A current documentary airing on Amazon Prime regarding our favorite Madea performer, one Tyler Perry. Tracing his hard scrabble roots in New Orleans where he was in an abusive home (getting beaten by his father on the regular) but after finding a calling somewhat in the church where he could exercise his comedic muscles much to the chagrin of his pastor, he then wrote a stage play where he used his own money to stage it to widespread ignorance since practically no one showed up to see it. W/this outcome, Perry still maintained to push forward but not until he decided to put the show on in Atlanta did he finally gain traction w/the people which would become his bread & butter; a large black audience who would occasionally go to mainstream theatrical productions but found in Perry's a safe space for the type of characters they were more familiar & comfortable with. From this success, he decided to mount the same play but now as a film w/him playing his signature character, Madea, which struck a chord w/the viewing public creating a financial windfall for the production which Perry would replicate w/many of his subsequent releases. With the money coming in, Perry decided to flex his finances & build studios in vacant buildings finding it was not enough so setting his sights on an abandoned army base, the die was cast w/Perry buying the property thereby opening up the first black owned film studio complex (even naming some of the buildings after some current & past luminaries like Halle Berry, Spike Lee, Denzel Washington, Sidney Poitier, Oprah Winfrey, et al). Not shying away from the criticism that's dogged his career of his creations pandering to the lowest common denominator (something I myself have said when asked), Perry has embraced what his critics call his shortcomings & used them as strengths. A good doc to be sure but still feeling a bit like it was made inhouse where the Kool-aid was not only served but drank on repeat.
