Young Cops To, Explains Memphis Blocking

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Michael Fleming's 4.4 interview with civil-rights activist and Martin Luther King confidante Andrew Young, posted last night, is one of the best things I've ever seen on Deadline.com -- a thoughtful, highly revealing discussion with a respected, well-meaning historical figure who's nonetheless an apparent obstructionist-in-denial when it comes to two proposed MLK biopics -- Scott Rudin and Paul Greengrass's Memphis and Lee Daniels' Selma.

Fleming reported last Friday that Universal Pictures had scuttled Memphis after Young and "the King estate" applied pressure. Young confirmed to Fleming in the interview that he did indeed contact Universal and objected to a Memphis script draft that, among other things, depicted marital infidelity in Dr. King's final days. Fleming also learned that Young was told by Universal that "it would not move forward with Memphis in response to his claims of factual inaccuracies." A studio spokesperson told Fleming that Universal's decision was "based on scheduling."

"Young is admittedly protective of the reputation of his close friend," Fleming writes, "and said he pines for someone to do for King what Richard Attenborough did for Gandhi." Young tells Fleming that when he read the script for Memphis, "I thought it was fiction." As for the depiction of infidelity, Young says: "There is testimony in congressional hearings that a lot of that information was manufactured by the FBI and wasn't true. The FBI testified to that."

Listen to what Young is saying here -- "a lot" of the FBI information about King's extra-marital trysts is possibly bogus, but not all of it.

"My only concern here is honoring the message of Martin Luther King's life, and how you can change the world without killing anybody," Young explains. "You've seen glimpses of that in the fall of the Berlin Wall, in Poland, South Africa, in a movement in Egypt that began with prayers, where even mercenaries and the most brutal soldiers have trouble shooting someone on their knees. These regimes crumbled before non-violent demonstrations, and that is a message the world needs."

Fleming suggests that "when films canonize subjects, audiences can sense it, and that is why good biopics mix reverence with warts-and-all treatment." Young replies: "It's not wrong if the warts are there. But we had the most powerful and understanding wives in history, Coretta, my wife Jean, and Ralph Abernathy's wife Juanita. These women were more dedicated and enthusiastic in pushing us into these struggles than anybody, and the inference Coretta might have been upset about Martin being gone so much or them having marital troubles, it's just not true."

Listen again -- Young isn't addressing the accuracy of the allegations about King's poon appetites, or asserting that King's wife was or wasn't aware of same. But to suggest that the late Coretta Scott King might not have been upset if (I say "if") she was aware of her husband's alleged extra-marital activities, or that she may have been "understanding" in this regard, is flat-out absurd.

Young tells Fleming "he offered input" on Memphis but hasn't heard back. "I said I would pay my own way to LA to sit with the writers, tell what really went on, and give them names, but nobody took me up on it,'" he says. It would a respectful gesture for any MLK biopic filmmaker to consult with Young, but given the levels of Young's denial about King and his commitment to hagiography in defiance of reported fact, what self-respecting creative would want to go there?

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Posted by Jeffrey Wells on April 5, 2011 at 8:14 AM

comment #1

Rod32303 says ...

Be careful here.

Please show or reference the "reported fact." Please. Give documentation or show us a link to the copies of reports or something. This King-as-Lothario is an Urban Legend to many, just as, I suppose, many believe he catted around. I would be careful not to paraphrase Young - to infer what you think he meant or what you think he's hiding just because he didn't address a subject you seem more interested in than others.

And this does hold interest to you, but everybody's not you, Jeff.

King is special, buddy. He's especially special to many of us black folk. I get why his relatives want to preserve his legacy - there haven't been too many, if any, Martin Luther King Jr's. Obstructionist to whom? You? In denial of what? Information gathered by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI?

Because they never told untruths or inaccuracies.

I guess when it comes to King, I don't care or care to hear about suspicions of infidelity. And yet, if there is truth there...sigh.

I think that when this becomes the focal point, if and who he might have been screwing that wasn't his wife (and that's a big IF), then his real work and the astonishing scope of what he was able to accomplish gets pushed aside. Shit, I teach kids today who have no concept or idea of what King did or the fact that if it wasn't for his work, their world (especially the world of African-American kids) would be very different.

Of course, this is a tangent and doesn't really address your issue, but that's the thing about King. Like it or not, he IS revered and it isn't only his family or estate that feel protective of his legacy, right or wrong as that may be.

These are excellent filmmakers, though, and they would no doubt be skillful in their interpretation of his life as they mean to tell his story. Maybe the films will be made after all.

Posted by Rod32303 at April 5, 2011 10:07 AM

comment #2

Eloi Wrath says ...

It was a very good article. So often you hear of projects collapsing and that's the end of it, but Fleming actually bothered to chase this one up and got to the bottom of the story. Fair play to the guy.

Deadline really does deliver the lion's share of content to all the other movie blogs.

Posted by Eloi Wrath at April 5, 2011 10:26 AM

comment #3

Tim says ...

There's no need to be careful. Just tell the truth. Revere the man, not the myth.

It's well-known that MLK wasn't perfectly faithful to his wife. And you don't need to cite 'urban legends', just talk to, as many researchers have, his mistresses. Or, cite Ralph Abernathy's own autobiography.

If you have anything resembling a functioning, discerning mind, you can still revere what King did while also knowing he wasn't perfect in his personal life. What's so wrong with that?

Posted by Tim at April 5, 2011 10:43 AM

comment #4

Rashad says ...

"and said he pines for someone to do for King what Richard Attenborough did for Gandhi."

So he only likes the positive fictionalizing.

Posted by Rashad at April 5, 2011 10:52 AM

comment #5

alynch says ...

The most telling remark in that article is Young saying he'd prefer a movie like "Ghandi" be made about King.

Obstructionist to whom?

Artists. Historical inaccuracy never has and never will make bad an otherwise good movie. The worst it can do make the work distasteful. Do I need to make a list of all the great artistic works over the years that have wiped their ass with the historical record?

Posted by alynch at April 5, 2011 10:59 AM

comment #6

The Thing says ...

@Tim

I think that Young just doesn't want to have the focus be on the infidelity when the focus should be on the events leading up to the assassination. He never said anything about not including any cheating, nor said that there was no cheating, but that there was more than there should be. Maybe it was to sensationalize the script, but Young just felt that it was too excessive and fictionalized to be correct.

Posted by The Thing at April 5, 2011 11:09 AM

comment #7

bluetide says ...

I am in favor of anything that prevents the unquestioned didactic atrocity that would be Lee Daniels' Selma from reaching the screen.

Posted by bluetide at April 5, 2011 11:26 AM

comment #8

Kakihara says ...

So the film was basically going to be a Kennedys-style hit job?

alynch: "Historical inaccuracy never has and never will make bad an otherwise good movie."

Well, yeah, if you can overlook the millions of people dying in Vietnam and the Holocaust, then Full Metal Jacket and Life is Beautiful ain't so bad.

"The worst it can do make the work distasteful."

Well, Greengrass apparently didn't learn at the box office the last time he went that route.

Posted by Kakihara at April 5, 2011 11:37 AM

comment #9

LexG says ...

When I was a kid, I used to wonder what everyone was complaining about when liberal critics or Spike Lee or black leaders would gripe about, say, Dennis Hopper rolling into South L.A. and making a movie about gangs I'd be all, SO WHAT?, Dennis Hopper is awesome and COLORS RULES and ICE-T POWER and whatnot...

But now as an adult I kind of get it... It must take balls of steel for an Irishman who looks like Bentley from the Jeffersons all thinking he can do justice to the definitive screen take on Martin Luther King. That's like hiring F Gary Gray to do the definitive screen take on THE TROUBLES. Christ, I'm a nearly 40 year old white guy who grew up in America.... I wouldn't for a second presume I could tell the definitive screen version of Andrew Dice Clay, let alone one of the most important figures in our nation's history. Then multiply that times GOING OVER TO ANOTHER COUNTRY and making a movie about their most beloved dude.

In general I NEVER get how these firebrand overseas auteurs get here and make movies about our cities and neighborhoods and culture. Yeah, yeah, I know, the whole Milos Forman "eye of an outsider for an interesting perspective" thing, but honestly? That's kind of an antiquated notion. You could send me to Korea and I wouldn't be able to figure out the fucking parking lot, so how do you get to a strange country you didn't grow up in, then have the audacity to direct a movie about those people? Not saying Greengrass hasn't done a swell job with it before, but...

I don't know, I'm the biggest Michael Mann fan ever, but still something seemed kind of poseury and white-boy funk about ALI, old-ass Chicago white guy Mann playing all these tired Sam Cooke chestnuts and awful 60s soul songs on the track, or Norman Jewison turning THE HURRICANE into some after-school special about the Canadian relief team.

Plus, and this is just an arbitrary whine of mine, but any movie where the famous black guy is hounding through the 60s and all the black women are dressed like The Supremes crossed with Viola Davis in Far From Heaven? It's never sexy, and it's always super boring.

Posted by LexG at April 5, 2011 1:33 PM

comment #10

Deathtongue_Groupie says ...

"'the King estate' applied pressure"

Most probably with their hand out.

I remember that WTF??!! incident a few years ago when they held up a public statue of King until they got paid for the rights to his likeness.

Posted by Deathtongue_Groupie at April 5, 2011 1:54 PM

comment #11

BobbyLupo says ...

"I think that when this becomes the focal point, if and who he might have been screwing that wasn't his wife (and that's a big IF), then his real work and the astonishing scope of what he was able to accomplish gets pushed aside."

I do think that's it's possible to avoid that, I think that (for instance) 'Malcolm X' managed to show a lot of the good and the bad.

But I absolutely agree with you that, with any significant focus in the movie, that's going to be the thing that a lot of people latch on to, and it would definitely be used to overshadow the actual story. And I say this because, since before he died, that's exactly what those infidelity rumors have been used to do.

It seems as if there's plenty of reasons not to, and the only good reason to show it is "absolute historical accuracy". But absolute historical accuracy is a fake ideal; it doesn't exist at all, and people generally fall back on it when whatever they want the filmmaker to focus on isn't the focus.

Posted by BobbyLupo at April 5, 2011 2:14 PM

comment #12

BobbyLupo says ...

"Listen to what Young is saying here -- "a lot" of the FBI information about King's extra-marital trysts is possibly bogus, but not all of it. "

In the actual article, he specifically says that the adultery depicted in the movie didn't happen AND smears him by saying he was a participant in setting it up. Way to gloss over that, Jeff.

Posted by BobbyLupo at April 5, 2011 2:31 PM

comment #13

Jeffrey Wells says ...

No reasonably well-informed adult who knows (i.e., has read extensively about) the '60s would claim that the infidelity motel-room stories about King are total bullshit. Didn't Ralph Abernathy write about them? Nobody except for the denial brigade and hagiographers like Young are claiming they're flat-out false. You know what I love about the alleged FBI reports, and what for me gives King an interesting dimension and humanity? The allegations that he liked white women. I'm very enamored of those reports/rumors/whatever, however true or untrue.

Posted by Jeffrey Wells at April 5, 2011 4:09 PM

comment #14

Jeffrey Wells says ...

Here's what King's Wiki page says. I guess it's all bullshit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.

Allegations of adultery

Having concluded that King was dangerous due to communist infiltration, the focus of the Bureau's investigations shifted to attempting to discredit King through revelations regarding his private life. FBI surveillance of King, some of it since made public, attempted to demonstrate that he also engaged in numerous extramarital affairs.[165] Further remarks on King's lifestyle were made by several prominent officials, such as Lyndon Johnson, who once said that King was a "hypocritical preacher".[172]

Ralph Abernathy, a close associate of King's, stated in his 1989 autobiography And the Walls Came Tumbling Down that King had a "weakness for women" .[173][174] In a later interview, Abernathy said he only wrote the term "womanizing", and did not specifically say King had extramarital sex.[175]

King's biographer David Garrow wrote about a number of extramarital affairs, including one with a woman King saw almost daily. According to Garrow, "that relationship, rather than his marriage, increasingly became the emotional centerpiece of King's life, but it did not eliminate the incidental couplings that were a commonplace of King's travels." King explained his extramarital affairs as "a form of anxiety reduction." Garrow noted that King's promiscuity was the cause of "painful and overwhelming guilt".[176]

The FBI distributed reports regarding such affairs to the executive branch, friendly reporters, potential coalition partners and funding sources of the SCLC, and King's family.[177] The Bureau also sent anonymous letters to King threatening to reveal information if he did not cease his civil rights work.[178] One anonymous letter sent to King just before he received the Nobel Peace Prize read, in part, "The American public, the church organizations that have been helping—Protestants, Catholics and Jews will know you for what you are—an evil beast. So will others who have backed you. You are done. King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do (this exact number has been selected for a specific reason, it has definite practical significant [sic]). You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy fraudulent self is bared to the nation."[179]

King interpreted this as encouragement for him to commit suicide,[180] although William Sullivan, head of the Domestic Intelligence Division at the time, argued that it may have only been intended to "convince Dr. King to resign from the SCLC."[160] King refused to give in to the FBI's threats.[181]

On January 31, 1977, United States district Judge John Lewis Smith, Jr., ordered all known copies of the recorded audiotapes and written transcripts resulting from the FBI's electronic surveillance of King between 1963 and 1968 to be held in the National Archives and sealed from public access until 2027.[182]

Across from the Lorraine Motel, next to the rooming house in which James Earl Ray was staying, was a fire station. Police officers were stationed in the fire station to keep King under surveillance.[183] Using papered-over windows with peepholes cut into them, the agents were watching the scene while Martin Luther King was shot.[184] Immediately following the shooting, officers rushed out of the station to the motel, and Marrell McCollough, an undercover police officer, was the first person to administer first-aid to King.[185] The antagonism between King and the FBI, the lack of an all points bulletin to find the killer, and the police presence nearby have led to speculation that the FBI was involved in the assassination.[186]

Posted by Jeffrey Wells at April 5, 2011 11:18 PM

comment #15

Jeffrey Wells says ...

I humbly apologize for accidentally deleting a long rebuttal post that claimed the King adultery stories are baseless. I don't know what happened but all of a sudden It was gone. I must have deleted it without knowing what I was doing. Sorry.

Posted by Jeffrey Wells at April 5, 2011 11:24 PM

comment #16