It's an Extremely Small World After All

There's not a week that goes by that I don't think about Benjamin Disraeli observing that there are three types of lies, "lies, damn lies and statistics." I know that there are little gnomes toiling away in the basements and dark recesses of studios with the onerous task of attaching some arcane box office feat to the performance of a current summer blockbuster. Rarely do the apples equate to the oranges.

Last weekend I was told by an executive at Disney that one of those anxious little fellas arrived at his office with the news that Finding Nemo was the first film in three years to chart in the top 10 for more than 10 consecutive weeks. And what was the prior movie in 2000 that attained that vaunted achievement? Well, that golden classic What Lies Beneath. The exec decided Nemo's on-going commercial stamina spoke for itself and didn't require an added goose from that particular page of the record book.

I've become suspicious of all superlative claims. I'm not implying that the spin stops here. Rather that the pervasive gyration has gone into hyperdrive to a degree that often obscures the real issues. It's an admittedly purplish assertion but far from THE purplest.

Recently the Screen Actors Guild released a report on "diversity" and proclaimed that the employment share of minority actors reached its highest level in guild history during 2002. I have to first assume that the import of the claim is limited to the life of this study that spans roughly a decade. The report covers four minority groups - blacks, Latinos, Asian/Pacific Islanders and Native Americans - and women aged 40 plus. Overall the minorities accounted for 24.2% of all theatrical/TV roles according to casting data and "senior" women accounted for 29% of roles in their age grouping. Both sectors experienced 2% gains from 2001.

SAG is and should be encouraging a work environment in which age, race, color and other factors are secondary to skill, merit and professionalism. What the study does not break down is the actual work. What is the value of the gains if those groups singled out as minorities are playing drug dealers, maids, buffoons, terrorists and characters of derision or mockery? It should also be mentioned that virtually every Hollywood guild conducts annual surveys pertaining to the employment of its members and concludes that its seniors and people of color do not have the same employment opportunities as white males yet to celebrate their 40th birthday.

But let's conduct our own little survey by looking at the current top 10 movies playing in American movie theaters. How do they break down ethnically and otherwise in terms of leading roles. S.W.A.T.'s four featured players include two blacks, a Latina and a white male; Freaky Friday's duo are both white with the mom a plus 40, Pirates of the Caribbean has four white actors with paid ads and American Wedding features six white performers. Seabiscuit is headed by three white males, Spy Kids 3-D's star cast includes four Latinos and two whites, Bad Boys II has two title black actors, Lara Croft is a white female, Finding Nemo is animated but voiced exclusively by whites (I'll include just five) and the four principals in Terminator 3 are white.

By my count there are 37 leading roles that break down 29 white, 4 black and 5 Latino. There are no principal roles for Asians or Native Americans and a single role cast with a mature actress (there were seven parts for senior males). I don't have to explain that this is a random not a clinical study but whereas SAG's report concluded that roles for blacks represented 15.5% and Latinos constituted 6% of 2002 employment, the current top 10 reflects a 11% black and 13.5% Latino representation.

To be frank, I'm surprised and pleased that the result is as strong as it is in leading roles. I don't require a study to name the actors of diversity that can get films green lit. Employing SAG's groupings there are no Native American, Jackie Chan is the sole Asian, blacks include Will Smith, Denzel Washingon, Halle Berry and Eddie Murphy, the Latinos are Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Lopez and I'm not sure where to slot Vin Diesel. Now one can argue in several instances that some performers are only bankable in a certain kind of picture but that's also true of our white brethren stars.

The situation in the current top 10 is considerably less rosy when one scans the directing, producing and writing credits (the below-the-line categories verge on the scandalous). Brace yourself because eight of the 10 titles have none of the SAG diversities in those key creative positions (associate/executive producer credits are not included). Spy Kids 3-D was written, directed and co-produced (with a Latina) by Robert Rodriguez and one of S.W.A.T.'s three producers is Asian Chris Lee. None of the films was directed by a woman, Freaky Friday's two scripters are women (one over 40), two of Seabiscuit's four producers are female and it is based upon a book written by a woman.

It's not necessary to belabor the point. In the roughly 80 year history of Hollywood, the number of women and people of racial diversity with significant careers as executives, directors and producers is appalling. The same applies for such crafts as camera, music and even production design. Women have had considerably better success as film editors and costume designers and done marginally better marking on the curve as screenwriters. The ethnicities can point to a few that broke the color code prior to the 1980s such as cameramen James Wong Howe and John Alonzo, multi-hyphenates Gordon Parks and Melvin Van Peebles and others … but it's a short conversation. Creatively, Hollywood is a very male-dominated bastion.

The one area where barriers have been less apparent for women and people of color is acting, so the SAG study is not simply something that registers whether the patient has a pulse. In the case of performers, the question is how fast is it beating?

In a curious way, I relate strides in diversity and opportunity in the film industry to presidential politics. We've already cleared the hurdles of will America ever elect a Catholic and a divorcee. The next series of hoops involve blacks, Jews and women, two of the trouble spots in the movie colony. It's a little too soon to even contemplate a homosexual head of state.

Historically, the box office and tireless socially committed filmmakers have accounted for breaking the cookie cutter image of America exemplified by Andy Hardy. Black audiences have plunked down their money for comedies and action films that reflect part of their experience in a manner yet to be equaled by Latinos and difficult, based on numbers and concentration, for Asians and Native Americans to demonstrate. And while every movie-going study concludes that women make the majority of film choices among couples, executive decisions favor the tastes of teenage men - the single largest viewing constituency.

My immediate thought when considering the number of times the Academy of Motion Picture had honored a film reflecting other cultures, other races was the single memory of The Last Emperor. However, checking the book produced a longer list, albeit one had to reel back to 1990 and Dances with Wolves to find the most recent example. Emperor, unlike Wolves told its story (even if it wasn't directed or written by an Asian) from the perspective of a Chinese man. Similarly, white protagonists led the way on issues of race, culture and religion in such films as Platoon, Lawrence of Arabia, Out of Africa, Gentleman's Agreement, Gone With the Wind, Cimarron and arguably West Side Story and even Driving Miss Daisy. So, in addition to The Last Emperor, the only other Oscar pictures told from the on screen vantage point of someone of color are Gandhi and In the Heat of the Night.

At the present moment, Seabiscuit is the most critically lauded film of the year just as The Road to Perdition held that honor 12 months ago. Neither film nor any of last year's best picture nominees reflect the variety of the American cultural mosaic. The most recent nominee of that sort was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a film with the flimsiest association to American filmmaking and prior to that the sole U.S. films to deal with race in the1990s that wound up as Oscar best picture nominations were Wolves and The Shawshank Redemption. The overall situation has no chance for improvement until a time when movie decision makers entrust the American public to respond to a more diverse set of stories.

As to the plight of women on screen, there's good news and bad. The down side is that the majority of movies being made in the United States have a high testosterone level that favors male actors, Angelina Jolie notwithstanding. The current top 10's 37 featured roles include 11 parts for women and such thankless roles as barely evident wives and girlfriends. The positive spin is that at the end of any given year there are as many distinctive and challenging parts for women as there are for men, sometimes even more. Our male stars simply have many more options when it comes to choosing high paying roles in mindlessly inane comedies and genre films and that's reflected in the SAG study with the grim fact that in terms of actual working days, men out pace their counterparts in the battle of the sexes by more than 50 percent.

Biased and Teetering

While not exactly film biz, the specter of Spike raised its pointy noggin this week when Fox News filed suit against comedian/commentator Al Franken for copyright infringement. Franken's apparent sin (at least in the filing) was in titling his forthcoming book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. The problem is not that the jacket includes the likeness of Fox News' Bill O'Reilly (along with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney) but in the fact that the network managed to trademark the words "fair and balanced" back in 1995.

Now, while I can understand Disney and Warner Bros. going on the offensive when someone maligns the image of such studio creations as Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny, it's more difficult to appreciate Fox wrestling Franken to the ground over a couple of words. Especially when those words convey a level headedness and poise such actions fly in the face of.

Where the next step will take the two parties will be intriguing and one can only hope that Franken will retain the sort of wit and humor displayed by Groucho Marx when Warner Bros. threatened suit over the Marx Brothers use of the word Casablanca in their film A Night in Casablanca and wore the mirthless studio lawyers down to the nub. Frankenly they are just words and I can readily see a counter-suit along either a restraint in trade or truth in advertising basis. I like the slogan but my appreciation for the Fox lineup has nothing to do with "fair and balanced" reporting. Regardless of the number of times the phrase is invoked, it always provides me with a little chuckle and a reminder that irony is not dead.

- by Leonard Klady