Words by Gavin Philip Godfrey Photos by Hiltron Bailey
for Steed Media Service
Like a couple who’s been happily married for
50 years, Tyler Perry and Jill Scott love talking
about the day they first met. As Scott
tells it, they were complete strangers 15
years ago. Perry was a struggling
playwright from Louisiana who
had just moved to Atlanta,
and Scott was a starving
artist working at a French Connection
store to make ends meet in her native
Philadelphia. While in town on tour for
one of his earlier plays, Perry stopped
by the French Connection store looking
for a shirt when he met the store’s
manager, which just happened to be
the lovely Miss Scott.
“He’s looking for a shirt and I’m showing
him shirts and he doesn’t buy anything,
but he’s got a nice sense of humor,
he’s funny and a pleasure to talk to, so we
talked,” Scott says, recounting their first meeting.
Attempting to take their new relationship
beyond the confines of the French Connection
store, Perry presented his new friend with an
open invitation. “He said: So, what are you doing
later?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know.’ He said,
‘Why don’t you come and see a play?’ ”
Somewhat caught off guard by the offer, and
the fact that Perry only gave her one ticket to
ensure that she wouldn’t bring anybody, Scott
agreed to attend. “I hadn’t done anything
hardly, [I] just had a play in town,” Perry says
of the initial awkwardness. “Nobody knew who
I was.”
Yet, when this Philly girl had her first occasion
to witness her new Southern friend’s creative
genius, she was completely blown away.
“So I went to this play and I don’t remember
which one it was at the time but I do remember
this,” she declares. “It wasn’t the okey-doke, it
wasn’t the chitlin’ circuit. It was smart, it was
funny, and it was thoughtful. I’m looking at the
playbill and this guy… he’s the director and the
writer!”
Pan forward to 2007 and both Scott and Perry
are bona fide superstars in their own right.
The girl who worked behind the register, making
a part-time living in the world of retail, would
take the music world by storm with her doubleplatinum
debut disc, Who is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds
Vol. 1. Scott received a Grammy nod for her classic love
anthem, “A Long Walk,” and would go onto achieve gold success
on her next two solo albums. Loved and adored by music
fans across the globe, Scott has been praised for the raw emotion
and real poetry she brings to her music and lyrics.
To go along with the $75 million he’s grossed in DVD and ticket
sales from his eight plays, Perry is in the process of creating his
own film empire. Along with his co-producer, Reuben Cannon, the wildly diverse Perry, also operates Tyler
Perry Films. Perry released Diary of
a Mad Black Woman, Madea’s Family
Reunion, Daddy’s Little Girls and Why
Did I Get Married? via the film company.
Perry’s first three films cost a total
of $17 million to make, and in turn
the accomplished thespian-turnedbusiness
aficionado has grown the
initial investment into box office gross
sales of $140.7 million.
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Like any great American tale, both
Scott and Perry have rags-to-riches
stories, worthy of any Hollywood
screenplay, but it is their collaboration
on the silver screen in Perry’s newest
film that’s makes for a more intriguing
script.
The screening for Why Did I Get
Married? which was held in Atlanta,
found Perry standing before a crowd of
screaming sisters and inspired brothers
joking about the dangers of movie
bootlegging. “Hollywood doesn’t respect
black or white, it’s all about the
green. How did the movie do?” he
says. “So when people bootleg the
movie and sell it in the barbershops,
it undercuts people who are trying to
do the right thing.” Amongst the roar
of applause and several ‘uh-huhs, yes
sirs, and ain’t that the truths,’ Perry
made another statement about his
latest offering,“I will say this is my
best movie.”
Like any artist paying respect to his
craft, Perry acknowledges that each
film has been a learning process for
him. Whether it was finding balance
dressed as a woman in a fat suit, as
in his ‘Madea’ roles, or attempting to
show the hardships of a mechanicfather
in Daddy’s Little Girls, the man
behind the camera admits he still has
a lot of maturing to do.
“I try to grow on every film. I’m walking
now. I was crawling in everything
else. This movie — the way the story
was told — I think was very unique,”
he says, explaining why his latest film
is his best to date. “Using the camera
the way I did was very different — for
me. There are some people who really
get into camera movement and
all the other stuff. For me, having an
amazing cast like this really made the
movie come alive because everybody
brought their own personality to it.”
After one viewing of Married it’s
easy to see why he would call this film
his finest work. Aside from his use of
different camera angles and shooting
the film on location in both Canada
and his own studio in Atlanta, Perry
introduces the audience to some of
the most memorable characters ever
captured on film.
And though it would appear that he
wanted to achieve some type of mainstream,
cross-over success by recruiting
megastar Janet Jackson, Perry
says that Jackson’s and Malik Yoba’s characters, the films “power couple,” were
written in at the last minute, when Jackson
agreed to do the movie. Perry’s ensemble
cast brings an uncanny energy to the film,
one which is only matched by the amount
of life breathed into the roles through the
superb writing.
For actors like Scott, who was more than
happy to be reunited with that tall, handsome
brother from years back, Perry’s work
shows common scenes in a different light.
Whether he’s showing black people living
a life of luxury and treating it as though it’s
commonplace, or two characters are talking
about the dangers of STDs or African
American women being infected with HIV/
AIDS, the subject matter in Married, as well
as all of Perry’s works, touch the very heart
and soul of the audience member.
“And it’s also a different kind of reflection,”
says Scott of her director. “We continue
to see the same reflections again and
again. You know, everybody is in some kind
of drug warfare, everybody’s some kind of
negative something, but to see people that
are established and are married and are
working at it — to see that — that’s a reality
for a lot of us.”
Whether or not one is fan of Perry’s
work, his track record and the quality of
his product demand a level of respect.
For a filmmaker who can stay so rooted in
reality and the issues pertinent to society,
only time will tell if greatness will present
itself in the form of shiny, gold statues and
mentions in the company of names like of
Van Peebles, Lee and Poitier. However, for
Perry, none of that is important right now.
He feels a deep responsibility to his community,
and if his pass at Scott back in the
day wasn’t evidence enough, it’s obvious
he has no qualms about sharing his gift
with the rest of the world.
“What I want people to walk away with is
knowing that there are other sides to who
we are,” he says. “We’re not just walking
around with our pants hanging off [our]
buns, our hats back, thugged out. It’s not
about the bling, bling and the Rolls and the
rims. There are people who go to college
and work and are successful, so I think it’s
very important to show that there are other
sides of who we are as people.”
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