Hard times for Black Films Without White Approval

You Got The Power, Inc.
Program Outline
January 11, 2012

Topic of Discussion: Hard times for Black Films Without White Approval

• Oscar Devereaux Micheaux was an American author, film director and independent producer of more than 44 films

  • He is regarded as the most prominent producer of race films

  • In the many films that he wrote and produced throughout his long career, he featured strong black male and female characters in diverse professions, offered realistic images of black struggles for middle-class respectability, and emphasized the importance of black family values

  • He produced both silent films and “talkies” after the industry changed to incorporate speaking actors

  • Micheaux contacted wealthy white connections from his earlier career as a porter, and sold stock for his company at $75 to $100 a share

  • Although the short-lived Lincoln Motion Picture Company produced some films, he is regarded as the first major African-American feature filmmaker, the most successful African-American filmmaker of the first half of the twentieth century

    • Through the Lincoln Motion Picture Company, noted black actor Noble M. Johnson—with the support of his brother George P. (Perry) Johnson—produced fine films The Realization of A Negro’s Ambition (1916), a Horatio Alger story about a black engineer and his sweetheart who overcome obstacles to achieve their ambitions of family, home, and friends

    • Oscar Micheaux took the familiar Hollywood storylines and gave them a distinctly racial twist

• Hollywood continued to produce films with stereotypical exaggerations that white America associated with blacks

  • This became the basis for the racial tension that stood in Hollywood for decades until well after World War II

  • On the relatively rare occasions that blacks did appear, it usually omitted the richness of African-American culture and the talent of its performers

  • Blacks were, in the words of African-American author Ralph Ellison, “invisible”

• Later, when films presented blacks in too positive a light or challenged southern racist attitudes, film censors simply edited black characters out of versions shown to southern audiences

  • Many films with black actors never even played in the South

• From the early teens into the late 1940s, however, there were also films with all-black casts created specifically for African-American audiences by both black and white producers and directors

• A “separate cinema” grew up and played in segregated theaters of both the North and the South

• It was as if a parallel universe of African-American films existed

• “In the Shadow of Hollywood: Race Movies and the Birth of Black Cinema” is a fascinating documentary which documents the “Race Film era”

• In the 1950s, Gordon Parks worked as a consultant on various Hollywood productions and later directed a series of documentaries commissioned by National Educational Television on black ghetto life

  • In 1969, Parks became Hollywood's first major black director with his film adaptation of his autobiographical novel, The Learning Tree

  • Shaft, Parks' 1971 detective film starring Richard Roundtree, became a major hit that spawned a series of blaxploitation films

  • Parks's other directorial credits included The Super Cops (1974), and Leadbelly (1976), a biopic of the blues musician Huddie Ledbetter

• In 2010, New York City played host to Urbanworld's 14th Annual Film Festival

  • Independent film festivals take place against the backdrop of a raging debate over the state of black and Latino cinematic endeavors

  • Urbanworld founder Stacy Spikes [talks] about his initial vision to create what has now become a premiere showcase for urban movies

    • While he was still an executive at Miramax Films, Mr. Spikes chafed under the "resentment" he felt toward movie executives who expressed the idea that there was no market for quality black films

  • Black independent films have a tougher time garnering financial and critical support

  • Most black filmmakers whose names don't start with Tyler and end with Perry are often palpably frustrated with a movie industry that draws frequent criticism for its lack of ethnic diversity

• In an interview with the Daily Show's Jon Stewart on Monday night, George Lucas was frank about the trouble he had getting the film Red Tails made

• This was told to a rather stunned Jon Stewart on Comedy Central's Daily Show

  • Lucas said studios weren't willing to finance a film without a white protagonist as an anchor

    • The white protagonists' role in mostly black films is generally to act as a redemptive vehicle for the white audience

    • The protagonists allow white audiences to believe that in another place, at another time, they would have been just as righteous

  • Lucas said that the film took about 23 years to develop

    • “It was designed to be during the war,” Lucas said

    • “It’s very patriotic, very jingoistic, very old-fashioned, corny, just exactly like 'Flying Leathernecks' only this one was held up for release from 1942 when it was shot, and I’ve been trying to get it released ever since”

    • Lucas told Stewart he’s been working on the film for 23 years

    • Although paying for it himself, he went to the studios to create the prints, ads, and be responsible for distribution

  • Lucas goes on to explain that major studios don't believe films with majority black casts do well in foreign markets

    • “I showed it to all of them and they said, ‘No. We don’t know how to market a movie like this.”

      • Wonder why Hip-hop doing so great overseas?

  • Lucas said, “I wanted to make it inspirational for teenaged boys.

  • I wanted to show that they have heroes, they’re real American heroes, they’re patriots that helped to make the country what it is today

  • “And it’s not glory where you have a lot of white officers running these guys into cannon fodder. It’s like a real, they were real heroes.”

  • And Hollywood said, "No."