You’re a best selling author. How did you decide that it was time to venture into film?

Crystal McCrary Anthony: For me it was a natural progression because both of my novels, “Home Court Advantage” and “Gotham Diaries” I tried to pitch, sell, made into films, TV shows, etc. I’ve had so many doors closed in my face particularly from studios and gatekeepers who have very myopic ideas about the images of African Americans on film and television. So their response to telling stories about African Americans is that they have to fit into a market that in their mind or their accounting and marketing department tells them. They only want to depict African Americans only in a comedic role or about a woman who is trying to find a man. We often don’t get the rich, varied, real life everyday images of African Americans that exist. I wanted to be apart of telling a story that hasn’t really been told.

Why is it so hard to get Hollywood to ‘green light’ African American films that don’t have a buffoon antic feel to the script? Why it is that dramatic content doesn’t get a green light?

Crystal McCrary Anthony: I think what they will say is black people won’t go to see black folk in dramatic roles. They will say there’s not an audience which is not an audience. That is their first response. The second response is quite disturbing …this covert even sometimes subconscious racism that the gatekeepers, who none of them are black, have about black folks. Just not realizing that there is black family life. That there are black people integrated in the professional world whether they are doctors, lawyers, web designers, stock brokers, etc… and that we are breathing, thinking human beings that have problems and issues not to dissimilar from characters like we see in Friends. And theirs an audience to come see our stories and our stories are not just typical images but have value. I think there’s just inherent reluctance.

Do you feel you’ve reached your goal in Executive Producing the film?

Crystal McCrary Anthony: With Dirty Laundry it has been a dream to work on this film with the team that has been assembled. First and foremost, Maurice Jamal who is our writer, he wrote the script, he directed the film he also has a significant role in the film. And he shot it in 3 ½ weeks and had the first rough cut in 3 weeks so its great to work with someone who wrote such and original screenplay that tackles a difficult subject matter, that being homosexuality in African American families and the church.  That tackles it with great humor and integrity so for us to shoot this film with the amazing cast that we have…

The goal now is to get a distributor.  We absolutely have distributor interest because they are responding to the film. It’s great to have these major distributors who have come to our screenings and say oh, there really is a market and audiences really are laughing at the film. But it wasn’t something that they just visualized by reading the script and seeing who the cast was. So again, have my goals been accomplished? Yes. They will be accomplished once we get a distributor, once we get a theatrical release…not a direct to video release. No disrespect to those who do go direct to video but this is bigger than that.

Personally and professionally; does it upset you that African Americans don’t support their own films?

Crystal McCrary Anthony: What statistics or what do you have to say that African Americans don’t support their own films?

Several years ago at an Urbanworld Film Festival, Regina King was on a panel, supported by several other famous named entertainers stated that Blacks don’t support their own films. Not to mention the fact that the numbers at the Box Office don’t lie. This is why you have some filmmakers choose direct-to-video.

Crystal McCrary Anthony: If your asking why don’t some African Americans support films with other African American characters in them …that’s sort of a blanket question of why does that not happen.  I mean my most immediate response to that is, if that is indeed the case, if you’re talking about a film like Soul Plane or Pimps Up Hoes Down; I’m not necessarily going to support that cause that’s not interesting to me.

So you’re saying that it’s more of the content as oppose to an African American film?

Crystal McCrary Anthony: I think it’s the content. Blacks came out and supported Soul Food, which sadly enough I think that was the last time I can think of that we had a large scale film about an African American family. Now that I think about it, there was also ‘Waiting to Exhale’. But back to your point about why African Americans do not necessarily support black films, in a broad scale, I think that their not doing it because they are dissatisfied with the inventory. With doing film Festivals for Dirty Laundry, I can tell you that there is a huge outpouring of support by African Americans hungry for films with African American characters and content that are compelling good quality stories.

Will you be taking on the chair of filmmaking yourself?

Crystal McCrary Anthony: I’ve written scripts before. I’ve never tried to sell them but I’ve really been inspired by this process that we had. We raised the money ourselves to make it so. We did it outside the studio system so I would absolutely continue trying to make films. Writing and directing, I don’t know…the whole creating process is such a thrilling and gratifying one.

In regards to Hollywood not green light African American films with dramatic content what would you say your ultimate goal is in that particular area?

Crystal McCrary Anthony: I would like to help facilitate our people to have more choices. As a mother, I have a 3 year old daughter and a 6 year old son, I’d like to be able to take my son and daughter to the movies and for them to see the pictures of black folks that are not bastardized depictions that they can be proud of. The fact that Cinderella was done with Brandy playing Cinderella, that I totally dug that. Because so often our images, especially for our little black daughters, princesses and Cinderella, their white blond hair…they’re not reflective of what my daughter sees in the mirror. It’s great for confidence building. Self-Esteem building for a black child in this country who already when you turn on the news, there’ so many of these images that we see we already know that blacks are disproportionably represented in a negative light. My goal would be to have more positive images already across the media.