Chris Rock Pens Blistering Essay on Hollywood's Race Problem: “It's a White Industry”

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Black people have to FLY to where the White man can WALK to.

Chris Rock just wrote a very blistering editorial about this issue.

In the aftermath of some pretty embarrassing E-mails in the Sony hacking incident (e.g. several E-mails released show less than enlightened speculation on the sorts of movies President Obama and his family would like to see), and the demographics of some of Sony's top executives (they're mostly white men), Chris Rock used that a launching point for having an honest conversation about racism in Hollywood, with particular focus on Latinos.

Now, when it comes to casting, Hollywood pretty much decides to cast a black guy or they don't. We're never on the "short list." We're never "in the mix." When there's a hot part in town and the guys are reading for it, that's just what happens. It was never like, "Is it going to be Ryan Gosling or Chiwetel Ejiofor for Fifty Shades of Grey?" And you know, black people f—, too. White women actually want to f— black guys, sometimes more than white guys. More women want to f— Tyrese than Jamie Dornan, and it's not even close. It's not a contest. Even Jamie would go, "OK, you got it."

Or how about True Detective? I never heard anyone go, "Is it going to be Amy Adams or Gabrielle Union?" for that show. I didn't hear one black girl's name on those lists. Not one. Literally everyone in town was up for that part, unless you were black. And I haven't read the script, but something tells me if Gabrielle Union were Colin Farrell's wife, it wouldn't change a thing. And there are almost no black women in film. You can go to whole movies and not see one black woman. They'll throw a black guy a bone. OK, here's a black guy. But is there a single black woman in Interstellar? Or Gone Girl? Birdman? The Purge? Neighbors? I'm not sure there are. I don't remember them. I go to the movies almost every week, and I can go a month and not see a black woman having an actual speaking part in a movie. That's the truth.

But forget whether Hollywood is black enough. A better question is: Is Hollywood Mexican enough? You're in L.A, you've got to try not to hire Mexicans. It's the most liberal town in the world, and there's a part of it that's kind of racist — not racist like "F— you, nigger" racist, but just an acceptance that there's a slave state in L.A. There's this acceptance that Mexicans are going to take care of white people in L.A. that doesn't exist anywhere else. I remember I was renting a house in Beverly Park while doing some movie, and you just see all of the Mexican people at 8 o'clock in the morning in a line driving into Beverly Park like it's General Motors. It's this weird town.

You're telling me no Mexicans are qualified to do anything at a studio? Really? Nothing but mop up? What are the odds that that's true? The odds are, because people are people, that there's probably a Mexican David Geffen mopping up for somebody's company right now. The odds are that there's probably a Mexican who's that smart who's never going to be given a shot. And it's not about being given a shot to greenlight a movie because nobody is going to give you that — you've got to take that. The shot is that a Mexican guy or a black guy is qualified to go and give his opinion about how loud the boings are in Dodgeball or whether it's the right shit sound you hear when Jeff Daniels is on the toilet in Dumb and Dumber. It's like, "We only let white people do that." This is a system where only white people can chime in on that. There would be a little naivete to sitting around and going, "Oh, no black person has ever greenlighted a movie," but those other jobs? You're kidding me, right? They don't even require education. When you're on the lower levels, they're just about taste, nothing else. And you don't have to go to Harvard to have taste.

Mr. Rock's recent movie, Top Five, was largely financed by himself and Jay Z, and Barry Diller's production company. Bloomberg's Business Week agrees that Hollywood isn't fair to African American movies or stars.

Chris Rock has made a career of being blunt, particularly about race. So when he wrote in the Hollywood Reporter last week that the movie business is “a white industry,” his appraisal was familiarly provocative. And by most measures, his remark was also right.

Black films account for a tiny fraction of big studios’ output. Budgets tend to be small, and distribution is limited largely to domestic theaters. Rock’s new film, Top Five, which opens in wide release this weekend, features a mostly black cast and isn’t mainly about race. Those kinds of films are rarely made by large Hollywood studios. Top Five was produced by Barry Diller’s IAC Films.

Comments

[garote]

"Top Five" was a pretty good movie. I laughed like hell for most of it, which is a lot more than I can say for "Dumb And Dumber To".

As for white people whining that they're losing the country, well, okay - let them whine. And if Chris Rock wants to spend his time telling them to shut up, to the applause of others, that's cool too. Whatever gets asses in theater seats, right?

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but it's a little more than whining, right? I think, for instance, that this is why the white middle class can be a bit indifferent to police brutality and the filling of prisons with minorities. They feel as though they are losing the country, and they aren't going to take it - putting further negative pressures on minorities, because whites feel that they are the victims now.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

One of the Sony Emails between a producer and the head of the studio, Michael Lynton, suggested Denzel Washington won't make money for Sony because he is black and the rest of the world is 'racist', But most of the ticket sales for The Equalizer came from overseas, not American theaters. The producer 'suggested Sony should avoid casting black actors to appeal to an international market that the producer deemed racist.' It is unknown who the producer is, and Washington and Lynton have yet to comment on this latest leak.

Aaron Sorkin and director Judd Apatow seemed more upset that the press published verus the racism revealed in the leaked E-mails. Apatow really suggested the information released was as bad as what Jennifer Lawrence went through with her nude photos being released.

Chris Rock mentioned Apatow indirectly in his opinion piece (Rock didn't accuse Apatow of racism, but mentioned his name as a mentor for up-and-coming writers and comics). But honestly, when I thought about it-- Apatow really doesn't have much diversity in his movies that I can recall. And Katherine Heigl chaffed a bit working in Apatow's movie, Knocked Up, due to the way he portrayed women in that movie, you know the typical shrewish stuff. Heigl said it got old really quick.

And I've wondered about a double standard with Bill Cosby (Judd Apatow is very fixated on getting every appearance by Bill Cosby cancelled), but seemed perfectly fine supporting Woody Allen last year over the child molestation charges with his step children when he was married to Mia Farrow.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

I have been surprised that there is not more of an uproar over these leaks, unless I am out of the loop. Maybe they are too far behind the scenes? Despite the liberal trappings of Hollywood, I am not shocked that these attitudes persist. Maybe Americans aren't too shocked either, and maybe they agree and understand them.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Aaron Sorkin wrote a lengthy op ed about it in the New York Times, (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/15/opinion/aaron-sorkin-journalists-shouldnt-help-the-sony-hackers.html) shooting the messenger type of deal, in a very self-serving way, writing that journalists were just as complicit as the hackers, for just publishing the information. Over-the-top and pretty f hypocritical, I thought.

Apatow was more involved on Twitter, writing that the leaked information hurt several productions, and could hurt several films from being produced. Again, that maybe true, but that's not the bigger take-away I got from those leaks. Speaking of Apatow, one of his more successful proteges, Lena Dunham, got a lot of shit thrown her way (rightfully I thought) when her HBO series Girls, set ostensibly in New York CIty, for having a lily white cast. Ms. Dunham never really explained why that was the case in my opinion. And she has plenty of people in the media who will rush to her defense. And as Chris Rock wrote, these people aren't raving lunatic racists, they're typically liberal people, but they get so miffed at the mere suggestion about this issue, when it is so brazenly obvious. Dunham hasn't been the only show that's has a lily white cast set in NYC, Sex in the City, Friends, How I Met Your Mother, are all notoriously mostly white ensembles. I guess with someone so much younger like Ms. Dunham, more is expected of them.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

If I remember correctly, Dunham said it simply reflected the reality that she had lived in at the time and translated it onto the screen.

[oslo.livejournal.com]

Which is just to say, "I remember that all of my friends and colleagues were white, and that was a relevant part of my reality."

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I sort of remember that explanation, and I thought it was pretty lame.

Lena Dunham’s world—her Tribeca neighborhood; her Brooklyn Heights school, St. Ann’s; and her Midwestern liberal-arts college, Oberlin—populated mostly by privileged white people.

As the week of discussions wore on, I came to the wearying, but clarifying conclusion, as others did, that perhaps our ire should be directed at the cultural gatekeepers, the studio executives who seem to have decided that stories about white people sell better. (As The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates put it on Friday, “It is not so wrong to craft an exclusively white world—certainly a significant portion of America lives in one. What is wrong is for power-brokers to pretend that no other worlds exist.”) In the end, I think that what Dunham owes her audience, first and foremost, is not the fully accurate representation of others’ experiences but the commitment to avoid offering up crass stereotypes of anyone who doesn’t look like her.

Source: The New Yorker: White Girls (http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/white-girls)

One of the head writers for Girls, Leslie Arfin, was pretty trolly regarding the criticism Girls was getting, making a mean-spirited joke. Internet sleuths were mining Arfin’s writings for evidence of other racially problematic commentary, and they found it, including a comparison of Barack Obama’s skin color to excrement and an interview in which she expressed her love for the word “nigger.” What an colossal ass.



More about that here. (http://www.thewire.com/entertainment/2012/04/girls-writer-responds-critique-girls-horrible-joke/51314/)

[oslo.livejournal.com]

You know, there's a point at which, as a white person, you can cross over this line between needing the easy comfort that all-white media gives you, where non-white faces tend to be a bit off-puttingly unfamiliar and difficult to relate to, and being interested in being othered, in being excluded from the conversation, just to hear what other people are saying. I am so sick of white people and their stupid stories.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

I'm not at either extreme, thankfully.

[oslo.livejournal.com]

I don't view these as two points at "extremes." I think the difference is just between being able to appreciate stories that are not by and for white people, and being threatened by them.

[theidolhands.livejournal.com]

Actually, the White middle class apparently threatened to take over the protests, so much that formal statements were released telling such individuals to stop (or at the very least cease taking center stage); privileged individuals took it upon themselves to lecture everyone, which was also perceived as intensely insulting, invasive, and dismissive.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

I'm a little lost. The middle class was threatening to take over the protests against brutal policemen? And police and political actors issued formal statements to these middle-class leaders to hold back? Who are the privileged people who took to lecturing everyone?

[theidolhands.livejournal.com]

wat?

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

I was trying to parse through your comment. Can you elaborate?

[moonshaz.livejournal.com]

Yes, please. I couldn't quite follow it myself.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I thought Jesse ran for president.

[catlin.livejournal.com]

We are losing touch with grammar?

[interdictor.livejournal.com]

This is a Jewish thing, so it's kind of unfair to call it "white". I know this is a subject people don't like broaching since the Jews were victimized unfathomably just 70 years ago, but look at the people whose hands are in these pies, who are running the media. It's not "white men".

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Well, I never inquired about the religion of the major shareholders of Disney or News Ltd, and given they are the largest media conglomerates in the US... But who knew? Apparently Jewish people are sometimes successful capitalists as well.

Your point being?

[bikinisquad3000.livejournal.com]

You're kind of missing what he means by "white industry." He's describing hiring/casting poilcies throughout, not the demographic makeup of the people running the industry.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

You seen many black Jews?

[interdictor.livejournal.com]

A few.

[mudryikot.livejournal.com]

A vintage soviet cartoon to go with that:

Red-lettered sign in background says "SCHOOL"
caption beneath: "A black child and dark personalities"
"темные личности - dark personalities" here supposed to mean persons both "malevolent" and "of questionable reputation". Don't know how well it translates into English.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

I think it works in English.

[moonshaz.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think it works quite well in English!