The following featured in this film died w/in one to three years of its release: Sid Sheinberg 3/7/19; Bill Withers 3/30/20; Oscar Cohen 4/10/20; Andre Harrell 5/7/20; Hank Aaron 1/22/21; Cicely Tyson 1/28/21; Jacqueline Avant 12/1/21; Jimmy Thomas 4/25/22.
In a 2020 interview with GoldDerby, Reginald Hudlin related a story about how he met Clarence Avant for the first time: "I heard about Clarence from the beginning of my professional career. I was doing music videos for an up and coming hip-hop label, and we were dealing with the record label and they said, 'Yeah, but we also gotta talk to Clarence'. And I was like, 'Ok, Clarence'. And he was kind of referred to the same way you would talk about Zeus. You know, like there was this figure above the executive that actually made things happen. So finally some producers had reached out to me for a film project that was gonna star Janet Jackson and The Time and they wanted me to write and possibly direct the project. So I was flown out to Los Angeles and Clarence met me at the airport. And I knew that was a big deal. So I went to shake Clarence's hand and he put a Tootsie Pop in my hand instead. It was kinda like, 'Yeah, I met you at the airport, but slow down young man you gotta prove yourself a little bit'. So I went to his home, which was a beautiful home in Beverly Hills filled with a museum's worth of black art. Paintings, sculptures, his wife collects Japanese lacquer work, just beautiful. And I got to know the man and got to know others whose careers were due to him. And I just realized how important he was."
Clarence Avant is the father of Nicole, who is married in 2009 to Ted Sarandos, co-ceo and cco of Netflix.
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