E10 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, MARCH 27 , 2022
The 94 th Academy Awards
telecast should be: An industry
event celebrating the craft of film-
making? A star-studded ceremony
bringing glitz and glam to the
masses? Packer wants i t to be c lear
that he views the ABC telecast as
an entertainment property — one
he hopes will entertain as many
people as possible. “My goal, ulti-
mately, is to get eyeballs on the
show,” he said earlier this month
in a Zoom interview with The
Washington Post.
Packer, one of the most promi-
nent Black producers in Holly-
wood, is no stranger to appealing
directly to viewers. His films have
grossed more than $1 billion
worldwide and include 10 No. 1
box-office hits — “Girls Trip,”
“Think Like a Man,” “Ride Along”
and “Stomp the Yard” among
them. His work has ranged from
rom-coms to thrillers t o cult favor-
ites, but the common thread is
stories that reflect and center
Black people and their experi-
ences — in o ther w ords, stories the
academy and Hollywood at large
have tended to overlook.
Despite the clout he wields
nearly three decades into his ca-
reer, Packer is the first to admit
he’s no Hollywood insider. He
didn’t go to film school. He calls
Atlanta, not Los Angeles, home.
“That either makes me a perfect
choice or the worst choice, and I
like to believe the former,” Packer
said of his Oscars role. “I have not
built my career within the tradi-
tional Hollywood power system.
And so I come at it from a very
different perspective, and that is
true of the way that I approach t he
biggest night in the industry. I
approach it from the perspective
of a consumer.”
The academy, which has made
efforts to diversify its ranks since
years of criticism culminated in
the 2015 #OscarsSoWhite cam-
paign, said Packer’s big-tent ap-
proach is precisely why he was
chosen to produce as the industry
rebounds from a global pandemic.
“Will’s vision of inclusion and cel-
ebration is exactly what’s needed
right now, and both his creative
instincts and boundless energy
will surely make it all happen,”
David Rubin, the academy’s presi-
dent, said in a statement.
Packer said he has listened to
the criticism, “but I feel very
strongly about t he way that I want
to do the show this year. And I
think that’s the only way that I
would sign up to do i t. To do a s how
like this, you’ve got to be fearless.”
If his approach sounds anti-
thetical to the way the Academy
Awards has traditionally operat-
ed, that’s exactly the point.
“I want people to be talking
about the Oscars in a Wal-Mart in
Dallas versus just the happening
restaurant in Beverly Hills,” he
said.
P
acker’s filmmaking career
began, almost accidentally,
nearly 30 years ago while he
was an engineering student at
Florida A&M University in Ta lla-
hassee. His friend and fraternity
brother Rob Hardy came up with
the idea for a film about a young
man who, like them, was coming
of age at a historically Black col-
lege or university. Packer, who
planned t o get his MBA after g rad-
uating, agreed t o help Hardy make
“Chocolate City.”
When the feature-length film
was finished, they sent it to a
number of production companies.
“Nobody in [Hollywood] cared,”
Packer said. “Nobody wanted to
see i t. A nd t hat was true of m y first
couple of movies. But what hap-
pened was I was able to take those
movies directly to my audience —
directly to consumers. And that’s
actually what really jump-started
my career.”
Packer and Hardy took on the
marketing and distribution of the
film themselves, c utting t heir o wn
commercials and advertising on
the radio and TV. After the movie
premiered to a sold-out crowd at
FAMU’s on-campus theater, the
duo persuaded a local second-run
theater to screen it using the same
video projector they used to show
Florida State University games on
the b ig screen. “We had like two or
three consecutive sellout week-
ends,” Hardy recalled. “And they
were like, ‘Bring that “Chocolate
City” movie back here!’ ”
The duo’s big break arrived
when they secured a home video
distribution deal through a small
company that went defunct a few
years l ater. By the time Packer a nd
Hardy graduated in the spring of
1996 , “Chocolate City” was in
Blockbuster stores nationwide,
PACKER FROM E1
‘My goal,
ultimately,
is to get
eyeballs’
na Hall, Wanda Sykes and Amy
Schumer will take on the job to-
gether.
Packer is known for champion-
ing underappreciated talent, and
Hall, who has starred in five of
Packer’s films, starting with
“Think Like a Man” in 2012, is a
prominent example. She’s “crimi-
nally underrated,” Packer said.
“She is absolutely masterful. I
think she can do anything.”
Hall said she appreciates the
“ease” of collaborating with Pack-
er. “He has a way of making work
feel fun and he takes the w eight off
of it,” Hall said. “He could be so
stressed right now with the Os-
cars. But I would never know it
from him ... He really creates and
holds s uch a safe s pace as an artist
to navigate in. That’s one of the
reasons he’s incredibly special.”
When Packer thinks about the
Oscars ceremonies he’s seen over
the years, a few moments come to
mind: Ellen DeGeneres’s pizza
party. Chris Rock hosting. Denzel
Washington and Halle Berry win-
ning best actor and actress at the
200 2 ceremony.
“The Oscars that stand out to
me the most are the ones where I
felt some type of a connection to
the people that were on the stage,”
he said. “That’s what I’m trying to
create this year.”
“Let’s get as many people u nder
the t ent as possible ... movie l overs
of all stripes,” he continued. “A nd i f
they enjoy it, and if it’s an enter-
taining show for them, then the
whole industry benefits.”
T
he controversy surrounding
the Oscars telecast changes
has, in headlines at least,
overshadowed the historic mile-
stone in Packer’s appointment.
This year’s ceremony marks the
first time an all-Black team has
produced the show: Packer’s co-
producer Shayla Cowan is chief of
staff at Will Packer Productions
and has worked with him for
years, starting as his assistant on
the 2010 sequel “Stomp the Yard:
Homecoming.”
While the industry’s focus has
largely revolved around the ins
and outs of the ceremony, Friday
said he was struck by an an-
nouncement about the Governors
Ball, the glitzy after-party that
Wolfgang Puck has catered for
more than 25 years. Packer an-
nounced recently that the famed
restaurateur would team with
Black-owned culinary collective
Ghetto Gastro in a collaboration
that the producer has said “ breaks
boundaries and brings a new fla-
vor to” the storied event.
“It’s a fantastic way to impact
this industry,” Friday said. “Who
thinks about the caterer?”
The ceremony will also feature
HBCU students as presenters, cel-
ebrating institutions like the one
that nurtured Packer on a world
stage — and amid a rash of threats
against dozens of the schools.
Packer’s tweaks also extend to
arguably the most visible part of
the ceremony: the return of a host
for the first time since 2018. Regi-
world.”
Though he had the backing of a
partnership with Screen Gems,
Packer still hustled like an indie
producer. Packer got the cast in-
volved in promoting the film
ahead of the peak Twitter era,
Good said. “We went everywhere,
to like every Black college, and we
were just on the ground, grass-
rooting it.”
“Will and [Hardy] decided to
use that as a way to put this movie
out into the world and to make
people feel like it was theirs and it
belonged to them,” Good added.
“It was word of mouth ... ‘Tell your
friends, take your family — this is
for us.’ ”
Packer and Hardy put out a
number of other blockbusters be-
fore dissolving their professional
partnership in 2014. Since then,
Packer has delivered a steady
stream of his own box-office hits,
while also finding success in tele-
vision with A&E’s Emmy-winning
“Roots” remake in 2016 and the
fan-favorite reality s how franchise
“Ready to Love.”
Amid t he accolades, Packer says
he most treasures hearing from
fans who say their child wanted to
go to an HBCU because they saw
“Stomp the Yard.”
“Kids aspire to what they see.
That’s the power of this medium.
It makes things tangible for them,
especially if you don’t have access
to those worlds,” Packer said. “I
have been told that multiple
times, and it never, ever ceases to
really impact me in a major way.”
have,” said Friday, who named
Packer jury president for last
year’s 25th anniversary festival.
“He’s charismatic and incredibly
intelligent, and he knows Black
audiences.”
“Trois” helped to further put
Packer and Hardy on the map
when the movie — boosted by the
vast network of supporters the
filmmakers established with their
first film — pulled in $1.2 million
off a limited 50-screen run. The
indie did so well it ended up on
tracking lists alongside major dis-
tributors. “People started calling
our house in Jonesboro, Georgia,
wondering who was Rainforest ...
with this, you know, $50,000-per-
screen average,” Hardy recalled.
R
ainforest Productions saw
its first No. 1 hit when
“Stomp the Yard” pre-
miered atop the box office in 2007.
The film, starring Columbus Short
and Meagan Good, revolved
around life at a fictional HBCU
and, more specifically, the step-
ping tradition of Black Greek or-
ganizations.
Packer was honest about the
movie being his “first big thing,”
Good said, and treated the cast
and crew like peers.
“Oftentimes when you’re on
projects, you feel like, ‘That’s the
boss,’ ” said Good, w ho also starred
in “Think L ike A Man” a nd i ts 2014
sequel. “With Will, it just always
feels like we’re all on the same
journey and we’re all just trying to
put some great things into the
giving them “a ton o f legitimacy as
indie filmmakers,” Hardy said.
Given the success of Hardy’s
feature directorial debut — which
made about $100,000 on a
$20,000 budget — Packer decided
to forgo the MBA and try produc-
ing full time with his and Hardy’s
recently formed company, Rain-
forest Films. They set up opera-
tions in Atlanta, long an epicenter
of Black culture and influence. It
was a prescient move — years
ahead of the tax credits that made
Georgia a flourishing film m arket.
The duo’s next feature film, an
erotic thriller called “Trois,” pre-
miered at the American Black
Film Festival (then known as the
Acapulco Black Film Festival) in
- The movie, about a married
couple whose experimentation
with a ménage à trois goes awry,
“wasn’t the most critically ac-
claimed film,” but “it was a really
provocative movie and we hadn’t
seen that a lot, especially in the
indie world as it relates to Black
filmmaking,” said festival co-
founder Jeff Friday.
The ABFF, which Friday found-
ed in support of Black filmmakers
whose talents often went over-
looked by mainstream festivals
such as Sundance, was two years
into its existence a t the time. Pack-
er was the f irst filmmaker to reach
out ahead of the festival — to say
he had submitted “Trois” and, Fri-
day recalled with a laugh, “to say
hi.”
“Will has a confidence and exu-
berance that most people don’t
DAMON CASAREZ FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Will Packer poses o n a roof next to the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. Despite the perch and his industry clout, he’s the first to admit that he’s no Hollywood insider.
