America Behind the Color Line (39 page)

In 1997, I starred with Larenz Tate in
Love Jones,
a film I thought was ahead of its time. To me, it represented the artistic, bohemian, in many ways European culture of black love. It portrayed very educated, sophisticated black folk that we don’t always get a chance to see on-screen. I think that if
Love Jones
had come out now, with more advertising and more merchandising behind it—the same big hoopla they give other mainstream love stories—we would not have disappointed anyone. The studio tried to rerelease it when they realized how great the sound track was.

What happens with a film like
Love Jones
is the studio executives go, okay, this is a great script, a love story; we’re going to take a chance on this one. We’re going to make it as low-budget as we possibly can, and we’re going to put it out there and step back and hope that it sticks. But not only did
Love Jones
stick, it did great numbers. Had it been given better distribution, it would have been a bigger success. But when they do these films, they give us 50 percent of the distribution they’re going to give
When Harry Met Sally
. It’s almost as if the studio heads are setting us up for failure but giving us just enough success so we want more.

The reason Whoopi Goldberg has been able to break through lots of barriers is that she’s beyond color. Whoopi is Whoopi. I can’t imagine there ever being another Whoopi. I did my second film with her,
Made in America,
in 1993. They were torn between me and Thandy Newton, the black English-woman who was in
Beloved
. We’re both good actresses, but Thandy looks more mulatto, so it seemed more believable that she and Ted Danson would have had a more mulatto-looking daughter. They hired Thandy, but she couldn’t get rid of her British accent. So in the end I got the role, thanks to Reuben Cannon, the film’s amazing black casting director.

I am here because God put me here; put this passion in my heart to do good work. If I’m just one of the torch throwers, then let it be. I’d love to be super superfamous and have projects coming to me left and right, but there are very few people who get those opportunities. I would love to be one of them, but if I’m not, I’m okay with it. We have to continue to lift each other up and be there for each other and support one another and really try. Even if we don’t agree with the choices that we make, we are black people. We have to give each other love and not be so critical and not tear each other down and not be envious, even though this industry is set up for people to act that way.

I love what I do so much when it’s good. I love what happens between “Action!” and “Cut!” They can put the political side of Hollywood on a ship and send it so far out of here that I never see it again.

Right now I think the key for me is to just be still, continue to read, continue to try to find things I like. For the first time in my life, I can do whatever I want. I get to lie in bed all day if I want to. I took the time to have my child and be with my family and focus in on what’s important to me. I allowed myself the space and the distance from the business to get a better perspective on things, and I don’t want to rush it.

I’ve always been the type of person to hibernate and then come back out. I’m not the type of person who’s always visible. I don’t want to be the flavor of the week. That’s what happens to a lot of girls in Hollywood. They might get a couple of good hits and then it’s over. In this business, as with any other, the only way to get higher pay or more recognition is to take the next step in a logical sequence; to work hard to get to that next place.

My girlfriends and I have often discussed the fact that as black people, we are not raised and trained for success. We are raised and trained to know how to survive. So we’re coming from a place of, how can I get in here and make this work for myself? How can I get my hustle on? This isn’t all bad, because it means we can overcome obstacles—and we have proven throughout history that we can prevail. But at the same time, when we have our first small success, the first thing we do is go buy a car and nice clothes. You walk down the street in L.A. and everyone’s about their hair, their nails, their clothes, what kind of car they drive. If you’re not careful, you can get caught up in that.

I love like nice things. I’m the first person to admit it. But I’ve made preparations for my future, for my retirement, for my son’s education. My purpose is to make sure my son is inspired to reach a higher level of success. I’ll be happy with that. I want my son to realize that he can do whatever he wants to do but you have to be smart during the process. You can’t just go and spend all your money. The parents of white kids always have a stash for their kids. And they pull it out right when that child is either getting married or graduating from college. So it gives them a head start with life.

If my son says to me someday, Mama, I’ve decided to be a movie actor, I’m going to say, God bless you, babe, but you know what, you’re going to college first. I didn’t have a chance to finish school. I want to finish school; it’s one of the things I most want to do. I want my son to have that, because everybody has the right to have an education. And college teaches you how to socialize with people. It’s like life, but in a small, isolated community. There’s a lot to be said for that.

Education gives you confidence, and we need that, especially for our black men. I think black men have had a hard road. My son is only eighteen months old, and every night we read and he speaks and understands Spanish. I’m trying to do the right thing. When he was still an infant, I took him to Trinidad. That’s where my roots are, on the islands. Many of my relatives are getting old, and I wanted them to meet my son. He was too little to really know what was going on, but I just felt like he was blessed, like he had the kiss and we could go on again.

I hope someday to be a producer. You have much more power behind the camera than in front of it. But I’m happy with the sequence of events that has led me to where I am today. I couldn’t have planned my career any better. For now, I’m working with writers, trying to find roles I believe in. And once I find a script I’m passionate about, I will capitalize on the relationships I’ve already established and get the movie made. I just recently finished my first screenplay, called
Purple,
with my writing partner Avery Williams. Look out. Here I come.

DON CHEADLE
Excellence

The status of black movies and black actors in America is a microcosm of the country as a whole. The people who run the studios are predominantly not women and predominantly not black, or anything other than white. Most of the stories they connect to, and most of the ideas they can understand, are not from a perspective that is other than where they come from.

The definition of racism, for me anyway, keeps moving and changing. In a general sense, everyone in this country is a victim of racism—white, black, Chinese, whoever. While the effects may be more subtle for some than for others, I don’t think it’s any less hurtful, culturally, for people not to know about each other than it is for some of us to be cut out of something. Obviously, what goes on in Hollywood casting is different from the kind of racism we had at the country’s inception. We’re talking about an institutionalized ideology now. Today there’s a pervasive attitude that black movies don’t sell. I know people who have tried to set up independent movies with overseas financing. Often what we hear over here is that black movies don’t perform overseas. But I also know that when producers go into their meetings and they have a briefcase and they have four movies, they don’t even pitch the black movie. A producer who’s nonblack told me that. He told me that when they go in these rooms with German bankers and French bankers and Italian investors, they don’t even get into discussing how the black movie can sell. So then they come back and the numbers support the view that black movies don’t sell. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

People don’t want to take risks on movies they don’t think are going to make money. They need everything to be a home run. Everything. There’s this idea now of vertical integration, where they want the sound track, they want the video, the cups, the T-shirt. They want to saturate every market. It’s basic greed.

I heard a very successful producer—on the $100-million level—say to a director on a film I was doing, see, the difference between you and me is, you want to make good movies that make $100 million, and I just want to make movies that make $100 million—and I’m going to be here longer than you! That’s the prevailing philosophy. Get paid. Make the money.

Nothing sells itself. And if you’re already thinking, well, it’s not going to sell because the last black movie that you didn’t try to push didn’t sell, then you’re not going to be behind it trying to push it. Everybody wants to do
Spider-Man
now. Everybody wants to produce in the rearview mirror. Nobody really wants to take a chance.

Now we come to the real crux of moviemaking, which is how to sell a movie. Again, we’re talking about people who are for the most part not black, not representative of anything other than white males or white females, and who are instructed to target the demographic of fourteen- to thirty-five-year-olds.

If I spent $40 million on something, I would want to see a return. I can’t get mad at people not wanting to spend $40 million on a movie that’s not going to make a return. But I’d back it up even further in time. I’d say that America’s huge conglomerates sprung out of companies whose profit base traces all the way back to the slave-based economy that established this nation’s prosperity. So if we were talking about equality of opportunity, or even reciprocity—if we were talking about the way America really looks, rather than the way movies look—then there would be more work for black actors, directors, and producers in Hollywood, and for others of color as well.

Of course, there are myriad reasons why one actor doesn’t get a certain part. If we believe union numbers, there are many more white actors who don’t get parts than black actors. If I get turned down for a part, I can’t attribute it solely to the fact that I’m black. But it’s obvious that I am, so I’m sure that’s always a factor in any thought process about whether I get hired. If they put me in a lead in a big-budget movie, they’re most likely going to have to get me a white costar. It’s got to be a buddy film, unless it’s Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. Where they have a huge audience from their first film, they gamble on putting those two together and getting box office results.

I don’t think that Hollywood is as color-struck for men as for women. It’s very hard for black actresses. Dark-skinned actresses don’t fit the classic beauty standard, so they’re often overlooked. Light-skinned actresses are too light to be thought of as black, but they’re not quite white. It’s even harder for an Asian woman than it is for a black woman to be a movie star; it’s difficult for most Americans to name even one. It’s hard for women, period.

In terms of who has the power to green-light a movie, there are still no black executives who are running a studio and who therefore have their hands on the checkbook. And I know of only a couple of women who can write the checks. Now, if Will Smith or Denzel Washington or Eddie Murphy wants to do your film, you have the clout to go to those people who write the checks and it becomes a negotiation whether your film will get made, depending on the size of the budget, the genre, and other factors. Granted, there are only about five or six white actors who have the same kind of clout. So does racism play a part in that? You have to look at it in a more comprehensive sense. Sure, there’s some progress in that three black actors have a level of say that’s new. But when blackness does become green, it’s comedies and black and white buddy films that get done, not a broader range of genre.

I think the two areas where racism is most apparent in Hollywood are opportunity and timing. White actors are subject to cultural stereotypes, but to a lesser degree than black actors. Historically, the stereotypes that have characterized blacks in this country and, by extension, black actors and actresses, have been far more limiting and unacceptable. As a corollary, good white actors have the luxury of being able to fail—or being in a movie that fails to make money—and still get hired for many more films with budgets higher than the one for the film that just tanked. That’s not the case for many black actors. But again, it depends. If you were to be in a huge blockbuster and it was perceived that you were the main reason for its success, you’d probably get a few more at bats—black or white. As far as timing goes, it’s approaching close to a century since the beginning of film in this country and it’s only in the past few years that moviegoers have had the chance to become familiar with a handful of leading black actors whose films aren’t spaced apart by years. It’s timing and opportunity—who at the studio level holds the stick at the time and what are they willing to risk, because it’s always a risk.

I guess that whether there’s such a thing as a “raceless” role in Hollywood depends on your understanding of the word. My role as Cash in
Family Man
could be viewed as one of those roles if you were to look purely at how the character needed to function in the story. But Brett Ratner, the director, decided to inform the part with my race. The fact that Cash comes in the store and the guy automatically assumes he’s pulling a scam, instead of thinking that his lotto ticket could be real, was based purely on the racist element. I did Luke Graham in
Mission to Mars,
and that character could have been any color. Yet, unless we progress very far from where we are now, a big issue would be made of the fact that the first person to go to Mars is a black man.

Not every scene in a movie lends itself to exploring the issue of race. For one thing, as a writer, you sometimes start to factor something into a script and then the story goes left, and it’s like you have a whole other movie. I think there are roles, more and more, where the person’s race unfortunately doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with their function in the film. The issue of race per se is not a talking point in mainstream movies. You might want to write race into a person’s role in the film, but mainstream moviemaking really is not about art or consciousness-raising. It’s about generating money.

There’s got to be a story. The need for a good story supersedes issues of race, white or black. That’s just a fact for everyone who pays to see a movie. From three years of age or younger, that’s what you get turned on by. Once upon a time, this happened. Oh! Then what? There was intrigue, oh, then he succeeded, oh, then he failed. Oh, oh, then he did this and that. That’s a story, and we can follow that. We don’t want to hear, “Now I’m going to give you a lesson for thirty or forty-five minutes and then I’ll give you five minutes of entertainment.”

I think Carl Franklin put it best. We were doing an interview for a BBC program and he said, this is still about dreams and illusions and fantasies: “In my dreams,
I’m
slayin’ all the dragons.
I’m
the one who’s rescuing everybody. The hero looks like me.” Dig that. We’re all at the center of our own stories and imagined epics.

And when it comes to casting, it’s hard to get the right people, because good movies are about craft, art form,
and
storytelling. A good movie—and good isn’t always successful—but a good movie needs to ring true with the fantasy that moviegoers bring to the experience.

Acting isn’t bricklaying. If you have a skill for laying bricks, you can do it no matter what you look like—if they hire you. You can plumb a brick and put it on the mortar, and then boom, do it. When it comes to casting, you can’t just say, you have to hire these five black people or these four Asian women, because not everybody can do it. Not everybody is right for every role. It’s not as simple as saying, we need more numbers of blacks or Asians. Yes, we do need more numbers, but if the stories aren’t intriguing, engaging, and entertaining, and if it doesn’t hold together as a whole, then just sticking a bunch of people in a product that’s ultimately not going to be that good doesn’t help either. In fact, it does just the opposite.

It’s possible for black actors and directors to sometimes cover for individual shortcomings by blaming racism. It’s an easy crutch for black actors and directors to rest on because it’s there. It’s not like we made it up; racism is a real, tangible thing. But you can’t always pinpoint it as the reason why something doesn’t get made, or why something’s bad or something doesn’t get supported. A lot of so-called black movies are junk. But so what? Most movies are not very good; most pieces of art are not very good; most CEOs of companies are not very good. That’s why, when they
are
very good, they’re exemplary, and we go, oh my God. They’re lauded, because mediocrity is what’s rampant. Excellence is rare.

Everybody in Hollywood needs to hire a no-man. Everybody in life needs a no-woman or a no-man—somebody who will sit there and when you go, yeah, they go, no, do it over again. It has to be someone you can’t fire—someone you can’t get rid of. You have to have your no-man.

As for the role that the writer might play in changing the racial balance in Hollywood, I’m also experiencing now how the writer is low man on the totem pole. They treat writers like garbage out here. There are going to be ten more of them on the script anyway. Unless you’re one of the A-list writers who has some sort of control, and who they have some sort of reverence for, you’re just there to get the first couple of drafts done and then they’re going to change everything and your words don’t mean anything to them anyway. It’s very difficult once you get to a position where a movie is being made and they have to cast people and they have to think about how they’re going to sell this thing. I don’t know any writers who write into their script, “He holds up a can of Pepsi toward the camera and takes a drink.” The scripts are just the templates—loose blueprints—and I see them get gutted very quickly.

The power, in my opinion, lies with the producers—the handful of guys who run Hollywood. The writers put their best foot forward; they write the best script they can. They can people it with whoever they want to people it with, all shades. Once it gets to actually casting the thing, then it becomes about “Who is available?” “Do they open a movie?” “How can we market this?” You green-light from what you know, and from the experience at the box office. And all of those things together don’t equal more black movies or more roles in films for black actors.

I would like to see people instead of trying to make one movie for $100 million that makes upwards of $100 mil, make ten movies each for $10 mil that each make upwards of $10 mil. That way, you can still have some sort of content. If we give people the content, they will go see the movie. I don’t think people go to see bad movies because they want to see bad movies. It’s the dirty water, clean water analogy. People want something to go see, so they’ll go see that movie that maybe ain’t that good and they’ll justify it and make it make sense, and if they get laid at the end of the night, then hey, that was a good night. But if people were to see movies that are interesting and thought-provoking and engaging and that aren’t just popcorn and fluff, I think they’d appreciate it.