*In an interview with “Black Enterprise” in 2009, Spike Lee criticized Tyler Perry’s “Madea” character, saying it promotes negative stereotypes and that it was time for Black filmmakers to evolve.
“I know it’s making a lot of money, breaking records, but we can do better,” Lee told media personality Ed Gordon back then. When he was told about Lee’s comments, Tyler Perry responded by telling reporters on the red carpet that Lee and other like-minded critics could “go straight to hell.”
But the two filmmakers would later reconcile their differences. When Perry opened “Tyler Perry Studios” in Atlanta in 2019, one of the guests he invited for the grand opening was Lee himself. Perry went further; he named a soundstage after Lee at the large 330-acre facility.
In an interview in those days, Perry explained why he decided to end his beef with the “Do The Right Thing” director.
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“I don’t care if you have beef with somebody,” Perry explained. “The truth is you can’t deny what he has done in the film industry and how he has been on the forefront to help me and everybody else to get to the places that we are.”
Recently, Tyler Perry was hosted by Chris Wallace on “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace” for an interview about Tyler’s new movie “A Jazzman’s Blues.”
Wallace now has a new show on CNN and HBO Max after moving from Fox News. “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace” premieres last weekend, with Wallace taking Tyler Perry back to the decade-old criticism leveled against him by Spike Lee.
“When Madea first started, first came out, Spike lee called it ‘coonery and buffoonery.’ And over the years, there have been a number of people who say that you’re playing with negative stereotypes of Black men and Black women,” Wallace said. “How do you respond?”
Tyler Perry answered that he had heard it all before.
“There’s a certain part of our society, especially Black people in the culture, that they look down on certain things within the culture,” he responded. “For me, I love the movies that I’ve done because they are the people that I grew up with that I represent and, my mother would take me in the projects with her on the weekends, she played cards with these women. Most of them have 12th-grade education, but their stories and how much they loved each other and how when they get sad about something, another would come in and make a joke. I’m five years old on the floor with my matchbox cards. I was in a masterclass for my life. So when someone says you’re harkening back to a point of our life that we don’t want to talk about it, we don’t want the world to see you’re dismissing the stories of millions and millions of Black people.”
He also added that his work “resonates” with people who’ve had similar experiences.
“But it also goes back to the Harlem Renaissance and Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. Langston Hughes said that Zora Neale Hurston was a new version of the ‘Darkie.’ Langston was northern, very sophisticated, Zora Neale from the South. Her character spoke in a southern dialect,” he continued. “So this is a conversation that’s been going on long before Spike Lee and Tyler Perry. It is what it is. But what is important to me is that I’m honoring the people that came up and taught and made me who I am. Their stories deserve to be told too.”
Tyler Perry’s new film “A Jazzman’s Blue” is unlike any of his past comedies. The Netflix drama is about a forbidden relationship between two young lovers in the Deep South and is set in the 1940s.
Tyler has said he wrote the movie’s script back in 1995, long before his “Madea” stage plays and movies came to life.
“A Jazzman’s Blue” made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11 and began streaming on September. 23.
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