Malcolm X (1992 film)

• Denzel Washington as Malcolm X (previously Malcolm Little). The protagonist and titular character, a former petty criminal and convict who undergoes a spiritual transformation while incarcerated, joining the Nation of Islam and quickly rising through its ranks as a minister and activist for African-Americans. Washington had previously played the role in an off-Broadway play entitled When the Chicken Come Home to Roost, and was director Spike Lee's first and only choice.
• Angela Bassett as Betty Shabazz. A nurse and NOI activist who later marries Malcolm. The real Betty Shabazz served as an advisor to the production.
• Albert Hall as Baines, the convict who mentors Malcolm and converts him to Islam. He is fictionalized composite of several real-world individuals.
• Al Freeman, Jr. as Elijah Muhammad. The charismatic leader of the Nation of Islam. Muhammad's role is partially combined with that of then-current Louis Farrakhan, whose role in the script was cut after he directly threatened Lee.
• Delroy Lindo as West Indian Archie. A Harlem gangster and who runs a local numbers game and takes a young Malcolm under his wing. Lee had originally written the role with his longtime collaborator Samuel L. Jackson in mind.
• Spike Lee as Shorty. Malcolm's close friend from childhood who follows him into crime, the two drift apart after they are incarcerated, but later reunite through Malcolm's activism. He is based on several real acquaintances of Malcolm, primarily Malcolm “Shorty” Jarvis.
• Theresa Randle as Laura. A young woman whom Malcolm had a strained romantic relationship with, and later passes over in favor of Sophia. She is last seen after his release, walking the streets as a prostitute.
• Kate Vernon as Sophia. A young Caucasian woman whom Malcolm meets at a Boston nightclub and who quickly becomes his lover and partner-in-crime. She is caught alongside him for their crimes, and sentenced to two years in prison, later marrying a white man and becoming a housewife.

Political activists Bobby Seale and Al Sharpton make cameo appearances as a pair of street preachers. Civil rights attorney William Kunstler appears as the judge who sentences Malcolm and Shorty to prison. Future South African President Nelson Mandela appears as a Soweto school teacher delivering a lecture on X. Spike Lee regular Nicholas Turturro has a minor role as a Boston police officer. Michael Imperioli has a brief appearance as a news reporter. Film director John Sayles appears as an FBI agent surveilling Malcolm. Washington's son 8-year old John David Washington appears as a Harlem elementary school student.

Ossie Davis provides voiceover narration over the film's closing sequence, reading the eulogy he had originally performed at the real Malcolm's funeral.

In 1968, Worth commissioned a screenplay from novelist James Baldwin, who was later joined by Arnold Perl, a screenwriter who had been a victim of McCarthy-era blacklisting.[6] However, the screenplay took longer to develop than anticipated. Perl died in 1971.[5]

Baldwin developed his work on the screenplay into the 1972 book One Day, When I Was Lost: A Scenario Based on Alex Haley's The Autobiography of Malcolm X. In 1976, Baldwin wrote of his experience, "I think that I would rather be horsewhipped, or incarcerated in the forthright bedlam of Bellevue, than repeat the adventure".[7] Baldwin died in 1987. Several authors attempted drafts, including David Mamet, David Bradley, Charles Fuller and Calder Willingham.[5][8] Once Spike Lee took over as director, he rewrote the Baldwin-Perl script. Due to the revisions, the Baldwin family asked the producer to take his name off the credits. Thus Malcolm X only credits Perl and Lee as the writers and Malcolm X and Alex Haley as the authors of The Autobiography of Malcolm X.[5]

The production was considered controversial long before filming began. The crux of the controversy was Malcolm X's denunciation of whites before he undertook his hajj. He was, arguably, not well regarded among white citizens by and large; however, he had risen to become a hero in the African-American community and a symbol of blacks' struggles, particularly during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. In the three years before the movie's release, sales of The Autobiography of Malcolm X had increased 300 percent, and four of his books saw a nine-fold increase in sales between 1986 and 1991.[8]

Once Warner Bros. agreed to the project, they initially wanted Academy Award-nominated Canadian film director Norman Jewison to direct the film. Jewison, director of the seminal civil rights film In the Heat of the Night, was able to bring Denzel Washington into the project to play Malcolm X. Jewison and Washington previously worked together in the 1984 film A Soldier's Story. A protest erupted over the fact that a white director was slated to make the film.[8] Spike Lee was one of the main voices of criticism; since college, he had considered a film adaption of The Autobiography of Malcolm X to be a dream project. Lee and others felt that it was appropriate that only a black person should direct Malcolm X.[9]

After the public outcry against Jewison, Worth came to the conclusion that "it needed a black director at this point. It was insurmountable the other way...There's a grave responsibility here." Jewison left the project, though he noted he gave up the movie not because of the protest, but because he could not reconcile Malcolm's private and public lives and was unsatisfied with Charles Fuller's script. Lee confirmed Jewison's position, stating, "If Norman actually thought he could do it, he would have really fought me. But he bowed out gracefully." Jewison and Denzel Washington would reunite several years later for The Hurricane, in which Washington played imprisoned boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, who spent nearly twenty years in prison for a murder he claimed he did not commit before his conviction was overturned in 1985.

Spike Lee was soon named the director, and he made substantial changes to the script. "I'm directing this movie and I rewrote the script, and I'm an artist and there's just no two ways around it: this film about Malcolm X is going to be my vision of Malcolm X. But it's not like I'm sitting atop a mountain saying, 'Screw everyone, this is the Malcolm I see.' I've done the research, I've talked to the people who were there."[8]

Soon after Spike Lee was announced as the director and before its release, Malcolm X received criticism by black nationalists and members of the United Front to Preserve the Legacy of Malcolm X, headed by poet and playwright Amiri Baraka, who were worried about how Lee would portray Malcolm X. One protest in Harlem drew over 200 people.[8][10] Some based their opinion on dislike of Lee's previous films; others were concerned that he would focus on Malcolm X's life before he converted to Islam.[8][10][11] Baraka bluntly accused Spike Lee of being a "Buppie", stating "We will not let Malcolm X's life be trashed to make middle-class Negroes sleep easier", compelling others to write the director and warn him "not to mess up Malcolm's life."[8] Some, including Lee himself, noted the irony that many of the arguments they made against him mirrored those made against Norman Jewison.[10]

Looking back on the experience of making the film and the pressure he faced to produce an accurate film, Lee jokingly stated on the DVD's audio commentary that when the film was released, he and Denzel Washington had their passports handy in case they needed to flee the country.[12]

Washington agreed to play Malcolm X while Norman Jewison was scheduled to direct the film. Still, Lee stated he never envisioned any actor other than Washington in the role. Lee, who had worked with Washington on Mo' Better Blues (1990), cited Washington's performance as Malcolm X in an Off Broadway play as superb. However, some purists noted that Washington was far shorter and had a far darker complexion than the real Malcolm X, who stood 6'4" and had notably reddish hair and a lighter complexion (due to his very fair-skinned Grenadian-born mother's partial white ancestry) and bore only a passing resemblance to him.[13]

Spike Lee also encountered difficulty in securing a sufficient budget. Lee told Warner Bros. and the bond company that a budget of over US$30 million was necessary; the studio disagreed and offered a lower amount. Following advice from fellow director Francis Ford Coppola, Lee got "the movie company pregnant": taking the movie far enough along into actual production to attempt to force the studio to increase the budget.[9] The film, initially budgeted at $28 million, climbed to nearly $33 million. Lee contributed $2 million of his own $3 million salary. Completion Bond Company, which assumed financial control in January 1992, refused to approve any more expenditures; in addition, the studio and bond company instructed Lee that the film could be no longer than two hours, fifteen minutes in length.[11] The resulting conflict caused the project to be shut down in post-production.[9]

The film was saved by the financial intervention of prominent black Americans, some of whom appear in the film: Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Janet Jackson, Prince, and Peggy Cooper Cafritz, founder of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. Their contributions were made as donations; as Lee noted: "This is not a loan. They are not investing in the film. These are black folks with some money who came to the rescue of the movie. As a result, this film will be my version. Not the bond company's version, not Warner Brothers'. I will do the film the way it ought to be, and it will be over three hours."[11] The actions of such prominent members of the African American community giving their money helped finish the project as Lee envisioned it.[8][9]

A month before the film was released, Lee asked that media outlets send black journalists to interview him. The request proved controversial. While it was common practice for celebrities to pick interviewers who were known to be sympathetic to them, it was the first time in many years in which race had been used as a qualification. Lee clarified that he was not barring white interviewers from interviewing him, but that he felt, given the subject matter of the film, that black writers have "more insight about Malcolm than white writers."[14]

The request was turned down by the Los Angeles Times, but several others agreed including Premiere magazine, Vogue, Interview and Rolling Stone. The Los Angeles Times explained they did not give writer approval. The editor of Premiere noted that the request created internal discussions that resulted in changes at the magazine: "Had we had a history of putting a lot of black writers on stories about the movie industry we'd be in a stronger position. But we didn't. It was an interesting challenge he laid down. It caused some personnel changes. We've hired a black writer and a black editor."[14]

Malcolm X's widow, Dr. Betty Shabazz, served as a consultant to the film.[10] The Fruit of Islam, the defense arm of the Nation of Islam, provided security for the movie.[13]

When Denzel Washington took the role of Malcolm X in the play, When the Chickens Come Home to Roost, which dealt with the relationship between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, he admitted he knew little about Malcolm X and had not yet read The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Washington prepared by reading books and articles by and about Malcolm X and went over hours of tape and film footage of speeches. The play opened in 1981 and earned Washington a warm review by Frank Rich, who was at the time the chief theater critic of The New York Times. Upon being cast in the film, he interviewed people who knew Malcolm X, among them Betty Shabazz and two of his brothers. Although they had different upbringings, Washington tried to focus on what he had in common with his character: Washington was close to Malcolm X's age when he was assassinated, both men were from large families, both of their fathers were ministers, and both were raised primarily by their mothers.[13]

Malcolm X is the first non-documentary, and the first American film, to be given permission to film in Mecca (or within the Haram Sharif). A second unit film crew was hired to film in Mecca because non-Muslims, such as Lee, are not allowed inside the city. Lee fought very hard to get filming in Mecca but Warner Bros. initially refused to put up the money for location shooting. New Jersey was considered for filming the Mecca segments. In the end, Lee got money and permission together for filming in Mecca.[15]

In addition to Nelson Mandela, the film featured cameos by Christopher Plummer (as the prison's Catholic chaplain), Peter Boyle (as a police officer), William Kunstler (as a judge), as well as activists Al Sharpton and Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale (as street preachers).[16]

The film was made shortly after Mandela's 1990 release from prison and during the negotiations to end apartheid in South Africa. Lee explained that he made "the connection between Soweto and Harlem, Nelson and Malcolm, and what Malcolm talked about: pan-Africanism, trying to build these bridges between people of color. He is alive in children in classrooms in Harlem, in classrooms in Soweto."[6] Mandela ends the film with a quote from Malcolm X himself, with Malcolm in a film clip saying the last four words. The quote goes: "We declare our right on this earth, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being, in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary."