GETS FIRST BLACK CEO
LOS ANGELES: A veteran producer is the newly elected chief executive of the Television Academy and the first African-American to hold the post in the organisation’s 70 years.
The academy said on Thursday its board of governors elected Hayma “Screech” Washington as chairman and chief executive officer. The producer has served as co-governor of the producers’ branch of the academy.
A former Walt Disney executive, he has worked on programmes, including sports, awards and music shows, and won seven Emmys as an executive producer for The Amazing Race.
In 2013, Cheryl Boone Isaacs became the first African-American head of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The movie academy has faced harsh criticism over the lack of minorities among Oscar nominees, with efforts made to diversify the academy’s membership. AP LOS ANGELES: It is an old joke in Hollywood that the biggest twist in M. Night Shyamalan’s work is how badly his career nosedived after he arrived on a wave of acclaim.
The Indian-American filmmaker announced himself to the world in 1999 with The Sixth Sense —a tense, supernatural thriller with a reveal so shocking he was talked up as the new Alfred Hitchcock.
Two follow-ups cemented his reputation as “king of the twist”, but years of poorly received work followed, prompting reviewers to wonder whether the twists weren’t just an attempt to paper over shoddy filmmaking.
Shyamalan has never let criticism jolt his vision, however, and the 46-year-old director has come full circle with rave reviews of his 2015 thriller, The Visit, and early acclaim for his new movie Split.
Arriving for a preview screening of the psychological horror tale at the AFI Fest here this week, he was at pains to point out that the twist was never a defining feature of his work.
“I don’t think of it like that... like I’ve got to bust out the big dance move everybody wants. It’s not like that,” said the father-of-three, known to friends as Night.
“It’s more about what is this story you’re telling and how are you telling that story.”
Asked if he feels he has something to prove, the director looks bemused, saying: “So much more complex than that” and denying he would ever worry about people liking his films. AFP