ABOUT THE SERIES
Negroes who refuse to be bound by this country’s peculiar attitudes are subversive. They have every right to refuse to be bound by a set of attitudes as useless now and as obsolete as the pillory.
—James Baldwin
PERSONAL NOTE:
The windows of Daryl Wilson’s suburban Chicago home rattled with sharp guitar riffs and a driving drum beat while his wife and three children slept two floors above. Barely two hours earlier, Daryl, an ER doctor with dreadlocks down to his waist, had finished his 10-hour shift at a nearby hospital.
“Time to rock!” he screamed. “Utoooooopia!!!!!!”
And it was in that moment, with Daryl’s lab coat draped over a banister as he screamed punk rock lyrics into a microphone,
that we knew we had found the story we needed to tell. Here was a black man whose “normal” life illustrated the surprising and unexplored reality of African American men. Managing a hospital ER one minute, jumping off stages into a mosh pit the next, Daryl is the kind of iconoclastic man who says something unique and critically important about being black, being a man, and being an American in our modern age.
THE SERIES
Men tells the story of six iconoclastic black men whose lives break the stereotypes of how African American men live in 21st century America -- despite pressures to conform. The series is created by actress/producer Michael Michele and senior Washington Post editor Chris L. Jenkins, as well as talented directors Eriq LaSalle, One9 and Darius Clark Monroe. Thus far, the team has completed filming three 30 minute episodes.
WHAT IS THE
SERIES ABOUT?
This docu-series is about freedom and individuality and six black men whose lives represent a break from the narrow definitions that often characterize African American male life. Instead of the typical images of black men as celebrity or criminal, the characters in this docu-series represent a more complex and dynamic portrait of how black men live their lives everyday. Each one of our subjects are mavericks, men who illustrate individuality in the face of loss and hardship. The universal struggles faced by these men illustrate the commonality between black men’s experience and broader American ideals.
This docu-series is aimed at a broad, multi cultural audience interested in watching programing that portrays African-American men in a light that is more realistic than what is often found in mainstream media, movies and on television. A common concern among these audiences is that too often black men are portrayed in ways that are stereotypically one-dimensional. But the recent success of a wide variety of content on both the large and small screen illustrates that a significant swath of audiences are hungry for different and diverse story telling around the lives of African-Americans — story telling that is modern, compelling, exciting and entertaining.