Sounds like a plan...I can't wait till they start handing out cars:D j/k

Akeelah and the Bee article... so true
 

THE MO'KELLY REPORT: (Continue to) Boycott Akeelah and the Bee

No, I’m not talking about graduation from high school or college…as it is that time of year. I’m not talking about any of you out there who managed to marry your high school or college sweetheart…as it is also that time of year.

Congratulations are in order because ‘we’ managed to ‘stay the course.’ ‘We’ managed to be consistent and remain true to our collective ideals, blocking anything threatening our growth as a people.

Ladies and gentlemen, put your damn hands together for the successful boycott of the movie Akeelah and the Bee.

It takes real temerity to ignore arguably the best movie of the year. Not the best ‘Black’ movie of the year, but the BEST movie in all of 2006. That takes a level of dedication rarely seen and unheard of unmitigated gall.

Yes, I remember the odds were more in our favor with Phat Girlz. We had more ‘excuses’ available at our disposal. Everything from “not wanting to support a movie starring Mo’Nique,” to not supporting a movie with a supposedly misguided marketing campaign.”

Yes, I was worried. Deep down inside I knew ‘we’ wouldn’t be able to rely on those excuses the next time around and I worried whether we’d have the gumption to make sure another positive movie highlighting the Black experience would under-perform commercially.

When you lay it out on paper, it really didn’t look promising. There was a great script, great starring cast, including two Academy Award nominees Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne…and even a superb performance by relative newcomer Keke Palmer.

But ‘we’ had an ace in the hole. ‘We’ didn’t give a damn.

The movie was executive produced by Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. Not Oprah, not Quincy, not Bill (Cosby), not Bob (Johnson) but Mark.

As in Mark Cuban. Uh, no thanks Mark. I’d appreciate it if you left the meaningful and ‘positive’ movies to ‘us.’ You have no business trying to produce thoughtful and thought-provoking African-American cinema. You AND Steven Spielberg can go straight to hell. I’m still mad at him for that abomination called The Color Purple. 11 Academy Award nominations? What in the hell was HE thinking?

See, what Mark Cuban didn’t understand was although he had the best of intentions and produced a stellar cinematic piece…he forgot one minor detail.

‘We’ don’t give a damn.

Never underestimate ignorance and indifference. They are more powerful and potent than virtually any force known to man. They are mother and father respectively to self-hatred and self-destruction. It’s true. Ignorance and hatred are inextricably linked; ergo ignorance of self can have only one end result. Mark Cuban was trying to mess all that up with messages about the ‘value of education’ or ‘being proud of who you are.’

How dare he?! Ignorance is bliss and he’s messing with our collective euphoria.

I was so scared that African-Americans might come out and support this movie I saw it three different times, err uh of course in the hopes of making sure other African-Americans didn’t try to see this movie. My job as a card-carrying ‘hater’ is to make sure that I, like most African-Americans would continue to wallow in mediocrity and relative stupidity.

No way in the world did I want Black folk seeing this wonderful story. No way in hell did I want people, especially Black people to support a movie that portrayed African-Americans AND Latinos in a positive light…even with a bit of innocent interracial romance included.


That’s simply unacceptable.


Unless Blacks and Latinos are trying to kill each other or shoot their way straight to jail, we have no business spending our money to see such uplifting garbage. Everybody knows that there are only three stories about minorities worth producing and supporting. You know, the one where we go to jail, the other one in which we just got out of jail…and that other, other one in which we go to jail, get out and develop a scheme that threatens us going back to jail. If the movie is not on the following list, we have no business supporting it. Please support all of these movies, now out on video.


Lockdown

3 Strikes

Caught Up

Get Rich or Die Tryin’

Paid in Full

Civil Brand

(and 187 other movies that I don’t have time to list)


Thank God, ‘we’ are still stuck on stupid. Then again, most of us seemingly aren’t interested in having a relationship with the Lord, so probably He didn’t have anything to do with this. This is all on us. ‘We’ get all the credit.
Thanks be to ‘we.’ Let the church say ‘Amen!’

As it turned out, my services weren’t needed. The theater patrons were mostly White anyhow. I didn’t have to keep the multitude of ‘us’ away. ‘We’ staged our own successful boycott and nobody can take that away.

Mission accomplished.

To add further irony to insult, Akeelah and the Bee was written and directed by Doug Atchison, a White man. I had followed this script for many years, dating back to when it won a national honor in the Nicholls Fellowship Screenwriting competition. For the uninitiated, that’s the Academy Award amateur screenwriting competition.

In other words, all of Hollywood knew that this was a great movie waiting to be made from jump. Another Nicholls Fellowship winner was the shamefully positive (and commercially unsuccessful) movie Down in the Delta

Thank God though for the livid indifference of my people. Without your collective help, ‘we’ wouldn’t be celebrating today.

Let’s put it in quantitative terms:

After four weeks in wide release…Akeelah and the Bee with a great story, cast and matching performances has grossed:

$15,728,000

To put that number in perspective…

Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (50 Cent)

$30,981,850


Baby Boy (Tyrese – 2001)

$28,734,552


Antwone Fisher (Denzel – 2002)

$21,078,145


Soul Plane (Bunch of fools – 2004)

$13,922,211


Phat Girlz (Mo’Nique)

$6,922,865


Down in the Delta (Alfre Woodard)

$5,662,985


Soul Food (Ensemble - 1997)

$43,490,057


Waiting to Exhale (Ensemble - 1995)

$64,236,823


Dead Presidents (Ensemble – 1995)

$24,104,295


If we disregard inflation and assume these figures to be both static and directly comparable, we can come to the following conclusions.

• The commercial appeal of Akeelah and the Bee is akin to the maligned Soul Plane. I’m not sure how anyone should view this fact, no matter how you look at it. I’m disappointed that Soul Plane didn’t do better. I’d much see more cinema with ‘us’ acting like buffoons and smoking marijuana, than I would watch a story about an African-American girl attempt to win the national spelling bee.

• African-Americans have no intention of supporting meaningful Black cinema, irrespective of the color or gender of the writer, director or producers. That’s a very positive sign.

• Black Movies starring Black Academy Award-winners or nominees don’t do well. See: Antwone Fisher. It is a better business decision for a Hollywood studio to put out a movie featuring a rapper with a gun in both his hands, shooting at people who look like him…and that’s a beautiful thing.

• It’s been almost 10 years since a Black, positive, non comedic movie has been a commercial success. Hallelujah!

Today is a great day in Black America. We should all stop and take moment to fully appreciate the magnitude of this accomplishment. Only in America can a movie about two gay cowboys (which was supposedly so ‘repulsive’ and allegedly antithetical to American ideals and morals) could be better received and supported in its community than a positive movie about African-Americans in ours. Although Brokeback Mountain did not have national distribution upon its release…you fill in the rest. Although gays are estimated to be 10% of the population and African-Americans are 12%...you fill in the rest. If you can’t, I’ll do it for you.


Brokeback Mountain

$83,025853


Akeelah and the Bee

$15,728,000


Congratulations Black America…you didn’t let me down and your continued indifference is both noticed and needed.


Keep hope alive. You are not somebody.


The Mo'Kelly Report is an entertainment journal with a political slant. It is meant to inform, infuse and incite meaningful discourse...as well as entertain. The e-book "The Best of The Mo'Kelly Report" will be available...uh, soon. For more Mo’Kelly, http://mokellyreport.blogspot.com. Morris W. O'Kelly can be reached at mokellyreport@sbcglobal.net and he welcomes all commentary

Ok, here's a thought. While I admit, that we as African Americans don't have the best track record as far as supporting African American films, truthfully, how well is any black film going to do w/o the support and buying power of white America? Looking at the list, the only two movies (good or bad) that seemed to do well were Soul Food and Waiting to Exhale, and even that is mediocre for the entire theater life of the film. I'm just wandering if any movie solely targeting the black community will ever truly prosper in the way that 'white' movies do (even if fully supported by the black community). I honestly don't know, its just a thought. I'd be interested to see what percentage of any movie's revenue is generated by African Americans.

Personally, I'm not a huge movie goer (usually only while on dates), so I can't really speak to why Akeelah and the Bee didn't do well. The impression that I got from the few commercials that I did see was that it had something to do w/a spelling bee and an African proverb/fable (that's just what the name sounded like to me) and it'd be good for the kids. As a young, single, child-less woman it didn't strike me as 'must see on the big screen' film. However, like I said, I'm not a movie goer, so I really only come out for movies that I think will have more of an impact in the theater (action-type flicks).

I think the article offered an interesting perspective. It is really sad that parents are not exposing their children to such a positive movie.

I just took my daughters to see this movie this afternoon. Great, heart-warming flick.

.... of course I'm now having flashbacks from three years of high school Latin.

Released today on DVD!

And...if you have the Sept issue of Essence with Beyonce on the cover, there's a coupon inside for $2 off the purchase price of the DVD.

We watched this for our family night this week and Nas and Nia loves it. Nia. who's only 2 was walking around the house spelling out wordslike she knew what they meant.

Very good stuff.

Missed the movie-by the time I decided to see it it was gone!:mad: However, it is now out on DVD! maybe it will make more money now!

Really? I missed that.

Okay, I know I am waaaaaayyyyyy late on this, but I just saw the movie on cable ppv. All I got to say is it is the BEST feel good movie ever! And when it got to the scenes where Wake Up Everybody was sung the tears flowed until the end.

*Still wiping away tears*

At the National NAACP the youth watched the movie. My children who are teenagers wanted me to purchase it. It was wonderful!

I saw it last Sunday via On Demand and I cried so hard I thought I was going to get kicked out of my apartment complex. I cried through every spelling bee that child participated in during the movie. It was a wonderful movie!