What will liberate filmmakers of color, like Spike Lee?!

Are you interested in or concerned about Miracle at St. Anna and why Spike Lee must still struggle to bring his proud and uncompromising views on people of color to viewers?

O.k. You love Spike Lee or you don't; whichever you feel is fine. But when you read the article in the Washington Post about how much Lee had to hustle to make his next film, Miracle at St. Anna, you have to ask how skrewy Hollywood is.

Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It came out in 1986 and blew many people away. It was fresh.; it was new; it was made by African-Americans. After he invested two years in hustling and marketing it, he used each of the next four years to make and release a new film - Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever, among several other - by and about black people. He earned a lot of controversy, some of it reasonable and warranted. He made himself coincidentally a role model for artistic people of color, especially African-Americans.

Is it naive or reasonable that after having made a career, a following and an irrefutable resume, he would need to hustle less because he is a known commodity, a "brand?"

As BBC News confirmed, Lee's last film, The Inside Man had the biggest opening of any film Lee had made or Washington had starred in. Still...

He should not have to do this. But there are no studios which people of color run which do films like "Miracle." Robert L. Johnson's company, Our Stories Films (part of the Weinstein Companies), is geared toward family-friendly stories, those that entertain, but barely challenge how or what you think. Anglos remain much more comfortable with watching stories about themselves than of people who may barely look like them.

In a balanced world, every one's experience and stories receive equal respect and recognition, as long as they are interesting, or amusing, or both. Few Anglos want to be reminded wrongs they or, more likely, their ancestors, committed against people of color. Many of the most important stories about communities of color must acknowledge a history of those wrongs as part of their context. This story is old, chronic; as old as Oscar Michaeux.

It remains morose that, even when people of color, especially African-Americans, want to put their stories into the wide world, they don't have a system in place. Johnson, whose Black Entertainment Television (BET) perpetuated many more problems than those which, many people thought, it was created to solve hasn't helped Lee yet. Perhaps the big question to ask is why affluent or wealthy African-Americans - those who sign peoples' checks and don't wait for someone to sign theirs - and other wealthy people of color haven't decided to make a system to shrink the stresses.

Those artists who challenge their audiences, like Lee and his peers, can focus more on their art and work and worries over money. Have Lee and his peers not given a compelling business (profit) case for supporting these films? How old and chronic is that problem?