Words On Flicks: June 2022

Celebrating fathers at the movies, in the movies, and for the movies this month on

The Words On Flicks Show podcast!

Listen starting Sunday, June 12, 2022 at 3pm ET/12 noon PT here.

Here's the lowdown on our very special guests:

Digital media and entertainment executive Juliana J. Bolden leads the creation of digital products, social media strategy, and the production of TV/film/digital content for brands like Wells Fargo, the Emmys, AT&T, the NAACP and NAACP Image Awards, Grey Goose, BlackTree TV, and served on the 2016 Democratic National Convention Committee Specialty Media team. In 2009, the San Francisco Bay Area native played a key role in building Emmys.com (the Television Academy’s very first consumer-facing website). Later that year, Bolden launched the Emmy Publications video/film production division. She began her television/digital career at ABC Family Channel/Disney, working on such long- and short-form programming as the ubiquitous Power Rangers series, and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications from San Diego State University. She is also currently the Exec Producer & Sr. Entertainment Correspondent for Hollywood Post Network/BlackTree TV Group.

A. Scott Galloway is a prolific Los Angeles-based Music Journalist who has been writing about music since 1988 for magazines that include Urban Network, Wax Poetics and the U.K.’s Blues & Soul – interviewing artists from Max Roach to Maxwell. His specialty niche is composing liner note essays for reissues and compilations of classic recordings for which he has written over 300. As it relates to history in Black Film, those credits include the 25th anniversary Deluxe 2-CD reissue of Curtis Mayfield’s “Superfly,” “The Reel Quincy Jones” compilation of the composer/conductor’s film music, “The Best of Shaft” compilation of songs and cues from the “Shaft” film trilogy, the golden era Motown time capsule “Cooley High,” a pairing of Gladys Knight & The Pips’ “Claudine” w/ “Pipe Dreams,” and the various artists compilation “Super Bad On Celluloid.” Mr. Galloway is also the Editor of the 2013 Hal Leonard deluxe coffee table book “Down The Rhodes: The Fender Rhodes Story.” And he wrote the foreword for Les McCann’s book of photography “Invitation to Openness.”

Harlem native Michael A. Gonzales is a cultural critic, short story scribe and essayist who has written for The Paris Review, The Village Voice, Wax Poetics, The Wire UK, Maggot Brain and Pitchfork. His fiction has appeared in Under the Thumb: Stories of Police Oppression edited by S.A. Cosby, Taint Taint Taint, Dead-End Jobs: A Hit Man Anthology edited by Andrew J. Rausch, Black Pulp edited by Gary Phillips and The Root. Upcoming stories will appear in The Book of Extraordinary Femme Fatale Stories edited by Maxim Jakubowski, Get Up Offa That Thing: Crime Fiction Inspired by James Brown edited by Gary Phillips, Killens Review of Arts & Letters and Obsidian Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora.

Leslie Hunter-Gadsden is a journalist and educator with more than 30 years of experience writing for print and online publications, including Next Avenue, Purple Clover, Black Enterprise and Forbes.com. A graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, she has written on a variety of topics including business, women in the workplace, motherhood, education, dance, theater, science, race relations and family ancestry. The mother of two grown children, storytelling has always been her passion, whether through spoken word, written word, or dance.

Tonya Pendleton is a veteran multimedia journalist in news, sports, lifestyle and entertainment reporting. She’s written for Essence, Ebony, BET.com, The Source, XXL, Jordan Magazine, the Philadelphia Daily News, The Washington Post and more. In her current incarnation as a writer/editor with TheGrio.com and as “Things To Do” curator for NPR affiliate WHYY, she crafts content for a local and global audience. The Philadelphia resident was born and raised in New York City and is a graduate of The New School.

Karen Thomas has never worked a day in her life. She pursued her passion for 20 years as ESSENCE marketing and special events director, retired, then spent the next 20 years developing a $200 million not-for-profit charter school network that grew from a $1 million investment. Her idea of retirement is doing whatever the hell she pleases including living in Paris to study art history. Her greatest accomplishments are her children and grandchildren, with whom she hopes never to live.”

As a native son of Texas, Derrick Thompson spent many of his formative years dreaming of the bright lights of New York City. An acceptance letter from Columbia University would turn that dream into a reality. Although he earned his Ivy League degree in Urban Studies, it was the music business that brought his professional career to life. Derrick landed his first music gig as a sales assistant at the now legendary Sleeping Bag Records. There he would cut his teeth in a number of positions including dance music promotion, product management and talent acquisition. Helping the tiny label land its first #1 Billboard album would be his first crowning achievement. Derrick moved on to stints at both Def Jam and EMI working with the likes of LL Cool J and Arrested Development. Eventually Derrick found his way to the newly formed BMG Music Publishing. Starting as a music library coordinator, he would eventually rise to become Senior Vice President of Talent and oversaw the company’s expanding R&B/Hiphop roster. During his successful tenure at BMG , he brought the likes of Mobb Deep , Nelly , Erykah Badu and Lupe Fiasco into the BMG music publishing family. Derrick serves on the advisory board of the New York based ad agency Sparks & Honey. A past recipient of both the Heroes And Legend Award and the Award of Excellence from Urban Network, Derrick has embarked on a brand new professional chapter as a content creator.

Song Snippets*:

"Daddy Could Swear, I Declare," Gladys Knight & the Pips

"Song For My Father," Horace Silver

"Color Him Father," The Winstons

"Son of Shaft," The Bar-Kays

"Papa Don't Take No Mess," by James Brown

"Your Daddy Loves You," Gil-Scott Heron

"Dance With My Father," Luther Vandross

"Dat Dere," Oscar Brown Jr.

"Papa," Paul Anka Live

*I was determined not to use The Temptations’ “Papa Was A Rolling Stone”