Auteur Watch - Ivan Dixon

Sadly, Mr. Dixon has passed on to that great Director's Guild in the sky, where D. W. Griffith and Ed Wood are still playing that epic game of ping pong.  "Best 38,275,431 out of 76,550,861?" asks Ed, even though it'll take him a half an eon to even begin to catch up.  But the game goes on anyway, because hell, there ain't anything else better to do, man!  They've seen all the old movies, all the new movies... and a director knows better than to come back from the dead, apparently.  Too many enemies, willing to give up the afterlife's big secret.  But... there was a black dude on "Hogan's Heroes"?  That's a new one!  Reminds me of that story about how Nichelle Nichols... it's right there in her IMDb bio!  She was going to quit "Star Trek"... the very first one, that is.  But none other than Dr. Martin Luther King talked her out of resigning from the show.  I doubt if Ivan's got a story like that.  Of course, "Hogan's Heroes" doesn't quite rise to the same level, but whatever.
It probably does him a disservice that his IMDb Top 4 is all stuff from the '60s.  He worked in other decades, you know!  And he, along with only the coolest, epic cast in the history of '70s movies, appeared in a little something called Car Wash.  Hel-LOOOOOOO???!!!!!!  And he was in 1998's Clay Pigeons with Vince Vaughn... I'm sorry, that's 1971's Clay Pigeon.  Totally different movie.  Vinny would've been too young for that one.  And yes, he played the blaxploitation game a little, if only as a director, of such hits that Quentin Tarantino has memorized like Trouble Man and The Spook Who Sat by the Door... wow!  I memorized that correctly!  I usually get one or two words wrong in these longer titles.  I'm turning into my dad, what can I say?
Yes, a toast to Ivan Dixon.  Born and raised in NYC, died in North Carolina.  He didn't move to Beverly Hills and stay there like some celebrities... oh, right.  Actually, they're getting quite liberal these days in Beverly Hills!  Why there's two, three African American residents already!  I'm kinda proud of myself; I didn't even mention Ivan's work with Bill Cosby... damn it.  Okay, to be fair, Cosby probably wasn't going to stop just because one director told him to.