by Here at the Boles Blogs Network, we get hundreds of promotional emails a day asking us to write articles about people, products and issues. Sometimes we act on a tip that catches our fancy, but more often than not, we can’t abide the coverage request. Last week, I received a spectacular request from Byron Horne of THB Films and this article is the result of that inquiry.
Here’s the pitch:
“The Start of Dreams,” directed by The Horne Brothers, is the story of award-winning director Kenny Leon bringing aspiring teenage actors to a Broadway stage in his annual August Wilson Monologue competition. In a new age where Arts Education is considered expendable in such a penny-pinching economy, Leon is determined to use his celebrity and influence to expose kids across the country to the wonderful world of theatre. Featuring A-list actors like Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson and Phylicia Rashad, “The Start of Dream” is packed with Hollywood’s elite weighing in on this important art form and what it means to the United States.
Please check us out in the Atlanta Film Festival, May 3rd.
I am not a big Phylicia Rashad fan — I find her pretentious and condescending just like her older sister, Debbie Allen — but in the promotional snippet for the movie, Phylicia is so effective and smart and tough that her quote inspired the title of this article:
I really appreciate the intention and purpose of “The Start of Dreams” and I encourage you to watch the movie and get involved beyond the screen. The filmmakers ask us to look inside ourselves to determine who we are and what we want to know, feel, and pass down to others.
What kind of life do we want? Do we want to exist in fear? Do we want to elect those who will turn around and punish us for our hope and belief in them?
Those questions may not immediately seem to be Arts related, but they are life related — and that makes them important, artistic, touchstones that must first burn us all before then warming us up with the eternal fire of inquiry that can never be doused, but is often repressed.
The Arts can free us — but only if we allow the medium to move the moment.
Great article, David. My association with Ms. Rashad only goes as far as being a fan of her character on The Cosby Show when I was growing up so I always think positively about her. I like this video and what they aim to do!
That’s where I got to know her, too, Gordon. Her style is not my taste — so there’s a conflict of understanding on a really remote, organic, level.
Yes, we need to foster the Arts with money — not try to dry it down with economic starvation!