'First Sunday' creator David Talbert is a man on a mission

Ice Cube (left) and David E. Talbert on the set of "First Sunday," an urban theater dramedy written by Talbert and produced by and starring Cube. (Tony Rivetti Jr.)

HOLLYWOOD - David E. Talbert isn't delighted by his description in Hollywood these days: "the next Tyler Perry." But then, the multiple NAACP award-winning writer-director-producer - whose debut dramedy, "First Sunday," opened last Friday - isn't discouraging the comparison either.

After all, both popular playwrights have grown rich and influential by creating works that intermingle inspirational messages, modern music, and plainspoken 'hood realities with big belly laughs. As well, both cater to the same underserved fan base: middle-aged, middle-class, church-going black women.

Talbert and Perry are the top brands in what's known as "urban theater" - a boisterous milieu that grosses tens of millions of dollars a year and packs concert halls and theaters while receiving scant mainstream attention. Over time, urban theater has been called many things, including "black Broadway," gospel theater, and even the "chitlin' circuit," owing to its roots in the segregated South.

"We serve popcorn at some of our plays - you'll never see that with 'Les Miserables,' " said Talbert. "We serve Courvoisier too. People get a nice little buzz on. Sometimes people drink a little too much rum and Coke before they see us. It unfortunately disrupts the action onstage. But it's theater owned by the people. If they love it, they'll talk back to the play."

At a moment when urban theater is making serious inroads into the mainstream, Talbert's strong association with the genre carries weight. And viewed a certain way, Perry was actually once the "next" David Talbert, whose first play preceded Perry's first effort by nearly eight years.

In 2005, writer-director-producer Perry (who appears as a hot-headed granny named Madea in his productions) took his urban-themed, gospel-flavored "Diary of a Mad Black Woman," from the stage to the big screen. Despite negative reviews and the absence of bankable stars, the $5.5 million movie stunned industry observers by earning more than $50 million at the box office.

Perry's movie adaptations of his plays have earned a cumulative $107 million. TBS shelled out $200 million for his new sitcom, and Perry's company is on track to gross $1 billion by 2009.

So when Talbert began making the studio rounds nearly three years ago, conventional wisdom had him similarly adapting one of the 12 plays he's produced for film. But the Washington, D.C., native, who has been touring the country with his productions for 15 years, wanted to develop an original screenplay.

"They wanted me to do what Tyler did," Talbert said. "But I'm not Tyler Perry. I don't follow anybody out the gate. I want to create new stories."

"First Sunday" follows two down-on-their-luck petty criminals (Ice Cube and Tracy Morgan) who botch a plot to rip off their local church and wind up taking its congregation hostage. As it turns out, the bad guys aren't so bad - even if they've taken to waving pistols and trying to blow up a safe in a house of the Lord - and not all the parishioners are as saintly as you might expect. The movie earned a strong $17.7 million in its first weekend.

" 'First Sunday' is the best of all my worlds," Talbert said. "It's romance, a whole lot of comedy, a whole lot of inspiration. It's social commentary. That's the formula that works for me."

But the project nearly fell apart when Talbert grew frustrated with the glacial pace of getting "First Sunday" into production. Once Ice Cube read it, he jumped at the chance to star and produce.

"I wasn't looking at it like, 'Yo, I need to do a movie for this (faith-based) audience,' " said Cube. "But David has an infectious personality. He has vision. And he knows this audience like the back of his hand. The audience that loves his plays goes to these movies. They want to see black people in real-life situations - they want to see black people on the screen."

Although Talbert, 41, was brought up in a religious family - his great-grandmother was a Pentecostal preacher, his grandmother is a touring evangelist, his mother was a preacher, and his father and brother are pastors - he grounds his optimistic worldview with real-world experiences.

Before Talbert began writing plays in 1990, he earned a marketing degree from Morgan State University and worked as a radio disc jockey in Baltimore and Oakland.

He has resisted putting dogma into his plays, best-selling novels, or movie in lieu of more general social messages.

"I'm not a religious guy," Talbert said. "There's a much bigger audience when you're not hitting them over the head with, 'You have to feel this way or feel that way to take part' . . . A lot of times, religion can be a way to keep people from coming together."

Asked if he had a social agenda, Talbert laughed.

"I'm a 6-foot-3 black man whose favorite movie is 'Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,' " he said. "I see the world as it could be, not as it is, quite a lot. I'll show you the way the world is in my work. But I also show you the way it could be if people would understand each other a bit more."