Late Friday, heading back to my apartment in a Lyft ride, watching the smooth, white marble and granite of the Washington Monument illuminate the nighttime sky as we passed by, it suddenly occurred to me that of the five best performances we’ve seen so far in 2019, three of them belong to black actors. For those of you reading this article that have not seen Lupita Nyong’o hypnotically haunt our screens in Us, Jonathan Majors movingly mesmerize in The Last Black Man in San Francisco, or Kelvin Harrison Jr dynamically declare his arrival in Luce, stop right here, rectify that misstep, and imprint their greatness into your movie memory banks at once.
Don’t worry, I’ll wait……
Seen them all? Good. Lupita’s yin and yang performances that brilliantly pull from opposite sides of the emotional spectrum with the quality of both remaining equally high has stood the test of time for almost the entirety of the year. Majors’ rangy portrayal of the eccentric but lovable Montgomery drives home the importance of never judging a book by its cover while Harrison’s stunning turn as the sociopathic Luce is one of the year’s most chilling and impactful achievements in acting. There has been frequent conversation as of late about the monochromatic makeup of awards season nominees and the dearth of diverse faces when the time arises to recognize the year’s best in acting. The fact that such a strong case can be made that the best acting performances of the year in Female Lead, Male Lead, and Supporting Male all hail from black actors is a remarkable achievement that I think is worthy of a little more acknowledgement and discussion. But that hardly anyone has noticed is unfortunately not that shocking and something that we’ve seen before in recent memory; something that if you think about more deeply, raises another question that could help to alleviate some of the recent pains in the film business that many have been wracking their brains trying to solve.
This display of excellence from a demographic that has been historically overlooked and underutilized echoes what we saw in 2018 when three of my top five films of that year were both written and directed by people of color. Daveed Diggs’ and Rafael Casal’s Blindspotting directed by Carlos López Estrada, If Beale Street Could Talk co-written and directed by the indubitable Barry Jenkins, the moving thriller Searching written by Aneesh Chaganty and Sev Ohanian and directed by Chaganty, and Steve McQueen’s Widows. And like what we’ve seen so far in 2019, these great films from the previous year also feature awards-worthy performances from actors of color like John Cho’s heart wrenching turn as a determined father in Searching, Daveed Diggs’ and Rafael Casal’s intoxicating chemistry in Blindspotting, and Regina King’s Academy Award winning performance in If Beale Street Could Talk. While representing the best that film has had to offer over the last two years, these films achieved box office success ranging from surprisingly pleasant to disappointing due to most of them being the endeavors of independent studios with the marketing budgets to match. Indeed, how to successfully connect with modern adult audiences in a landscape where most refuse to engage with films any more serious than a teen targeted PG-13 movie is a problem that has perplexed even the larger Hollywood studios. Their previous attempts have met with increasingly poor results so, with the quality of work put forth by these independent filmmakers and actors of color and the positive reception from film audiences, I found myself wondering: In a desperate time for major studios scrambling to figure out how to sell adult dramas again, why isn’t greater diversity being explored as one possible answering considering the evidence in its favor?
Hollywood’s diversity problem has mirrored that of the greater society in which it exists. A 2019 study on diversity in Hollywood conducted by UCLA’s College of Social Sciences found that people of color remained underrepresented on every industry employment front in 2016-17 with 19.8 percent of film leads being minorities with 12.6 percent employed as film directors and 7.8 percent as film writers. This trend persists despite the percentage of minorities with the populace of the United States rising to nearly 40 percent in 2017, with the millennial generation that constitutes the coveted 25-34 adult marketing demographic being one of the most diverse generation in American history. This increasingly diverse audience of potential moviegoers would like nothing more than to see themselves represented onscreen and box office results bear out not only that reality, but the potential financial windfall that could result from fulfilling said desire.
My favorite films of 2018 as mentioned earlier were all critical darlings and, with the exception of Widows, were also well-received by the audiences that did get a chance to see them with Blindspotting, Beale Street, and Searching each garnering at least a 70% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Financially, Searching was a decent hit for its distributor Sony Pictures, earning $75.5 million following a $5 million purchase of the film from the Sundance Film Festival. In its opening weekend, Blindspotting clocked in a per screen average of $23,750 on only fourteen screens, finishing with $4.83 million gross on only 523 screens and minimal marketing. If we extend this box office analysis past adult dramas and into other genres, the financial potential of increased diversity continues to be obvious. Warner Bros.’ breakout 2018 romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians compiled a worldwide gross of $238.5 million, against a production budget of $30 million. After a summer box office that will likely only see one original film gross over $100 million domestically, the creatively fresh, diverse independent films that satisfy critics and the audiences that see them alike seem to be a clear potential solution for what ails the adult drama. The success and appeal diverse dramas enjoy on an independent level can be possibly be extrapolated on a larger scale with the backing and support of major studios. It’s certainly worth a shot from an industry struggling to find any other solutions to an environment that edges closer to having room only for blockbuster films and relegating everything else to streaming. In terms of the “business” side of the movie business, there are contractual reasons explaining the dearth of adult dramas in theaters and why studios are prevented from presenting them to audiences even if they wanted to. Following The Walt Disney Company’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox last year, the children’s entertainment behemoth claimed forty percent of the film business. Disney’s exhibition terms with theaters often require them to show their films in a specific number of auditoriums for a minimum amount of time or be barred from showing the film(s) at all in any theater across the country. And since Disney is a movie studio that almost exclusively produces blockbusters and remakes, the only movies modern audiences seem willing to pay to see, theaters are forced to agree to the rigid terms, creating situations where some small town theaters with eight screens have six of them occupied by Disney movies. Modern movie business realities dictate that even if movie studios do wisen up and realize that if presented with fresh, diverse, and creative takes on adult dramas audiences will turn out for them, they may not be able to present them in a proper manner that would bring results.
Instead of waiting for old, familiar faces to save a dying industry to poor results, why not give fresh, innovative creators a chance to display their skills on a grander stage after proving that audiences enjoy the sampling they’ve already been given? The best of the year level performances of actors like Lupita Nyong’o, Jonathan Majors, and Kelvin Harrison Jr. show that the talent among minority actors is there and if given the opportunity to display it, greatness can be achieved and these actors can perform to a level that surpasses that of the rest of their peers. The continued hesitancy to extend these opportunities even in a business environment calling out for fresh tactics highlights the lack of outside-the-box, creative thinking from studio executives and is indicative of the decision-making that has led to this conundrum in the first place. In the bleak landscape of the future of the multiplex, a splash of color could be what’s needed to breathe life back into cinema. Can Hollywood finally move past its prejudices and recognize the potential for success in time to save itself? And if it can, have mergers and acquisitions already rendered any attempt fruitless before it can even get off the ground? Lovers of cinema can only hope the answers are found sooner rather than later.
