Slam (1998)
Directed by Marc Levin
Raymond Joshua, a young black performance poet, is arrested and imprisoned for a petty marijuana charge in a Washington, D.C. jail. Although the confining prison walls do little to shield him from danger, it is within those walls that Raymond establishes his identity, strength, and voice and meets a prison gang leader and a prison writing teacher, Lauren Bell. Bell inspires Raymond to use the power of creative expression to free himself from the struggles and demise of the Black male as another victim of the judicial system.
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Stuck in a mental ward with the usual psychiatric suspects -- the obsessive-compulsive mouse (David Patrick Kelly), the Miss Havisham-ish old lady (Celia Weston), the germophobe (''Slam'' poet Saul Williams) -- none of whom have any problem with the notion that their new neighbor really is an extraterrestrial, Prot becomes their leader.
While Mary McCormack ("The Big Tease," "Private Parts") doesn't get enough time to do much with her somewhat disgruntled wife character and Alfre Woodard ("Mumford," "Down in the Delta") and other performers inhabit characters that seem likely to have been fleshed out more in the novel, David Patrick Kelly ("Songcatcher," "Dreamscape"), Saul Williams ("One True Thing," "Slam") and Celia Weston ("Hearts in Atlantis," "Hanging Up") are all good as some of the mental patients Prot encounters.
Saul Williams ("Slam") is Ernie, a patient with a phobia of air contaminants who always wears a surgical mask and latex gloves, almost normal behavior in these times.