WHAT WENT WRONG - Malcolm X

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

Three decades of development hell, a dozen drafts and one very embattled director. This week, Chris and Lizzie explore the tumultuous journey of Malcolm X, Spike Lee’s unusual path to the directing chair, and how the public battle over the civil rights leader’s story nearly eclipsed the story itself. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to What Went Wrong, a movie. Welcome back to What Went Wrong, a podcast that just so happens to be about movies and how incredibly difficult it is to make any movie, let alone a good movie, let alone a three-hour long, incredibly epic biopic that I think kind of sets the mold for a lot of biopics to come after it. I am your host, Lizzie Bassett, alongside as always. My love lovely, lovely co-host, Chris Winterbauer. And Chris, what are we talking about today? We are discussing, Lizzie, 1992's Malcolm X. And one of these days, you are going to get our intro, right? And I'm looking forward to it. It's not today.

It's your favorite podcast, full stop. That's what it is, the people demand it. No, we're discussing, as you mentioned, Spike Lee's three hour and 15 minutes. it basically epic biographical picture covering almost the entire life of Malcolm Little, also known as Malcolm X. Lizzie, had you seen Malcolm X before? And if not, what were your thoughts upon watching it? I had seen at least half of it before. I think I had only seen the first half. And I had not seen really like after he goes to prison forward, which was my favorite part of the movie upon watching it this time. So you were just like, and he got his justice and you turned it off. No, I can't remember why I only had seen half of it.

I think, I don't know if it was like in school and they just put on, you know, like the first half and they were like, oh, period's done, bye, because it's three hours and 15 minutes long. But, yeah, I'd never seen the whole thing. I really, really enjoyed it. I thought it was great. You know, it is an intimidating watch at three hours and 15 minutes. And the first half of it is very sort of heightened and almost cartoony, I'm sure, intentionally, and then it really settles into itself around the halfway point, exactly where I stopped

watching the first time. But yeah, I loved it. Denzel Washington is absolutely incredible. Spike Lee is a really good actor, which I always forget, and I wish I could see him act in more things as well. It was beautiful. I thought that the way that he was so sort of honest about Malcolm X's trajectory and, you know, the nation of Islam was really fascinating. And like I said, I think that this

very much set the mold for some of the cradle-to-grave biopics that we see coming later in the 90s, but more in the 2000s and kind of up to today as this sort of movie has become more popular. And something that David pointed out while we watched it is that the first half is almost Baslehrmann-y. And I think that's true. I think that Bazlehrman does. rip quite a bit from the way that he sets this up, particularly Elvis. There was actually a lot that I thought was reminiscent of this. Yeah, I agree. This is my favorite Spike Lee joint of all the Spikely joints. I really, really love this movie. It's one of my favorite Denzel performances. As you mentioned, it is absolutely my favorite Spike Lee performance. I think Spike Lee is good. So good.

And I think he's perfect in this movie because I think he's best when he's in a supporting role. and I think this really fits him, and he plays very well opposite Denzel as Shorty, Denzel's friend during his days as Red when he was sporting a conk and running around town with white women earlier in his life. Now, Lizzie, this movie has a crazy troubled backstory. It took nearly 30 years to make. It was mired in controversy, as we'll get to all the way through its release. It struggled to find a studio. It struggled to find a director, or perhaps the right director for a long time. And even at times, the family of its subject was at odds with the production itself.

This is a movie I think a lot of people have very strong feelings about, especially in the black community. We'll discuss some individuals who really felt that the story of Malcolm X needed to be presented in a very specific way, because as we'll learn, Malcolm X was a lot of different people across his life. That's one of the most amazing things about the movie, is that he had so many distinct periods of his life, which were capped with incredible moments of change. Yeah. And so who Malcolm X is is like a really open, big question. That's one of the things I think this movie does so well is it does not, like, so many of different periods of his life feel very

kind of incongruous on paper almost. And the movie doesn't really try to hide that, which I think was smart. There are so many other biopics where if something doesn't fit the narrative, they don't include it. And I could be totally wrong. I'll be honest. I don't know enough about Malcolm X. I'm not particularly qualified to talk about him. But to me, at least from watching it, it seemed like they didn't try to gloss things over and they aired on the side of including more, which I did appreciate. A lot of that's because of what the movie is based on. So let's get into the details. Obviously, this movie was directed by Spike Lee. It was written by Spike Lee and Arnold Pearl, and we'll get into the exact mechanics of who got credit and why they got credit.

The film was produced by Marvin Worth and Spike Lee. It stars Denzel Washington, Angela Bassett, Albert Hall, Al Freeman Jr., Delroy Lindo, Spike Lee, Christopher Plummer, John Carlo Esposito, Wendell Pierce, Karen Allen, and many, many more. Some notable cameos. It was released by Warner Brothers on November 18, 1992, and as always, the IMD logline for the film reads, The Biographical Epic of the Controversial and Influential Black Nationalist Leader from his early life and career as a small-time gangster

to his ministry as a member of the Nation of Islam and his eventual assassination. And that I do think covers the span of, the film. Yeah. Which is 20 years. It's actually slightly longer, technically, than 20 years, but very close to 20 years, of this incredible individual's life.

As always, some of my favorite sources for this episode, Lizzie. By any means necessary, the trials and tribulations of the making of Malcolm X by Spike Lee, James Baldwin, a biography by David Leaming, and the text that the movie is most based on, the autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley, a book that if you have not read, I highly recommend. It is an incredible, incredible book. We'll get into how it came about and some of the mechanics of the book shortly.

What I will say is, despite criticism at the time, you were asking Lizzie about how faithful this is to Malcolm X's life. I would say by Hollywood film standards, this is a very faithful adaptation of the book, the autobiography of Malcolm X, which I did read for this episode. It is not 100% faithful, and there are some specific instances that we can get to that are not entirely faithful. But again, by Hollywood standards, I think this is a very faithful adaptation of the book. Okay, cool. Let's dive in. So we got to go back basically 60 years, almost to the day. February 21st, 1965, just a few months shy of his 40th birthday.

Malcolm X was assassinated at the Audubon ballroom in New York. Now, if listeners you're unaware, Malcolm X was a very polarizing figure at the time, both in white communities and black communities, and his murder came at obviously a tremendously turbulent time in American history. I'm sure most of you know this, but we were in the midst of the civil rights movement. We were also in the middle of a decade that was marked by multiple racial and politically motivated assassinations.

So obviously, Medgar Evers was murdered by a Klansman in 1963. JFK was killed a few months later by Lee Harvey Oswald. Obviously, Lizzie, if you remember in the film, Malcolm X's comments about JFK have a pivotal importance to his trajectory and relationship with Elijah Muhammad, the founder of Nation of Islam. Of course, Martin Luther King Jr., and RFK would be murdered within months of one another in 1968. So five major racially or politically driven assassinations. nations. Now, at the time of Malcolm's death, author Alex Haley, who you may know as the author of Roots, the saga of an American family, had been collaborating with Malcolm on an autobiography. So Haley had first interviewed Malcolm X for Playboy. They started working on the book together in

1963. Now, it should be noted. The book is maybe not 100% accurate to real life. Even Alex Haley himself writes, autobiographies are a form of fiction. at the end of the day, because it's somebody recounting their own. And a lot of scholars have said over the years that Haley really should be viewed as a co-author of the book. Sure. He was helping Malcolm tell his story. He was editing him. And there were a lot of power struggles between the two men over what should be included in the book and what shouldn't. And specifically, Lizzie, you mentioned there are different parts of Malcolm that seem incongruous to one another. So as they were writing the book, Malcolm X was having this rupture from Elijah Muhammad and the nation of Islam in the movie Malcolm X, and this is true in real life, discovers that Elijah had been having affairs with very young, in fact, underage women and getting them pregnant, which was against his teachings and was one of the things that led to a schism between him and Malcolm.

So Malcolm wanted to go back and revise earlier portions of the book in which she would speak very highly. of Elijah Muhammad, as if he was like a father figure. And Haley said, no, no, no, no, people need to understand that just like at one point you were read, at another point you were a militant believer in the nation of Islam, and that's what's going to give the book its authenticity,

is the fact that you did believe this, and now you believe something different, and that you were able to change. So that stayed in the book. You can read it in the book, and it obviously made it into the finished film. Now, for the purposes of this episode, I'm not going to delve into areas where the book might have not been entirely accurate to later scholarly work on Malcolm X's life.

There have been like dozens and dozens of books written about Malcolm X. We're just going to focus on the book and, you know, the movie. And to your point about autobiography is like it's kind of inherently in some ways an unreliable narrator. It's just like if you were to try to recount your own life, you have a very particular angle on it. And that's great in many ways. And it's incredibly useful. and it's its own form of art. But if I were to try and recount my own life,

I will get things wrong. I will have a particular point of view. I will remember things differently than, you know, if you were checking three, four, five sources as you're writing a biography and doing this kind of thing. So I think that's totally fair. I think we understand the limitations of the format. And I think there are just a couple things I'd call out

that are worth noting that are slight deviations that the film makes from the autobiography. One, Malcolm X was actually much, younger when he started his life of crime, so to speak, and his relationship with Sophia, the white woman, then is portrayed in the film. I believe in the film, at least I interpret it as maybe he's in his early 20s when that starts. That's what it looked like. He was actually 16 at that point.

So Malcolm X is 6'4, and he always looked much older and sounded much older than he was. So he started, I believe, his relationship with Sophia when he was 16 and I think she was 20. might be off by a year or so in those dates. So he had a very hard life. As you've seen in the film, you know, his home was burned down twice by white supremacist. His father was murdered by a group called the Black Legion in Lansing, Michigan. His father's siblings, three of them were murdered by white men. His mother was eventually put into a mental facility after she lost her husband and had kind of a slow decline into a mental health crisis. He and his siblings were separated into to different homes. As they do show briefly in the film, he was very smart. He was class president,

but even in, quote, progressive Michigan at the time, he was constantly called the N-word. He was treated like he was the mascot of the town. And it wasn't really until he showed up in Boston to actually go live with his half-sister, who's not shown in the film. The film kind of begins. He's already in Boston. And he's hanging out with Shorty. That's when he discovered, oh, my God, there are actual full communities of black people, as opposed to we're the one black family in white, Lansing, Michigan. Not the only one, but you know what I'm saying. There were very few.

The movie also uses composite characters in order to streamline the story, and it does omit a couple of important figures in Malcolm X's life, most noticeably, Lewis Farrakhan, who would eventually succeed Elijah Muhammad as the head of the nation of Islam, and had actually been a protege of Malcolm X's. We will get to why he was left out of the film. The movie also makes it seem as if the FBI was only wiretapping Malcolm toward the end of his life. That's something that my understanding is had been going on for years.

And there are even things that didn't make it into the autobiography of Malcolm X, specific editorial decisions that Alex Haley made. One instance is removing Malcolm X's noted anti-Semitism from certain interviews or journal entries. and this was unearthed through notes that Haley had written to his publisher in later years. Now, before the book was even published, it was already controversial. So Doubleday was the original publisher of the autobiography, and after Malcolm's assassination, the CEO, Nelson Doubleday Jr. gets cold feet about the book. Three weeks after Malcolm X's assassination, they dropped the project,

and he cites fears for the safety of their employees. Whoa. Yeah. You would think that you would want to release it. Yeah. So fears of inciting violence is the concern. And at the time, again, Malcolm X stood very much opposed to Martin Luther King Jr. in many ways. Like, he did not agree with the nonviolent approach. So there was this assumption that, oh, my God, he represents black militantism. Right. So. Although he had walked that back a bit, but by the time that he died, hadn't he? A little bit. Yeah. But, I mean, the famous photo they recreate in the film of him with the

Carbine standing at the window that went on the cover of Life magazine had come at the very end of his life. He was still an advocate of self-defense. Yeah, yeah. So there was a taboo-breaking editor and publisher by the name of Barney Rossett of Grove Books. He had published the first beat poets like Ginsburg. He'd also been the first person to publish Lady Chatterley's Lover since 1929. So he published that 30 years later. A scandal. Well, he's all about, you know, according controversy and getting the books out there. So he picks up the rights to the autobiography of Malcolm X. It's published in October of 1965, and it's very successful. It sells six million copies over the following decade. So it's a very, very successful book. And there's at least one

young hustler who thinks, there's a movie here. And this gentleman is named Marvin Worth. And like Malcolm Little, he'd come up in the world of the jazz underground, as you mentioned, all the music kind of in the first half of the film. But unlike Malcolm Little, Marvin Worth is white. So by the age of 15, the Brooklyn-born upstart had become a teenage promoter of jazz concerts. He was booking the likes of Billy Holiday and Charlie Parker. He'd actually then gone on to become Lenny Bruce's manager, comedian Lenny Bruce. He wrote monologue.

I know. He wrote, this is like by the time he's 20. He writes monologues for Lenny Bruce, Joey Bishop, Alan King, and Buddy, hack it, and then he partners up with Arnie Sultan, and they become like a comedy writing duo, and they write three movies, Boys Night Out with James Garner, three on a couch with Jerry Lewis, promise for anything with Warren Beatty. So all of a sudden, you know, this kind of New York Jewish comedian ghost writer decides, I want to do the Malcolm X biopic. And it seems completely random, except for the fact that he actually knew Malcolm X when Malcolm was known as red.

As he later told the New York Times, quote, he was selling grass, he was 16 or 17, but looked older. He was very witty, very funny guy, and he had this extraordinary charisma, a great dancer and a great dresser, he was very good looking, very tall, girls always noticed him, he was quite a special guy. So Marvin Worth had met him, and what he really was drawn to, as we mentioned, Lizzie, is the fact that this person had this incredible capacity to change. So he'd gone from country boy to criminal to Muslim black nationalist to kind of humanitarian, right, at the end of his life. And he saw that this was like this true American story of reinvention, right? If America is the one place you can reinvent yourself and Malcolm X had reinvented himself not once, not twice, but maybe even three times in his life.

And he'd only lived to 40. So that's pretty incredible trajectory. So Worth secures the rights to adapt the book. He gets them from Alex Haley and Betty Chabazz, who's played by Angela Bassett in the film, Malcolm X's widow, in 1967. And even though he is a writer, he's smart enough to know that he couldn't write the movie. He didn't know anything about Malcolm's experience as a black man. So he hires, acclaimed author, civil rights leader, and friend of Malcolm's James Baldwin. And Lizzie, have you read any James Baldwin?

I am ashamed to say I don't know that I have read any full. pieces of work by James Baldwin. I have seen movies based on his work, including if Beale Street could talk. Based on his novel from 1976. Baldwin, though, in the 60s, was at the forefront of the civil rights movement. He was one of the civil rights leaders in the same way that Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. were. And a lot of this, at least a lot of the reason he was known nationally among white people was because in 1965, he debated prominent conservative William F. Buckley at Cambridge, at the Cambridge Union, which I'm sure most of our listeners have seen clips because it was televised and later played, both in the BBC and in the United States.

He also kicked Buckley's butt in that debate. So, Worth approaches Baldwin to adapt the book, and Baldwin says, yeah, I would love to adapt that book. Actually, I'm already adapting it. And Worth was like, excuse me? Because it turns out director Elia Kazan had hired him to direct it, to adapt it, to a play. So obviously, Kazan, a streetcar named Desire, on the waterfront, east of Eden, he hires Baldwin to write this as a play, and they had gotten support from Betty Chabazz as well. I'm guessing she didn't tell Worth because she thought, well, one's a play and one's a movie.

I think that's fair. I don't know that outside of sort of the workings of Hollywood, you would necessarily understand that you probably can't do that. Exactly. Now, the material quickly presented Baldwin with a challenge that even Spike Lee would face, which was how was he going to present the nation of Islam without getting sued or worse? So Baldwin's solution to this problem was what a lot of people do when they're adapting somebody's life story, which is to create a composite representation of a specific person or a group. A note from his outline read, the estate of Malcolm X and the nation of Islam can be considered to be at war. And I have, therefore, been forced to invent what is here called the movement without more specifically naming it. And of course, I have not been able to

use the actual names of any of the people in the nation of Islam movement, particularly that of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. I have, in short, discarded some characters and invented others. Listen, totally get it. That's a big composite, though, to roll all together. But I do understand. By October of 1967, the play fell apart. Unclear why. So Worth comes back to Baldwin and says,

come on, let's do it as a movie. Baldwin's family says, don't do it. And Baldwin himself is like, Hollywood, you know, maybe on Broadway I could do a faithful adaptation, but Hollywood's going to want to whitewash this story. But Baldwin had always wanted to write a screenplay, and he didn't want somebody else to do a, bad version of Malcolm X's life in Hollywood.

So he moves to Los Angeles in February of 1968, and he starts writing with a very specific actor in mind for Malcolm, Mr. Billy D. Williams. Oh. Also known as Lando Calrissian. Yes. Not at that time. Later. Worth wanted Dick Anthony Williams, who at the time was more known as a stage actor, and

the studio, they ended up at Columbia, wanted a star. In contention, Lizzie. One James Earl Jones, Sidney Poitier. Yep. There were rumors that the far too short, Sammy Davis Jr. was interested in the project. That he was interested. Not the studio was interested. Okay.

It was rumored. Very big asterisk. It was rumored that Charlton Heston in Blackface was considered by the studio. No. I don't actually believe it. There is no way. I mean, maybe somebody brought it up at a meeting. But, no, I don't think they actually considered it.

Sure. I could see them bringing it up. So, Baldwin's concerns about Hollywood being truthful to Malcolm's life were apparently well-founded. The studio did start sending him notes, wanting kind of a viewer-friendly, sanitized version of the film. They even sent him a memo saying to make sure to avoid giving any political implications to Malcolm's trip to Mecca.

And it's like, that's literally the turning point of his character at the end of the film. In a letter to a friend, Baldwin asked the friend to imagine being told by Hollywood how a black man lived and died. April 4th, 1968, Baldwin had been on the project for a few months. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. This was the third close friend, colleague, and civil rights leader of Baldwin's who had been murdered in the span of five years. Obviously, we mentioned Medgar Evers, then Malcolm X, now Martin Luther King Jr. According to his biography, Baldwin was drinking heavily by this point. He may have even tried to take his life by taking too many sleeping pills, and things fell

apart relatively quickly. He basically sat in a public interview. He was going to tell the story his way or not at all. And so when he turned in his screenplay, the studio shouldn't have been surprised when they received an over 200-page, non-chronological, mostly prose-style screenplay, which, although beautifully written, wasn't really by. as a feature film. So in late 1968, early 69,

Marvin Worth in Columbia hire veteran screenwriter Arnold Pearl, a white Jewish man. He was a playwright and TV producer, wonderfully talented, to come in and collaborate with Baldwin. Baldwin actually really liked Pearl, but he didn't want a collaborator. This was his vision. So he left Hollywood and abandoned the project.

So at this point, the timeline gets a little messy, but bear with me. So Warner Brothers acquires the rights to the book. Arnold Pearl comes along with it. So Pearl starts revising Baldwin's draft and basically writing a new version of the script. Warner Brothers brings in additional writers to take more cracks at the project, including Calder Willingham, who'd written the graduate, Pads of Glory. He did a pass in 1970. His version apparently made Betty Chabazz, quote, look up from her dinner and throw food at him, end quote.

Oh. At the same time, Worth decides, you know what, we can't crack a narrative version of this film right now anyway, because nobody's willing to talk about what was going on in their personal meetings with Malcolm X. And so because they had no insight, but beyond the autobiography, they didn't know what his conversations with Elijah Muhammad were like, you know, et cetera. They were worried that they weren't going to be able to make an actually truthful film. So he decides to pivot to do a documentary. So he and Pearl produced a documentary.

It was released in 1972. It's called Malcolm X, his own story as it really happened. It was narrated by James Earl Jones and Hossie Davis. Arnold Pearl actually did pass away before the release of that film. So Arnold Pearl died in 1971 is one of the credited screenwriters on the final film. I'll get to that. This film did have generally positive reviews. and that same year, James Baldwin published his own version of the script under the title

one day when I was lost, and you can actually buy it and read it. And it's really, really beautiful. And I think we'd make an amazing miniseries. It just was too much, you know, for a movie at the end of the day. Sure. So then, Lizzie, the project just kind of languishes. So Worth isn't able to crack the script, Baldwin had left, Arnold Pearl had died. Presumably, the studio's not going to just pour more money into developing this project

without some sort of asset attached to it, be it an actor or a director, and Worth was busy with other projects, a particular high point, 1974's Lenny Bruce picture, Lenny, starring Dustin Hoffman, directed by Bob Fosse. And beyond that, Malcolm X kind of receded from public consciousness in a way

that some of his civil rights contemporaries didn't. But then in the early 1980s, a new writing-directing duo, a very high-calibre, writing directing duo expressed interest in the project. Legendary director, Sydney Lumet, and David Mamet, fresh off collaborating on The Verdict, approached Columbia and Worth with their own version

of a script covering Malcolm X's life. I mean, listen, both great in their own ways, in their own projects. Do I think they should be the ones in charge of a movie about Malcolm X? No. Uh, yeah. To his credit. Spike Lee later said, Marvin Worth did not like the script, in particular, their approach to Malcolm X's speeches.

I don't think they were entirely faithful to his speeches. I was wondering about that. I was wondering how much, maybe we'll get to it later, but I was wondering how much of the publicly available speeches in this movie were actually pulling from real catalog content or if they were rewritten. But I can hold that until later. Hold it until later because it's a great question and I have a good answer for you. Okay.

So Lumet and Mamet go away. they're not deterred, they rewrite the script, and they come back and they say, we got a banger for you, and we have the perfect Malcolm. Richard Pryor. All right. I don't know. Maybe he was a great actor. Maybe.

It's very funny. He's very funny. He was older than Malcolm had ever been. Oh, yeah. I love Richard Pryor. I don't think he has, like, the quiet confidence that, you know, Malcolm X had. They seem energy-wise very different. We certainly didn't see it, yes.

Exactly. So, Worth is not particularly interested in this, and this version of the project falls apart pretty quickly. But the upside is, it seems like, a combination of Lumet and Mamet's interest in the project, as well as kind of a rebirth of interest in Malcolm X at a pop culture level. Some of his speeches had shown up both as recordings being sampled or, you know, as lyrics being used in a lot of hip-hop songs at the the time, had breathed new life into the project such that Worth was able to get a new screenwriter involved to take another crack at the script. So then he considers hiring August Wilson, who was blowing up off of fences, which she had just come on a Broadway with. But he goes with novelist and essayist David Bradley, who wrote another version of the script. And by 1986, it was apparently

156 pages. And Worth is like, we just need a director. And the New York Times writes, you know, this is threatening to become one of Hollywood's most legendary unmade films. And Worthy says, no, no, no, it's absolutely going to get made. And Bradley says, I actually don't think it's going to get made. And they find a new director. Another very talented but very white director, of course, Norman Jewison, who had, I would argue, better credentials than others involved.

He had done in the heat of the night with Sidney Poitier, great movie. Best Picture winner, and he had a really good team and vision for the movie in place. He's going to bring Charles Fuller, who had written a soldier's story and been nominated for an Oscar in 1984, which had been directed by Jewison. And it's going to star the up-and-coming, soon-to-be Academy Award nominated Denzel Washington as Malcolm X. Wow. And this is 80. 186, 1987. Yeah, around this time. Okay, so right before Glory.

Well, right before Cry Freedom, which is when he played Steve Biko, and that was the first time he was nominated, and Glory was 89, two years later. So Denzel had been on St. Elsewhere, I think, 82 to 88. You did ricochet, and then all of a sudden it's Cry Freedom, David Attenborough, Glory, and then Movedo Blues, and then Malcolm X. It's this incredible run that just catapults him, right, into the stratosphere. Charles Fuller, to be clear, black American playwright. So Jewison was the white head of the project, but he had a diverse team. And it seems like I think had a good vision for what the film was going to be that was going to be respectful to Malcolm X's life. Now, Washington had even played Malcolm X in a 1981 play when the chickens come home to roost.

So this is like a pretty compelling package. And Marvin Worth is not going to get in the way of this, right? This makes sense. Like you have an Academy Award nominated screenwriter. You have an Oscar-winning director, and you have an Academy Award nominated, soon-to-be, actor as your lead. It's pretty compelling. So by May of 1990, again, the timeline gets a little funky here.

Variety reported that Jewison, Washington, and Fuller are all officially attached to the project. It is set up and good to go at Warner Bros. brothers. We are moving. It's 90. The movie comes out in 92 and Juicin's directing. And that announcement catches the attention of one Spike Lee. Now, I'm not going to rehash Spike Lee's biography here. Check out our episode on Do the Right Thing for more on his journey to this point. But what I will say of his early years is that Spike Lee had been a passionate fan of the autobiography of Malcolm X since he first read it in middle school. And actually, if you read his books,

you can read the making of Malcolm X and he has a making a book of Do the Right Thing. His journal entries feel similar in voice to the autobiography of Malcolm X. They're very honest, very probing. I'm sorry, we all have colds. No. Continue.

That's fine. That is a wild sneeze. Please keep that sneeze in. There's like no release. It's all buildup. Okay. Spike had been obsessed with the idea of making a film about Malcolm X. He had loved the book even before he decided he wanted to be a filmmaker.

And in fact, there's a short documentary about the making of the film. He and his DP Ernest Dickerson talk about how when they first met in film school, they talked about how cool it would be to make a movie about Malcolm X. Now, of course, by May of 1990, Spike Lee was no longer just some random film student. his 1989 film Do the Right Thing, had put him on the map in a huge way. He's probably the most famous black director in the world, one of the most recognizable directors in the world by this point.

And his fourth feature, Mo Beta Blues, was set to be released in August of 1990, a few short months away, and it starred Denzel Washington. So he had a connection to the lead of the movie already. And Spike Lee did not think it was appropriate for a white director to tell Malcolm X's story. So let's listen to a clip of Spike Lee

talk about his reaction to the announcement. Never have I said only a black person and direct black subject man. But it takes a very sensitive white director to get the nuances of what it means to be African-American in this country. With such a very important person in African-American history like a Malcolm X,

I thought myself, it was very important that you had somebody who really understood the culture to tell that story. Because so often we have African-American stories stories about black people, but it end up being about the white people. Cry freedom.

I've had this discussion with Richard Attenborough. Stephen Beaker was an extra in that movie, extra in that movie. Steven Spielberg, one of the greatest film makers ever, But I'm a start, I'm sorry. I'm not feeling Matthew McConaughey. I'm not feeling Anthony Hopkins. That's not the story to me.

And so I started talking about it in the press. I like the Matthew McConaughey quote. Yeah, he's right. And obviously, Glory, which I think is a fantastic movie, and I love. It follows Matthew Broderick. It doesn't follow Andre Broderick. for example. Yeah, it's still a white savior movie.

I think in glory, like, it's actually saved by how good Andre Brower and Denzel are. Like, they kind of steal the movie away from Broderick. But Spike Lee's obviously right. Like, Cry Freedom is about Kevin Klein's character. It's not about Denzel. Also, I think probably the most famous example of this, which has been now, you know, looked back on historically as something that was the wrong way to approach this kind of content is, of course, the help.

And I think that's kind of where it sort of cauterized exactly what the problem with this kind of approach to these stories is. Exactly. So, Spike Lee, never one to shy away from asking for what he wants or thinks is right, decides to let the studio know and makes a public announcement that he should be the person to direct the film, not Norman Jewison. Wow.

Yeah. Some sources say he called Worth himself to tell him, I'm your guy. others say that Worth learned of Spike Lee's interest in the film and actually approached him, even though Norman Jewison was already attached to the project. I could see either one being true. One thing that worked in Spike Lee's favor is that he thought the Baldwin Pearl version of the script was actually the best version, and that's the version that Marvin Worth also liked the most. I think it's the version that most closely followed the direct arc of Malcolm X's life, as you mentioned, Lizzie in the film, you kind of go from teen years to age 40 in a linear fashion.

Do we know what script Norman Joeson was working off of? Had he kind of entirely reworked it, or was he sort of using that as source material? I believe they were using it as source material, but Charles Fuller was writing his own version of the script. That's why Charles Fuller was brought on to the project. Got it. I'm sure it was great. But Lee was kind of saying, I'll work off the Pearl Baldwin version and tweak it myself. So he's going all the way back. Yeah, but the thing that Lee's willing to do that Baldwin wasn't is that Lee says, we're going to add back in the nation of Islam. It's not going to be called the movement.

We're putting it in. And further, they had learned things about the assassination of Malcolm X and his assailants that they were able to add in that they had not known at the time. Yes, some of those things have in subsequent years actually been called into question, but we'll stay in our current timeline. Right. So in late 1990, after I believe, protracted behind-the-scenes battle, Norman Jewison finally agreed to step down from the project.

And this is a huge deal. And Jewison says that he left not because of the racial controversy, but because he did not feel confident in his ability to translate Fuller's script to the screen and that Malcolm X kind of remained an enigma to him. He didn't fully understand him. And Spike Lee fully corroborated this. He actually said, Jewison would have fought to the death if he thought that he could do the film justice.

Like, Joeston was not going to back down. And the only reason he backed down was because he just didn't think he could quite do it right. Wow. So in December of 1990, Spike Lee, who had just finished rapping Jungle Fever, along with his producers, Monty Ross and John Killick, flew out to L.A. for a meeting with Warner Brothers

to talk to him about the project. Specifically, Bob Daley, who's one of the studio execs, says, we want this to be the source. Studio's Academy Award-winning film going into 1992. But Spike Lee says that he got a quick sense that they didn't actually understand the scope of the project when they got down to budget and time. So Lee claims that he made two things clear in this first meeting, Lizzie. What do you think they were?

It's going to be really long and it's going to have a lot of locations. Meaning it's going to be expensive. That's exactly right. Yes. He said, we need at least $33 million. and the movie is going to be at least three hours. It's not the last time these numbers would be discussed. So in January of 1991, the LA Times announces that Spike Lee has taken over Malcolm X.

And everybody was okay with it, right, Lizzie? Probably not. No, definitely not. And we'll get into some of the problems that people had. Thus began nine months of pre-production dominated by budget negotiations and increasingly public controversies. So, uncontroversially, Lee brings in his core team, the wonderful cinematographer Ernest Dickerson, casting director Robbie Reed,

costume designer Ruth Carter, production designer Wyn Thomas and composer Terrence Blanchard, most of whom we discussed at further length and do the right thing. They draft up a budget, it's $40 million. The studio says, try again. They draft up another budget. It's $34 million. The studio says, try again.

Unfortunately, for Spike Lee, because he had sold himself so aggressively into the project, I think the studio quickly realized they knew he would do anything to get the movie made. And so they didn't have to give him extra resources. I also think that they thought that since he was a scrappy indie director, he could stretch a dollar, which is insane because the minute vendors realized that there's a studio behind a movie, they're going to jack the prices up on you no matter what. Also, just the scope of what they're covering, there is no way

that this is going to be a cheap movie. He goes to Mecca. Like, that alone, you're... This is going to cost money. And they literally go to Mecca, as we will discuss. Yeah. So, Lee, luckily, had actually another movie in production that he could compare his to. And that's, of course, Oliver Stone's JFK.

So, JFK, which does not cover 20 years, was going to be made for $40 million. and was apparently being given a three-and-a-half-hour runtime. So Lee's like, this is about a murdered white political leader, this is about a murdered black political leader, we should get equal treatment. Not so much. Warner Brothers finally comes in and they say, the budget is $28 million.

And to add insult to injury, it's not even all from Warner Brothers. 20 million is from Warner Brothers. 8 million is from Largo Entertainment for the foreign rights. And they basically made it so the bond company would be responsible for any overages if the move went over budget. What that means is if they go over budget, it's not the studio that's going to be coming in and saying, hey, let's talk about how to get down on budget. It's the bond company

that's going to be coming in. And the only thing worse than dealing with a studio head is dealing with a bond company. We'll get to the problems that that created. So Spike Lee says, fine, because he knows it's going to go over budget. I just have to say yes now and get the movie going. Otherwise, they're going to, you know, kill the project. So at the same time, he's setting up interviews with Malcolm's family and former colleagues, you know, his bodyguard, his children, obviously, Betty Chabazz. And as he's doing these interviews, two things keep happening. One, people keep asking him to see the script. Everybody wants to see the script, because they want to make sure that the version of Malcolm they know or remember is the version of

Malcolm that Lee is going to talk about most in the film. So folks that were associated with, with Nation of Islam or Black nationalism, were very concerned that Lee was going to focus too much on Malcolm X's gangster days when he was younger. Folks that knew him at the end of his life were worried they were going to focus too much on his separatist ideas, you know, kind of in the middle of his life.

So everybody had a different agenda. Specifically, though, there were also people giving him warnings, even thinly veiled threats about his safety saying, don't do certain things because certain people might come after you. So, for example, one person said, don't have Malcolm shown doing drugs or running around with white women for your safety. Whatever you do, don't do that. Be careful about your own security spike.

You've got to be careful about security. And in fact, Lee omitted Lewis Farrakhan, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, who was actually one of Malcolm's protégés inside the nation of Islam in real life. I wondered about that. Yeah, following threats from his camp, regarding his inclusion in the film. So Lee did take some of this seriously and just removed Farrakhan from the movie entirely.

And Brother Baines, interestingly, is a composite character. So Brother Baines, who helps him convert in prison, is a composite character and is not based on one person individually. Sure. That makes sense, and it works well in the movie. I agree. Now, to be clear, Louis Farrakhan and his camp have denied that they, in any way,

tried to stymie the production or made any threats, and even though it was long assumed, or has been assumed by many, that he instigated, he has also denied giving or being aware of the order for there to be a hit on Malcolm X. If you're watching this film, I sink the intention,

at least my interpretation of it is, Brother Baines represents the attitude of Farrakhan at the time of Malcolm X's departure from the nation of Islam and eventual assassination. So you can think of Brother Baines, in my opinion, as somewhat of a Farrakhan proxy. Now, Lee's films were not only controversial within the white community,

they were also controversial within the black community at the time, and there were some who felt he was an inappropriate choice for the project, specifically, black nationalist poet and playwright and spokesman for the United Front. to preserve the legacy of Malcolm X, Amiri Baraka. There is an excellent piece from 1991 by David Anson called The Battle for Malcolm X that chronicles this very public exchange of words between Lee and Baraka that I'll recommend you all read.

But basically, Baraka fires first. He says, based on the movies I've seen, I'm horrified of seeing Spike Lee make Malcolm X, I think Eddie Murphy's films are better, end quote. Which is a pretty, I mean, Eddie Murphy's films are great. But it's a... They're a little different. Pretty harsh. Yeah, a bit of a different energy.

Yeah, a tap. There were rumors, too, that Murphy had been interested in playing Malcolm X during the Jewison period on the project, unable to confirm. Could have been interesting. I mean, no one's going to top Denzel, but of everyone else who's been discussed, Eddie Murphy is a good actor. I think he would be my second choice behind Denzel, personally. So they go back and forth in public,

and what it really comes down to is people saying, don't mess up Malcolm X's life, and the way to not mess up Malcolm X's life is to show us the script so we can confirm you're not messing it up. And Spike Lee saying, I'm not interested in making a movie by committee. You are welcome to buy a ticket to the movie

and then criticize the end result, which I think is the exact right response. I agree. It's so hard because it would be so tempting to try and get as much input as you possibly can, but to the point that we keep coming back to over and over again, he was an extremely complex man with so many different facets and so many different periods of his life, you're going to have a problem if you're trying to get, you know, sort of permission from everyone involved.

It's not going to work. So this is all playing out in public. Alex Haley, author of, of course, the autobiography of Malcolm X, has told Alex Haley, said at the time, quote, probably no script writer alive could write a script that would satisfy the diverse groups who feel an ownership of Malcolm, feel a possessiveness of the image of Malcolm. Even Charles Fuller, right? The playwright and screenwriter who had been dropped from the project

when Jewison stepped away made clear that the irony of the situation wasn't lost on him. Quote, it's rather poetic justice, don't you think? To say some black or white person should not participate in an art form is inconsistent with being an artist, end quote. Obviously referencing Spike Lee,

petitioning for Jewison to be removed from the project for being white, which, as a consequence, Fuller was removed from the project, Who is Black? Right. So you can see why he would be frustrated, like, hey, yeah, okay, you got rid of the white director, but you also got rid of the Black writer.

You can read Spike Lee's full comments, they're back and forth online, but what he made clear is that he was making a Spike Lee joint. However, Lizzie, there's one element that Jewison had brought to the project that Spike knew he had to keep. Any guesses? Yes, Denzel.

Denzel, Washington. my favorite actor of all time. I may be the greatest actor ever in my, their greatest screen presence ever. I could watch him do anything. It's ridiculous. He's pretty incredible. Then there's so many roles that like,

obviously you know kind of the classic Denzel parts, but there's so many where I feel like he didn't even get the attention that he deserved. Like Philadelphia is one that comes to mind where he is just absolutely stunning in that movie and sort of a quieter, less, less densely. Zelly role. Yeah, he's amazing. He's absolutely amazing. And he's very quiet in the back half of this film, as we've discussed.

Yes, he's wonderful. So, by the early 90s, as we mentioned, the former St. Elsewhere actor, he was twice nominated and had won Best Supporting Actor for his turn in Glory. He was only the second Black Man to win that award after Lewis Gossett Jr., officer and a gentleman. As we mentioned earlier, his most prestigious roles to date had been White Savior movies. Right. Glory, as I mentioned, I loved, but still, unfortunately. white savior movie. Malcolm X was not that. Washington had been raised in Mount Vernon and Harlem,

New York, and as he later said, he credited his mother's decision to send him to military school at 14 for changing the direction of his life. So I definitely think he could relate to Malcolm X's 180-degree changes in his life. He'd worked with Spike Lee, obviously on Mo Betta Blues, but that's an ensemble film. And I would argue that he'd yet to have a lead role that did justice to his once-in-a-generation talent until this moment. Lizzie, I'm not sure how familiar you are with Malcolm X's speaking voice, with his speeches. They are not played at nearly the clip of, for example, MLK Jr. or JFK. So I would like to play a brief clip with the description.

So Malcolm X was 6'4. Denzel Washington, I think, is about 6'1. Malcolm was 4 inches taller than that. He was extremely handsome. He had piercing eyes of very serious countenance, but it was broken up by this very infectious smile. So he'd look very serious, but they'd smile, and it would totally, totally sweep.

I could see him just sweeping people off their feet. He was obviously imposing. He was incredibly smart, and he was a great speaker. And I'd like to play a brief clip that I think not only captures Malcolm's cadence, but also shows how Denzel, without doing a mimicry, was able to kind of imbue the character with the essence of Malcolm X. Mr. Moderator, Reverend Clegg, brothers and sisters, and friends, and I see some enemies. In fact, I think we'd be fooling ourselves if we had an audience this large and didn't realize that there were some enemies present.

This afternoon, we want to talk about the ballot or the bullet. the ballot or the bullet explains itself. But before we get into it, since this is the year of the ballot or the bullet, I would like to clarify some things that refer to me personally concerning my own personal position. I mean, Denzel did an incredible job. He sounds a lot like him. I agree. But I think one of the things that Denzel does so well, and I agree, he nails his

speech pattern is that he doesn't attempt to mimic Malcolm X. I think instead what he does is he channels Malcolm X through Denzel Washington. You know, sometimes you know, for his...

Look, Bradley Cooper in A Star is Born. Great performance. He alters his voice so much that it feels incongruous with his singing voice and even with his appearance a little bit. And I really think Denzel found the right balance of like how much is me and how much is him. And I think it's a really, really smooth balance.

I agree. I think those are the best portrayals of real people is when you don't try to do, as you said, an impression. We watched something recently. I won't call it out out of respect to the actor, but it just felt like it felt like someone doing a terrible impression of a famous person, and it was almost unwatchable. Oh, yeah. Denzel, though, didn't land at that performance on sheer talent alone, he worked his ass off. He prepared for over a year. He stopped eating pork. He stopped drinking. He learned how to pray in Arabic. He studied Malcolm's speeches. He fasted. He studied the Quran. He met with Malcolm's family and former colleagues. Now, Lizzie, you mentioned the speeches. He also helped Lee with the script. As Lee said, the speeches in the Baldwin-Pearl script were not really

Malcolm's best speeches. They were Malcolm's speeches. Okay. They did not really show the growth politically of Malcolm's mind, so we threw them all out. With the help of consultant Paul Lee, Paul Lee is a Malcolm expert who was a consultant on the film, who gave us copies of every single speech that Malcolm gave. Denzel and I chose and inserted speeches. Baldwin had stuff out of order. He had Malcolm giving speeches at the beginning of the movie that didn't really come until 63064, so we had to get rid of those. Denzel, though, did improvise a little bit during some of the speeches, and we'll get to a specific example in a few moments. Now, of course, Lizzie, Denzel's not alone as being an incredible performer in this film. He is surrounded by some remarkable actors, and there are a couple I'd like to

address briefly. One of my favorite roles, West Indian Archie, who runs the numbers with Malcolm during his red years, Lee actually first approached Samuel L. Jackson, who had broken out on Lee's jungle fever a year or two earlier. That makes sense. And Jackson actually turned down the role. He took a higher-paying part in the crime thriller, White S. S. Dunst. So next, Lee went to Charles S. Dutton, but the shooting schedule would have conflicted with his TV show, Rock. So then they went to Avery Brooks, a drama professor who had acted in theater and on television. And that didn't work out. And so then they land on Delroy Lindo. Why was he the last one?

He's so good. I actually, this, he blew me away in this movie. Yes. He, I've always known he's good. But when they go head to head the first time they meet

and he's intimidating Denzel, I was like, oh my God. Like, you're going toe to toe with Denzel, who I think is maybe my favorite actor. That's incredible. And one of the reasons they're so good together, Lizzie, they had actually gone to acting school together. They overlapped for a year

at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. That is so funny. I would have thought Del Roy Lindo was way older, but I'm guessing he's not. Two years apart. Del Rendo Lindo's only two years older than Denzel. I know.

Denzel looks like he's 15 years younger than him at the beginning of this movie. But also, Del Rolindo today looks exactly the same as he did in Malcolm X in 1992. That is true. It's crazy. Yeah, like he ate, he did all of his aging until that point.

And then he stopped. Yeah, he's so good. As Lindo told Rotten Tomatoes later, Denzel saw the first scene I ever did in acting school, and I saw the very first scene he ever did. And Lindo actually told Rotten Tomatoes that he was in a waiting room with both Jackson and Avery Brooks prior to his audition. So, like, he was in the same waiting room with them to audition, gets in there. And then he actually read with Denzel.

So Denzel actually read across all of these guys. for Archie. And Lee said that even Denzel was blown away by Delroy Lindo. And one of my favorite scenes is when Malcolm, once he's become Malcolm X, visits Archie, and he's had a stroke, presumably, and he helps him exercise his arm, and he asks him, did he really have the number?

It's so beautiful. It's so tragic. It's so well-acted. It's so understated. I agree. I thought that scene was really very moving. Yeah. And Delro Lindo is incredible in it.

I love that scene. He's great. And I'd love to give a shout out to casting director, Robbie Reed. We also discussed her a lot and do the right thing. I mean, so many great cameos. Christopher Plummer, obviously, Karen Allen, Peter Boyle, John Sales, David Patrick Kelly. Al Sharpton has, you know, a cameo. William Nusler, Cuncelor, excuse me.

Ossie Davis does the eulogy at the end of the film. He actually performed that eulogy at Malcolm's funeral. So it's just an incredible cast. You're forgetting two tiny cameos. There's Michael Imperioli. I don't know if you caught him. I didn't. He's the reporter who's interviewing Malcolm X

immediately after the house fire. He has like one line, but it is very clearly Michael Imperiali. Amazing. I love Michael Imperiali. And the other one is John Carlo Esposito, who of course is one of the... Who is the only assassin who was caught at the time

because he was shot in the leg as he was escaping. Yeah. And Wendell Pierce, who would go on to play Bunk in the Wire later. One of my favorite actors in the film, Angela Bassett, I could not find anything about her casting in this film, but we can say she was fresh off of Boys in the Hood, which we did cover, and that movie had really broken her out.

So even though she was a relatively new face in the world of feature films, she was bringing a lot of legitimacy opposite Denzel Washington, having received a lot of praise for her performance in that. last role. She's incredible. She's absolutely incredible. When she is crying at the end, just watching the cops go through the theater, it is heartbreaking. Yeah, the cops just don't care. Okay, Lizzie, so principal photography doesn't get any easier. It begins on September 16th, 1991. They don't have enough money, and they have too many locations. They began in New York. They would end in South Africa, and of course, they would go through New Jersey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia in between. And the travel

logistics were honestly the least of their concerns. So the art department warned Lee that most of the locations were not ready yet, but they had to keep going. Consultant Paul Lee kept warning Spike Lee that the script was not ready yet, but they had to keep shooting. So two weeks into filming, to add insult to injury, Spike Lee's girlfriend dumped him. Unclear why, probably because he was busy, shooting a movie. Then his father was arrested for heroin possession and then let it slip that Spike Lee was his son in an attempt to get better treatment, which was then leaked to the press. And remember, everything about this movie is playing out publicly right now. Tragically, a young female extra was raped and murdered.

It was not in relation to the film, but it was obviously somebody involved in the film. A car with a brick tied to its accelerator crashed into the curb near the shoot, presumably a targeted attack by somebody upset by the filming of the movie. and later in the film shoot while en route to South Africa, a bomb threat was called in on their plane, which delayed them as they had to ground the plane and search all of the luggage. So a lot of unusual logistics to overcome,

and also the movie was just difficult to shoot. There are some incredible shots in this movie. So Lizzie, the first shot of the movie, do you remember how the first shot goes? You kind of start above the train tracks on a crane, the locomotive goes by, we boom down, we get to the street, we pick up Spike Lee as Shorty, we follow him into a barbershop. There are dozens of extras, right?

It's like 1946 or eight or something like that. It's big. The scale of everything is big right from the beginning. Very big. A lot of production design, a lot of extras, a lot of costuming. And of course, you had a camera operator who had a steady cam on a crane who then had to step off the crane on street level to follow Lee. into the barbershop.

And of course, the subway car, that's period-appropriate, can't move on its own. So they have to have another train in front of it that kind of pulls it and then backs it up. And it takes a half hour to reset that subway car after each take. Oh, God. So production designer, Wyn Thomas, whose work is fantastic in this movie, estimated that that shot alone cost them a million dollars. It looked great. It looks great.

It's a great opening shot. I will say that it's very Spike Lee to introduce his own character before Malcolm is in this movie. Lee did want to shoot at the actual Audubon ballroom where Malcolm X had been murdered. It was unsafe. There was too much asbestos, and it took forever to find an appropriate location. And so they found their final ballroom, which was the diplomat ballroom in Manhattan. And Lizzie, that dance number from the beginning of the film that you may remember, that's actually the same room that they used at the end of the film when Malcolm X is shot.

I'm not sure if you can tell, but the team had to work full-time, 24 hours a day to pull that off. And Spike Lee wasn't the only one who was uncompromising. Denzel had become Malcolm X. In fact, during one take of his speeches, Denzel concluded these scripted remarks, at which point Lee stood up to call cut, but Denzel kept going for according to Lee five minutes until the camera ran dry. And Lee went up to him and was like, where did that come from?

And Danzel said, I don't know. And Lee said, that's fine. We're keeping it. And so even though all of the speeches are accurate in the sense that they base them on real speeches, there are some Denzel-specific improvisations in the film that made it in.

I will say, I very much appreciate that they are using mostly archival for the speeches. That is something that drove me absolutely insane in the recent. Anna Kendrick dating game movie was that they did not use any of the actual archival for the anyway, go on. I think they actually tried very hard in this film to keep it accurate.

Well, why would you not? If it's available and, you know, like, it's what they said it's there for a reason, even if it's not quote unquote cinematic, like I just always would prefer to actually hear what the content of the speech was. Anyway, go on. Well, speaking for the need for authenticity, there is one. one person I know Lee wanted the approval of and did eventually show the script to, and that is, of course, Malcolm X's widow, Betty Chabazz. After 35 days of shooting, he finally relented and

showed her the screenplay that they were working off of, and it went less than great. As he wrote, quote, she hated the script, hated it. She said it was the worst piece of shit she'd ever read in her life. She came to me and told me that she and Malcolm never fought. He went on to admit, quote, I wish we had gotten more input from Betty. She sat there and saw her husband killed in front of her eyes with their four children at her feet and two babies in her belly. So no matter what I feel, you can't get around that. So when she would go and curse me out, which was often, I'd have to sit there and take it. End quote. Yeah. If there's one person you're going to talk to, it's Betty. We'll get back to her. She comes around.

Now, her concerns on the film would soon be the least of Spike Lee's concerns about his film, because by Thanksgiving of 1991, Lizzie, the production had finally started to run out of money. So obviously, they're trying to make a $50 million film for $28 million. As I mentioned, due to the financing structure around this project, any overages were the responsibility of the bond company. The bond company is not Warner Brothers. They don't have other film projects, you know, they could pull some money from, et cetera, and they have no interest in paying a dollar more than they had to.

Enter Mack Harding, whose name is right out of a gum shoe crime novel, Bond Representative, and Spike Lee's personal pain in the ass. At first, they called him Indiana Jones because he had a penchant for felt hats, and then they called him The Terminator because it felt like he was trying to murder the production. It's hard to express how frustrating this must have been for Lee. He already held the studio in low regard. I mean, rightfully so they were low-balling his movie. And now he had to take creative input from effectively a numbers guy,

whose ideas might have been fiscally responsible, but were creatively questionable. For example, Lizzie, he urged them to shoot the meccasines in New Jersey or Arizona. Classic. Instead of Saudi Arabia and Egypt to save money, to which Spike Lee said, quote, where are you going to get the extras from? How many Arabs are there in Arizona?

How many black people? They don't even celebrate Dr. King's birthday in Arizona. I'm not spending a red nickel in that. state, end quote. Yeah, very reminiscent of the godfather where they were like, you don't need to go to Italy, just use the mountains in upstate New York. It's like, it's not the same thing. Not quite. On this front, to their credit, Warner Brothers agreed. Production moved to Saudi Arabia and Egypt as planned. Now, according to an article that Entertainment Weekly published during the film's production, Malcolm X was actually the first narrative film that was allowed to film in the Hajj in Mecca.

So they had allowed documentary film crews in before, not narrative films. And they were allowed to do this because these scenes were actually shot by an entirely Muslim second unit camera crew. The other mecca scenes that featured Denzel Washington were filmed in Cairo, where they had built a replica of the Holy City, and they had over 5,000 extras in some of those scenes. So those scenes that really show you the scope of everyone making the pilgrimage, that's incredible, and that's all real. Like, those are all human bodies showing up, you know.

no cutouts or digital bodies there. So the production turned to South Africa where obviously they were going to shoot the concluding scenes with Nelson Mandela. Again, the bond company tried to hold them up saying, look, we need a signed agreement from Nelson Mandela to appear in the film before we approve this travel. And Lee says, screw that and gets everybody onto a plane,

even though Nelson Mandela had actually said no to being in the movie because Lee rightfully thought if he could just talk to him, you could probably get him to do it. And Vandela, of course, did agree to be in the film, but he said that he would not say the line by any means necessary because of his philosophy and the political situation ending apartheid in South Africa. Right. So at the end of the film, it cuts to Malcolm X saying those words. By December of 91, the film was $5 million over budget, putting its budget Lizzie at, ding, ding, ding, $33 million, the number that Spike Lee had said he needed.

Mm-hmm. The bond company officially seized control of the project as they ended. post-production. So, in January of 1992, Lee and his editor, Barry Alexander Brown, hold up at the 40 acres in a mule offices, that's his production company in Brooklyn, to start editing the life of Malcolm X. They had over 20,000 feet of film from the second unit that had shot in Mecca alone. From the beginning, they tried not to worry about runtime.

As Brown said, quote, I just have to cut Malcolm X as I feel it should be cut. It's not my job to be concerned with lengths. Once everything is cut and we look at it as a whole, we can say, all right, is this a little long and we don't have to spend so much time on this part? Which I think is the right approach. Yeah. Probably.

Well, Lizzie, can you guess who may not have felt that was the right approach? I'm going to go with the money, man. The Bond Company. They said, no, no, no, no, good sirs. We would like a running time of two hours and 15 minutes, which was never going to happen. And Lizzie, why would they want a runtime of two hours and 15 minutes? Because that's the cutoff, at which point you can pack more screenings into each

theater, anything above that. And I think you lose at least one screening per theater per day. That's right. Now Warner Brothers, to their credit, was a little more flexible. And they said, it just has to be under three hours, which is somewhat, I think that's kind of reasonable. You know, three hour movies. Three hours is a lot. Yeah, pretty long. But they said, we're not going to pay for anything else. And the bond company says, we're not going to pay for anything else. And the bond company actually went to Warner Brothers

and said, any footage used beyond the two hour, 15 minute mark, you guys have to reimburse us for, which I don't even know how that would have worked, but it is a threat that they made. So Lee flies to Los Angeles and he asks them for $1.3 million to finish the film. And they say, no,

we're not going to consider additional funding until we test screen the movie because they want to see if it performs well. before they agree to put any more funding into it. Well, how are you going to do that? Yeah, which means they're not considering it to be an Oscar film, right? Because if they're just trying to test its commercial viability. So at this point, Lee had already invested $2 million of his $3 million salary back into the film.

The bond company suggested he put the remaining million in to get things done. I believe Lee said no at this point, although I could not figure out if in the end he did put his whole salary in or not. I also read a rumor that Denzel Washington put his salary into the film. I could not confirm that. But they would have had points on the back end, right? I believe so. I don't think they kicked in, as we'll get to. In February of 1992, the bond company doubled down. They claimed that Lee owed them a screening of the film because they argued that the South Africa filming that had concluded the production had been second unit. So they were like, oh, it was second unit. You were just shooting Nelson Mandela in South Africa. Therefore, principal photography actually ended a month earlier. They were basically

trying to take weeks away from him and post to deliver his director's cut. So Brown and his team are working around the clock, and things are starting to get ugly in the press. Even though the studio has some other runaway productions, one of which I believe was The Thief and the Cobbler, which is an animated film that everybody and their mother has requested us to cover and we will cover at some point in time. Okay. Malcolm X is the movie that's getting all of the attention. But some of this, Lizzie, is by his design. He actually went to the press to pressure Warner Brothers into funding the rest of the production.

He went so far as to call the studio a plantation in public. Whoa. So Warner Brothers fires back, and they criticize Lee for not being in the editing room with Brown 24-7, criticizing him for continuing to teach, work on music videos, and commercials during the post-production, period. In late March, Lee and Brown are working on the temp mix, and the bond company fires the entire post-production team, saying, payrolls gone dry. So Lee, at this point, has to ask people, I'm guessing, to work for free. Yeah. And at the same time, the movie's still way too long.

Based on what I put together, it's likely that he was at three hours and 50 minutes right now for the runtime. So he has no money. He gets the movie down to three hours and 20 minutes for the studio, but he's out of funds. So he asks for help. He writes out a list of people to reach out to. He said it took him two weeks to work up the nerve to start calling them. And he basically asked them for a gift. There's no tax write-off, no input on the project, no return on investment.

Can we have some money to finish this film? Donors included Bill Cosby, Peggy Cooper Caprits, Oprah Winfrey, James Janet Jackson, Tracy Chapman, Prince, Magic Johnson, and Michael Jordan. Bill Cosby was the first person he called, and Lee said that before he could tell him why he was calling, Cosby just asked how much do you need. He then asked Lee to where to send the check, but instead of waiting, Lee went to his house in person to pick it up. The last two people Lee called were Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan because he wanted to use their competitive relationship to fuel funding. He called Johnson first, got a donation, then called Jordan, and told him how much

Johnson donated, which resulted in Jordan donating even more money. So very smart moves by him. Wow. On May 19th of 1992, he held a public press conference publicizing the donors who had saved the film. It was actually only $72,000 that had been raised to continue post-production. That's how little we're talking about. And the next day, under public pressure...

They could have shelled out more, those people? Yeah. Well, for that reason, first of all, that number may not be accurate. I found it through AFI, and I trust them as a source. But it does make me think that perhaps this was more a ploy in Spike Lee's public spat with Warner Brothers as a strategic move and an attempt to get them to take the movie more seriously more than it was an actual needed cash flow, you know, stop-dap solution.

Now, whatever the motivation, it was ultimately successful. So Warner Brothers, the next day, agreed to finance the rest of the film. It was apparently going to cost between $35 and $40 million at this point. So Lizzie, with Warner Brothers finally on board, the rest of the process was smooth sailing. Just kidding. It's never smooth sailing. So Lee was wary of working with Warner Brothers marketing. He felt like he'd educated Universal, the distributor of his first films, on how to promote his films.

And he'd be starting at Square One again. He brought in Paul Lee, Scholar, to give him. a seminar to the Warner Brothers marketing team, but there were a few controversies that Lee may have brought upon himself. Number one, Lizzie, in August of 92, a couple months before the film's release, he urged people to plan on skipping work and school to go see the movie when it came out. Quote, don't go to work that day. Don't let the children go to school. Go to this movie. We have to support this film, or Hollywood will have the excuse at once. Malcolm X's daughter, Atala Shabazz, said, I do not request, nor do I think my father would want you to play hooky.

Stay in school and learn, stay at your job, and feed your family. So that one backfired on Spike Lee a little bit. Now, the film Lizzie famously opens with the George Holiday filmed footage of Rodney King being beaten by the LAPD. Lee had purchased that film from Holiday, but in September of 1992, he was sued by Holiday for allegedly misleading him about how the footage would be used in the film. Holiday claimed that Lee sent him a peaceful scene in a classroom saying that the film was going to be about coming together. He then learned from various news reports that the opening scene involved a highly inflammatory montage sequence,

which is true. It's an American flag burning as we watch the footage. It is indeed. It's great, but it's very intense. So Holiday sued Lee, and they eventually settled out of court. Now, Lee's promotion of the film himself, Lizzie, was under scrutiny. As early as late 1990, he'd designed a cap with X from Malcolm X on it. He'd

started wearing it around to promote the movie and get himself on the movie. By January of 91, he started giving these hats away to his famous friends. And then he started selling them at his store, Spikes Joint. And then leading up to the release of the film, he expanded into other branded clothing. And he was criticized by a number of people who felt that he was exploiting Malcolm's story and that Malcolm would not have approved of the tactic. Obviously in the film, you see, Malcolm X was not a materialistic person later in his life. He was uninterested, and it seems like personal possessions or nice things. In fact, the Nation of Islam owned his house.

That's the controversy you see where they're trying to take the house away from it before they set it on fire. Lee responded, I will say that Malcolm was about black economic development. That's true. That's what I'm about. We're about giving them black kids jobs. This is what America is about. What does Madonna do? Come on.

Not that Warner Brothers's approach to the project was perfect. Now, Lizzie, as we've discussed, ad nauseum, boys in the hood do the right thing. The concern that white executives had at the time was that these films would incite violence. Of course. And Warner Brothers President Barry Reardon decided to get ahead of it by holding advanced screenings with police departments across the country, presumably to diffuse fears that the film would spark violence. And of course, Lee's like, I feel like if you just show this movie to cops, you're kind of priming people to think the movie is going to be about violence. violence when the movie's not in the end. Also, I don't know if they're going to love it.

Lee said they did. Okay, good. There was an interview where they're like, what did they think? And he's like, they loved it. But Lee says everybody loves this movie. So just, you know, we don't know, 100%. Now, the studio did know that they had one incredible asset with this film, which was Denzel Washington's performance.

No matter if you think the movie's too long, or if you don't love the pace or if you don't think it's accurate enough, Denzel Washington is a standout and received you know. universal acclaim for his performance, and early reviews and test screenings had showed people loved him. So, the movie has a prime award season release date of November 18, 1992, which is good for building buzz. So despite the controversy it had garnered in development and production, the movie releases, and is kind of tepidly received. Huh. The box office receipts were modest. 9.9 million, its opening weekend.

Finished third after Home Alone 2 lost in New York and Bram Stoker's Dracula. Oh. There was a minor controversy over a ticket punching issue. Lee claims that he caught wind of folks buying tickets for Malcolm X, only to look down and see Home Alone printed on their ticket stubs. He thought Bunny was being intentionally siphoned away from the film by distributors. Warner Brothers investigated this.

They found no evidence of wrongdoing or conspiracy, just, you know, probably stoned 17-year-old kids hitting the wrong movie when they sold people their tickets. The critical responsibility to the film was generally positive. Vincent Canby for the New York Times called the film as complex as its subject. Kenneth Turin from the LA Times wrote, The Unexpected Aspect of this forceful, purposeful work by a director with a reputation for being an in-your-faced polemicist and provocateur. It's just how careful. and classical a film it finally is.

I really agree with that one, because I think the movie's actually not nearly as infused with Spike Lee's stylistic flourishes as some of his other movies are, and it benefits from that. Yeah. Roger Ebert gave it four stars, calling it one of the great screen biographies, but Todd McCarthy, a variety,

expressed a common sentiment amidst the film distractors, calling it disappointingly conventional and sluggish. Now, the reviews from the black community were also mixed, Ciniast magazine ran a review symposium of black critics, which you can read on brother Malcolm.net, many of whom take issue with the softening of Malcolm's character, the simplification of relationships, specifically him and Sophia, which was very complicated. Especially if he was 16 and she was 20. That's definitely an element.

But also, I believe there was some domestic violence in their relationship. It was very complicated, and it really represented, and he speaks about this at length in his book, how his mother who was, who hated her whiteness because her mother had been raped by a white man, seemed to prefer his darker-skinned siblings. At the same time, his dad, who was very dark-skinned, seemed to prefer Malcolm for being lighter-skinned. And then Malcolm kind of internalized some of this when he went to Boston and obviously started running with a white woman. So it's very, it's a very complicated dynamic. in the book, does it justice?

And the film, I think, has to simplify it just for runtime's sake. Yeah. Again, I think these are fair criticisms, however, within the spectrum of Hollywood biopics, I actually think the movie does a remarkably good job. They also sometimes criticize the use of flashback, saying that not enough emphasis had been placed on the kind of formative racial experiences of Malcolm X's life, misplaced humor. I really like some of the humor, but, like, you know, shorty, fainting,

during the sentencing hearing, for example, or a failure to adhere to exact historical accuracy, but they kind of universally praised both Lee for the accomplishment of getting the film made it all and the remarkable performances, especially Denzel as Malcolm X himself, which, it seems like everybody agreed, was a monumental accomplishment.

Yeah. Now, Malcolm X concluded its domestic run with a gross of $48 million. The production budget alone, I believe was about 40. So Warner Brothers did assert that it lost $30 million on the film. And Lee himself later said that the making of the film had unfortunately obscured the film itself.

I also think that the double-edged sword of Lee's willingness to fight for his film in public was that obviously he succeeded in getting it made, but as he admits in that comment, he may have ultimately distracted from the film itself. Ruth Carter was nominated for an Oscar for her costuming. As she should be. It's great in this.

She lost. Oh, and she lost. What do you, well, do you remember what she lost to? What year was this, 1992? What else was nominated? Bram Stoker's Dracula. Oh. Oh, oh.

Well, those costumes are also really fun. They're great. That's a, I mean, it's a tough beat, but both films were great and great costumes. Denzel was, of course, nominated for Best Actor. but he lost to Al Pacino and Martin Bress's scent of a woman. Lee did criticize this decision publicly. I'd have to agree with Lee on this one. I absolutely agree.

I think Al Pacino's great, sent of a woman, but I think Denzel is giving a once-in-a-generation performance here. Yeah, I think it's a bigger accomplishment. I think there's so many more subtleties to this performance. Love Al Pacino. Sent of a woman is great, but yeah, not for this. In an unexpected twist, Lizzie.

one fan of the finished film was Dr. Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X's widow, who said that outside of the scene where they fight, which is so brief and barely even a fight, but she said they never fought, and she said outside of that she quite liked the movie. Well, they even say in the movie that they don't fight. He says, how many times have we argued? She says never. Exactly. Yeah. And I wonder if Spike Lee put that in to, you know, a piece of. Marvin Worth, for his part, who had spent the better part of 30 years trying to get the movie made, said that even though the box office numbers did shock him, it was absolutely worth it. And even if the movie hadn't made it a dollar, it was a historic accomplishment to get this story on the big screen. In the end, Spike Lee would go on to repeatedly thank Norman Jewison for graciously stepping down and allowing him to take over this production.

And I think the Jewish inversion could have been very interesting, but I actually think this is Spike Lee at his best in that he tempered himself to kind of get this movie made. And that concludes, Lizzie, our coverage of Spike Lee's Malcolm X. That was really interesting. Thank you, Chris. I definitely feel like I need to learn more about Malcolm X himself, which I felt after watching the movie, too. I think it inspires, you know, a deeper look, which is a good thing.

Yeah, I mean, there are multiple Pulitzer Prize winning books about Malcolm X, and there's a lot, you know, that we didn't have time to get into today about his earlier days. So there are some things that were, you know, attributed to other people that were actually things that had been part of Malcolm's experience. And so I do encourage everybody to read the autobiography of Malcolm X. Marable Manning has a really incredible book that I have not finished yet called Malcolm X, A Life of Reinvention, that I highly recommend. And that brings us to what went right.

So, Lizzie, I'd love to let you go first for what went right, and then I'll give mine. There are some obvious ones, but I'm going to go for the cinematography by Ernest Dickerson. I think it's really incredible in this movie. There's some shots that I was just blown away by, whether it's Denzel in the prison cell, when they open the sort of two tiny slots

that you can just see the beams of light coming through and you can barely kind of see him moving at the base of the cell as he's going through withdrawal. And I also just think the energy of the camera in this movie is incredible, and they do a really good job of going from this very high energy, as I said, almost cartoonish beginning of his life, to the real stillness. And I think peace isn't the right word,

but what we end up with as Malcolm at the end is so moving and it doesn't feel incongruous at all because they handle the transition so well. I love that shot of him where it's almost like he's floating as he's walking towards the Audubon Theater on his, obviously his last day when a change is going to come is playing. So, yeah, I'll go with cinematography.

I think it's amazing. Yeah, and that is one of the kind of the putting the actor on the dolly with the camera, is a real Spike Lee Diggerson flourish that does work wonderfully in this movie. There are moments of kind of Spikely kind of stylized approaches to moments that they're subtle enough and they're spaced far enough apart

that I think they serve as a really nice garnish and they're not distracting in any way. And I think they just, they handled the scale of this incredibly well. I am going to give mine to, I got to give it to Spike Lee. I mean, Denzel, yes. But the amount of scrutiny that he was under in making this film and the amount of confidence it requires to do so, and arguably egotism, you know what I mean,

borderline arrogance is just remarkable. I could not imagine. This is someone who, by virtue of their life story, does not cleanly fit into any particular archetype or ideological position or trope. And as a result, everybody has their own personal version of them. In a way, it's going to sound ridiculous,

but imagine making a movie about, you know, Jesus, for example, and everybody's going to have a different version of Jesus. That's so, you know what I mean, close to them, that they have a personal relationship to. No, Chris, there's one correct version, and it's Mel Gibson's. That's right. Meaning it's Jim Caviesel as Jesus. My own personal Jesus Christ, J.C.

So I would love to give it to Spike Lee. And I'd also just take a moment. I think we've entered a new era or we've been in it for a while, perhaps, where for whatever reason, we seem to in our personal lives, or maybe in politics or on social media, we distrust changing positions. We distrust people who say that they have learned and changed. And yet if you look at what we consume, the stories we consume, the only ones that resonate and the ones that we like are the ones where there is a change. Right. Without change, stories are meaningless. And I think Malcolm X's life is such a great example of the transformative power of being able to admit that you were perhaps wrong or misinformed.

and the desire not to be right within any particular subgroup, but the desire to be right on a more humanistic level. And you can see in his life why he believed the things he believed at every point. And it's always entirely justifiable. I mean, this is somebody whose family was destroyed, you know, by the government in large part, whose father was murdered. by racists, whose uncles were murdered by racist, whose grandmother was raped, obviously, by a white man who then discovered religion in prison and the saving power of self-respect and self-advancement,

and yet had the courage to say, I think this is wrong, to the very people who had propelled him to the forefront of the civil rights movement when he did see something that he felt was wrong. And it takes a remarkable amount of conviction. And I think we all should allow ourselves to see the grace of change and to allow for change, you know, and to remember change is a good thing or can be a good thing. And sticking to one's guns, you know, and purity of position in the moment may be valuable traits, but in the long run, reflect a disinterest in the world at large. So anyway, I had a wonderful time researching Malcolm X. I didn't know a ton about him before this podcast, and he's a truly fascinating American figure.

Beautifully said, Chris, I think that that comes across throughout the movie. It's not about being right. It's about doing what's right. And, yeah, I agree. I think they really pulled that off. that is hard to do. Absolutely. All right, guys, thank you so much for tuning in for another episode of what went wrong. The support you guys have shown us across this podcast has always been really phenomenal and humbling, and particularly so over the last couple of weeks, as we have

navigated an unusual moment in Los Angeles history. The wildfires have begun to subside, and we are figuring things out and very fortunate to be supported by, really a wonderful community. So thank you to everybody who has reached out. And if you would like to support this podcast further, there are some really easy ways to do so. Obviously, you can leave us a rating and review on whatever podcast app you're using,

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And you can, of course, engage with us more directly on Patreon. Patreon is a platform that allows creators such as ourselves to connect with our fans. Head to www.com slash what went wrong podcast. You can join for free. For a dollar, you can vote on films that we are going to cover in the future. For $5, you can get an ad-free RSS feed. and for $50, you can get a shout out at the end of our episodes. But guys, our $50 tier, is it full, Lizzie?

It's full, Chris. Son of a... Well, you just got to wait. You got to wait until it clears up because we're not making more. It's a limited commodity. So, Lizzie, we need to thank our full stop members. And Lizzie, if you would not mind doing your best Malcolm X impression, And wow, I'm just kidding.

We will not be doing that. No, we'll just read them out like normal today. Guys, thank you to all of our patrons. But in particular, we have to say thank you to our full stop supporters. You guys are helping us get this podcast out and make it more than just a hobby. And we love doing it for you. So without further ado, well, we have to kick things off with the birthday boy.

Happy birthday boy. And of course, the Provost family. where the O's sound like O's. Zach Everton. Galen. Film it yourself. Chris Zaka.

David Friskillante. Adam Moffat. Kate. Also, her friend, Kate Lrington. M. Zodia. Benton Brown. C. Grace B. After school.

Jen Mastro Marino. Christopher Elner. Blaise Ambrose. Jerome Wilkinson. Lauren F. Lance Stader. Nate the Knife. Lena.

Andrea. Ramon Villanueva Jr. Half Greyhound. I was hoping I got that one. Really hope that's your full legal name. Lauren Dunn. Brittany Morris. Darren and Dale, Conkling.

Ashley. Jake Killen. Andrew McFagglebagel. Matthew Jacobson. Grace Potter. Ellen Singleton. J.J. Rapido. Joey Sri Samant

Scott Gurwin Sadie Just Sadie Son of a bitch Brian Donahue Adrian Pengoria Kathleen Olson Chris Leal

Brooke Leah Bowman Whose house I'm currently living in Thank you Leah for that as well Steve Winterbauer Whose house you're currently 100 feet from

Yes Who I'm borrowing a lot of baby things from Don Shibal George Rosemary Southward Who's currently in the house that I'm in Oh Tom Kristen

Jason Frankl Saman Chianani Michael McGrath Lonrilad And last but certainly not least Lydia Thanks Lydia Thank you so much you guys

We really appreciate it We will be back in two weeks With Lizzie Some like it hot Indeed Some don't like Working with Marilyn Monroe as we will find out.

And until then, hit us up on Instagram or Patreon. Thanks, guys. Bye. Go to patreon.com slash what went wrong podcast to support what went wrong. And check out our website at what went wrongpod.com. What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast, presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing and music by David Bowman. Research for this episode provided by Jesse Winterbauer.