Kinostar Tyler Perry

His humor is massive, his figures seem simplistic, critics accuse him of racism behind: But black U.S. film mogul Tyler Perry is one of the best kept secrets in Hollywood - and produces success at the box office after another.

African-American actors like Will Smith, Forest Whitaker and Eddie Murphy are the Hollywood cinema has long been indispensable. We have grown accustomed to having what police both as pirates, presidents like bums black faces possible. But what about the power behind the scenes? Who knows a black studio boss? Or even heard of Tyler Perry?



His films are called "Diary of a Mad Black", "Daddy Little Girls" and "Why Did I Get Married". Tyler Perry comedies that is not only marketed itself, for which he wrote all the scripts and directing. But when it is usually the main character - an overweight, and gun-toting grandmother zeternde black named Madea - played. Successfully: Meanwhile, Perry led by the magazine "Forbes" as the third richest African-American actor.

Tip for all

However, the media mogul Black is still one of the best kept secrets in Hollywood. And although self-taught 39 years last October - with Will Smith, Oprah Winfrey and Sidney Poitier as guests of honor - his own wide open studio complex in Atlanta. More than 25 million DVDs of his films, he has already been sold, in addition to his screen projects, he produced several shows this summer, as the fledgling sitcom "Meet The Browns".

Is Tyler Perry, the white establishment to little attention, is not only self-sufficient in its operation, the absence of critical insights and conventional advertising, but also in the niche market it serves. Although none of his films were always in a European location, Tyler Perry is black in America long ago that the house brand. Because he has an audience by word of mouth attracted in cinema, movie theaters so far avoided most: African-American practitioners, families, grandmothers. Who had never been seen before black snakes queue old ladies in front of a box office?

Sidney Poitier, the grand old African-American film think you know why Perry is so successful: "It speaks to an audience that does not consider the film industry for decades an audience that reflects like him again in his own image would look -. On average, affectionate, bad people. "

The faithful also helped the film being Perry, "Madea Goes To Jail" - against all the dire predictions of the experts - the blockbuster status: Already the opening weekend, playing the comedy of a 41 million U.S. dollars. A margin which is itself quite a few Hollywood greats in the shadows: "The name of Tyler Perry," said the magazine industry "Media By Numbers", "guarantee continued success as the only Harry Potter . "

The newspaper was referring to the seven films that led African Americans in the last four years, the average income of $ 45 million - at a cost much less than ten million dollars. Even more amazing, these numbers when you consider that Perry's films uses a non-white to 95 percent of the audience.

Creativity, stereotypes, commercialism

How films depict blacks is still controversial with critics. Not without good reason they call character Perry as a crude, simple-minded as his humor and film subjects such as boxes relations melodramatic.

Even worse, they accuse him of unconscious racism, "Perry has some of the old Hollywood stereotypes of the era of apartheid exhumed," said Todd Boyd, professor says to pop culture at the University of Southern California, "Blacks are also often slow and stupid. now reinterpret these prejudices Perry films for a new era."

But as "Madea" comedy made even woodcuts - they obviously meet a widespread need. The desire to see blacks in everyday interactions. Or, as Eugene Robinson in the "Washington Post," writes to let the "Magic Negro" paradigm behind them: Although the definition in Hollywood, black characters usually only about their relationship with the white world, they will be in Perry , at least not a moral function in conditions imposed on the majority society.

Perry studied his audience from beginning to earth: His films based on plays that toured the auto dealership for years by former African-American churches and community centers. Raised in a poor neighborhood of New Orleans, the father abused the mother going to stop the violence on how regularly dragged into the harbor of the Black Church, Perry gathered here, character studies, from which he then built his theater and screen characters.

Individual combatants, Earth's magnetic

In the end the advice that Oprah Winfrey has led to his own way: It would be cathartic to write your feelings, she said in her TV show. Perry wrote in the following letters for himself, his anger on his father and treated the youth has failed and turned it in 1992, his first play: "I know I've changed." Then he built a following on stubbornly. He slept in the car to save on rent, and often visited 350 days a year through the black neighborhoods of Cleveland from Newark to Houston.

When he got the idea in 2002, bringing his comedy to the screen, it might be the major studios rejected. "True blacks are lost, but for movies anyway," he is a representative of Paramount Pictures said openly.

Perry has made every effort to rebut this: He made disparaging remarks of his white boss in a studio down the country churches, sold-out spectacle. With a predictable effect: the public was outraged boos and prompted more than ever watching Perry debut album "Diary Of A Mad Black Woman" film. For many it was the first time they entered a of the most infamous play of light.

And it's probably "Madea Goes to Jail" not be the last film in cinema history of Perry wrote down. Grandmother Madea in Afro-America has long past to become a pop icon. A force of nature, which is not without a plan to stop by to Gag Gag shaking scenarios. Weaknesses of all directed with heart and down to earth wisdom compensates.

And if the "New York Times" Perry as "one of the few genuine populists in the American film industry" means, it could go no recommendation Oscar. Black filmmakers but take it as a compliment. Finally, to Hollywood at the end figures count only cash.