Why Fox Searchlight's 'Movies For Black People' Experiment Failed
Give Fox Searchlight some credit, I guess, for attempting to navigate one of the more challenging markets in contemporary film: the "urban market," i.e. movies targeted toward minority viewerships, particularly African-Americans. And now that most signs point to the company's retreat from that same market after a few conspicuous underperformers, go ahead and ask: What went wrong?
It's a good question the LAT asks and attempts to answer, citing recent history -- the low grosses for Our Family Wedding and Just Wright; Searchlight's placement of the Taraji P. Henson vehicle Baggage Claim into turnaround -- as a sign that Lionsgate and Tyler Perry might have the market cornered on black filmgoers. Searchlight co-president Steve Gilula naturally denied that Baggage Claim is any sign of the label reconsidering its approach to this audience ("[W]e've had great success with a number of movies in this category. There's no fundamental strategic shift and we're not walking away from black-oriented films."), but I wonder if that denial isn't part of the problem. After all, Searchlight has never made "black-oriented" films. Very few studios really have.
The closest Searchlight itself ever came was Notorious, the Biggie Smalls biopic that made a fine showing in January 2009 with nearly $37 million. But to the extent that movie was about a black man, it wasn't about black experience. It was about a crossover superstar whose life and death carved out its own color-blind section of the wider cultural mythology. The demographics were secondary. The same is generally true of The Secret Life of Bees, which performed almost equally in a tougher season. Here, however, Searchlight had the benefit of hedging; based on a best-selling novel by a white Southern woman, Bees could live or die as a chick-flick or urban flick. Queen Latifah ended up with a NAACP Image Award nomination for Best Actress -- but so did Dakota Fanning, around whose character the film revolved in the first place.
Then you look at some of the others, and I'm sorry, but these are movies for (and ultimately about) white people. I Think I Love My Wife, Chris Rock's DOA entry from 2007, was a remake of an Eric Rohmer film, for Christ's sake. Same cloying, self-aware middle-class concerns, with a detour to a D.C. slum to help muss its hair a bit. It was low-budget enough that $12.5 million domestic didn't necessarily spell failure, but conceptually speaking it was as much of a wash as anything the studio would release until last year's Miss March.
This year is much more instructive, however. Our Family Wedding purported to join Forest Whitaker and Carlos Mencia's families is unholy, goats-on-Viagra matrimony. "Oh, those crazy blacks and Mexicans!", the marketing yowled. "They're just like us!" Yes, us -- the hegemonic "us" to whom Hollywood makes little secret of pandering, all while extolling its sensitivity to the imperative of putting minorities onscreen. Fittingly it opened soft (sixth place) and finished softer ($20 million) last winter. Too bad it didn't come out a month ago; we could have sunk it in the Gulf of Mexico and plugged BP's busted oil well with its condescension in a matter of minutes.
Then there's Just Wright, another "black-oriented" film that was sold and positioned no differently than a "white-oriented" film. Queen Latifah and Common? An athletic trainer and a pro basketball player? As romantic leads? So you stick a basketball on the poster and that makes it "black-oriented"? What? And just like that, another underwhelming $19.4 million later, here we are with Baggage Claim in turnaround and Fox Searchlight denying it's getting out of the market it never truly entered in the first place.
The thing is that Searchlight knows that had it kept its nerve, Baggage Claim (which the studio optioned more than two years ago) absolutely would have been the studio's urban-cinema litmus test. Based on David E. Talbert's best-seller (and set to be written and reportedly directed by the author himself, who is as big a name among African-American readers as Perry is to African-American TV- and moviegoers), it played with fairly standardized romcom conventions -- thirtysomething single woman goes on a 30-day air journey around the country to find the man of her dreams. This is such an obvious success-in-waiting it's ridiculous -- which isn't to say there weren't at least some of the development troubles that Gilula cited in pulling the plug. (To wit, producers wanted to shoot this summer; Searchlight says its plate was full.) But to dismiss a proven, relatively inexpensive property targeted at African-American women seems to be leaving a lot of money on the table. That audience is historically underserved, making up the majority of Perry's viewers not because he's "Tyler Perry" but because Perry and Lionsgate dared to gamble on black films for their own sake -- not as some crossover effort or an exercise in Hollywood liberal guilt. It could have proved -- and hopefully still can prove -- that studios will meet African-American viewers more than halfway even if the majority of their demographic won't.
Publishing knows it, TV knows it, and now movies need to know it: That is black-oriented cinema. Different industries? Kind of, sure. And is it my studio money to spend? Of course not. But on days like these I wish it were, because I would make a fortune.
· Fox Searchlight tweaks its urban efforts [LAT]
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Comments
This is the most ridiculous article I've ever read. How is "I think I Love My Wife" or "Just Wright" about White People? Black people can't have the "Same cloying, self-aware middle-class concerns" as white people? There are no such thing as black problems. Not every black film has to be about the segregated south, the hood or "shucking and jiving" films like "Who's Your Caddy?" Black life is not just "Precious"
Just because Tyler Perry makes a killing in the box office doesn't mean that all o the "urban market" is satisfied with it.
in recorded history, there has never been a 'black problem' that could be described as 'cloying.'
Searchlight isn't experimenting with black films. It has had consistent success with black themed films - Brown Sugar, Johnson Family Vacation, Roll Bounce, etc.
Maybe they made the mistake of thinking us black folk won't over look the fact that Queen Latifa is a lesbian. Who wants to see a relationship movie when the lead is faking the fact she's straight?
yeah, searchlight never made black-oriented films prior to Notorious...Brown Sugar, Kingdom Come, Phat Girlz, Roll Bounce, Johnson Family Vacation, Antwone Fisher...
It's amazing how minorities are the first to go againt other mainorties. Seriously man? That's your point? It amazes and disgust me that african americans and latinos (I am latina btw) were the majority in voting for proposition 8... The irony of life. How hipocritical are we really? ¬¬
Get over your Ramin Setoodeh way of thinking (that lesbians or gays can't play straight)! Seriously... it pisses me off!
An interesting article to tackle a tricky subject, and your dig at the "Family Wedding" campaign is right on target -- but I agree with BLAKDIAMON that the middle part is weird. Just because it's upper middle class doesn't mean it's not black. I mean let's not return to the 80's where all "black" movies HAD to be set in "the hood"...
Queen Latifah is one of the most charismatic actresses and celebrities in any medium today -- but that doesn't make her white!
So you stick a basketball on the poster and that makes it “black-oriented”? What?
Umm....Did you miss the two black people on the movie poster?
Movies, books, TV and all entertainment should be good stories about real people. Character driven engaging plot lines are what will make a successful story in movies. As seen by all the comments and the original article, color defines and divides people, when it should educate and elevate all people.
I see a movie based on whether it tells a good story, not the color of it's actors. When movies are well written, acted, produced and directed regardless of the race of those involved, we will have achieved something of lasting value.
@La Kesha: Wow, nice way to jack the thread into your own homophobia. You do realise that actors "fake" all kinds of shit every day because... well, that's what actors do? Didn't notice anyone giving 'Hitch' a pass because Will Smith is a "fake" who is really a happily married father.
I went to see "Just Wright" and I'm "white".
I like the Queen and the plot. It was far better than the stupid "white" romance-comedy like "What About Steve?" and the really awful one with Jennifer Aniston and Gerad Butler.
Too bad a good film with characters you actual like can't get an audience.
BTW - the critics like "Just Wright" as well. Again, just sad that it didn't get an audience.
horribly written article, completely off point
How about just showing the start of Mississippi Burning over and over again for them? I sometimes watch that in rewind so that it's got a happy ending.
That's what acting is! Who cares is Latifah is lesbian? We appreciate her and her contributions!
I know I'm late to the game but I have to say when will (the proverbial)you understand that If you want to see people of color telling "our story" get out of your own way and you make it happen. Go to school, write your scipts, books and screenplays, make your money, buy yourself a studio. Then work your producing angle and get the help of anyone who believes in your project. Spike Lee did it when he was making Malcolm X.
Hopefully people as a whole will want to see your movie which is not just about a "Precious". Incidently the storyline of Precious is not indigenous of just African American culture, it is everywhere. All folks gotta do is just be honest with themselves.
Let's stop depending on white folks to give us what we already have... talent and resources. We cannot as black, AA, whites, asians or any race for that matter MAKE anyone do what we want them to do. WE are all an integral part to humanity. So if you want a movie done about blacks then pool your money and get it going. Whites have been doing it as long as the movie industry has been alive. Our stories are our own. Who better to tell it than us? Our stories will be heard.
What about Webster?
@Sixhundred: A black problem that's cloying? Webster.