A new report by the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA measures racial and gender representation in TV and film in 2012 and 2013; Song Exploder breaks down the theme song for "House of Cards"; A new stage production by Cal-Tech takes "Alice Through the Wormhole."
New study breaks down the numbers behind Hollywood's diversity problem
The Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA just released its "2015 Hollywood Diversity Report: Flipping the Script," which examines diversity — of the lack thereof — in the film and TV industries.
The study focused on the top 200 theatrical film releases from 2012-13, as well as all broadcast, cable and digital platform television shows from the same years.
Here are some of the more startling statistics from the study:
- Women directors are underrepresented by a factor of eight-to-one
- Minority film writers are underrepresented by a factor of three-to-one
- Movie studio heads were 94 percent white and 100 percent male
Darnell Hunt is director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center and a co-author of the diversity report. He spoke with The Frame's host, John Horn, about the cycle behind underrepresentation and the silver lining that his study found.
Interview Highlights:
Looking at the people in positions of power — and I'm not even counting the executive suite — like writer, director or producer on movies, especially those with big box office appeal, where do you see minorities working or not working?
You tend to have a revolving door of opportunity for the names we know, the seasoned writers and directors. There are many women and minority directors/writers who have quite a bit of talent who just don't get the opportunity, so we tend to see these numbers reproduced year in, year out.
Because this is a high-risk industry, the people who make these projects tend to surround themselves with people who look and think like them, or people with whom they feel comfortable, so that reproduces the stalemate we talk about.
And that's a huge issue. We've had other guests who have said the same thing, that the "safe" talent pool for big-budget movies is mostly made up of white males. And when the studio's risking hundreds of millions of dollars on one of those projects, they tend to go where they've gone before. It becomes a cycle where there's no precedent for hiring people outside that very limited talent pool.
You're talking about a catch-22, and that's what we're confronted with. The problem is that all the data are beginning to show that audiences and the market really want diversity, in front of the camera and behind the camera. That's precisely what Hollywood's not delivering, and so you have a situation where, even though studios may be risk-averse, most films under-perform.
There are certain tent-pole films that we know will do well... but then there are all these other films that don't do as well as you might think, and most new TV shows fail. I guess our point is that if most projects are failing anyway, and we know the market wants diversity, why not try something different?
Why not take a smart risk on talent that — while they might not have a track record due to the catch-22 we're talking about — has shown in other ways that they're capable? Why not take that risk? That's where the market's going.
Are there any specific examples of what you're talking about?
The classic example that everyone points to is the "Fast and the Furious" franchise, which is up to seven [titles]. [It features a] majority-minority cast, a minority director, and not only does it make money in the U.S. but it makes a ton of money overseas, proving that you can make those types of films.
That would be a great example of what's possible were the industry more committed to really aligning what they do with where America is and where America's going. One of the things that we found in our study that's quite telling is that most films have less than 10 percent diversity in their cast. And as it turns out, those films don't do as well at the box office when compared to films that are more diverse.
Conversely, you say that films with relatively diverse casts have the highest median global box office results and the highest median return on investment, so are you saying that there's a causal relationship between those things and having a diverse cast?
You can't say there's a causal relationship. In fact, the relationship isn't linear; it's sort of curvilinear, and when you get to films that are majority-minority, box office goes down somewhat.
Those are niche market films, so for the black market those are Tyler Perry films and that type of thing, and they do pretty well on return on investment because they don't spend a lot of money to make those films. But they're not at the box office making the same amount of money as some of these tent-pole films.
So we're not saying it's causal; what we're saying is that diversity is something that is marketable, it's something that people want, and it stands to reason that, given where the audience is and where the market is, films that are diverse give you a greater chance at doing well than those that aren't. Quite frankly, it's pretty clear from our numbers that diverse audiences tune out some of these projects that don't at all reflect their experiences, don't reflect the stories they might relate to, or don't reflect the characters they can identify with.
Caltech's theater program creates a new wonderland in 'Alice Through the Wormhole'
File this under the heading of: “Know your audience.”
A production of "Alice in Wonderland" at Caltech re-imagines Lewis Carroll's tale as the journey of a grad student who gets sucked into a wormhole where logic loses ground and she must battle The Queen of Research Funding.
"Alice Through the Wormhole" isn’t your normal musical theater, but this is also not your normal theater company.
The Caltech community isn’t exactly known as a hotbed of theater talent. These are the people who spend hours in labs, help design rockets and, in the case of lead actress Holly Bender, work on a magna-spectrometer for JPL.
“I’m not always the most outgoing person but get me on a stage and I really enjoy myself," Bender says. “There’s something to be said about this fusion of arts and science. There’s something really special about bringing the two together.”
But making that happen isn’t always so easy. Brian Brophy, a former member of the Actor’s Gang company, is the one-man band that is the theater department at Caltech.
Brophy says it is difficult to attract of students to the program, which goes hand-in-hand with the difficulty of being the director when you know you’re not the smartest person in the room.
Actors are drawn from students, faculty and alumni, and "Alice" has been adapted to be right in the Caltech wheelhouse. Alice is now a grad student hurled into the world of science funding, trying to sustain work and her emotional balance. Brophy says focusing on that balance issue — exposing students to the arts and forcing people out of their lab-coated comfort zones — is the real benefit of putting on a show, and part of the reason Caltech has a theater program in the first place.
“I think I’m saving a lot of their lives," says Brophy, perhaps only half-joking. "I had one gal who came in, the first thing [she said] was, 'I won’t wear a dress and I won’t wear my hair a certain way.' And she had all these things she wasn’t going to do. But by the end she was this self-confident creature … and even these social skills are going to serve her in the future.”
Brenda Varda is a former engineer-turned-musician who wrote the book and the music for "Alice Through the Wormhole." She says dealing with scientists-turned-actors can take some adjustment.
“Going to school here is tough,” Varda says. “Some of these people haven’t acted before in their lives, so talking to them is a slightly different set of language than you would use with someone else. One way to approach it is go for the emotional context, and the other way is to find ways into more logical sides of descriptions of human behavior and timing and structure.”
But it’s a two-way street, as the cast had a lot of input into the final script.
“We sort of folded the science into it layer by layer," says Steve Collins, who plays a manic PhD candidate. "We would riff on ideas, Brenda throws some Alice thing out, and we’d riff on it, and tune up the scientific veracity: Oh no that’s not how peer reviewed papers work.”
Cast notes notwithstanding, Caltech's theater program is much more about the journey than the destination. Undergrad student Harrison Miller plays the caterpillar, or Matter Filler in this incarnation.
“You come to school with geniuses and you get bad grades and these people are acing every class, and these people are way smarter than me,” Miller says. “But this is something a lot of Caltech kids would be terrified of doing, so it certainly gives me a little something I can do that they can’t.”
By the way, Miller had an interview with SpaceX lined up, so no matter what the reviews say, he should be fine.
"Alice Through the Wormhole" will be performed Feb. 27-28 and March 1 at Caltech's Ramo Auditorium.
'Song Exploder': Breaking down the theme to 'House of Cards'
Have you ever listened to a song and wondered how it really came together? Hrishikesh Hirway is a Los Angeles-based musician who takes a song apart piece-by-piece and then brings the artists on his podcast, Song Exploder, to talk about how they put it all together.
On his latest episode, which was adapted for The Frame, Hirway talks with the composer of the theme to "House of Cards," Jeff Beal. (The series' third season debuts Feb. 27.)
Beal worked closely with producer Beau Willimon and director/executive producer David Fincher to shape the tone of the opening theme. Beal also reveals how he built the song over time and how he changed the music from season-to-season to match the sinister changes on the show.
(You can listen to the entire second-season version of the theme below.)