African-American films ride ‘Cosby effect’
Hollywood taking note as middle-class tales succeed
By Terry Armour Tribune entertainment reporter
Preston Whitmore didn’t exactly set out to make a statement. He didn’t think he was filling some void in Hollywood. When he penned the screenplay for “This Christmas,” his semi-autobiographical film about the trials and tribulations of a middle-class African-American family celebrating the holidays, he was simply writing about what he knew best.
“When I sat down to write this, I was merely writing stories based on my family experience,” the director said. “When I sat down to write, I just wrote about the stories that happened to me.”
These stories about family, while universal, rarely make it onto the big screen. More often, films that deal with the African-American experience focus on the hip-hop community, “gangsters” and violence. But the latest spate of movies depicting middle- to upper-middle-class life, including “This Christmas,” which opens nationwide Wednesday, is proving there is an audience for this type of fare.
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Set in San Francisco, “This Christmas” tells the story of the Whitfields who, for the first time in four years, are together for the holidays, each with his or her own set of baggage. There’s the oldest daughter Lisa (King), who has reached an impasse in her marriage. There’s Kelli (played by Sharon Leal), whose love life has taken a back seat to her career. There’s oldest son Quentin (Idris Elba), who is only home because he’s on the lam from some hoods.
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“That middle-class African-American audience is sporadically taken seriously,” said Brandon Gray, president of Box Office Mojo, which since 1999 has tracked Hollywood box-office numbers. “You will get a picture like ‘Why Did I Get Married’ or ‘Soul Food’ or ‘The Best Man,’ and it will do well, and the industry will act shocked and surprised by it, as if it came out of the blue. But there is this sense that the audience isn’t being as consistently served as it could be, because it is a lucrative market. These films tend to be relatively low budget, and they tend to post good grosses. None has been a real blockbuster, but they don’t need to be blockbusters. They have a built-in audience.” (more…)
My only fear with movies like “This Christmas” is that they tend to follow the same story-line: somewhat of a close-knit family gathers together around a major event only to find out they are not as close as they thought they were over the years. One sibling is a skank, another is the college-educated snob, another is the hustlah, another has a dream of becoming something, but was always afraid to mention it to anyone. And finally, you have the main character who brings it altogether. I’m certainly not knocking it because it is a good alternative to the string of gun-toting hustahs who has a beef to settle. I just hope we are not over-killing the alternative.
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