The New Black Clout in Hollywood

BILL COSBY EARNED NEARLY $60 million last year and is king of prime-time television with his No. 1-rated “The Cosby Show.” Eddie Murphy is lord of the movie box office, having made Paramount Pictures $685 million richer in the past five years. In the white-dominated world of show business, where creativity and Wall Street merge, these two black entertainers have become blue-chip stocks. Their value to Hollywood is undisputed, and both have the kind of extraordinary clout reserved for few stars. They have the autonomy to choose the projects they want to do and the people with whom they want to work.

But in the past two years, other black artists have brought their own visions to the screen by writing, producing, directing and starring in their own films. Spike Lee’s “She’s Gotta Have It” and Robert Townsend’s “Hollywood Shuffle,” for example, were critical hits and, more important, spoke the language Hollywood understands best: profits. As a result, Lee and Townsend have received major-studio financing for their second films--Lee’s “School Daze,” released two weeks ago, and Townsend’s “Heartbeats.” Along with such television talents as director Thomas Carter and actor-producer Tim Reid, they are creating new images for blacks, shaking up stereotypical perceptions.

Today blacks are more visible in the film and television industry, both on camera and behind it, than ever before. And what has surprised and caught the attention of TV executives is the size of the black audience: Blacks spend 1.4 hours watching television for every hour spent by the rest of the population. Still, there are shockingly few blacks in creative power positions: 120 of the 6,500 members of the Writers Guild, or almost 2%, are black; the Directors Guild lists 195 blacks out of 8,558 members (about 2.25%), and black producers number less than a handful. (In contrast, 4,033 of the Screen Actors Guild’s 70,411 members, or about 5.75%, are black.) Fewer than a dozen blacks hold creative decision-making jobs at the major studios and television networks. And without representation in these institutions, some black artists say, the inroads they have made in the entertainment industry will be a passing trend--like the rash of black action-adventure films of the 1970s--instead of a lasting, fundamental change.

ROBERT TOWNSEND IS A MEMBER of both the Writers and Directors guilds; he’s also the producer, director, co-writer (with Keenen Ivory Wayans) and star of last year’s “Hollywood Shuffle,” a semi-autobiographical, moralistic romp that pinpoints the problems facing blacks in the entertainment industry. It’s ironic that Townsend, after laboring for years as a stand-up comic and actor, should finally grab the attention of Hollywood by poking fun at it.

“Hollywood Shuffle” recounts the plight of Bobby (played by Townsend), an aspiring actor who finally lands the lead role of a black gang leader in a movie written and produced by whites. He faces an anguished decision--to take the fame, along with the shame, of perpetuating the stereotypical image of blacks, or to turn down the part.

“The film’s about integrity,” Townsend says, “(and the fact) that people always have choices. But ‘Hollywood Shuffle’ isn’t only a black movie. I don’t think in terms of ‘Well, dear, let’s go see a good white movie tonight.’ ”

Townsend financed “Hollywood Shuffle” with $60,000 in earnings from acting in “American Flyers” and “A Soldier’s Story.” When he ran out of cash, he applied for credit cards and charged them to the limit, finishing the film another $40,000 later. He showed the rough cut to various studios, received several distribution offers and decided to take one from Samuel Goldwyn Jr. The film has grossed more than $5 million.

Townsend and Wayans are at work on their next film, about a black singing group. It will include many of the actors who appeared in “Hollywood Shuffle.” But this time Townsend and Wayans have the backing of Warner Bros., to the tune of $6 million to $8 million--hardly extravagant in Hollywood terms but a huge budget compared to that of the first film. Other fallout from the movie has included a special that aired on HBO in December--”Robert Townsend and His Partners in Crime”--and Townsend’s assignment to direct Murphy’s concert film, “Eddie Murphy Raw,” which has grossed $49 million since its release two months ago.

“We can change the system because we have created well-received product,” Wayans says of their partnership. “We don’t stay down when we’re knocked back. Look at the way Robert financed his movie--now every time a black applies for a credit card, some banker starts shaking and praying he doesn’t want to make a movie. We are a different breed.”

Townsend and Wayans represent a new generation of black producers and directors. “The civil rights movement happened in the ‘60s, and we are the children of the ‘70s,” Wayans says. “By the time we grew up, we were comfortable with the gains that (blacks) had made. Hostilities had died down considerably, and our generation had gained a different and broader perspective. We are able to relate to people as people, and that comes across in our humor.”

Townsend feels that other comedians--such as Richard Pryor, to name one--have had to withstand more racism than his own generation, and that their work reflects that. And while Townsend hasn’t felt that degree of angst , he and his counterparts have been put through the rigors of limited acting roles and exclusion from power in the entertainment field. “Hollywood Shuffle” was their comedic answer to these problems.

Townsend and Wayans were in Paris last year for the Deauville Film Festival. As they left the theater after the screening of their movie, a car screeched to a halt behind them. A Frenchman leaped out and approached the pair as they walked down the boulevard.

“Monsieur Townsend, I just saw your movie and I loved it,” the fan gushed. “I would very much like to discuss with you the state of the nigger in the United States.”

“He had no idea that word was insulting,” Townsend says now. “He thought it was synonymous with downtrodden blacks. He had picked up nigger from the films that this country has been sending overseas--those movies with negative images of blacks who are always the murderers, rapists and drug dealers. In Europe, blacks are actually considered to be intelligent, artistic people.”

IN AMERICA, BLACKS HAVE historically attained clout within the film industry only to fade quickly from center stage because they didn’t have the support of a wider power base. (And in a transitory business like entertainment, even that can’t guarantee longevity, as any recently fired studio executive can attest.)

In the early ‘70s, Melvin Van Peebles gained acceptance by directing such films as “Watermelon Man” and “Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song.” Gordon Parks Sr. won praise for “The Learning Tree” and commercial success for “Shaft” and “The Super Cops.” Yet it has been years since Van Peebles or Parks directed a film. Even Richard Pryor didn’t complete a multi-picture deal, estimated at $40 million, with Columbia Pictures, after internal conflict developed in his own company, Indigo Productions.

Many blacks say they have been unable to gain a foothold in Hollywood because nepotism and social connections remain the town’s two greatest employment agencies. In other words, when blacks are doing the hiring, more blacks will be hired. Says Townsend, half-jokingly: “My (cable) special had so many black actors I figure only Motown hires more. Otherwise blacks have to wait for another ‘Roots’ or ‘The Color Purple.’ I have a lot of talented friends who don’t work unless I employ them, and until that changes, I’ll continue doing films with lots of black actors.”

The economics behind this hiring phenomenon was recently explained by two UC Santa Barbara sociology professors, William and Denise Bielby, who were commissioned by the Writers Guild to study pay equity and employment opportunities among minority TV and film writers.

“Given the pressures television producers are under, they don’t have the time and energy to find (new) black writers and directors,” says William Bielby. “White executives tend to take fewer risks and rely on the same people they’ve used in the past, so they can meet their production deadlines and keep the networks happy.”

SPIKE LEE, ONE OF THE ANGRIEST of the new crop of black film makers, directs much of his bitterness toward the Catch-22 studio executives frequently use to defend their hiring policies: “I’d hire blacks if I could find competent ones.” Responds Lee: “These guys are full of it. I can give them a list of dozens of qualified, talented blacks. All they have to do is write to me.”

Lee employed many of the people on that list in “She’s Gotta Have It,” which he wrote, produced, directed and acted in. He made the film for $175,000, mostly financed with his personal IOUs; it has grossed more than $7 million. On the strength of that success, Columbia Pictures financed his new film, “School Daze,” a contemporary musical comedy. He says that actor Ossie Davis and musicians Stevie Wonder, Phyllis Hyman and Raymond Jones of the group Chic worked on the film for one-tenth their usual fee because they consider it a rallying point.

“The days of our boycotting and begging are over,” says Lee. “Columbia gave me a $6-million budget for this film; I could have used a lot more. So it’s non-union, and everybody is working for scale. People are pulling together on this project. One of our problems has been the inability of black people to put aside their differences, so the factions end up working against each other.”

“School Daze” created factions of its own. Lee wanted to film it at his alma mater, Morehouse College in Atlanta. But school authorities rescinded their permission when they discovered that the plot pits one segment of black collegians, the wealthy “wannabees” (as in “wanna be white”), against their darker, poorer brethren.

Lee, 31, is no stranger to this kind of controversy. His first film was the target of complaints that its lead character, Nola, represented yet another exploitive stereotype of a promiscuous black woman.

“Nola is a young black woman who’s searching and finding out about life. She’s not every single black woman,” Lee snaps, adding that people who have problems with his movie should make their own.

Lee roars his outrage with his new-found voice, and few are safe from his lambasting. He attacks Eddie Murphy and Whoopi Goldberg for having done nothing in their films to change the “asexual” view of blacks in the movies. Where, he asks, are love scenes that portray Murphy as a romantic and caring person, a positive role model for the kids in the audience? Why does Murphy, who has the power to demand a change of image, remain silent? (Murphy refused to be interviewed for this article; his manager, Bob Wachs, said the actor-comedian was on location and would have no comment.) Lee admitted that Goldberg doesn’t wield Murphy’s influence, but he wondered aloud why her moments of passion with co-star Sam Elliott in “Fatal Beauty” landed on the cutting-room floor. Then again, Goldberg has questioned that editing decision, too.

LEE WASN’T even born when Aaron Spelling, as a young writer, found himself caught in the cross fire of television’s big guns when he wrote an episode of the TV Western “Zane Grey Theater.” It was the early 1950s, and Spelling had written a script for his friend Sammy Davis Jr. in which Davis was to play a sheriff rounding up a bunch of bad white hombres .

Whoa, said the sponsors. No black man was going to hold a gun on white men, no matter what crime they had committed. Spelling was forced to rewrite the script, which he turned into a piece about a black cavalry troop that captures a group of Indians. It would be 30 years later, in “48 Hours,” when Eddie Murphy would deliver the classic line in an all-white, blue-collar bar: “I am your worst nightmare come true--a nigger with a badge.” (Then he took a gun away from a white patron.)

Spelling was among the first of television’s power players to break the color line on and off camera. His mega-production company, Spelling / Goldberg, put on the air such interracial shows as “Mod Squad” and “The Rookies.” Spelling says he employs blacks not because he’s a “bleeding-heart liberal” but because it makes economic sense. “When we put Diahann Carroll in ‘Dynasty,’ making her John Forsythe’s half sister, the ratings soared,” he says. “The fact remains that 20% of the viewing audience is black.”

As for hiring blacks behind the camera, Spelling says his company went to the Directors Guild in December, 1983, to establish a minority hiring plan, and within three weeks the company instituted a program to help train would-be directors. These observers, as they are known in the industry, haven’t had the opportunity to attend film school, but they receive hands-on experience by helping the assistant directors.

Spelling also gave “Rookies” star Georg Stanford Brown the chance to direct, back in 1974; today Brown is the president of Nexus Productions, an independent company co-owned with his wife, actress Tyne Daly, and Edward Gold, which has produced such programs as “Vietnam War Story” for HBO and the network TV movie “Kids Like These.”

Other black-owned independent production companies have made their influence felt. This TV season’s only minority-produced series, “Bustin’ Loose,” starring Jimmie Walker, is the work of Topper and Alyce Carew’s Golden Groove Productions. And Frank Dawson, a former director of programming for MCA/Universal Television who is now president of Regis IV Entertainment, recently signed a deal with Universal to write and produce a feature.

IN MOST CASES, IT SEEMS, the quickest route to creative control is acting. Tim Reid, star and co-executive producer of the series “Frank’s Place,” is a former regular on “WKRP in Cincinnati” and “Simon & Simon.” Thomas Carter was a member of the ensemble on “The White Shadow,” a ground-breaking television series in the mid-’70s about an inner-city basketball team with a white coach, when executive producer Bruce Paltrow made him an apprentice and, after a year, gave him a shot at directing. Carter has gone on to become the prince of pilots: Every one he’s directed has become a series, including “Miami Vice,” “St. Elsewhere,” “A Year in the Life” (he directed the Emmy-winning miniseries) and “Call to Glory.”

Now, Carter says, he’s in a position to assist the other actor-directors who have come off the bench since he did, including fellow “White Shadow” alumni Kevin Hooks and Eric Laneuville. When Carter had to turn down directing a movie for CBS-TV a few years back, he says, “I suggested Eric, but the network didn’t want him because he had no TV movie experience. I told them I would act as a consultant, and if I felt Eric wasn’t handling the project, I would take over. He did a great job.”

Today Carter is dressed like a preppie behind his desk at the Zanuck/Brown Studios, where he is developing and directing his first feature, “Blue Lightning,” an anti-drug action-adventure film. (He had planned to direct the sequel to “Cocoon,” until a scheduling conflict forced him to abandon that project.) Carter, considered one of the most respected members of Hollywood’s hierarchy, has overcome the color line, but he says he also has experienced racism along the way. Raised in a small Texas town, he was a part of forced integration, and in high school and college he was barred from certain clubs and from running for class office. The experience, he says, laughing, prepared him for Hollywood.

“The prejudice in Hollywood is usually very subtle,” he says. “But a few years ago I was working with an actress who was having her own problems about the show and feeling insecure and protective about herself as a woman. She thought I was favoring the male star. So she smiled at me and said, ‘Thomas, I learned a new word today-- spearchucker .’ It was an awkward moment, which I later defused in one conversation with her.”

Only recently, Carter had reason to be distressed once again when he sat on a Directors Guild grievance committee as it met with representatives of a production company that was about to be threatened with arbitration. The company had broken an agreement by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers to follow non-discriminatory hiring policies.

“It was alarming,” he says, “to sit across the table from these intelligent businessmen and listen to them tell us they couldn’t find qualified ethnic minorities or women directors, while we had a list of names of people they could have picked from at any time. Remember, this situation had been going on for over four years.”

George Crosby, a former producer of “Miami Vice” and “A Different World,” says that support of young talent is the key to solving the lack of opportunities facing minorities in the entertainment industry. “A few black entertainers have reached a position where they can tell their agents, managers and studio personnel that they want them to hire young blacks as junior agents or executives, whatever, and help them develop into full participants in this business,” Crosby says.

“You have to support new talent, just the way white people are hired out of college and put in power-potential positions. Does this industry claim all white people are qualified from birth? If not, how do you justify the lack of minority participation on executive levels? It just can’t be done.”

Paul Mooney, a stand-up comic, actor and screenwriter (he wrote “Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling” for Richard Pryor), agrees that networking is crucial to black influence. He’s a charter member of the “black pack”--a group of entertainers that includes Eddie Murphy, Townsend, Wayans and Arsenio Hall. All are friends; all help one another with projects.

“Until now blacks always talked about brotherhood, while whites were practicing it,” Mooney says. “My mother thought all Hollywood needed was Sammy Davis Jr. He came through a different period where it was a matter of survival to be ‘white.’

“The ‘black pack’ helps each other, and this type of unity translates into power,” he says. “This is the first time blacks have pooled their energy on this level.”

But Aaron Spelling is not so optimistic. In a business where players come and go, Spelling has lasted for more than three decades, and from that perspective, he hasn’t seen much change in the status of blacks in TV and film. Asked what he would do if he were a black artist in Hollywood today, he replies without a second’s hesitation: “I’d paint my face white or go back to writing so I can’t be seen. But black or white,” he adds, “I’d love to see Bill Cosby do a white show that has a non-ethnic theme, and staff it with all black people. Cosby is the only one in the world who has the power to pull that off.”