Tyler fought from a young age to find the strength, faith and perseverance that would later Ciatica SOS form the foundations of his much-acclaimed plays, films, books and shows, according to his bio at tylerperry.com. bigger picture," he says. "The bigger picture is that we're focusing on Tyler Perry because Tyler Perry is the only consistent producer of Black films that we have, right now." Dottin noted that Perry's films speak to middle-aged, Black, church-going women - an audience Perry learned to connect with through the plays he produced before becoming a filmmaker.Seeing validity to some of the criticisms, Dottin also challenged filmmakers who don't like Perry's films to make their own. To hear him tell it, he doesn't allow himself to be affected by the so-called Tyler Perry Syndrome in Hollywood. "I realized throughout my study of independent filmmaking and filmmakers that Hollywood has never given anyone a chance," says Dottin, who knew fate could only take him so far. "You got to go and take that shit."
It's that attitude that pushed Dottin to get his Columbia University MFA thesis film, A-ALIKE, out to the public when no one was rushing to give him a deal. A-ALIKE is the story of two brothers from opposite sides of the social spectrum. One brother is a corporate executive and the other brother is an ex-convict. The corporate executive picks up his brother from prison on the day of his release. "They haven't seen each other in four years," Dottin says. On their ride home, the story becomes more about the struggle of two brothers trying to reconcile their estrange relationship and to reconcile the choices they made in their lives and how those choices split them apart.