AppBLACKation Rejected

A Hollywood consultant’s scathing report on what he sees as Tinseltown’s race problem.

Racism has always pervaded American life, but as Johnson recounts in his first book, it has adopted new and insidious forms in recent years, particularly in Hollywood, where he worked from the early 1990s until quite recently. He describes an industry in which black actors are chastised for turning in performances that read as “too refined,” in which a TV network executive won’t hire a black musician because “he scares me, and I’ll deny I ever said that if I have to,” and in which, regardless of race, all participants “seemed to get off on degrading anyone below them.” Johnson tells these anecdotes as asides to his own story: that of an aspiring writer in Los Angeles who can’t catch a break. After arriving there from the Midwest, Johnson discovered that “Blacks had their areas, and so did whites, much like Chicago.” The movie business is segregated, he charges. White executives guard their turf through employment intimidation, he writes, and the search for “like-minded people” often means further marginalizing the already marginalized. Johnson explains that young black filmmakers do get opportunities to work, but if those projects fail to live up to expectations, their creators aren't provided with second chances. Johnson writes with grace and intelligence. At times, he seems to set down harsh facts against his own instincts: his temperament is somewhat conservative, and had the episodes he recounts been less egregious, he may not have felt the need to record them. The reader curious to know how an idea becomes a script and then a property and then a movie or a television show will find a step-by-step insider account of the process here, one chronicled with unhappy wisdom but without bitterness. “They played the game dirty and used undetectable discrimination tactics to beat me and other blacks right [off the playing] field,” Johnson writes toward the end. His engrossing story should make readers sorry they did: Hollywood would be a better place if he was still a part of it.  

An absorbing and harrowing look at a cutthroat industry culture that runs on raw ambition and hidden shame.