![]() ![]() The script was about life in South Central Los Angeles, and its author was a USC film school student, John Singleton. I suspect Amy feared that the project would be shot down by other staffers' comments, which is why she asked to see me in a separate meeting late that afternoon." "This script was not presented in that meeting. ![]() "Normally anything to be given to me for weekend reading would have been brought up in the regular Friday morning staff meeting," Price said. Late one Friday afternoon in March 1990, Amy Pascal, who was then a production vice-president at Columbia (she now heads Sony's Columbia Pictures), asked to see Price to discuss a unique script that she wanted him to include in the usual weekend reading he would do at his house in the Malibu Colony. Kramer, Tootsie, Gandhi, Ghostbusters, and Out of Africa. That executive, Frank Price, was chairman of Columbia Pictures, responsible for developing and green-lighting hits like Kramer vs. It's a black story, but I believe there's a chance to pull in a white audience, too,'" Price remembers "I said, 'A-ha, it's contemporary, it's not period. The story behind its making is one of a young, talented screenwriter and a studio executive who took a chance on him. Boyz n the Hood also introduced a national conversation about inner-city gang violence, a subject that until then had been mostly a local urban issue. The film is now considered one of the centerpieces of modern black cinema for its realistic portrayal of life in the inner city. Later, the Motion Picture Academy nominated Singleton for writing and directing Oscars, making him not only the youngest filmmaker nominated for directing but also the first African American. ![]() Press coverage of violence attributed to its opening made it controversial, while rave reviews made it one of the most critically acclaimed of the year. He proved that a movie with no white faces as major characters, about the dicey topic of black-on-black crime, could win over critics and audiences of all colors. Many find it patronizing.īut 20 years ago this summer, director John Singleton-who returns to theaters in September with Abduction-defied that wisdom. The picture, as many have noted, fits into a mold that critics label a "white savior" film, the kind of movie where white stars appear to help the black characters do something they might not otherwise do on their own. Just look at the current box office success The Help-Emma Stone, a white actress, stars in the film about the black experience during the Jim Crow era in the South. The conventional wisdom in Hollywood is that if you want to have a film about minorities, there need to be white actors in the lead roles. ![]()
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