As black film gets serious, will the industry - and audiences - take it seriously?
You're watching Beyond The Trailer's review of Straight Outta Compton...
Tyler Perry is perhaps most associated with black film today, and it was indeed his early
box office success which made Hollywood begin to cater to black audiences at a level not
seen since blaxploitation. However, these days Perry's films seem as antiquated as those
do, and there are new players emerging. One is Will Packer and while he isn't a household
name like Perry he's certainly as prolific. Stomp the Yard, Obsessed, Think Like a Man,
Ride Along - almost every black comedy or thriller made in the past ten years is produced
by Packer. In fact, the three biggest producers in black film right now are Packer, Forest
Whitaker and Brad Pitt. But while Packer's films are decidedly mainstream, commercial
fare, Whitaker and Pitt have pioneered awards contenders - and winners - like 12 Years a
Slave, The Butler and Dope. And one of the reasons Whitaker and Pitt have found so much
success is that their films are old school, and use white Hollywood's decades old checklist
when it comes to depicted the downtrodden and diverse. But now Packer is looking to
up his game, and with his first serious film - his first historical drama - he's boldly
producing a film about a part of black history that's important to black people and depicts
problems that still plague the black community today. And the subject of this film is a political
rap group that scared a lot of white people back then, and who's messages probably still
scare a lot of white people today. Yet ironically, the two NWA founders producing this film along
with Packer are hardly the angry disenfranchised youths they once were. Almost thirty years
later they're now one-percenters. Dr Dre became the world's first hip hop billionaire when
he sold Beats to Apple, and Ice Cube is a movie star who cast his own son as himself
in this movie - hmm, what's a good rhyme for nepotism? So while NWA was able to strike
a nerve with black audiences back in 1988, can they still reach out and touch them today?
And now that they're savvy businessmen, have they learned enough to reach out and touch
white audiences - and critics, and awards voters - as well? Hell, Packer might have
produced some of Ice Cube's comedies, but maybe he and Dre should've taken this to Whitaker or Pitt...?