Good News / Bad News of the New Black Cinema : The films are finally coming out in force, but marketing African-American themes to a broad audience is the challenge now

Look closely at the advertisements for Spike Lee’s new film “Jungle Fever”: Wesley Snipes is paired in a gentle embrace with co-star Annabella Sciorra. In the billboards, black hands are interlinked with white. “Jungle Fever” is billed as sexy, romantic, even comedic, with nary a mention of the explosive racism and ravages of drug abuse that serve as the overwhelming subtexts in Lee’s story about an interracial romance. “Vastly entertaining, funny,” the ad quotes from Vincent Canby’s review in the New York Times. “Hotly erotic and brutally funny” is the comment used from Peter Travers’ Rolling Stone review. “Talk about sexually provocative!” shouts KABC-TV’s Gary Franklin.

Universal Pictures’ ad campaign--combined with Lee’s knack for generating controversy over his films’ social messages on the editorial pages--appears to have worked: When it opened last weekend, “Jungle Fever” audiences bought $5.3 million worth of tickets at 636 theaters, for an impressive per-screen average of $8,385. With about 20 films by black directors slated for release this year--nearly as many as in the last decade--Hollywood marketing executives are faced with a new challenge: how to draw an interracial audience to films with African-American themes and casts, and often potent social messages, at a time when the country is plagued by polarized race relations.

“If you want to see prejudice at work, make an all-black movie,” Miramax Films President Harvey Weinstein recently told one reporter. Miramax did just that: Bill Duke’s “A Rage in Harlem” was roundly praised by critics for its fresh storytelling style and hip sense of humor. It’s also slick entertainment with the production values of an expensive Hollywood movie.

But the audience didn’t exactly line up around the block: Since its May 3 opening, the film has grossed $9 million (split about evenly between the theater and Miramax), with an audience that is 80-85% black--leaving Miramax executives perplexed. “The audience is mostly adult; they’re intelligent, review-driven moviegoers. But we’re missing the white complement of that audience,” said Miramax Executive Vice President Russell Schwartz.

Hollywood studios can do a profitable business attracting a primarily black audience. For one thing, African-Americans, on average, go to movies more often than whites. A 1990 survey by Deloitte & Touche and Impact Resources found that close to 60% of blacks had attended a movie during one month, compared to only 51.2% of whites. Using U.S. census figures, the Chicago-based Target Market Research newsletter estimated that in 1987, black households spent $1.2 billon out of a national total of $5.1 billion on entertainment, including movies, concerts and sports.

In the 1980s, the budgets of Hollywood’s few black-themed movies were small enough for the films to be profitable without attracting large white audiences. But as African-American filmmakers take on more ambitious projects--and budgets--it becomes increasingly important to attract a broad audience. Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” cost $6.5 million to produce; but “Jungle Fever” cost about $14 million and his next movie, “Malcolm X,” will be well over $20 million.

“A Rage in Harlem” cost roughly $8 million--which is still a third of the cost of the average major studio movie. But past movies that became profitable largely on the strength of a black audience were much cheaper--like Robert Townsend’s “Hollywood Shuffle” (strung together on his credit cards) and the Hudlin Brothers’ “House Party” (which cost less than $2 million). Marketing and distribution is another hefty tab, and can add upward of $2 million even to a small, independently made feature.

The stakes are high for another reason: Many African-American filmmakers fear that their films will have to demonstrate better-than-average performances at the box office--otherwise, they say, the small window that Hollywood so reluctantly opened for them could come crashing shut.

So far, Hollywood marketers have shown a willingness to advertise tough themes when marketing to an African-American audience, but a desire to soften the message when attracting what they like to call a “crossover” audience. Whatever controversies audiences find once they get into the theater for “Jungle Fever,” the message pushed by Universal to get them there is one that most Americans want to hear: That people can connect across racial lines. Simon Kornblit, Universal’s executive vice president of marketing, noted that the film’s handling of racial conflicts is evident in promotions--particularly magazine and newspaper stories such as Newsweek’s June 10 cover story. The advertising, he said, positions “Jungle Fever” as an “important movie that is also entertainment.”

Miramax hasn’t given up on “A Rage in Harlem”--particularly after the warm reception it received at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in May. “We’re going to take all summer if we have to. We’re inventing the wheel here,” Miramax’s Schwartz said in a reference to Hollywood’s inexperience at selling films with African-American casts. Other industry experts, however, say Miramax will be hard-pressed to regain the momentum the film had on opening day.

In an effort to draw a broader audience, Miramax is continuing to give the film a push in art-house theaters. The company also is attempting to attract an older interracial audience by toning down the violence hinted at in its ads, taking the guns out of the hands of co-stars Forest Whitaker, Robin Givens and Gregory Hines. (At one time Miramax executives said they considered asking Duke to cut out some of the violence in the film, which some critics and audiences complained as being too graphic for a comedy. But the director said he was never asked to do so and has no plans to re-edit the film.)

Columbia’s “Boyz N The Hood,” which opens July 12, will be a key test of whether Hollywood marketers can sell a black-themed movie to an interracial audience. Already, the film--which was screened at Cannes--has captured the attention of critics who wrote that it was not only a powerful social commentary about teen-agers growing up in South Central L.A., but also a compelling dramatic entertainment.

The question is whether the studio can get a crossover audience to turn out for a film that features an all-black cast and explores gang life in L.A. “Colors,” a 1988 film about gang violence in L.A.’s barrios, was a commercial success for Orion Pictures, but the film had a white director (Dennis Hopper) and mainstream white stars (Sean Penn and Robert Duvall).

Although Columbia’s promotional campaign for “Boyz” will be multi-pronged, said Paula Silver, the studio’s marketing president, it will primarily focus on attracting African-Americans to the $6-million movie. In periodicals aimed at black audiences, the advertising will be hard-hitting. “The problem with black against black violence is . . . No one sees it,” one ad says. “This doesn’t say entertainment, it says important film,” Silver explained.

Even in other venues, Columbia is doing little to soften the message of the hard-edged film. In the TV commercial now airing--which Silver says is primarily aimed at a young black audience--a gunshot explodes into a string of violent scenes as the voice-over says, “It’s hard to be a saint in South-Central L.A.” But the commercial includes one key element to attract a broader audience: It opens with critic Roger Ebert’s thumbs-up on the film as a “life-affirming story.” For now, said Silver, employing quotes from critics is the only way Columbia will attempt to broaden its appeal for a crossover audience.

Mario van Peebles’ “New Jack City”--released earlier this year--was successful in drawing a mixed-race audience, though Warner’s marketing campaign primarily targeted young blacks, according to Robert Friedman, Warner’s president of worldwide marketing. Friedman says the film was aided by good reviews, but also acknowledges that the presence of a major white character (played by Judd Nelson) helped draw in young white audiences. Executives at competing studios also note that Warner marketed the movie as a black “Lethal Weapon.”

Spike Lee’s first films--”She’s Gotta Have It” and “School Daze”--owed their modest financial successes to black audiences, but his next one, “Do the Right Thing,” became a cause celebre on op-ed pages and spurred enough of a crossover audience to sell $28 million in tickets. “Do the Right Thing” made Lee the first commercially bankable black director in Hollywood.

But with “Do the Right Thing,” Lee gave Universal Pictures elements with which to sell the film to crossover audiences. The movie is told from a black perspective, and while Lee’s angry tone in publicizing the movie did nothing to soften his themes, the movie did feature three strong white characters. Its message about violence as an appropriate reaction to racial oppression also gave it an urgency that went beyond the black community.

Lee’s fourth film, “Mo’ Better Blues,” dealt with black jazz musicians and was a box-office disappointment. “Jungle Fever” is another look at racial tension in New York, this time built around the reactions to an interracial romance. Besides the central role of a black architect’s white mistress (portrayed by Sciorra), the film features strong white characters played by veteran Anthony Quinn and rising star John Turturro.

The question of building a “crossover” audience is a delicate one. Minority filmmakers hate that term because of its suggestion that their films are being compromised to broaden their appeal. And some media experts in the black community dismiss studio complaints about the difficulty of building a diverse audience. Ken Smikle, president of the African-American Marketing and Media Assn. and publisher of Target Market News, pointed to the popularity of TV shows ranging from “Cosby” to “The Arsenio Hall Show” as evidence of white interest in black culture and figures.

Byron Lewis, chief executive of New York’s Uniworld Group Inc. and a consultant to studios marketing African-American films, said black culture is influential not only in TV, but also in American music, lifestyle and fashion. So, he asked, why not movies?

But studio executives inside Hollywood--nearly all of whom are white--insist that it is difficult to attract whites to a film with an all-black cast. “‘If only we knew what that crossover mystery was,” said New Line marketing President Sandra Ruch. “A great deal of it has to do with culture and politics.”

“Why doesn’t a white audience go to see a black film? Is racial polarization so entrenched? Ten to 15 years ago (“A Rage in Harlem”) would have crossed over,” insisted Miramax’s Schwartz.

He may be right. A similar comedy with an underworld setting was Sidney Poitier’s 1974 “Uptown Saturday Night,” which was popular enough among a broad audience to spawn two sequels.

Black exploitation films of that era also managed to attract interracial audiences. One of those was “Shaft,” said Uniworld’s Lewis, who served as a marketing consultant on the 1971 picture. The marketing campaign for “Shaft” included getting its song on urban radio stations--where it became a hit single before the film even opened--and dozens of screenings around the country. “Shaft,” directed by Gordon Parks, paved the way for scores of so-called blaxploitation movies--urban action dramas that gave black filmmakers and actors their best shot ever at making mainstream Hollywood movies.

Another black-themed film with a broad following--this time among older audiences--was Martin Ritt’s “Sounder.” Producer Robert Radnitz recalled that he refused to be deterred from the project, despite the cynical and often racist reactions of the studio executives he pitched it to. He says the film, which was nominated for four Academy Awards, owed much of its box-office success to about 300 advance word-of-mouth screenings across the country, many of which were attended by vocal civil rights leaders.

But the contrast between these films and those being released today also says something about the way Hollywood has changed overall. As a rule, the studios no longer know how to nurse a film past the first weekend to build up an audience. A film’s advertising budget and release strategy--which largely dictate its success--hinge on the first weekend results. “It’s difficult to make a film with any kind of serious implications today,” Radnitz noted.

Easily the most successful black-themed film ever made was Steven Spielberg’s 1985 “The Color Purple.” The movie, adapted from Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, grossed more than $94 million and garnered 11 Oscar nominations. But the movie was excoriated by many critics and black leaders who felt Spielberg had sugarcoated Walker’s bitter themes in order to attract white viewers. Some critics compared “The Color Purple” to “The Song of the South,” a 1946 Walt Disney picture regarded by many film experts as racially patronizing.

Whatever people thought of “Sounder” and “The Color Purple,” both were made by high-profile Academy Award-nominated white directors, which gave the two films huge marketing advantages over movies made by emerging black filmmakers. Martin Ritt was well-known for social dramas ranging from “Hud” to “The Sound and the Fury” and his films were easily targeted for “serious” adult moviegoers. Spielberg’s name had become synonymous with broad-audience movie entertainment, and though “The Color Purple” marked a departure for him, Warner Bros. had the unique advantage of being able to sell the filmmaker over his film.

If the studios could even market black-themed films--most of which are modestly budgeted--to a black audience, they could be quite profitable. Indeed, most recent black-themed films owe their success to building a market primarily within the black community. New Line’s “House Party” is an example of a low-budget comedy that became profitable as a hip, must-see movie among many black teens.

“We make movies for less money so we can target them specifically,” said Ruch, whose New Line produced “House Party” and the upcoming sequel. “We make sure (before a film is approved) that there’s an audience we think we can target.”

Later this summer New Line will release Topper Carew’s “Talkin’ Dirty After Dark,” set inside a Watts comedy club, which will be targeted at young blacks, while the current release, Joseph Vasquez’s Latino-black “Hangin’ With the Homeboys”--a critical favorite--is now playing in two New York theaters.

The youth audience is also the focus of next fall’s sequel to “House Party”--and New Line expects to pick up a crossover audience because of the high profile of stars Kid and Play, who have appeared in a Sprite commercial and whose characters are featured in a children’s cartoon series on NBC.

But when it comes to movies geared toward older audiences--or more serious material--Hollywood runs up against a brick wall. “To Sleep With Anger,” “The Long Walk Home,” “A Rage in Harlem” and “The Five Heartbeats” were all box-office disappointments during the last year. At a recent Independent Feature Project seminar on the making and marketing of Charles Burnett’s critically acclaimed “To Sleep With Anger,” several members of the audience wanted to know what was behind the film’s low profile. “Why, when there is an African-American cast, a movie is always assumed to be ‘specialty?’ . . . Most people I know who are African-American never even heard of the film,” said one woman, as the audience--half of whom were black--applauded her.

It’s tempting to dismiss those kinds of complaints as part of the territory for an art-house movie released by an independent distributor (Samuel Goldwyn Co.) with limited resources. The problem is that the same complaint is routinely voiced when it comes to films with African-American themes.

“I’m not impressed” with Hollywood’s handling of black films, said Uniworld’s Lewis. “I don’t see a dedicated effort in terms of the studios.”

Armond White, the black film critic for Brooklyn’s City Sun, insisted: “These are not marketing mistakes: It’s a lack of marketing interest.”

Part of the problem, some experts say, is that Hollywood treats the black audience as one--rather than examining its diversity. “It’s not a monolithic black audience,” said Smikle, noting that every urban market has at least two or three African-American radio stations aimed at different sectors of the community. “I don’t think there’s a great enough understanding at the studios on how to diversify a marketing strategy within the black audience.”

Smikle cites “The Five Heartbeats” as a case in point. Twentieth Century Fox seemed to have built a youth-oriented marketing campaign, he argued, when in fact the story of a Motown musical group was “a nostalgia movie for black baby boomers. Fox didn’t capitalize on that.”

Whether the target audience is rural, urban or suburban, young or old, black films require different marketing approaches, experts say. Blanketing radio stations, as well as TV, is one key. So is maintaining open channels of communication with black-directed publications. Just as important, say these experts, are grass-roots campaigns designed to build early word of mouth. As part of Columbia’s promotion of “Boyz,” that studio is emphasizing screenings that will draw opinion-makers from the black community.

The African-American community is watching all of these marketing efforts closely. A few weeks before the opening of “A Rage in Harlem,” director Bill Duke confessed his fear that his movie’s performance would dictate trends for African-American filmmakers.

“There is talk in the Hollywood community that if my film fails at the box office--following the failure of ‘To Sleep With Anger,’ ‘The Long Walk Home’ and ‘The Five Heartbeats’--the studios will decide that means black audiences don’t want those kinds of films, that they want action pictures like ‘New Jack City,’ ” Duke said. “My prayer is that we’re going to be allowed to make various kinds of films and in different kinds of genres.”

Given the timid fare that Hollywood has offered over the past decade, that’s a prayer audiences should share too.