Willie Dynamite

Year releasted: 1974

by Nathan Rabin
July 16th, 2003

The blaxploitation boom of the early '70s fostered a huge upsurge in films exploring issues of importance to the flashy, high-profile pimp community. For example, Willie Dynamite explores the complexities of pimping through the dramatic fall of titular flesh-procurer Roscoe Orman, who later participated in a different kind of street life as Gordon on Sesame Street. Orman is a fervent capitalist with a fondness for furry capes, matching hats, and vanity license plates (his reads "Dynamite"), and little patience for his underachieving employees. When a neophyte streetwalker brings in less than she could, he subjects her to the following tongue-lashing: "You ain't no West Side junkie bitch making it on a garbage can! I put you in the finest hotel in New York, with over 2,000 plastic chumps that got just one thing on their dumb minds!" As Orman explains, his girls need to do more than just exchange sex for money: They need to sell an idea, a fantasy. "You got to make him feel he's boning the Statue Of Liberty!" But Orman has more to worry about than employees who fail to erotically emulate national monuments. The cops are cracking down on prostitution, leading Orman's flamboyantly attired pimping peers to consider joining forces to counteract both the ever-present fuzz and the "strange freelance bitches." Orman rejects their plans, which go against his capitalist impulses, but his decision has serious consequences, as hell hath no fury like cooperation-minded pimps scorned. Further trouble arises from former hooker and do-gooder social worker Diana Sands, who tries to curry favor with Orman's ostensibly loyal stable by telling them how much they overpay for their drugs and hooker garb, calling them "the saddest ripped-off bitches I have ever seen." To make matters worse, Orman is taken to jail on trumped-up charges, and forced to do push-ups while spelling his name for chuckling cops. Finally released from jail, he confronts Sands, who explains that she's a "consumer-protection agency, sort of a Ralph Nader for hookers." Besieged by pushy social workers, crusading cops, cranky rival pimps, and even the IRS, Orman ends the film open to the idea of leaving pimping altogether, having emerged from his experiences older, wiser, and far more sensibly attired.