Free The Butler: A Witness to History by Wil Haygood Page A

up, and climb the stairs to lay her down to sleep. She died on June 12, 2011, but not before she made those around her promise to get her last-conceived movie made. They all promised.
    With money raised, director, producers, and casting guru Billy Hopkins along with Leah Daniels-Butler began assembling a cast. It’s widely acknowledged that actors marvel at the performances Lee Daniels is able to elicit from them. (There’s no dissent from the real-life butler’s son, Charles Allen, who after seeing Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey play characters inspired by his parents became emotional, later telling me that they had captured the core essence of his mother and father, even if their story had been dramatized for the sake of the film. “They’re uncanny,” he said of the actors. “They’ve somehow channeled my mom and dad.”) Known for talking at length with his cast about their performances, Daniels also spends countless weeks poring over materials and photographs, immersing himself in the world he will soon commence filming. Actors are told by other actors about his intensity and attention to detail. David Jacobson would make some of the calls to actors’ agents as the cast was being assembled. “I would tell agents that by the time this movie is finished, their client would want to pay us for having been in it.” He wasn’t laughing.
    As Laura Ziskin proudly knew, given the film’s subject matter, the cast was going to be racially diverse. Oprah Winfrey signed on, thenForest Whitaker and David Oyelowo. Alan Rickman and Cuba Gooding Jr. and Lenny Kravitz followed. Then came Vanessa Redgrave, Jane Fonda, and Mariah Carey. The Hollywood trade papers were gushing over the cast. There were more: Liev Schreiber, James Marsden, John Cusack, Clarence Williams III, Nelsan Ellis. Many of those who worked behind the scenes—Ruth Carter in costumes, Andrew Dunn in cinematography, Matthew Mungle in makeup—boasted Oscar nominations and multiple film awards as well. It became common knowledge that cast and crew took pay cuts to work on the film; otherwise it simply could not have gotten made. “Many worked for scale,” Pam Williams confided to me. “They just wanted to be in this movie.”
    One evening on the film set, I asked Danny Strong, a native Californian, who had started his career as an actor before turning to screen-writing, why he was so eager to work on the film. “I’m really passionate about race in America,” he said. “And I thought this film could be a way to cover African American history from Jim Crow to Obama. I thought this could be an epic film on race.”
    There has been much talk over the years in film circles about Hollywood’s attempt at civil rights–themed movies. As it is, there have been just a few. And for the most part, they have been met with scorn. In 1988 came Mississippi Burning, which was inspired by the true story of three murdered civil rights workers in early 1960s Mississippi. The film made heroes out of the two investigating white FBI agents, whichis where it all went awry. The historical record clearly shows the FBIdid not play a heroic role in the Mississippi case, and the movie actually minimized the role of black civil rights workers in the state during the reign of terror there. In 1996 came Ghosts of Mississippi, about the probe into the murder of civil rights hero Medgar Evers. Mississippi law enforcement showed little desire to solve the killing. The movie itself focused on the white assistant district attorney—certainly a brave and conscientious man—who reopened the case after it lay unsolved for three decades. Filmmakers, of course, have to make decisions on which particular story to focus on in any multifaceted drama. But a question about Ghosts lingered: would not the life story of Medgar Evers have made a compelling drama? Strong was aware of the aftertaste those movies left. “It was easy to avoid that trap,” with this movie about a White House