Straight Outta Compton, which chronicles the lives of N.W.A bandmates Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, MC Ren and DJ Yella as they navigate hip-hop stardom and all its concomitant issues, received a nomination for Best Original Screenplay, but was noticeably left out of other categories in the 2016 Oscars race.
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Similarly, white actor Sylvester Stallone was nominated for his performance in the high grossing film “Creed”, but the film’s black writer-director, Ryan Coogler, and black star, Michael B. Jordan, were not.
Ice Cube is handling it just fine. Then he did a pretty damn good earnest-sounding Steve Harvey in apology mode at the Miss Universe pageant – saying no it was his fault, he read it wrong.
And although some films nominated this year have diverse casts, in many of these cases the nominated person associated with the film is white.
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Ice Cube is still Straight Outta Compton and still keeping it straight up, as shown by his response to the film’s awards snubs during a Thursday appearance on The Wendy Williams Show. Plus if he had any doubts about where Straight Outta Compton was positioned as the Oscar nominations approached, then Jamie Foxx’s brilliant half-Kanye, half-Steve Harvey at the Golden Globes was warning enough. I know firsthand how incredibly hard (and what a small MIRACLE) it is for EVERY single movie to get made. Trust me, I get it. Those of us in the industry who labor to make the best content we can are especially sensitive to a perceived systemic bias against a group of people or type of film. We need more content produced by, written by, directed by and featuring filmmakers and actors of color being given the greenlight. “This has been a great year in film, it really has across the board. And we see, despite all of the talk since last year, nothing has changed, and it looks even worse this year”. I repeat-it’s embarrassing. It’s unfair to the performers of color who sacrificed so much, laid it all on the line AND DELIVERED with their projects this year. Number one at the box office, over $200 million at the box office worldwide – you know I can’t be mad.
