Wild About Harry Belafonte

"...a film that touches the depths of who we are as a people, touches the depths of what America is as a country, and gives us a sense of understanding more deeply what our past has been..."  ~Harry Belafonte paying tribute to 12 Years a Slave film director, Steve McQueen.

If you read my previous blog entry, you know that I'm on a new entertainment adventure.  I'm doing a podcast called The Bobby Rivers Show.  In one of our shows, I talked about the immensely moving and memorable performance delivered by Chiwetel Ejiofor as the educated African-American family man kidnapped and dragged back into slavery.

                                                                           

He is, once again, sold and worked like a beast of burden.  12 Years a Slave is based on Solomon Northup's true life experience in a time when there was slavery here in the Land of the Free.  Chiwetel Ejiofor, quite deservedly, is one of the current nominees for the Best Actor Academy Award.

I am so glad U.S. moviegoers are now discovering the versatility and depth of this acclaimed British actor.  Chiwetel Ejiofor deserves attention "on this side of the pond."

Early last month, there was a reported brief disturbance during the New York Film Critics Circle awards dinner.  Armond White, a smart and often contrary critic in the circle, may have called the filmmaker a couple of unsavory names when Mr. McQueen was accepting the award for Best Director.    Armond White, one of the few African-American critics in the NYFCC, did not like 12 Years a Slave.  The controversial White was later expelled from the NYFCC.  News items on the bad conduct reported that McQueen didn't seem to be aware of the disturbance from Armond White who was seated at a table near the back of the room.

Also making news -- in a more positive light -- was the speech actor/activist Harry Belafonte delivered before Steve McQueen was handed his award.  I know a couple of critics who were present.  They said that Belafonte's speech was extraordinary.  The transcript of it is online.  I read it again thanks to the "Harry Belafonte pays tribute to Steve McQueen's genius at NYFCC Awards" article on the HitFix.com website.  You can Google it.  It's a wonderful speech.  Director Steve McQueen must have felt that Mr. Belafonte's tribute was the ultimate prize that night.

I advocate racial diversity in the  arts and in the discussion/criticism of the arts.  There are about 35 members of the New York Film Critics Circle.  With Armond White gone, I've heard that the NYFCC now has just one black critic.  One.  In a New York City organization.  That sure is a lot o' white dudes telling me why I need to see 12 Years a Slave.  And my forefathers were slaves.  In over 20 years living in New York, the weekly movie critics that I saw on the ABC, CBS and NBC network morning news shows and on the local evening news programs were mostly white males. The film review duos we saw in syndication were usually white males.  It's 2014.  I have an AARP card.  In all my life, I have never ever seen a black female or a Latina critic reviewing movies frequently on a network or local TV news program.  And I've lived in Los Angeles and New York City.  Diversity is needed to help us keep a sense of history.  Even the white liberals in Northern cities can occasionally forget.  Case in point: Last August, National Public Radio's fine Fresh Air daily show did a week-long salute to Late Night TV Talk Show Hosts.  Steve Allen, Jack Paar, Johnny Carson and Jay Leno were mentioned.  So were David Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon.  Joey Bishop, Joan Rivers, Pat Sajak and Chevy Chase got mentioned.  Who did not get one single mention during those five hour-long Late Night Week shows on Fresh Air?  Arsenio Hall.  His show back in the 1980s was such a huge hit that it put him alone on the cover of Time magazine.  The same cannot be said of the Pat Sajak and Chevy Chase late night shows.  To me, that was a major oversight on NPR's part.  Fresh Air should have included the black host who made late night TV history.

I'm proud to have been the first African-American to get his own prime time celebrity talk show on VH1.  I was a veejay/talk show host on the network from 1987 to 1990.  NPR contributor Henry Alford was a VH1 host in the 1990s.  In his humorous memoir, Big Kiss, he wrote that all VH1 veejay/hosts in the 1980s were stand-up comedians who used wacky props -- like the melon-smashing Gallagher did.  I never did stand-up comedy.  When I interviewed guests such as Kirk Douglas, Norman Mailer, Sally Field, Jodie Foster, Phil Collins, Carlos Santana, Tina Turner, Spike Lee, Whoopi Goldberg, Ben Kingsley, Michael Caine, Shirley MacLaine, Meryl Streep, Liza Minnelli, Marlo Thomas, novelist Judith Krantz, Dominick Dunne and Omar Sharif, I did not use comedy props.  I just did my homework and conducted the interview.  Writer Henry Alford was inaccurate.

Look at the faces of late night network talk show hosts now. Just like the New York Film Critics Circle, there's very little racial diversity in 2014.

I've blogged about the fact that when the Tonight Show originated from 30 Rock in New York City, Harry Belafonte had a groundbreaking week as the guest host while Johnny Carson was on vacation.  This was for a star-studded week in February 1968.  In the early 1990s, I was a host on CNBC's Talk Live.  I had Chiz Schultz, producer of A Soldier's Story, as a guest.  His film was an Oscar nominee for Best Picture of 1984.  Chiz was an employee on the Tonight Show when Belafonte substituted for Johnny Carson.  That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship with the singer/actor who went on to star in another feature Chiz produced, The Angel Levine (1970).

Belafonte got his dear friend, Dr. Martin Luther King, to be a guest on Tonight.  Belafonte was at King's historic Civil Rights March on Washington in 1963.  Chiz told me that Belafonte had to challenge network brass to book Dr. King.  Network executives saw the Nobel Peace Prize recipient as a black political radical and were afraid of losing sponsors.  Belafonte booked Dr. King for his first and only appearance on a late night network entertainment talk show.  Not a sponsor was lost.  Here are the two friends on NBC just a couple of months before Dr. King's untimely, tragic death.

When will NBC pull that historic Tonight Show interview out of its archives and show it to today's audiences?

Flying stand-by and trying to book flights in between flight-canceling snow storms, I wrapped up an extended stay of New York City job hunting and podcasting with a couple of days in San Francisco to visit my longtime fabulous friend, Dominic.  He and I love independent bookstores.  He works at one in the Portrero Hill area.  I highly recommend his workplace, christophersbooks.com.

Christopher's Books has the iconic entertainer's account of his special week hosting the Tonight Show.  It's fascinating and, in terms of race and network TV, still relevant.  Read chapter 16 in the paperback edition of his memoir, My Song.

Chapter 16 in Harry Belafonte's memoir, My Song, is full of network entertainment TV history that's often overlooked -- and shouldn't be.  Black performers were excluded from the network TV host arena.  Famed singer Nat "King" Cole broke the color barrier hosting a variety show on NBC in the 1950s.  His highly-rated show was canceled after a year because NBC couldn't find any national sponsors for it.  Companies didn't want to "upset" Southern viewers by sponsoring his show.  Sammy Davis, Jr. hosted a show for a short time after Cole's breakthrough.  Belafonte writes about this in that chapter.  I cannot think of another black entertainer who sat in the Tonight Show host seat for a week or more after Mr. Belafonte did in 1968.  For its historical significance, I wish NBC would air his late night interview of Dr. King during Black History Month.

In addition to indie bookstores, Dominic and I love...breakfast.  He took me to breakfast at a diner just a short walk from Christopher's Books.  If you want a delicious way to start the day in San Francisco, have breakfast at Plow on 18th Street.  My tastebuds were singin' and dancin' "I Feel Good" like the late, great James Brown.  Take your morning appetite here:  eatatplow.com.

Two eggs over easy, home-made sausage, potatoes, two little lemon ricotta pancakes and some mighty good coffee.  Oooooh, Daddy!  That's what I like.

OK.  I've given you tips on books, breakfast and a recent speech by Harry Belafonte.  For some movie tips and Oscar talk, check out my podcast coming up this Monday on BobbyRiversShow.com.

Hear Me Out: I've Got a Podcast

This is the kind of work I love doing.  I love talking about films -- like I did for ABC News back in 2000 when I was the entertainment editor on the ABC News/Lifetime TV weekday show called Lifetime Live.

Since my professional TV career began -- way back in the early 1980s -- I've loved doing interviews.  I still love doing interviews.  And talking about films.  A career high point for me was having my own celebrity talk show on VH1 in the late 80s.  In the 90s, I frequently did interviews on local morning news programs in New York City.  At night, I had my own local cable show.

From my VH1 years, this interview moment with Paul McCartney in London is a favorite.

I was lucky.  I had some excellent guests on my VH1 talk show.

After three great years on VH1, I went to local news work on New York channels 4 and 5.  Then I hosted Top 5, a pop culture food history show that aired from 2002 to 2008 on Food Network.

From 2006 to 2008. I was heard at dawn with Whoopi Goldberg as a regular on her entertaining weekday morning show for Premiere Radio.

I also booked roles in national TV commercials and I played a recurring satirical news character for The Onion.

Then the work scene got really loopy for me in New York City.  I felt like I was in an episode of Louis C.K.'s sitcom, Louie.  All the gigs you see in the above videos -- including the radio job I had with Whoopi -- I got those on my own.  I didn't have a broadcast agent to submit me for an audition or arrange for me to have a meeting with executives.  I didn't have that luxury.  I got those gigs on my own.  After Whoopi's show, with all my credits, I still couldn't get a broadcast agent.  I asked Whoopi if she could refer me to a good broadcast agent but she could never think of one.  I am not exaggerating:  From 2008 to 2010, veteran agents with top agencies in NYC made appointments to meet with me.  More than once, I was asked if I'd ever done any on-camera work.  Yes...."if."  I felt like I was the Invisible Man of Television.  All of the agents turned me down for representation saying that they just wouldn't know what to do with me.  But agents and network executives could figure out what to do with Snooki, Honey Boo Boo, Real Housewives, the Kardashians and Mo Rocca.  He's on CBS Sunday Morning.  I tried for years to be a contributor on that show.  I could never get an audition or a meeting.

After Whoopi's show got cancelled, I couldn't get work and I couldn't get an agent to help me get work.

Things were rough for a spell. But now I'm trying something new with the very groovy help of an agent who's been a fan of my work since I was on VH1.  She coaxed me to try a podcast.  Let me coax you to lend an ear to my premiere episodes.  Go here:  BobbyRiversShow.com.

In the first two podcasts, we talk about sex, art, George Clooney, Jackie Collins, The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles, being black in America, not being gay enough for cable TV, and the time I went out for cocktails with Martha Raye.  (I never saw so much vodka go into one little woman in all my born days.)  You'll meet a New York City novelist whose manuscript was published after it was discovered on the rejection pile.  He went on to win the attention of actress/director Debbie Allen.  I'll get some tips on faith and perseverance from Broadway musical star Melba Moore.  We'll also discuss the significance of Dr. Martin Luther King Day.  The Tony-winning actress/singer has new music for you to hear.

Let me entertain you on my podcast.  It's more of the kind of work I really love to do.

Dr. King on The TONIGHT Show

"Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase."  ~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I wish you a most fulfilling Dr. Martin Luther King Day.  Do something for somebody.  Give a hug, take time to call and see how someone is doing.  Say "I love you."  Give time and attention to someone down and.  Help carry someone's packages.  Buy a needy friend a burger and a cup o' good coffee.  Write a check to UNICEF.  Spend time with a lonely senior citizen.  Go out and play with your kids.  Treat people with the respect and kindness you'd like to receive.  Be involved.  There are many little things you can do on Dr. King Day that can have a big impact on someone's spirit.  And yours.

I blogged earlier that my two young nephews, ages 10 and 13, absolutely loved Lee Daniels' The Butler.  They raved about it the night they got home from seeing it with their parents at the cineplex one Friday night last summer.  We were in a room together while I was watching the Golden Globes on NBC and they asked if The Butler was nominated for anything.  That made me a very proud uncle.  We talked a bit about the history they saw in the movie.  I told them that I watched Dr. King give his famous "I have a dream" speech when the historic March on Washington was a live network TV news telecast.  I was a little kid.  Their dad, my brother, was even smaller.  I remember the civil rights history my nephews saw in The Butler.  I am a product of that history and a most grateful, humble beneficiary of the 1960's civil rights movement.

My nephews are the sweet product of an interracial marriage.  When I was born, interracial marriage was against the law in some American states.  Yes.  My brother and my sister-in-law would have been in legal trouble and, truthfully, perhaps in physical danger in some places for being married in the U.S.A.  Our country needed a Civil Rights Movement so we black people could wed, vote, get a good education and have equal opportunities here in the Land of the Free.

Last summer, when audiences' hearts were moved while spending time with The Butler, America celebrated the 50th anniversary of Dr. King's March on Washington.  I'm so glad my parents urged me to watch that special news telecast with them that August day when I was a youngster.  They knew the significance and importance of Dr. King's march.

Many notables of stage, screen, music and literature attended the March on Washington to give support and witness history in the making.  Dr. King's friend, singer/actor/activist Harry Belafonte, was there in 1963.  Here he is with actors Burt Lancaster (L.) and Charlton Heston (R.).

In previous blogs, I've written about Dr. King's rare NBC nighttime appearance.  Many people today don't know about it.  I wish NBC would pull Dr. Martin Luther King's special guest appearance on the Tonight Show out of its archives and air the segments now for historical purposes.  It's still relevant.  I was high school at the time and got to stay up late so I could see it.  I talked about this show in 1991 when I was a guest host on a CNBC prime time program called Talk Live.  My guest was Belafonte friend and film producer Chiz Schultz.  Chiz's credits include 1970's The Angel Levine (starring Belafonte, Zero Mostel, Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson) and A Soldier's Story, an Oscar nominee for Best Picture of 1984 and starring Denzel Washington.

Chiz was on the Tonight Show production team when Dr. King was a guest.  Back then, Johnny Carson's late show was based at 30 Rock in New York City.  Years later, the show relocated to Los Angeles.  Carson was on vacation and his guest host for the whole week was Harry Belafonte.  This was major.  An African-American entertainer was the guest host on a network late night entertainment talk show.  This was a rare sight in 1968.  OK, let's face it:  It would be a rare sight now too.  We've never seen a black host get a late night talk show gig on NBC, CBS or ABC.  That's one reason why showing this archive footage in 2014 would be so relevant.  On CNBC, Chiz told me that Harry Belafonte had a star-studded week of guests booked.  He wanted to book Dr. King.  NBC brass was nervous and opposed his wish to book Dr. King.  Executives saw Dr. King, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, as a political radical and they did not want to loss sponsors.  Belafonte held firm.  He booked Dr. King.  Not one single sponsor was lost.

This marked Dr. Martin Luther King's first and only appearance on a network late night entertainment talk show.  Harry Belafonte booked him.  Harry Belafonte was the guest host.

This was February 1968.  Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in April 1968.  NBC has something very special in its Tonight Show archives.  Is the network aware of that?  NBC could air it during Black History Month on the Today Show.  Have Mr. Belafonte in studio as a guest.  There's an idea.

Wish me luck.  I'm taking the message of Dr. King's quote up top to heart.  I'm on the road for a week, with a new and rejuvenated spirit, determined to get work again.  I've got a lot more faith in things now than I did three years ago.  I'll be starting over, in a way, with this job search.  I'm taking a big chance, a giant step, on this trip.  But I feel positive.  And I've got enough to take in a new movie or two in my spare time. I'll let you know how they were when I get back.  Take care.

Oscars 2014: The Butler Hustled Out

Hollywood Prom Night.  The Academy Awards.  The Gay Superbowl.  Whatever you want to call it, the Hollywood Gold Rush is now underway because the Oscar nominations were announced early this morning.  As expected, Meryl Streep got her annual Oscar nomination.  It's now a Hollywood law that she gets nominated whether she made a movie or not.  A big surprise that I heard mentioned on network morning news shows and Los Angeles radio stations was that Lee Daniels' The Butler did not get a single Oscar nomination.  It was such a hot movie last summer with critics and moviegoers.  My two young nephews, ages 10 and 13, enthusiastically told me it was one of the best movies they saw last year.  That made me proud.  The movie and the butler's civil rights experiences brought a few tears to my eyes.  But no Oscar nominations for movie director Lee Daniels nor for The Butler stars, Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey.

You never can predict how the Oscar nominations and the Oscar awards will go. Oprah knows that.  Remember when she had Leonardo DiCaprio on her daytime show to promote The Aviator?  She'd just seen him in it and she made a prediction for his biopic performance as Howard Hughes.  Oprah stood up and with gusto declared, "Go get your Oscar, Leo!  Go get your Oscar, Leo!"  Then a movie called Ray came out.  Instead of Leo getting it, Foxx got the Best Actor Oscar for playing the late Ray Charles.

Three black actors are in the Oscar race -- two for 12 Years a Slave and one for Captain Phillips. Three black people up for Academy Awards.  That's three more black people than I saw in place as guest entertainment contributors discussing the nominations this morning on Today, CBS This Morning and Good Morning America.  With all the talk of 12 Years a Slave and The Butler, not one African-American movie journalist/film critic was present to talk about two top films focused on the African-American experience.  It was like a repeat of last year when two top Oscar contenders were Beasts of the Southern Wild and Django Unchained.  No nominations for The Butler.  Ten nominations for American Hustle.  Nine Oscar nominations for Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave.

The Steve McQueen film brought the British filmmaker a nomination for Best Director.  It's a nominee for Best Picture.

12 Years a Slave also earned nominations for Best Actor (Chiwetel Ejiofor), Best Supporting Actor (Michael "12 Inches a Slaveowner" Fassbender) and Best Supporting Actress (Lupita Nyong'o).

Did you see Fassbender as the New York City sex addict in Shame?  Woof!  He was a revelation.  Emotionally and physically naked.  His replica of Peter O'Toole as Lawrence of Arabia is the only reason to sit through the lame sci-fi adventure, Prometheus.

In my August 2013 blog piece, "Bobby Cannavale in BLUE JASMINE," I wrote that I felt Sally Hawkins was ripe for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination as Jasmine's sister.  I am thrilled the Academy felt the same way.

This should be Hawkins second Oscar nomination.  Her first should have come for the 2008 British film, Happy-Go-Lucky.  Rent that movie and see what I mean.  She's brilliant as the steely, working class optimist who changes how people move through their lives a bit.  Cate Blanchett, as dozens of movie critics predicted, got a Best Actress nomination for Blue Jasmine.  Actresses have great luck performing Woody Allen material.  Diane Keaton, Dianne Wiest, Mira Sorvino and Penelope Cruz all won their Oscars for Woody Allen films.  Judy Davis, Maureen Stapleton and Geraldine Page got Oscar nominations for a Woody Allen film.

Ironically, an actress who has given several excellent performances in Woody Allen classics has never been nominated at all in her long movie career.  Mia Farrow was never nominated for her shining and versatile work in The Purple Rose of Cairo, Radio Days, Alice, Broadway Danny Rose or Hannah and Her Sisters.  I would've mentioned that if I was on one of today's network morning shows.  Look at Farrow's stunning dramatic work in Roman Polanski's 1968 modern-day horror story, Rosemary's Baby.  Follow that with her Judy Holliday-ish comedy turn as the dumb blonde in Radio Days.

Mia Farrow and Robert Redford starred in the 1974 remake of The Great Gatsby.

Bruce Dern co-starred as the husband to Farrow's Daisy Buchanan.  Baz Luhrmann's opulent remake was Leonardo DiCaprio's other big moneyman movie of 2013.  Leo as The Great Gatsby didn't do nearly as well with American critics and moviegoers as The Wolf of Wall Street.   Scorcese's Wall Street drama puts DiCaprio in the Best Actor Oscar race opposite another veteran of The Great Gatsby -- Bruce Dern, nominated for Nebraska.

On ABC, CBS and NBC, the entertainment contributors talked about today's Oscar "snubs."  Oprah Winfrey and Forest Whitaker didn't get nominated.  Tom Hanks didn't get nominated.  Robert Reford didn't get nominated.  That's true.  But... at least each one got nominated in the past.  Oprah was nominated for The Color Purple.  Forest won Best Actor for The Last King of Scotland.  Tom Hanks won a historic two consecutive Oscars for Best Actor.  Robert Reford won Best Director for Ordinary People, Best Picture of 1980.  Oprah Winfrey was bestowed an honorary Oscar for her humanitarian work.

As I've blogged before... Edward G. Robinson, Joel McCrea, Donald Sutherland, Richard Gere, Dennis Quaid, France's Jean-Louis Trintignant (A Man and A Woman, Z, The Conformist, Amour) actress/director/screenwriter Ida Lupino and Mia Farrow do not have one single Oscar nomination to their credits after decades of solid work.  The fact that Andy Griffith never got a nomination, especially in the Best Actor category for A Face in the Crowd, leaves me mystified.  He gave one of the most blistering, most memorable performances in a 1950s American film.  He burned up the screen as the power hungry, influential, two-faced national TV star in that classic drama years before he gained great fame as a beloved TV sitcom character.  If you've never seen that 1957 movie, rent the DVD as soon as you can.  Andy Griffith was one talented Broadway, film and TV actor.

  

 THOSE are snubs.  No one on the morning shows mentioned the Forest Whitaker was snubbed in two categories.  He's not up for Best Actor.  He's not up for Best Picture.  He produced the critically acclaimed indie movie Fruitvale Station.  Whitaker's production was one of the best films I saw last year.  It was hailed at the Cannes Film Festival.  I'd have loved to see new actor, Michael B. Jordan, get a nomination today for his remarkable performance as the young family man in Northern California who should not have died the way he did while innocently on his way to a San Francisco New Year's Eve party.

Here's a question:  Through the 1930s up to 1945, there were 10 nominees for Best Picture.  Then it went down to 5.  A few years ago, it went back up to 10.  However, now that we can have 10 nominees, we've been getting 9.  We got 9 today.  Why aren't we getting a movie like The Butler, Fruitvale Station or All Is Lost as the 10th nominated film? Many entertainment reporters this morning were surprised that Robert Redford did not get a Best Actor Oscar nomination for All Is Lost.  That movie got terrific reviews.  Redford hit the high seas in All Is Lost.  Hanks did the same as Captain Phillips.  Neither got nominated.  Just like in some lovemaking, "the little man in the boat" was overlooked.

If you want some laughs this weekend, I've got a DVD double feature tip for you.  Steve Coogan got two Oscar nominations today.  His production, Philomena, is up for Best Picture.  He's up for Best Adapted Screenplay.  He wrote Judi Dench to a Best Actress Oscar nomination as Philomena.  See Coogan as the clueless 1980s actor whose Hollywood career went only as far as the lead role in a national commercial for a herpes medication.  This loser is now teaching high school drama in Arizona. He writes and directs plays that get panned by the school newspaper's teen drama critic.  Even the teacher's wife thinks he's a loser.  The students think he's a dork.

Things change when his wife leaves and, in his depressed state, he writes a musical sequel to Hamlet that turns Jesus into a hipster.  Hamlet 2 goes beyond Glee -- especially when the town conservatives are enraged that the students are performing a number called "Rock Me, Sexy Jesus."

But the loser reinvents himself and wins the support of his students.

Amy Poehler, Catherine Keener and a very funny Elisabeth Shue co-star.  Shue plays herself as an actress whose career fell so flat after her Oscar nomination that she had to take a job as a nurse in Arizona.  Shue was a Best Actress nominee for 1995's Leaving Las Vegas.  I've been a fan of British comic actor Steve Coogan for quite some time.  2008's Hamlet 2 shows him at his quirky, irreverent best.

Kinky Boots, a fun British comedy, was turned into one of the biggest musical comedy hits now playing on Broadway.  It was a top Tony winner.  Did you know that Best Actor nominee, Chiwetel Ejiofor, originated the role of the wise drag queen performer who helps a poor town get back on its feet financially ... with the help of high heels?

I'm also thrilled that the U.S. is getting to see the gifts of this fabulous actor.  You get lots of smiles seeing him playing a man who was only a slave to fashion in the movie that inspired a big Broadway musical comedy hit.

In closing, here's how unpredictable Oscar nominations are.  Bad Grandpa, from the people who gave us MTV's Jackass, got one Oscar nomination.  The Butler got nothing.

That's Hollywood.  The Oscars are handed out Sunday, March 2nd, on ABC.

Oscar Talk & Black History 2014

The Oscar nominations will be announced very early Hollywood time this Thursday, January 16th.  Black history will be made with the announcements of those actors and others in the running for Hollywood gold.  The current president of the Academy is Cheryl Boone Isaacs, an African-American woman.  Her late brother was one of the most influential Hollywood executives, a marketing whiz who helped such films as Star Wars, Chariots of Fire and Thelma & Louise find world-wide audiences and Oscar nominations.  Did you ever attend a midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show?  Ashley Boone came up with the idea of midnight screenings for that musical comedy satire that turned the initial box office dud into a cult favorite. He was one of the most important movie studio executives in Hollywood in the 1970s.  Cheryl Boone Isaacs was extremely gracious and attentive to me in my VH1 years of the late 80s.  At the time, she was a top woman on the Paramount lot when I had my VH1 talk show.  I look forward to seeing her on TV Thursday morning.

The Oscars:  Will 12 Years A Slave get Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor nominations?

Will playing the hard-drinking wife of The Butler bring Oprah Winfrey get her second Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nomination?

If Forest Whitaker does not get a Best Actor nomination for playing The Butler, will he get a producer nomination if the excellent Fruitvale Station is nominated for Best Picture?

It's been a while since 2-time Best Actor Oscar winner Tom Hanks has been in the running for Hollywood gold again.

Will he be nominated for either being Captain Phillips or for Saving Mr. Banks?

And will Meryl Streep get her annual Oscar nomination?  It now seems to be a Hollywood law that she gets nominated whether she's released a movie the previous year or not.

OK.  Yes, I am once again gonna go "diversity issue" on you.

During red carpet coverage preceding the Golden Globes, a CNN reporter interviewed 12 Years a Slave director, Steve McQueen, and said that last year was a great year for black films.  So...since the black experience was in major films last year...will we see black film reviewers and entertainment journalists in the mix discussing the Oscar nominations after they're revealed Thursday morning?  Or will we see mostly Angloids on NBC, CBS and ABC trying to pronounce the name Chiwetel Ejiofor, actor from 12 Years A Slave?   Will they know that Ejiofor originated the role of the drag queen in Kinky Boots, the feel-good British movie turned into one of biggest musical comedy hits now on Broadway?

On Oscar nomination day last year, there wasn't one black film reviewer as a guest on Today, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning or even in the critics panel discussing the nominations that night on PBS' The Charlie Rose Show.  And two of the top Oscar contenders were Django Unchained and Beasts of the Southern Wild.

Believe me, there are black film critics available in America who can expertly handle talk about Oscar nominations.  The segment producers of the network morning news programs and syndicated entertainment news shows just need to do some homework and find them -- and add them to the overall arts discussion.

I had a live local cable show in the late 1990s back in New York City.  When I hosted film talk panels, I purposely made sure they were black, Latino, white, male, female, gay, straight.  In order words, mixed and diverse.  Like movie audiences in my world.

When I got to review films on CNN, USA Network and for ABC News on Lifetime TV, I felt blessed.  And grateful.  A lot of minorities don't get that chance.  Think about this:  Andy Cohen on Bravo can find black housewives to get catty about each other on TV and swivel their heads like they've got Slinkys for neckbones.  But how many times on TV have you seen a black female film critic review the new Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks  movies?

This coming Thursday,  I hope to see some refreshing diversity on the network morning shows during the Oscar talk.  Let's see which guest entertainment contributors get invited.

History could be made Thursday morning.  Amy Adams has four Oscar nominations to her credit.  Marisa Tomei has three.  If Oprah gets an Oscar nomination for The Butler, she will make Hollywood history.  She was a nominee for The Color Purple.  No black actress has three or more nominations to her credit.  Whoopi Goldberg (The Color Purple, Ghost) and Viola Davis (Doubt, The Help) have two each.  Let's see if Oprah joins them with her work as the butler's complicated but devoted wife.

For your DVD or Blu-Ray viewing pleasure, Lee Daniels' The Butler is available Jan. 14th.