Kevin Willmott’s doc The Heroic True-Life Adventures of Alvin Brooks premieres June 19

Alvin Brooks was interviewed for Kevin Willmott’s newest film.

The Heroic True-Life Adventures of Alvin Brooks, the latest film written, produced, and directed by Kevin Willmott, will premiere at the Screenland Armour Theatre on June 19 for Kansas City’s second annual Juneteenth Film Festival. The film follows the life of Alvin Brooks, one of the city’s first Black police officers, as well as the city’s first Black department director and founder of the AdHoc Group Against Crime. 

We spoke with Willmott, an Academy Award-winning screenwriter and University of Kansas professor of film & media studies, about the film ahead of its premiere. 

The Pitch: You met Brooks while working on your 2011 documentary, From Separate to Equal: The Creation of Truman Medical Centers. What was your first impression of him? 

Kevin Willmott: I knew his name and AdHoc from the news, since I’m a Lawrence guy… When I interviewed him for the hospital documentary, I was blown away by him. First, he was a policeman in the 1950s, you know, one of the first Black policemen in Kansas City. And just his realm of history and how much he was involved in the community on so many levels—things that I read about in history books. He experienced a lot of these things. 

More than anything, his stories blew me away. He would relate incredible stories. I thought at the time, ‘He needs to have a documentary just on him.’ Then he went on to do even more great things since then. When he wrote the book Binding Us Together (in 2021), it reminded me how much I wanted to make that documentary, and the book laid it all out.

How do those stories figure into the documentary? 

Really, (the film is) him telling his life story. That’s where the title comes from—his stories are really adventures. (They are) adventures growing up in the ‘30s and ‘40s as a kid in Kansas City, being a Black policeman in the 1950s, being one of the first Black city officials in Kansas City in the 1960s and ‘70s, and then creating AdHoc in the late ‘70s…I just let him tell his story, more than anything. 

Why is this documentary relevant right now?

There are certain things that are really relevant, specifically policing and the problem of policing. The Black Lives Matter issues have always been at the forefront for the Black community, but they’ve really been at the forefront for the last 20 years… (Brooks) was dealing with that in the 1950s. Those issues have been a cancer on America for a very long time, and we still have not come to terms with it. He has a story he relates in the film that I think is one of the best examples of how police should conduct themselves. I don’t want to give it all away, but that story is an example of what I think Black and white folks expect from the police in terms of how they handle a dangerous situation. 

I think he embodies what America should be in terms of how he dealt with every aspect of every group in every aspect of the community. That’s what Dr. King called ‘the beloved community.’ That’s the thing he embodies. He embodies it because that’s what he actually carried out in real action in Kansas City. And that’s why he’s a beloved figure—because he carried it out in action. He didn’t just talk about it. He carried it out in action. 

What do you think is Brooks’ definitive trait? 

We lovingly joke in the film that he’s Shaft, the 1970s Black hero. People don’t realize this—they think of Shaft for a lot of other things—but the superpower of Shaft is that he can talk to the police, he can talk to the power structure, he can talk to the Black activists, and he can talk to the drug dealers and the street folks. He can deal with every aspect of the community, and they all trust him. They all look to him to help in one way or another.

That is Alvin Brooks’ superpower.

He was able to navigate all of these groups that didn’t trust each other. None of them ever communicated in any kind of real way, and he was able to communicate, build trust, and be this interlocutor that was able to navigate (them), bring them together, and move things forward.

Tickets for the premiere of The Heroic True-Life Adventures of Alvin Brooks can be purchased here.