Is Hollywood ready to produce a BIG BUDGT Epic film starring mostly black people??? (1 Viewer)

[Ruth_F]

yes but it was actually a surprise sucess. they did not expect such a response....and it was the #1 film at least one week, maybe two weeks in a row.

 

[Ruth_F]

on problem is that this was a BAD movie...javascript:smilie('')

 

[Ruth_F]

i appreciate the suggestion but as a black woman I AM SICK TO DEATH OF SLAVE STORIES.....we have made enough contributions to this country that you can find some other darn story to tell.

 

[Ruth_F]

EXCELLENT POINT and actually i've never considered the correlation between tv dramas and films...i can only remember one drama and it was about three years ago with blair underwood and v. foxx - first season was good, but then they took the characters in crazy directions and chose bad times for the show.

 

[Mike-M]

I don't think we should be talking about an epic, because as I posted before, studios and some executives are so racist that they don't even want to greenlight action films starring black people like "Biker Boyz."

Start smaller. How about an independant 1 million dollar movie starring a black cast that gets great reviews and and wins a few awards? How about more leading black males in action movies? How about more black women in movies period?

 

[Kevin Alexander]

This is a cultural travesty IMO. To me, black women are some of the most stereotyped people in Hollywood. From my observation, black women come in one of the following 3 varieties:

1) the "big" loud mouth black woman,
2) the "baby's momma"/'hood chick black woman
3) the token/background black woman w/ a few lines and 30 seconds of screentime.

It is because of these reasons that I find the Fox TV series "24" so intriguing. The producers have done an excellent job of selling the American TV watching public on a black President. Not only that, but the black cast in that show is very complex and very well acted. The black characters are so well played that the color of their skin "disappears" - I don't see a "black" President, I instead see "The President". I think the black cast of "24" can be an excellent recipe for future black films to follow.

 

[Paul.S]

Mike-M wrote:


Add my voice to the chorus here.

-p

 

[Ruth_F]

We'll have to agree to disagree on that one, Ruth.

Paul - if I had said that I would agree to disagree I was acutally referring to Biker Boyz.

Am I missing something fellas but black males do star in action films all the time - will smith has several, sam jackson has several, the rock has a couple, vin diesel have some - not sure that training day falls in that genre maybe denzel's next film man on fire will. richot, and the one he did with russell crowe certainly does.

 

[Holadem]

Yeah, so I must ask, what the hell are y'all talking about?!

--
H

 

[Paul.S]

Ruth:


Perhaps you should edit your post then, Ruth.

Your "this was a BAD movie" comment in your post #102 follows a long quote of Erik.Ha's post #36 that is entirely about Drumline. Erik's original post had nothing to do with Biker Boyz.

None of your many recent posts to this thread, #s 95-99 or #s 100-104, make any reference to Biker Boyz. (If I may be so bold as to make a point of 'thread management' here: it would be helpful if you--wanting to comment on as many posts as you did after apparently discovering this thread over the past weekend--had combined all of your comments into one post, as opposed to making each responsive comment a post of its own. I think this might facilitate responses in turn to your comments as well. Any comments Admin?)

Per the beginning of my post #107, at least now we're closer in opinion WRT the movie you were actually referring to.

-p

 

[Kevin Alexander]

Ruth, many of those actors that you have mentioned have reached a mainstream appeal w/ the non-black moviegoing public - they represent the "safe bet" among black actors. I would like to see new and fresh talent waiting for their chance to develop their career skills for the big screen. Personally, I don't want to see Will Smith for the rest of my life as the "black man in pictures" for my generation. There is other talent out there and I wanna see it.

 

[Kevin Alexander]

Pam Grier was sorta like the premier black actress of the 60's and 70's, but I wonder how many lesser known black actresses back then abandoned their dreams because Hollywood didn't have room for them. We always hear about new and exciting upcoming actors and actresses, but on the other side, we're being constantly served up Will Smith, Sam Jackson, and Denzel. As great as these guys are, there are many more out there (black and latino actors/actresses) awaiting their chance to show they can act w/ the very best.

BTW, as mentioned earlier, I, too, would like to thank everyone for a civilized discussion of this topic...this is fun.

 

[Ruth_F]

I hope this clarifies that.

Mike M also indicated I should edit my post - and I agree but I am not as skilled at using HTF features and I thought when i as on the site last year there was a feature that allowed you to preview your post before sending it.

Excuse my not following list protocol, thanks for bringing it to my attn.

 

[DavidAls]

Great discussion thus far.

I've participated in a few other discussions like this before; I've gotten really tired (offended, or bored) of the way I see black Americans depiced in Hollywood films. As a black male myself, I've gone to watching mostly indie films and foreign film, and I can single out a few films (directors both black and white) that were outsanding in my opinion: Antwone Fisher, George Washington, Brother From Another Planet, That's My Face, many Spike Lee films. I haven't hesitated to recommend them to friends of many varied ethnicities, and for the most part they've agreed with me on their strength. To varying degrees, they didn't make a lot of money.

Regardless of ethnicity, it seems that audiences are most comfortable seeing black Americans in an extremely narrow range of roles, which socially seems way behind the curve. I'm writing from a college town (with 4 research universities and Research Triangle Park in 3 counties), so - black, white, Asian and Latino - many of the people I know are academics, artists, grad students, or working in law, tech, etc., and in 'black' film I see none of the above represented in film. Instead, black Americans seem perpetually relegated to the same stereotypical music/sports/comic/whatever-in-the-hood crap that Hollywood has been pushing for decades, and it seems to me that audiences fail to even think that something else might be possible.

Thus I've just turned away from Hollywood stuff for the most part - after sitting through one too many Martin Lawrence embarassments (just a notch above minstrelry, and the fact that the audience was black or white doesn't matter - it's still appalling), and getting beyond tired of neo-blaxploitation gangsta stuff (which is perpetually gobbled up by late-teen/twentysomething white male audiences).

Rather than hold my breath waiting for a new Hollywood film that might depict black culture with the depth and skill seen in films like Seven Samurai, Wild Strawberries, 8 1/2 or the Apu trilogy, I simply watch Seven Samurai et. al. The fact that I - as a black American - am finding more things that I identify with in 50-year-old Kurosawa, Bergman, Fellini, Satyajit Ray, Kenji Mizoguchi, or other films than in Bad Boys II or National Security is indicative of a monstrous lapse on the part of Hollywood, and a certain lack of knowledge (or self-knowlegde) in film audiences. Granted I watch a lot of 'art' films (less popular with all audiences); and I don't want to sound like a snob, but I also know I'm not the only black film fan who's written off Hollywood. I'm part of a loose, informal local group of people who get together to watch, discuss, occasionally write about films, and the majority of this group is black or Asian, and scattered indie and foreign (non-English) films is the overwhelming majority of what we've ended up watching.

Let's see a period epic about the Harlem renaissance (I'm thinking of the book When Harlem Was In Vogue), or a bio of black modernist painter Romare Bearden, or a philosophical piece of sci-fi (like Colson Whitehead's novel The Intuitionist), a complex morality play like Crimes & Misdemeanors, or a detailed individual drama like Pather Panchali/Aparajito/Apur Sansar. Or a big, Kurosawa-style historical epic.

 

[Mike Broadman]

I"m not even black and it annoys me. And then when there is a film that deals with "black issues" it's always in "da ghetto" and about drugs. Hollywood seems to think that all black Americans just live in urban shit-holes.

As cool as it would be to have a film about pre-WWII harlem or the Nubian kingdom or something specifically "black," I think it would be just as interesting to see ethnic-neutral stories that start blacks.

One cool thing about Spawn is that he is a black guy but that's never an issue. Too bad the movie was weak, though. If it would have been good, it would have ended the idea that comic book characters are all white guys.

 

[Ruth_F]

David - sadly your comment is so true. While it is true Fox Searchlight butchered the distribution on Antwone Fisher I remember talking with the manager the weekend the film finally went wide - audiences were choosing National Security instead.

 

[Kevin Alexander]

DavidAls, I knew there were young black men like you out there. Excellent post!

Mike Broadman wrote...
My feelings too, Mike. Is that too much to ask???

 

[DavidAls]

I remember thinking this after watching Charlotte Sometimes a few months back - an ethnic-neutral indie film with an all Asian-American cast; it's excellent, intricate little drama with the ability to speak to any intelligent viewer; far better than the heavily-hyped Better Luck Tomorrow, which appeared on dvd/vhs at the same time.

Thanks a lot Kevin for the kind words there!

 

[Clem]

Thats such an ironic statement its funny...............

 

[Lew Crippen]

Excellent points in post #114 David. I’ll only observe that, in my opinion, mainstream Hollywood films don’t for the most part address issues, concerns or just interesting adult (not necessarily sex) subjects on any regular basis. So much is geared towards the male teen/young adult audience that persons of all races are more interested in Antwone Fisher, Fargo, George Washington, Rabbit-Proof Fence, Talk to Her, {I]City of God[/i], The Wind Will Carry Us, Yi Yi, Flowers of Shanghai and In the Mood for Love than we are in most mainstream films.

Not to say that I can’t enjoy Finding Nemo or any of the ‘Lord of the Rings’ films, but I really think that mainstream films, for the most part don’t have much to say—regardless of your ethnicity or social background.

I would agree with your main point, wondering why a story about prostitutes and their customers set in a time before I was born and in a place to which I’ve never been, has more meaning to me than the vast majority of mainstream films.