Jeffrey Wright’s Reasonable Comment About Black Cinema Will Probably Get Misconstrued in 3,2,1…
Can you name five black directors off the top of your head? We're not asking that to be snide: We confess we struggled just now to come up with five ourselves. (Spike Lee, Lee Daniels, John Singleton, Tyler Perry ... Kasi Lemmons.) There are more, of course -- like Antoine Fuqua, F. Gary Gray and Carl Franklin -- but it's pretty telling that it's just a handful, and only a few of them have had what would be described as big box office smashes. So it's completely understandable that actor Jeffrey Wright recently talked about a lack of what might be called "Black Cinema." But we're already anticipating people misconstruing his comments and bending them all out of shape.
NewsOne interviewed Wright, perhaps best known as Felix Leiter from the Daniel Craig James Bond films, as part of the National Black Writers Conference Symposium, which was celebrating the work of the late playwright August Wilson. Wright was asked to address the state of black playwrights and black screenwriters -- oh, and would there be a new Wilson coming anytime soon? That's a pretty wide-ranging question, and Wright answered it as thoughtfully as he could:
Measured, honest, humble, and pretty accurate. Unfortunately, NewsOne decided to headline the story "Actor Jeffrey Wright Says 'There Is No Black Cinema.'" Which he did not say. The closest he got to saying that was "I don't really see any Black Cinema," which isn't the same thing at all. But that's the quote NewsOne went with -- as did AwardsDaily, which linked to the story today. The interesting thing is that Wright didn't say this all that recently: The Symposium happened in March and this video went out in early May. So why make a big deal of it now? (Other than the fact that we're in late August and there's no news, of course.)
For the record, we think Wright is absolutely correct, and we like that he smartly didn't put the blame on mean old racist Hollywood, although they definitely deserve some. Instead, Wright's talking more about the African-American community's inability to finance and support black projects, which probably doesn't get talked about enough. Most importantly, though, Wright's comments aren't willfully provocative: He's not making blanket statements or offering a definitive take. Really, he's just starting a conversation. He surely knows that an Oprah can give a film a huge push just by signing on as an executive producer, like she did with "Precious." And Perry, despite his painfully mediocre movies, is a legitimate Hollywood brand. But it's still rough sledding out there. And labeling stories "Jeffrey Wright Says 'There Is No Black Cinema'" won't do much to help.
Actor Jeffrey Wright Says "There Is No Black Cinema" [NewsOne]
