Wish I Wrote That: Tyler Perry and Hollywood

The latest edition of "Wish I Wrote That" tackles Tyler Perry's curious path to super stardom. Actually, this commentary by The Atlantic's Ross Douthat hints at bigger, uglier truths about the movie industry:

Perry's ongoing under-the-radar success is a reminder that even in the age of "independent" cinema and pay cable, the movie industry often functions less like a competitive marketplace than a lumbering, brain-dead monopoly. Perry is a talented and hardworking guy, but as the critics will be happy to tell you, he isn't all that talented; he's become a sensation in part because the competition in his particular niche -- middlebrow entertainments pitched to African-American audiences -- is so persistently thin. It isn't racism, exactly, that lets Perry have his audience more or less all too himself; it's the same kind of Hollywood tunnel vision that looked at The Passion of the Christ's enormous success and decided that the appropriate response was to try to market anti-religious films to the church-going audience that made The Passion such a blockbuster. In theory, the studios are out to find out what the movie going public wants and give it to them. In practice, though, they seem far more comfortable doing what they've always done, and finding a way to sell it, than taking the risks necessary to woo and win an under served part of their audience.

Well said - but he's leaving something out. Hollywood can and does think on its collective feet. When "Spider-Man" hit it big back in 2002, competing studios rushed to come up with their own caped crusaders. When "Scooby Doo" raked in a rot of rucks, sorry, a lot of bucks, the studios trotted out "Josie & the Pussycats" and toyed with other cartoon properties for development.

So why didn't they do the same for "The Passion?" Isn't is show business, at the end of the day?

(Photo: David Mann and Tamela Mann break bread in "Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns" - Photo Credit: Alfeo Dixon)