius, it was thrilling to watch and experience.
Daddy was one of four men who were called Section Hands, or “gander dancers,” because they worked the railroad in the six-mile section of the track that came through our part of North Carolina, outside of Wilmington.
As much as I enjoyed the “huhn!!” chant and the shifting to the weight, I really enjoyed sitting with Daddy and the other Black men before they started to work. I had no way of understanding the full implication of the ritual of “Getting ready to git down,” but I could feel and respect it.
He simultaneously motivated and entertained the men and set the timing through work songs that derived distantly from sea chanteys and more recently from cotton-chopping songs, blues, and African-American church music. Typical songs featured a two-line, four-beat couplet to which members of the gang would tap their lining bars against the rails, as in this example:
1 2 3 4 “O joint ahead and quarter back”
1 2 3 4 “That’s the way we line this track”
When the liners were tapping in perfect time, he would call for a hearty pull on the third beat of a four-beat refrain:
1 2 3 4 “Come on, move it! Huhn! (pause)”
1 2 3 4 “Boys, can you move it! Uhmm! (pause)”
And so on until Mr. Harris would signal that the track was properly aligned.
A Caller, like Uncle Lofton, or Daddy, could call all day and never repeat the same phrase twice. Veteran section gangs lining the track, especially with an audience, often embellished their work with a one-handed flourish and with one foot stepping out and back on beats four, one, and two, between the two-armed pulls on the lining bars on beat three.
My brother and I were not told to be quiet or respectful. We just knew it. The kind of work they did required giving yourself up to it completely. When they moved, they moved as one. When they went “huhn!!” They coordinated it all at the same time.
They would just sit there silently and nobody would be looking at each other. They would be “getting ready” and that was why it was so quiet. I was always watching that. I was watching it and feeling it, too. My brother and I knew that work was serious. We learned how to work by first admiring it. We admired how Daddy and Uncle Lofton and Uncle Elmo settled themselves before they would start work.
• • •
When the door of the Lincoln Town Car shut, I looked out of the corner of my eye and saw Sean coming towards me. I did not get up. He came and sat down right beside me. But I was already thinking and remembering and recalling how Daddy and Uncle Lofton would settle themselves before they worked on the rail tracks.
Sean just glanced at me. Then he sat down slowly. He sat down just the way the men sat down when they were getting ready to work on the rails. He did not say anything and I did not say anything.
When you are sitting there, you are emptying yourself. You are making all of you available. Sean knew that we were going to do our scene next. We knew it, because we saw them bring the prop up. The prop was a convertible blue Cadillac and had been pulled up in front of us.
My brother and I were not told to be quiet or respectful. We just knew it. The kind of work they did required giving yourself up to it completely. When they moved, they moved as one. When they went “huhn!!” They coordinated it all at the same time.
I saw Phil and Peter, Phil’s son, discussing the scene. Behind them, there was a crew with the cameras, and then the sound people. They were waiting. Sean said somewhere that he was never trained as an actor, but I could tell that he was trained as a worker.
The Scottish came to North Carolina early in America’s history, and there are still annual Scottish poetry festivals that date back to slavery. What they had in common with the slaves was their feeling of being close to working the land, and wood.
When Sean was ready, he turned to me and asked if I was “ready.” I told him yes, I was “ready.” We walked over to Phil, the director. Phil said, “Sound.” Sean was inside the car. All I had to do was reach inside the car and recite my lines. My line—now that I think about it—was “What you wearing? Giorgio?”
Sean did not laugh. He went with the line. “Yes, Giorgio!”
Then, I said, “Giorgio! You gone be alright, brother!”
“Cut!”
At the end of the shoot—we had to do it three times—we shook hands.
“Thank you,” Sean said, laughing, “You were terrific!” My line was supposed to welcome Sean to the Black neighborhood—and it did. At the end of the shoot, I brought out my camera. Phil told everybody that they should not bring a camera to the set. I knew that I would not be doing any more films with Sean, so I brought a camera anyway. I took lots of pictures of Sean—and it was not long before the entire crew wanted me to shoot a picture of themselves and Sean.
When we had a minute together, I mentioned to him the love of work that the Scottish poets shared with African-American slaves and oral Black poetry. I think I mentioned Langston Hughes. But I most certainly did mention Paul Robeson. Sean told me that Robeson came to Edinburgh, and that when he was nineteen years old he heard Robeson sing the famous American union song “Joe Hill,” in honor of Scotland’s miners.
Sean’s love for Paul Robeson was no doubt the reason he gave a speech on the iconic African-American singer and actor in Washington D.C.
Alex Salmond, a Scottish politician and personal friend of Sir Connery, said, that during that speech “Sean cited the words of Paul Robeson’s great song ‘What is America to Me?’”:
“What is America to me? A name, a map, the flag I see a certain word, ‘Democracy.’ What is America to me?” Robeson added the words “the right to speak my mind, that’s America to me.”
Salmond wrote, “Here was Sean standing on the steps of the Capitol addressing the very people who had taken away Paul Robeson’s passport, and he was extolling the greatness of a hero of the civil rights movement–Sean knew exactly what he was doing and the message hit home. Above all, he was a great Scot. Be in no doubt about his love for his country: Scotland Forever was not just tattooed on his forearm but was imprinted on his soul.”
Sean’s love for Paul Robeson was no doubt the reason he gave a speech on the iconic African-American singer and actor in Washington D.C.
Anyway, Sean and I had a great conversation about the poetry of Scottish folk and Black folk, and it was great to know that he had such a feeling for the love of the Black verbal arts. The experience of working on the set with the great actor was an unforgettable one.
We took many pictures with my camera of a group of young Chicanos who wandered onto the set, and Wesley had a great time working with him. Phil and his son, Peter, made the experience of working with Sean really terrific. Later, Phil told me that during an interview on The Tonight Show Sean mentioned that he had enjoyed working on the film with a Berkeley professor—me. Later, I saw the great film, Finding Forrester (2000) that featured Connery as a successful writer who takes on a young Black student as a protégé, and it reminded me, once again, that he had great respect for African-American literary culture and African-American people.
