Blacks Also Want Their Stories Told

The very perceptive article by Marcy De Veaux about “Waiting to Exhale” was right on target (“Why Surprise at Film’s Success?,” Counterpunch, Jan. 8). It took me 43 years to get another positive portrayal of blacks on the screen. I’m referring to “Tuskegee Airmen,” a story about the all-black, P51-flying, 332nd Fighter Group, which distinguished itself while serving with the 15th Air Force in Italy during WWII.

I was told repeatedly that there was no market for movies of this type because the white audience is not interested in stories about African Americans.

My repeated suggestion that there are sufficient numbers of African American people to make the picture profitable, and that there is indeed an insatiable thirst in our communities throughout our nation to make the effort profitable, fell on deaf ears. White junior executives who knew nothing about our culture and its stratification socially, economically, morally and intellectually could not overcome their tragic and intellectually bankrupt stereotype of African American people.

Once I was introduced to Frank Price by Ivan Dixon things began to change. Price was one of the heads of Universal Pictures at the time and after listening to me (for less than 30 minutes) lay out the story of this outstanding group of black men, he rose from his seat and said, “My God, what a marvelous story.” He offered us a development deal on the spot!

What made the difference between that scenario and the hundreds I had had in the prior 35 years? Frank Price has personal black friends with whom he associates on a regular basis. He knew of the tremendous hunger for uplifting portrayals of African American people by African American people and knew that “Tuskegee Airmen” was perhaps the very best vehicle to feed that hunger.

Frank Price left Universal before we got a script developed but he took the project on to Columbia, where he became chairman and CEO. He never lost his enthusiasm for the project and took it with him to Price Entertainment Inc. when he formed his own company.

Bob Cooper of HBO, who has always had a sense of fair play about all people and subjects, asked us to make the picture for his company and we did. The success of that effort is unprecedented in the entertainment industry. It is one of the top three pictures HBO has ever made. The focus group, which was composed of a majority of white people, gave it the only 100% approval rating HBO had ever had on any of its movies.

I am almost deified by African American people who recognize me as the persistent author and co-executive producer of this wonderful picture. The experience has been very humbling. It is as if I am viewed as a black Moses who had led his people out of the muddy waters of ghetto-oriented gang banging, drug-culture or slave-era type of garbage we have been force-fed by the television and motion picture industries.

There are endless stories like “Tuskegee Airmen” and “Waiting to Exhale,” begging to be made. Hopefully, with the overwhelming success of both of these efforts, executives in the industry will rethink their previously held stereotypical misconceptions.