Q: So is it better for you now?

Van Peebles: If you mean...well, I can't really answer that. I mean, if somebody gets in my way, I choose to go around them. By them, I mean whoever doesn't want me to tell a story I want to tell. Better? Easier? Look, man, money can be found on the level to make films, and there are more of them being made because technology has given us a hand here.

Q: You used digital cameras on your newest, A Belly Full?

Van Peebles: That's right, that's right. But there's a whole other thing past the making of it. You have to figure out how to get it out on your own. I took Belly Full to festivals to do my test marketing on somebody else's dime. After that, you just have to find the help you need to distribute it. There are a lot of righteous brothers and sisters and other folk who want to do the right thing and help. But of course, they don't want to lose what could amount to a very substantial amount of money either. So they'll come to me because of my name and what it represents. But who knows what'll happen?

Lemmons: Could we talk about the seventies for a second? Because I think there were a lot of really fabulous movies made in those years, like Sweet Sweetback, that were really, really powerful and would be extremely difficult to make now. I'm thinking of movies that hardly get mentioned anymore, like Claudine and Putney Swope. It was just a really interesting time for movies. And I feel that was one of those times when anything was possible, a new time was dawning, and it didn't really fulfill its promise. And I'm not sure exactly why, but there were only a handful of African-American directors, like Melvin Van Peebles and Gordon Parks. And now there are so many more.

Q: Are the opportunities really greater today? I tend to think that, like everything else in movies, it's a good news/bad news situation.

John Ridley: Well, the good news is that there is a lot of work for black filmmakers. The bad news is there's a lot of work for very few black filmmakers. It's a very narrow market. For everybody: black, white, what have you. But it's certainly narrower if you're black and even narrower if you're Asian or Hispanic.

Q: Statistics show drastic underrepresentation of minorities in the industry. The Writers Guild of America reports that in 1997, just under 5 percent of writers working on feature films were minorities. There was a rise in minority roles in 1999, with black roles going up from 13.4 percent to 14.1 percent. Still...

Spikes: I remember something [president of Time Warner] Dick Parsons said once: A company that does not look like its target audience will ultimately miss its mark. I liked that. He was saying that if you want black business and you don't hire black people in your company, what chances are you going to have? How do you feed that audience if you don't feel that audience's needs in your own arteries?

Ridley: The problem with the craft unions, the crews and the lack of minorities? That's a huge, huge problem. That's even larger than the problems above the line.

Q: Talk about that a little.

Ridley: I mean, Will Smith and Eddie Murphy are going to bring in millions and millions of dollars. So there's going to be an incentive to work with those guys. And they're proven commodities, coming from television, Saturday Night Live or what have you. For people in the trade unions, what's the difference if you hire a black guy or a white guy? And I don't think a lot of people in the trade unions are racist at all. But the reality, as with most jobs, is that you're going to hire people you've worked with before, people you feel comfortable with. If you're a white guy, who do you feel comfortable with? A white guy. I've worked with crews that are mixed and everybody--literally everybody, black, white, Asian--gets along. But it makes a difference when the person on the top is saying, "Hey, make sure we mix it up a little bit."

Q: What about the attitudes in the executive suites, Stacy? How easy is it for a person of color to make something happen with a studio at that level?

Spikes: Let me put it this way. For a long time, when we were on the outside looking in, we were always saying, "Hey, could you give us a little money so we could play this game, too?" Now, [black people] are upwardly mobile with a little more expendable income and now, maybe, Daddy is willing to write us a little $100,000 check to let little Jimmy go do this crazy thing which was once only the privilege of white kids.

Q: The way you frame that metaphor suggests the extent to which the black audience and the black filmmakers are, to Hollywood, children to be indulged instead of engaged. Is that mode of thinking still in play?

Spikes: Absolutely. How many heads of studios do you know who are black? Until Berry Gordy, how many do you think would be put in charge of a whole record company? None. Until you flip the industry or make money outside the system, like Gordy did, until that happens in film, we won't be in the position to command respect.

Q: Is "respect" hard to come by? Even after all you've accomplished?

Spikes: I'll never forget when I was a little kid, my dad would always say, "If you make a C, you're not going to get the job. If you make an A, when the white kid makes a C, now you're even."

You see what I mean? If a white producer and a black producer walk into the same offices at the same time, they're not equal. Same script, same movie. One is going to get it made. The other is not. Well, where's the money going? Why won't it go to the black producer? Is there some reason that goes, like, we can't handle money or we're not responsible? I look at some of the issues I've dealt with in setting up this distribution company. I have to audition every time I'm up to bat. I tell them how I was vice president of marketing at Miramax. I've run October Films' marketing. I've marketed campaigns with $100 million war chests. And I've set up, from scratch, a film festival that's half the size of Sundance and still, still, I have to get beyond [white executives'] apprehensions. It's down to "Gee, I dunno..." or "I'm not sure..."

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