Filmmaker Darryl Roberts takes his time when making a movie. Over the last 20 years, there have been just three: The Perfect Model, his debut feature in 1988, which was followed by a drama called How U Like Me Now in 1993 and, now, America the Beautiful, his first documentary. Roberts, a native Chicagoan and African American who performed with Second City, created the film over a five-year period. It's a film that tackles the obsession with beauty that seems to have reached epidemic proportions in this country and speaks to audiences of all ethnic and cultural persuasions. Though the movie is hard-hitting as it delves into everything from plastic surgery to the toxic chemicals in cosmetics, it's also enormously entertaining and Roberts' style is gentle and winning. America the Beautiful has run in dozens of film festivals and has won tremendous critical and audience support. It plays an exclusive engagement in Chicago at the Landmark Century Centre Cinema beginning Fri., May 9.
Windy City Times: This idea about America's obsession with beauty has been ruminating inside your head for a long time, I take it?
Darryl Roberts: Not in reference to a documentary, but I think for a lot of my life I was a victim of falling only for beautiful women without realizing I was a victim. I think that kind of ruminated under the surface and came out in this documentary.
WCT: This resonated with me because this obsession with beauty and the perfect physique is a long standing issue in the gay community.
DR: Funny you mention that. Last November I did a screening at a film festival and fashion stylist Michael Holdaway was there with his best friend, Ted Casablanca from the E! Channel, and they're big in the gay community. I was thinking, 'I wonder what they're going to think?' Afterwards, they said that they loved it and Ted went on the E! Channel the next day and told everyone they needed to see the film and that was awesome.
WCT: And Ted is also in the film.
DR: Yes he is, which is great.
WCT: He's so flip about the subject.
DR: [ Laughs ] He is!
WCT: I was thinking, 'Wouldn't you know it—the one gay person, the one representation of My People, and he's flip about the subject'—
DR: No, there's another gay person in the movie—do you remember the Black guy? The fashion producer?
WCT: Oh right, right.
DR: That guy was awesome. But I love Ted because he's just hilarious.
WCT: I was surprised to see the film open with two Black teenagers and one saying point blank without any problem, 'I'm ugly.' That stunned me because I remember reading a lot of articles over the last 10 years claiming that young Black girls did not go through the same body-image problems that young white girls did.
DR: For decades, this was absolutely true. There was a very distinct difference between young white and Black girls and their concept of beauty. Being thicker was a source of pride, and to be really skinny was really thought of as negative. It wasn't until recently—and they say this is happening within the last six years—Black girls started getting plastic surgery and they've started having body-image problems. The advertising industry is so pervasive that they've just broken down that wall.
WCT: Do women come up after seeing the film and say, 'Okay, no more plastic surgery?'
DR: I had a case like this in Dallas. My associate producer was told by his cab driver that two women he'd just driven to the airport were talking about the movie and one said when she got home she was cancelling her plastic-surgery appointment. Another guy called me to tell me that he was scheduled to have liposuction but after seeing the movie it was out of the question and he wasn't going to do it. That made me feel good.
WCT: How do people combat this pervasive wall? It's not just fashion magazines and commercials; now our TV and movie stars are willfully disfiguring their faces.
DR: Right. I tell people that the bottom line is that the advertising industry is not going to stop doing what they're doing. It's a capitalist society we're in and that's just a given. All we can do is empower ourselves and take back our power that advertisers have over us and that's basically by starting to believe that we're beautiful in the way that we are. I think on a real individual level we can work on this as well. I'll be honest with you: When Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers told me that I have a beautiful handshake for the next two weeks I was just running around just shaking people's hands. [ Laughs hard ]
WCT: Now is that because he's a celebrity validating you?
DR: Well, I've never heard that before but that's an interesting question. I really don't know the answer ,but I do know that it made me feel beautiful and that's something that Tom Cruise may not have. So when you throw him and Brad Pitt in a magazine, all of a sudden I don't care that I don't look like them. I have my own beauty. I think we have to discover what our own beauty is and make that our value system and in that way not listen to what the advertisers are selling us.
WCT: That's going to be a tough road, but this film is a great beginning. What's going to happen with the movie beyond this week at the Landmark Century?
DR: In June we open in New York and Los Angeles, and then after that we're going to 30 cities.
WCT: This has got to feel great after all this work and all these years. It sounds like it was a real labor of love.
DR: It does and it was.
See www.americathebeautifuldoc.com for more about the film.