Michael Davis: Once You Go Black, Part 3
If you have not done, so please read last week’s article. Thanks.
I’ve encountered quite a few things in my Hollywood journey. Some great some not so great and some that really sucked.
Really sucked.
I once sold a show on a Monday morning and by Monday night the show was gone and so was my deal.
I once had a great idea for a reality show. I took the idea to a huge Hollywood player with the intention of making him the host of the show. He loved my idea. He loved my idea so much he tried to sue me and take the show. The show I created and asked him to be a part of.
One of the fun things about Hollywood is finding project financing. That’s always the highlight of any deal…not.
My partner in one particular deal was the fantastic writer, TV producer and now huge young adult novelist E. Van Lowe. E (yes, I call him E) and I spent a weekend in San Francisco securing funding for this great project.
We were a well-oiled money getting machine that weekend. We pitched the project like major league all stars and the money people were so impressed we had a yes before we left to go back to L.A. In fact, the meetings went so well that after we sold the idea and spent the rest of the weekend in the city by the bay just hanging out and celebrating our new fully financed deal!
Monday morning bright and early we boarded our flight secure in the knowledge that we were about to make television history!
When we touched down in LAX all was right in the world. E dropped me off at my house and before he left he took a phone call.
The deal was dead.
Dead like Lincoln. What happened? Or in hood speak, What had happened? Why hood speak? Because this is an article about blacks in the entertainment field and unless I throw in some hood speak many in Hollywood won’t take this seriously.
I know, I know. It’s pandering but you have to understand there are some in Hollywood that thinks my Ph.D. stands for pretty hard dick.
Well, continuing hood speak, what had happened was a third partner had decided she had not contributed enough to the closing of the deal so while E and I were happily flying to L.A. that bright Monday morning, she who must not be named was having a talk with the investors at breakfast.
Neither E nor I had any idea she was having this talk, and what a talk it was. She talked us right out of the deal.
Ah yes, there’s no business like show business!
I’ve got more horrible yet uplifting to my enemies stories but I’d best get to the point. In the blah blah years I’ve been doing the Hollywood thing I’ve had some great experiences and some (obviously) not so great experiences. Rather great or sucky I’ve never had a deal go south because I was black.
You would think that the way some in Hollywood react to black properties that would be the standard issue rejection.
Dear Michael Davis,
Thanks for coming in to pitch Negro Stories: Stories about black People.
Unfortunately, although we loved the concept, we could not help but notice there were many segments about black people in your pitch.
We completely understand the need for more diversity on TV but we are a business and everyone knows that black does not sell.
Sorry, homie.
Sincerely,
Ian White
Executive, Fox Studios
I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard that black doesn’t sell or black is death and many more asinine statements regarding black properties in the entertainment business.
Think about this for a moment. There are people running studios, networks and comic book companies in 2012 that think that black doesn’t sell. These people think that America will not pay to watch black people entertain them.
That’s as stupid as thinking that just because I’m a black man I have a huge peni…nope, wrong example. That’s as stupid as thinking global warming is a myth. Global warming has been proven without a shadow of a doubt. Those people who refuse to believe in it despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary do so, in my opinion, because they simply don’t want to believe it.
Who denies facts? Well the GOP for one, and many in the entertainment business for sure.
Black doesn’t sell?
Really?
Here’s a news flash, Hollywood. Young people drive Hollywood revenue. Young people decide what’s hot and what’s not. Pop culture is a young person’s playground.
Here’s the kicker. Black culture is youth culture. Let me be clear, African American culture is youth culture all over the world.
It’s our swagger that drives pop culture. That’s our music your kids are listening too. That’s our style of dress you kids are wearing, that slang you don’t understand comes from us. That’s us who dominates sports, that’s our dance your daughter is trying to do…badly.
The film Heaven’s Gate was made for what was in 1980 an unheard of budget of 50 million dollars. That’s like 75 billion dollars in 2012 money. OK, maybe I’m a tad off but it’s not a stretch to think that in 2012 dollars that 50 million would be upwards of 300 million or more even.
Heaven’s Gate made three million dollars.
Damn! That, as they say in the hood, is ghetto!
Now that would be bad enough if the lost was just 47 million but the lost was much more. The budget was 50 million to make the movie. The adverting and marketing costs added millions more to that sum.
Result?
Heaven’s Gate just may be the worst box office disaster in the history of the world…that and The Spirit. Sorry, Frank.
Using the Hollywood formula applied to black movies that box office performance should have prevented another western from being made for years and years. When a black movie fails Hollywood loses its mind and then it’s years before another black movie is made because black means death and black doesn’t sell.
Here’s what I think, when any movie fails, black or white it’s because the movie could not find its audience for whatever reason… or perhaps it’s because the movie sucked.
George Lucas wrote a $58 million dollar check to produce Red Tails, an all black film about the Tuskegee Airmen. He said in an interview that Hollywood did not want to fund the movie because they did not know how to market it.
Translation: black equals death.
The movie did not do well. Here’s my guess why that was. It wasn’t a great movie.
Duh.
I wanted to like it but there were too many plot issues for me and the film seemed a bit contrived. The movie was the problem, not the racial element.
According to some in Hollywood, when a black movie fails its because it was a black movie – when any other movie fails it’s because of a zillion other reasons.
If that’s not the world is flat thinking then I really don’t know what is.
I’m amazed at the sheer idiotic thinking of some in Hollywood.
Black doesn’t sell?
Will Smith.
Black doesn’t sell?
Oprah Winfrey.
Black doesn’t sell?
Tyler Perry.
Black doesn’t sell?
Blade.
Black doesn’t sell?
Hancock.
Black doesn’t sell?
Jamie Foxx.
Black doesn’t sell?
Spawn.
Black doesn’t sell?
Denzel Washington
Black doesn’t sell? Bullshit, Mr. Hollywood, simply bullshit. The above list is a very short one to be sure but I think it makes the point rather well.
I think the problem is not that black doesn’t sell Mr. Hollywood but rather you don’t know how to sell black.
End, part 3.
TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Emily S. Whitten wants stuff!
WEDNESDAY MORNING: Mike Gold takes on Secret Identities!
