I wanted to send a quick note of congrats on your recent accomplishment with funding After the Storm for feature film production. I am a fellow Hamptonian and staunch Black Independent Filmmaking. My schedule has been very hectic but I am glad that I took the time to read the HU e-newsletter this time. I am not sure what your intention is for the film once completed. However, if you are interested in the film festival circuit, I am affiliated with The Roxbury Int’l Film Festival & The Int’l Panafrican Film Festival of Cannes. I would be more than willing to make appropriate intros. Willing you the very best and I look forward to seeing it in the theatres.

In reference to your film, Cole, it’s interesting to note that the movie “Extremely Loud and Upclose” – a film starring Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, and a slew of White actors – is able to get financed easier and quicker than your script, both of which have similar story structure (young boy overcomes after devastating tragedy). Just goes to show you, as Kanye West said back in 2004, “Racism’s still alive, they just be concealing it…”

my apologizes for the late response. got sidetracked by a bunch of different things. definitely enjoyed reading your viewpoints on the matter. you are definitely correct. risk and demand are huge parts of any business…especially the film biz. i’m definitely not a believer in the ‘if you build it, they will come’ philosophy. you could end up building something that most people simply don’t want. even worse, it could be something that just isn’t that good. i actually think that some filmmakers are delusional enough to believe that the filmmaking is a craft that is immune to the rules of business and finance. i definitely know better. as i’m sure you already know, not every product is expected to have the huge impact in the marketplace that apple or pixar products do. very few films truly ‘blow up’ and become household brands. most of the films that do reach that status have huge P&A budgets to raise awareness about their release. while i wouldn’t expect the feature that i’m trying to get financed to break any box office records, I do believe that it will be a profitable endeavor. i wouldn’t be trying to make the movie if i didn’t believe that it had an audience. that are all kinds of projects that fill a particular niche and perform quite well at the levels in which they are playing ball. true, not every act can sell out MSG, but plenty of artists make a nice living packing out the House of Blues, the 930 club, etc. that said, i’ve got projects in development that could play at various levels. things that could be shot at under $1 million…to very high concept material. as a first time filmmaker, i’m trying to step into the game with a specialty project that has the potential to perform quite well at that level. i guess the main point of what i was trying to get at with this piece is that there are certain entrenched conceptions of ‘black film’ that spring from places well beyond the box office. i merely hope that the time will soon come when we’ll stop making assumptions about project based on their ‘blackness’ and start looking at them in ways that reach beyond their ‘ethnic appeal.’ is it unreasonably optimistic? sure. but as a writer and entrepreneur it’s certainly necessary to have these sorts of thoughts. the immediate goal would be to make profitable films that capitalize on a smaller scale…eventually building the scope of future projects until they are playing at the highest levels of the industry. in that process, hopefully black filmmakers can do enough to show the public that the complexion of the actors in front of the camera is certainly relevant, but when it comes to the universal experiences of the human condition…it doesn’t matter so much at all.

and thanks for the bday wishes bro. those HU days are gettin’ further and further away!