Milk Carton Alert!

While cruising darkbrotha's blog, I came across a post for "The Five Heartbeats". He had a scene from youtube with this dude, which led me to ask: What the eff happened to Michael Wright?

He and his hoarse, froggy voice were a staple in 90's, thanks to films like "The Five Heartbeats" and "Sugar Hill". He always looked rough to me, like he was half a step away from crackdom. I remember very vividly a line he had in some movie where he screamed "The only place you're gonna be is in a body bag!" at the top of his lungs, and remember it sounded like his larynx was gonna explode any second.

I also remember that I used to go to his mother's restaurant in midtown Manhattan, called Jezebel's (before it got all touristy). I liked it cause it had upscale Southern food, and the place was decorated like a beautiful French bordello.

Anyhoo, I went in there one night with a member of a very famous R&B group and an artist whose video I was styling. The video was for a soundtrack for a movie this Wright guy was in, and he happened to be there hanging out that night with his mom and Wesley Snipes. I went over to the table to tell him about the artist and how it was a coincidence that they were there at the same time, on the same night. He thought it was funny too, and got up to walk over when his mother shoved him back down hard and abruptly in his seat. "Let them come over to meet you" she hissed. Like he was the King of France or something! There was complete shock and silence for almost a full minute. It took all of my strength (for business reasons) not to tell her how completely delusional she was....maybe she was his manager, which would explain why his career is nowhere to be seen.

Looking on IMDB I can see he was a reoccurring character on "Oz". I would not know that, cause even tho I have seen every episode of "The Sopranos" and "The Wire", that ish was too gritty for even me, beautiful chocolate men nonwithstanding. He most recently was in some random movie called "Raving" (2007) playing "Security Guard". Not good. Not quite worthy of a milk carton yet, but he is definitely on his way on the express train.

Here is a scene with him in 'The Five Heartbeats" that I saw on darkbrotha's blog:

Even tho this film is corny to the ninth power, it is a perennial community favorite. Why? In my opinion, it is so very uniquely black, a story that can only be told by us and with us, i.e. the Motown phenom. It combined black music, black drama, black comedy, and black issues into a movie that was easy to digest, and easy to watch. In other words, pre-Tyler Perry, and I ain't mad.

Bonus Milk Carton:

More worthy of this post (both from the Five Heartbeats) are Tico Wells :

(this was the most decent pic I could find)

and Troy Beyer:

I know Troy hooked up with Robert Townsend and wrote a couple of movies, most notably "B.A.P.S." and more recently "Love Don't Cost A Thing". But what's up since then? She seems to have fallen into the Rae Dawn Chong realm. And Tico? Complete and utter silence on his career front. Maybe he should have used that big magic third leg my girlfriend said he had (oops, did I say that?). Who knew?

Extra, extra bonus:

Here is the video that I styled, that I just found on youtube looking for "Sugar Hill". Bear in mind that she refused to wear anything I asked her to, and I was only responsible for her leather coat in one scene (her best outfit by the way). If she would have listened to me maybe she'd still be around! haha