Tony Brown. Journalist

In 1990, I was attending American Film Market at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills.  My objective was to license a movie titled “Reel Bullets” in the international marketplace.

A middle aged Black man came into the hotel room (which had been converted into a sales office) to discuss a film with which he was involved.  At the time, Tony Brown had a Sunday morning show on PBS called “Tony Brown’s Journal”, which dealt with Black political issues.

The movie was titled “The White Girl”.  I asked if I could speculate on the story line before seeing the flyer.  He invited me to go ahead.  I guessed that it was about a light-skinned Black girl trying to pass for Caucasian who recognizes the error of her ways and becomes proud of being Black.  He initially assumed that I had already encountered the movie.  But, it was easy to make the case that I had not.

He changed the subject to the number of Black people in entertainment media.  He said that Blacks were underrepresented in the acting trade.  I disagreed.  A study quoted in one of the trade papers stated that Blacks held 16% of the acting jobs, but 14% of the population.  It was Hispanics that were underrepresented.

It was in non-acting creative and non-creative areas that Blacks were relatively rare.  He asked how I thought greater numbers of Blacks could join the ranks of producers, writers and directors.  I supposed that making more prison movies would be a start.  His initial shock permutated into a subtle smile as he left.  I watch his show on the following Sunday, where he showed pictures of his visit to AFM.  But, made no reference to our encounter.