ABWW Hater of the Day: Tim Alexander director of Diary of a Tired Black Man

Tired is exactly what I call this film. The writer and director of this straight to DVD debacle, bill this waste of celluloid as the answer to films like Diary of a Mad Black Woman and Waiting to Exhale. Alexander who claims he is happily married now, decided to produce a film about a failed relationship instead of being happily married. When I say film, it is actually two films badly edited together. The first part of the film is a narrative about a poor brother who is tortured by his mean, demanding wife this bit only lasts for 15 minutes. Alexander’s solution for the downtrodden black man? A white woman, of course! The second part of the film is composed of man on the street interviews that trot out all the stereotypes about how unattractive, stubborn, angry, aggressive, demanding and basically dysfunctional black women are. Although the film states that black men have historically let black women down,  Alexander’s respondents seem place the blame squarely at the foot of the black women. The films theme is that “many black women were raised without a real father around. Their mothers taught them to hate black men, and to think of black men as no-good scoundrels who need to be kept in line. Women seek out men who are like their fathers, so black women tend to seek out no-good men. When they do find a good man, they tend to treat him very badly just because he’s a man.” These biased put downs  are followed by the testimony two Hispanic women who just love their black men.  Despit his meager attempt to be fair and balanced, Alexander’s message is clear especially since he could not find one happily married black couple to talk about how they found bliss.

The video and audio are both rather mediocre. The camera work (handled by Alexander, along with the music and pretty much everything else of note) is rather amateurish. Jimmy Jean-Louis known as the Haitian as hit show Heroes stars as the beleaguered brother. His accent is so thick that I can hardly understand him, no wonder he is silent in his role on Heroes! Sure there have been a few films that point out the failures of black men, but much more of black pop culture (rap, comedy and films) promotes black female stereotypes and loudly declares that we are not fit for love. Alexander is so insecure about his “masterpiece” that he attacks those who don’t agree with his vision of black women on the Internet Movie Database (mecca for film geeks) and then invites them to be insulted on his own site. Luckily this auteur has no other film projects in production and this lemon will live a long life at the bottom of the discount bin at the Dollar Store!