Episode Description
With COOLEY HIGH, screenwriter Eric Monte and director Michael Schultz put the experiences that defined their youth on the screen. Preach (Glynn Turman) and Cochise (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs) are fast friends and comrades in Chicago’s notorious Cabrini-Green housing projects. Like Monte and Schultz, they spend their days rabble-rousing, chasing girls, losing friends to senseless violence, and the unfairness and inequality that defined the African-American experience in the 1960s.
Beyond its box office success, COOLEY HIGH inspired a generation of artists to share stories that balanced compelling drama with the real issues facing black Americans for decades to come.
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References:
- “Cooley High Harmonies” by Matthew Tchepikova-Treon for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2026/07/26/cooley-high-harmonies/
- “‘Cooley High’: Surprises on Set” (The Oscars): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjzihAntUVY
- “One Spark Of Joy In Cooley High Character’s Life Snuffed By Bullets” (Jet, Oct. 21, 1976): https://books.google.com/books?id=9UIDAAAAMBAJ&dq=cooley+high&pg=PA28#v=onepage&q=cooley%20high&f=false
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#LawrenceHilton-Jacobs #DCP
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Show art by Emily Csuy. Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Outro music: "It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday" written by Freddie Perren and Christine Yarian and performed by G.C. Cameron from the COOLEY HIGH soundtrack.
Timestamps
0:00 - Episode 394: COOLEY HIGH (1975)
3:15 - Whadja Watch This Week?
26:19 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary
28:15 - The 'hangout movie'/'issues movie' dichotomy
53:44 - The ‘authentic’ filming style
57:23 - Mr. Mason
1:08:16 - Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects
1:14:28 - Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs as Cochise
1:17:22 - Costuming
1:20:47 - The Junk Drawer
1:28:45 - To All the Loves We’ve Tried Before: 1975
1:30:02 - Cody’s Noteys: The Movie Draft: — Criterion Collection