No quiet believer

Entertainment | Filmmaker Tyler Perry takes Hollywood with loud themes of redemption | Megan Basham

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Last fall, in a showdown that could have been scripted in a studio writing room, a small-budget, little-advertised film with no major stars to speak of took down two Hollywood heavyweights.

Given writer/director Tyler Perry's track record, box-office prognosticators shouldn't have been surprised when Why Did I Get Married? managed to trounce both the much-hailed George Clooney vehicle, Michael Clayton, and Mark Walhberg and Joaquin Phoenix's edgy thriller, We Own the Night. After all, his first film, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, earned $50 million dollars on a paltry $5 million investment. His second, Madea's Family Reunion, raked in $63 million.

Yet when Married beat out the other two films on their opening weekend by an almost 2 to 1 earnings margin, the question on the entertainment media's lips was, "How did we not see this guy coming?" The answer to that question speaks more to Hollywood's willful ignorance of Perry's fan base than to the filmmaker's lack of profile.

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April 05, 2008, Vol. 23, No. 7

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The other campaign Feb. 9, 2008 View WORLD E-zine	Signs and wonders Jan. 26, 2008 View WORLD E-zine	The plots thicken Jan. 12, 2008 View WORLD E-zine