Driving While Black

MOVIE #1,263 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 12.04.23 • VOLUME LV • I feel like I say this every other TRUE RANDOM review, but this is the perfect example of a selection for this series: a micro-budget indie comedy about the experience of, you guessed it, driving while black. In other words, not just a movie I wouldn’t have watched otherwise, but one that I would likely never have known even existed. In this sense (and especially because it’s a truly small independent production), whether or not I liked it or would recommend it feels less important than the simple act of seeing it. And I’m not sure if this makes sense to anyone who isn’t me.

So what is Driving While Black? Well, it’s billed as a dark comedy but that’s inaccurate. It’s just a regular comedy about a black man who has to deal with racial profiling in Los Angeles (and while this is almost entirely semantics, the humor is too broad to classify as anything else). Co-written by its star, Dominique Purdy — who is most famous for his music career: he has a prolific discography under the pseudonym, The Koreatown Oddity — it’s basically a series of vignettes shot on the streets of Los Angeles. A loose plot will pop up from time to time but the narrative is less important than the vibe and message which, while one-note, sure (it’s all right there in the jokey/memey title), is still crucial. And despite its comic tone and a few goofy fantastical embellishments (the film begins with a dream sequence where a cop’s eyes turn black before two other cops wearing KKK hoods show up), it does still hit home at the central dilemma in a very real way: black people can’t get in a car or walk down the street without an underlying fear that a police officer might harass or even kill them.

I didn’t LOL at any point, but Purdy is charismatic and amusing in the lead. And while it looks like its budget, there were attempts to stylize the final product in the edit which elevated it above most other similarly cheap, shot-on-digital films.

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Driving While Black is a 2015 American black comedy film directed by Paul Sapiano, starring Dominique Purdy. Inspired by the real life experiences of Purdy, who co-wrote the screenplay with Sapiano, the film tells the story of a black man who has to deal with racial profiling in Los Angeles, California. It was released on June 13, 2015.