Top 5 Denzel Washington Performances with W. Kamau Bell (Archive)

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2:24What kind of a show are you guys putting on here today? You're not interested in art? No. Well, look, we're going to do this thing. We're going to have a conversation. Hey, film spotters, we have another archive drop in your feed with our conversation, a long conversation, I think a fun conversation about Spike Lee and Denzel Washington's fifth collaboration as director and actor, highest to lowest coming this Friday. We wanted to put our top five Denzel Washington performances back in your feed. This is from 2017. We had W. Kamau Bell on the show. Among the many things that he does, Josh, he had a CNN show, Emmy nominated, the United Shades of America.

3:13He directed the Peabody award-winning documentary. We need to talk about Cosby. And he had a podcast that ran a regularly between 2015 and 2019 that was appropriately for our purposes called Denzel Washington is the greatest actor of all time, period. Great show, great guest. And looking back at my list, Adam, I'll just say my number one pick, my own eyebrow raised. So I'll have to, I'll have to give that a fresh listen and see if I convince myself sometimes, sometimes that happens here on the show. So hopefully listeners will enjoy a fresh year or maybe listening to again, our top five Denzel Washington performances.

3:57That's from may 2017. And if you want access, regular access, whenever you want, you want to dip into the archive and hear shows like this, that is a benefit of being a FilmSpotting Family member. And you can learn more at FilmSpottingFamily.com. Enjoy. Mr. W. Kamau Bell. Many of you may know Bell for his politically charged standup. His new comedy album, Semi-Prominent Negro, was just released this week. He's also the host of CNN's United Shades of America, which just got picked up for a second season, not to mention his live monthly radio show and the politically reactive podcast that he co-hosts.

4:30but the reason he's with us today is because he thinks Denzel Washington is the greatest actor of all time period. And we know this because he co-hosts another podcast called Denzel Washington is the greatest actor of all time period. Kamau, you are a very busy man. Thank you so much for taking time for us today. Thank you. When you say it like that, I started to get sleepy. I bet it's a lot. How do you, how do you pull all of that off? I mean, I just sort of, you know, I think it is a function of after I had, I had another TV show, totally biased where I was like there for like 12 and 15 hours a day.

5:00and then when that was over, I was like, I don't want to ever have to commit that much time to one project ever again. I would like to do lots of things that take up a little bit of time. Well, that's good to hear. I got another one for you, okay? Can you add a fourth podcast? I want you to do something on the Forrest Gump sequel, the one that you speculated about in one of your early episodes. When that finally comes out, I just want you to do episodes cataloging that movie. Can you do that for me? I think I'll have to get rid of another podcast before I add another podcast. The funny thing is I'm always like going, I could do a podcast about this.

5:33And then I look at my wife and she's like, no, you can't. I'm always coming up with more ideas. I mean, you know, so it's – but yeah, certainly I think there's more podcasts in my future. I just think I'm going to have to suspend some while I do that. Sure, sure. That's a sound move. So when we announced that we were going to do this look back at Denzel Washington's career tied in with the Magnificent Seven review, we heard from a lot of people on social media saying you've got to get Kamau Bell on. You got to get someone from that show to talk about Denzel Washington. And the good part was we were way ahead of those Denzelots.

6:04We had already reached out to you. So we are very excited to have you on. And that term, Denzelot, all of our best ideas come from our listeners. Did you coin that expression or is that a pre-existing thing that you latched on to? No, it wasn't. It didn't exist. We sort of, I mean, I came up with the title. I'll take credit for that. I'm a big fan of like crazy long titles. like my new we just announced that i have a book coming out that also has a crazy long title i just think because everybody else every other podcast and titles gotten shorter for example like cereal is the number one podcast but you have no idea what that's about when you just say i'm listening to cereal so like i just feel like i just want a podcast it's very clear what it is so that you know what you're getting into but then it was actually me and kevin avery we both we actually shared it's going to be so much more boring we shared the same comedy manager for a while and she was the one who's like you should call your people denzel it's and we were like thank you comedy manager this is the rare the rare time our comedy manager actually has a good idea so uh no offense every comedy manager but she carrie smith she was like that and so that's where it came from so but you know since then the denzels have come up with lots of things that have been incorporated into the podcast so the basic idea for the show when you set out at the very beginning you know just go through denzel's films talk about all these performances has that vision been pretty much accomplished as you're approaching, I think, almost 100 shows now?

7:23Or has it changed a little bit along the way? And basically, what does it feel like to do this now this many episodes in? I mean, I think it really started to shift really early on. The idea was that we would review every Denzel Washington movie and therefore prove that he was the greatest actor of all time, period. But very early on, we started people reaching out to us because Denzel is an icon and also a very unique icon. Tom Hanks is also an icon, but there's other white guys. Like, you know, there's like, you know, if Tom Hanks walks into a room and the other side of the room, like George Clooney walks in the room, we got two white guys, two icons in the room.

7:58But Denzel is sort of singular in that in that there's not another actor of his era that holds a similar space. I mean, Samuel L. Jackson is great. Morgan Freeman is great. But he's kind of the king, you know? Yeah. And so I think that like very early on, people started coming into that. But then it also very quickly turned into a thing that was just generally about diversity in Hollywood. You know, at the time we started doing the podcast, like Oscar So White kicked up again. Right. We also started talking about like they're also Project Greenlight. The season of Project Greenlight had all that weirdness around diversity and Effie Brown when Matt Damon was like diversity on camera, not behind the camera.

8:30And I was a big fan of that show. And Kevin's a big fan of Matt Damon. So we had to have a lot of debates about that. And I mean, I think one of the greatest things that the show has done is that, you know, we talked to Ryan Coogler. Now, he's obviously he's the director of Rocky. Now, we talked about his favorite Denzel movies, but it was a really in-depth discussion about Creed. And luckily, our fans have grown with that, and they like that. So we find that we don't actually have to do an episode that's even 50 % Denzel for our fans to keep up with it. Because Denzel just sort of turns into a discussion about diversity in general.

8:59Yeah, no, that's really interesting how it's evolved to that. So we are going to get to your top five Denzel Washington performances, which I imagine was incredibly difficult considering how big of a fan you are. And considering how many great performances he has given, a little bit of setup here. And if I got any of these numbers wrong, I'm sure someone out there will correct me. I looked at his IMDb page. I counted 44 feature film credits. Of those, I've seen 26 of them. So I don't know how good that is or not. I don't know if you've seen all of them or not. Come out, you can tell us. But I've seen 26 of those 44.

9:32He's made five with Tony Scott, the director he's worked with the most. Spike Lee four times. Antoine Fuqua now three times. Ed Zwick, three times. He, of course, has won two Oscars. And I got this from the FiveThirtyEight.com article, speaking of those think pieces come out, the four types of Denzel Washington movies. They have him ranked 29th all time in terms of box office. His films have made over$2.2 billion domestically. So just a little bit of background there. Let's actually go ahead and get to your picks. And how did you even begin to come up with your list? Well, we talked about this in the podcast.

10:06I actually learned this from people coming on the podcast because some people we we make everybody come on and say, what are your top five favorite Denzel Washington movies? And very quickly, people were like, do you mean favorite performances or favorite movies? Like there would be this sort of like split between a Denzel Washington movie I enjoy or a performance that I think is is transformative and relevatory. And I never hadn't thought of it that way. So only through other people coming to the podcast, you like Dave Zirin, who's the great political sports reporter, came on with two lists. And now it's a pretty common thing for people to do that.

10:34or Ryan Coogler, we call it Coogler-ing, who would have like tied for number five is four movies. I can relate. That sometimes happens on this show. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's called Coogler-ing. Okay. So yeah, so for me, like my favorite movies are pretty different than this list of my favorite performances. Okay, really? Yeah, no, there's only one. Well, there's two, I guess. I mean, that's not very, but yeah, there's three on here that I would have, a couple I would have put on my list of favorite movies, but then later through doing the podcast, I'm like, I'm just saying that so I sound smart.

11:03It's not actually true. Yeah, well, just to jump in real quick, I'm curious because we may sprinkle in our choices. I know we did come up with our top five as well. Josh, did you end up in a similar place or are you like me and kind of have your five favorite Denzel movies that also happen to correspond with your favorite performances? I went with performances, but for me, the tough thing was we have a poll going on right now between best Denzel performance or another poll asking for your favorite. So this is a whole nother can of worms come out that you can get into. And so I got turned around in that a little bit, which has been really tough.

11:36Yeah. And we are going to get to those results later, but I guess I'll give a little bit of a spoiler. A good example there, I think, I don't have them in front of me, but Malcolm X, I think, won for best performance. But Training Day wins for favorite, right? And there is a big distinction between those two performances. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Like people, there's a sense that we talk about this in the podcast. There's a sense black people really like to not like Training Day because, like, you know, he's just playing a bad cop. but you cannot deny the immense fun it is to watch him in that performance totally you know you can you can sort of get on your high horse and go i don't think it's good that you won an oscar for that and that's also a discussion we can have but i have somebody who came around to that and be like this is just a good i mean it's like he is so he chews up every bit of scenery and it's so fun to see an actor like that get the be allowed to sort of just run all over the screen I agree.

12:26Whereas Malcolm X, he literally does the right thing. Yeah. And it's a great performance, but it's like if honestly, I always think of it this way. If there's two TVs or on one TV, there's two different movies playing, Malcolm X or Training Day, that's how you figure out your favorite. The one you go, well, I got to go watch this. And I'd watch a little bit of Malcolm X. I can get to Training Day before he says King Kong. Exactly. OK. So did either of those make your top five then? Both of them maybe? No, we talked it again. So this is top five performances. That's right. Performances. So number five, I'm going to say Hurricane.

13:00OK. Hurricane is – it used to be one of my favorite movies. But if you watch the movie, it's a little bit heavy-handed. And they also have to cover a lot of time. And so it's just that thing where movies have to cover a lot of time. They sort of like – things sort of get attenuated. But that movie did bring me to read about Reuben Hurricane Carter a lot. But his performance in that movie, the fact that he plays a guy from like 18 to like, I don't know, 60. And it's not totally unbelievable. and the fact he was 45 years old and ripped in the boxing scenes. Yeah. And it has a classic Denzel Washington line, I'm 50 years old, which means Kevin Avery's safety.

13:33The quivering lip, everything, yeah. 50 years old. I've been locked up for 30 years. It's funny about that movie because in that poll question that we're referencing, we gave like the top six answers we thought would be the most common and we didn't list hurricane among them and then we had other where people could write in and hurricane scarcely got mentioned do you think that there is a valid reason or any reason that you can come up with why that movie for some reason just hasn't held the same esteem over time since it came out i mean i think it has the biopic problem that like you know it's hard to sort of like when you really need to cover a person's whole life it's hard to do a great job with that or a thorough job with that like you know every biopic should actually be like a season of television like where it's like you know instead of like cramming it all in also i think it got a lot of heat at the time i remember that yeah but then they played a little fast and loose with some of the facts which i felt like did we all see a beautiful mind was that guy like a like a closeted reprobate like you know exactly but the movie just uses the crazy math genius i feel like that was to me like a little bit of a of institutionalized racism we're like oh so this black guy gets heat for playing fast and not as fast loose to the facts as other biopics do regularly so i think it sort of that affected it and also i think it's a little bit like if you want to watch hurricane you might as well watch malcolm x because it's basically a better version of that movie you know it's a black guy well he has been in a number biopics so you know maybe once those start getting ranked in people's minds hurricane falls to the bottom yeah might be i just think hurricane is not really he's great in it it's not i mean i say this very it's not a ton of fun like i think so it's not Like Malcolm X, even though it's tragic, seeing him be Malcolm X is fun.

15:18It's just, it's amazing. And you're really like, oh, this is one of the greatest things I've ever seen. So Hurricane is great, but I think it maybe doesn't age as well as these other ones. But his performance is absolutely top notch. Yeah, a clear one there, as you were saying, that would fit here into your top five performances, but not your top five Denzel movies. What about your number four? My number four, I'm going to say A Soldier Story. Love it. Yeah, A Soldier Story is like the first. I think maybe he did maybe he did the carbon copy movie first but we don't really count that yeah but yeah soldier story is really like a great movie because it's a murder mystery and Denzel starts out being what you would think is like oh this guy's got nothing and then eventually the reveal it's like oh this guy's got a lot more than I expected you know no spoilers and I think that like it's sort of interesting that he ended up being such a leading man because it's really that is a really character performance like it's not dominated by him being like the best looking handsome guy like he's sort of an he's sort of a nerd for lack of a better word he's wearing glasses and he sort of thought is like not being really worthy of anyone's respect that's true yeah where are you from peterson hollywood california uh by way of alabama sir you see i enlisted in 42 i thought we'd get a chance to fight sir did you know the sergeant well uh no sir he was already with the company when i got assigned and pfc's and sergeants we don't mixed too well sir you played ball for him oh yes sir i played shortstop and did you like the sergeant no sir you see well it goes back to the team so stone ass felt stone ass well i'm the only one who called him that sir sergeant water sir didn't mean no offense sir leading actors don't normally start out that way they normally start out as leading you know it's like it's a real character role later he would have been cast in the role that howard rollins would have played if they'd done that movie again.

17:06Well, that's right. He kind of is in Courage Under Fire, right? Yeah, yeah. He does the same thing. So I think it's really a testament to the fact that we've, that sometimes in the modern era, we forget that Denzel, if he was less good looking, he would have been a great character actor. No, that's absolutely right. Yeah. He's too good looking, too tall, too good looking to be a character actor. And also, I think that he actually was in A Soldier's Play, which is why he played the same role in the movie. He was in A Soldier's Play. And we had David Alan Greer on the podcast, who was also in A Soldier's play that also starred Samuel L.

17:35Jackson was also in that play in New York and told great stories of like actors in the late 70s, early 80s, those guys all being on in a play together. Amazing. Yeah, that movie is one. It came out in 84. I was nine or 10 years old then. And I watched it all the time. For some reason, I think my dad exposed me to it. And I became obsessed with it because it would be on HBO all the time. And so I would just see it constantly. And I do remember him very vividly from that film. And then I remember getting into high school my senior year having to write a paper for an English class on the Melville short story Billy Budd that was made into a movie in the 60s with Peter Ustinov.

18:10And that's basically a soldier story is basically Billy Budd, but set obviously in the army. So yeah, and I love that movie and that book too. So that's one that has always stuck with me. It's a great choice. 60 years of Whistler Blackcomb, two legendary mountains, thousands of stories from skiing on the back of glaciers to pushing the limits. We've carved our legacy into this terrain. Now it's your turn. Experience North America's largest ski resort for yourself with world-class snow sport events, concerts to the edge of the mountain, gravity-defying fire and ice shows, and more. This winter, go beyond.

18:46Plan your trip to Whistler Blackcomb. What about your number three? Number three? Glory. I mean, it's like I sort of struggle, like maybe it should be higher. I mean, he basically – that's when for a lot of black people he became like, oh, so we're going to put him on a post-it stamp someday. He's going to be like – he's going to get his birthday off one day for his black household. He's going to be on the back of half his church fans, all for that scene where he plays a very complicated character. Again, a character – it's something a character actor would do because he's not the good guy in the movie.

19:19He's a very complicated character. A character you sort of want to hate, but Denzel Washington's charisma sort of makes it that you're like, I want to hate you, but I can't. and it is i mean glory tear is a thing like you can say to somebody i almost had a glory people because of that movie the fact that he cried out of one eyeball i mean it became like this thing where it's like not only is a great performance but he's doing a magic trick and i mean it's to this day you can say to most black people of you know probably go glory tear and they know what you're talking about most many people know what you're talking about but i think it's just like it was when he became bigger than just an actor in that movie And that's a movie – again, you don't get to see a movie where he's acting up against Morgan Freeman and Andre Brower.

19:57And big ups for – what's his name? Ferris Bueller in that movie. Matthew Broderick, yeah. A for effort, let's say. Well, I'd say a lot of white guys I would have been mad at that they were on screen. I would have been like, move out of the way so I can get to them. But he sort of plays a very good like, I'm not supposed to be here. But I have a lot of respect for Matthew Broderick who watched that movie. I'm like, he could have been blown off the screen. And he sort of let his naivete laugh him not to be blown off the screen. glory that's when he becomes a force to be reckoned with yeah button up that collar sucking that gut tucking them big black lips lighten your skin shrink up that nose i don't have to listen to this where you going boy let me buy let you buy let you buy Let me tell you something, boy.

20:51You can march like the white man. You can talk like him. You can learn his songs. You can even wear his suits. But you ain't never gonna be nothing to him but an ugly-ass chimp in a blue suit. Oh, you don't like that, do you? No. Hmm? Well, what are we gonna do about it? You want to fight me, boy? Huh? What you gonna do about it? You want to fight me, don't you? There's no denying, though, that Denzel just manhandles that movie. I mean, he's not really supposed to be the one thing you come out of it thinking about. But you do. You're right. And you do. You absolutely do. I think it's the potent combination of swagger and anger that he has in that role.

21:36And you're right. Watching scenes from Glory again, it's a much more complicated character than I remember in my memory. It's not the sort of postage stamp character that we might think of. He's really complicated and troublesome and conflicted. And man, making a breakout performance out of something like that takes a special sort of skill. Yeah. And that was his first Oscar. And I think also the other thing about that, as we talk about the current era of like people don't understand how can Colin Kaepernick say such mean things about America and say he still likes America? Well, it's complicated.

22:11You know, like, go watch Glory. It's really good. Like, Denzel ends up basically showing pride in the flag, you know, while at the same time hating everything the flag has created. So I think it's, for a black person, it's like, that character is very relatable. It's like, I totally get that. Like, you know, it's not love it or leave it. It's like, hate it and fix it. Yeah, and that's funny because we just got done talking about last week on the show Born on the Fourth of July. So this topic seemed very relevant. And then I just actually watched Glory for the first time. Somehow in the 80s, I missed it.

22:40I knew that I had to cross this one off before I talked to you or talked to anybody about Denzel Washington. And yeah, his performance is, there's no doubt it's a standout. And that interesting combination you pointed out, Josh, of the kind of swagger and anger and that sense of righteousness is something we get that really comes through in a lot of really good Denzel performances. But then on the flip side of that are the ones where it always feels like he's repressing that. And that's fascinating, too. And that comes through actually a little bit, I think, in his character in The Magnificent Seven, and the more quiet reserved ones, but there's always something underneath the surface you're just waiting to spoil over, to bubble over.

23:13I think that struggle over the idea of righteousness is like if you look at Denzel Washington as an auteurist actor, like what's the through line in almost every one of his performances, it's that and you see it right here in Glory. Yeah, great pick. Number two. Number two, we're going with Training Day, which Training Day could easily be number one, but I don't want to get black people mad at me. So I'm going to say number two. Look, it's Training Day. I mean, that movie only works as well as it does because you have a history of Denzel Washington's career behind it to sort of know where he came from.

23:44And so I think if he had done Soldier Story and then Trinity, you'd be like, OK, so he's just kind of a jerk. But because we'd had a history of Denzel Washington being like this sort of like, you know, post Malcolm X, like he's our savior. He's black. You know, he's black Jesus or Jesus, as some people say. There you go. You have this sort of history of him being like this sort of like he's he's our avatar for positive black male role models. And then in Trading Day, he's it's like a meta performance because we're like how you're watching the character of Alonzo do all these horrible things. We're like, Denzel, how could you do this?

24:18And at the same time, again, his charisma comes through as that character given to another actor would just be like, you know, it would be like Bad Lieutenant. where however can tell you're just like, I just hate you. Which is fun to watch, but it's not a box office hit. I think it's Denzel's charisma that turns that into a box office hit. And again, shout out another white guy, Ethan Hawke. I condescended his performance, but the more I'd seen it, I'm like, you have to be a strong actor to put up with that guy for the whole movie. To be truly effective, a good narcotics agent must know and love narcotics.

24:50In fact, a good narcotics agent should have narcotics in his butt. What are you gonna smoke that? Nope, you are. Hell if I am. Yeah? Yeah. You not? No. Why, you a Mormon or something? You're a Jesus freak? No, man, I'm not. This is my job. This is your job. I can't do that. Smoke it. This ain't a test. Just take a hit. Take a hit. Man, listen, I became a cop to stop people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's not a review board and I ain't cocaine. Take a hit. No, man. I think in general, a lot of us, I've noted this recently because I think Ethan Hawks had an amazing run over the past couple of years in particular.

25:33I think a lot of us condescended to him for some reason as not a heavyweight enough actor. And I think he's proven us all wrong here recently. I like the idea of his performance in Training Day being a meta performance that in the way you talked about, but also because when I watch it, I feel like he's screaming at Oscar voters the whole time. I don't know what you've been waiting for, but fine. here it is berates them into giving him his best actor oscar which they finally did yeah as the great comedian greg proops said and i was one of those jokes i wish i'd written and he said this before he won the oscar he's like and finally they're going to give this guy who's played bico and malcolm x and reuben hurricane carter they're going to give him an oscar for playing pimptacious mcgee that's pretty much it i was just like that's good i wish i've written that that's so great all right well what's what's better than training day what's your number one performance Malcolm X is the Michael Jordan of Denzel Washington movies like it's just like you can sort of argue against it for fun as not being the greatest but that's the greatest performance because it's also the most important performance because when he took the movie Malcolm X there was a lot of talk of like can he pull this off there's a lot like amongst the black community he's too dark-skinned to do this he doesn't look enough like Malcolm we should get a lighter skinned guy there's all this sort of talk about this book is impossible spike lee's doing it it's spike lee gonna do a good job is he able to do an epic movie like this you know spike lee ran out like ran out of money and then like black celebrities gave him money to finish the movie it all is tied into also the fact that it was one of the first movies that sort of that went viral before it came out through the x caps and the x shirts that people were like like people like michael jordan were wearing like so the movie marketing became a part of the story like i had an X shirt and X cap and I didn't even wear baseball caps but it was just like it was a phenomenon a cultural phenomenon that now movies try to replicate every movie tries to replicate sort of like a viral marketing campaign and Spike Lee sort of pioneered that with Malcolm X and that movie without that movie I wouldn't have read the autobiography Malcolm X when I did I was like oh I should probably read the book before I see the movie and so and that book changed my life and Denzel there's moments in that movie if you've seen a lot of pictures of Malcolm X and you see Denzel in that movie he looks like Malcolm X which doesn't make sense because he doesn't look like Malcolm X.

27:43No, you're absolutely right. And so that's why he's always talked about like he's a very spiritual, religious man. He keeps it on down low a lot of times. But it's like he really feels like he was channeling Malcolm X. And I'm like, I don't know enough about that to know if that's true. But there's times that when we go, it doesn't make sense. He looks like Malcolm X, even though he doesn't. And I mean, there's this. I mean, you know, one of the most quoted speeches in my life that we use as part of the rating system on the show is, oh, I say and I say again you've been had you've been took you've been hoodwink bamboozled led astray run amok this is what he does i just did a very poor job of it that speech is like again it's like it's one of the things where you can say that to probably a certain generation of black people they go yeah malcolm x and the funny thing about that there's no evidence that malcolm x ever said that the real malcolm x but it's one of the most quotable and again we didn't land on plymouth rock there's no evidence that the real malcolm x said that that i've ever seen but denzel said it so So now it's one of the most popular Malcolm X quotes.