I went to the screening of Tyler Perry’s new movie “For Colored Girls” yesterday. Round up your closest girlfriends for movie night and definitely drinks on November 5th. This movie is very needed. We all have stuff. Issues. Fears. Demons. Stuff. “For Colored Girls” is based on the book Check out the movie trailer and background story.
The movie is based on the Broadway play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow is Enuf” by Ntozake Shange, who also played one of the original characters and is still writing books at 61-years old. The original play made its Broadway debut in 1976, as a collection of poems called “choreopoem” and each character is identified by a color, which embodies a topic such as abandonment, domestic violence and abortion, among other subjects. Since then, the play has been published several times and made into a heavily edited TV movie in 1982, which Shange (whose birthday is today) once again performed. The play is still performed on college campuses.
Perry wrote, directed and produced the powerful film that opens November 5, and told Robin Roberts in an interview today on Good Morning America, that Madea is nowhere to be found so don’t come expecting her. The movie is very heavy and tells the individual stories of eight women brought together by tragedy and introduces the potent play to a new generation. He’s proud that he was able to put so many talented black women on screen, and gives Macy Gray and Jane Jackson major kudos for their performances.
Perry is an award winning actor, playwright, author, director and producer and is the sixth highest paid man in Hollywood. He gained national fame in 2005 when his play Diary of a Mad Black Woman was adapted to screen and his alter ego, Madea made it to main stream audiences. He has since produced, written and directed other Madea based movies as well as The Family that Preys and Why Did I get Married usually with tepid reviews. He is also the producer and director TBS series Meet the Browns and House of Payne. He has recently canceled his Madea tour citing exhaustion after performing 125 shows in 126 days and then making two movies back to back.
Perry says while the play and movie were written from the black woman’s perspective, the message is universal and one that everyone, no matter what gender or color you are: finding love within yourself despite adversities.
