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The following interview was done late 1993 and appeared in SHOCKING IMAGES #3 and #4.
Part 1 / Part 2

http://www.shockingimages.com/dolemite/interview.php

SHOCKING IMAGES: DOLEMITE was your first film. That was directed by D'urville Martin. I heard he was dead.

RUDY RAY MOORE: Yes. He died in 1984. He had a heart attack.

SI: Did he do any other films?

RRM: Yes. You mean direct?

SI: Yes.

RRM: Disco 9000.

SI: Did he act in any others?

RRM: Oh yes! Friday Foster with Pam Grier, Black Caesar, THE LEGEND OF NIGGER CHARLIE, BOSS NIGGER all with Fred Williamson. In other words, he did about 10 pictures with Fred. And he did THE BOOK OF NUMBERS with Raymond St. Joques.

SI: Some people consider DOLEMITE to be the ultimate black action film. How do you feel about that?

RRM: Yes. Well, I'll tell you how DOLEMITE got to be. What it was. I had created a character in my party records. He was so bad on the records. After creating the character on the records people said "I wonder if he's as bad in the movies as he is on the records?" I had some daring things that I had done in it, like pulling out guts and all that. People just really went for it in that period.

SI: Wasn't the black action phenomena started by Melvin Van Peeble's Sweet Sweetback's Badaaasss Song?

RRM: No. That came out in '71 and there was Superfly and Shaft in these early years. But Melvin Van Peeble's film could have been one of the pioneers of what is the so-called "blaxploitation".

SI: What do you think of Shaft and the Fred Williamson type films?

RRM: Well, those films were nice for that period.

SI: When and where was DOLEMITE filmed?

RRM: DOLEMITE was filmed in 1974 on location in my house in Los Angeles. We had very little to do it with, so I had to set up stuff in my house and around the place that I lived, in the alleys and things for the chase scenes. Whatever I could do to get it done at a very phenomenal cheap price.

SI: Did you finance it yourself?

RRM: Yes.

SI: Did you finance your other films as well?

RRM: THE HUMAN TORNADO and partially PETEY WHEATSTRAW and all of RUDE I done.

SI: What is your connection with people like Lady Reed, Jerry Jones, and Jimmy Lynch? They were involved with a lot of your projects.

RRM: Lady Reed is an old friend of mine through the years and when I started doing movies I was out to give her a break. Jerry Jones came to me as a writer to write the script DOLEMITE. So that's how we've become connected and since then we've done several projects together. Jimmy Lynch is one of the early comedians to do "four letter comedy". We met after he had his first album out. He came to town and I met him and introduced him at the old California Club.

SI: Were you into a lot of karate?

RRM: No. My karate scenes were staged by martial arts champion Howard Jackson. I had to go to his school. I guess I went for about a month to get the coordination ideas to do martial arts on film, which is not difficult to do. All you have to do is know the movement and they stage it. So I was able to learn that in his school.

SI: What made you decide to incorporate karate in your films?

RRM: Well, it had became popular from the Bruce Lee era. Black people were going to see that a lot too on the screen. So I decided to incorporate that into my story line.

SI: DOLEMITE was always good in a bad sort of way.

RRM: He was good and upstanding but didn't take no shit. He was just as self-contained to defend by whatever means necessary.

SI: Clips from DOLEMITE have been shown on the ARSENIO HALL SHOW as well as a lot of references to the character on numerous rap albums. He seems to be popping up all over place. Do you feel that you've created a legend with the character?

RRM: Yes. Dolemite and some of the other characters that I do. I have been sampled 21 times by Luther Campbell on his rap records. I've been sampled by NWA over half a dozen times. I'm sampled by Dr. Dre on the "Chronic" album, which is doing big. It's gonna do 4,000,000 records. I had a sample from one of my movies in Lavert's video and I've also worked live with Eazy-E with a hot single out now. I am also on the album with Big Daddy Kane, "Taste of Chocolate." I did a video with Eric B. and Rakim. So now I am tagged as the 'Godfather of the rappers", also known as "Rappin' Rudy-The king of the Party Records".

SI: Why have you been tagged "The Godfather of Rap"?

RRM: It's because I am the influence to the rappers of today with the rap that I done years ago. Rappin' and rhymin'. I am the first commercial artist to come out with that on record with explicit language. All my stuff rhymes. (Goes into a monologue) "Way down in the jungle deep. The lion stepped on the monkey's feet..." I was doing that rap style years ago so naturally they looked to my records to see what they can find because I was the first. So naturally being the first, I am the Godfather.

SI: Everybody was always "rat soup eatin'.."

RRM: I am very creative and use creative material. I wanted daring things to say to make people jump up in the seats in the theaters. So "rat soup satin,. no business barn, low life, decrepit, insecure, junkyard.." none of those words are bad. They are not four letter words. So when we gave the movie to the MPAA to judge it for language, they didn't know what it meant. They come back to Dimension Pictures and said "We don't know what Mr. Moore is talking about. We know what "motherfucker" means but we don't know what "rat soup eatin,. insecure, peppergut, junkyard.."means. So what we're gonna do, we gonna rate this picture "R" for language." We had to cut the scene when the girl is lying on the bed from the beaver being further back off the camera. The gut scene where I pulled D'urville Martin's guts out had to be cut down some. It was too graphic for an "R" rated picture. So they said "Make those couple of cuts and we'll give it an "R" for language." That included the "rat soup eatin'."

SI: You then did the follow up to DOLEMITE, THE HUMAN TORNADO.

RRM: That was the second DOLEMITE picture.

SI: Was that shot around your home as well?

RRM: It was shot right around location in Los Angeles and in the Dunbar Hotel. The place where I had this huge apartment with about nine rooms. I decorated every room in it to shoot a scene in. Even the hospital scene, the jail-house scene, everything was done in my house by set decoration.

SI: Was there a really small budget on this too?

RRM: Yes. I wasn't able to afford locations. The special effects, we did most of them ourselves. We just did not have the money. If I would've had money to do films then, I would have been a giant. I done all I'd done on nothin'. On a shoe string.

SI: At the beginning of THE HUMAN TORNADO there is a scene where one of the characters walks in on a lady in the bathroom and she is shouting "This is for ladies!" That's your voice isn't it?

RRM: That's me. How did you know?

SI: It just sounded like a voice you've used before on your party records.

RRM: That was an overdub we did in the studio. When we got in the studio, there was nobody to do it so I done it. I've done many, many things myself, from set decoration, to cooking, to production manager, to acting, everything. There was nothing too small for me to take hold of; run errands, everything.

SI: You sang a few songs that were included in your movies. Were those ever released?

RRM: Yes. I sang "The Human Tornado". I sang the song "Miss Wonderful" too, and they were released as a single.

SI: Who's Cliff Roquemore?

RRM: He was the preparer for PETEY WHEATSTRAW and the director of THE HUMAN TORNADO. He wanted a shot at writing and directing. He was talented and didn't cost me the money probably most directors would've cost. So I went along with him.

SI: There is a part in THE HUMAN TORNADO where you are having sex and scenes of you eating food are edited in during that sequence. That is one hell of a hilarious metaphor!

RRM: Roquemore came up with that and I came up with the scene where the fellows are sliding down the slide into the woman. The writer just wrote the script. I put the dialog in it of the explicit language.

SI: The fight scenes in that were sped up. Was that for a comedic effect?

RRM: Yes. We sped the fight scenes up. The trailer is not, though. I was looking at it the other day, and they were not sped up. That was Dimension Pictures' idea.

SI: In the beginning of THE HUMAN TORNADO, you are doing some of your comedy. At the end of that scene there are shots of a red rose edited in.

RRM: That was the trademark of Dolemite. He wore the red rose on everything. If you look in the picture, you'll see that the red rose is on all the wardrobe.

SI: Tell me about PETEY WHEATSTRAW.

RRM: PETEY WHEATSTRAW is an old folklore character from 1941. People used to talk about Petey Wheatstraw, the devil's son-in-law, the high sheriff of hell. So I took Petey Wheatstraw and made the character out of him. I wrote this monologue, in other words he was the son of the devil. So in writing the screenplay, we had to prepare how Petey Wheatstraw becomes the son-in-law of the devil. He has to marry the devil's daughter. Cliff Roquemore put this plot together to make it come out like that. But that's where Petey Wheatstraw comes from, one of my album characters.

SI: When was that made?

RRM: It was made in 1977.

SI: Then you did DISCO GODFATHER.

RRM: DISCO GODFATHER was the destruction of my film career. I had picked up backers to back me and DISCO GODFATHER was a little too mild of me. That was prepared by someone else. I should not have let him go in that direction. I should've went the same direction I was going with DOLEMITE and PETEY WHEATSTRAW and THE HUMAN TORNADO. But they were trying to clean me up with a better image and it didn't work. So I lost my investment. And that closed my film career out. I haven't done a film since, other than my concert which was just a stand up comedy concert.

SI: Do you have any plans for doing more films?

RRM: Yes. I have had plans for years to try and get back into it, but I could never get help. Never could get any kind of assistance.

SI: What made you decide to have a disco oriented film with DISCO GODFATHER?

RRM: The DISCO GODFATHER was supposed to be a take off from a black point of view of SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, but the writers went in the wrong direction with it. Should we have had a cop out to SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER with a lot of sex and a lot of great dancing, the things that the young people were doing at that period, it would've worked. But they were trying to clean me up to become more of a humanitarian by talking against drugs. Which that's what DISCO GODFATHER was about. So he put the disco theme to it in order to give it the music from the SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER idea.

SI: At the end where you've sniffed the angel dust and began freaking out, what was the idea that you were trying to imply with that?

RRM: I was only following the script lines and the idea of that was that the angel dust was so terrible until they caught me and put me in the room and got me loaded on it. It showed the effect that it had on me. That's how that came about. The gang that he was trying to knock out of the angel dust laboratory. When I got into the house, one of their assistants got me and drug me into that room and gassed me in there. So when they did find me, that was the condition I was in. Although those were not my ideas, these are just the script ideas that I was performing.

SI: When was RUDE released?

RRM: RUDE was released in 1982. I did it in 1980 and come back again in 1982 and did some more.

SI: Are all these available on video still?

RRM: Everything is available on video, even MONKEY HUSTLE. That's the one I did for American International Pictures. It's available. It was done in 1976 also.

SI: Tell me about MONKEY HUSTLE.

RRM: MONKEY HUSTLE was done with Yaphet Kotto and a great lady named Rosalind Cash. I had become strong in the market. I was lining up people with pictures that cost a few pennies to do. I was doing these pictures at this price and the president of AIP asked me to come up and then he asked me to do a picture for him, which was MONKEY HUSTLE. And lo and behold, I took it and coulda did THE HERETIC with Richard Burton, but I was advised by my assistants not to do it because of the money they offered me. But I wish I would've so I could put that on my resume.

SI: Was there any other films you worked on?

RRM: I worked on Penitentiary 2. Those are all the films that I have worked on that I've been seen in, other than many years ago when we were going out to Hollywood and doing those group set shots and stuff. But those are my starring roles.

SI: What are some other black action films that you think are influential to that era?

RRM: I did like Pryor in Which Way Is Up? and Max Julian in The Mack. I thought those were fantastic films. And Pam Grier. She had a couple of earlier pictures that were fabulous during that period.

SI: Why do you think that the craze for the black action films died out?

RRM: It died out from different groups complaining about what we were showing on film, from an image stand point. The companies that were doing it stopped shooting it, like AIP, who was one of the big companies, got so much feedback, so much kicking, so much complaints. None of the groups who did all that complaining never did anything. So it just left us out of work. That was the reason.

SI: When did your comedy career start?

RRM: My comedy career began in '59.

SI: How did you decide that was what you wanted to do?

RRM: Well, I had a lady friend in Cleveland, Ohio that used to do comedy, Caldonia Young. She had a comedy act and I used to watch this lady and mock her. Then when I came to Los Angeles, I went on stage and did her act and that went fantastically fabulous. So from then on I was doing comedy.

SI: When did you come to California?

RRM: I came to California in '59.

SI: How many comedy albums did you release?

RRM: 18.

SI: During what years did those span?

RRM: 1970 up until 1985 I was still making albums. But I have 18 in all. I'm doing new ones now. I did rap albums since then.

SI: Those early ones were released on Laff Records?

RRM: No. They were released on my own label.

SI: That was Comedian International?

RRM: Yes, and I leased them to Kent Records for major distribution.

SI: Wasn't Laff Records the main black comedy label?

RRM: No.

SI: Wasn't Leroy and Skillet, Jimmy Lynch, LaWanda Page, and others coming out during that time?

RRM: Yes. They didn't have the monstrosity of the albums though. They didn't have the bigger hit records. Leroy and Skillet had one that did pretty good called "2 or 3 Times a Day". Everything else on Laff was just records. But I hit big with mine. I made Billboard charts with mine.

SI: What happened to all those other comedians?

RRM: Leroy had a stroke and Skillet retired. Jimmy Lynch lives in Mobile (Alabama). LaWanda Page is doing great with commercials and everything. But the biggest black comedy label was Dooto. They featured Redd Foxx, Leroy and Skillet, myself, and many other comedians appeared on the Dooto label. Laugh come out with comedy records during the same period I did. They came out in 1969 and they had a lot of local comedians, but none of them ever got real big. The only one you could think off was Leroy and Skillet.

SI: What happened to Blowfly?

RRM: Blowfly lives in Miami. He appeared on a label called Weird World. That's the company that was put together out of Miami, Florida.

SI: Did he ever make any movies?

RRM: No.

SI: In your opinion, who started adult oriented black comedy first?

RRM: Redd Foxx. I am the first one to do explicit language. The first one on the face of the earth to do four letter words on a record. When my records came out, the record stores were afraid to put them on the shelf. They would hide them under the counter. Redd Foxx come out in 1954 with albums but they didn't have the explicit language on them. They had adult style phrases, double meaning words. You know. He never said "motherfucker" and all that on records. Not in his period before we popularized that on record. I am the one who popularized that on record. They've influenced a whole generation of comedians behind me. Every comedian in the business now is a part of me. A chip off of me. Because I'm the first one to have the NERVE to do it long ahead of time

SI: You still do a lot of stand up today?

RRM: Yes. If I didn't have that, I couldn't make it. My stand up comedy act is what made me able to keep going. All the other movie stars of the blaxploitation era, they're not doing anything. But I had a stand up comedy act. So I can go week after week, month after month, year after year, and still be doing shows.

SI: I heard there may be a box set of your releases coming out?

RRM: No. My albums are released by J&J distributors out of Chicago. He did talk to me about doing a package on them, but we hadn't come to any agreement on it. I own all of my records.

SI: Some of your biggest characters that you did were Dolemite and Shine.

RRM: Shine and the Great Titanic, Dolemite, Petey Wheatstraw, and Dangerous Dan.

SI: The good fuckin' man!

RRM: Yes. Those are some of my strong characters. And I created lady characters like Hurricane Annie.

SI: Where did the name Dolemite come from?

RRM: Dolemite comes from vitamins. It gives you strength. So I said, "Well, maybe I should call myself Dolemite because this is strong." Bad Dolemite!!

SI: How often do you do live performances now?

RRM: I do it sometimes. Weekends, like Friday and Saturday. Sometimes I go from city to city.

SI: So you do a lot of traveling?

RRM: I just got back from Chicago where I was at the world famous Regal Theater. Me and Big Daddy Kane, the rapper.

SI: You made an appearance on one of his albums too.

RRM: Yes, TASTE OF CHOCOLATE.

SI: How old are you now?

RRM: 56.

SI: What would you like to do in the future?

RRM: I would like to do another movie and I'm also in negotiations with a big company here to do my rap album, Filthy McNasty. I'm trying to rap a style that both adults and young people would like. I wanna split myself down the middle. I don't want it to be too hip hopish. I want it to be just middle-of-the-road enough so that it will appeal to both sides. So we're producing it now.

SI: Where can people get your comedy releases? At least for me, I had trouble finding them at first. Is there a mail order address?

RRM: Yes. Comedian International, P.O. Box 11591, Los Angeles, CA. 90011.

SI: I heard a rumor about a Rudy Ray Moore preservation society.

RRM: Not to my knowledge. I've had different groups come to me with ideas like that and so called fan clubs. But I have never known of anything to really get off the ground for me like that. Although I have a lot of fans. Fans in the south. I get great letters about my work. They're mostly all white that be writing me these letters. They have been turned onto me in the later years.

SI: I happened upon you by accident a few years back.

RRM: Stumbled upon it?

SI: Yeah, after seeing DOLEMITE.

RRM: It is one of the early movies of that period. That was big, big, big in the theaters. It was poorly and cheaply done but it really... Let me tell you how DOLEMITE did in Chicago. When we played it there they had Mandingo (1975) playing. A United Artists picture. I had DOLEMITE. A little home made picture. And did you know that DOLEMITE grossed MANDINGO there in the same week that they were shown? Mandingo cost $6-7 million and DOLEMITE cost only $140,000. So you see how strong I was up against something that had a lot of money into it. What I could do with nothing. I made my party records like that. I made my party records in my house. I would get a little alcohol and orange juice and stuff and invite friends up to my house and bring a technician up and let him record me in the house. That's how I made my party records, very inexpensive. People come and laugh for free, 'cause I'd have a party for them. That's why we call them party records.

SI: What's you opinion on comedy, especially black comedy, today?

RRM: Well, the black comedians today, there are a lot of them and some are doing well. But I said "When the smoke settles, I will still be standing", because I am so professional and so strong that I don't bomb out nowhere. I am always guaranteed to sell. The comedians today are not like the comedians that come along with me. We were comedians that could be heard and enjoyed. The comedians today have to be seen to be enjoyed, visually. Audio, you know, to put them on a phonograph record, the stuff that they do would have no great impact unless you could watch them do it. But I was the type of comedian that could do stuff and you listen to it and it would get across. So my opinion of the comedians today is that you need to structure yourself in the way you can be heard and seen and go over both ways.

SI: Are you happy with the way your career has turned out?

RRM: To a great degree. A lot of the comedians that come along with me don't even have jobs today. They can't work. They didn't become popular enough to survive in this period. Although there was one come along behind me using the same thing that I was using that got real big. That was Pryor. I didn't get as big as Pryor but I was satisfied by getting as big as I did. Pryor never give me any credit. But I am almost 100% sure that he was influenced by me getting through with the type of comedy that I did get through with, that he picked up and the companies exploited him highly with it. But I am the originator! Everybody else is the imitator.

SI: Is there anything else you would like to add to this?

RRM: I tell all the rappers today. When it comes down to rappin', I was through with it before you ever learned what to do with it. I say you can't out thank me, out think me, out walk me, or out talk me. I am the godfather of all rappers!


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