Is Tennessee ready for the slippery slope of legislating by phone? During the pandemic, members of local and state governing bodies have been allowed to conduct meetings electronically per executive order by Governor Bill Lee. They have not had to hold physical meetings in a physical place. They can hold meetings on Zoom or even by telephone conference call, as long as they allow the public real-time live audio or video access and follow other rules.
In some instances, this has meant that the governing body is on videoconference, and the public must show up physically at city hall to watch them through a government computer. It has not been ideal for citizens, who have lost the benefit of interaction with their representatives before and after meetings of county commissions, city councils, and zoning boards. But the minimum — the ability to follow the discussion, know who is speaking, and know how a person is voting — has been protected under provisions in the governor’s executive order.
After the pandemic eases, the regular rules of Tennessee’s Sunshine Law will go back into effect. But some local elected officials, county commissioners around the state, specifically, want to continue to be able to patch into a meeting and vote by phone instead of physically attending. Problem is, this time around, the protections for the public that were carefully preserved in the governor’s executive order would disappear.
House Bill 327 and Senate Bill 301, sponsored by two Knoxville lawmakers at the request of the Knox County Commission, would permit almost half of a county legislative body to participate and vote in a given meeting by calling in instead of appearing in person if they meet certain requirements.
A healthy debate should take place on whether legislating by phone and not in front of constituents is a good idea. The Tennessee Constitution prevents state lawmakers from doing this. But if the General Assembly thinks it’s important to allow county commission members to call in and debate and vote by phone, then surely the public needs protections to ensure that citizens can hear and understand who is talking on the phone at any given time and how those members vote.
How did such legislation emerge? The idea as presented by its sponsors is noble and kind. It would allow county commissioners who are having a family emergency or medical emergency to stay at home and still participate and vote in a meeting. However, it’s unclear what would constitute a “family emergency” or even “medical emergency.” The legislation gives authority for that determination to the county commission, raising questions about potential misuse or abuse. Another reason is more straightforward — the member is out of the county for work, but even that could be abused. The fourth reason is specific and seems unlikely to be abused — the member is called into military service.
The bill requires that a quorum of the county legislative body be at the physical location of the meeting before other members are allowed to call in and vote by phone. For example, on a county commission with 25 members, only 12 members could call in for any given meeting. On the 40-member Metropolitan Council of Nashville and Davidson County, only 19 members could participate electronically at the same time. While it may seem an unlikely scenario for so many to call in, the bill permits it. And it would not be completely outside the imagination that with such large governing bodies, you might have six or seven people taking advantage of the electronic participation.
Like with any slippery slope, we ease into new realities slowly. The legislation creates an exception to the entirety of the Open Meetings Act, not just the section that sets out rules on how electronic participation in meetings should take place — rules that have been developed largely for state boards. This means if the legislation became law, it would trump where it conflicts with any part of Tennessee’s open meetings law. The bill instead envisions that the county legislative bodies would come up with their own rules to protect the public’s interest in open meetings. This assumes that each of the state’s 95 county legislative bodies would impose stricter standards on themselves than what is required in the open meetings law — an idea that deserves more examination and thought.
Finally, the bill’s sponsors point to a natural limitation in the legislation: An elected official could participate electronically in only two commission meetings a year. It’s a seemingly small hole in the open meetings law for the state’s 95 county legislative bodies. But if passed, it likely won’t be long before city councils, boards of aldermen, and other local governing bodies ask for the same. And the limits of twice a year? Why not three? And how about expanding it to county budget committee meetings, too? We should proceed cautiously and thoughtfully down this route of permanent exceptions to the open meetings law. The enthusiasm of an elected official for more personal convenience should be tempered with the duty of appearing before the public they represent and conducting business in the open.
Deborah Fisher is the executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government.
Memphis author Sheree Renée Thomas posted photos of herself, Troy L. Wiggins (pictured), and Danian Darrell Jerry signing copies of the just-released Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda to Instagram.
Zamunda Forever
Memphis businesses celebrated the release of the Craig Brewer-directed Coming 2 America. Some flew the Zamundan flag, while others posed with Brewer.
Spread Love
A woman with a big heart was spotted at Sam Cooper and East Parkway last week. Christopher Champlain wrote on Facebook, “I think it’s pretty awesome that she woke up today and decided to sit at one of the busiest intersections and spread love.”
When Ballet Memphis ended its 2019 season with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, everyone involved knew it was a moment of change. It was the last show for dancer Crystal Brothers, a 23-year veteran of the stage, and for Dorothy Gunther Pugh, the CEO and artistic director who founded the company 30 years ago. But little did they know how much things were about to change. The coronavirus pandemic shuttered Ballet Memphis and other performing arts organizations all over the country, and consigned them to an uncertain future.
That’s why it was lucky that Steve J. Ross and David Goodman decided to film their documentary, A Ballet Season, when they did. The University of Memphis faculty members have created an invaluable portrait of artistic camaraderie and struggle, and a reminder of what we have lost in the past year.
Ballet Memphis performs The Nutcracker in A Ballet Season. (Photo courtesy Steve J. Ross)
“When we pitched it to Ballet Memphis, neither one of us really knew Dorothy Gunther Pugh very well,” Ross says. “It was her company, but she had a strong group of people surrounding her. The idea was, look, we admire you. We’re not doing some sort of horrific tell-all about the royal family or anything. But at the same time, this would be our film. We want to make a film about a year in the life of a company, and what it means to be a ballet company in all aspects of the word. That they agreed to it was a great act of trust on their part and her part.”
If you go into A Ballet Season looking for diva behavior or backstage drama, you won’t find it. These artists compose a group of disciplined professionals working to make the best shows they can under the constraints of time and budget. Before the company takes to the stage to perform Gisele for a half-full house, Pugh tells the dancers that though there may not be as many people in the audience as they would like, “The ones that bought their tickets, by God, we’re going to give them the best our hearts can do.”
David Goodman says this generosity of spirit is the essence of the company. In the board meeting that opens the film, it is pointed out that Ballet Memphis is the most diverse company in the country. “Something that also drew us to Ballet Memphis was they have a real connection to this city. They put that on the stage, and they’re very intentional in how they do that. They don’t want to feel like, in their own words, a palace dropped into the middle of the city that’s inaccessible.”
Goodman was behind the camera for more than 80 hours as a fly on the wall in the rehearsal hall and meeting rooms, even accompanying the dancers to their annual physicals. “David is a really great observational documentary cinematographer,” Ross says. “Some of the dancers were a little hesitant about this whole process, but after a couple of months, they didn’t even notice.”
“Repeat visits are really the key,” Goodman says. “It was particularly important to be there at the beginning.”
A Ballet Season (Still image from the film by cinematographer David Goodman)
The earned trust pays off with intimate scenes of the dancers and choreographers working on their moves. Revealing the repetition and pain of their process was a big leap for the dancers. “That’s the key to ballet, right? It has to look effortless,” says Ross. “A big part of this film was trying to be with the company for a whole year. Can we grasp this creative process? And I think that’s one of the things about dance is if you’re filming the same thing several times over, you can see that process.”
This is particularly striking late in the film, when Ross and Goodman intercut between rehearsals and performance footage. You can hear Brothers groan in pain as she does a particularly bendy move, then see her repeat the same move onstage with a broad smile on her face. Injury constantly stalks the dancers. By February, everyone is fighting through some kind of pain.
But the show, as always, must go on. The performance sequences are beautiful and compelling. They highlight just how much we have missed in the last year as live performances have been curtailed by the coronavirus. A Ballet Season reminds us of what we had and took for granted — and what can be again.
A Ballet Season airs on WKNO-TV on Friday, March 26th, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, March 28th, at 4 p.m.
Momentum continues to gather against the construction of the proposed Byhalia Connection oil pipeline through several low-income African-American neighborhoods and across the footprint of the Memphis aquifer field.
Former Vice President Al Gore, author of award-winning volumes on climate-change issues and one of the most prominent environmentalists of our time, was the featured speaker of a spirited and well-attended anti-pipeline rally staged in South Memphis Sunday, March 14th, by the ad hoc Memphis Community Against the Pipeline (MCAP) group.
Encouraging grassroots opposition to the pipeline, which is pending under the auspices of the Valero Energy Corporation and Plains All American Pipeline, Gore called the proposed construction “reckless, racist, [and a] rip-off.”
He noted that several actions to halt or retard development of the pipeline, which has approval by the Corps of Engineers, is imminent in the Memphis City Council, the Shelby County Commission, and the General Assembly.
One strategy being discussed on the county commission, which at the moment holds in escrow several tax-defaulted properties along the proposed pipeline route, would be to require an independent study on the environmental feasibility of the pipeline before those properties could be released. For the time being, there is a moratorium on sale of the properties, but a vote on their status could occur as early as this week in committee or next week in the commission’s regular public meeting.
• Dilating for a spell on the theme of racism during his remarks on Sunday, Gore noted, “The founder of the Ku Klux Klan [Nathan Bedford Forrest] is still honored to this very day with a bust in the Capitol building in Nashville, Tennessee. They ought to take that down!”
At the moment, Gore’s remark may have seemed a mite anti-climactic, inasmuch as the Tennessee Historical Commission had, earlier in the week, reversed its prior positions and voted overwhelmingly to remove the bust, transporting it to a section on military leaders in the nearby state museum.
But Gore was on target. Though the commission’s action was supported by Governor Bill Lee, among others, and was in the wake of a vote by the Capitol Commission to remove the bust, there are still legal snags to the removal process.
For one thing, state law provides for a 120-day waiting period to allow for potential legal challenges to the action. For another, as noted in the Tennessee Journal, Lt. Governor Randy McNally (R-Oak Ridge) and Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville) are calling the Historical Commission’s vote “unlawful” because, they say, the process omitted a statutory requirement for the state Building Commission to concur with the Capitol Commission’s previous vote for removal.
Moreover, there are other rear-guard actions pending against the Historical Commission’s decision. State Representative John Ragan (R-Oak Ridge) and state Senator Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald) have drafted a bill to reconstitute the Historical Commission’s membership. An amendment by Ragan would require a commission action such as the removal vote, which was technically a waiver, to be approved by majority votes in both chambers of the Tennessee General Assembly.
Ragan’s amendment would further proclaim that monuments currently ensconced on the second floor of the Capitol (like the Forrest bust) “must be preserved and protected for all time,” with any attempt to remove them becoming an impeachable offense.
Photo courtesy of Rhodes College Dr. Bettina L. Love
Award-winning author and professor Dr. Bettina L. Love will discuss the struggles and possibilities of committing to an abolitionist goal of educational freedom, as opposed to reform, moving beyond what she calls the educational survival complex.
That’s a heavy but necessary conversation from the Communities in Coversation lecture series hosted by Rhodes College and co-sponsored by Facing History and Ourselves and Rhodes’ Division of Student Life, and Educational Studies, Africana Studies.
Love is the perfect person to highlight during Women’s History Month. The educator and orator teaches at the University of Georgia and has been instrumental in establishing abolitionist teaching. A founder of the Abolitionist Teaching Network, Love is passionate about developing and supporting teachers and parents to fight injustice within their schools and communities.
In a recent TED Talk, Love said, “Students who identify with hip-hop culture embody the characteristics of grit, social and emotional intelligence, and improvisation — all of which are proven to be predictors of academic success.” She argues that, “Ignoring students’ culture in the classroom is all but an oversight; it’s discrimination and injustice that plays out in our culture in very dangerous ways.”
Love discusses these topics and more, followed by a Q&A.
“We Gon’ Be Alright, But That Ain’t Alright: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom,” online from Rhodes College, rhodes.edu, Wednesday, Mar. 24, 6 p.m., free with registration.
t seems a little off-brand, but the French are a scotch-drinking nation. And now they’re making the stuff themselves. When you look at national trends, this is no real surprise: The British could float a navy on the amount of French brandy they drink. Further south, despite Italian wines being very fashionable in this country, the Italians themselves are shifting dramatically from wine to beer for the simplest reason of them all — their parents drank wine. While the French can be a pretty pedantic lot, that cuts both ways. You may not want to talk existentialism with them, but when it comes to food and drink they rarely go in halfway.
Over the holidays, my father-in-law gave me a bottle of Michel Couvreur Overaged Malt Whisky. He gives both his sons-in-law a bottle of scotch every year, and since I’m the weird one, I usually get a bottle of something slightly off-kilter — like French scotch. To be clear, if it’s not made in Scotland, it’s not scotch, but malt whiskies have been cropping up all over the planet in what we’re now calling “World Whiskies,” with some impressive results.
The Michel Couvreur bottle is a thing of beauty on its own, and what’s inside looks more like cognac or bourbon. What surprises you, if you are a fan of French wines, is how “big” the flavor is. Their wines, like the food, are often the result of a mastery that makes the complex seem subtle. There is nothing subtle here. It is in the same sandbox with what we know as scotch, but don’t go thinking you are diving into a bottle of Highland malt. Michel Couvreur resides on the other side of the spectrum from those impressive and very light Japanese whiskies.
This is an exercise in just how much the cask imparts to the flavor profile of what is sitting in it. The product is actually distilled in Scotland and then shipped to France as what we might call Scottish moonshine (if not white lightning, at least plaid lightning) and “ennobled” in sherry casks in France. Traditionally, scotch is aged in recycled American white oak bourbon barrels. With plenty of producers using sherry casks these days, what makes the Michel Couvreur different is that they forgo the traditional rack-houses and lay the casks up in the Burgundian caves of Bouze les Beaune. They swear that this makes a difference.
I’m not sure what, exactly, those Burgundian caves are adding to the party, but something made this whisky what it is — a strange, cozy marriage of scotch and brandy. Sticking your nose in the snifter, there is a faintly musty, medicinal vapor that is actually not terribly inviting. On the palate, however, things improve dramatically. There is little-to-no smoke or that peatiness of the Islay or Highland malts, but with a few drops of water, the taste of malt whisky comes through. Like the child of immigrants still using the phrases his parents brought over from the old country in a local accent.
Again, the palate here is very big — at the time I think I used the word “intense.” Which is not something that the French generally go in for, unless they are talking politics or sex. But it doesn’t stay that way. On the back end, you get some solid notes I can describe only as “very old brandy.”
How to drink it? I can’t imagine using it as a mixer in a cocktail, but on the other hand, a little water or an ice cube or two will open up the hidden gems in this beautifully peculiar malt whisky. And it is peculiar because, in my experience “intense” and “interesting” aren’t mutually exclusive, but they do tend to travel in opposite directions. This bottle is the exception to that rule.
This event exists because of donors’ generosity to January’s Indiegogo campaign raising awareness of Black Lodge’s plight. Since that generosity will help the independent video rental store and music and events venue survive until the end of lockdown, they’d like to give back. Memphians can enjoy 48 hours of movies, music, comics, art, and more, compliments of Black Lodge.
“Venues all over the country have struggled to stay afloat during the pandemic, and Black Lodge is no different,” Black Lodge states on social media. “As our live band shows, movie screenings, and club nights have been on hold, it’s been a challenge to stay open. Thank you, so much, to each and every one of you. Now, we want to give something back.”
Featured bands will include Jack Oblivian, The Sheiks, and Louise Page live-streamed from Black Lodge, along with many other pre-recorded performances. Short films will include creations by Craig Brewer, Mike McCarthy, John Pickle, Laura Jean Hocking, Chad Allen Barton, and others. Josh McLane, Billups Allen, and other comics will make you laugh. Drag artists Moth Moth Moth and Hunny West will perform. Mixologist Morgan McKinney will host a special drink mixology tutorial. You’ll need one before watching the killer comedy Freaky, starring Vince Vaughn and directed by Christopher Landon.
The telethon will wrap up with a double-feature of two of the worst movies ever made, E.T. rip-off Mac & Me and 1990’s Troll 2 (which is about vegetarian goblins — not trolls).
You will be able to tip the bands and continue to donate to the Black Lodge fund. We hope that you do.
The Black Lodge Telethon, online from video.blacklodgememphis.com, Friday, Mar. 19, 6 p.m., through Sunday, Mar. 21, 3 a.m., free.
Thanks to COVID-19, 2020 was Hollywood’s year without hits. With American movie theaters shuttered to prevent the spread of the deadly disease, studios kept their big guns under wraps, while simultaneously trying to figure out how the new paradigm of streaming services fit into their business models.
“What I think is most interesting is how the system of Hollywood that’s dependent on numbers started to be in question,” says director Craig Brewer. “It was shaky. With no box office, how could you judge a movie in this environment? By what numbers? You saw kind of a breakdown of everything that had been built around that.”
But that hit drought ended on March 5th. If your TV was on that weekend, odds are you were watching Brewer’s new film, Coming 2 America. According to Screen Engine, the independent firm that tracks streaming viewership, the Eddie Murphy comedy scored the largest audience of any release since the pandemic upended the movie business the previous March, handily beating both Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’s October release and Wonder Woman 1984’s Christmas audience. “The premiere of Coming 2 America has far exceeded any of our wildest expectations,” said Jennifer Salke, chief of Amazon Studios, who distributed the film.
Brewer broke into Hollywood with 2005’s Hustle & Flow, the now-classic hip-hop film starring Terrance Howard and Taraji P. Henson, which was produced and filmed in Memphis. The film earned Howard a Best Actor Academy Award nomination and a stunning Best Original Song win for Three 6 Mafia’s “It’s Hard out Here for a Pimp.”
But what most people don’t recall about the film is its disappointing opening weekend. “I’ve never been successful in the way that Hollywood gauges your success: These are the numbers, and this is what we projected,” Brewer says. “I’ve never been in a situation in my career where I’ve met or exceeded the numbers. It’s always been a victory that is ultimately more rewarding, like awards that come later, or a movie becomes beloved over time on television, like Hustle & Flow. People embraced it over a decade or so. I can now say, ‘Well, I’ve got this on the books. I’ve at least achieved that thing that a lot of people in Hollywood think is ultra important.’ And not that it isn’t; it’s just not something that you’re thinking about while you’re making a movie. You just want it to be as good as it can be.”
Brewer first worked with Eddie Murphy on the comedian’s 2019 comeback, Dolemite Is My Name. In the 1980s, when Brewer was a teenager dreaming of making his own films, Murphy was conquering the world. “It’s great to be young and watch a star explode,” Brewer says.” You feel like you were part of it. And I think for our generation, we were there watching him explode on Saturday Night Live. Then he became a movie star and transcended all of it. People around the world were like, ‘America! Eddie Murphy!’ He was like Elvis.”
Dolemite Is My Name garnered universal praise and Oscar buzz, even though Murphy was not ultimately nominated, despite many thinking he should have been nominated for Best Actor. “They even joked about it in the Oscars’ opening monologue that year.”
Most importantly, the filming of Dolemite was a good experience for everyone involved. “[Murphy] was proud of his work, which he should be,” Brewer says. “He did a fantastic job. I’m really proud of Dolemite Is My Name. We realized that there was a good pairing there, a good team. So when he asked me about Coming 2 America, it seemed like this would be a great way to stay in the Eddie Murphy world. Eddie had been working on this idea for a couple of years, and I think now he was galvanized to move forward because he felt really confident with the way audiences were responding to Dolemite. And he was ready to tell this story.”
Following up a beloved film like Coming to America is an enterprise fraught with expectations. The 1988 film starred Murphy as Prince Akeem Joffer, the scion of Zamunda, a fictional country in Africa. Unwilling to acquiesce to a dynastic marriage arranged by his father, King Jaffe (James Earl Jones), he flees to America to find love — and what better place for a king in waiting to find a wife than Queens, New York?
Murphy’s co-star was Arsenio Hall as Semmi, the prince’s long-suffering best friend. The comic duo also played a series of memorable bit parts in the film, such as a pair of wisecracking old men in a Queens barbershop, and Murphy’s unforgettable turn as soul singer Randy Watson, frontman for Sexual Chocolate, who invented the mic drop. Like Hustle & Flow, the film had become part of the culture through decades of reruns on cable TV. “What the studio and Eddie would bring up all the time is, ‘Don’t underestimate how many people have watched Coming to America,’” Brewer says. “We nicknamed it ‘Black Star Wars’ because it comes with the same kind of complications as doing anything in the Star Wars universe.”
Murphy and Brewer took a script by the original writers Barry W. Blaustein and David Sheffield and reworked it with Black-ish writer Kenya Barris. Getting the tone right proved to be difficult. Murphy had made a name for himself with raunchy comedy, but some of what was funny and transgressive in 1988 wouldn’t fly today.
“We’re in a different place with comedy,” says Brewer. “Yes, you can just be as irreverent as you want to be, but that irreverence can’t equal offending people’s essence. As funny as [Akeem’s betrothed princess] Mani was jumping on one leg and barking like a dog, today, it’s gonna be received differently by 17-year-old women who are looking at a very authoritarian, patriarchal, misogynistic society, and saying, ‘Is that really something to laugh at?’
“What I find interesting about the conversation that is happening around Coming 2 America is that it’s the same thing that we were talking about in the early drafts. It was packed with nods to the original movie. I mean, they were coming out of the woodwork. I think we went to the Zamunda McDowell’s opening, and Sam Jackson robbed the place again. There’s plenty of criticism that all our movie is, is nostalgia, which, by the way, is what we wanted to accomplish. We always felt like we wanted it to be a return to your old friends. But there is also something rather interesting, a lesson. It’s like ‘Don’t you do anything with my original movie! And don’t you dare explore any of your woke themes in my Coming to America!’ But Akeem was looking for substance. He wanted a woman who had a mind of her own.”
Shari Headley, who played Akeem’s love interest, Lisa McDowell, in the original film, was among the actors who returned for the sequel. She gets both a funny sequence with SNL vet Leslie Jones, and an emotional scene with Murphy as his loving wife and mother of three daughters. She’s not the only veteran Black actor who gets a victory lap. John Amos, famous first as the father from the seminal 1970s sitcom Good Times, returns as Lisa’s father, who shines when he gives Akeem a much-needed pep talk. “That was a special day working with him because the whole crew was just in awe of his whole legacy. He comes off so perfect in that moment.”
Brewer first worked with Wesley Snipes on Dolemite, where he played Murphy’s foil, director D’urville Martin. “I remember saying, ‘We need somebody that can go toe-to-toe with Eddie Murphy.’ When I pitched that to Eddie, he was like, ‘I don’t think there’s anybody except Wesley.’ I was like, like, ‘Oh my God, can you imagine?’”
In Coming 2 America, Snipes again plays Murphy’s rival — this time, General Izzi, leader of Zamunda’s neighboring country Nexdoria — and damn near steals the show. “He’s actually an inspiration to a lot of people. They go, ‘Man, I just like his attitude now.’ It’s at odds with what some people would predict how Wesley would be. And now that I’ve made two films with him, I’m just like, please, please, Hollywood. Are you seeing what everybody’s saying now? Can somebody back the money truck up to Wesley Snipes right now? Because we would like him back.
“I think when you’re directing movies, the big joy you get is adding actors and actresses that you have always dreamed of working with, and being able to somehow work within their craft,” says Brewer. “But among all those people is one of those actors. … I mean, there’s us, and then there’s James Earl Jones, right? When you asked me, what was it like to meet him and work with him? It was like I was sitting down with the end credits of Field of Dreams.”
James Earl Jones as King Jaffe Joffer. (Photo: courtesy Paramount Pictures)
The Quest
To maintain secrecy, Coming 2 America filmed under the code name The Quest, which was Murphy’s first title for the original film. “We finished principal photography right before the end of 2019,” Brewer says. “We did think that we were going to probably try to get a week in New York after we did an edit. This is common with a lot of big pictures. So there were some plans to explore that, but the more 2020 began to reveal itself to us, the less likely that became. … The pandemic hit, and then we really had to learn in real time what we could do with our editorial team, how we could work remotely.”
Brewer directed the edit via video conference, first alone in his Los Angeles apartment, then in his Memphis office in Crosstown Concourse. “The technology did not rob me of my usual process, where I can be in the room with an editor and share that energy and immediacy. But I have to be honest, the remote process also taught me that there’s another way: Be clear with what you want, and give the editor or artists their own space to contribute, to do their own interpretation, without you having to be joined at the hip.”
Director Craig Brewer on the set of Coming 2 America, which filmed under the codename “The Quest”. (Photo courtesy Craig Brewer)
Eventually, the reshoots happened on the Paramount lot during the height of the pandemic. “It was interesting, because we had to learn how to do it. There’s a whole new color system, and you’re constantly being tested. But the good news is that, I’d have a safety meeting in the morning, and I’m looking around at these crews who’ve been working on sets for decades. There’s no one better to take on some challenges than a film crew. They’re going to figure it out.”
Coming 2 America was originally scheduled for theatrical release in August 2020, but as the pandemic dragged on, the date was pushed back to December. Brewer says he saw the writing on the wall before Paramount announced the sale of the film to Amazon. “I was early in my opinion that we’re probably going to go to a streamer.”
The reported budget of Coming 2 America was about $60 million. When Amazon paid $125 million for the rights to the film, it seemed like a decent profit for Paramount, who stood to lose an entire year of theatrical income. In retrospect, it seems like a bargain for Jeff Bezos — and a triumph for Amazon’s marketing team.
“I was all for us being part of the entertainment during this time. By not pushing it to another year, I felt like we were, for a lack of a better term, like a service. Let’s get this movie out to everybody right now. We want to see some old friends. We want to enjoy ourselves. I felt really special, actually, after awhile. The whole cast did. Look, we were disappointed. Of course, we would want it to be in movie theaters, and we want that communal experience to happen where there wasn’t a pandemic and thousands of lives being lost. But here’s where we are now. We hope everybody just stays at home and watches Coming 2 America and has a great time with their family and friends. It’s a feel-good movie, and people need to feel good right now. It felt really bad for a long time; now we need to feel good.”
Coming 2 America is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video.
