Tuesday, July 29, 2008

THE THIRD AND FINAL ACT IN MY INTERVIEW WITH HOLLYWOOD EXEC JEFF TAPLIN FROM INFINITUM NIHIL



If you missed the previous two acts, click for Part 1 or Part 2

ACT THREE

SHEQUETA
Where can up and coming black filmmakers meet people like you?

JEFF
If you’re working in Hollywood I guess you’ll meet people. Just get your feet wet you know. There’s no one place or anything. Just go out there (and) network. Cause one door will open another door will open another door. Like when I came into town, I didn’t know all the black people who worked in town but over the years you just kind of meet them. Maybe you’ll meet someone who’s like oh yeah I know this person, you should meet this person. So that’s what will happen when you get out there and start working. It’s all about networking.

SHEQUETA
Any last words of encouragement or advice to the young and old black filmmakers struggling to make it in Hollywood?

JEFF
I guess I would just say don’t give up. Your voice is…how do I want to say it…don’t feel that you don’t have a place at the table. Everyone has a place at the table. You just have to make that place for you. When I look at Spike Lee’s career, the thing that I really liked about it and the thing that I took away from his career and that I admire him for is that he always has this…I always felt like he has this sort of sense that what he was saying was valid. He felt entitled to say it and speak his mind artistically and creatively. Don’t ever feel like you can’t do it or you shouldn’t be here. It doesn’t matter what race you are or what background you come from, you’re here and don’t feel like you’re somehow last or second class or something. Just sort of look around you and see how far society has come in such a short time in the last forty years.

JEFF CONT’D
There was this column I read recently by the former political speech writer Peggy Noonan. She has a regular weekly column in the Wall Street Journal. She was talking about the Obama candidacy. She’s like a white cath- I think she’s Catholic, probably in her fifties-sixties, and she made this point in her column just how it all kind of hit her and how it’s probably hitting a lotta people. She said how she had a friend who told her this anecdote—and I assume they were white— I guess it was the night of like several different primaries. One of the primaries was in Alabama and she said the friend tells this anecdote where they’re sitting there watching the TV and they’re just like "oh Obama wins Alabama." It kind of went in one ear and out the other like okay great. This person’s daughter saw the TV and she goes "hey look daddy, isn’t that the place where they put the fire hoses on black people?" And he was kinda like wow he hadn’t really thought of it like that. He hadn’t really seen it that way. Like isn’t that an amazing accomplishment in his lifetime and his children’s lifetime? Here she is at school learning about this and then here she is watching on TV and so he hadn’t really made that connection.
JEFF CONT'D
So her point of this anecdote was…despite the country’s problem it’s still an amazing country. That we can have that moment and kind of wow here’s a black man who again like forty years ago they would have turned the fire hose on him and here he is winning not only the primary of this state, but also goes on to win to be the candidate for one of the two national parties. So you know we live in this amazing time of history. Even when I was coming up like ten years ago, I never like felt like oh I shouldn’t be here. I always kind of had this mentality of I deserve to be here. Like you know the previous generations fought their battles of civil rights, and women rights, and minority rights. They fought these battles so I could be doing this job here and now. So I shouldn’t take that that for granted. And at the same time, I should be aware of that and kind of realize that I don’t need to struggle as hard. They fought those fights and now it’s up to me to make good on that promise. I think that’s where many blacks find themselves. At this point in time and history, we have to now make good on the promise of the dream deferred. You know Martin Luther King and Malcolm X’s and everybody else, Booker T. (Washington) and (George Washington) Carver and all those guys.

SHEQUETA
We’re on the backs of our ancestors…

JEFF
Exactly, and we have to make good on their struggles and their fights and their victories and their failures and continue to go forward. And to really live in the spirit that one day everyone will be equal no matter your race or religion you know, your gender, your sexual orientation. That’s what we all should be moving forward to. To that day where people don’t have to say uh you know if we have one more black person in this film it’ll be considered a black film. Again, look at someone like Will Smith and you look at a movie like Pursuit of Happyness, that was basically a black film.

SHEQUETA
But they would never say that...

JEFF
But it wasn’t marketed as a black film and people went and saw it anyway. Even though the story was kinda pedestrian. Again, it sort of shows that we’ve come so far in terms of how we look at entertainment (and) how we look at ourselves…You know people always say oh you know art imitates life-imitates art. And again I’m not sure if it’s one leading the other but what I do know is that they both inform each other and they both work off of each other. Maybe in a way, the fact that there were so many movies where you have Morgan Freeman playing the President, where people can kind of go okay I’m okay for that idea. People can somehow take what was previously fiction and turn it into fact and go okay I’d be okay with having a black president cause Morgan Freeman was the President and it was okay in that movie.
SHEQUETA
In conclusion...

JEFF
At the end of the day, Hollywood, all they care about is green. So when you prove to them that you can make money they don’t really care who you put in your movies or what the movies are about just as long as you make money for them. But at the same time, you gotta realize that you want to put out something that is positive or at least enlightening to a different experience….My advice would be that the path is easier (and) there are many obstacles but just don’t let those get you down and set you back. And just realize that we’ve come a long way.
FADE OUT:

THE END
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