Writer/Director: Pierre M. Coleman
Producer: Derek Morse
Editor: Rashad Frett
DP: Mike Hauer
Stars: David A. Bynoe, Deborah Green, Kevin Craig West and Dike Uzoukwu
Jeremiah, a troubled young male, tries to deal with the cards he’s been dealt with in life. He makes a decision to help his struggling mother, which ultimately leads to his demise.
Jeremiah (David A. Bynoe) is 15 and already experiencing the realities of not having enough — in his case, he lacks stylish clothes and financial security so his mother doesn’t have to work so hard for basic necessities. He, like any young man in his situation, strives to take care of his mother by any means necessary.
He turns his back to school and low wage barbershop work and involves himself in illegitimate sources of income, because as he puts it:
“Sometimes you gotta do the wrong things for the right reasons.”
Hello, My Name Is Trouble (2010) is reminiscent of the inner city ghetto films of the 1990s. Yet, Jeremiah’s path is not one of physical violence and destruction as in John Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood (1991) or The Hughes Brothers’ Menace to Society (1993). Jeremiah doesn’t load a gun or fire off bullets. Instead, his destruction is internal, leading to the demise of his future.
Seeing Jeremiah on this downward spiral, Reverend Pearl (Kevin Craig West) urges him to have faith and perspective. He tells the young man: “A wise man once told me: I cried because I had no shoes – until I met a man that had no feet.”
Jeremiah responds that he has no feet. He envisions himself as that man at the very bottom of the abyss whose situation cannot possibly get worse.
No Bible scripture can turn Jeremiah around or scare him straight. He’s reached the point where he questions traditional beliefs like the existence of God, because why would God want him or his mother to suffer?
It’s not immediately apparent to the audience that Jeremiah’s life is as bad as he perceives it to be. But can we really know? Can we really imagine life the way Jeremiah sees it, unless we have trudged in his sneakers?
The Reverend’s attempt to save Jeremiah ultimately falls on deaf ears – like Project Pat once mused, some people “don’t wanna be saved.”
What’s interesting about the short film – written, directed, and exec. produced by Pierre M. Coleman – is not so much the topic of nihilism, but the return of nihilism in the 21st century. Hollywood certainly thought that viewpoint of blackness had passed with the old millennium – black filmmakers setting their films in the affluent suburbs or on the shores of Martha’s Vineyard have also given this genre a premature burial – but this short film revives it.
Hello, My Name is Trouble speaks for all the people who haven’t made it and frankly aren’t sure that making it occurs in their zip code.
And as more black people rise into the middle class with the ghettos permanently in their rear view mirrors, it reminds us that several million others still call that ghetto home. Even while they are constantly trying to escape it.
Hello, My Name is Trouble played at several film festivals: Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival, San Diego Black Film Festival, New Filmmakers Festival in New York, and Hamptons Black International Film Festival, where it won Best Short Narrative Film.
