When What the Bleep
Meets the Streets

A TLC interview with E. Raymond Brown
& William Arntz by Liv Kellgren

Liv Kellgren: How long did it take for this movie to come from an idea to the screen?

E. Ray: Oh, actually, the book was what came first and that came in late ’02. I wrote the book, the first rough draft, in less than two months, it was a very lucid experience and just sort of came through me, a lot of the archetypal stuff.

But then working music production and urban hip-hop culture, stuff like that, so there was a lot of innovation with the terminology.

Liv: Have you done a lot of archetypal work, personally?

E. Ray: You mean like studying the Jung stuff and like the background in shamanic studies and Taoism, studied a lot of Arnold Mindell’s work with the process-oriented psychology, stuff like that.

Liv: It sounds like this movie is a culmination of a lot of your different life experiences all coming together.

E. Ray: Yes, I call it an urgent synthesis.

Liv: Will, you were one of the key people in the creation of What the Bleep. How did you go from Bleep to Ghetto? That seems like quite a leap.

Will: Well, now that you’ve seen both movies, it’s not as big a leap as it appears on the surface. But the leap was sort of not my doing. After I finished Bleep, I was kind of done with doing movies and I was getting retired. Then I started thinking, you know, if I could do something to help people, why not do it.

So I was sitting around and about a month later a copy of E. Ray’s pilot for the film got in my hands, and I watched and I said, you know, I think I’ve got to do this. It was the insight, the premise and humor that E. Ray had already put there that I just, you know, it almost wasn’t even a conscious thing. I just saw it, I said, yeah, this is something I can do. In fact, it’s something I want to do.

Liv: Are you surprised by who’s been attracted to your book and to your truth?

E. Ray: There’s an evaluation of the conversation of empowerment and what is it to be empowered. Then, you know, transformation and that process is involved in it, like, who is really moving forward in the Game, and are you stagnating? Are you in some outdated space, or are you moving forward, because the Game keeps shifting?

I had done some transformational coursework, actually, I could see that that was woven into it. Then there’s like this exploration of enlightenment that we’re, even when I wove in—when you started talking about, the Biblical quote, what is it? “To gain the world, but lose your soul in the process,” so, you know, how do you juxtapose being within different realms in where do you position yourself and you can kind of squander a lot in one realm trying to gain a lot in another, so there’s that whole exploration of the conversation of enlightenment.

Liv: You mentioned the Game a few times. Would you clarify for us your concept of the Game?

E. Ray: Okay, well, Ghetto Physics is conversation about raw dynamics in the social power game. You know, a lot of people say, “Well, hey, you know, I’m not playing the Game. I’m serious. You know, I’m not playing games.” And I get that.

I get that adult conversation, but the reality of it is, that we perform every day. And it does come down to how are you with your game, and, when you look at it from, even examining from kind of a macro science perspective, there’s the interplay of all these dynamics in the realms, there’s interplay: We’re in the Game.

Will: I mean, for me, I had never really thought of it in those terms. This is really a street term. When we interviewed the pimps in the movie, they’re always talking about the Game, the Game is to be sold not told. They’re always talking about the Game. You know, they’re paying for the Game.

And so it was something that they would refer to, and me coming from outside the culture, I was intrigued by it. For them it was a very, very specific thing. And what it is, when you say the Game, it’s like whatever business arrangement you’re in, or business sphere you’re in, that’s a game.

So, it’s a way of putting a lasso around a certain interaction and calling it the Game. It’s the Game with a capital G. It’s something very specific that you engage in, in order to further your agenda.

You know, the nice thing about the street terminology is it kind of breaks it down and makes it very, very basic. It’s not so much all the subtle manipulations involved, that’s all part of the Game.

Liv: And so tell us what’s a pimp, what’s a ho and what’s their relationship in this Game that you talk about?

Will: Well, the Game, it’s played out on all these different levels. There’s the street game, and some of the premise of the movie, the pimp and the ho, when you see them do their game, in other words, their interaction, the way that they work and whatnot, their agreement, is pretty obvious.

The thing that intrigued me about E. Ray’s thesis was that this pimp-ho-type relationship is really the same thing going on at all these other levels. It’s like the simplest expression of that. And by looking through that lens, you can clear a lot of the confusion about it and say, oh, I see what they’re doing. I see that politician just wants me to run off and do their bidding for them. They want me to do all the work and they’re going to get all the money, or a corporation’s going to do that, so that’s their game.

In that sense, they’re just pimping me and turning me into a ho to do their bidding. So that’s the basis of a lot of the metaphor of the film.

Liv: And you mentioned in the film, also, that the Game, with a capital G, is the only game in town unless you rise to a spiritual level.

E. Ray: No, actually, we didn’t mention that in the film. You know, one of the things I point out to people is that the film and the book is a conversation where we’re not saying this is the reality. We’re in the conversation and so we’re exploring how it shows up. If you move to a spiritual level, you become both pimp and ho at the same time. And even saying that, I don’t know that you’re, quote, unquote, out of the Game.

Liv: I really appreciate your concept of yin and yang, and that’s a great metaphor for us, being both at the same time. You know, there’s the little bit of yang in the yin, and a little bit of yin in the yang, just like we can both be the pimp and the ho at the same time.

E. Ray: One of the things I was present to from studying archetypes is that all of them are woven. Those are the threads of that mythic layer. You know we’re not just temporal beings. We’re not just beings that you can take a ruler or something, a tape measure and encompass everything about us in that dimensionality.

Liv: You have quite a range of guest speakers from real life pimps and ho’s filmed on the streets at night, to rapper Ice-T and author Byron Katie. Tell us more about the diversity of your group and how they all came together.

Will: When I hooked up with E. Ray, E. Ray had already had Cornel West, KRS-One and had gotten Ice-T.

And when I came on, a lot of what I tried to bring to the project was furthering the idea that it’s the same Game at the street level and on a global level. So I started thinking what type of people do we start interviewing to give a more global picture to the whole thing.

So John Perkins came to mind, because of his stuff with the World Bank. Then with Byron Katie, you know, I’ve met her a number of times and as far as I can tell, she’s very evolved, you know, quite enlightened. And I just wanted to have that sort of energy in the movie is the simplest way to put it, because a person like that carries a certain vibration and it really shows the full spectrum of the conversation.

E. Ray: We were trying to get people in the conversation that represented various perspectives that could help broaden it from various places, because we saw that it wasn’t just happening from one space.

Once I had like an Afro-centric, you know, core to it, when I started with my pilot draft, I wanted to have like Cornel West, KRS-One. KRS is probably the most brilliant mind that hip-hop generation has ever produced. And then Cornel West, from the African-American community, he is the epitome of an intellectual and, I think, in the world community.

Liv: What do you think we as individuals and a culture need to do to get out of the ghetto? Is that even a possibility?

Will: And I think about this, in eleven words and three rhymes, here’s how you fix the planet: Let’s unite, let’s don’t fight, and let’s get the money right.

I mean, does that sum it up? Think about it. Let’s unite. Let’s get rid of the separatists and all the divisions. Let’s don’t fight. Let’s, you know, stop the wars. And let’s get the money right, which is the basis of so much of the strife anyway.

I mean, man, the guy nailed it. Three rhymes and eleven words, I’m in awe.

E. Ray: I would say why are we completely interested in getting out of the ghetto, just like when people say, “How do we get out of the Game?” I’m like, “Why are you trying to get out of the Game? Why don’t you want to go further into the Game, if you want to shift or transform aspects of the Game or something?”

That reality of how the pimp-ho dynamic is showing an interaction dynamic is showing up on the planet. It doesn’t work, so I think we just need to shift it. And I don’t know if it’s necessary to be in a conversation about getting rid of the ghetto, but how do we embrace it and can we bring some love to it and just get present that we’re in it and it’s part of our nature and can we create it in a more human expression.

Liv: And is one of those ways to express freedom and responsibility?

E. Ray: Well, you know, when you say freedom and responsibility, I think, to me what also comes to mind is expression and awareness, ‘cause freedom is like some innate existential compulsion, right? Something inside of you that’s coded in you wants to be free to express itself, so it’s like full self-expression.

Then the responsibility is you have an action, but you’ve got to have awareness to be able to direct your action. So what is the relationship between freedom and responsibility is like, for me, what is the relationship of being fully self-expressed.

But if you’re not aware of how to play in the Game, this is why the Game is so relevant as a metaphor, because in interacting out here in society, you’ve got to get out here in the political system, you know, as an economic being, social, psychological, spiritual, all these levels we exist as a being.

So in being responsible for yourself, you’ve got to be responsible for expanding your consciousness, period, period, or it’s not going to be a better planet. This is all bullshit, the whole enlightenment thing, you know, we are the world, this is going to be all bullshit, because the Game is going to go down. Let’s be real. Let me tell you from a ghetto perspective the Game is going to go down.

So people, our consciousness must be raised, like that’s part of the Game. How do we get to each other and help expand each other’s awareness and really get that we’re connected to each other.

Liv: So, gentlemen, who are the real pimps and ho’s?

Will: Well, they’re pretty much, you know, everybody. When I first heard the title, I immediately got that the real pimps and ho’s were the people in positions of power who were, basically, pimping us on their dreams for their own betterment.

But, you know, in the end, it’s all of us. We all take those archetypal things, we all take those roles. This is, for me, stripping down all the fancy labels that you might have when something or someone. Gee, I’m playing the whole ho role, so, to me, that’s the real part of it.

E. Ray: I would just say it’s also context to who are the real pimps and ho’s in what? Politics? Economics? You know, in what Game?

Because there’s benevolent pimps and there’s diabolical ones. There’s a Jim Jones and then there’s a Dalai Lama. Dalai’s got followers, too. He shows up in a pimp-ho dynamic. They’re just on the other end of the spectrum that you have evolved very benevolent pimps, that operate and perpetuate agendas to the benefit of their ho’s or to the benefit of the people who are subordinate to them.

So that was very controversial, just so you know. That’s was very controversial that we are introducing this exploration about the spectrum of, is it possible to synthesize the idea of someone who puts the Game down and has prowess at putting the Game down, but is also a benevolent figure, not just a diabolical figure.

It is easy for everybody to say the pimp is the ruthless corporation or the tyrant. We want a good pimp who’s going to counter that, ‘cause how else are you going to counter it?

Will: One of your questions was sort of what do you want people to take away from that, from this. And really, a lot of it is, like you said, it’s awareness. In the end, we don’t want to come across as telling people what to do or how to do it.

What we’re saying is, look, the Game goes on in all these levels, be aware of it, be aware of it. Once you’re aware of it, figure out what your dream is and then choose what to do, choose your life, choose your role out of awareness.

Don’t just go unconscious and be pimped, or don’t go unconscious and be pimping, being driven by some desire, but just with awareness step back from it, see the Game and then choose.

We’re not saying what’s right or wrong, how to choose or not. But it’s choosing with that awareness and then taking the responsibility for your life and your choices.

You know, in a couple of lines, for me, that’s really what I hope. When people walk out of that film, they’re bustling within their minds.

E. Ray: I would just say: Be your truth, and then I would just say that [some people] don’t want to disturb people about not agreeing with them, so they’ll tend not to be their truth because it’s controversial. But I would say, be your truth.

For more information about Ghetto Physics, and to find it in a theater near you, please visit www.GhettoPhysics.com. Ghetto Physics plays in Los Angeles October 22. Watch TLC for information on a San Diego screening.