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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Hollywood Race Obsession Cuts Both Ways |
| 2008-07-25 |
| US actor Danny Glover, who plans an epic next year on Haitian independence hero Toussaint-Louverture, said he slaved to raise funds for the movie because financiers complained there were no white heroes. "Producers said 'It's a nice project, a great project... where are the white heroes?'" he told AFP during a stay in Paris this month for a seminar on film. "I couldn't get the money here, I couldn't get the money in Britain. I went to everybody. You wouldn't believe the number of producers based in Europe, and in the States, that I went to," he said. "The first question you get, is 'Is it a black film?' All of them agree, it's not going to do good in Europe, it's not going to do good in Japan. "Somebody has to prove that to be a lie!", he said. "Maybe I'll have the chance to prove it." "Toussaint," Glover's first project as film director, is about Francois Dominique Toussaint Louverture (1743-1803), a former slave and one of the fathers of Haiti's independence from France in 1804, making it the first black nation to throw off imperial rule and become a republic. The uprising he led was bloodily put down in 1802 by 20,000 soldiers dispatched to the Caribbean by Napoleon Bonaparte, who then re-established slavery after its ban by the leaders of the French Revolution. Due to be shot in Venezuela early next year, the film will star Don Cheadle, Mos Def, Wesley Snipes and Angela Bassett. "I wasn't the first one who had this idea," he said. "Sergey Eisenstein had the same idea, Anthony Quinn had this idea, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, and this goes on." The "Lethal Weapon" co-star, just turned 62, finally raised 18 of the 30 million dollars needed from a Venezuelan cultural body set up in 2006 by his friend President Hugo Chavez to counter what he termed "the Hollywood film dictatorship". Venezuelan filmmakers last year slammed the investment. "It is Mr Glover who should be bringing dollars to Venezuela," the National Association of Film Makers and the Venezuelan Chamber of Film Producers said in an open letter. Glover, a longtime activist, has supported Chavez's political revolution since he was first elected in 1998. An admirer of the Senegalese writer-filmmaker known as the father of African cinema, Ousmane Sembene, Glover has helped produce African films, including the recently-acclaimed arthouse movie "Bamako" by Abderrahmane Sissako. "The first African films that I saw were films that portrayed Africans as savages, ignorant and uncivilized, and I wanted to know something else," he said. "I was very fortunate, I had the chance to read writers like Mariama Ba, Aime Cesaire ... and Leopold Sedar Senghor. I read him when I was 20." "When I saw Sidney Poitier on screen, I was probably 10 or 11," he added. "That was a different image, an image I had never seen before, on screen. The African-Americans I saw, they danced, they were buffoons, that was the image. So Sidney brought another image." History, Glover said, had enabled him to play a wide range of roles because of the changes taking place in society. "I think cinema has played a great role in our re-imagining ourselves," he said. Hot on the heels of Clint Eastwood being attacked for not depicting blacks at Iwo Jima. Hollywood is obsessed with "rainbow diversity", not matter how nonsensical. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #15 OS, I value your insight, but please feel free to clarify how Detroit, under its succession of black mayors, meets your assessment as a cause of failure. Be careful, though. If you claim that Kilpatrick sees all blacks as his "clan/tribe," you are not only being politically incorrect, the infighting going on there about his actions among blacks themselves brings the validity of your observation into question. We won't even start on the idea of how a Bama presidency might lead to greater anti-white racism and discrimination. |
| Posted by: Jomock Platypus9662 2008-07-25 23:24 |
| #14 Jomock, it aint the skin color. Its that the US is individualist and ecuminical, Haiti is collectivist and tribalistic. Simple. America values tne individual, Haiti values the clan/tribe. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2008-07-25 22:46 |
| #13 Haiti and the U.S., the first two independent nations in the Western Hemisphere. One overwhelmingly black, the other predominantly white. Haiti is known for what? Voodoo? Papa Doc? Can't think of anything else they're known for except unwanted refugees. "Born under a bad sign" indeed. Just another example of the fact that anyplace there is a black government there are tremendous problems with the governance of that political entity. See Detroit as a U.S. example. |
| Posted by: Jomock Platypus9662 2008-07-25 21:26 |
| #12 I do think it hilarious that our moral superiors in the compassionate Hollywood Left are refusing to finance the project because there aren't enough white people in it. Mike, actually, we only have Danny's word that the Hollywood elite rejected it because it didn't have enough white people in it. They could have rejected it because they thought it sucked like a bilge pump. |
| Posted by: Rambler in California 2008-07-25 18:06 |
| #11 Hati's a basket case, and Glover's a lefty airhead, albiet one who is a pretty decent actor. The story of Toussaint's uprising is an interesting bit of history that isn't well known. If the script sticks to reality, it could make for something worth watching. Or, it could suck, for any of the reasons why movies suck--bad dirceting, bad acting, bad production values, a script that tries to filter events through Marx or postmodernism or the screenwriter's cocaine habit, or just isn't all that well written to start with. We won't know until we see it. I do think it hilarious that our moral superiors in the compassionate Hollywood Left are refusing to finance the project because there aren't enough white people in it. |
| Posted by: Mike 2008-07-25 15:15 |
| #10 "the film will star Don Cheadle, Mos Def, Wesley Snipes and Angela Bassett." -other then Cheadle (who I thought was good in hotel rwanda) I wouldn't pay to see a cRapper, a tax evader, and some over the hill heffer either. |
| Posted by: Broadhead6 2008-07-25 14:34 |
| #9 You guys are being too harsh on the folks in Haiti. I mean, they've only had 200 plus years since indepedence to create a civil society. |
| Posted by: MarkZ 2008-07-25 14:26 |
| #8 And I've been to Haiti - its a tribalistic cesspool. Such a success that peopel risk dying on the ocean rather than staying. Real good example there Glover. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2008-07-25 13:08 |
| #7 Glover is a tool, a fecking leftist moron. This movie will flop massively, since it will be a leftist polemic piece of shit. Look at the red meat: Due to be shot in Venezuela... Sergey Eisenstein (communist supporter) Harry Belafonte (anti americal leftwing looney) raised 18 of the 30 million dollars needed from a Venezuelan cultural body set up in 2006 by his friend President Hugo Chavez I hope Danny is happy, because he will not get work again after throwing this much money down the crapper for whats bascially a left wing version of a Riefenstal pice. Anyone else wonder why we need to get off foreign oil? SO Huge will not havemoeny to waste on leftist shit-heads like Glover. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2008-07-25 13:07 |
| #6 He wants to glorify the Haitian independence hero because independent Haiti has been such a rip roaring success. |
| Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2008-07-25 12:31 |
| #5 Maybe he should call the movie "Kill Whitey". Glover is a shitbag, he can stay in Venezuela. |
| Posted by: bigjm-ky 2008-07-25 12:14 |
| #4 Gee, he managed to get the money from his Commie dictator friend, whoduh thunk it? |
| Posted by: AlanC 2008-07-25 10:52 |
| #3 If Danny-boy is in charge, the film's liberal slant will doom it before it begins. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2008-07-25 10:08 |
| #2 Danny Glover's still working? Well good for him... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2008-07-25 10:02 |
| #1 Go see Mugabe he'll give ya a handful of 25m Zimbob notes. Film away |
| Posted by: Beavis 2008-07-25 09:54 |