A Plea To The Movie Museum: Do That ‘Boyz N The Hood’ Tribute Without Apology
deadline.comFilm Academy chief executive Bill Kramer dropped a reminder in Toronto on Saturday, that his group’s movie museum will in February devote space to the late director John Singleton’s Boyz N The Hood.So here’s a gentle plea to the museum: Do this one without apology.For the moment, the Academy and its museum are in apology mode.
Next Saturday brings “An Evening With Sacheen Littlefeather,” complete with “a long-awaited statement of apology from the Academy” for what it describes as 50 years of boycott, attack, harassment and discrimination following Sacheen’s on-stage rejection of an Oscar meant for Marlon Brando.The museum’s current “Regeneration” celebration of black cinema likewise comes with a note of regret. “We should have seen it long before now, but this is the day it begins,” Academy governor Ava DuVernay said of black achievement while introducing the show.The apologies are perhaps in order.
There will probably be more. But Singleton and his 1991 debut film deserve to be remembered for what they were: A proud and unapologetic presence in a studio culture that was happy to have them.I knew John only a little, certainly much less well than did his executive-mentor and later collaborator Stephanie Allain, or the many young people who worked at his New Deal production company.
While at Columbia, trying to produce movies in the 1990s, I had an office two doors down from Singleton’s. On one project, a never-produced action film, we were partners.
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