by Whitney Friedlander

Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images        

On Monday at the Television Critics Association in Beverly Hills, people of color working in Hollywood dug deep into the question of diversity hires on television. They offered a range of perspectives on the prevailing frustrations in the industry, both in front of and behind the camera.

Colorism is a big issue.
“The elephant in the room is always the dark skin,” actress Tichina Arnold of Starz’s Survivor’s Remorse said, pointing to her own arm and saying “women of color, color, color.” Survivor’s Remorse director Victoria Mahoney said this is understandable, considering skin tone is a topic that is hard to even “navigate within the [black] community.” Mahoney talked about an upcoming Survivor’s Remorse episode where the A-story line is about colorism. “When I met with Mike [O’Malley, the showrunner] initially, one of the things that I spoke about that’s important to me is the difficulty to navigate the community, and have light skin and dark skin be an issue,” she explained. “On the day of when we were shooting, we all had to have these very delicate conversations, and it was really crucial for me to make sure that the individuals in the scene had input.”

It’s incredibly hard for female directors of color.
Although director Anthony Hemingway (Underground; The People v. O.J. Simpson) said that we “are definitely coming into a time where there are more opportunities,” thanks to TV One, Starz, El Rey, and other channels that actively seek out minority programming, Mahoney added that Survivor’s Remorse’s O’Malley had to take to Twitter to find a female director of color for his series because he couldn’t find anyone from the agencies:

“I’m a four-percenter. Often today — not 30 years ago and not 100 years ago — when people hire people of color, they usually hire male. When they decide to hire women, they usually hire white … in order for me to get out of that four-percent, I need co-conspirators … there’s a cat that gets a $250 million film at Sundance. He goes straight to a $140 million franchise. But I’ve been directing TV for five years — multi-cams, all kinds of shit  … and someone was just talking about whether I’ve got experience.”

She said that “there’s a line in the sand, and what my job is now is I have to move that line in the sand and confront people who are very comfortable in old, old ways of thinking. It’s exhausting. It’s boring … I’m starving for something else.”

Diversity hires are also a concern for below-the-line jobs.
“We have to be at the table on every single level; and it goes for TV One as well,” said D'Angela Proctor, the senior vice president of programming and production for that channel. “We’re an African-American network, but at the same time, we may use a white production company. I cannot have it when I go to set and my entire cast is black and everyone below the line is white.”

Even when we get shows that have non-white casts, they’re often steeped in stereotypes.
“I’m dying to see a Latino family show that’s not criminals,” said Carlos Coto, the showrunner for El Rey’s From Dusk Til Dawn. “I want to make a Latino show without the word ‘cartel’ in it. That would be awesome.”

There are still way too many "girlfriend" parts for women.
“I could have a résumé that’s 50 pages long if I would take every role that’s offered to me where I’m playing the girlfriend,” said actress Jurnee Smollett-Bell, adding that she took her lead part on WGN’s Underground because she wasn’t just the girlfriend. “That’s definitely been the challenge, is fighting these stereotypes that people oftentimes write because it’s just easy to just write us as one-dimensional people.”

Check this out on volture.com

NALIPster producer, writer and director, Alejandro Sugich, is set to participate in the Docunexión Mx-De program brought by the International Documentary Film Festival of Mexico City (DocsDF), in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Mexiko and Dok.Fest München.

The projects selected to participate in the program will have the opportunity to participate in workshops with Sugich and other renowned international professionals in the München Dok.Fest and DocsDF festivals to create an active exchange of ideas and foster creative collaborations around documentary film.

The DocsDF festival will take place in Mexico, from October 17 to 21, and the Dok.Fest München festival will take place in Germany, on May 3 to 13 in 2017.

Aside from participating in films, Sugich is the co-founder of SumoVR A 360/VR/AAR, a production company based in Venice CA and Mexico City.

Learn more on alemania-mexico.com

by Saba Hamedy

Could Star Wars come to ABC?

According to Channing Dungey, ABC Entertainment President, it's a definite possibility.

“As a fan, I would absolutely love to say yes,” Dungey said during the network's Television Critics Association presentation on Thursday. “We have had conversations, and we will continue to have conversations with Lucasfilm. It would be wonderful to extend the franchise.”

However, there is no official timeline.

Dungey, the first African American person to lead a broadcast network in the U.S., has been with ABC Studios since 2004. She helped with the development of Scandal, How to Get Away With Murder, freshman hit Quantico and Once Upon a Time. 

She replaced Paul Lee in February 2016. 

At the panel, Dungey also touched on the Bachelor franchise, tackling the question that has been asked of presidents before regarding diversity on the shows.

Normally, the picking process for The Bachelor, The Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise originates with what Lee called "The Farm Team" a.k.a the pool of contestants that producers have used since the show's inception in 2009. For example, season 20 Bachelor Ben Higgins was a finalist on last season's The Bachelorette with Kaitlyn Bristowe.

At the network's winter TCA presentation in January, Lee said ABC is "doing a whole lot of tweaks" to the Bachelor franchise.

"I'd be very surprised if the [Bachelorette] in the summer isn't diverse," Lee told reporters following the network's executive session.

However, a diverse lead Bachelor or Bachelorette has not yet become a reality.

"I would very much like to see some changes there," Dungey said of the franchise. "We need to increase the pool of diverse candidates in the beginning...so that is something we really want to put some effort and energy towards.” 

When asked if ABC would ever pick outside the Farm Team pool, Dungey said "we could."

"But first runner up in one cycle becomes person to lead next cycle [and] it’s worked really well for us," she said. "Because the audience feels very engaged in choosing next candidate. I think what we’d like to do is widen that pool of candidates."

Dungey also briefly addressed the network's plans for a potential standalone streaming service, which rival networks such as CBS already have in effect.

"Obviously this is the future in a lot of ways," she said. "We are committed to getting our content to our audience in as many ways as possible we are very excited about our partnerships ... and we relaunched our ABC app, which is going to be a great place and opportunity for our audience to find our shows in addition to throwback content and new ABC digital originals."

Check this out on mashable.com

By Bob Strauss

Warner Bros

In the current comedy “Bad Moms,” Jay Hernandez plays Mila Kunis’ walking wish-fulfillment: her kids’ middle school’s hottest widower who’s the only person in the movie that thinks she’s a terrific parent, wants to cook her dinner and is an eager expert at oral sex.

It has not been unusual for the South San Gabriel native to play a dishy guy ever since Hernandez stole Kirsten Dunst’s heart in his first movie, “Crazy/Beautiful,” 15 years ago.

So ladies, are you ready for Diablo?

“I don’t think I’m a sex symbol in ‘Suicide Squad,’ ” Hernandez laughs about his criminal character, who has no hair anywhere on his head and is covered with tattoos that make him look like a Día de los Muertos spectre fresh out of San Quentin (and that’s not even considering his impressive, if hard to control, ability to blast fire from his body). “I guess if serial killers can find wives in jail, he might pass.”

In the DC Comics villains mash-up movie, Diablo is a member of the criminal squad tasked by the government with defending the world from greater threats — or else. But when the team’s psychos gleefully take baseball bats and boomerangs to their opponents, the haunted Diablo holds back, guilt-ridden to near paralysis over his violent street gang past and the horrible personal tragedy his flames were responsible for.

So, if you like damaged, sensitive types ...

“I’ve never played a character like that,” said Hernandez, 38, who saw some of his friends turn to crime while growing up. “To be able to use that unique history of me growing up in L.A. and being exposed to certain things, I thought it was really cool. In some ways, I’ve avoided playing characters like this because I didn’t want to perpetuate stereotypes, but I thought Diablo was an exception. There’s a lot of heart to this character. He has a lot of impact in the movie — [he] represents its idea of redemption.”

And looks like death warmed over burning coals. The tattoos — a combination of transfers, airbrush, paint and sealant — initially took five hours to apply each morning, which the makeup team eventually perfected down to a pleasant three. It was a mere 40 minutes to remove it all when the shooting wrapped.

“It was a pretty grueling schedule because I’d have a full day, but be the first one in hair and makeup and the last one out every day,” he says.

At least Hernandez never got burned, even though practical flamethrowers were often a part of Diablo’s CG-enhanced pyrotechnics.

One reason why the actor never went the crime route his character and some of his childhood friends did is that, well, someone thought he should be an actor. A talent manager named Howard Tyner randomly saw young Hernandez in an elevator, liked his look and gave him his business card.

“I wrote him off. I thought it was B.S. to be honest,” Hernandez recalls. “But my mother convinced me to call the guy three weeks later and we set up a meeting. My father was highly suspicious, but I gave it a shot, took some acting classes, started auditioning and I was horrible at it for a number of years.”

A lot of women are probably glad it all worked out. And some no doubt want to know if Hernandez has any real tattoos.

“Just a couple, but not like that!” he roars in regard to Diablo’s. “No, no! Face tattoos are a bad idea, man.”

Check this out on dailynews.com

by Salias Lesnick