Sunday, September 14, 2008
A+E, In this Issue..., Movies, Q&A

The king of Atlanta

As his entertainment empire continues to expand, filmmaker Tyler Perry remains committed to bringing Hollywood to the ATL

BY KEVIN FOREST MOREAU

With apologies to satellite radio personality Howard Stern, if any living entertainer deserves the title “King of All Media,” it’s movie/theater/TV mogul Tyler Perry. The writer, actor and director of several acclaimed stage plays and films certainly exudes an aura of royalty: Even if he weren’t a wealthy man with a compelling rags-to-riches story, reported to have earned $125 million last year alone, his calm, coiled presence, hinting at an intensity beneath the surface, would still make him the center of attention in any room.

I’ve sat across from a number of music and film stars in my career, and in person, the great majority of them appear smaller, less commanding than their professional personas. Tyler Perry is the exception: At ease in a casual dress shirt and Atlanta Braves cap, he seems bigger and more imposing than his onscreen characters. And considering he’s best known for inhabiting the larger-than-life, no-nonsense, pistol-packing matriarch Madea, that’s saying a lot. 

That centered quality comes in part from success—which Perry has achieved beyond his wildest dreams—but also from struggle. This is a man, after all, who once famously lived in his car, who once hustled to perform one-man plays for anyone who would sit still long enough to watch them, mostly in churches where his messages were likely to find a receptive audience. Those days seem far away to most of us, who only know him as a living Horatio Alger story: the man who came to Atlanta from his native New Orleans in 1992, fleeing a chaotic home life ruled by a drunken and violent father.

But without those long-ago days, would we have the Tyler Perry we know today, the ruler of an empire of plays, sitcoms and movies packed with family-friendly morals, melodrama and, most importantly, humor? More than success, more than simple wealth, his air of self-assurance suggests nothing so much as a man who has learned, through struggle and triumph, exactly who he is and what he wants. And like most men who have overcome obstacles to achieve their desires, he’s satisfied, perhaps, but not content. Because his successes to date have only proven to Tyler Perry that there are other challenges, other goals to attain. Future successes await.

One of them, in fact, sits right around the corner: His newest film, “Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys” (Perry embeds his name—his brand, really—in the title of his movies so audiences know exactly what they’re going to get), opened on Sept. 12. And it stands to become his biggest hit to date, thanks in part to an impressive lineup headed by Kathy Bates and Alfre Woodard and including Sanaa Lathan, Taraji P. Henson (“Hustle & Flow”), Robin Givens, Rockmond Dunbar (“Soul Food”), Cole Hauser (“K-Ville”) and KaDee Strickland (“Private Practice”).

It’s also more layered than “Daddy’s Little Girls” or “Why Did I Get Married?,” his last two films not to feature his towering alter-ego Madea: Although it revolves around a soap-operatic affair between a spoiled white businessman and a driven black woman, that center is surrounded by the touching story of an aging businesswoman (Bates) who takes a road trip of self-discovery, a story that grounds “Preys” in the tradition of such cathartic, female-driven films set in Southern locales as “Fried Green Tomatoes” and even “Steel Magnolias.”

The week before the opening of “Preys,” I sat down with Perry for a brief chat about his career, his Atlanta home base and his role in the upcoming J.J. Abrams reboot of “Star Trek,” among other things.

Q Congratulations on getting “Meet the Browns” picked up by TBS.

A Yeah, isn’t that crazy?

I saw “Family That Preys” last night, with the cast and crew.

Aww—you saw it with them?

It was a great experience. When you got up and talked to everyone before the movie started, I was struck by your rapport with them. They seem to have a lot of affection for you.

Yeah, but you should have been with the real people. They’re jaded, man. They’re so jaded because they’ve worked on it, they’ve seen it, they probably didn’t enjoy it as much as the real folks.

Was “The Family That Preys” part of a conscious move on your part to move a little further away from the kind of broad comedy you’re known for, with Madea and “House of Payne” and “Meet the Browns”?

No. No. What I would love people to understand is that there’s “Why Did I Get Married?,” “Daddy’s Little Girls” and “The Family That Preys,” which are different; they’re different types of films. Madea and the “Browns” silliness is me having fun. I love to do it, I’m going to keep doing it, I just want to have fun. But I have a drama side of me that wants to tell different stories. And I’ve been telling this to people—people find this hard to believe—I’m a student of life. So, as I experience things, I’m able to write about them. As I experience different races and cultures, I’m able to write about them.

I never knew any white people my entire life—in my entire life. Grew up in Uptown New Orleans, went to an all-black high school, had white teachers, went to work, knew a couple of white people there, but did not know them. So as I’ve been able to become more successful, the doors have been opened for me to places that I never have been in before, which are allowing me to tell different kinds of stories.

You’ve said this film grew out of some of your personal experiences.

Yeah, I was going through a whole lot of stuff with this sudden rise, because you know, below the radar, I had all of this support and love. And just, when I went above the radar, it was, you know, you get the negativity and the critics and the things that I don’t really—I was focusing too much time on the negativity. So I wrote this movie as a catharsis for me, to just enjoy life, you know? Charlotte, Kathy Bates’ character, has an issue that no matter what you have, life is short, so enjoy it. So that’s where I am now, really enjoying my life.

You’ve made a big point of keeping your production company here in Atlanta, despite some clashes with neighbors of your Inman Park facility. You’re in the midst of moving to a huge campus near Greenbriar Mall to contain everything you’re doing. As your company grows, do you foresee a point where you would try to be closer to New York or Hollywood?

No, no. I’m bringing it all here. I’ve been big on [having Hollywood] coming closer to me. I have no desire to—I have a house in L.A. and an apartment in New York. But this is home. This is home.

What is it about Atlanta—the people, the resources—what are the benefits of being able to film here?

The pluses are [that] the people are so eager and so hungry and so excited about it that they’re with you, they support you 100 percent. The negative part of it is, the pool is so small, it’s so shallow, there’s not a whole lot of people, so I’ve had to bring in a lot of transplants from New York and L.A., and may have to even bring in more as time goes on, to get what I’m looking for. But the positive is, there’s some of the best people here, the best people to work with. We have a lot of fun and it’s very, very respectful. It’s such a cool place to work because I don’t deal in any drama, I don’t deal in foolishness. … They know how I like to operate, so it’s really great.

Tell me about filming the “Star Trek” movie. How was that experience?

It was really great. It was really weird being on somebody else’s set, but J.J. Abrams is the reason I did it, and I would do it again to work with him, because he’s a huge fan of mine, I’m a huge fan of his. It was just a great situation.

What’s next? You’ve got 100 episodes of “House of Payne” in national syndication, and there’s every reason to believe “Meet the Browns” will follow that same path. What do you do after this?

More movies. More movies. I’m moving to three Tyler Perry movies a year, and two other movies that are not Tyler Perry films. I have an office in L.A., and I have headhunters out there, pretty much, producing partners who are working things out to help me find more people. So I’m developing new writers and new talent, I’m looking for new … for new everything. SP