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EXCLUSIVE… UPDATE: Memphis, Paul Greengrass‘ film about the final days of Dr. Martin Luther King, is coming back around. Now, I hear that steps are underway to make Memphis Greengrass’ next directorial outing. I’ve heard that Veritas is in talks to finance with Wild Bunch. You might recall the picture was shelved after Universal Pictures dropped out, and Greengrass and producer Scott Rudin shelved it because it became too difficult to set up new financing and shoot the film so that it could be released during the MLK weekend holiday. Greengrass and Rudin moved on to make Captain Phillips, the Sony drama about the Somali pirate heist that stars Tom Hanks as Captain Richard Phillips.
Related: Opposition To MLK Films Reveals Hard Truths About Biopic Biz
The script depicts Dr. King’s final days as he struggled to organize a protest march on behalf of striking black municipal sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was slain. That storyline is juxtaposed with an intense manhunt for King’s assassin James Earl Ray, involving some of the federal authorities who, at Hoover’s direction, had dogged King’s every step with wiretaps and whispering campaigns before the civil rights leader’s death.
I’ve written about how the King family and the activist’s close confidante, Ambassador Andrew Young, have objections to the project: King’s heirs have their own project at DreamWorks, and Young objected to the depiction of infidelity. I read the script when Greengrass tried to make the movie last time around, and felt it was Oscar caliber stuff that was a powerful testament to King’s struggle and his sacrifice, even if he was portrayed as an imperfect human being. Let’s see how this one comes together, but I must say it is as good as any script I’ve read in years.
Related: Total 3 MLK Projects: Now HBO & Oprah Developing Miniseries
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Once again, white creative team, black subject. There are 50 black bio pics, subjects floating around Hollywood, including this one, and not a single one is written or produced by an African American. Not one. This includes Richard Pryor, James Brown, Miles Davis (who famously said he’d like to die with his hands around a white man’s throat) and on and on. Or James Brown at Imagine, white writers, white producers and white director attachment. No one on the creative team has ever been call the n word and James spent his early life being called that every day.
If you want to understand the depth of Hollywood racism, here is is on full display. A group of white men sit in a room and decide THEY will depict the great black icon in American history and NOT INTERVIEW ONE PERSON WHO MARCHED WITH KING, not get the approval of his heirs. Not necessary, “we’re white men and we rule the world and know everything.” We can do what we want with your icon and fuck you, black America.
And then to add insult to injury, “let’s hurry and we can exploit KING WEEKEND WITH THE KING MOVIE! What a marketing opportunity!! We get to piggyback King, how cool is that? Why when I’m sitting at Chateau Marmont smoking my Gauloise cigs, I’ll tell everyone how I really channeled that Negro preacher. I WAS King.”
I am saddened but not surprised. Welcome to HollyKKKwood.
You picked the wrong movie to stir up these tired complaints around. You only need look at Greengrass’s 2 masterpieces, UNITED 93 and BLOODY SUNDAY to see the enormous integrity, respect and passion for accuracy he brings to historical films about sensitive subjects like this. Go whine somewhere else.
Actually Abe has it right. Greengrass has already shown that he’s too irresponsible to make this movie. He wants to trade in FBI generated gossip, not historical fact. If he can’t curb his desperate need to dirty up a good man then he needs to move on.
End of story. Greengrass is a good action director but the wrong guy for this movie.
And yes, Hollywood shouldn’t make this movie without blacks in leading positions on the project.
This is a pretty outrageous and stupid comment. Yes, no one is disputing that power in Hollywood is white (although I wouldn’t stay strictly male at this point. And yes, plenty of misguided but well-intentioned films have been made by white producers and studio executives that have been simply awful.
However, as is mentioned below, Paul Greengrass is a tremendous director who has tackled similar subject matter, especially in Bloody Sunday. He’s not interested in a standard-issue Hollywood biography, he’s interested in MLK’s real story, good bad and ugly. If you’re not interested don’t go watch it.
As for his family’s permission, family’s of important historical figures are most often impediments to getting a good film made–they want something to be shaped into one of many personal agendas they have all too often.
And lastly, your use of the phrase “HollyKKKKwood” is truly out of line—you can criticize Hollywood all you want for being oblivious to and botching the stories of historically oppressed groups, but they are in no way shape or form comparable to the KKK.
BTB–
Perhaps no one told you that the King estate has already given permission to Dreamworks to make a King film. So your “family as impediment” line has no merit.
And as for the “good, bad and ugly” nonsense we all know what that means. Out of a two to three hour movie ALL you’d care about is anything relating to gossip of extramarital affairs. The rest would not interest you.
There are people with “personal agendas” in regards to a King biopic. But it’s not the King estate. It’s the people who never even mention King, or interest in a movie starring a black person, except for this, and that only because they think it can be turned into an anti-King smear piece.
I know damn well the King estate has given DreamWorks permission, and the King family today is a circus. My bet is that that film never ever happens and will be in large part to their dysfunction.
And for the record, my father is black and my mother is white and l grew up very much understanding who MLK was and the sacrifices he made so that someone like me could have a good life in this country. You are so colossally out of line for thinking that I’m interested in smearing him you have no idea. Paul Greengrass is an immensely talented director who would knock it out of the park.
So, fuck off.
I wish I culd LIKE Honest Abe’s comment…actually i wish I culd LOVE it…its the harsh truth and LA’s westside and hill’s residents will NEVER truly grasp it…However, i must say tho that im a little more disappointed in Hollywood’s black elite who arent banding together to produce a King biopic…where is Oprah, Will Smith, Denzel, Tyler Perry, etc etc with all their money and power…this whole thing stinks to high heaven but unfortunately, if these rich old powerful white men dont make these movies, they wont get made…period.
Who cares about the color of ones skin when it comes to a movie about historical events? Why not make the best movie possible with the best director available? If people keep throwing the word “racism” around loosely like they do today, it’s going to lose its meaning.
I disagree, James. Honest Abe might be a bit strong in his remarks, but we often have filmmakers NOT in a particular community writing about and making movies about that community.
Greengrass is an amazing director, but we’ve made and made and made and MADE movies about the African-American community and yet only a handful of African-American directors and writers have gotten to tell those stories.
So stuff it with the “whining” label and maybe, just made, the film community can have an honest conversation about how authentically it tells the stories of people of color, of different ethnic backgrounds, of LGBT people, etc.
So – after writing the film and getting the money himself – Greengrass should hand over HIS SCRIPT to another director? THAT is racial equality?
As valid as Honest Abe’s complaints about white hollywood are, it illustrates a point I’ve made often; that in order for black writers to write well they’ll have to take a lesson from their oppressors in ironic detatchment. As ineffectul diatribes go you can vent your spleen but what does it get you? Another example: the classical rhetorical question. Use it sometimes. Find the poetic metaphor and reveal profound truths, driving needful motivations, devoid of cliched bludgeoning of the potential reeader or audience. Free yourself from the shackles of your own polemics because it’s boring you and everyone around you. A nifty metaphor can always come in handy as well….
That you think no black writer, director or film has done says either you work for Tyler Perry or are slow in brain or don’t know much about film. Your pick. DO you realize how dismissive, condescending and out of touch your comment is? Big words don’t make you right.
So glad the pieces are coming together! Now all we need is David Oyelowo back for the lead! (Fingers Crossed)
Wow…almost every response to Honest Abe’s post were somehow in denial or sort of racist (black man should look to the white man for tips on writing? Wtf?); and while PG is a talented director, FLIGHT 93 is an exercise in pure fantasy as NO ONE was there (who lived to talk about it) to recount just what happened – including the writer and director, so I would not parade authenticity as a strong point of argument for Him. As a white man, I must own up to the fact that 99 percent of films we make about other races and ethnicities, by virtue of us not being them, are skewed and inaccurate; a rough estimation at best. Its like having the Chinese do a biopic on Shimon Perez – no matter how much their heart is in the right place, and no matter how penny pinching they are (and feel they can relate to the jewish man)…they are not jewish, nor can they relate to the plight of jewish people. How’s that for accuracy?
By that silly logic, Steve McQueen could not have made his own masterpieces HUNGER and SHAME, as he’s neither a white Catholic Northern Irish man, nor a wealthy white American sex addict. And Ang Lee could not have made BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. You seem to be suggesting that filmmakers should only be allowed to make films about their own ethnicity, which is insane.
No, he is just saying at some point you have to let the person experiencing it make the film. A gay story is very different when the director is gay. There is insight you can’t get otherwise.
Also Greengrass’s film is called UNITED 93, “Flight 93″ was a TV movie. And if you had seen it you would know that everyone on the ground in the control towers and the FAA headquarters is played by the REAL PEOPLE who were there, and that while the passengers are played by actors, the pilots and flight attendants are real professionals in those fields. That film, while fictionalized, is as close as we’ll ever be able to get to what happened that day.
And finally, your statement that the Chinese cannot understand Jews, “no matter how penny pinching they are”, shows your true colors. You should be embarrassed.
A little more research Mr. Fleming, would have revealed a film by an Afro American about MLK called ‘Boycott’ for HBO.
Which I am proud of. And directed. (And rewrote)
Big props to you Mr. Johnson. Boycott is one of my favorite films. Jeffrey Wright and his beautiful bride were amazing. Terrence Howard
and Ron Dellums son were kick ass as well. I remember the Homicide
days. For me, it was the greatest television series in my lifetime.
Peace
Please do a film about the Tulsa riots in 1921. The story needs to be told.
Thank you Clark Johnson or person pretending to be Clark Johnson!!
This makes me think of the so called controversy around the Nina Simone biopic or the Jimi Hendrix bio pic…. In the end we are talking about movies – something to entertain for a couple of hours not to change the course of history!!
Yes there are people who argue the kind of images released by Hollywood affects the perception of “other” or “minority” by larger society. However, if films make up the only contents of these folks’ educational toolbox, that’s a whole other can of paint.
It seems as though the point isn’t so much that filmmakers should not be allowed to do films on races other than their own, but that a film about MLK specifically, a man who seemed to stand for equality based on merit, not race, would benefit from a selection process where any filmmaker, including African Americans, have a shot at making such a film. That’s not the case (not the business we’re in), so there is always inherent skepticism and a taste of hypocrisy when a film about MLK specifically, is made by an all anglo saxon creative team. It’s as though this business hasn’t changed from the 1960s. Maybe it has. A little.
The important thing is to perpetuate interest in modern history to re-generate new audiences. No film on such a subject will be 100% accurate about the person,the events etc. as they have to satisfy a cognoscenti who want a comprehensive report whilst at the same time providing a starting point for new learners. They work best to stimulate awareness in a broader context overlap the issues and roll them forward to work up appetites for knowledge. They also have to entertain, i.e. beguile a wide audience without history impeding the storytelling – it’s a film not a reference book.
Really…