An open letter to Rob Cohen seemingly an advocate for African American in Hollywood - since 1975
Let me be honest Mr. Cohen you can listen to Jazz, and Hip Hop all day it does not mean that you know Black people or what is entertaining to or for them. Yes (as a group) bit off on your cliché filled offerings Triple X and Triple X State of the Union. Partially because they filled a niche needed at a time when the Black Action Film was dead.
Yet today with rich intelligent source material (Alex Cross) you still manage to deliver us another round of hackneyed played out images and dialogue filled scenes that barely played in your 1975 debut as a producer (Mahogany), I thought you had learned your lesson by the time you got to The Running Man in 1987 another film with rich source material. Your acceptance and willingness to portraying character William Laughlin (Yaphet Kotto) as a common thug.
Rob as a producer, writer, director each time you are given an opportunity to be progressive and give us an African American character that is beyond the rhetoric you have chosen to go with a stereotype that can be negatively reinforced. Let me be honest and say thank you for putting African Americans in film, but your brand of help is not help. If possible please stop thrusting your negative stereotypes to the screen be willing to trust in those that you hire to know what they are talking about because you dont know Black people.
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