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      John Langley, a Creator of the TV Series ‘Cops,’ Dies at 78

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      “You can be entertained by it, you can be disgusted,” he said of the popular reality show that embedded film crews with police officers in the streets for 31 years.John Langley, a creator of “Cops,” the stark-looking reality television crime series that followed police officers on drug busts, domestic disputes and high-speed chases for more than 30 years, died on Saturday in Baja, Mexico. He was 78.Mr. Langley apparently had a heart attack while driving with a navigator in the Ensenada San Felipe 250 Coast to Coast off-road race, said Pam Golum, the spokeswoman for Langley Productions.“Cops,” which made its debut on Fox in 1989 and ran until last year, documented misdemeanors and felonies through the lenses of hand-held video cameras, its stories told without narration or music except for its reggae theme song, “Bad Boys.”From the start the show, created with Malcolm Barbour, was supposed to be an unbiased look at law enforcement, and Mr. Langley later saw it as a truer expression of reality TV than series that followed it, like “Survivor.”“You can be entertained by it, you can be disgusted, but it is what happened,” he told The New York Times in 2007. “It wasn’t staged, it wasn’t scripted. I didn’t put anyone on an island and tell them what to do.”Each episode told a different story shot by a crew embedded with one of various police departments. A drug sting at a pain management clinic. A Taser used to subdue a man called Lion. A woman found in a car with warrants for terroristic threats. A car pursuit into the woods. A man arrested in a car with fake license plates while holding 20 grams of crystal meth.Reviewing the first episode for The Times, John J. O’Connor wrote: “For purposes of the show, however, the court of law is the video camera, which is kept running even when the trapped suspect protests its presence. We are reminded several times that ‘this program shows an unpleasant reality’ and that ‘viewer discretion is advised.’ That should keep them from switching to another channel.”“Cops” began in Broward County, Fla., where in 1986 Mr. Langley and Mr. Barbour got the local police to cooperate in a nationally syndicated documentary, “American Vice: The Doping of a Nation,” hosted by Geraldo Rivera, who was also the executive producer.Mr. Langley recalled in a Television Academy interview in 2009 that the Broward County episodes became part of his successful pitch to other police departments.“We’re not the news,” he said he told them. “We’re not here to expose your department or look for dirt, but to show how difficult your job is on an everyday basis.”A scene from a 1998 episode of “Cops.” “We’re not the news,” Mr. Langley said he would tell local police departments. “We’re not here to expose your department or look for dirt, but to show how difficult your job is on an everyday basis.”FoxNick Navarro, the former sheriff of Broward County, said “Cops” had helped make police departments more transparent by combating negative stereotypes about officers.“I was sick and tired of seeing police officers portrayed in TV shows and movies as Dirty Harry and ‘Miami Vice,’ and just out there killing and maiming and doing extravagant things,” Mr. Navarro told The Miami Herald in 1999.In 2013, after Fox had aired several hundred episodes, a civil rights group, Color of Change, mounted a campaign to cancel “Cops.” The group said that the show’s producers and advertisers had built “a model around distorted and dehumanizing portrayals of Black Americans and the criminal justice system” and had created a reality “where the police are always competent, crime-solving heroes and where the bad boys always get caught.”In the Academy interview four years earlier, Mr. Langley addressed criticism about race in “Cops” by saying that while 60 to 70 percent of street crime was “caused by people of color,” he had made sure that most of the criminals seen on the show were white, to avoid “negative stereotyping,” he said, and because most of the show’s audience was white.Fox did cancel “Cops,” but it was swiftly resuscitated by Spike TV (now the Paramount Network). Last year, however, amid protests over the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and calls for criminal justice reform and police accountability, Paramount dropped the show.John Russell Langley Jr. was born on June 1, 1943, in Oklahoma City and moved to Los Angeles with his family when he was a baby. His father was an oil wildcatter. His mother, Lurleen (Fox) Langley, was a homemaker.After serving in Army intelligence in the early 1960s — he was in Panama during the Cuban missile crisis — Mr. Langley earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English literature from California State University, Dominguez Hills, and studied for a Ph.D. in the philosophy of aesthetics at the University of California, Irvine, but did not complete his degree.He worked in marketing for Northwest Airlines, wrote short stories and a screenplay, and had a job with a company — where he met Mr. Barbour — that produced press kits and posters for movies. Forming their own company, the two men directed “Cocaine Blues” (1983), a documentary about the perils of cocaine abuse, which led them to make an antidrug music video, “Stop the Madness,” for Ronald Reagan’s White House in 1985. (Mr. Barbour retired from producing in 1994.)Mr. Langley received a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame in 2011.Michael Kovac/Getty ImagesMr. Langley produced several other documentaries, some with Mr. Rivera, while trying to pitch “Cops” to NBC, CBS and ABC, all of which rejected the idea. But Fox ordered a pilot.“Barry Diller watched it and said: ‘God, that’s powerful, too powerful,’” Mr. Langley said in the Academy interview, referring to a meeting with the Fox chairman at the time. Another executive worried that Fox’s stations would not accept such a raw program. (Mr. Langley had left in a lot of blood and guts, he said, knowing he could cut it.) But Rupert Murdoch, whose company controls Fox, said, “Order four episodes.”“Cops” spawned several other unscripted crime series by Mr. Langley, including “Las Vegas Jailhouse,” “Jail,” “Street Patrol,” “Undercover Stings” and “Vegas Strip,” which he produced with his son Morgan, the executive vice president of development at Langley Productions.Mr. Langley was a producer of feature films as well, including Antoine Fuqua’s “Brooklyn’s Finest” and Tim Blake Nelson’s “Leaves of Grass,” both released in 2009.In addition to his son, Mr. Langley is survived by his wife, Maggie (Foster) Langley; their daughter, Sarah Langley Dews; another son, Zak, who is the senior vice president of music at Langley Productions; a daughter, Jennifer Blair, from a previous marriage to Judith Knudson, which ended in divorce, and seven grandchildren.Mr. Langley understood the power of a police department’s cooperation when, while shooting “American Vice,” he asked the Broward police if he could shoot a drug raid live.“I said, ‘If you’re going to do this bust anyway, can you do it on this date, and maybe do it in this two-hour window?’” he told the Television Academy. “They said, ‘Yeah, sure,’ and that’s how we did it.” More

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      in Television

      Shows Like ‘Cops’ Fell Out of Favor. Now Texas May Ban Them.

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      Lawmakers passed a bill named for Javier Ambler II, who died in 2019 after officers arrested him in front of a “Live PD” television crew. If the governor signs it, this would mean the end of police cooperation with reality TV shows.Two years ago, a television crew gathered in the small city of Hawkins, Texas, to film the life and work of Manfred Gilow, the chief of police there.Cameras followed Chief Gilow as he and his officers responded to calls, snapped handcuffs onto wrists and searched vehicles for drugs. The program was not available on Texas televisions; Chief Gilow is from Germany, and that is where “Der Germinator” (a portmanteau of “German” and “The Terminator”) was broadcast.Last year, after the nationally broadcast policing shows “Cops” and “Live PD” were canceled, “Der Germinator” filmed a second season. But prospects for a third may have dimmed last week, when the Texas Legislature passed a bill that would make it illegal for law enforcement agencies to authorize reality television crews to film officers on duty.“Policing is not entertainment,” said James Talarico, the Democratic state representative who introduced the legislation. The office of Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, did not respond to requests for comment this week about whether he would sign the legislation.Reality law enforcement shows, Mr. Talarico said, “rely on violent encounters between citizens and the police to boost their own ratings.” He cited an investigation by The Austin American-Statesman, which reported last year that law enforcement officers in Williamson County, Texas, were more violent when the “Live PD” cameras were rolling.The bill, which the Legislature passed with bipartisan support on May 13, is named after Javier Ambler II, a 40-year-old father of two who died in 2019 after Williamson County officers forcibly arrested him in front of a “Live PD” camera crew.Mr. Ambler’s sister, Kimberly Ambler-Jones, 39, said she believed that her brother would still be alive if the television crews had not been filming. “Because they had ‘Live PD’ there, it had to be hyped up,” she said. “It had to be drama.”That show was taken off the air in June. So was “Cops,” which had beamed arrests, confrontations and car chases to televisions across the United States for decades.The cancellations came amid nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. They also followed years of campaigning by the racial justice organization Color of Change, which had been pushing networks to drop “Cops” since at least 2013.Arisha Hatch, the organization’s vice president and chief of campaigns, said the shows were one-sided and served as propaganda for law enforcement.“They violate the civil liberties of people who are forced to become the stars of the show,” she said. “They operate to make a joke about how Black communities and poor communities are overpoliced.”Ms. Hatch welcomed the Texas bill, noting that the state-level legislative approach appeared to be without precedent.But with two flagship policing programs already canceled, it is unclear whether the law would have any immediate effect if approved by Governor Abbott.A reality series set in Texas called “Lone Star Law,” on Animal Planet, could most likely continue filming as long as it keeps its focus on wildlife and game wardens, Mr. Talarico said.“Der Germinator,” on the other hand, could be at risk.Chief Gilow argued that the program should be allowed to continue, characterizing it as more of a documentary than a reality show. He said it offered German viewers a glimpse of life in the United States, as well as a cautionary tale about the consequences of crime.“I think it is positive,” Chief Gilow said. “But you will have some people just hating it because they hate the police.” He added that the show did not violate anyone’s rights and blurred the faces of people who did not consent to be filmed.Police body cameras captured the 2019 arrest of Javier Ambler II. Crews from “Live PD” were also filming, but their footage was never broadcast.Austin Police Department, via Associated PressMs. Ambler-Jones said she hoped that Mr. Abbott would sign the bill — and that similar legislation would spread beyond Texas.“I know people feel like this is just entertainment,” she said of reality policing programs. “But you don’t understand what the person on the other side of that camera is dealing with.”For months after Mr. Ambler’s death, his family did not know what had happened to him — only that he had died in law enforcement custody. The details became public last year, after The Austin American-Statesman and the news outlet KVUE obtained body camera footage.Mr. Ambler was driving in the Austin area on March 28, 2019, when Williamson County deputies tried to stop him because he did not dim his headlights to traffic, officials said. After deputies tried to pull Mr. Ambler over, the authorities said, he kept driving for more than 20 minutes before crashing his vehicle.The body camera footage showed that the officers restrained Mr. Ambler and used a Taser on him multiple times. “I have congestive heart failure,” Mr. Ambler could be heard saying. “I can’t breathe.”Mr. Ambler was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. “Live PD” footage of the arrest was never broadcast on television.Since then, Williamson County officials have faced several lawsuits related to reality television footage. Two deputies were indicted on second-degree manslaughter charges in Mr. Ambler’s death, and the former county sheriff, who lost his seat after a November election, was indicted on charges of evidence tampering. All have pleaded not guilty.A spokeswoman for Williamson County declined to comment because of pending litigation. Big Fish Entertainment, the production company behind “Live PD,” did not immediately respond to emailed questions.Mr. Talarico said he hoped the legislation, if signed into law by the governor, would keep “Cops” and “Live PD” out of Texas for good. “Without the force of law, there’s nothing preventing these shows from coming back,” he said, “except for their own conscience.” More

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      'Judas and the Black Messiah' Is the Latest Film to Punt on Politics

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s Notebook‘Judas’ Is the Latest Political Movie to Punt on PoliticsBoth “Judas and the Black Messiah” and “BlacKkKlansman” are rooted in issues of radicalism vs. the system, but the dramas rely on morally opaque characters that undermine the stories.Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya) onstage, and Bill O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield), an F.B.I. informant, in beret. Was O’Neal actually a supporter of the Black Panthers?Credit…Glen Wilson/Warner BrosMarch 5, 2021Updated 5:43 p.m. ETAt the beginning of the fact-based drama “Judas and the Black Messiah,” an F.B.I. informant named Bill O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield), wearing a slate gray suit and matching tie, sits in front of a camera. He’s being interviewed for the documentary series “Eyes on the Prize II,” and an unseen questioner asks, “Looking back on your activities in the late ’60s, early ’70s, what would you tell your son about what you did then?” What he did then was abet the police killing of the Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. O’Neal’s expression is guarded; his eyes flit to the right and his lips part ever so slightly, but no words come out.The film thus begins with an open question: How does O’Neal account for his actions?It’s a question the movie examines but doesn’t actually answer; “Judas” does not even give an indication that it has its own take. Despite the great performances and otherwise entrancing narrative, there’s a flaw in the storytelling: The moral opacity of the character of O’Neal fails to give us any true sense of the personal stakes involved and hinders the film’s ability to connect to current politics. In this way, “Judas” recalls another recent biographical drama about an undercover agent that punts on politics: Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman,” from 2018.In that film, a Black detective named Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) teams up with a white Jewish officer (Adam Driver) to infiltrate a local Ku Klux Klan chapter in 1970s Colorado. When Ron goes undercover at a Black Panthers rally, he gets involved with a student there named Patrice, who eventually discovers, to her disgust, that he’s a police officer. “Ron Stallworth, are you for the revolution and the liberation of Black people?” Patrice asks, but Ron deflects, saying, “I’m an undercover detective with the Colorado Springs police. That’s my j-o-b, that’s the truth.”As an undercover police officer, John David Washington, right, with Adam Driver, deflects questions about his beliefs.Credit…David Lee/Focus Features, via Associated PressBut that’s not just a deflection on Ron’s part; it’s a deflection by the film as well. Though Ron insists that he nevertheless cares about the Black community, Patrice has a point. As a Black police officer, how complicit is he with the system? His politics aren’t spelled out, and Washington’s acting is too wooden to reveal what Ron thinks of the radical Panthers.At the rally he watches intently, but it’s unclear whether his gaze reflects his attraction to Patrice, a real interest in the politics or a shallow admiration for the pageantry of the proceedings, the flair of the rhetoric and the energy of the participants. There’s a sense that both Ron and the film see the Panthers and the Klan as comparable political extremes, just positioned at opposite ends of the spectrum, and that neither is righteous or effective — though the film shies away from conveying this with more confidence and clarity.As a director known for taking risks, Spike Lee is surprisingly moderate when it comes to this film’s politics, never allowing his protagonist to cross over to the side of the revolution. In an effort to remain faithful to the conventional cop-film genre, “BlacKkKlansman” embraces the belief that not all cops are rotten. Ron has faith in the system; he has his buddies, and they’re fighting a group of violent white supremacists, so we too invest ourselves in these good cops and their fight for justice. But of course, by the end, when Ron’s superior tells him to drop the K.K.K. case, Ron is surprised to find that the institution of which he’s a part is fundamentally flawed.While “BlacKkKlansman” maintains faith that the system might prevail thanks to a few good cops, “Judas” openly recognizes that the system is broken and veers more closely to sympathy for the Panthers’ cause without explicitly promoting or denouncing it.“Judas” distinguishes itself by providing a nuanced look at the Panthers, not simply their militant actions but also their community initiatives. And like many of the characters themselves, the film is captivated by the charisma of its Black messiah, Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya, who won a Golden Globe on Sunday for his performance). He brings his usual steely intensity to the role; it’s like watching a game of chicken between him and the camera, so resolute is his gaze and so palpable his attention when he cocks his head to the side like a challenge.Hampton is not the real focus of the film; Shaka King’s direction and Kaluuya’s performance give him such depth and appeal that he steals the spotlight. But the film begins and ends with Bill O’Neal. He is our eyes, his path is what leads us to Hampton — he should be the film’s real focus. And his ambivalence and internal conflict about betraying Hampton, despite his being the propulsive force behind the film’s tension, lack a clear motivation.Bill dances around the issue of his motives and politics, whether he’s working for the F.B.I. or the Panthers. The agent he reports to, Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons), interrogates Bill about his stances on the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, but Bill shrugs off the questions, saying he’s never thought about them. Whether he’s in earnest or lying to stay safe is unclear. In a later scene, an undercover Mitchell observes Bill at a rally and concludes that this operative must actually be invested in the movement — either that or he’s a terrific actor.Daniel Kaluuya, left, Ashton Sanders, Algee Smith, Dominique Thorne and Lakeith Stanfield in a scene from “Judas and the Black Messiah.”Credit…Glen Wilson/Warner Bros.And that’s part of the problem too — that Bill does seem to be an Academy Award-worthy actor, and Stanfield, who is such a careful, cerebral actor, delivers a performance that is almost too perfect. With just a sideways glance or a subtle movement of his mouth he immediately conveys a switch of role, cluing us in yet again that despite Bill’s seeming devotion to the Panthers, this is all a performance, one that confounds not just Agent Mitchell and Fred Hampton but us as well.It’s possible that we’re meant to see Bill as an opportunist, so politics are irrelevant. But for a film so blatantly political, that seems unlikely.It’s strange that these dramas opted for noncommittal protagonists because both clearly want to engage with the real world — with history and modern-day events. “BlacKkKlansman” includes footage of the deadly Charlottesville Unite the Right rally the year before the movie was released, and the epilogue of “Judas” includes details about Hampton’s partner and son and their continued involvement with the Panthers, along with footage of the real O’Neal from “Eyes on the Prize.”Perhaps one reason these otherwise politically outspoken (and liberal-leaning) films are reluctant to take a stance involves actual history, a fear they might misrepresent the real flesh-and-blood men they depict. And perhaps it is symptomatic of a lack of imagination that despite their gestures toward the present, “Judas” and “BlacKkKlansman” don’t dare expound on Black radical politics or negotiate what these politics — or even ambivalence — could mean in the context of the real-life climate in which the films were released.O’Neal with his F.B.I. handler, played by Jesse Plemons.Credit…Warner BrosEither way, the films underestimate the depth of their protagonists and the awareness of the audience. In the argument between Patrice and Ron or the meetings between Bill and his F.B.I. handler, King and Lee could have forced their respective protagonists to confirm their views on radical activism vs. the law enforcement system and negotiate their positions in the larger narrative of the history within that divide, but “Judas” and “BlacKkKlansman” shuffle away, tails between their legs.In the “Eyes on the Prize” footage, the real O’Neal sits in front of the camera, in that slate gray suit and tie, and is asked the question we heard in the beginning: “What would you tell your son about what you did then?” There’s the pause and the eyes shifting to the right. His response, when it comes, is indecipherable: “I don’t know what I’d tell him other than I was part of the struggle, that’s the bottom line.” He then says that “at least” he “had a point of view,” though he doesn’t state exactly what that was.That O’Neal, who committed suicide in 1990 on the same day “Eyes on the Prize II” premiered, is the film’s Judas is appropriate. In the Bible, the end of Judas’s story is unclear. In one gospel he hangs himself out of guilt for betraying Jesus. In another there’s no account of his guilt, but he dies in what seems an act of divine punishment. Did Judas betray the Messiah for those 30 pieces of silver alone, or did he have other reasons? Did he regret the action afterward, and if so, was it for his role in the murder of another human being or for a more personal betrayal of his own beliefs, that he offered up the man he honestly believed was the messiah?O’Neal’s final words in the clip are, “I think I’ll let history speak for me.” That’s where O’Neal and these two otherwise good films were wrong. History has no mouthpiece of its own; it can only speak through the interpretations of those who tell the stories of the past. And if those stories intend to also speak to our present, they must speak with conviction. They must take a stance.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More