News: "Dirty Laundry" Pulled, Wall Street, Torture, Usher, Will Smith

Despite three sold out weekend performances and a considerable $12,000 weekend gross, the management at Manhattan's Clearview Chelsea Theater made the highly unusual decision to pull the plug on Maurice Jamal's Dirty Laundry, which stars Rockmond Dunbar and Loretta Devine. Theater Management "expressed concern that 'the producers may have bought the gross' ", reports Keith Boykin, who is the associate producer of the film and his partner Nathan H. Williams is the executive producer. Our review of the film and interview with director Maurice Jamal is in the current issue of The Advocate.

"They expressed suspicion because there were $1,500 in advance ticket sales for Sunday before the theater opened," Keith adds. "I hate to say it, but this smacks of racism, plain and simple. Black LGBT people have to fight every step of the way just to get a movie into the theaters, and even then, the theater owners would rather lose money than continue running a successful black LGBT movie. That makes no sense."

· The Dow Jones industrial average slides 294.26 points, or 2.14 percent, "after the Federal Reserve trimmed interest rates rather than slashing them, letting down investors who fear the economy might slip into recession."

· Will Smith previously expressed interest in starring in a Barack Obama biopic and now says he will hit the campaign trail for the presidential candidate. "I think he's what the future of America is going to be. Barack represents what I feel is the future of the optimum survival of America."

· Central Intelligence Agency Director Michael Hayden fails to answer key questions at a closed door session before the Senate Intelligence Committee about the agency’s "destruction of secret videotapes showing harsh interrogation of terror suspects." Hayden testifies tomorrow to its House counterpart.

· Hayden claims "videotaping stopped in 2002" but a report in today's New York Times suggests it may have continued longer. A former terrorism detainee held in 2003 describes "cameras both in his cells and in interrogation rooms, some on tripods and some on the wall."

· Former CIA interrogator: We waterboarded prisoners because the White House told us to.

· Modern Fabulousity on the possible film adaptation of the Color Purple musical and R&B star Usher Raymond's return Broadway in a role that will include numerous shirtless scenes.

· Log Cabin Republicans denounce Mike Huckabee's previous positions on HIV/AIDS funding and a proposed quarantine. "Governor Huckabee shouldn’t try to revise history to explain away his comments from 1992," says president Patrick Sammon. "He ought to do the right thing and admit he was wrong."

Comments

[nOva]

Is there no other theater that can run Dirty Laundry?

[Hikaru]

Pulled after a profitable weekend?

"Suspicious" is being charitable.

[Orange]

Don't you think the theater (located in the gay hood of Chelsea) knew of the movie's content before agreeing to screen it? In Manhattan, business is business and if the theater thought they would make a grip by showing a film that had gay themes, but was extremely profitable, they wouldn't have pulled it. If this was a Tyler Perry film that involved homosexual themes there's no way they would pull it. If this film is such a cash cow, another theater should pick it up in a heartbeat. It's easy to cry racism and homophobia, but it's hard to look at your film and say despite the involvement of some amazing actors, the writing and the directing is amateurish. I know we are starved for Black LGBT films and television but we shouldn't be satisfied by substandard production with all the talent we have to offer. Calling racism and homophobia when it is unwarranted waters down the legitimacy of real racism and homophobia claims. Just admit it's a crap movie and move on.

[Cadence]

Orange, theaters don't pull films based on poor production values, bad writing/directing, or if they are crappy. You said the theater wouldn't pull a Tyler Perry film, but you can't get more amaturish than that. Theaters care about turning a profit, not making subjective judgements about the quality of a project.

Race probably played a part, but in a business sense. The theater probably felt that the people who were in the audience during the opening weekend were not regulars and were not going to patronize this theater except to see this one film, so they decided to make room for a film that their regulars would support.

The bottom line, the movie was very profitable over the weekend, people did come out and see it, and that should be cause for more theaters to want to show the film. Lack of distribution is the main problem plaguing Black filmmakers, regardless if their films are poorly produced or not.

[taylor Siluwé]

I agree Cadence,

Tyler Perry films are entertaining, but not exactly Hitchcock. Still, they are wildly succeessful. So whether or not we enjoyed 'Dirty Laundry' (I did immensely!), the calibre of the filming is another matter entirely.

I went to the matinee showing at 11am. It was pretty empty, but matinees on a friday usually are -- which is why I chose that time. Admitted introvert that I am, I hate crowds.

Anyway, foregoing my usual habit of bringing my own munchies (you know how we do), I stopped at the concession stand and bought a water. A small one was $5! But I felt I had done my part for the theatre's bottomline and proceeded to enjoy the movie.

I think we have a long row to hoe before we will get box-office respect. Crying racism isn't the answer. Crying homophobia isn't the answer. Both of these things may have come to play in this unsettling turn of events. But just whining about it is silly.

Yes, contact Clearview as Jasmyne Cannick suggests, let them know how disappointed we were.

But lets stop playing the race card and the homophobe card -- even when it has some vague truth.

[BGM]

Unfortunately, as someone pointed out on another site they lacked a marketing plan and was unable to do a rollout release of the film.

I find it disappointing that with all of the intelligent people involved in this project, that they failed to plan more thoroughly. Perhaps they were more concerned with having their names on the film versus the success of the project itself.

And this was the wrong time to play the race card, especially from someone who created an organization that is known to be very disconnected from the Black Gay community.

[tdubbs]

well i sure hope the movie comes to atlanta, shoot

[Derrick from Philly]

OK, but why did the theater owners say that the producers bought tickets to jack up the weekend gross? Why did they accuse them of some shit like that? THat kind of lie certainly helps one (a black one) to whip out the race card.

And, don't white folks usually whip out the race card first? They use to do it with the whip!

[Cadence]

BGM, a good site you may want to look at to understand the film business is boxofficemojo.com. You will see that independent films rarely play in thousands of theaters, and that it is not unusual for films to just open in NY and LA to garner publicity through word of mouth.

This brings us to the second problem publicity costs money. The filmmakers don't have the money for print, radio, or tv ads, and that's why they were doing things by a grass roots effort and relying on gay blogs and word of mouth. This was their PR plan. They hoped that sold out shows in NY and LA would convince other theaters to show the film, and convince audiences to come out and see the film. If the film had opened in a wider release this weekend, but didn't draw such a large PSA then the film would have disappeared very quickly, and this is a scenario that indep. filmmakers can't risk.