How ‘The Brothers’ Got Its Groove On

African Americans often complain that Hollywood does a poor job of portraying blacks in films, pointing out that movies too often portray their culture as a world that consists only of drugs, guns and rap music. How can black children find proper role models, they ask, when African Americans on the big screen are constantly depicted as pimps, gangsters and rappers? So when a screenplay by African American writer-director Gary Hardwick found its way to Sony’s Screen Gems label, production vice president Stacy Kolker took it to Clint Culpepper, executive vice president of acquisitions and production at Screen Gems, and said this looked like the kind of movie they should be making. Culpepper agreed, and the result is “The Brothers,” which opens Friday in about 1,400 theaters nationwide. Written and directed by Hardwick, the film stars Morris Chestnut, D.L. Hughley, Bill Bellamy and Shemar Moore as upper-middle-class black professionals as they take on two of life’s most terrifying prospects: honesty and commitment. The film also stars Tamala Jones and Gabrielle Union. Just as “Waiting to Exhale” and “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” explored the friendships of black women, “The Brothers” travels a road similar to “The Best Man” and “The Wood” in examining the male side of things. While “The Brothers” targets African Americans, the studio believes good word-of-mouth could widen its appeal to audiences of all races. “When you have a good story, it doesn’t matter what color people are,” Culpepper said. “It just so happens that the writer-director [of this film] is a black man. But men in general have trouble with commitment and relationships, whether they are African American or not.” Culpepper said “The Brothers” encouraged Screen Gems to make another African American romantic comedy, this one tentatively titled “How to Make Your Man Behave in 10 Days . . . or Less,” starring Vivica A. Fox. Culpepper noted that Fox agreed to do that movie after seeing an early screening of “The Brothers.”

ABC Does Its Own ‘Traffic’ Study

America’s war on drugs was portrayed in the film “Traffic,” up for numerous honors at Sunday’s Academy Awards show on ABC. All this week, ABC’s late-night “Nightline” has planned a series looking at just how realistic the “Traffic” portrayal is. The five-night program, which starts at 11:35 tonight (and also ties in nicely with the March 10 anniversary of Mexican President Vicente Fox’s first 100 days in office), will include reports from California, Mexico and the Washington, D.C., suburbs. It will look at drug trafficking, including a powerful drug cartel in Tijuana, the efforts by the Fox administration to combat the illegal drug flow through Mexico, and how suburban communities in the United States are dealing with an increase in drug use. Customs official Rudy Camacho, featured in the film, gives a similar tour of the border crossing to “Nightline.” The series is reported by “Nightline” anchor Ted Koppel and ABC News correspondent Deborah Amos.

New Orleans Still Ranting Over Raves

The U.S. rave community finds itself between a rock and a hard place this week in the Big Easy. The rave scene is accustomed to controversy (police and parents have long dogged the late-night, electronic dance gatherings as dangerous), but now raves are under attack in New Orleans from federal prosecutors using a surprising new weapon--the so-called “crack house law,” which allows prosecutors to go after anyone who owns or maintains an illicit marketplace to drug trade. In January, U.S. attorneys indicted three New Orleans rave promoters with the law, saying, in effect, that the wild sensory onslaught of the events is tailor-made for drug use and sales and shelters the illicit traffic. The State Palace Theater promoters negotiated with prosecutors before the indictments and had been expected this month to plead guilty (and receive a one-year sentence), but after rave peers and civil liberty activists came to their aid, the defendants opted to seek a dismissal citing their 1st Amendment right of free speech. “In the end, the mere act of providing music to the public cannot be a crime,” their attorneys wrote in the motion. Prosecutors responded to the plot twist by abandoning the original indictment and redoubling their investigation to build a sturdier case. The American Civil Liberties Union is keeping an eye on the case and says the government is seeking a chilling precedent. “There’s nothing that points to any guilt of any drug crime in this case; what it all points to is that these three men put on, in a responsible way, a concert,” said ACLU attorney Graham Boyd. “What’s clear, too, is that this will be a national strategy on [the government’s] part.”

--Compiled by Times Staff Writers