Dennis Leoni (writer, director, producer) has been a force in Latino Hollywood for more than a generation. When people speak about him–and his name comes up often–they speak with admiration about his work on Resurrection Boulevard and Los Americans, and his commitment to Latino Hollywood.
Dennis posted a short, powerful piece on Facebook today that we want to reprint here. It prompted us to call him as well, and get a sense of what made him decide to talk so frankly about the State of Latino Hollywood.
It’s time to stop complaining, he said. It’s time to put aside petty feuds and prejudices even within the Latino community. It’s time to stop blaming others and do the work ourselves.
Here, exactly, is what he said:
In the spirit of all that’s been said recently, particularly in the memory of my wonderful friend Lupe Ontiveros, I’ve been thinking…
Latinos, those born here and those not, don’t realize that the disparaging images of us that have dominated the U.S. television and motion picture landscape since the dawn of time are not only, in large part, responsible for how the greater U.S. population views us, but also how we view ourselves, particularly our children. It’s why we still struggle with racism and negative stereotyping.
But if this is to change, we must stop looking to others to change it for us and we must do it ourselves. We must create, fund, produce and market our own media images in order to change any negative perceptions that people have of us.
To do this, we must support one another and create our own marketplace in the same way African-Americans have. Then and only then will we control how we are viewed in media and also begin to share in the dream that we so greatly deserve.
He’s not the first one to say it; we hope he won’t be the last. But this is what he believes, and he’s not afraid to say it.
And we’re glad he did.
Photos: ©2011-12 Angela María Ortíz S.
