The making of "Hollyhood." (African Americans in the motion picture industry) (Cover Story)

The success of recent black films has revived black cinema, but the struggle to produce movies not depicting "hood" violence continues

A young hispanic mother from the Bronx struggles to take control of her life, at times fighting against her family, her community and herself in Darnell Martin's $5.5 million premiere film, I Like It Like That.

In Haile Gerima's low-budget but powerful Sankofa, a black model, who is emotionally removed from her community, travels to Africa and relives her ancestors' painful slavery experience.

Love blossoms between a young black man and woman in one of Houston's toughest neighborhoods in George Jackson and Doug McHenry's $7.2 million Jason's Lyric.

These diverse black images all graced the Big Screen last fall, a highly unlikely scenario even five years ago.

There's an explosion of black images on movie screens, fueled partly by superstars such as Eddie Murphy and Whoopi Goldberg. Nevertheless, the black movie industry is still in its infancy. The power in Hollywood remains with those who can finance and distribute movies, and blacks are just beginning to make inroads in the industry's elite power structure.

Several actors and filmmakers, however, are leveraging their power by creating their own production companies. This allows them creative control and power to hire other blacks while still being tied to a studio that distributes their work.

Rejected by Tinseltown, filmmakers whose works are deemed to have low commercial value are literally taking their message to the streets. They're using word-of-mouth to market their independent films on a theater-by-theater basis, much in the same way black film pioneer Oscar Micheaux (Harlem After Midnight) did decades ago.

THE POWER OF THE DISTRIBUTOR

"There are three axes of power: finance, distribution and talent. Until you control one or all, you're powerless", says George Jackson, whose company Jackson/ McHenry Entertainment (JME) produced the blockbuster films New Jack City and House Party II. "In a historical context, we're at the beginning of the black filmmaking golden era."

"The power", adds entertainment lawyer Stephen Barnes, "always lies with those who have the means of distribution."

In 1993, Hollywood released 469 films that grossed a total of $5 billion. Black directors made 11 of those films and generated ticket sales of 29 million. In the boom year for black filmmakers - 1991, in which 19 films were released - their movies reached an audience of 40 million and accounted for only 4% of that year's ticket sales.

Blacks have been making their presence known on the other side of the camera for years. They directed highly successful films during the 1970s and 1980s, including Sidney Poitier's 1980 Stir Crazy. The movie, starring Richard Pryor, sold more than 37 million tickets. It's still the most popular film ever made by a black director. The success of such films, however, didn't open as many doors for blacks as the latest wave of black cinema has. It's at the director-actor level that black power in Hollywood is now being harnessed.

Generally, it costs between $5 million and $20 million to make a movie. Even when the money for a project is secured, it's the films with distribution deals that get to see the light of a projector. Only major studios such as Columbia, Warner Bros. and Universal can regularly guarantee financial backing and distribution. "There's a myth that anybody can make a movie. That there's money out there to make them, explains Grace Blake, an independent producer whose projects include Silence of the Lambs, School Daze and The Cotton Club. "Everybody who makes a movie isn't going to get a studio deal. Films are a very expensive form of expression. Everybody's trying to go from the top down. You [need to] go from the bottom up."

Blacks are slowly inching upward in Hollywood studios, but their bottom up" climb has reached only mid-level management. One of those who has attained such status is Stephanie Allain, senior vice president of production at Columbia Pictures. Allain started in Hollywood as a script reader and worked her way up. "There are highly placed blacks in almost every division", notes Allain, who encouraged Columbia to finance both Jason's Lyric and I Like It Like That- the first studio movie made by a black woman. But Allain readily concedes, "None of us [black studio executives] has green-light power" - that is, the ability to approve a production budget.

Pressed by groups like the NAACP, Hollywood is slowly starting to open its doors. "I think there's opportunity," Allain says. "The studios feel somewhat pressured to increase diversity in their executive ranks. The truth is that the only way is to promote and train young, ambitious, talented people beginning at entry level positions. You can't expect to be promoted from the outside."

McHenry of JME says black filmmakers must position themselves to own their own films if the problems of producing diverse movies and financing larger projects are to be solved. "If we can gain more of the decision making [power], we can avoid many of the problems," McHenry said at a recent conference of black broadcasters.

JME secured a distribution agreement with Savoy Films. Savoy provides JME with a $12 million annual budget, plus domestic distribution, promotion and advertising. "Our next step is to go to the street and make our production money," says McHenry. "So at the end of the process, we will be in a situation where we finance our own movies . . . We'll own the negatives for those movies - and then the next step would be to think about distribution." This scenario contrasts with the usual route of appealing to major studios to distribute a film and provide a budget for it.

LEVERAGING STARDOM

Denzel Washington has starred in many films, including Glory for which he won an Oscar, and has leveraged his clout to form Mundy Lane Entertainment. His company has working relationships with Tri-star, Warner, Columbia and Disney. And Mundy Lane recently purchased the rights to the popular Easy Rawling black detective series by writer Walter Mosley.

"Denzel became very serious about producing. He wanted to make sure there were some challenging roles available to him," says Debra Martin Chase, Washington's partner at Mundy Lane. "There are so many African-American stories that would make incredible movies." Chase says Mundy Lane is committed to hiring as much black talent for its productions as possible.

Spike Lee has been the most vocal proponent of hiring black technicians for behind-the-camera positions - from grips to cinematographers - often challenging both the unions and the media.

Lee made She's Gotta Have It - his first major film and one of the movies credited with ushering in the black cinema renaissance - on a shoestring budget of $175,000. By his fourth film, Mo' Better Blues, Lee was able to get $10 million from Universal Pictures. He formed his own company, 40 Acres And A Mule Productions, to ensure creative control. He also wanted to be sure that blacks would work on his productions. He soon proved to be a merchandising expert, capitalizing on everything from books that describe the making of his films and posters, to clothing related to his films.

Warrington Hudlin, who made House Party I with his brother Reginald, and the Black Filmmakers Foundation in New York convinced Paramount to sponsor a training program during the filming of Boomerang. "[The trainees] were employed as onlookers," Blake says. "Even so, I would like to see more of that happening."

John Singleton is yet another example of a black filmmaker who used his clout to help others. In 1991, at the tender age of 24, Singleton became the youngest black filmmaker to win an Oscar nomination. It was for the movie Boyz N the Hood, which raked in more than $60 million. The film's success helped Singleton get a three-year contract with Columbia to produce movies through his company, New Deal Productions. The production crew for Boyz was 90% black. "I didn't ask anybody if I could [hire a black crew]. I just did it," Singleton said in a 1991 New York Times piece about black filmmakers.

THE LURE OF THE "HOOD"

Controlling the images of black people in film is just as important as controlling who works on the film. Robert Townsend, whose movies include Eddie Murphy Raw and The Five Heartbeats, has charged that most black films aren't considered marketable unless they include violence. "There is a black renaissance, but we have to be careful," he said. "We've got to do all kinds of stories. If the films all have the same kinds of tones, then it will be another black exploitation period."

Spike Lee agrees: "There has always been a market for black films. The problem is getting Hollywood to expand the kinds of films it will make, and raising the glass ceiling in terms of money and marketing," he said in a published interview. "We're too versed as a people to have a limited subject matter."

But others believe the explanation for the rash of"hood" movies like Albert and Allen Hughes, Menace II Society is more straightforward. "These films are valuable because they're inexpensive and there is a clearly defined audience for [them]," says Stephen Barnes, who closed the deals for Boomerang and House Party I. He also represents the Hudlin Brothers and Keenan Ivory Wayans.

For those filmmakers with subject matter that's unappealing to studios and major distributors, there are few alternatives. Some independents, like Gerima - a Howard University professor - go directly to the theaters to make their own deals. That usually involves renting the screen for a week or two, then going out to promote the film and to sell tickets - an arduous undertaking any way you cut it.

Nelson George, who co-wrote Strictly Business and CB4, points to Gerima's Sankofa as a significant turning point for black filmmakers. "What he's done is prove that a film can be marketed city by city, theater by theater [outside the Hollywood establishment!," says George, author of Blackface: Reflections on African - Americans and the Movies.

Sankofa got standing-room-only attention at worldwide film festivals. It won major awards at Milan and at the Fespaco Film Festival. But in spite of the enthusiastic international reception, Sankofa was summarily rejected by American distributors. If this was a film about pathology in the black community, it would have been well received, [in the States]" says Kay Shaw, the national distribution manager at Mypheduh Films Inc. in Washington, D.C. Sankofa celebrates the story of our resistance to the enslavement process. In it, black people are not a backdrop to their own story.

When independent filmmaker Julie Dash marketed Daughters of the Dust at the Sundance Film Festival, she was told by a Japanese distributor, "That's not real black people."

Gerima stopped looking to Hollywood studios to show his movie. He looked instead to various groups in the black community. Washington, D.C., raised the money to open Sankofa for a week" Shaw said. That week turned into 11 weeks. "Then there was a call to see it all over the country."

It took Dash nine months to get a distribution deal. Even with the success of Daughters, Dash still fights to get money for new projects and wider distribution of her work.

Even when you get a distribution deal, if the project isn't marketed effectively it quickly dies. "You don't have people of color in studios who know how to market to blacks," says Lisa Davis, an entertainment lawyer who represents Spike Lee and who is the first black partner in the New York law firm of Frankfurt, Garbus, Klein & Selz. "Perfect example - The Five Heartbeats was a wonderful movie, but it was marketed to a young audience when the movie's appeal was to an older crowd."

Some blacks in the industry are starting to realize that there won,t be any significant change until they form their own alliances to finance and distribute films. For every Lee or Singleton, there are dozens of black filmmakers on the outside of Hollywood looking in.

But the idea of empowerment in the film industry seems to have taken root. Many industry insiders draw a comparison to the sports industry, where blacks have starred for decades but haven't gained ownership. Mario Van Peebles, who directed and starred in both New Jack City and the cowboy epic Posse, calls it the golden rule: "He who owns the gold makes the rules." Van Peebles owns the production companies MVP Films and Block & Chip Inc. with his father, the legendary Melvin Van Peebles, who directed the 1971 Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. New Jack City, which was produced on an $8 million budget, was one of 1991's most successful movies, grossing more than $50 million. It is the tenth most popular film directed by an African-American.

"We are still dependent on white financiers for these projects and that limits what you can do," Mario Van Peebles says.

But Van Peebles, who recently finished work on Panther, a movie about the Black Panther Party, says things are slowly changing. He says it's up to black filmmakers to make movies now that celebrate black people, while we're in the house."

Van Peebles compared the plight of black filmmakers to being a house guest.

"We can move some of the furniture around," he says, "but no one's ready to let us paint the walls."