Director/Producer Paris Barclay (Photo by Jeff Mosier)
Teachers preparing their curriculum for Black History Month or LGBT History Month or just complying with the California FAIR Education Act should add Paris Barclay to their list of notable individuals. The African American Steering Committee of the Director’s Guild of America (DGA) will be paying special tribute to the Director/Producer/Filmmaker/Activist on Wednesday, Feb. 22 at the DGA Theater on Sunset Boulevard with scores of actors, directors, and writers in attendance.
Barclay, the DGA’s First Vice President, chairs the DGA’s Political Action Committee, co-chairs its Diversity Committee and is a former co-chair of the African American Steering Committee. He’s directed more than 120 TV episodes, winning two Emmy Awards and a DGA Award for NYPD Blue, four other Emmy nominations and nine DGA Award nominations for episodes of Glee, In Treatment, Weeds, House, The West Wing, and ER. He’s also been honored by the NAACP Image Awards and GLAAD, among other entertainment and non-profit organizations. He’s now Executive Producer and primary director of FX’s Shakespearian-tinged Sons Of Anarchy about an outlaw motorcycle gang that protects its small California town.
But what makes Barclay so notable – more so than being prolific and fiscally reliable – is his determined, smart passion for justice and equality. That Glee Emmy nomination was for a Nov. 11, 2009 episode called “Wheels” that won him a DGA Award, a Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting and the Visionary Leadership Award at the 2010 Shane’s Inspiration Gala for highlighting the abilities of people with disabilities. Glee creator Ryan Murphy called it “the turning point for the show.” And TV Guide named the “Hearts and Souls” episode of NYPD Blue (where Jimmy Smit’s character dies) and the “Three Stories” episode of House in their 100 Best Episodes of All Time.
Here’s an excerpt from the Emmy TV Legends interview with Barclay – this one’s about his advice to young directors.
Barclay is more erudite than most TV viewers may know. He conceived the Sons of Anarchy Season 4 premiere killing montage set to “What a Wonderful World” as a visually interpretation of the opening of the W.B. Yeat poem “The Second Coming:”
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
But Paris Barclay doesn’t just integrate his passion for justice and equality in his craft: he lives it. In the Los Angeles LGBT and HIV/AIDS communities, he is known for his long commitment to improving the lives of others. He has raised funds for the Van Ness Recovery House, for Project Angel Food during the harrowing 1990s and the Black AIDS Institute, founded by his cousin, longtime HIV/AIDS activist Phill Wilson, among other HIV/AIDS and LGBT organizations. When Project Angel Food honored him with their Founders Award in 1998, Barclay said: “I consider my work for this organization my highest accomplishment….What’s the point of any success if you don’t give something back?”
AIDS activists Phill Wilson, Vallerie Wagnor, Paris Barclay in the early 1990s (Photo by Karen Ocamb)
In 2001, Barclay was honored by the Black AIDS Institute with their annual Heroes In The Struggle portrait . He is greatly concerned with the impact HIV/AIDS is having on the African American community, in large part because of the stigma of homophobia.
“My feelings are that humans are dying and it really doesn’t matter much to me how,” Barclay said in the Black AIDS Institute tribute. “They’re still dying and they still need our help.” Stigma must be addressed as frankly and as directly as possible.”
He promised to continues to the struggle. “I fight the battles for all of them,” he said. “I feel that it is the responsibility of any African American, primarily any African American that has prominence in the industry of their choice. I feel they have a responsibility to use that prominence to influence people to a positive end. So I feel I’m doing my job.”
And while Barclay is successful, as a gay man he knows he’s still a second-class citizen in the eyes of America. On Sept. 14, 2008, in reaction to the antigay forces pushing Prop 8 in California, Barclay married his partner of 10 years, Christopher Mason. Theirs was a featured Love Story in The Advocate that year:
“We wanted to fight the ballot initiative,” Barclay explains, sitting with Mason in the couple’s airy living room, “and we thought, What’s the best statement that we can make? We should get married. Most of the people coming to this wedding will never have seen a gay wedding. I seriously doubt that anyone is going to come away unmoved. We’ll give them the words, and then hopefully they’ll go out and talk to their friends about it.”
After they fortuitously escaped being on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, they made another change. From The Advocate:
“After that Paris and I came to the conclusion that we needed to make a difference in the world,” says Mason, a food-industry executive. “For us it came to adopting some kids.” African-American boys, to be specific. As the couple researched the foster care system in Los Angeles County, they learned that dark-skinned boys are the last to be adopted. “I’m pretty chocolate myself,” points out Barclay, who attended an exclusive boys’ school in Chicago before going on to Harvard. “I thought, What if I had been born into different circumstances?”
Their sons were ring-bearers at their wedding.
Last June, Barclay was featured in Variety as one of the “Ten TV Directors Who Leave Their Mark,”calling him among “the most respected in the business.” That month, Barclay was also on the cover of Advertising Age one of 2011′s 50 Most Creative People, saying “Mr. Barclay brings an innate cultural awareness to shows.”
Through his work and life, Paris Barclay is intent on smartly and artistically challenging what he has described as an “empathy deficit” – the “inability to recognize ourselves in one another.” By honoring Barclay on Wednesday, his DGA peers may also be recognizing themselves in him.
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Christopher, Paris and their boys have been a force in the Pop Luck Club, as well. This article really conveys the dignity of this wonderfully inspiring family.