TITLE: Stranger Thangs: Denzel & The Hidden Danger in Hollywood’s Diversity Push
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX4D5WwoyQA

We see black faces in Hollywood, but it still don't feel right. But as Denzel would say, a different culture will create a different film. One thing's for sure, when you hire me, you're getting a black actor. And if you wrote it and you didn't see a black actor when you wrote it, or even if you saw one, sometimes what you put in my mouth is not how I talk. Depending upon what I read, you created a character who's a lot more educated than you allow him to speak. I can conjugate and a lot of people can. So, I don't need you to write black vernacular for me. I can say what you want said, but you need to say it this way. If I'm from somewhere else, I can say it that way, but from what you have here and who this character is, he's a lot smarter and more educated than you made him speak. We don't all speak like somebody on a rap video. I can fix that for you if you'll let me. If [clears throat] your ego is not too precious, then all I'm doing is making your movie better. I don't know what gives me more pleasure, watching my story unfold or going in and watching the uh a room full of black people talking for me and saying words that uh and writing words that black people I hate white people writing for black people. It's so offensive. We have seven writers other than ourselves. Two of them were African-American women. And one of them said, "I've never been in a room where there's another African-American woman." The kid from Stranger Things, Caleb Mclofflin, they did something with his hair. You miss or you make a mistake that big because you have color in the room, but you don't have culture in the chair. Stranger Things spent $270 million on their last season. They couldn't find one person on set to notice that Caleb's hair was a huge production error. I would like to think it's a cultural thing. Black people, we notice hair right away. Whether you're a girl or boy, you learn about your hair pretty early in life. When we talk about representation, we notice the mistakes or the things that people look past or the things that people don't think is very important. That is culturally important to us. Even if Caleb made the decision on his own to go that route, somebody should have been there to tell him it's probably the wrong thing to do. Sometimes it feels performative when you see productions try too hard to include every race. It just feels inauthentic and they never quite get the characterization right. They asked if I wanted to be on Friends and I was supposed to just walk in like and I was like okay it's a job but I I've been working like none of this is new. So do the job. It's to me again like if I would have gotten a guest star on Living Single or you know Martin I would have been like oh my god New York undercover. Yes. I've arrived friends. Okay. So, I'm doing press for something else and I'm on the view and I make a joke cuz they everyone's like, "Oh my god, you're like the first black person on Friends and I was like, "Yeah, who knew I was the Rosa Parks of Mustsea TV?" Turns out NBC did not find the humor that I did. And they literally went through every frame and I think at this point it's like season 9 in a show based in New York to find if there was any other black person who said anything. After looking through 27 episodes per season, nine seasons, every frame, they were like, "What we can accurately say is that you are the first African-American love interest on Friends." >> It comes off in some of these films that they're making a film about us and not for us. A lot of times what you end up with is the viewpoint of the writer or the director and what they think about that particular group. >> Cruising in Hollywood tend to be all white. Well, let's go back to American History X, right? American History X. There was no whites. I mean, there was no blacks or brown on that crew that I can remember. >> Wow. >> None. So, a lot of days I was the only brother on set cuz they would bust in them skin heads in Orange County and and it was me. >> Oh, they were real skin heads. >> Real skin. He wanted real skin heads. The director wanted real skin heads in the movie. So, a lot of them he wanted he he he's a I heard of method actors, but he was a method director. The long-term implications of being inaccurate can have a real negative outcome. Especially if you believe art imitates life and life imitates art. You'll see people trying to live up to an image that was created by a person that knows very little about the group of people that he's displaying on the camera or in his art. >> One thing's for sure, when you hire me, you're getting a black actor. And if you wrote it and you didn't see a black actor when you wrote it, or even if you saw one, sometimes what you put in my mouth is not how I talk depending upon what I read. You created a character who's a lot more educated than you allow him to speak. I can conjugate and a lot of people can. So I don't need you to write black vernacular for me. I can say what you want said, but you need to say it this way. If I'm from somewhere else, I can say it that way. But from what you have here and who this character is, he's a lot smarter and more educated than you made him speak. We don't all speak like somebody on a rap video. I can fix that for you if you'll let me. If your ego is not too precious, then all I'm doing is making your movie better. I don't know what gives me more pleasure, watching my story unfold or going in and watching the uh a room full of black people talking for me and saying words that uh and writing words that black people I hate white people writing for black people. It's so offensive. We have seven writers other than ourselves. Two of them were African-American women and one of them said, "I've never been in a room where there's another African-Amean woman. Little Richard is a great example of someone who lived in the shadows of people that essentially copied off him. This is a reoccurring theme. And did you know that Elvis Presley and Pat Boom sold more of Tutti Frutti than I did and I rode it and sung it. >> Did that bother you? >> No, it didn't. It made me feel good. They opened a door that was locked and I couldn't get in. And I took the Beatles and MC Jagger with me. MC Jagger was living on a truck. I had Jimmy Hendrickx playing guitar for me. I had Billy Preston on organ. James Brown and Joe Tex was my vocalist. >> People that he helped make famous, people that took his work, whether good or bad, they shined a light on his work. But my question is, if the work is great, why does someone else need to shine a light on it? >> And I think that a country that doesn't do something to u sustain its culture, whatever it is, doesn't invest in it, doesn't keep it happening, isn't proud of it, maybe they just shouldn't exist. because it's the culture and the beautiful things that a society produces. Those are the things that should survive for thousands of years. Everyone cares about representation. Even if they pretend not to. Without ownership, you end up in a situation where people ask you to make changes that might compromise the way you look. These movies stick around. They outlive their performers. that have to be explained and recontextualized for the next generation. And so then he goes, "What I wanted to talk to you was, and this is on my mother's grave, he goes, "How do you flourish and survive here when we work for a brand that makes that puts out black images and black styles, but there almost no black people in the design floor? >> It's uh repulsive is what it is. And there's no, it's inexcusable is what it is. >> And I'm really happy. I'm really really happy that if anything, forget the success of Empire. I mean, that's that's great that we have that. >> What is important is that people of color know that they are wanted cuz Jan told me that we ain't wanted. >> You have these elite institutions like Giuliard, they could learn how to connect with a different culture, a different race of people. But what you hear from people who've attended Giuliard is a different story. >> First place I was learning more on 52nd Street than in Jiuliard. >> How long did you stay in Jiuliard? >> Long enough to know that I wasn't going to play any white music and left. >> So for those four years at Giuliard, all the white actor has to do is play all white characters. >> That's not me. me, I'm tasked to only do the classics and no black um writer is included in those classics. And then once I leave Giuliard, guess [music] what? Most of what I will be asked to do [music] are black characters, which people will not feel that I am black enough. So then I'm caught in a quagmire. His culture. >> His culture. His culture. >> Sometimes tradition gets in the way of culture. They want to put you in the box, make you learn it a certain way, a way that was established before black people were even allowed to participate. >> Um, it it occurred to me having watched MTV over the last few months, um, that it's it it's got it's a solid enterprise with it and it's got a lot going for it. I'm just flawed by the fact that there's so many so few black artists featured on it. Why is that? >> I think that we're trying to move in that direction. We want to play artists that seem to be doing music that fits into what we want to play for MTV. There's that the company is thinking in terms of narrow casting. That's evident. >> So minorities often have to carry the burden of representation. We can't just make art freely. We have to signal our own people. It's the burden we have. This leads to a crossroad. Budget versus identity. If someone else provides the money, they're going to ask you to make changes that might go against what your ultimate goal was. When they say went to 18 million, they called and said, "You got to put white people in it." >> Huh? >> Fox called like, "Dallas is going up to 18 million. Put white people in it. It's not it's not a it's not a urban movie anymore." >> Whoa. >> So, I was like, "How many white people you put in? Like, how is this going to be authentic to the marching band culture?" So, I started looking. I went back to the AU center like how is this going to make sense? like because they was like put Georgia Tech in. I'm like that ain't you they gonna be just standing there. [laughter] So we shot them. We shot Georgia Tech. We shot Georgia all the bands and they were standing there. They weren't moving at all. They on the field like >> So it just don't look right. Right. >> Jordan Pill creates Get Out. >> What you did and are doing is breaking down a door for a genre where maybe black filmmakers aren't as taken serious, aren't as present. What Jordan Peele did do is he proved to Hollywood that these type of films can make money and that black people will support these type of films. Ownership. >> Ownership. Ownership. the [clears throat] thing with how he structured his deal and how he >> Ryan's a really, you know, seems like a very very smart guy and he's been he he did a really smart thing with that deal which is that he um kind of relates to this idea of of of kind of ownership like some of the air and the Jordan deal earlier like >> you're going to get the movie and you're going to release the movie but like you know they're going to be participants in it and they got what's called a reversion so that Ryan and I assume you know the other principal creators the movie reverts back to his ownership. cuz there's a lot of value in a movie. The movies that are really successful, uh they have a lot of value in it was called like the tales. Like that's why, you know, people still they'll still license the movie for 10 20 million to to Netflix or Prime or Max, you know, that's been out a long time ago cuz people will still watch it if it's like a big big hit. So now Ryan will be able to not just, you know, get a piece of it now, but in 10 years when they're going to license Sinners again, that's all going back to him and he bet on himself, right? And it really now accused the value of that. >> Yeah. Ve, very sharp, very innovative. It was very controversial. A lot of people were on the studio side were mad at at War Brothers because it was like, oh, you're you're giving away this value. Um, but that's an example of like using that leverage. It's like, okay, you figure this guy is so good and he's got this cast and this script's so good. He's like, this is what I want. >> Change change the business essentially. >> It's about ownership. When I was, you know, young, I used to sketch the swoosh everything, you know. So, it was heartbreaking for me to have to leave Nike, but they refused to allow me to get royalty on my shoe. And I knew I had the hottest shoe in the world. I knew Yeezy was the hottest brand in the world, but I couldn't get royalties. He just said, "Look, you can make 5,000 shoes or 10,000 shoes and we'll give some of the proceeds to your favorite charity." But it was nothing to build. You know, now we building factories. >> When you lack cultural gatekeepers, you don't just get bad hairds, you get a distorted reality. >> Like my mandate tour, I need I need these women to be shot more beautifully than they ever have. And it just came from obviously historically seeing us being shot really poorly and literally before I shot this, I went to see this really big movie that one of our women was in and I was like, "Oh my god, you can't see her." >> I've seen a lot of my co-workers in the way they speak to directors, especially when those directors are women and especially when those directors are black women. >> Really? Mhm. I tell I tell people whenever I see a director who is shadowing, you know, another director, I say, "Hey, shadow," like there was I was on American Horror Stories and the director was a white man and had a shadow and the shadow was an Indian woman uh Indian-American woman. And I said, "Hey girl, find you an Indian-American woman to shadow." Because the way crew and cast will talk to this white man and follow his lead is very different than they will yours. You have to figure out and see what you will encounter. So, you need to shadow someone that looks like you, someone that shows up in the world with you, because I promise you, it's very different. >> Cinema creates culture. What you see on screen, it shapes the way you see yourself and it shapes the way other people see you. >> There is something about seeing someone who looks like you that makes it more tangible. You could see it. You could touch it and it gives you the possibility to look through your imagination and you know what? Redefine yourself. >> We're past inclusion. It's about understanding. Being sensitive enough to understand how we're depicted on screen matters. I would love for there to be a time where these subject matters don't have to be talked about. If you care about culture and not quotas, please subscribe. If you want to help the channel, feel free to become a member. And like I say, I don't always have to be right. I just want the opportunity to be wrong. >> Be appointed hand of the king. [music] >> [music] [music]