Blind to black and white

It's been a long time since that famous taboo-breaking kiss between Sidney Poitier and Katherine Houghton in the 1967 movie Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.

Since then, though, there's been a distinct dearth of inter-racial sex in Hollywood. Only in blaxploitation hits like Shaft and Superfly has inter-racial romance blossomed, and the zippers soon went back up after that brief exposure in the early Seventies. Now, however, at last a movie has come along which shows that celluloid sex does not have to be an all-white affair. "Black and White could get me shot," says writer-director James Toback of his Manhattan-based movie about rich white kids who identify with hip hop groups. A cult director since the Seventies, whose devotees are known as Tobackonists, this indie movie-maker in his latest film mixes up an astonishingly eclectic inter-racial cast including Elijah Wood, Robert Downey Jr, Brooke Shields, Ben Stiller, Bijou Phillips along with non-professionals like Mike Tyson, the rap group Wu Tang Clan and German supermodel Claudia Schiffer - the latter playing a "Nordic plunderer in a black world". "The way inter-racial sex is presented in this picture," Toback comments, "is so casual, so extreme and so severe it will bring the closet-bigots to the surface. It's going to shock people." That's true. Black and White caused an uproar in America even before it went on release this summer. From the very first scene of this freewheeling movie, Toback announced his intentions with two white teenage girls making love to a black youth up against a tree with only minimal camouflage being provided by the shrubbery in Central Park; Claudia Schiffer later has sex with the same youth, Oliver "Power" Grant of rap group Wu Tang Clan, in a bathroom. So, not altogether surprisingly, when the film was submitted to the ratings board at the Motion Picture Association last spring, the American censor duly responded and reached for his scissors. "It doesn't sound like much," says a deadpan Toback, "Bijou Phillips has her hand between Kim Matilova's legs and is kinda hammering her arm back and forth. They [the censors] referred to it as the 'elbow jerk'. They said the scene had 10 elbow jerks in it. I said, 'I hadn't counted'. "'Well, we did,' they said, 'and there are 10'. I said, 'And?' - 'Cut it down to two.' I had to cut the whole shot," he sighs. "The sad thing is you end up negotiating with these people."

Not that Toback helped his cause when he accused the head of the ratings board of being a racist. "Yeah, I told him that because what I felt bothered them was the inter-racial nature of the scene. I said: 'If it was a white guy, you wouldn't be objecting to this, but because the sexuality in the scene doesn't fit into your professed mode, you won't allow it.'" The censor's response is not on record.

Aside from official censorship, though, the rumbustious Toback believes that it's almost impossible to get any inter-racial sex into an American film because, in the end, the only colour that matters in Hollywood is the colour of money. "White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, you name 'em; they're all part of the hip hop nation now," says Toback. "But in Hollywood there's this defensive thinking that says, 'What's the point of excluding any part of our potential audience?'. So, if you ask them, 'Why aren't we reflecting the hip hop phenomenon?', they'll say, 'Because in the South that's not true, hip hop hasn't caught on. Down there we're gonna get nothing but anger; so why should we make a movie that's going to eliminate 20 per cent of our audience before we've even started?' "And since budgets have soared higher and higher," Toback concludes, "that sort of conservatism is becoming more and more entrenched."

As widespread as hip hop now is in America, the 52-year-old director thinks that the craze is actually a symptom of something that's even more far-reaching. "What the movie suggests and illustrates is that there is a generational change coming now that's going beyond the fads that every teenage group usually engages in. At the moment hip hop culture is dominant, but ultimately the sartorial and the musical aspects of it will go. "However, the inter-racial sex that it has brought along with it will stay," Toback adds. For the first time in the interview, this torrential talker pauses to collect his thoughts. "I gave Warren Beatty this line he used in Bulworth - his movie about a hip hop-loving senator - that sums it up for me: 'Everybody's got to keep f***ing everybody else until there's only one colour'. Right now - and for the first time without any social stigma being attached - that's what's happening with young kids in America."

Even for a determined liberal like Toback, however, there are some forms of inter-racial sexuality he is hesitant to portray on screen. "It was Downey's idea," he says of the most talked-about scene in his film where pale, skinny Robert Downey Jr has the temerity to make homosexual overtures to the former heavyweight world champion Mike Tyson. "Robert wanted to play Brooke Shields's husband. I said, "She doesn't have one." But he was determined. "What if she does? What if he's gay? In fact, what if he's gay and compulsively cruising?" Toback couldn't resist this and agreed. To compound the chaos, the director then made the mischievous suggestion that, during the film's party scene, Downey hit on the cast's other ex-con, Mike Tyson, who would be playing himself. "But what if he kills me?" pleaded Downey. "It's a great way to go out," was Toback's reply.

In the final film, however, the scene immediately goes into meltdown when Downey confesses to a nonplussed Tyson: "In my dream, you're holding me tight." The ex-fighter decks Downey, which in turn arouses Brooke Shields who then suggests that all three head for a hotel room. But while he's describing all these shenanigans, Toback reveals that they shot another version of this scene between the two former jailbirds which he would have loved to have used. "That scene was completely improvised with Mike backing away from Robert saying, 'I'm chillin' man. Leave me alone.' But then Mike said, 'Leave me be, man, I'm on parole,' and Robert replied, 'So am I'."

Toback says he wished he could have kept the line, but what seemed more important for him at the time was to present a wider - and more unexpected - variety of inter-racial sex on the screen. "I hope that the movie will force people to face up to inter-racial sexual thoughts in a way that they haven't done before. Although that's not a problem for Robert Downey," laughs Toback before leaning forward to elaborate. "Later on in that take he told Tyson, 'After we've made out I'm gonna bite your ear off'."