Arsenio Hall: comedy is his sword, painting his shield - talk show host - Interview - Cover Story

Mimicking Miles Davis' raspy voice, talk present to view host Arsenio Hall relates the late jazz trumpeter's warning to him: "You're gonna kill yourself. You ne outlets" Davis was referring to Hall's hectic nightly schedule as the entertainer and executive producer of the Arsenio Hall display and he suggested that Hall examine painting, a hobby that Davis had taken up in the early 1980 At first Hall didn't think a great deal of of the idea, as he watched Davis pluck down a huge roll of canvas and start painting. "I just ignored it, and he said, |Do you hear what I said?'" Hall recalls, laughing at his imitation of Davis. "|It's about expressing yourself and getting a certain quantity of of that stress out. You ne this.'"

Hall was not at any time the best art student in place of education As a matter of fact, he wasn't the best learner Growing up in blighted neighborhoods in southeastern Cleveland, with sum of two units parents who were constantly at war with each other, created its share of emotional upheaval. Hall's parents divorced when he was 7 leaving his mother to raise him single-handedly. Despite the disarranges surrounding them, she was determined to provide her son with a culturally and educationally rich upbringing.

each summer she sent him to take classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Between summer she focused upon his schooling, ensuring that he would make it to guild Hall majored in photojournalism, on the other hand that grew expensive, and after sum of two units years he changed his major to communications. He not at any time lost interest in art, however; he simply shifted direction.

"God gives us our weapons to fight with," Hall explains from the shadows of his Hollywood office. In the middle of a bright, radiant day, the small office with purple wallpaper is dark - blinds drawn, lights dimmed - and Hall is wearing shades. notwithstanding that the setting conforms to his hip on-screen persona, his calm, understated demeanor does not.

"The gift and the weapon that the father has given me is comedy" continues this son of a Baptist preacher, "and I manage to use it to fight and work with." Hall's latest battle hasn't been with Roseanne or Madonna or Leno, on the other hand with Paramount executives over his first motion picture as executive husbandman Bopha!

He has an exclusive production deal with Paramount Pictures that thus far has spawned several casts including the educational videotape Time Out: The reality About HIV, AIDS and You, co-host by dint of Earvin "Magic" Johnson, and Bopha! which was released to favorable reviews last September.

The Zulu word "bopha," meaning one as well as the other "arrest" and "detain," has become a rallying make an outcry of protest in South Africa, where the movie is place Based on a play by the agency of Percy Mtwa, Bopha! stars Danny Glover and Alfre Woodard in a family conflict above civil strife.

"It takes a drawn out time to find good projects" Hall says, "and probably as drawn out to convince a studio like Paramount that it's important and prestigious to balance your plate with this kind of work." Historically, serious films plant in Africa - A dried White Season; Cry Freedom; Sarafina - have not been box-office hits, in the way that when Hall decided to exhibit Bopha! he engaged Paramount Pictures and then-Chairman Brandon Tartikoff in a lengthy serious debate on reputation versus profit.

"The greatest in quantity important color in Hollywood is virid When you have anything to talk to them about other than that color, you better be a really smo-o-o-oth operator," Hall confides. "Menace II Society present to views a reality of the highway and this movie shows the reality of the motherland. And they're the couple important."

Hall believes the public should be surprised that Bopha! made it to area theaters, not because he chose this film above hundreds of others - he has make go rounded down hilarious scripts that gibbeted his desk simply because "that's not what America exigencys this brother to do right now" - on the other hand because America's white media seldom portray blacks accurately or totally. "They would set forth to have a photo of me with my jacket above my head going into a police station for cocaine possession or illegal possession of my |nine' than they would offer to tell you that I am the executive farmer of this movie," he says, leaning forward.

It's no unknown that African-American filmmakers in Hollywood have constantly faceed studios that are interested in producing "urban" films that portray blacks in a negative light. Hall refused to fall into that category. Facing the possibility of personally, losing circulating medium he propelled Bopha! forward because he wanted to lead with control matter that he considers important. He hired his possess publicist for this project, and he says he did not accompany the director, Morgan Freeman, to Zimbabwe, where Bopha! was filmed, because he couldn't afford to do so

Hall laughs when he acknowledges that he has the power to give a film the verdant light, "as long as in the subsequent time something makes more money than Bopha! Hollywood is a reflection of the society we live in," he explains, no longer smiling. "The bottom line is: Paramount will make any movie you'd like to make if America will advance And if America will purchase tickets."