Major Film Productions
The movie How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998) which swept the NAACP Image Awards and won the award for outstanding picture. was Kevin Rodney Sullivan’s Hollywood directorial debut. The movie was based on a popular novel at the time, and follows the story of Stella (played by Angela Bassett) who is a single mother of one who finds love in Jamaica with a man much younger than her named Winston, (played by Taye Diggs). It also had many a few notable stars such as Whoopi Goldberg, who plays Stella’s best friend in the movie. The film, while not the first to use a tropic paradise as its background, “may be the first to blatantly portray a tropical paradise as a sexual mecca beckoning tired American businesswomen to shed their clothes an inhibitions,” according to a review by the New York Times. Despite some mixed reviews, Sullivan still “provides a movie that speaks in a recognizable way to a black audience, particularly black women who have found themselves omitted from serious screen depiction over the decades”.
Sullivan’s next major production was Convicted (2002), based on the autobiography of Carl Upchurch entitled Convicted in the Womb. The movie wrestles with race relations, and issues pertaining to jail and gang violence, as well as the use of derogatory terms towards people of African Descent. The main character, after being reformed in jail goes on a mission to help lower youth violence in America, by inviting all the largest gang’s leaders to a church meeting about violence. Upchurch himself had a cameo within the movie as a jail cell guard. He then went on to produce Barbershop 2: Back in Business (2004), which a sequel to the original Barbershop (2002), with the entire original cast returning with some additional extras. Notable cast members include: Ice cube, Cedric Antonio Kyles, Anthony Anderson, and a brief cameo by Queen Latifah in promotion of her own spinoff of the Barbershop franchise.
The latest major film production by Kevin Sullivan was Guess Who (2005), the idea for the movie was originally a collaborative effort by Ashton Kutcher and the late Bernie Mac. As Ashton Kutcher explained in an interview about his choice of directors, “I had a conversation with Kevin before we started the movie. And the reason that I liked Kevin—we picked Kevin to do the movie, Bernie and I did, because what he knew the movie needed was heart. And he was more concerned about the heart than the comedy”. The movie focuses on a young white man (played by Ashton Kutcher) attempting to marry the African American woman, while trying to seek the approval of her overprotective father (played by Bernie Mac). Working with Sullivan did have its impact upon the film, as Kutcher explains, “Well, working for Kevin Sullivan was a very different experience for me. Kevin didn't just let us go. At no point in time did Kevin just let us go… And I think that that brought a different performance for each of us from what we'd done before”. The movie received mostly mixed reviews.
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