THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, March 25, 1996 TAG: 9603240281
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CARRIE RICKEY, KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
LENGTH: Long : 121 lines
Tonight, in front of a billion TV viewers, Oscar-winner Whoopi Goldberg will host the 68th annual Academy Awards at a gala shindig produced by multiple Oscar-nominee Quincy Jones.
Two of the world's best-known black superstars presiding over the most racially controversial contest in Oscar history. What's Whoopi gonna say about that?
When Oscar nominations were announced on Feb. 14, African Americans gasped: Out of 166 nominees, only one - the director of a live-action short - was black. (Winners will be announced at the ceremony to be broadcast on ABC, beginning at 9 tonight.)
A goose egg for black actors in a year that Morgan Freeman held audiences spellbound in ``Seven,'' that Angela Bassett had them breathless in ``Waiting to Exhale,'' and that Laurence Fishburne mesmerized them as ``Othello?''
A goose egg for Babyface, the man behind the multi-platinum ``Waiting to Exhale'' soundtrack and score?
Make that a goose egg on Hollywood's face, says the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has planned a series of protests against the institutional racism he believes keeps minorities from making it in the film and TV industries.
Jackson said over the weekend that the protests were being planned at ABC affiliates in 25cities. In Hampton Roads, news staffers at work Sunday at WVEC, Channel 13, had not heard of anyone leading an such an effort against that station. But, said assignment editor Tonya Yancy, ``Who knows what tomorrow may bring? There may be people on our doorstep.''
Yet the year of the ``Hollywood blackout,'' as People magazine has dubbed it, was also filled with positive signs for African Americans.
Eighteen films made by and starring African Americans were released by studios in 1995.
Denzel Washington (``Crimson Tide''), Samuel L. Jackson (``Die Hard With a Vengeance'') and Morgan Freeman (``Seven'') starred in three of last year's 10 top-grossing films.
``Bad Boys'' and ``Waiting to Exhale'' each earned more than $65 million domestically and are huge overseas.
More films than ever before (``Boys on the Side,'' ``Crimson Tide,'' ``Die Hard'' ``With a Vengeance,'' ``How to Make an American Quilt,'' ``Species'') featured multiracial casts in scenarios where the characters solved conflicts together.
Entrepreneur Magic Johnson launched a multiplex chain to serve black communities.
Suddenly, the larger issue of racism in Hollywood looks less black and white - though the view has a lot to do with where you're sitting.
Most Hollywood executives - who are overwhelmingly white, male and unwilling to have their names associated with comments about race - refute the blackout charge by pointing to their studios' black-themed films.
African Americans in the industry paint a different picture.
``It's good news, it's bad news, it's bittersweet,'' says Tim Reid, the Hampton Roads-born actor-director whose nostalgic ``Once Upon a Time . . . When We Were Colored'' is now playing in theaters around the country.
``I think it's encouraging to see integration on screen, but that isn't the issue. The issue is, are African Americans being portrayed as we are in America? If you ask me that, I say `no.'
``Some people might say it's racism,'' Reid reflects. ``I say it's disrespect for the consumers who pay 25 cents of every movie dollar'' spent in the United States and account for only 12 percent of the population.
``Everything in the industry is a good news/bad news story,'' says Rutgers University professor Jesse Rhines, author of the forthcoming book ``Black Film, White Money.''
Despite the encouraging fact that Angela and Denzel and Wesley and Whitney are household names and box-office magnets, Rhines is concerned that African Americans have not been as successful getting employment behind the camera. If African-American representation in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is bad - only 4 percent of the academy's 5,000 members are black - then the 2 percent African American showing within Hollywood's unions is deplorable.
``Every time People magazine calls, it's always because there's a problem,'' says Dolores Robinson, a Hollywood business manager and producer whose client list has included Wesley Snipes, Rosie Perez, and Robinson's own daughter, Holly Robinson Peete.
The media is better at reporting blacks in crisis than blacks achieving, Robinson says. She's almost as sick of this as she is at being ``one of the few flies in the buttermilk in Hollywood.''
Like a tennis star at Wimbledon, Robinson slam-serves the news bulletins.
``The bad news? Where African-Americans are concerned, (storylines contain) too much emphasis on urban urban urban, gang gang gang, drug drug drug,'' Robinson says. This ``cultural distortion,'' as Jesse Jackson calls it, wouldn't exist if Hollywood encouraged black filmmakers to show the full spectrum of African-American life, says the artist manager.
``The good news?'' asks Robinson. ``Bill Cosby, Spike Lee, Tim Reid, the Hudlin brothers and the Hughes brothers - filmmakers who do the hiring of their crews - are getting African Americans into the unions.''
``The bad news was that `Devil in a Blue Dress' was a good movie and no one saw it,'' Robinson says, mourning the fact that ``Blue Dress'' co-star Don Cheadle didn't get a supporting-actor nod.
If it's the hero movies like ``Rocky'' and ``Mr. Holland's Opus'' that are blockbusters, then why are studios more likely to finance a black-themed movie about inner-city violence and nihilism such as Spike Lee's ``Clockers'' than they are a highly praised coming-of-age drama such as Reid's ``Once Upon a Time?''
``The images that Hollywood allows to be made are urban, angry, dysfunctional,'' says Reid, who was forced to seek independent financing for ``Once Upon a Time.'' ``Black people are the only people on the planet who let other people tell our stories.''
But don't look for Reid to join Jesse Jackson's protest, asking the studios to count the minorities on their employment rolls.
``Can't just go and stand out there with a picket sign. Done that,'' says Reid, star and director of the highly praised dramatic series ``Frank's Place,'' which made TV history for its nearly all-black cast. ``Sitting there and calling them racist doesn't change anything.''
``I'm not going to throw stones at glass houses,'' he says.
``I'm going to go build me a brick foundation.'' MEMO: Staff writer Eric Sundquist contributed to this story.
ILLUSTRATION: Color file photo
Actor Tim Reid
by CNB