ETHNIC LENSING INCORPORATING PEOPLE OF COLOR INTO BIG-BUDGET FILMS IS NO LONGER THE EXCEPTION.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

The mood-swinging debate that sprang up during the recent Academy Awards season over racial representation in Hollywood movies left out one big, potentially crucial component.

Some years ago, foreign box-office surpassed domestic and is still growing into an ever-bigger slice of the movie profit pie. 2001's 10 top- grossing films, for example, made a collective $2.314 billion at North American theaters and $2.773 billion elsewhere, for a whopping foreign exchange differential of $459 million.

Will bottom-line-conscious U.S. studios respond to such numbers with films that not only look more like the country, but like the world?

Empirical evidence indicates that the answer is yes.

`About the quality'

``Nowadays, it's basically about the quality and popularity of the actor; it has nothing to do with color,'' observes Rolf Mittweg, president of worldwide marketing and distribution for New Line Cinema, a studio that has long been committed to African-American-targeted product and such cross-cultural blockbusters as the Jackie Chan-Chris Tucker ``Rush Hour'' comedies.

``We absolutely think about ethnically mixed casting,'' adds Jorge Saralegui, the Cuban-born, suburban New York-raised producer of such recent releases as ``Queen of the Damned,'' ``The Time Machine'' and ``Showtime,'' all of which went to some lengths to vary the color of their casts. ``It's such a conscious thing.''

But there are caveats when it comes to foreign audiences and distributors' contribution to this trend. The German-born Mittweg, who's been dealing with overseas territories at New Line for 12 years, says that he simply does not hear complaints from abroad about either the ethnic balance or negative cultural portrayals in American films. And Saralegui points out that ``most foreign territories are very star-oriented, and that works against the argument in the countries that only like big, white American stars.''

`Never ... a better time'

That acknowledged, there has never been a better time in world history to be an African-American movie star. The unprecedented best acting Oscars won by Halle Berry and Denzel Washington last month came amid a cycle of releases either headlined by or prominently featuring blacks - ``Snow Dogs,'' ``John Q.,'' ``Blade II,'' ``Panic Room,'' ``Changing Lanes,'' ``High Crimes'' - that repeatedly topped the domestic box-office charts.

``It just says that people think that I can make money for them,'' ``Lanes'' star Samuel L. Jackson says with a self-satisfied laugh. ``It's real simple: I'm able to pick and choose the roles I do, and I never read race-specific scripts. My agents and managers send me anything and everything that crosses their desks.''

Even the year's biggest hit, the computer-animated ``Ice Age,'' can be viewed metaphorically as part of the multiethnic trend for its theme of animals from different species banding together. The movie's sloth is voiced by John Leguizamo, a New Yorker of Colombian and Puerto Rican heritage whose own busy career, he reckons, is the result of film-influencing forces at home, abroad and crossing both ways over borders.

``It's happening both behind the scenes and in front of the camera a lot more,'' Leguizamo notes. ``You've got John Woo from Hong Kong directing 'Mission: Impossible 2' with South African villains and the girl is played by an African from England. (African-American) Carl Franklin directed the new movie with Ashley Judd, Latino directors are popping out of nowhere. ... It's happening everywhere.

``And especially for Latin people, this is the first big boom that's really sticking,'' he adds. ``That's because, before, we didn't know how to work the system as well and English wasn't our dominant language. But now that we've mastered English, it's so much easier to get in there and fight for what you want.''

`Not ... enough big roles'

Language proficiency and the most lucrative offshore market outside of Western Europe, however, has not yet enabled a third U.S. minority group to realize the gains in Hollywood that Latinos are starting to enjoy and the ironically less-exportable African-Americans have been expanding on for over a dozen years.

``It hasn't translated to Asian-Americans getting the leads in movies,'' notes Guy Aoki, founding president and executive board member of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans, an industry advocacy group. ``They continue to use Jackie Chan, Chow Yun-Fat, Jet Li ... all of these people from abroad, probably figuring that if they don't do well in America, they'll still sell overseas. But by using actors from Hong Kong or China who are not very good at speaking English, they're limiting the kinds of roles that Asians or Asian-Americans can play. At least African-Americans are getting big enough roles to win Oscars. We're not getting big enough roles to get nominated for best supporting actors.''

Aoki blames some of that on Asian audiences' contentment with their own stars and the earlier-mentioned, white American biggies who are popular everywhere - even, in still small but rapidly growing proportions, in India, the only other country on Earth with a cinema industry as large as ours.

India's colorful, song-and-dance-centric and very culturally specific Bollywood product is gradually incorporating Hollywood presentational values - Mira Nair's internationally successful ``Monsoon Wedding'' is an example - while stylistically influencing Western productions, most notably the Academy Award-nominated ``Moulin Rouge.''

As the burgeoning competition/cross-pollination between Hollywood and Bollywood indicates, the international movie marketplace is a complex ethnic mosaic comprising many different groups. For example, despite political tensions between America and many Arab and Muslim nations stemming from the war on terrorism, Hollywood movies remain extremely popular in many of those countries. And this despite a tendency, long before the World Trade Center was attacked, to target Muslim terrorists as the preferred villains in dozens if not hundreds of American action movies.

`Racist against Arabs'

But now, in another paradox brought on by the growing importance of international markets, there's optimism that even that could change.

``I think yes, as Hollywood increasingly depends on different audiences, if those audiences, governments, companies or what-have-you come to express objections to certain types of portrayals, it will absolutely start to affect the way these portrayals are conducted,'' says Hussein Ibish, communications director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. ``Clearly, it would, because one thing Hollywood responds to is the bottom line, and international markets are potentially capable of withholding as well as granting business.

``But one of our complaints to Arab states is that, while restricting films on all kinds of otherwise dubious bases, they have not generally speaking made any objection to films that are racist against Arabs,'' Ibish adds. And that's because, he acknowledges, American films are so gosh-darn entertaining - but also so resistant to thoughtful consideration that their cultural and racial trespasses simply don't register with besotted viewers anywhere in the world.

``Our cinema has already been changed dramatically by the change to globalization,'' notes Toby Miller, a New York University professor of cinema studies and one of the authors of ``Global Hollywood,'' a recently published book that examines the international film trade. ``One of the reasons why we've had so many action-adventure movies is that they require minimal dialogue. The reason for that is not the claim that we have an MTV generation here that can't understand complex films. It's that there's a public around the world that needs minimal dialogue so you have minimal costs and problems of translation.''

But while acknowledging that Hollywood is capable of doing anything in pursuit of every last euro, yen and rupee it can get, Anglo-Australian Miller reckons that, ultimately, we'll be seeing more diverse and accurate representations of all the world's peoples in movies for altruistic as well as commerce-based reasons.

``There are strong pressures, and have been for some time, for Hollywood to think about not offending other communities and to think about issues of cultural sensitivity,'' Miller says. ``But the two most prominent pressures are that, one, Hollywood is still liberal, and likes to see itself as racially tolerant or whatever. It listens to criticism on that level.

``And then the other factor is money, money, money,'' Miller, no ivory tower idealist, quickly adds.

CAPTION(S):

5 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) repainting hollywood

As global box office grows, Tinseltown moves to reflect a more multicultural world

(2) no caption (Denzel Washington)

(3) no caption (Jackie Chan)

(4) no caption (Halle Berry)

(5) no caption (Jennifer Lopez)