John Leguizamo’s perfect world
It includes more roles for people of color, not more time spent ‘being patient’
Recently, public discussions about the Oscars sound a lot like the private discussion at my dinner table: Everyone is asking why the movies are so white. As an actor who’s been in more than 50 films, never once as a white person, I have a few ideas, developed over long conversations with other actors of color, usually while we’re playing dominoes. (Not really — just playing to Latin stereotypes for the Donald Trump fans who are reading this.)
Charlotte Rampling and Michael Caine, possibly to their regret, have suggested the Oscars are #SoWhite because black and brown actors are less talented and shouldn’t be rewarded on an affirmative action scheme. No one I know is looking for a handout — only a chance.
Minority actors are held back, more than anything else, by the narrow range of roles we’re offered. As Viola Davis said last year, after she became the first black woman to win the Emmy for outstanding actress in a drama series, “The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity. You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there.”
For all the talk about “liberal Hollywood,” the film industry is as conservative as any other wealthy institution. If Hollywood were a U.S. state, it would be Alabama. It’s more conservative than TV. It’s more conservative than Broadway, which was the dinosaur of the media world not too long ago.
The hottest ticket on Broadway right now is Hamilton, in which a mostly Latino and black cast portray our country’s Founding Fathers, and a Puerto Rican actor plays Alexander Hamilton, our first Secretary of the Treasury. And no one who’s seen this great show has interrupted it by shouting, “Wait a minute, why is Hamilton so tan?” No one objects to a show in which the cast resembles a snapshot of America.
Similarly, cable and network TV are rapidly becoming more inclusive: Jane the Virgin, Empire, Narcos, Blood
line, Vinyl, Telenovela and Superstore all have Latino actors in lead roles. Why can’t Hollywood adapt in the same way? Latin people make up 17% of the U.S. population, but we had less than 5% of the film roles (according to a 2014 University of Southern California study) — even though the Motion Picture Association of America says we buy about 25% of all movie tickets. (And that’s not counting the ones who sneak into theaters.)
“Latinos don’t want to see movies about other Latinos,” a studio executive once said to me. But my people love movies so much, we’ll even see stories about white people. My long track record — sorry but not sorry for the immodesty — of selling out theaters across the country demonstrates how badly people of color want to see themselves represented on stage.
“Be patient” — Caine’s admonition to us — has long been the advice of people protecting their positions against change. In a famous 1963 civil rights speech, John Lewis said this: “To those who have said, ‘Be patient and wait,’ we must say that we cannot be patient.”
We have been patient, but our patience has been rewarded with neglect. We don’t ask for affirmative action policies, only for producers to recognize that they can make a lot of money by telling stories that are inclusive. If people of all colors are paying more than $400 for a ticket to see
Hamilton, I’m sure they’d shell out $26.50 plus convenience charges for a movie.