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

[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.