Crystyn: That’s one of the things I’m trying to understand. They didn’t want to make money?
They don’t care about it (money). When it comes to image control they don’t care about it. I had to fight when I was down in Nashville at the prison (filming Civil Brand). The director’s guild had to fly in and change my contract. I took less money because I had final cut.
I was all excited. They didn’t want me to have final cut. After I was done, they said, “Neema I know you have final cut and we can’t tell you what to do, but that one line when LisaRaye says said, ‘Everything is political.’ I don’t think you should put that in.”
We also won the audience award at UrbanWorld, and when she said that line, it got a standing ovation. That’s how much power you have when you have final cut. That’s the one line they didn’t want.
Crystyn: So on our side we want money, and sometimes we’ll give up image control for a dollar, but they will give up the dollar for image control?
They make you think that Black films don’t make money. Look at Shaft. MGM was closing down when they made Shaft. Sam put MGM back on its feet. The white guy who did Superfly bought an island off the money he made. So don’t let anybody tell you that.
Crystyn: It’s great when there is an event in your hometown and you have so many people come out to support you. That says a lot, about you because there are a lot of people who come up, but because of how they did it, people from their past are not there. Your people come out of the woodworks.
They surprise me. I’ve know my people so many years. I feel blessed. I have a lot of people who love me, and I’m so blessed. But, I had to go to LA to get respect. I was telling my friend Gary Brewer, I’ve been back and forth, but I’ve really been here.
Crystyn: And how was it being in the business and balancing a family?
You have to have that isolation. One thing that helped me was I was able to go back and forth. I got away from my family. I had stuff I wanted to do. I would stay in LA for periods of time and if it wasn’t for my husband you know… he does understand. He is my best friend and my partner. As far as getting things done, you need to isolate yourself. There is no way you can do it all. There were times I had to go away and work.
Crystyn: You’ve done like Super Sweet 16, Gilmore Girls, All You’ve Got. Do you have an affinity for Teen Films?
My first one was the Donna Cheek story, which was about the first Black woman equestrian. I started off with Different Worlds, an after school special. It got the nomination* for Daytime Emmys and it was a Pulitzer Prize award-winning book. I wanted to do movies and so I went to my agents and they said, “You gotta do more than episodic. I mean I taught when I first graduated, so I don’t know how I got involved in the teen thing. I just fell into it.
Loretha Jones, was president of MTV and she’s the one who hired me. She brought me into do All You’ve got with Ciara and Adrian Bialon. When I did Super Sweet 16 she went out of her way to hire me as another African American.
I like working with young people. They are more eager to listen, and I like listening to their original ideas and incorporating them. When I was young I had good ideas and a lot of people didn’t want to hear them and when I got the opportunity to create myself own ideas, I felt good about it. I don’t like to limit young people.
Is there anyone who was hard to work with? Or what do you define as someone who is hard to work with?
It depends on whether it’s a Black actor or an actor in general. Black actors have more complexes. When they work with a Black director they’re hesitant and they’re worried from the very beginning. They are not used to being lit right or used to being given the courtesies that you give them.
It’s kind of like being a mother you have to hang in there and after a while they get used to you and it’s like she’s alright and she’s good and she cares about me. So now I’m gonna relax. Some Black actors you have to really dig deep and get them to find themselves, cause they’re not used to playing themselves, they’re used to playing a stereotype.
Crystyn: I remember you were on a set where someone mistook you for a prostitute role?
Yeah when I was doing Frank’s Place, the first day I came in with me jeans and my vest on, and the AD said, “What are you doing in that? You better go to wardrobe and put on your short skirt and whatever you’re gonna wear.” He said, “You’re here to play one of the hookers at the bar.” And I just said, “Which way is the dressing room?” Later when Hugh Wilson, who created the show, introduced me to everyone as the director and the AD turned red.
Crystyn: Did you get a lot of that since when you started out you were young and you were a Black woman?
I was ignorant to the fact that there were very few women. I started to realize there is nobody else who looks like you. I didn’t know the politics, which enabled me to get through it without thinking about it. When I went to AFI it was striking. It was so white that I did notice. But I came out of a politically conscious background and because I came from New York, I didn’t let it bother me. I didn’t care what anyone thought. We came up feeling the revolution, the war movement, the women’s movement.
Crystyn: Do you think that’s the difference now in what we are seeing on the screen?
I think the young filmmakers and visual people of today don’t really know what it is to struggle until it hits them. Which means they hit that glass ceiling – and it does happen. Like the Hughes brother make a hit like Dead Presidents and it’s like I’m made a hit, I’m gonna be making movie after movie. And then it’s 10 years before you make another movie.
When you’re fully integrated you’re divided. And when you are more separate, you’re more united. When I was coming up there were more African American films. Now they’ll put one Black character in a movie, and it’s supposed to be cool. I’m hoping that your generation, which is really a powerful generation and has come on the arms of my generation, uses the gifts of things that we’ve fought for.
“You have to know the business”
It’s all about the business. You have to know the business. I had made more money than I ever made in my life. But I didn’t know what to do with the money; to save it, to invest it. But it took years, and you say, “Oh, other people should manage your money.”
It took years. I had two deals with studios and I didn’t know what to do with them. I was the first African American woman to ever get a studio deal in the history of motion pictures. And I was in there with my young self, but I didn’t know what to do with it and I had no business sense.
I had two deals and where did it get me? When you’re the first, you’re learning while you’re doing. And of course, now I know why they give young people deals, because you don’t know what to do with it. And when you get older you know what to do. And if I had it now, I would really know how to work it. And that’s why I don’t have it now, because I know what to do. But what I can do is help young people. I teach them, this is what you do.
And even if you do it right you still never know. It’s tough, you look at people like Julie who did Daughter’s of the Dusk and the Rosa Parks story for CBS. Where is her next film?
Crystyn: Do you have any projects in the works?
One project is The Girl From 135th Street. It’s about a young mother from the projects. She’s married, but her husband went over to Iraq and was a war hero and came back crazy cause he got shot in the head. So she left him and moved back with her mother and they have a little boy, and he is a reincarnation of the Dali Lama. I’m hoping to shoot the New York part in the Lincoln Projects because my concept is like a maze. And I’m very excited, I’m gonna shoot in New York and in Nepal.
The second project is called “Listen for the Fig Tree,“ which is a script I developed at Columbia from a book by Sharon Bell Mathis that won a junior Pulitzer Prize. It’s a Christmas Story about a young, Black, blind girl that lives in Brooklyn, and it’s about the community and a mother and daughter relationship.
I’m thinking about self-distributing “Cutting da Mustard,”… my husband’s film, which is very positive film especially for young Black men. It’s got stars in it; Sinbad, and Keisha Knight Pullium and Charles Dutton, Brandon T. Jackson, Adrienne Balion. It won 6 film festivals, it was closing night at the Pan African film festival, but it got no offers cause they don’t know what to do with it.
I have a project called, “When It’s Said and Done,” that I’m working on with the rapper Queen Pen. She had a book of short stories and she gave me the rights to it when she saw Civil Brand. And I wrote a screenplay for it about a young Black female singer.
And I’m working on my own screenplay called “Slangbook” which I’m writing about when I was growing up. We had a book called Slangbook and we used to pass it around write our name with a nickname and write a note like “She think she cute.” And I’m almost finished with that.
Neema Barnette is the CEO of Harlem Girl Productions and you can fin her work on LiveTheaterGang.com.