Let me set the scene for you... I am a white, female director and writer, and I've written a script about an African-American, female, foreign war correspondent set against the backdrop of the civil right movement. My lead character is the daughter of two slain civil rights workers who has spent her whole adult life seeking justice everywhere but her own back yard. I am putting this project together with a respected casting director and we have an Oscar-nominated actress attached.
In the past several months, this script has generated lots of meetings around town. Along the way, more than a few people have been surprised that I am not African-American. I have always taken their surprise as a compliment... until several weeks ago. The long and the short of that particular meeting is that I was told that the company in question would not make my film because I am not African-American. When I pointed out that Taylor Hackford made RAY and Steven Spielberg made THE COLOR PURPLE, I was told, "But they are established directors."
Am I really to believe that in 2006, in regards to a story that is about race, racism and the legacy of the civil rights movement, I am experiencing a form of reverse racism? Because I am not African-American, this company will not finance a story with a lead character that is black. But, if I were an established, MALE, white director, they would consider it. Is this really happening?
Better still, the experience I had with said executive goes to the very heart of what my story is about. My story wrestles with the legacy of segregation and racism. It explores how we, as individuals and as a society, wrestle with prejudice today. The situation I've described in the paragraphs above is clearly a case where stereotypes and prejudice won.
So, I can't just take it lying down. The very part of me that wrote my script in the first place forces me to raise my voice about the behavior of this executive. Maybe I can't change him or make him finance my film, but I can decide not to validate or reward his behavior with silence.
I wrote this screenplay because I had experienced something that my lead character experiences. I believe other people -- black and white, male and female -- can identify with it as well. It was the experience of being dehumanized, of being devalued, stripped of my personhood because of the color of my skin or my gender. In the moment when this executive told me that while he loved my screenplay, he would not support its being made at his company because of the color of my skin, I felt stripped of my talent, my sensitivity, even my voice. He essentially said to me, You're not black, so you can't tell this story. But, if you were an established, successful, white man, I'd support you.
It is a damning indictment of our industry that forty-two years after the civil rights act of 1964, we still think nothing of a white man directing a film with three female leads (IN HER SHOES,) or directing the thoroughly Japanese and female story of a geisha (MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA.) Yet, it is the front-page story of the LA Times Calendar section when a black director makes a hit film outside the urban genre (profile of Tim Story and THE FANTASTIC FOUR.)
We are nearing half a century since legalized segregation was officially outlawed. It is time to end the double standard. It is time to cease letting it flourish in silence.
One last irony... the working title of my screenplay? NEVER TOO LATE.