Search - Dick Gregory - The Way He Sees It on DVD

Awful! Doesn't Match Item Description

Hunk Golden | US | 01/13/2010

(1 out of 5 stars)

"I'm a fan of anything health/fitness/diet related. I own Dick Gregory's outstanding 1970's treatise, Dick Gregory's Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat: Cookin' With Mother Nature! That book is an excellent view into his dietary world, detailing how he used a natural (basically fruitarian/juice/fasting) diet to lose 200 lbs and become supremely healthy. Heck, the man was diagnosed with cancer (lymphoma) in 1999, and he's battled/beaten it with his natural living. I digress. I ordered this for Gregory's nutritional talk, which was supposed to be half the video. It wasn't, but that's the least of the problems I had with this DVD.

For starters, the run time is listed as being 71 minutes. I'm pretty sure it was 61 minutes. That's not important really. What is important (and supremely dissapointing!) is that Dick Gregory's portion of the video is only 28 minutes in length! Here's the item description:

"In the first segment Dick Gregory is interviewed at his speaking event. Here he gives his reaction to the results of the trial of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., violence in America, Black people's dependence on celebrities for liberation and more interesting information. In the second part, Gregory entertains and educates the audience about nutrition to keep you healthy."

Reading this, one would believe that the video (all 71 minutes) would be Dick Gregory speaking about race, then about nutrition. His segment on race is only 7 minutes. It's average quality (looks like it was shot with a Flip video...very little production value). It's just somebody sitting across the table from DG, asking him questions. DG's social/political views are a little too "conspiracy theory" for me, but I don't mind his views. The second segment, on nutrition, was the part to which I looked forward. Unfortunately, I got very little out of it.

First of all, this segment is only 21 minutes in length. Again, DG's portion of the video only has a total run time of 28 minutes. The other 30'ish minutes are clips and ads from other videos (having nothing to do with DG). This DG video must be some sort of a "speaker's series," as the other videos looked to be similar. Anyway, for the second part of this video, the 21 minutes on nutrition, the production value is very low. DG is on stage in a university classroom/assembly hall taking questions from students. The person shooting the video is off to the left of the stage, using what looks to be a Flip video (or something like it...maybe even a camera phone). The funny thing is, I've taken much better sounding videos with my Flip. At least 1/2 of the time, you can't even understand what DG is saying. The mic is too low or something. The recording just fails to pick it up. Not that the video looks great either, but at least you can see him on stage.

I had to return this because the item description is flat out wrong. I'd love a video of DG talking diet. He has some stuff on YouTube (which is of much higher quality, by the way). I'd love more. If there's ever a well-made video on the man and his dietary views, I'm buying. Unfortunately, this ain't it."