Filmmakers turn their attention to television
In 2012, Justin Simien, an aspiring filmmaker from Houston, Texas, scraped together a little bit of money and shot a low-budget proof-of-concept video for a comedy called Dear White People. The provocative short — a satire that skewered well-meaning lily-white liberals at a fictitious Ivy League college — was the nucleus of a crowdfunding campaign, for which Simien hoped to raise the funds to support a fulllength movie.
However, when the proof of concept itself went viral, the project found not only donations but also producers and financiers: Simien was suddenly a hot commodity, and Dear White People arrived at Sundance two years later as a widely acclaimed feature film.
Simien’s newfound indie celebrity seemed to presage future success. One could imagine the director courted to helm a studio blockbuster — a windfall promotion enjoyed by similarly decorated Sundance alumni, from Colin Trevorrow (Jurassic World) to Rian Johnson (Star Wars: The Last Jedi) — or else bequeathed the resources to mount a mid-budget sophomore feature with enviable creative latitude and a couple of marquee stars.
But no. Instead, Simien secured a deal with Lionsgate to write and direct an adaptation of his debut feature for TV — a 10-episode Netflix original series for which many of the film’s cast members have returned to reprise their roles. The first season of Dear White People has now debuted in its entirety on the streaming platform in Canada and the United States.
This is a move up for Simien, unambiguously. Dear White People, the film, may have been the toast of Park City and, for a moment, the object of rapturous praise, but no amount of fanfare or fervour can inspire the world at large to take notice of an independent comedy.
Which is to say that, between its limited theatrical roll-out and modest video-on-demand release, not many people actually saw Simien’s much-praised debut.
Netflix does not lack viewers: Dear White People the series has already attracted more attention (and indeed more dubious controversy) than Dear White People the motion picture ever did, and it seems highly likely that over the course of its first weekend streaming, the show will be watched by 15 times the number of people who ever paid to see the film.
Is this not advancement? Is this not the road to success?
Only a decade ago, this would have been unthinkable. In fact, it would have been considered unmistakable evidence of failure.
The men and women who slaved away behind the camera for the small screen yearned to leave television behind to write and direct feature films.
This was of course equally true of the talent in front of the camera. TV was where you languished until you were plucked from obscurity and made it as a movie star.
But as film continues to drift inexorably from the centre of our pop-culture attention — as the independent cinema becomes a truly niche interest, like poetry or the opera — it seems only reasonable that talent should follow the direction of the trend.
People watch television. They talk about television, write about television and have arguments about television over dinner and drinks. Why shouldn’t a gifted writer-director want to share in that interest?
While Simien may have had an excellent second feature in him, what he has now is a level of success he couldn’t have found for himself any other way.
On the one hand, it’s regrettable that filmmaking as a craft has diminished so much in its long-enduring stature, that the noble pursuit of making a film may no longer seem like a good enough end game. On the other hand, it’s difficult to blame talented artists for wanting their work to actually be seen.