Reel life: Why don't black heroes matter in movies?
Did you know that if writer/actor/director Don Cheadle hadn't fabricated a white colead for his new Miles Davis biopic "Miles Ahead" no movie studio would back it?
"Until there was a white colead in the movie," Cheadle told USA Today's Andrea Mandell, "there was nothing that was going to happen."
Something happened, all right.
Instead of Miles Davis being the hero of his own story, the jazz musician became a colead along with Ewan McGregor's Rolling Stone writer Dave Braden, an unethical opportunist who joins Davis (Cheadle) for an episodic adventure involving gunfire, car chases and a stolen secret session tape (that never really happened).
So, Davis becomes the latest black protagonist in a biopic whose story is diluted because the white character diverts the focus.
Remember the 2000 biopic "Men of Honor," starring Cuba Gooding Jr. as Carl Brashear, the U.S. Navy's first black deep sea diver?
He's about to die underwater when Master Chief Billy Sunday (Robert De Niro) saves his life. Later in the movie, Sunday also saves Brashear's career.
Billy Sunday never existed. Yet, he's given a pivotal role in Brashear's story.
You'd think that martyred civil rights leader Medgar Evers would be the hero of his own story in 1997's fact-based civil rights drama "Ghosts of Mississippi." Right?
Nope. The hero is Alec Baldwin's white assistant district attorney prosecuting the man who killed him.
Rob Reiner admitted that he wouldn't have directed "Ghosts of Mississippi" had the main character been black.
"I didn't feel I had the right to tell the stories of people like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X or Medgar Evers for that matter," he said in the movie's production notes. "But I felt I had the right to tell the story of a white person facing these issues and what he learns about himself."
What issues? Being lynched? Having a burning tire put around your head?
In Hollywood, racial bias is an insidious force, silent, invisible, virtually undetectable in small doses. But make no mistake, every one of these movies, including "Miles Ahead" (which opens in expanded markets this weekend), is a dose of racial bias.
<h3 class="briefHead">How they got 'Jungle' star to act alone?</h3>
To get authentic performances from inexperienced "Jungle Book" star Neel Sethi, puppeteers from Jim Henson's Creature Shop played scenes with him in front of blue screens where CGI animal characters would be inserted later.
"Sure, you could put a tennis ball on a stick, but it's not the same," said visual effects supervisor Robert Legato in the movie's production notes. "A tennis ball can't trigger responses like a master puppeteer who is used to dealing with kids and eliciting emotions."
Sometimes a puppeteer would put eyeballs on his hand or use a life-size puppet to work with Neel.
"We'd change it up from take to take to keep it fresh for this young kid who wasn't a seasoned actor," Legato said. "It helped him give a really great performance."
<h3 class="briefHead">Film critics notebook</h3>
An expanded 10th annual Screen Test Student Fest starts with a 10 a.m. doughnut reception on Saturday, April 16, at the Prairie Center for the Arts, 201 Schaumburg Court, Schaumburg, and ends with a 7:30 p.m. competition. Admission ranges from $5 to $10. Ten cash awards to be presented. Go to ci.schaumburg.il.us/PCA/youth/Pages/ScreenTestStudentFest.aspx.
Buffalo Grove 007 novelist (and half of the Dann & Raymond Movie Club team) Raymond Benson will be on hand to celebrate the 50th anniversary screening of the fourth James Bond thriller "Thunderball" at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 21, at the Pickwick Theatre, 5 S. Prospect Ave., Park Ridge.
Benson has written six authorized 007 novels and three novelizations based on film screenplays. He joins Ian Fleming Foundation board member Colin Clark of Oak Lawn for the show. General admission $10. parkridgeclassicfilm.com.