I, Too, Sing Hollywood

[The group breaks into a chorus of"No!"]

Weekly:Are there pressures on women to put on a different kind of performance?Prince-Bythewood:Well, I started in TV, and I’m actually shocked that I stayed as long as I did, because every single one I was on — except A Different World and South Central — I was the only black writer. And I swear, it was months of fighting them trying to change my script, trying to tell me this or that about black folks. It was ridiculous. I must have been annoying but I didn’t care, because I was fighting for the integrity of my writing. Smith:When I attended the Sundance directors’ lab this summer, there was one young director who used expletives like adjectives and pronouns. I watched him, thinking, "There’s no freaking way that if I came into an office and behaved like that that I would get a job. They’d call security on me." I mean, it’s a construction and it works for him. I’m trying to figure out what construction will work for me. Haven’t found it yet. Still broke, still ain’t got a job. Davis: My world is quite different, but people have the same kind of trepidation when they see you in the room. I made full professor this summer, and that makes me one of three black women teaching film in the country who are full professors. It’s a constant struggle. You’re usually the only black person, the only female, and to try to convince them that you are the right person to do X, Y and Z is still a struggle. Weekly:A lot of recent articles have suggested that we should retire the term "black film," that we’repost-race.

[The group scoffs.]

Lemmons: I heard a white man who runs a studio putting a cap on black film and black audiences — what you can spend to make a black film and what our stars are able to make. We asked him what about Eddie Murphy? What about Oprah? And he said, "Those are no longer black people. Those are stars." I don’t want to cross over and become just a filmmaker and not be counted in that census, you know? I want to be counted as a black person, as a black person who is successful. I feel very possessive about our actors. Eddie Murphy — yeah, he’s internationally famous, but he’s one of ours. Prince-Bythewood:I consider myself a black filmmaker, and I say that because even though I want to do all kinds of genres – the next thing I’m doing is a thriller — I want black people in them. I mean, Carl Franklin, I love his career, I think it’s amazing. It’s just that at this point in my career, that’s not what I want to do. There are so few films with black folk in them . . . if we’re not doing it, who’s going to? Lemmons: I still think that if he directs One True Thing, he’s still a black filmmaker who directed that movie. We can still claim him. [Laughs.] When Meryl [Streep] gets nominated for the Oscar, he’s still one of ours. Davis: I respect black filmmakers who say that they don’t want to be labeled as black filmmakers. At least we’ve gotten to this point in world history where they can say that. That’s fine. But that will never be fine for me. I’m still dealing with racism and sexism on a day-to-day basis. I’m not isolated from the world in which I live. Smith:Yes, I’m a black filmmaker. Yes, I’m a woman filmmaker. And I don’t really think too much about it. I think about it about as much as white folks think about what they’re going to call themselves. I make movies about people that I’m interested in, just like they do. And, for the most part, those people are black. When I write a script, it’s a given — unless I say otherwise — that they’re black. Why would I sit around writing about white people? I can go see their stories any hour of the day. I go see every movie hoping to see a black woman who is intelligent, smart, strong, vulnerable and sexy. And those five things cannot ever be in one character if she has black skin. Never. I’m not interested in seeing any movie if it doesn’t fulfill those requirements. I mean, there are a lot of black films made by brothers that I have to walk out of. I can’t sit there and watch them do that to us. Weekly:You’d like to think that the rise of black talent in Hollywood would have signaled a shift in representation.Lemmons:I absolutely think it will happen with more women. I find that women — as filmmakers and as people — are not interested in putting up with the status quo. Most of the women I know are aware of the deepness of women. There are many white male filmmakers who have captured women beautifully, and, of course, there are works of literature in which women have been beautifully realized by men. But in cinema we’re just not seeing it, for some reason, in regard to black women. One of the things that motivated me to make Eve’s Bayou the way I did was that I was sick of the image of the noble, slightly sweaty, angry black woman. I remember after I did Eve’s Bayou, someone said, "You were in Louisiana — why weren’t those women sweating?" I said, "You know what? I’ve had enough sweaty people." I just didn’t want to see any sweat. I wasn’t feeling that. I was feeling this other thing that I experienced in my youth, looking at my family and my neighbors and the people that I knew — this beauty and glamour. Smith:Even at the Sundance lab, I was advised that if the woman had to be black, then the male love interest should probably be white, because there was probably no other way I was going to get the money to make the film. That’s why I’m interested in Gina’s relationship with New Line. Prince-Bythewood:The whole thing with Love & Basketball is that my budget would have been a lot lower if I hadn’t got Omar Epps, because to them he was a star. It was, like, if you get a star in the male role, go ahead and cast the rest of the movie the way you want — because I wanted to cast an unknown for Monica [the lead female]. It wasn’t like they gave me all this money based on the script. It was "Who’s going to bring in the audience?" Lemmons:The really interesting thing with Eve’s Bayou is that studio people would ask me to put in white characters. I mean, even if they were negative white characters — just any white character. They would say, "Can’t there be a racist?" And I just said, "This is Eve’s bayou." Weekly:Going back to the Omar Epps thing, studios want to protect their investments by having names in the cast regardless of who’s directing the movie. Did having Sam Jackson make a difference toEve’s Bayou?Lemmons: Having Sam Jackson has made my career! [Laughs.] Thank God for Sam. When I was trying to make Eve’s Bayou, the studios would say, "Oh we love it. It’s a beautiful script. But you need to get a star. If you could get, say, Sam Jackson . . . " Sam’s people read the script, and we attached him to the project. Then we went back to those same studio people and said, "We got Sam Jackson," and they were like "Oh. You got him. We didn’t really mean that . . ." Even with Sam attached, in both these cases — it’s not a piece of cake, because the subject matter is not mainstream. Davis: Do you think if you’d been a white male director with Jackson attached you would have still had the same problems? Lemmons: I can’t even speculate. I was eight months pregnant with both my green lights. I went in thinking, "There’s no way you’re going to waddle in here and get the money to make this movie" So even though it was a hard road and we had three green lights on Caveman’s Valentine — two of them fell through — I don’t know. We were able to get the films made. I think there’s a place for all of us as filmmakers, just as there’s a place for all of them — from Sayles to Scorsese to [Joel] Schumacher. To me, Gina is the great white hope because she made something mainstream that everybody can feel. Everybody can feel Love & Basketball. Davis: That’s important. Gina’s the first one to jump off on another feature film so quickly. Prince-Bythewood:Can I be honest? I learned so much on Disapearing Acts, but the biggest thing I learned is that I want to write and direct my own things. I’m very proud of the result, but I don’t want to be a director for hire. It’s Terry [McMillan]’s vision, then Lisa Jones’ — who wrote the script — then mine. It’s not the same experience. I wish I had waited. Lemmons: Caveman’s Valentine was adapted by the novelist, but I worked on the script for three years. But I came out of that movie and said to my agent, "I’m going to write my next movie." If we let ourselves be directors for hire too easily, we’re going to end up putting that same image out there that we’re struggling against. Whereas if we write it, then at least we’re going to control, to a certain extent, the female characters and the type of movie that it is. Prince-Bythewood: I couldn’t turn Disappearing Acts down, because it’s always been one of my favorite books, but there was also a bit of panic: I’m never going to work again. Now I have the confidence that I can take a year-and-a-half off and write the next script, and someone’s going to buy it. I have to keep telling myself that. There’s a great amount of fear when you have your agent telling you that there’s a six-month window of being hot. But if I want to stay special and have a voice, I have to write and direct it myself. Weekly:Kasi, you said that you think it’s going to take more women directors to change things. But do you think it’s also going to take more women everywhere in the industry?Lemmons:I feel strongly about women. Both of my movies have had an extraordinary number of women working on them. This last movie, all my keys were women — the DP, the producer, the editor, the production designer. On Eve’s Bayou it was the same thing. I think that that is important for the industry. It’s opening up. It’s going to happen. It’s inevitable. Even if they didn’t want it to happen, it’s going to happen. It’s a wave that’s been set into motion.

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