The New Yorker Radio Hour - How Black Creators Are Changing Hollywood

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

In the past few years, it seems a floodgate has opened, releasing a deluge of tremendously successful media that centers the Black experience. “Get Out,” “Black Panther,” and HBO’s “Watchmen” are just some of the big-budget prestige projects that have drawn huge audiences and dominated the cultural conversation. The New Yorker Radio Hour looks at this moment in Black entertainment and investigates the industry forces behind it in a special episode, produced by Ngofeen Mputubwele. A film scholar explains the complicated history between studios and Black audiences. And Barry Jenkins, the director of “Moonlight,” tells David Remnick about the doors the Obama Presidency opened for Black creators in Hollywood. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. And I'm Gauphin, Mfeng Poutoubewelle. Gophane is one of the producers on our show, and he's here to introduce things. So Gauphin, what's on deck here? What are we up to? So today we're talking about black film. I noticed a few years ago around 2016 that it felt like every single year there was a big black movie coming out that I was looking forward to.

Just the one? Yeah, just one. Just one. Just one. 2016 was Moonlight. 2017 was Get Out. 2018 was Black Panther. Then TV 2, like 2019 was Watchman.

And I was very curious at a certain point, like, oh, I wonder if something, like, is something actually happening? Like, is there like a Renaissance or something happened? or did I just like not pay attention to movies before now? So how are we going to go about examining this and answering the questions that are central to this? We're talking to the Oscar award-winning director, Barry Jenkins, who directed a little film called Moonlight. We're talking to Cheryl Lee Ralph, who is on the new show, Abbott Elementary. Over the course of her career, she's worked with Sidney Poitier, Lauren Hill, and just been part of these iconic moments of Black Entertainment.

meant. But to start, I figured I should go to someone who actually knows film well. I talked to a film scholar, a professor at Northwestern named Amar Jean Christian. He specializes in the ways that black stories, brown stories, queer stories break into the culture through new media. So I asked Amar if something unique is happening in black film. Yeah, it's a really great question. And Amar said yes, and I quickly learned that there's a lot that goes into why the answer is yes. Historically, black film rises and falls based on broader industry trends, regulation and culture. This idea that black film is connected to what's going on in the wider industry is really important to Amar. And he says, in order to understand the current moment, we have to step back to the very beginnings

of filmmaking. Black film in the U.S. starts in the early 1900s at the dawn of cinema, independent film studio owners who created a lot of really exciting black films when the medium was totally new. Amar says that after this, the classic era of Hollywood comes into being, where studios have these exclusive agreements with theaters and pretty much dictate what movies the theater show. We associate the classic Hollywood studio era with really conservative storytelling, and that means that black people didn't get a shot at leading films, right? If you watch the Ryan Murphy Netflix show, Hollywood, which is about that time, the whole thing was, how could a black person write a movie, you know?

Until 1948, with a Supreme Court case that breaks up the classic Hollywood studio system. Yeah, the breakup of the studio system forces the studios to figure out what the audience actually wants. When they don't have these exclusive, really controlling relationships with the theaters that show movies, right? They actually have to figure out what do people want to buy tickets to? Because before, they would just tell people, these are your movies. You know, these are your options. This is all you have. And so by 1960, they start making edgier films.

They start making films starring younger people with more violence, more things. sex and that kind of works for a little bit, but it really isn't until the 70s when they've really hit rock bottom and their revenues are really struggling that they try putting black movies in theaters. And of course, there's more independent theaters happening right now. So theaters just end up showing these really low budget films starring black people and they just kill at the box office. The Soul Sisters Answer to James Bond and the most exciting new star in years. Six feet two of Because of course, by the 1970s, black people haven't had films for, like, an entire generation, you know, on cinemas.

So there are a hugely underserved audience, and it ends up stabilizing Hollywood's revenues. Of course, black exploitation kind of crystallizes these edgy black stories with violence and sex, and Hollywood makes a lot of money off of that. Man, that broad is 10 miles of bad road. And it ends up stabilizing the business. until the 80s when they invent the blockbuster, right? You have Jaws and Star Wars in the late 70s, mid to late 70s. And then Hollywood figures out, oh, we can just put blockbusters in cinema. And that becomes the thing in the 80s.

Big budgets, special effects, big stars, or Oscar films. And then in the 90s, you get, quote-unquote, ghetto pictures. And so just real quick, give me an example of a film in that genre. Quote unquote, ghetto pictures? Boys in the Hood. Okay, okay, got it. Yep, yep, yep. Now what we need to do is we need to keep everything in our neighborhood, everything black, black owned with black money.

So when we think about like boys in the hood or belly or even later in the 90s like Friday, right, these were kind of Hollywood's attempt to like embrace hip hop, right? Embrace the rise of hip hop in culture, which as Craig Watkins says was Hollywood's response to the introduction of new media. and the growth of television and people spending less time in the theaters, they always use the black audience to draw people back into theaters when they've lost to the audience in some other way.

And that is what's happening again now in the 2010s. I think Django Unchained was a huge hit, and that reminded Hollywood that black people like movies, and that we deserve movies. And I think with that, and 12 years of slave, which also did really well, paved the way for films like

get out to get financed, which would have never been financed before. I think what we're seeing now in black film that we haven't seen historically every moment is a different type of genre, right? Black exploitation was like gangs and sex, quote-to-quote ghetto pictures

was that, but the cities had changed. Now, of course, hip-hop is mainstream, so that's not edgy anymore. So what is the new edgy thing to do in black film? I think it's genre. You get to decide what kind of king you are going to be. We're seeing Black Panther, Black people in fantasy. If there's too many white people are getting horrors.

Get out. Black people in horror, which we haven't seen in a long time. So I guess what I'm wondering is in the 90s, I remember watching these shows like Martin, Living Single, in living color. And then in retrospect, it seems like the black shows kind of disappeared in the 2000s.

Does that make sense what I'm saying? Absolutely. The story is about vertical integration. So in 1996, the federal government passed the Telecommunications Act, and that allowed media companies to buy more media companies. All of a sudden, if you were pitching a TV show in Hollywood, you needed to get

not only the president of the studio, and the president of the network to say yes, but then their boss and their boss's boss to say yes. And because of racism, there's just always going to be some person who's like, no, that's too risky. I don't want to do that. And that didn't really change until they had got,

the ratings had gotten so bad that they finally had to just try new things and let Chandra Ryan make scandal, right? And let A-24 do 12 years of slave and release that widely in theaters and Django Unchained with Tarantino, and finally they just, the numbers don't lie, right? The ratings don't lie, the box office numbers don't lie,

and they will follow those trends. But in the meantime, it just became an industry-wide shutout in the 2000s, which is why you had people making web series, by the way, right? This is my entry point into this conversation. I was like, why does Issa Rae make a web series on her own in the year 2011? And it's because she couldn't pitch that show to Hollywood. awkward moment what's the protocol for repeatedly

running into someone at a stop sign Oh my god I totally didn't even see you It's been so long I know right No seriously What the fuck is it Lo and behold

This low budget web series made for like No money has millions of views on YouTube And Hollywood is like Oh Right The Black audience We forgot about y'all Welcome back

You know Right right right Right, right, right. And who is going and saying sort of like, our numbers are too low, now, let's introduce black film? Like, kind of like, what I mean is like, what is the mechanics of that? Is it like intentional? Is it nefarious? Is it like how does the mechanics of that work? It's a confluence of factors. It usually is a visionary director or producer who manages to get someone, to give them money to make something that ends up getting seen and shows the industry

that there's money to be made. And once there's a hit, the industry will follow. For the 20 teens, I really think it was Django Unchained. Amongst your inventory I've been led to believe as a specimen I'm keen to acquire. What's your name?

Django. Then you're exactly the one I'm looking for. Hey, no sale. Because it made so much money globally, it just made so much money. and it was such a racially charged storyline that the industry hadn't tried before, a story about slavery.

And of course, who was that? It was a white director that was able to do that, right? So how does this wave get started? Well, white men always have access. So sometimes it's them. They try something. A lot of the directors of black exploitation films were white people, right?

Or white men who were able to get the capital to do it. So if the current moment has given us these films, like, get out, like a huge horror film. and other movies kind of like Underground Railroad, the TV show, things about racism, things about slavery, things about these kind of big high concept issues. Does that affect the kinds of stories that one tells in the sense that, like, essentially your story must be sort of like big to succeed?

Yeah, absolutely. I think it really puts a constraint on artists who want to tell stories about the black every day, about black love, about black parenting, right, about blackness outside of trauma. So much of the moment right now is compelling artists to tell stories about the most difficult parts of the black experience, which is important, right?

We have to tell the stories about our pain and our trauma because that's very real and it affects our lives. But a lot of black viewers are pushing back now and saying, well, why do I need to be triggered and retramatized every time I want to go to the things? theater or go to watch a TV show. You know, can't, I just have a nice story about two black people falling in love

and that's it. Like, do we need more stories about how we are attacked and violence? I don't, maybe, but I think we also need stories about solidarity, about how to love each other, about how to heal. And I just don't think that this hyper-capitalist,

hyper-competitive environment is really incentivizing that kind of storytelling. And I think it could have cultural effects that really prevent us, from healing, from building together, from connecting with each other outside of our trauma. Film scholar Amar Jean Christian, talking with the radio hours, Gauphin and Putobuele. In a moment, I'll also chat with Barry Jenkins, who directed Moonlight. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Vladimir Putin has invaded Ukraine, launching what could be the largest war in Europe since the end of the Second World War. And on our podcast feed this week, executive editor and politics and more host, Dorothy Wickenden, speaks with Washington correspondent and former Moscow correspondent

Susan Glasser about how the United States and its allies can respond. You know, I don't want to downplay the nature of these sanctions, but I think Putin has also shown his willingness to take that as the price for Ukraine, you know, that he has baked that into

his calculation and his decision to go ahead with the invasion. You can hear that conversation in the New Yorker Radio Hour feed wherever you get your podcasts. And on this week's show, we're talking about the current moment in black movies and television. The 2016 film Moonlight wasn't a blockbuster like, say, Get Out or Black Panther. But in a way, it was every bit as monumental. It's a subtle, intimate portrayal of Shiron. a character we see as a boy and then as a young man, struggling to understand his sexuality as he comes of age during the crack epidemic.

Were you from, Charon? You live with your mama? Yes. What about your daddy? You want us to take you home then after you get finished eating your food? No. Okay. You can stay here tonight.

Would you like that? Moonlight won best picture at the Oscars, of course, and a host of other awards. It also made Barry Jenkins one of the most celebrated young directors out there. Jenkins went on to do an adaptation of James Baldwin's book, If Beale Street Could Talk,

as well as the Amazon series, The Underground Railroad, based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead. In interviews, you've said that projects like Moonlight and Underground Railroad, start years and years before they ever come out in film.

What was happening in the culture 10 or so years ago so that projects like Moonlight, Underground Railroad, or Respect, King Richard, Black Panther, Get Out, would all come to fruition in these past six years? What was happening in terms of the culture and maybe in terms of the business? You know, it's interesting. 10 years ago would have been 2012,

so it would have been at the tail end of the first term of Barack Obama's presidency. And I remember I made my first film came out in the inaugural year of that presidency in 2008. And it was just really interesting to be a young black person, a young black creative in a time in this country where if you look to the highest office in the land, there was a black person. And there was a lot of things happening in the film industry. I think Ava made her first film or her second film, excuse me, around that time and won. Ava DeVernay with Selma. Ava DeVernay.

Yeah, exactly. I'm sorry, I forget that these people are my friends, but they're icons to folks listening. Yeah, Ava won she won the directing prize at Sundance, and, you know, Ryan Coogler had fruit veil. There was just so much going on, Justin Simeon, had dear white people. There was just so much happening. But are you saying the Obama presidency was like a kind of inspiration or permitting? that hadn't been there before? I wouldn't say permission.

Absolutely not. I wouldn't say that. But I do think it's interesting. The president of the United States is a very visible person. To have to see this person every single day, because the news coverage was intense. It meant that if you walk into any room, this wasn't going to be the first time someone had to see someone like me

walk into that room. And they weren't going to be surprised or taken aback, you know, by the things that we had to say. By the things that we wanted, about the things that we wanted to do. And I think so much work had been done in the decade prior, I must say, you know, people like Tindon Nogenda, who's an executive over at Netflix, you know, rising up, you know, all these different people that when the opportunity presented itself, there was just so many folks. It was undeniable, I would say. So what you're suggesting in a way is that it changed the atmosphere in the rooms that we don't see, moviegoers don't see. In other words, offices in downtown L.A. at agencies and studios. I would say that absolutely.

Change the atmosphere is a wonderful way to say it. And I think also, too, the energy with which people entered those rooms was just different. Now, I wasn't around in the 90s. It wasn't around in the 80s. I can imagine what it was like for Spike to always be the first, the only person stepping into those rooms and not adjusting, not amending who he was when he was in those rooms. And yet he made such great work, you know, despite the atmosphere, as you put it. That's Spike Lee you're talking about.

And against certain odds. And maybe going back to talking about Mr. Obama, perhaps, perhaps, yes, just seeing, constantly seeing this image, maybe it reaffirmed the need to be committed, you know, to being ourselves in that adjusted atmosphere. I think if you were to ask a black American writer about what canon he or she learned from, they would, it would differ radically from writer to writer, but they would be looking to, just as anybody from any identity would, black writing, whether it's right or Baldwin or Zorneill Hurst and on and on, but also available to him or her as Melville

and Jane Austen or whatever it is. As a filmmaker, what's the canon for you? Particularly when it comes to black American film, as constricted as it was by circumstance. One, I think for any black person who grew up the way I did, the original canon are your elder.

you know, you know, sitting at the kitchen table with my grandma and her drinking this Sanka coffee, you know, on Sundays, making us sit there and telling stories about her childhood. She grew up in South Carolina. That's one canon. And then when I think of cinema, you know, it's interesting. I didn't realize this until I was an adult and I was studying cinema. But a lot of the black cinema canon that I loved, I didn't realize was directed by white directors. You know, I'm talking about, because as a kid, it was. You're watching Coming to America.

You're watching the color purple. These are things that my grandma watched. And these are movies that are directed by white people. That was sort of the canon growing up. And then once I started to interrogate for myself, you know, what's behind those images? What's inside these images? It was spike, then. You know, I can't lie.

It was spike as far as the black canon of cinema images. And then Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep was the one. When I first saw that, it was like, okay, cool, this is a lightning rod. I understand where I need to go now. I want to ask you a particular aesthetic question. Throughout your work, you prioritize lighting, something that not everybody thinks about. What's the role of light in your films and what's the process you go through with your collaborator and cinematographer James Laxton and your colorist, Alex Pichale, to light actors and scenes in a way, that's become so iconic in your work?

You know, part of it, I'm working from memory. You know, I think one of the really, one of the things is really beautiful about cinema and about filmmaking is you're kind of using all these earthbound tools to capture the feeling of consciousness, you know, and to capture this wave of memories. And the way I remember black folk's skin,

the way I remember black folks standing in certain kinds of light, you know that's what bickle and myself and james james laxton that's what we strive for always this is a very privileged art form though which i mean it's very damn expensive yeah yeah and it always has been you know it's less expensive now and i think these tools in addition to one it's almost like jazz david it's like jazz you know i tell this story of being in argentina since you mentioned uh mr obama's uh first election, I literally flew to Argentina the morning after, after he won that race. And I get there to screen my first film, and I end up in this group of Argentine intellectuals, and they're talking about, what is America ever given to the world? Because everybody's trying to knock me back

down. I'm so proud that we have a black president. And they're like, nothing's actually created in America. And then he said, oh, but there is jazz. America created jazz. And I was like, yeah, we did. And then to me, because again, this was, these was a point of bunch of white Argentines that said, and you know what, and your people did that. You know, and they explained to me, the instruments existed, but they were used to play classical standards and things like that. But as the instruments made their way into the hands of black folks, the sound that came out of them stretched and mutated. I think with these digital tools of cinema, I think something very similar is happening in the field that we work in. And again, 40 years ago,

someone from my background, it would be a much longer journey to get to the point where I could take control of these tools. You mentioned my colorist Alex Bickle and the cinematographer James Laxton. We use these German cameras. And when it comes to you, it's just a brain. And you program how it reads light. You program what color tones it prioritizes. You program how it's going to reflect the curve, the highlights and the shadows and things like that. And so when we approach these images that are telling the stories of my ancestors and the people I grew up with, we program it to see them to prioritize how they look in the light. Barry, another thing that seems very important to you

in addition to light is naturally enough sound. A film teacher once told you that images are only 50% of the experiences of watching a film and the score is the other 50%, which seems like a lot. You and your composer, Nicholas Bertel, obviously take that greatly to heart. Can you tell me about the scores for Moonlight and the Underground Railroad?

What sort of worlds did you want to build into those projects in terms of sound? Yeah, yeah. I'll start by saying, just paying respect to Richard Portman, who was the film professor you're referring to? He was the first person I ever met who won an Oscar, and he had his Oscar. He won an Oscar for, he worked with Altman in the 70s, and they created this process of multi-tracking, all these dialogue tracks. And he was the one who said that. He's like, Barry, you guys come in here all day? and you focus on the image, 99%.

And then you just bullshit the last 1% of sound. He said films are half image and half sound. So shout out to him. And did he get the percentages right? Is it half? Really? You know, sometimes, depending on the scene, you know, it can be 99. You know, there's a scene in my first film where the screen goes nearly completely black. You just see a silhouette and you hear the voice, you know, of this narrative spoken.

So it depends. But I say, you know, Mr. Portman passed away right before Moonlight was nominated at the Academy Awards. But it was beautiful. He was in the honorarium at the ceremony, and we ended up winning best pictures. So shout out to Richard Portman. But yeah, it's so important. When you're in a cinema, the screen is in front of you. The speakers are everywhere, everywhere.

And sound, just like when you're eating food or you're drinking a wine, the taste is important, but the smell. It's just as important. I think in cinema, the sound is just as important. It's that sniff of wine before you taste it. That's what the speakers are to me. And especially with Muley, in particular, that character doesn't express himself verbally quite a bit, but the audience is hearing everything he hears.

And so both myself and Nick and then our sound folks, Annolly Blank and Matt Waters, we always just, we go into it going, how can we help the audience understand what this person is feeling right now, basically at all moments. Let your head, rest of my hand. Relax. I got you, I promise.

I'm not gonna let you go. Hey man, I got you. There you go. 10 seconds. That right there? Little world. More athletic. I think you ready.

Think you ready. Think we got a swimmer. You gonna try? You ready to swim? Go. For myself, in particular, you know, as a, as a, as a black storyteller, I'm always just trying to get closer to myself, close to the truth of who I am and the creation of these images, which can sometimes be very difficult. And so I look to the work

of others. Every time I get a chance to, I want to speak someone else's name who is working in a way that inspires me, who is telling black stories that either I am not telling or I can't tell. Because I think collectively, as we all tell our individual stories, we're just building out this tapestry of hopefully getting at the ineffable process of understanding or expressing what it is to be black in the world today. Barry Jenkins, thank you so much. I really appreciate your taking the time. Thank you.

It's my pleasure. Barry Jenkins, director of the 2016 film Moonlight and the Amazon series, The Underground Railroad. I hope you enjoyed the show. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. The theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Greta Green,

Calalia, David Krasnow, Gophane and Putubuele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Harrison Keith Line and Munfei Chen, and guidance from Emily Boutin. And we had additional help this week from Rianin Corby. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported. in part by the Trurina Endowment Fund.