Reality show paints Montrose in bad light

MONTROSE ? A new reality show on FX that filmed scenes at a favorite local hangout in Montrose, paints the community in a rather unfavorable light.

During filming of Black.White, which aired Wednesday night, a couple residents make racial remarks that locals say are not indicative of how the community as a whole feels.

The six-part show, filmed in August in Los Angeles, focuses on the experiences of two families ? one white and one black ? who, with the aid of extensive make-up, change races to learn what it is like to live in somebody else’s skin.

In one of the segments, Brian Sparks ? the father of one of the black families ? is transformed into a white man and takes a job as a bartender for four days at Leo’s All-Star Sports Bar and Grill on Honolulu Avenue.

During the segment, which was previewed on the Oprah Winfrey Show in February, Sparks asks a white, male patron to describe his neighborhood. The patron replies that it is one “of the last unaffected bastions of middle-class Caucasian America.”

While he kept his cool on camera, Sparks later told Winfrey that he felt sickened by comment and had to remind himself that he took part in the project to expose racial prejudices.

But Leslie Lesh, who owns the bar with her husband Leo, said the segment was not an accurate representation of the attitudes of her clientele or of local residents, and that she was disappointed with the show’s editing.

“Unfortunately, two people made racial comments during the filming of the show and one person tried to speak on the behalf of everyone but really the comments of one person does not reflect our business or our community,” Leslie Lesh said. “We cannot be held responsible for people like that making ignorant statements.”

Her bar attracts a wide range of people, including residents of all different races living in the community, she said.

The couple is also disappointed in FX because she said producers misrepresented the premise of the show to her and her husband.

“We were approached by the producers of the show under false pretences,” Leslie Lesh said. “We were told that is was going to be about a family moving from another state who wanted to try their hand at working in different occupations.”

They agreed to give Sparks a job and interviewed him. She had no idea about the race element of the show until the last day when he turned up to work without his “white” make-up on.

“We were shocked,” she said. “The thing is that Brian [Sparks] really loved our staff and after the filming, he came to hang out with us for a while.”

John Solberg, senior vice-president of FX, described the show as a unique mix between a documentary and a reality show, and said that staff had a mammoth job of cutting more than 2,400 hours of footage down into just six hours of tape.

“Ultimately, our goal as a television network is to make entertaining and engaging television,” Solberg said. “It’s clearly safe to say that this is an unscripted series ? nobody wrote lines for the participants and nobody was told how to act.”

Executive producer RJ Cutler, who won an Emmy Award for the series American High and was nominated for an Academy Award for the documentary The War Room, is promoting the series in New York and could not be reached in time for publication. gnp.black.0309-CPhotoInfo211OOO4J20060309ivude8knPhoto courtesy of FX(LA)Teen Rose Worgel undergoes a transformation on “Black White,” a new show on the FX network.