Don Cheadle's new film, Talk to Me, about Petey Greene forgets Greene's most important accomplishment: He was a community activist who railed against poverty and racism.There are two straight-to-the-gut scenes in Talk To Me, the new biopic in which Don Cheadle slam-dunks his portrayal of Ralph Waldo "Petey" Greene, the ex-con, street-sassy, Afro'ed-out deejay who brought black power to the radio in Washington, DC, in the 1960s.The first occurs the night Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated. Greene, who had fast-talked himself into an on-air job at WOL-AM, goes into the studio to try to calm down the city, which is in flames, as blacks are rioting and destroying their own neighborhoods. "I don't know if I'm more sad or angry," Greene tells his audience. And Greene is walking a line. He pleads with his listeners to resist the urge to strike: "That's your city ... That's not what Dr. King would've wanted." Then he says, "The truth is, if they can do it to him, don't think for a minute they can't cut you down like a dog." But he counsels, "Put away your anger."When he walks out of the studio, the other African-American employees embrace him. They all looked stunned and exhausted. Then they spot in the corridor the white station owner (played by Martin Sheen) sobbing. Greene and the other blacks are each processing this cataclysmic event, calculating the right proportion of outrage and sorrow. But for the white guy, it's simple: he's pegged the needle at tragedy. This awful event has not brought the two sides of the racial divide together. It has illuminated the gulf between black and white. The station owner has the luxury to feel only grief. Greene and the rest have a more complicated emotional and psychological task. They walk past the station owner, shrug, and go home for the night.
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