An instructive and depressing post from Deadline Hollywood about the friends and family of Martin Luther King Jr. stopping two prestige, high-profile MLK biopics. Openly gay Lee Daniels used his clout from Precious to get his Selma in with the Weinsteins. The spectacular Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday, United 93, Bourne 2 & 3) is making Memphis for Scott Rudin. Both screenplays include King's adultery. The family objected, and Andrew Young let Hollywood know their concerns, implying the parts they don't like are "fabrications."** Soon after those discussions, Universal said it dropped the Greengrass film because of "scheduling." The article reports, "The studio denied outside pressure played any role in deep-sixing the pic." King is a public figure and the studios don't need permission to tell his life story. The reporter gives the impression the family will blackball any project that includes King's infidelity. On a different point, I'd love to know how much either script credits Bayard Rustin and whether he is visibly gay. Andrew Young says he wants what Attenborough did for Gandhi.
**Although white FBI agents wiretapping King did fabricate evidence to discredit him, his serial infidelities are documented in biographies and in memoirs by black friends such as Ralph Abernathy and Kentucky State Senator Georgia Davis Powers, who discusses her own affair with King.
Here in Atlanta this is the same old same old. Young and King's children are quite brazen in their attempts to control the story and, in some cases, to profit from their connections to Dr King. Truth is not part of their agenda.
Posted by: Elliott Mackle | April 09, 2011 at 05:08 AM