46TH NAACP Image Awards

Here I am on the Red Carpet with my family!

Here’s a clip of the opening number for the Image Awards that kicked it off with a bang while making our mission statement clear.

I’ve executive produced the Image Awards for three years now, and every year people say this was the best year ever. Glad to know people notice the improvements in production, pacing, star power and overall entertainment. We strive to combine humor, tears, inspirational and enlightening moments and we did it again this year.

Anthony Anderson was a brilliant host; we had heartfelt speeches from Taraji Henson, David Oyelowo, Oprah Winfrey, Ava Duvernay and Spike Lee; insights in great achievers like Eric Holder and Clive Davis; and, as always, a lot of emotion around the In Memoriam section.

I’ve never counted how many times I haven’t won an Image Award, but it’s a lot. I remember when BOOMERANG lost to GLORY; I’ve lost in the TV directing category many times. I’ve lost for music videos and books. As the new NAACP President Cornell Brooks said, “you must really be dedicated to the NAACP to produce a show with that track record”.  Well, I don’t do what I do to win awards, although they are nice. Host Anthony Anderson broke his 9 time losing streak this year, so we’ll see if things change next year. But I’m not counting on it.

This is a cool clip that was shot at the NAACP Luncheon two weeks before the show.

Why The NAACP Image Awards Matter More Now Than Ever

“There’s a depth and diversity that you may not see elsewhere,” said NAACP president and CEO Cornell William Brooks in an interview with BuzzFeed News.

Kelley L. Carter, BuzzFeed News Reporter, posted on Feb. 6, 2015

The cast of Dear White People – Code Red Films

Gugu Mbatha-Raw in Beyond The Lights – Relativity Media

Chadwick Boseman in Get On Up – NBC Universal

There’s something powerful about the word “image.”

It’s a representation, an idea that helps shape how we view the world around us. And it’s a word that still carries a great weight today, perhaps a greater one than it did 46 years ago, when the NAACP hosted its first Image Awards in 1967, the same year race riots took place in Newark, New Jersey, and Detroit.

Tonight, the social justice organization will celebrate the best of entertainment created by and starring black and brown people. The show will air live on TV One at 9 p.m. Eastern/8 p.m. Central, and it’ll pay homage to networks and studios that dared to push the boundaries and tell stories that otherwise might never get told. It’ll also acknowledge the work of those who won’t see their accomplishments play out at a larger, more mainstream awards show. This year’s show will be especially meaningful, considering that so much thought and narrative has centered on the role that image plays in mass media with regard to young black men. Plenty of examples can be cited here, including the killings of Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, and Mike Brown. Conversations on the menacing image of black men and the perceived threats they give off have dominated cable news programs for months now.

And this is all reflected in Hollywood.

Kerry Washington of Scandal wins Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series at the 2014 NAACP Image Awards

NAACP president and CEO Cornell William Brooks said in an interview with BuzzFeed News that the lack of diversity of people engaged in fictionalized violence or fictionalized crime is disturbing. It doesn’t help that there aren’t many black or brown faces in Hollywood boardrooms who are cognizant of this and the role it might play to someone consuming the media.

That’s not to say that the Image Awards reward only characters who go against the grain and epitomize positivity exclusively. The fullness of humanity and black citizenship — victors and villains — is represented at the show.

“There’s a depth and diversity that you may not see elsewhere,” Brooks said. “We don’t have any preconceived notions about what black or brown people can or cannot do.”

Reginald Hudlin, a filmmaker who produced Django Unchained and directed Boomerang among others, is the executive producer of the awards show. A former president of entertainment for BET, Hudlin said that the Image Awards serves as a chance to repaint a more complete picture of what blackness is. Doing that helps to dispel what is often seen as a monolithic image (often negative and in most cases threatening) that is continually dispensed and considered wholly representative.

“I think, ultimately, black people’s problems is a PR problem,” Hudlin said. “What will protect us as a people is our ability to deal a consequence to those [who treat us differently]. And that’s the importance of the protests in Ferguson. That’s the importance of the NAACP as an organization, that was formed to fight back against injustice.”

David Oyelowo (as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) discusses a scene with director/executive producer Ava DuVernay on the set of Selma. Might the film win big at the 2015 NAACP Image Awards? Atsushi Nishijima / Via Paramount

In a larger sense, there shouldn’t be a need for such an awards show in 2015. There’s the idea that the acknowledgment and celebration of diverse representations of people of color should exist at larger mainstream forums, like the Emmys or the Oscars. But this show also comes on the heels of the Twitter campaign #OscarsSoWhite, where social media users had a field day lambasting the Academy Awards for its lack of diverse nominations in 2015. This is the whitest Oscar race since 1998, and several critics have said Selma director Ava DuVernay was overlooked for a Best Director Oscar nod and were surprised her star, David Oyelowo, failed to earn a Best Actor nomination for his portrayal of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. And it was a major headline in 2013 when Kerry Washington was nominated for a best actress Emmy because no black actress has been nominated in that category for a drama series Primetime Emmy in 18 years. This year, the big television story has been about the diverse casts of new shows like Black-ish, How to Get Away With Murder, and Empire and how they’ve been dominating the ratings game. It’s yet to be determined what this year’s Emmy race might look like and how these shows might fare.

But the Image Awards — often thought of by the stars who attend them as one big family reunion — is where work like this gets validation.

“We still need to celebrate world-class work being done by black creators … that may be getting overlooked by some of the other award shows,” Hudlin added. “There will always be a place for the Image Awards, the same way there always will be a place for black universities. I think they can all coexist in a beautiful way. You can have the Grammys and the Latin Grammys. It’s good to have family. It’s always good to come home and get love from people who know and understand you. And that’s what the Image Awards is.”

Comic-Con International Announces First Wave of Guests for SDCC 2015

February 2, 2015 by Brian Pate

Additional Guests To Be Announced In The Coming Weeks

SAN DIEGO- Comic-Con International (Comic-Con), the nonprofit educational organization dedicated to creating awareness of and appreciation for comics and popular art, today announced the first wave of special guests for its venerated summer show. The event will again be held in San Diego beginning on Thursday, July 9, and running though Sunday, July 12, 2015, at the San Diego Convention Center.

“Comic-Con is grateful to feature such talented individuals from comics and popular art,” commented David Glanzer, spokesperson for the nonprofit organization.  Indeed 2015 is shaping up to be another spectacular year in terms of talent joining the four-day extravaganza.

The first round of guests include

Writer Kelly Sue DeConnick: Captain Marvel, Pretty Deadly, Bitch Planet.

Artist Carlos Ezquerra: Co-creator, Judge Dredd, Stontium Dog.

Author Lev Grossman: The Magicians.

Writer/director/producer Reginald Hudlin: Django Unchained, Black Panther animated series.

Artist/illustrator William Stout: The Dinosaurs.

For up-to-date information on guests and all aspects of the huge summer show be sure to visit www.comic-con.org and check out Toucan Blog, the only OFFICIAL blog of Comic-Con International.

About Comic-Con International:
Comic-Con International (CCI) is a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to creating awareness of, and appreciation for, comics and related popular artforms, primarily through the presentation of conventions and events that celebrate the historic and ongoing contribution of comics to art and culture.  In addition to its San Diego convention each summer (the world’s largest comics convention of its kind), CCI organizes the Anaheim-based WonderCon Anaheim each spring. On the web: Comic-Con.org, Facebook.com/comiccon, Twitter.com/comic_con.

Read more here.

The Producer of Django Unchained Has Some Thoughts on Hollywood’s Race Problems

By Nate Jones at Vulture.com

Reginald Hudlin directed House Party while he was still in his 20s; produced Django Unchained, The Boondocks, and The Bernie Mac Show; and helps put on the NAACP Image Awards. So when he wants to talk about race in Hollywood, you listen. In a new essay for The Hollywood Reporter, Hudlin uses the recent Selma Oscar snub to talk about the struggles of the film industry as a whole. “It’s easier for a black person to become president of the United States than it is to be president of a movie studio,” he notes, arguing that, “given the shrinking white population in this country, the lack of people of color in the suites and on the screens is just bad business.” Though the industry will say things have improved since the ’50s, Hudlin notes that many of the excuses for Hollywood’s lack of diversity are the same: Back then, those in power worried openly about turning off southern audiences; now they say the same thing about the international market. Both times, he says, they were wrong.

To make Hollywood walk the walk of its diversity talk, Hudlin proposes “taking action at every point in the food chain”: more internships to get young people of color into the industry, a greater emphasis on multiracial casting, and diversity bonuses for executives. Also, he says, we should change the way we talk about movies: “It would be great if the phrase ‘black film’ wasn’t just used when a movie makes less than $100 million.”