Examples are numerous, and they include “Frank’s Place,” “Under One Roof” and the recent “City of Angels.” Except for comedies like “The Jeffersons,” “Good Times,” “Sanford and Son” and even “The Cosby Show,” getting a predominantly African-American show on a broadcast-television network — and then keeping it there without having to compromise it — has been a challenge for many talents. That situation is tackled by writer and debuting director Reggie Rock Bythewood in his drama movie “Dancing in September,” which has its first HBO showing Saturday at 9 p.m.
Nicole Ari Parker (“Soul Food”) plays Tommy, the developer of a series she pitches to a network that has George (Isaiah Washington) as its lone black programming executive. He likes her ideas, and her, and he persuades his colleagues to put her show on the fall schedule. That also satisfies a civil-rights organization lobbying for improved diversity on TV, and the couple gets personally involved while the series debuts and becomes a hit. However, pressure from sponsors and the network may force Tommy to trivialize the concept, which in turn could affect her romance with George. Vicellous Reon Shannon (“The Hurricane”) and Malinda Williams (“Soul Food”) also star.
Bythewood knows firsthand the struggles faced by creative forces on black-themed shows, since he was a staff writer on “A Different World” (where he met his wife, “Love and Basketball” director Gina Prince-Bythewood) and a producer on “New York Undercover.” He says those jobs “broke me into Hollywood, but it was weird because I had never watched much TV. My background was in writing plays. I had some pilots shot that never got on the air, but one did. By the time it aired, I didn’t even recognize it.”
That show was NBC’s “Players,” made by “New York Undercover” and “Law & Order” producer Dick Wolf, and starring Ice-T and Costas Mandylor. “It had a pretty different tone and cast makeup (when it was shown),” Bythewood recalls. “At a certain point, they wanted to go in a different direction, so they had some other writers come in. Because I had initiated the project, I still got a `created by’ credit, and I had mixed emotions about that. It seemed after every episode, someone I knew would call me and ask, ‘What are you doing?”‘
That history went into Bythewood’s “Dancing in September” script. “One thing that’s really important in my writing process is research,” he explains, “but because I knew this world, I wrote a first draft that was basically about my experiences. It really wasn’t where it needed to be, though, so I put it down for a while. When I picked it up again, I interviewed several television executives, primarily African-Americans.”
