Meet the Man Fighting Hollywood's Race Problem, One Supercut at a Time

For all the lip-service that Hollywood pays to diversity, a new video series demonstrates just how far the movie industry has to go.

In the above supercut entitled “Every Single Word Spoken by a Person of Color in The Fault in Our Stars,” all of the dialogue from non-white characters in last year’s smash teen romance is spliced together. How long is the resulting montage? About 40 seconds and it consists entirely of scenes of Hazel’s physician Dr. Maria. The video is just the latest in a new series created by an actor and writer named Dylan Marron. The videos highlight the lack of meaningful dialogue said by people of color in multiple well-regarded films — including many that Marron himself quite enjoys. So far, he has edited hits like (500) Days of Summer, Frances Ha, and American Hustle. None of the videos last more than 55 seconds.

Ironically, it took the best run of success in Marron’s young career as an actor and writer for him to realize that, as a queer person of color, a fair shake would be extremely hard to attain. Marron, a 27-year-old biracial native of Venezuela who grew up in New York City, is a star of the uber-popular podcast Welcome to Night Vale, has a starring role in a national ad campaign for TD Bank, and was recently was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for his play The Human Symphony. Marron spoke with Yahoo Movies about how he got the idea for the video series and what he hopes to accomplish with it.

So when and where did this idea originally come from?
About a year and a half ago — my theater group, the New York Neo Futurists, does a lot of short, short pieces. Our signature weekly piece is 30 plays in 60 minutes. I was on the plane coming back from a gig in LA, and I watched the movie Enough Said, and I was just like, “Wow, this is so unaware of itself. The only person of color in this movie is a maid, and the storyline is that her employer think she’s a bad maid.” It’s just a very peripheral plot line. There’s no importance given to her, and this was so clearly written by someone who doesn’t interact with any people of color unless they’re staff. Every week we set writing assignments of what that show needs, and I wrote something called “Every Word Spoken by a Person of Color in the Julia Louis-Dreyfus Comedy Enough Said, as Said by the Only Person of Color in This Show,’ and it went really well.

Watch the ‘Enough Said’ cut below:

So how did you jump from a stage sketch to videos?
I’ve had a good amount of success, and I’ve been invited to meetings with potential agents and managers. What I found is I have a lot of exciting items on my resume to talk about, and what I keep being told is “I don’t know how much work is out there for you — you have a very specific type.” So I rehashed the “Every Single Word” idea as videos. I find it to be so much more direct than a ranty vlog post. There is nothing about what I feel attached to these videos: no hyperbole, no embellishment, no comment. I’m just saying, “This is every single word spoken by a person of color,” and you can come to your own conclusions.

When I was growing up, I didn’t see my reflection in TV and film save for a few characters that I could count on one hand. When you don’t see your reflection, it’s a really dangerous thing, and this sociologist George Gerbner came up with an idea called “Symbolic Annihilation.” When you see yourself depicted in the fictional world, you think you have a place in society. And if you don’t, it’s symbolic annihilation. The author Junot Diaz has this great quote about how he also never saw his reflection, and he likens it to how vampires can’t see each other in the mirror. How do you create monsters in society? You don’t give them reflections. So it’s to highlight: Why are actors of color constantly being told there isn’t work out there for them regardless of their work or talent or awards?

And I think the other really important point is I’m making a concerted effort to choose movies that aren’t about whiteness, but where whiteness is a default. My new one is The Fault in Our Stars. It’s an incredible story. I loved the book. Nowhere in the entire book is anyone’s race ever mentioned. How cool would it be if Hazel was a young Korean teenager? What if she was adopted or what if she was multiracial? Whiteness should not be the default of stories about people. The Fault in Our Stars is about teens falling in love and dealing with loss way too soon. (500) Days of Summer is a love story — you could have been far more creative with that.

I’m not demanding that every movie be the UN. It’s not like every movie needs to be a rainbow. But when you give someone a reflection of themselves on screen, you’re giving a whole new group of people an entry point.

Dylan Marron at the Drama Desk Awards

One solution is more inclusive casting in stuff written by white people who generally write about themselves. But is an even bigger problem that creators of color aren’t getting the opportunity to create authentic characters of their own?
Creators like Shonda Rhimes shouldn’t be an exception. There should be more Shonda Rhimes. People write shades of themselves. It’s a very complex system that allows for that all to happen, which is who can afford to go to acting programs in the summer, and who can afford to go to film programs in the summer. A lot of people, especially lower-income people, see investing in the arts as a luxury or gamble that they can’t take. And I understand that. But there need to be more programs to give really, really talented minds the ability to hone those skills. And those minds exist across all walks of life. My goal isn’t, “Let’s fill the quota.” I’m not trying to stand on the soapbox with this series, saying we need a speaking Latino and a speaking black person. Telling great stories is first and foremost, but let’s acknowledge the diversity of stories that we can tell.

Watch Marron’s ‘Noah’ supercut:

So are there movies that you are not going to target?
I’m not picking these movies because I hate them. I’m picking them because they’re f—ing amazing movies — they just could have done different things with casting. I just watched Nightcrawler last weekend, and it’s so amazing, and I would never go after a movie like that, because that movie is about the white media and the way it frames stories. It’s like, “Okay, you’re aware of yourself.” You know exactly why Jake Gyllenhaal is the reporter, why Rene Russo is the head of a news organization. The whole crux of that movie is get a Latino or a brown person who is breaking into a rich white neighborhood. You realize how f—ed up that is, but it’s not pitched to you as normal.

What did you think of some fans online freaking out when Michael B. Jordan was cast as the Human Torch/Johnny Storm, a traditionally white character, in the upcoming reboot of The Fantastic Four?
He’s an amazing actor. I was following Michael B. Jordan, and also closely following the campaign to cast Donald Glover as the new Spider-Man, and what I want to say to Hollywood is, “I dare you. Do it, and I guarantee you you will come out winning. Be more confident in your material.” Spider-Man is an amazing franchise — it’s also untouchable. If you want to put out another movie, please do something different.