“I have an audience because of the blessings that I’ve had.”
Lee Daniels may be known to credit Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry for giving him a boost up the totem pole of film directors — but if it weren’t for Prince, ‘The Butler’ director may have never landed his foot beyond the industry door.
Now.. Daniels says he’s gearing up to pass on the torch to his chosen one.
“Daniels worked in casting the music video for Prince’s song “Kiss”… Prince was so impressed with his work that he asked him to cast the 1984 film Purple Rain.”
Daniels made the Purple Rain revelation during a recent appearance at Ohio State University, where the director addressed about 500 students. Turns out.. during the 80’s, Daniels’ mid-twenties were laced with Purple. In addition to lending his hand in Prince’s “Kiss” and “Purple Rain” — he also did casting for “Under The Cherry Moon.” That’s before reports reveal the now-54-year-old movie man started his production company, Lee Daniels Entertainment.
“Manipulating talent and the audience into make believe was intriguing to me.” ~Lee Daniels
Here’s what Daniels had to say about endorsing a new comer:
“Anything that I could do to ring the bell as loud as I could for this young filmmaker, to get people to see his film, I did so and I am doing so. I know the power of what Oprah and Tyler Perry did for me, and I gladly do it for someone that I really believe in.”
Is Daniels known to scour one NYC performing arts school, looking for a starry-eyed dudes to turn out? Of course! Just ask the aspiring film directors studying at the Ghetto Film School in the Bronx.
Lee Daniels may be a flaming homo but he’s a GREAT film maker, but I want to hear less about Lee Daniels and more about his upcoming film on the life and times of Richard Pryor
I can agree somewhat but explain again how Spike Lee is doing this though because you explain this one time before in a previous post but I just can’t find it
PRINCE!!!!!
(Throws my prosthetic bra at the computer screen….)
ANON 16:41, WTF IS YOUR PROBLEM WITH THE PORTRAYAL OF OUR HISTORY AS SLAVES IN AMERICA? THIS SHIT IS NOT ‘PORN’ IN ANY FORM, THERE IS NOTHING TITILLATING ABOUT IT!
Porn is ridiculous, made-up bs with no plot, depicting surgically-enhanced females performing nasty acts with multiple men in order to sexually arouse perverted White male viewers (for the most part). How can you compare a film like 12 YEARS A SLAVE to filth like that?
Why is it “abuse porn” to make a movie that addresses slavery in the most realistic manner that we’ve seen to date? (So was IRREVERSIBLE “rape porn” to you?) And even 12 YEARS A SLAVE is a still a partially sanitized version of the truth! It accurately depicts what was described in the book, but not ever salve experience was like Solomon’s. If you’ve ever ever actually read any primary sources depicting the treatment of slaves, you know that they were sometimes boiled alive or whipped until all the flesh fell off their backs, revealing the ribs & spinal cord, because the psychological torture of witnessing such depravity kept the other slaves deeply in check. THAT is what slavery was really like in some places. No one could depict such things on film without getting an X rating.
But THAT was the true level of depravity that many Whites here & abroad showed towards the Africans they had captured & enslaved — & that is the real reason why honest, accurate movies depicting slavery hadn’t been made, until now. Most White people don’t want to face the demonic nature of their ancestors, for fear of how much of that same nature still lives in them.
But as a Black person, that is NOT your problem.
It’s the 21st century, ANON — don’t you get that movies ain’t just about selling popcorn & soda? They are not just ‘entertainment’ — they’re about influencing thoughts & opinions. TV is probably the #1 medium because it comes right into your home 24/7. But movies watced in a theater run a close 2nd because they provide the complete artistic palette in an uninterrupted experience shared with strangers in a darkened theater, so they have a more powerful & immediate effect that TV. A film director gets to utilize image, sound, light, costumes, hair-&-make-up, set design, special FX, acting, music, all wrapped around a story, in order to get the maximum emotional response from the viewer. And with a great film like 12 YEARS A SLAVE, that response will change you as a person & make you look at your Black self in a new way.
NOTHING within the realm or art is more profound than being able to use movies to help people change their minds, or make them up, or see the truth with new eyes. A painting can’t do that. A song or symphony can’t do that. Dance or architecture can’t do that. Music videos can’t do that. Only movies can do that.
And unless your idea of a great Black film is a bs remake like ABOUT LAST NIGHT because it’s ‘contemporary’ & offers lots of sex with zero intellectual challenge, you cannot be such a dolt that you don’t see that difference in value between those 2 movies. One will be forgotten next month. 12 YEARS will still be watched & talked about after we’re both dead.
Steve McQueen said this about this movie:
“McQueen’s film pitilessly documents the beatings, lynchings, rape and brutality of a slave-owning class half-demented by its own moral corruption, and routinely reduces audiences to tears. “I hadn’t realised slavery was that bad,” is the comment its director keeps hearing.
“There’s been a kind of amnesia, or not wanting to focus on this, because of it being so painful. It’s kind of crazy. We can deal with the Second World War and the Holocaust and so forth and what not, but this side of history, maybe because it was so hideous, people just do not want to see. People do not want to engage.”
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jan/04/steve-mcqueen-my-painful-childhood-shame
EVERY Black person should see 12 YEARS A SLAVE. And if you can watch that movie & not feel different afterwards, if you don’t walk away from it despising slavery even more but also loving yourself more for being the descendent of those who had the strength & heroism to survive that horror, then your mind & spirit are truly dead. Just hand in your Black card & take a seat because you have no soul left in you. And there is nothing more useless than a Black person with no soul.
One last thing:
Steve McQueen didn’t find the autobiography 12 YEARS A SLAVE through Skip Gates or Oprah or any of the folks most people here would call “Black Boule” (which I don’t believe in). As connected as people pretend such folks are, no one from that set had anything to do with getting the book published. And McQueen’s WHITE babymama came across the book after he’d told her he wanted to make a movie about a free Black man in the American north who was sold into slavery in the deep south.
BTW ANON, because he survived what he did, Solomon Northup has 5th-generation descendants alive TODAY who knew his story before there ever was a movie — something that can’t be said by the vast majority of Blacks in America.
The Hollywood Reporter just did a one-of-a-kind piece, with family photos, about his descendants & what some of them thought of the film:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/12-years-a-slave-solomon-683174
HAPPY LAST DAY OF BLACK HISTORY MONTH, FOLKS!
RC, I am going to watch it this weekend.
You are blind. That was 2014 “Uncle Toms Cabin”. A sell out movie by a sell out director.
You dont need real talent to get a handup from negroes. They never look past their friendships and sex partners. They rarely apply the equal opportunity we marched for.
Exactly
Tyler Perry knock off!! Let’s see Mr.Daniel’s make a epic film like “madeas witness protection” LMAO I’m playin
Check out the made-for-TV version of 12 Years A Slave. Solomon Northrup’s Odyssey(directed by Gordon Parks) is more than likely available at your library. Parts of it can also be viewed on youtube.
FYI Purple Rain came before the ‘Kiss’ music video.
hello this sounds like some bullshit Purple Rain came out 1st now if he did well with the video kiss and he decided to let him cast under the cherry moon the I would agree because under the cherry moon sucked !!