exte wrote:George Lucas is doing a new film called Red Tails:
Tuskegee Airmen to be subject of George Lucas film
By DESIREE HUNTER, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 33 minutes ago
The black airmen whose lives will be the basis of a George Lucas movie know the picture will highlight their record of successfully escorting thousands of U.S. bombers in World War II.
They also feel it should tell of the trials they encountered stateside, like seeing German prisoners of war being treated better and afforded rights that were withheld from black American citizens.
Now that "Red Tails" is in preproduction, some of the airmen say they are excited their story is coming to the big screen but torn over how much it should devote to each of their two historic fights — against Adolf Hitler abroad and Jim Crow at home.
Lt. Col. Eldridge F. Williams, 91, wants the film to recount the discrimination they had to overcome in their own country. Williams, who served in the military from August 1941 to November 1963, said a white doctor's false diagnosis of an eye condition kept him from achieving his dream of being a pilot, though he became a navigator.
"I think the story that has not been told is stories like mine in which the home battle that was waged ... shall we say, helped open the door so that the unit could enter combat and demonstrate its capabilities and be successful," he said.
Col. Herbert Carter, who also was with the airmen in the '40s, said the racism the men encountered should definitely be mentioned but not dwelled upon in the Lucas film.
"So many want the movies to focus in that sense and that's bitter history that has been thoroughly emphasized and publicized," the 88-year-old said in an interview.
He said the real story is how they blew apart the notion that blacks could not fly planes in war.
Producer Rick McCallum said both elements are addressed in a script by John Ridley that "balances difficult and painful issues with what is, at its heart, the story of men with a dream to fly and serve their country."
Lucas hopes to begin shooting by year's end or early 2009, McCallum said. The movie's title refers to the color of their fighter planes' tails, which were distinctive and allowed U.S. bomber crews to know they were being escorted by the aggressive Tuskegee Airmen.
"It is a story of incredible adventure and enormous courage," said the producer, who's scouting locations for "Red Tails" in Prague, Czech Republic, and Italy. "I think the story will speak to anyone who has ever wanted to succeed at something others told them was impossible."
At first called the "Tuskegee Experiment," the first aviation cadet class began with 13 students at the Tuskegee Army Air Field, about 40 miles east of Montgomery, in July 1941. Black people weren't allowed to fly in the military at the time and the "experiment" was to see whether they could pilot airplanes and handle heavy machinery.
Over the next four years, the airmen went on more than 15,000 combat trips throughout Europe, the Mediterranean and North Africa.
Nearly 1,000 pilots were trained at the Tuskegee Army Air Field before its 1946 closing, after which the men from the all-black units were sent to an air base in Ohio. President Truman's 1948 order to desegregate the country's armed forces eventually led to a racially mixed military.
The men have been the subject of several documentaries and books. But a 1995 HBO movie "The Tuskegee Airmen," starring Laurence Fishburne, was the film that jump-started much of the attention the airmen have received in recent years, said Christine Biggers, a park ranger at the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site.
The HBO movie "was about 50 percent Hollywood, but it gave a good overview and got the word out. People all over the world saw it and it whetted their appetite to want to know more," Biggers said.
Lucas plans for the movie to be based on the historic record that brought the Tuskegee Airmen fame, drawn from their own accounts.
Carter was one of several airmen who were invited to Lucas' Skywalker Ranch a few years ago to record their oral histories, which will be used in developing the film.
Carter tells of the constant adjustment of being respected as a soldier on base, then having that dignity snatched away once off-base, where they were "just another Negro in Alabama in the eyes of the civilian population."
But he said the real story is how they overcame an environment that said "they didn't have the ability, dexterity, physiology and psychology to operate something as complicated as aircrafts or tanks."
The black airmen's response was "train me and let me demonstrate I can," Carter said. "We said the antidote to racism was excellence and performance and that is what we did."
Ah, yes, Spike Lee is about to suffer clinical depression at missing his chance to show heroic black airmen in action while being treated worse at home than German prisoners of war. Meanwhile, Lucas is saying to himself: "I know there are a few B-17 Bombers and P-47 Thunderbolts still flying and that's all I need for the foreground shots for my next whizbang special effects extravaganza which will be totally beyond criticism because the pilots will be black and I can return to the World War II movies that were so prevalent in my youth and had such a strong influence on me and I can do it all without saying anything that needs to be said because I don't know how to do that, and I don't care about any of that anyway, because the only issue worth serious consideration is how to make those nasty Nazi planes blow up real good."
Yeah, yeah, all of this is unfair and way premature. The problem for me is that I am in no way siding with Spike, and this movie needs its important themes to be articulated by a mature filmmaker. If Lucas steps up, then I will be positively delighted to be proved wrong.
I don't think Lucas is capable of making a film worth seeing anymore, but if he can somehow remember how to make a film rather than a video game spin-off, and get in touch with his pre-Star Wars millionaire self and become an artist again it would be nice to see him redeem himself after the past decade of embarrassment.
At the very least, the film will surely have some nifty CGI airplanes.
Roman Polanski has set Nicolas Cage, Tilda Swinton and Pierce Brosnan for his next film, "The Ghost," an adaptation of the Robert Harris political thriller.
Production begins in September in Europe.
Cage will play a ghostwriter hired abruptly to finish the memoirs of an ex-British prime minister after the first scribe turned up dead. The ghostwriter's research leads him to uncover skeletons in the pol's closet that put the writer's life in danger.
Swinton will play the wife of the former prime minister (Brosnan). Her marriage is crumbling, and she falls for the writer.
Robert Benmussa and Alain Sarde are producing. Polanski and Harris teamed to write the script.
Summit is selling worldwide rights; domestic distribution hasn't yet been determined.
Polanski set his sights on the drama last year (Daily Variety, Nov. 7), after he fell out of the $100 million epic "Pompeii," also an adaptation of a Harris book.
Cage will star in a remake of “Bad Lieutenant” lensing in late summer. Swinton has been shooting the indie “I Am Love,” while Brosnan, who’ll next be seen in Universal’s “Mamma Mia!,” stars with Susan Sarandon in the Shana Feste-directed “The Greatest,” which his Irish DreamTime is producing.
It looks like Guy Ritchie is up against Sacha Baron Cohen for Sherlock Holmes... Aparently Sony are producing a rival project that will see Cohen play Sherlock and Ferrel play Dr. Watson. Both sound disastrous in my opinion.
That's nothing anyone didn't already know. From what I've heard, certain members of the cast had to twist Hurwitz's arm to even consider it. It'll happen but it's not like going to start shooting this year or anything.
Jason Bateman has been talking about the AD film through much of the promotion of Hancock. He seems to indicate that getting a budget for the film is a problem as the appeal for the film will be much less than say Friends or SATC.
Yeah, debunked isn't the right word. Sure, the film hasn't been "green-lit" yet, but it'll happen. Michael Cera and Jason Bateman are huge right now, and everyone knows of AD as that show they should have watched. I predict the movie will be made and will be a surprise hit.
Not in production yet, only development, but Bruce McCulloch & Kids in the Hall have received some Telefilm Canada Feature Film Fund development money for a film called Death Comes to Town.
