"It's a White Industry"

Miles Davis was one of the most influential and groundbreaking musicians of the 20^th century. He was a jazz musician, composer, trumpeter and bandleader, through which he helped many of his ensemble, rise to fame.  He was at the forefront of several musical developments in jazz, including bebop, cool jazz and jazz-fusion, to name a few. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of fame and he won 9 Grammy awards – including a Lifetime Achievement Award. He has a star on Hollywood Boulevard and was awarded an honorary doctorate for his incredible contributions to music. His music, career and movements, continue to win awards 25 years after his death. This…hands down, no doubt about it, 100% should qualify him a deserving candidate for a fully funded and Hollywood endorsed biopic, correct? Wrong.

Oh, did I mention he was black?? And that changes things, IT SHOULDN’T, but it does.

Don Cheadle, who you might recognise from the Iron Man series or Hotel Rwanda, is an acclaimed actor, author, activist, writer and producer. He is about to make his directorial debut and star in a biopic, which he co-wrote, about Miles Davis’ life, ‘Miles Ahead’. He had a script, some great actors and permission from Davis’ family, yet in order to actually make the film he had been working on for 8 years, Cheadle had to set up a crowd funding campaign. Through this fundraising he managed to raise $360,000. However, it wasn’t until he rewrote the script including a role to cast a white actor, Ewan McGregor, that he was given the official go ahead for production, and enough money was invested. At the Berlin Film Festival, Cheadle said, “it’s one of the realities of the business that we are in, that films with all-Black casts are thought to be bad investments because they allegedly won't work for an international audience.” He has also continued on to say that the decision worked well for him, and he believes Ewan McGregor did a great job. Which is great, but it does not make the situation any more acceptable.

A film about a great musician, cast by a great actor and yet it struggled to raise funds?? This is typical American Hollywood white privelege, a prime example of institutional racism. When rubbish plots, characters and films are given millions of dollars at the snap of a finger, because the actors are all white. Hollywood controls the money made and spent, and it controls the images it produces. It chooses to stick to the stereotypes it knows will sell, and that means nothing is going to change. Mexicans are going to continue to clean and serve, and the token black actors will continue to be sassy, violent, in need of saving, or the funny token friend. In an article written by Chris Rock for The Hollywood Reporter he said, “Hollywood pretty much decides to cast a black guy or they don't. We're never on the "short list." We're never "in the mix." When there's a hot part in town and the guys are reading for it, that's just what happens. It was never like, "Is it going to be Ryan Gosling or Chiwetel Ejiofor for Fifty Shades of Grey?" and the same can be said for TV shows and movies across the board, and yet in order for this Miles Davis biopic to be produced, they had to rewrite the whole script to include a white character.

Rock continues on to discuss the progress the industry has made in terms of inclusion and representation, but personally I don’t think it’s progressing fast enough. “There's been progress. When I was on Saturday Night Live a few weeks ago, we did a sketch where I was Sasheer Zamata's dad and she had an Internet show. Twenty years ago when I was on Saturday Night Live, anything with black people on the show had to deal with race, and that sketch we did didn't have anything to do with race. That was the beauty: The sketch is funny because it's funny, and that's the progress. And there are black guys who are making it: Whatever Kevin Hart wants to do right now, he can do; I think Chiwetel is a really respected actor who is getting a lot of great shots just because he's really good; if Steve McQueen wants to direct a Marvel movie, they would salivate to get him. Change just takes time.”

The article is interesting, if you want to have a read! http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/top-five-filmmaker-chris-rock-753223