LIFESTYLE TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2013 Music38 & Movies Will this year cure Hollywood’s ‘selective amnesia’ with black filmmakers? his has been a banner year for black filmmakers, tracking, in the same way that the Republicans didn’t black moviegoers each year, and one common excuse a copout. “Even studio executives I speak to behind and yet somehow their success continues to stun track that audience in the 2012 election,” Ridley told for the paucity of those films is they don’t play overseas. closed doors admit there is not a real attempt to mine THollywood. “The Best Man Holiday” was the latest TheWrap. “That audience is there, it is hungry for diver- While a Tyler Perry movie can make money in the U.S., that area for films of color,” she said. Leonard pointed to film to thrill viewers, scoring an A+ on CinemaScore and the success of black actors such as Will Smith, Denzel grossing $30 million over its opening weekend. That Washington and Jamie Foxx, all of whom have been was almost enough to knock “Thor: The Dark World” out global icons at one point or another. Their success has of the top spot - a result no box office prognosticators not created myriad opportunities for unproven film- predicted. makers or actors. “Historically Hollywood has done a terrible job as- “These films make money every time,” DuVernay sessing the value of films and properties that are driven said. “But it doesn’t trigger a greenlight frenzy.” Her by women and people of color,” Franklin Leonard, a for- film “Middle of Nowhere” was nominated for several mer studio executive and founder of the Black List, told Independent Spirit Awards and DuVernay won the John TheWrap. “I’m boggled whenever black films do well by Cassavetes award at that ceremony. But she says that the constant refrain that they’ve over-performed,” Leon- no matter how well her films do, “I have to start from ard said. “How many black films have to “overperform” square one every time, and that’s not the case for my before we change the model for expectations?” white male counterparts.” This is at least the third qfilm to catch people She has tried to establish a pipeline for black film- off-guard this year. When “The Butler” opened to $25 makers in space, founding the African- million in its opening weekend, one trade publication American Film Festival Releasing Movement. AFFRM called it an “over performance.” When “Baggage Claim” is an independent distributor dedicated to releasing grossed $9.3 million its opening weekend, Moviefone arthouse movies that often disappear after a few film wondered: “How Did ‘Baggage Claim’ Beat ‘Don Jon’?” festival screenings. TheWrap’s sources have not been clairvoyant either, It has released six movies, including “Middle of also dubbing “The Best Man Holiday” a surprise. Nowhere.” Yet diversity is a larger problem is at the This is not the first time a strong year for black film- studio level. While a black filmmaker can scrap together makers has awed Hollywood either. Far from it. “The support for a film with a modest budget, securing the Hollywood machine has selective amnesia,” African- support of a major distributor or financier has proven American director, producer and distributor Ava DuVer- far more challenging. If there was ever reason to believe nay told TheWrap. “It’s not like we haven’t gone through that will change, it’s this year’s crop of movies. More a season of robust black image makers before.” than a dozen movies are opening in an 18-month span, She pointed to the rise of filmmakers such as John sity of entertainment and it has the money to go out.” the thinking goes, foreign audiences won’t relate. and the diversity, depth and success of those movies is Singleton and Spike Lee in the late 1980s while “The The sheer number of films aimed at a black audience “Studios are focusing on the global business and unlike any in recent memory. Best Man” director Malcolm D Lee noted the steady this year has spurred talk of an “Obama effect.” tentpole titles,” Jeff Clanagan, CEO of Codeblack films, Some offer unvarnished looks at slavery and seg- success of black comedies in the 1990s. Hollywood has The success has been both commercial and critical. a Lionsgate subsidiary focused on making movies for regation while others are universal tales of love and benefited from an eager black audience before, only to “12 Years A Slave,” “Fruitvale Station” and “Lee Daniels’ black audiences, told TheWrap. “If you are looking at farcical comedy. “What’s fueling the renaissance, if you back away. In doing so, Hollywood discounts a substan- The Butler” are all principal Oscar contenders while half urban movies, you are only looking at a domestic audi- want to call it that, are good stories,” David Talbert, who tial part of its constituency. “12 Years a Slave” screen- a dozen films have performed well at the box office. Yet ence. It’s harder to get a budget for it when you’re only directed “Baggage Claim,” told TheWrap. “The stories writer John Ridley recently compared Hollywood’s the recurring surprise at their financial success suggests dealing with domestic revenues and not foreign.” would be good regardless of who was acting in them. inability to satiate a dissatisfied black audience with the such talk ignores the larger quandary. How can this Clanagan then said it was “a whole other conver- Kevin Hart’s stand-up is just funny material. ‘The Butler’ Republican Party’s inability to court the black vote. wave sustain itself, and why hasn’t it before? Execu- sation about whether these movies can go foreign.” is a historic and it’s just a good piece. “That’s what’s go- “There’s an audience out there that you’re not tives estimate studios release two to four films aimed at DuVernay was less diplomatic, labeling that explanation ing to keep this from becoming an anomaly.”—Reuters The Culture Prize Giving Ceremony US country star Patty Griffin gets Londoners stomping merican Patty Griffin brought her resonant, mournful, soulful voice to London on Sunday, Asinging “Meet me on the banks of the Ohio” just a stone’s throw from the Thames in a sign of country mu- sic’s growing footprint in Britain. The scene, seemingly an incongruous one for an American country music star, was the Royal Festival Hall in the Southbank Centre, not far from Buckingham Palace. But the standing ovation at the end of Griffin’s con- cert, not to mention the foot-stomping and hand-slap- ping throughout, testified to her tremendous talent as both singer and song-writer, and to something broader: the surprising popularity of American country music in the United Kingdom. The genre has had a dedicated following in the British Isles for years but it seems to be growing, especially over the last decade. The evidence is anecdotal but ubiquitous. Spanish flamenco guitarist Tomatito (Jose This coming weekend London will host the annual Fernandez Torres) speaks after being British Country Music Awards, first held in 2006. The awarded an International medal for Arts. next year brought the inaugural Towerfest Country Music Festival, now an annual three-day event in north England. Other annual British country fests include the Spanish painter and Rock Ridge Roundup, Country to Country and Yee- graphic artist Juan HawUK. Genoves speaks after being The plethora of British enthusiast publications and awarded an International websites includes Maverick, the nation’s self-described “Leading Independent Country Music Magazine”. It Spanish Catalan opera soprano Montserrat Ca- medal for Arts. carries articles on American and British performers as balle speaks after being awarded the Internation- well as British concerts and events. Homegrown bands al medal for Arts yesterday in Madrid during the include Texarkana, which hails, despite its name, from culture prize giving ceremony in the Red Room of northwest England, not from the town that straddles the town hall in Madrid. —AFP photos the Texas-Arkansas state line. A band called Arizona Flame comes from northeast England, far removed in every respect (especially weather) from the American Southwest. As an American recently transplanted to London, Mirren wins London theatre award for Queen Elizabeth II portrayal all this left me gob-smacked, as the locals say. Key elen Mirren was named best actress for her Kinnear and Lester said that portraying Othello the Old Vic since 2003, was given the Editor’s Award country-music totems - cowboys, Bible-belt preachers portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in “The Audi- and Iago in the production of Shakespeare’s play for his contribution to British Theatre. and pickup trucks - are hard to come by in Britain. The Hence” at the Theatre Awards at the National Theatre had been a challenge, both Andrew Lloyd-Webber received the Lebedev nation’s roads are largely bereft of the iconic Ford F-150 on Sunday while the best actor award was split be- personally and in terms of seeing how the play could Special Award for his contribution to musical theatre. King Ranch pickup, whose seats have more leather than tween Rory Kinnear and Adrian Lester as the leads in be interpreted for new audiences. “It was important Actress/writer Cush Jumbo won the Emerging Talent most cows. “Othello”. The award for best play on the London stage that we got on with each other because we’re Award for her one-woman play about Josephine Likewise, British country singers seem to lack the went to Lucy Kirkwood for “Chimerica”, an exploration spending an awfully long time ruining each other’s Baker, “Josephine and I”. hardscrabble upbringing common to American artists. of the relationship between the United States and lives,” Kinnear said. The Beyond Theatre award was given to the BBC’s Glenn Campbell was the son of a sharecropper. Johnny China as seen through the eyes of an American photo- Lester said he thought the production had 2013 Proms season.—Reuters Cash picked cotton as a boy. Loretta Lynn was married journalist trying to track down a young protester who managed to connect with a whole new generation at age 13. John Denver had it better as the son of an of theatregoers. “It breathed fresh life into a play faced down a tank in Tiananmen Square in 1989. American Air Force officer. But his real name was John that people may have found dated,” he said. London A revival of ’s “Merrily We Roll Deutschendorf, which probably was suffering enough. Evening Standard editor Sarah Sands, one of the Along”, a flop on Broadway in 1981, was named Still, there’s evident logic behind country music’s British judges, said, “The high level of theatrical daring and best musical while Richard Eyre won best director boomlet. For better or worse, American popular culture creativity seen on the London stage this year made for a revival of Ibsen’s “Ghosts”. “People come from permeates the globe. And American country music trac- our choices tougher than ever to make. “We, like the around the world to see plays in London,” Mayor Boris rest of the world, have been dazzled by the talent on es roots to the Scots-Irish immigrants who settled the Johnson said as he made his way into the awards show.” hills of Appalachia, like Patty Griffin’s family. —Reuters banquet at the Savoy Hotel. “It’s the place where In other awards: the theatre really got going in the 16th century.” American actor Seth Numrich took the Milton Mirren, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Queen Shulman Award for Outstanding Newcomer for Elizabeth in Steven Frears’s movie “The Queen”, said his portrayal of a small-town gigolo in Tennessee she feels such awards are being given to the queen as Williams’s “Sweet Bird of Youth”. much as to her. Rachel De-lahay won the Charles Wintour Award “The Audience” shows her meeting with prime for Most Promising Playwright for her drama about ministers over many decades, and required that immigration and multicultural London, “Routes”. she portray a woman in her 20s as well as an Rosalie Craig won a new award for Best Musical octogenarian. “I’ve always felt playing her majesty Performance as the star of “The Light Princess”. that it’s actually her majesty who’s winning the award The Evening Standard Theatre Icon Award went to and not me,” Mirren told Reuters. “I did feel very much for her contribution to the world stage. doing a play that the response to the play was as David Walliams took home the new Award much a response to that person, that extraordinary for Comedy for his performance as Bottom in “A woman, as it was to my performance. But I should Midsummer Night’s Dream”. be very proud,” she said, speaking before the official Actor and director , artistic director of announcement was made. Helen Mirren Patty Griffin