Amistad

Eli (00:01.452)
Hello and welcome to the establishing shot a podcast where we do deep dives into directors and their filmography's I am your host Eli Price and we are here on episode 70 of the podcast I am alone today as you can see if you're watching If you're listening, I'm just telling you but I'm alone today solo episode for this week But we are continuing in our Spielberg series

in the middle portion of his career right now covering his movies of the 90s. And we are into 1997 and covering his movie Amistad today. So we don't have a guest, obviously, to introduce. And I don't really have.

Eli (01:02.2)
So yeah, we're gonna just jump right into it, I guess. I did wanna say, I guess before we do that, if you have not reviewed the podcast and you've enjoyed listening, I would really appreciate it if you would just hit the pause button. It takes maybe a minute to give it a review and a rating on Apple and Spotify especially, but anywhere where you listen.

I would love for you to leave a review. It just helps the visibility of the podcast, helps other people to find it. And if you like it, I would hope that you would want other people to find it and like it as well. So just give a quick review. It really just takes a minute. And I'd be okay if you stop listening into that unless you're like driving or something. But yeah, go ahead and do that. I would greatly appreciate it. But yeah, other than that, I'm just going to jump right in.

we are covering Amistad today. This is, man, I don't even know how many films Spielberg has done at this point. you know, it's his, let's see, fourth film of the nineties. So, a little bit slower, than, than his, run in the eighties. He is pumping them out in the eighties.

And a little slower now. So let's see. This would be, if you, if you don't count dual, this is his one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 movie. if you count the Twilight Zone 17th, if you don't count the Twilight Zone. So, I know that's what you tuned in today to listen to me count on the podcast. but that's a lot of movies. and we have.

decent amount more to go. yeah, we're moving here. We're on his 18th movie, really getting into the weeds of things. And really 19th you count Duel, which I kind of do because I don't really count his other two TV movies. They're there. But Duel was a legit movie that did have a run in theaters technically in Europe. So yeah, so you know,

Eli (03:22.892)
He's gotten, he's done a lot at this point. He's, he's done a lot and we're getting into his mid nineties. He's coming off of the most successful year ever. He goes back and has a little dip with the lost world, Jurassic park, not terribly. It made its money, but it's not terribly well received. And so, you know, he's, he's looking for something to do. He's started his new studio.

with a couple other guys, Dreamworks, which we all now know, very well. but at the time it was brand new, started that in 94. the Lost World Jurassic Park was not a Dreamworks movie because that franchise was already with Universal. So we had to make the Lost World with Universal. but he's, moving into 1997, three years after Dreamworks was started and doing his first movie under his new studio.

in Amistad. Now next week a little bit of a teaser. I'm going to do a little bit of a kind of I'll have a review of a movie that a listener wanted me to review. It's actually not just a listener but a supporter. So if you do support the podcast you can pick a movie that I have to review. And so that's what happened. So it'll seem a little bit random but that's because a

supporter of the show picked it for me to review. So I'll do that next week, but along with that I'm going to kind of go through the history of Spielberg starting up DreamWorks. And so we'll get into that a little bit next week. But not this week. This week we're talking about Amistad. Amistad started back in 19, I believe 84 maybe with Debbie Allen.

She was kind of a she had done some acting. She was a dancer and choreographer especially And she had been trying to get this movie made for like ten years she had read this book the Amistad one writings on black history and culture by John Alfred Williams and Charles F Harris she read this book in college this found this forgotten story of these

Eli (05:48.826)
1839, slaves taken from Africa, captured. They were on this Spanish ship, the Amistad, with a Spanish crew trying to take them to sell them. I'm not exactly sure what they were doing with them, but they were on their way. these captured Africans revolted and took over the ship. They were captured off the coast of Connecticut.

And eventually they were imprisoned for like two years. It took two years and then they were finally in the Supreme Court. went, the case went all the way to the Supreme Court and yeah, they were acquitted and freed in 1841, two years later. This was kind of a first in US history. I guess a decently important case. And it was 20 years before the Civil War. The Civil War started 20 years later. So.

This was, you know, this is an important story and it's an important event in history. Debbie Allen really wanted a movie made about it. She saw it as a major event, really unknown by most people, even in the black community, which Debbie Allen is a black woman. So, yeah, she talked about how it really spoke to her. It's about her ancestors and in 1984, she acquired the rights.

to another book called Black Mutiny, The Revolt on the Schooner Amistad. I think you say schooner and not schooner, but who knows? So she gets her rights to this book. She's trying to get it made. It's been 10 years and she's struggling to find a director. Even directors like Spike Lee and John Singleton, black directors.

knew about the story, Alan talked to them, but they just didn't think they could get it financed. you know, why they, their question was why would a studio give millions to make this movie about black people by black people? it really unfortunate. but they passed, they just didn't think it was going to work with them directing it. and lo and behold, as I said, Spielberg had just started DreamWorks.

Eli (08:11.744)
and they had the goal of putting art back at the center of filmmaking. we'll talk a little bit about that next week. But Alan talks to Laurie McDonald and Walter Parks, who at the time were in charge of development at DreamWorks. And they get her a 25 minute meeting with Steven Spielberg in his, you know, of course, busy schedule. So Alan, Debbie Allen had seen Schindler's List and thought that, hey, Spielberg nailed it with Schindler's List.

I think he can handle a story like this. yeah, their 25 minute meeting turns into an hour meeting. And this is a quote from Spielberg. said, she had me after 10 minutes, really. She had pressed upon me the importance of the African culture and this film industry does not make movies about African subjects. And Debbie was passionate. Why can't Hollywood change? Unquote. And so, you know, it's Spielberg, you know, was like, okay, let's.

Let's try this. I saw some conflicting information. I think one thing said that Spielberg had never heard the story, but then I'm pretty sure in the making of documentary, Spielberg says he had heard briefly of the story. So maybe he just was unfamiliar with the details of it and could have kind of heard something about it before. But the story really touched him. He was really moved by the story and the idea and the historical event.

Part of the reason he felt closer to it, him and Kate Capshaw, his wife, had at this point adopted two black kids along with their three biological children. Well, not biological for both of them, but children from them each. But they had also adopted two black kids, Theo and Michaela. And yeah, so this was really, really spoke to him. It was a movie that

I think I heard or read that Spielberg felt like making this movie. I would love for my kids, and white, to watch this, learn about this event where children before might not have known about it. this, as I said before, became his first DreamWorks project. And he was really, really walking on eggshells after the color purple criticisms that he had gotten. He knew he'd get backlash.

Eli (10:37.73)
for the wide perspective. Kind of knew that going in. And we'll really get into that, all of that later. I'm gonna try to cover mostly the history and the production stuff for a bit because that's, it's a lot. It's a lot to talk about. And you know, I feel like I'm not qualified to talk about it. So maybe I'm getting into this a bit like Spielberg and...

talking on something that really someone else should be talking on. I did find a black critic of the time to pull some quotes from so I could make sure I was representing a black perspective well. And I know that's nuanced and there's different opinions and different perspectives in the black community. It's not a singular perspective. But I did want to make sure I was doing my due diligence as another white man trying to cover a tough subject.

But again, we'll get into that later. I just wanted to give that caveat that I am well aware that I am not the one to make the judgment, but I will make a judgment nonetheless. This is a podcast, I've got to cover this movie, and so I've got to talk about it. So yeah, so he attempted to circumvent the criticism. He called in some historians trying to make the movie more

approachable. This guy, David Franzoni, wrote one of the first treatments of the movie. Franzoni later wrote Gladiator in 2000, so that's something that you would recognize from him. He doesn't have a very big filmography, but he did write Gladiator. The story was accurate, but Spielberg was not really satisfied with it, and so he asked his buddy Stephen Zellian to come rework it.

Gazalian of course was the writer of Schindler's List with Spielberg. Due to some like legal wrangling, Gazalian didn't get any screen credit for writing in the movie, but he did do a lot of reworking on that Franzoni script. But yeah, when you watch the movie, Franzoni is the one that gets the screen credit. yeah, more crew. You have Debbie Allen.

Eli (13:02.442)
Spielberg and Colin Wilson producing the movie the screenplay as I said by David Franzoni and Steve Zalian Janusz Kaminski is returning again and will continue to return for the rest of Spielberg's career to date at least as the director of photography cinematographer So Mitch Dubin is the camera operator for the movie. He does have some assistant directors some returning

At least this first one returning from Schindler's List, Sergio Mimica-Gizan, Sean Hoban, and Eric Jones. It seems like Spielberg has, as his career has gone on, is taking more use of assistant directors and second unit directors more and more. He's got a lot going on, so he needs some help. Of course, his tried and true editor, Michael Kahn, and tried and true composer, and John Williams are...

Working with him on the film You have some sound guys in Charles L Campbell and Lewis L Edelman Who have kind of been on and off working with Spielberg since ET? This another guy Doug Jackson Is not not working with Spielberg quite as much and then Rod jug Ron Judkins is a name that we've been saying more recently Working on movies like hook in Jurassic Park with him And yeah, Rick Carter's back

for the production design. had started working with Spielberg on his Amazing Stories television series and then jumped on with Jurassic Park, which of course had some incredible production design. So he's kind of kept working with Rick Carter, set decorator Rosemary Brandenburg and Tristan Luperty, costume designer Ruth E. Carter. So here you're starting to get some more black crew in

Ruth E. Carter. Ruth Carter worked a lot with Spike Lee over his career and you may or may not recognize her name because she won for a costume design for the movie Black Panther when it came out. So she's been nominated several times, maybe four times and has won that once. Special Effects was done by Tom Ryba who had worked some with Spielberg on Hook.

Eli (15:27.378)
And then casting was done by Victoria Thomas. If you look at Victoria Thomas' filmography for casting work, she's done a ton of work filling movies with black actors. And really, when I was looking through, go look through her filmography. I'm not going to pull it up right now, but you'll notice, man, these are a lot of movies that are full of really great

black actor performances. So really smart to get in Victoria Thomas to help with the casting. And speaking of the cast, let's get into that. Top build is Morgan Freeman as Theodore Jotson. This is a character that is completely fictitious, so you know, he's not... a lot of these characters are actually in the historical account. This character is not.

But Freeman was one of the first people that Spielberg showed the script to and he actually wanted him to play Kovie. But Freeman read the script and he really actually wanted to be Jodson. So Freeman says I really like this character. I want to play him. And Spielberg was like, you know what? Sure, you've got it. It's all yours.

Nathaniel Hawthorne plays Martin Van Buren. I don't really have much to say about him. It's fine, a fine performance. Anthony Hopkins plays John Quincy Adams. Old bumbling man walking around. It was originally offered to Dustin Hoffman. Hoffman declined, which seems to be a trend now, Hoffman being offered.

decent parts and declining spillwork so I don't know what's up with that but yeah Hopkins was the second choice and gets the role he had I can't remember if Hopkins had won and I'm pretty sure he had won an Oscar at this point so he was you know well regarded sir Anthony Hopkins that is and I liked Hopkins was talking about he found

Eli (17:49.07)
picture of John Quincy Adams. They showed him a picture and he was like, you know, we actually kind of look alike. And they showed the picture in the making of and yeah, it was just similar, similar face structure and stuff. So that's kind of cool. Matthew McConaughey plays Roger Sherman Baldwin. McConaughey is kind of up and coming at this point. He had finally recently been offered a major role in a popular film.

The real Baldwin is much older than McConaughey, but he plays the part well. And Spielberg really thought that McConaughey did a great job with this part. That was kind of a tough part to play in his opinion. yeah, McConaughey, think does, he does a good performance, I think, in this film. Stellan Skarsgård as Tappen is kind of a nothing character in a way.

Pete Possilthwaite as Hollabird, he's kind of the prosecuting lawyer throughout the movie. He's kind of in and out. You don't really get you learn much about him, but Possilthwaite of course does a great performance perfectly. He's not like overly villainous, but enough that you don't like him. David Paimer plays Secretary John Forsyth in the movie. You have

Anna Paquin who had just... I want to say she got a nomination for the piano. She was young in the piano which had come out earlier in the 90s and so she's a little older here in 97 but not a ton and she plays the young Queen Isabella, Queen of Spain, who was a young child at this point in history and you know she's in

I think she shows up twice for like a minute each, if that, and does this, fine, I guess Spanish accent is not really a much of a performance or anything to talk about. Thomas million plays Calderon. man, I really should have looked up, this guy's name and how to pronounce it because I've heard it several times.

Eli (20:09.656)
but it's still a hard name for me to pronounce. But Cho'atel Ejafor plays Ensign Kovey, the part that was originally offered to Freeman. And this was one of his early roles. He's young in this movie. Ejafor would eventually go on to win an Oscar for 12 Years a Slave in the lead role there. Really great actor. He's great.

in this part. He gets a pretty decent amount of screen time too in this movie. So yeah, he's great in the movie. You have the two Spanish sailors that are transporting the slaves on the Amistad and Gino Silva as Ruiz and John Ortiz as Montes. They're fine, I guess. Peter Firth as Captain Fitzgerald, who is the kind of British captain that

testifies in court and Blows up the fortress at the end spoiler as you know this is spoiler podcast Jeremy Northam plays judge Coughlin the young judge that comes in and kind of surprises everyone and gives them declares that they're free which they Had to not be free for a while still Arliss Howard is back after just like possil's weight after lost world playing John C Calhoun he shows up for like

few minutes does a really great performance as this is Calhoun the vice president at this point I think. Yeah I think so or was at some point I don't know but great you know southern you know I guess antagonist in a way shows up says gives his speech well performed and then you don't see him again.

And then you have the casting of the slaves, which is complicated. Spielberg had demanded that everyone cast be African-born and able to use an African language. And the casting team had to work really hard to coordinate work visas. Some actors lost out on parts because they couldn't meet the production schedule. But yeah, big ordeal getting together that cast that played all of the slaves.

Eli (22:35.048)
a group of like 43 or something like that. You also have some more prominent ones like Rizak Adoti plays Yamba. He's a guy that has the Bible, if you recall that in the movie. And then of course, I saved the best for last and Jaimon Honsu, one of his probably his breakout role here as Sinki.

Eli (23:04.214)
Jaimon was, this part of Sinkai was a struggle to cast. They had offered it a Cupid Gooding Jr. He was coming off the Oscar for Jerry Maguire. He declined the role, which I read that later. He said that that was a mistake. He should have taken it, which maybe, I don't know. I don't know that Gooding Jr. would have been as good as Jaimon was in this role. But nonetheless,

They they're really struggling. It's nine weeks before shooting and they still have not cast it despite lots of auditions in London and Paris and West Africa. And Spielberg's getting impatient. He's really wanting to keep momentum for saving Private Ryan going. And so he almost just kind of postponed the production of Amistad because he didn't want to have to postpone saving Private Ryan.

trying to cast this part. And finally, Jaimon Hanzu arrives. He's this 33 year old model from Benin. He was born in Benin. His parents had sent him to France for school at the age of 14. Goes on, he drops out of college and was actually living homeless on the streets of Paris for a while. And then someone apparently kind of sees him on the street, says, hey, you look interesting. And...

Like I have a photographer friend I'd love you to connect with and does he does he connects with this photographer guy and works for seven years as a model before this. so he, yeah, he's, he's comfortable in front of a camera. He's been doing modeling for awhile. He's done some, film work, like in he's done some B movies. He's done a few music videos.

So this really is his first first movie. He's if you look at his filmography He has a few things maybe before this is nothing that you would recognize. I think they're kind of nothing movies For the most part, but Spielberg was charmed by him This is a quote from Spielberg. He said Jermon has an inner peace and an outer strength that made him perfect for the role unquote and I agree. I think he's really like

Eli (25:29.996)
the best cast person in the movie. This kind of like complete unknown guy coming in and man, he just does an incredible job. So that's the cast. Production starts in February of 1997. They do some filming in Puerto Rico. They do some filming in Rhode Island.

They do some in Massachusetts and a little bit in California. So they're kind of all over for this movie. And then they're, they're also do some in Connecticut. That's where the Amistad replica was built. onset, a few days into filming, Debbie Allen kind of points out the almost total absence of African-Americans on the technical crew to Spielberg. and this is a quote from her and she says, quote,

And then the next day there were people. was then she's kind of speaking on, you know, kind of defending Spielberg. She says, it wasn't intentional. get a group of people you're used to working with and you use them all the time. Which is true. That's, you know, she recognized that Spielberg was just getting the people that he knows and that he works with well. And, that's kind of what directors do, but, but, you know, I appreciate that she pointed that out to him.

And I appreciate that. He was like, yeah, you're right. Let's get some African-Americans on this, technical group. so that was, that was kind of cool. Debbie Allen, went on and the making of to talk about that. One of the most difficult things was just creating the Africans, recreating the Africans that were on the Amistad, kind of recreate giving the actors to get in that mindset.

Chike Okpala and the making of doc was one of the actors He he said that there has never been a movie with so many Africans from the continent come together for a movie in America, especially not about them a story about them and so You know he he appreciated that this actor did they do bring in this guy. Dr. Arthur Abraham. He's a leading expert

Eli (27:52.93)
African cultures and he advised on all aspects of the Mende tribe, which is the tribe that this group was from in Sierra Leone. yes, Spielberg said he was just brilliant in tutoring the actors and yeah, did a great job. He talked about, you know, when they were trying to learn the language, Dr. Abraham would, you know, he had no trouble intervening and correcting things and fixing things and

teaching them what they needed to do. great that he had him on set all the time. Spielberg, in the making of it, shows Spielberg at one point kind of going through and shaking their hands. Yeah, and just really thanking them, really appreciative of them. They're having to wear these chains all the time and Spielberg was just like, I really, really appreciate it. Yeah.

Eli (28:50.12)
we'll talk more about that in a minute. One thing I did think was funny was cool and then funny after is that Anthony Hopkins' long speech at the end was seven pages of script and Hopkins did it all in one take, which is really, really incredible. Spielberg had been kind of funny about the the sir title. He thought it was kind of silly maybe.

But after this, Spielberg said that he was just like astonished that Hopkins was able to do that. And he was calling him sir thereafter, which I thought was funny. And yeah, and I think I even heard somewhere too that just like a couple years after he had said that, really just a year after he had said that, Possilthwaite was, no, it was earlier that year. had said Pothl-

Possibly is the best actor he'd ever worked with. He said the same thing about Hopkins. I don't know if he just took the throne for Spielberg or if he just says that too much. The actors did love Spielberg. Hopkins, you know, just commented on, you know, what a great director he was. said, Freeman really appreciated it. He said he's ended up to his eyebrows, but he still is always like taking suggestions from

us the actors or other people on set really open to hear ideas which you do hear about Spielberg which is cool Matthew McConaughey was saying just talking about how like he sees everything he would show up he talked about how he would show up on set and for the first 10 minutes he's like I don't know what we're gonna do I don't know exactly what shots we're gonna get and he's he McConaughey said he's just kind of

takes it in, looks around, and then after about 10 minutes, he just like goes, takes off. He knows exactly what he wants. He can see everything, jumps in, knows what to do with the camera. And yeah, he's working with Janusz Kaminski. This is their third movie together now. So they're kinda getting some rapport at this point. Spielberg was looking at some paintings by the Spanish painter Goya.

Eli (31:13.894)
And he really thought that was a good inspiration for kind of the atmosphere of the movie. So in Goya, there's a lot of use of like darkness and shadows and kind of just that. Really, a lot of what you see in the movie kind of comes from that inspiration from Goya. And yeah, I think it's a good looking movie. I don't think it's like. I don't think it looks like incredible, and I don't think it looks like.

horrible. It's you've got some really good shots. We'll talk about some of the shots in the sequences later on. Yeah, you know, I think it looks good. The lighting is always really good. There's a, you know, very cinematic, I guess you would say use of lightning like on the ship with the rain. yeah, it's interesting. It's. We talked about on the color purple episode how

Spielberg worked with his crew to really figure out how to light for black actors which you know at the time was actually like it you're advancing because there wasn't It wasn't given that much care back then in the 80s to that up to that point and so Spielberg had done some work with You know lighting black black actors well in the past probably brought some of that into this with Jan Uus

So yeah, you know something to appreciate as far as that goes Production more about the production the actors Had to learn Mende which was the language of the Mende tribe in Sierra Leone Spielberg did not want them speaking English with a with an accent He wanted them speaking the language. And so dr. Arthur Abraham as I said, he was a linguistic expert as well

Like I said, he advised on all the African culture stuff. So he ensured that there was comprehensible Mende. Debbie Allen, she was a producer, but she did a lot more than most producers do on this production. She worked with the African actors on their mental state. She was really trying to get them in the mindset of what they would be experiencing and what these people experienced back then.

Eli (33:42.914)
There was in the making of docket showed them kind of in a look kind of like a dance studio and they were really working on movement and Choreography and you know, they were practicing what it would be like to walk in the chains. So they had the chains on Yeah, just movement and posture and all of that. They worked hard on you know, she's telling them this is what's happening to you This is what they're saying to you, you know, how are you going to react and yeah

Akpala that I had mentioned earlier one of those actors had said that it was a real experience for him. He said after the first five minutes you Sometimes you can forget you're in a movie It's just it's it's hard Another guy Samuel PA who is a sink a is the the character name his African name is actually Sang by PA so Samuel PA is a descendant of his and was on the movie. So that's kind of cool

but he, he said he's just very stressful to go through. it was. Yeah. It was hard on everyone. Jaimon talked about how on the first day of shooting, he felt so ashamed to be treated like that. and yeah, just really, really tough. they used real chains. The actors will get uncomfortable. It was, it was very real for these people at times on set. And so, yeah.

It's tough because you've got this white director, you've got him directing black people playing slaves in chains and it's really messy. really... It's different to me than his work on the color purple. In a way, yeah, it's just really messy and we'll talk more about it, like I said, in a bit. I really want to try to get a little bit into the weeds of that.

but that's, the actors did feel the realness of that, as they were on set. Rick Carter, their production designer talked about how when you do a period film, you really want to. So yeah, you've got the costumes and yeah, you've got this, but really you're looking to create an impression of transporting someone to that time. So it's, you're really wanting to capture that.

Eli (36:09.826)
feeling of being in that time, not just like get the physical things right. so like they really did a lot of location scouting. Spielberg was talking about how you can't do like DC or anything like that, cause it's, it's too modernized now. So they had to kind of go around, in new England and Northeast and really look for good locations. like I said, the Mystic Connecticut, they,

have a harbor there and they built the replica of the homestead you'll see some scenes that kind of had a harbor and that's that's Mystic Connecticut so yeah and I thought this was funny Morgan Freeman was talking about part of the allure of acting is wearing costumes he's like once I'm sometimes when I get to do a period p-film and I get to be in costume I'm like

feel like I'm really acting. which I thought was funny and kind of endearing. one of the makeup guys, William Corso was talking about how arduous of a process it was. have 300 people every day that you have to change into, you know, through costume and makeup and hair into various people that you're going to see on the street, vendors and artisans and, you know, well to do people and beggars and

Yeah, you just have all these different kinds of people that you're creating and putting on the streets as background people walking by so a lot of work when you do a peer-review piece as far as that goes. And yeah, I think they did a fine job with all that. The score, I didn't really read a whole lot about the score. None of my sources really mentioned it hardly.

or at all. It's a fine score. It was kind of stuck in my head for a few days. Afterwards, you kind of have the African kind of chanting. I should have looked up what if they're, if they're saying something, maybe in Mende or something. But I'm not really sure. So yeah, I didn't, didn't get my research done as far as the score goes. But, but I did think it was fine. It was a solid John Williams score.

Eli (38:32.512)
Not one of my favorites, but good. Yeah, the filming was completed on time. Spielberg moved on to the pre-production of Saving Private Ryan during the post-production of this movie. he, I guess similar to going on to working on Schindler's List while Jurassic Park was in post-production. A little different in this way.

than before, but yeah, he was really just wanting to move on to saving Private Ryan. So he did do supervising for the post and editing work for Amistad, but yeah, he was kind of ready to, I guess, move on to the next thing whenever this was done filming. yeah, he does that. This is something that we do need to talk about because they finished filming, they're doing a post, they're getting ready to release it, but...

all throughout the production of this movie. There's this kind of shadow over it. There's this plagiarism accusation by a woman named Barbara Chase Rebo. She had a 1989 book, a novel I believe, called Echo of Lions about this story. The story of the the slay the Amistad people and their revolt and trial and all that. And yeah she she had written this novel

In 89, she had actually pitched it to some production companies, Amblin being one of those. And so she was claiming that Amblin had listened to her proposal. They declined the story. They felt like Sink A as a subject was too big. She said that they didn't return the manuscript or the novel they were sent, which I don't know what the custom is for that. I don't know if you're, if you reject it, if you're supposed to send it back or if it's just kind of assumed that.

Yeah, you send it to us, you know, why would we send it back? I don't know. It seems weird that you would think that they were going to send it back to me, but maybe that is what you're supposed to do. I don't know.

Eli (00:02.126)
Yeah, so she had tried to get like an amicable settlement that Dreamworks rejected. Amicable, guess, depending on whose perspective, Dreamworks rejects her. kind of, I read that she demanded $10 million and screen credit. And so Dreamworks rejected that. They were arguing that a story based on history cannot be owned by anyone and that

Debbie Allen had been carrying this project around since 1978 and even buying, you know rights to a book in 84 So Yeah, Barbara Chase Robo was claiming that they plagiarized specifically the fictional depiction of the John Quincy Adams and C &K Relationship as well as the black printer Jotson. So I don't know if in her book

The character was named Jotson, Theodore Jotson. If it was, it's kind of like, okay. But definitely the idea that there was this black printer, I guess that was like an ex-slave kind of thing. What she, you know, was in her novel. She investigates further. She finds out that the initial script was called The Other Lion, which, you know, it's like, okay, but that was like what they...

that was part of the story, know, that was part of Sink-A's kind of why people were following him sort of thing. you know, you can't lay claim on, I have Lion in my title and they have Lion in theirs. Well, yeah, it's part of the story. And then she had also kind of found out that the end of the film had changed during shooting because they were thinking that it was too close to her novel. So, yeah, it's kind of like...

Okay, so, but they changed it. I don't know, it's all, who knows, it's very sticky, all that stuff. Two days before the movie was released, her complaint was deemed inadmissible by a judge on the grounds that the act of plagiarism had not been clearly established, which I can see, you you can tell by how I'm reacting that I'm like, okay, but, you know, so the...

Eli (02:26.776)
The only thing that I could say would be like, this is, you know, if she had, if the black printer was named Jodson and did the same things that this guy did, because it's a completely fictional character, that would be like, Hmm. but other than that, I'm kind of like, I don't know that it seems like there is the same story. You know, Debbie Allen's had this rights to this other book since 84. I don't know that you can claim just because you pitched it.

and they didn't like your pitch. don't know. It's all sticky. They did eventually in February of 1998, a few days before Oscar nominations were announced, they did have a settlement out of court for a confidential amount. And really, from what I can tell, Chase-Rebo after that praised the film. She thought it was great. yeah, just weird.

She wasn't going to though until she got her settlement, guess. Yeah, so the film releases in wide in December 25th of 1997. It did have a limited release on December 16th, I believe. Yeah, Worldwide Box Office of 67.5 million. It had a...

The limited open was in 322 theaters. It made like four and a half million on that opening weekend. So I think it was number five in the box office for that weekend. And it really doesn't take off huge after it expands. Sometimes you can do a limited release. But once you expand it, it really takes off.

But yeah, this one didn't really. I think the budget was 30 to 40 million somewhere in there. And so eventually making 67 and a half million really like isn't that great. You do make your money back and make some profit, but that's not really what you're looking for with a movie like this that had a budget that big. And it didn't help that

Eli (04:50.706)
The Titanic opens the next weekend and it was just buried by the Titanic which obviously was became Took over from Jurassic Park the highest grossing film of all time for a while So yeah, and then it probably didn't help to that it really Even though the plagiarism thing didn't go anywhere in court it was still kind of weighed down by that and

controversy around that and then also just kind of racial controversy in general that Spielberg I think kind of expected. Weighed it down a bit kind of like a here we go again with Spielberg but ultimately the reception was mixed. Reviews were pretty mixed. Many

A lot of people judge it as an important story, kind of weighed down by its message, which I can see. then, you know, people talking about Spielberg failing to make people forget it was directed by a white man. Even years later in 2014, Steve McQueen, who directed 12 Years a Slave, gave it a resounding third thumbs down saying,

Who are the heroes in the film Anthony Hopkins and Matthew McConaughey for me? Maybe because I'm black a story with slaves has to be told from their point of view And I as you will see in a minute tend to agree there were some positive reviews I watched a clip from the Ebert and Siskel little review show and they both really liked it I was surprised but yeah, they they both

really enjoyed it. They thought it was well acted and looked great and they, I guess they thought the story was good. Yeah, interesting. But yeah, so the movie does get four Oscar nominations, no wins. The nominations were for Anthony Hopkins for Supporting Actor, Cinematography, Costume Design and Music. So yeah.

Eli (07:11.266)
So yeah, this is one of Ruthie Carter's Oscar nominations for costume design. Yeah, no wins, I think probably rightly so. I don't know that any of those really deserve the win a whole lot, but yeah. Let's go back to, that's kind of it as far as the production. There's not a whole lot out there about this movie, really because it didn't really.

You know, if you say, have you seen Spielberg's Amistad? People are going to be like, what is Spielberg's Amistad? You know, most people haven't probably even heard of the movie, just like most people hadn't heard of this historical event and really still didn't. I really hadn't ever heard of this event until preparing for this, this podcast and this watching this movie.

So it definitely didn't do the job that it he was hoping for it to do Yeah, so problems with Spielberg directing this is I found this article from back then by a Columnist named Cortland Malloy. He was writing for Let me find it. What public he was wanting writing for the Washington Post

and this was a review from, December 14th in 1997, but I'm going to quote him a few times out of this review. but I figured I'd start with a quote by him, to get us into the, this subject. and Malloy says, Amistad is essentially about how two white guys, actors, Anthony Hopkins and Matthew McConaughey come to the rescue of some Africans bound for slavery.

There's some fine acting in the movie, but the film does not come close to doing for African Americans in the Middle Passage what Spielberg Schindler's List did for the Jews and the Holocaust. So, you know, I think that's ultimately what we have to look at. Because that's why Debbie Allen went to Spielberg. She thought he did Schindler's List. You know, I think he can handle this subject. And while...

Eli (09:26.476)
I get where she was coming from. really think that just isn't, I don't know, that just doesn't ring true to me. And here's the thing, you know, we talked about Spike Lee and others kind of were like, I don't, we're not going to be able to get the budget we need to make this movie. It's a good story, but their studios just aren't going to give black directors with a bunch of black actors, the money we want and need to make the movie.

That's very unfortunate and The problem is So do you need someone with the cloud with speed Steven Spielberg to make this movie? Do you need Steven Spielberg so that you can you know as the director so that you can really like get the budget you need and The acting the prestigious actors that you Here's the problem with that for the color purple

I would say you kind of did. It was unprecedented to have all black cast like the color purple and a big movie like that. You really needed a guy like Steven Spielberg who kind of had earned the right to, you know, to make that sort of movie and really not earn the right to make that movie particularly. I think that's

saying that kind of wrong but had to earn the clout to say this is what I'm doing y'all give me the money and you know I'm Steven Spielberg y'all give me the money and I'm gonna make the movie and there's there's truth to that the problem with it here is this is this is with his own studio it's with Dreamworks he started this new studio he didn't have to direct this movie

You know, he obviously is really itching to get on to Saving Private Ryan So while he was touched by the story and thought it was important He obviously like has other things on his mind as far as directing goes so I question you know that makes me kind of question like You know Spielberg when you listen to interviews, he's always very sincere, but I'm like You're really itching to go on to Saving Private Ryan. You almost like

Eli (11:51.118)
just canceled this one because you couldn't find Cast Cinque. And so there's that. also like you own the studio, man. You can just find a black director that you think is worth investing in and give it to him. It's your studio. Yeah, you have two other co-founders, but it's your studio. You're the one ultimately deciding who to give the money to to make these movies.

and I don't know. I'm just like, so that argument just doesn't work. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. You need someone like Steven Spielberg with his clout and his power in the industry to get this movie made, but he doesn't have to be the one direct to direct it when he owns the studio that's producing it. so that's an issue. I, I think he's well intended.

Very, very, very extremely sincere and well-intended, but good intentions are not always an excuse for a lack of wisdom and a lack of just knowing when's the right time to be well-intended and what's the right way to use those good intentions. Yeah, I don't know.

There's problematic things in this movie that to me it's like, okay.

Eli (13:28.576)
Yes, we're depicting history. So does it matter if the director is white or black or whatever? We're depicting history, so we need to depict things the way they are. The problem is, yes, I think it does matter. And the reason is

You have a guy like Steve McQueen who directs 12 Years a Slave. 12 Years a Slave is a phenomenal movie. Is it fun to watch? Absolutely not. I remember seeing that movie in theaters. It was a really packed theater, probably on opening weekend, and it was completely dead quiet in that theater afterwards.

people kind of filed out, nobody really said anything. There were maybe some hushed whispers here and there, but I walked all the way to my car. think I said bye to the guy I had gone to see it with and that's about it. We didn't really talk afterwards. And it's because it's a devastating and hard and man, just a tough watch on a subject that should be tough to watch. And I just feel like

with Schindler's List Spielberg was very close to this he was wrestling he had some interwrestling with his own Jewishness that he was going through he was really close to this movie he was in Poland where it happened at Auschwitz at these camps filming with you know people with a producer who had survived it

This different. It's different. So yes, he did it with Schindler's List. He's not the man to do it for a movie like this. He's not close enough to it. He doesn't have the experience or the lineage to really tap into what he needs to tap into.

Eli (15:37.95)
Are there scenes that are harrowing and hard to watch in this? Yes, but it's all about the tone and the consistency of that tone. And I don't think the tone is consistent enough for the movie to have earned.

what it shows. The tone is very different from Schindler's List. It feels at times light and inspirational, and then with some harrowing stuff thrown in, most of the scenes of the slaves are just like them filing in back and forth between, you know, where they're being held and the courthouse and them just kind of standing there.

Eli (16:24.632)
I don't know. you know, you have things like a slave seeing a black man in a carriage and then calling out to him and him ignoring them. And they're like, he's a white man. It's like, yeah, do we need that from a white director? Do we need that? You know, does he really understand what's going on there? Maybe, maybe he can empathize with it to a degree, but. And then like I was talking about the, these harrowing scenes, you have.

naked black bodies being whipped and tossed overboard. And I question is this earned by the film? Are these scenes earned? Even just regardless of whether the director is white or black, these scenes just do not feel earned by the movie. When they started happening, I was taken aback and I was like, this is tough to watch, but also like the movie has not been dealing with this. It's just thrown at you.

and yeah, it, and you start off with the revolt and these, these black people like,

you know, massacring all of the Spanish crewmen and then you see them, you don't really know who they are or what they're about for most of the movie. And then all of sudden you're being thrown into them being whipped and tossed overboard, tied to stones and they're all naked and they're all in chains and being, you know, brutally beaten.

And I'm just like, this has not been earned. This is another quote from Cortland-Milloy. He says, quote, we see the face of a black man who is being whipped to death, but we don't see the face of the white man who's whipping him. We see black people drowning after being thrown overboard, but we never see who did it. The faces of the people shown actually catching slaves are black. The hands counting the money are white. Unquote.

Eli (18:36.02)
And I think he's getting at something to another aspect of this is it's it's like Spielberg wants to show the the horrors of what happened maybe without stepping on too many toes and that's that's a big problem with a movie like this that's that's a big big problem because you shouldn't depict that

unless you're willing to step on toes, unless you're willing to make people as uncomfortable as possible. Because that's the thing, it's uncomfortable to watch as it is, but honestly not uncomfortable enough. And it's not uncomfortable enough seeing the slaves led back and forth, these people enslaved and imprisoned, waiting, you know,

waiting to hear if they're going to be freed or not, having no control over themselves.

Eli (19:40.51)
There's a lot of problems here. And then a big problem in the script, I think. Baldwin at one point talking to Senkei equates himself and his situation. You know, he's like, I'm receiving death threats. You know, I'm not gonna have really a job after this. I, you know, I need you just as much as you need me sort of thing. And he's kind of equating his situation to and from with death threats from his clients to Senkei's situation.

And the film doesn't really deal with this. It doesn't challenge it. And that's a problem. I don't think you get a scene like that with a black director who would be aware of the issues with that. And yes, have people on set. You have a producer that wanted you to make this movie that approached you for it. But you're Steven Spielberg who, you know,

Who's really gonna come and say like, hey, you can't do this. Hey, this is all wrong. He would probably welcome it or say he would welcome it. And I really do think Spielberg does take advice well and make adjustments well. And when things don't work, he makes adjustments. We've seen that through his career, but I just don't think he was getting that on this movie with things like that.

Eli (21:09.388)
Does he get anything right? It's, you maybe, you know, you have John Quincy Adams bluntly point out that if Senke were white, he wouldn't be there. But, you know, that's obvious. And really in that, that context, it's kind of like everyone, the people that he's trying to convince don't really care. like that, that doesn't mean anything to them like it does to us now. and then he,

know, Senke at the end is like, what words did you use to convince them? And Hopkins Adams says yours, but he didn't really. He took his African idea of tapping into his ancestors and he kind of Americanized it. yeah, mean, it's appropriation. It's not using his words.

Appropriating his words, but I mean it worked and it helped them get free so that's good, but He didn't use his he didn't use his words I thought that was another problematic thing in the script that I don't know that you would have gotten that with a black director that was That is tapped into the black experience and knows that no, that's not what you did Another problem with

This is a choice by Spielberg. He tries to be real by not subtitling the African characters for a lot of the movie. The problem to me is that this dehumanizes them anymore because of the way that that is employed. This is another quote from Malloy on this. He says, quote, to me, that oversight echoes a powerful historical message that black humanity can exist only in relation to whites.

pause that quote. What he's talking about is really the only time that the African characters are subtitles is if they are talking to white people and there's not a translator and we need to understand it or if they're talking about what some white people are doing and it would be best for us to understand it. They're never subtitled if they're just on their own talking amongst themselves about themselves. So I'll start that quote over with that context.

Eli (23:30.286)
Now is this Spielberg's intention? No. He's just trying to be cinematic and make it real and you know we don't understand what they're saying but

you so we're just not gonna know, we have to try to feel what they're saying. But the reality is, it does come across this way. I was thinking the same thing when I was watching the movie. I was like, why can't I understand why, you know, I want to know what they're talking about amongst themselves. I don't want to just know what they're talking about when they're talking to Adams or Baldwin or, know, it's very frustrating.

Eli (24:29.422)
You know, we, you know, we go on to, you know, kind of really want to wrap this up. I'm just getting more for it. I'm starting to convince myself that I like this movie even less as I'm going through this episode. Cause, I kind of was feeling like it's an okay movie, but the more I think about these problems and issues, I'm like, I don't know. Maybe it's just, maybe there's, it's too problematic to say it's an okay movie. Maybe it's just not that great of a movie.

of these problems. The acting it's like yeah the acting's fine a great performance by I think by Ja-Man Hanzu can't I don't want to take that away from him because it's it's an incredible performance powerful visceral brutal but also like subdued at times and very dynamic yeah don't I can't take that away from him

Some the other acting is good, but it looks pretty good. It's Spielberg and Kaminsky. It's gonna look good. The production value is great. It's a big budget movie. It better be. But on the whole, it doesn't work. The script is just not good. There's all these problems. And then you're closing on the destruction of the Lumboko slave fortress.

Martin Van Buren lost the election, you and you're trying to give like this... I guess you have this inspirational speech by Hopkins and then you're cutting to the like this cathartic moment with the fortress being destroyed and you know we got our comeuppance because Van Buren lost the election with all of his political manipulations and yeah great

You get title cards about how Senkei returned home to his village destroyed by civil war. He didn't know where his family was. They probably were killed.

Eli (26:38.06)
When the movie ends, really just, you just want to know a story. It's like, honestly, like, yeah, it's important for American history, I guess this story, but for a movie, for me to be emotionally engaged in this and not just like be tuning in for a somewhat accurate history lesson, I really need.

emotional attachment and an emotional driving force and Senkei would be such the person and you see it in the film that's the thing you see moments like I think the moment where he is starting to open up more to Baldwin and Jodson and Tappan I think is theirs too Tappan is such a forgettable character at some point in the movie I'm just like what happened to that guy

But funny trail of thought. but yeah, you know, you have these moments where you really see not just like the depth of this character, his inner struggle and inner conflict, about who he is and you know, his, is he really a leader? Is he really, you know, who he has to act like he is? there's a ton there.

and it's acted so well by Ja-Man Han-Su that I'm like, man, I want more of Senkei. At the end of the day, it puts too much focus on too many of the wrong things. It even adds, you know, you're adding a fictional black character that kind of is, he's just a prop. He doesn't really do anything. Like what's the real function of Johtson in the movie? Just to be a

black ex-slave that can be like, yeah, we need to do this story. Like he's, and it's Morgan Freeman. And it's, like, what is the, what is this character? I don't know. Like he, I don't know. it's very frustrating. you do have people that defend it. Like, I'm listening to a biography, that it's kind of like a film by film biography of Spielberg by Molly high school.

Eli (29:02.71)
and she kind of defends it and says that he gives as much prominence and individuality to black characters as he can while staying true to history. And I just disagree. You could have a greatly historically accurate movie, but also like focus in and expand a character like Senke giving his perspective, giving him the

the majority of the screen time, the focus, the... Yeah, I don't know. I disagree with that. And this just doesn't have the great source material that the color purple had. So it has that against it as well. So did we need someone with the cloud of Steven Spielberg to make this? No, we didn't. We didn't need Steven Spielberg to make this movie. We needed Spielberg to...

find a black director to invest in to make this movie. That's what we needed. That's not what we got. I would like to think that if Spielberg this came across this table today, that's what we would get. But I don't know. It's tough. A couple other quibbles that are a little bit...

You know, I talked about the tone that was, that was a global, you know, it just a little bit on that. It's too many. It's too light with us. said, with harsh moments, throw down, just think about, you know, compare this movie to Schindler's list into 12 years of slave, two movies that I've talked about in this episode where you really feel the weight of the subject and in this movie, you just don't feel it. in fact, like the tone ends in an inspirational tone. Yeah. You have the.

upsetting title cards at the end about CK, but everything leading up to that has been kind of like Inspirational we can make a difference in America and we've got a I don't know is I Don't really know My other quibble is that the John Quincy Adams speech is this long, you know, I talked about he did it in one take That's great. But like it's kind of incomprehensible. I don't even know like he's tapping into the forefathers of America, I guess

Eli (31:27.674)
I don't really know what his point is in that like, we need to look to our slave owning ancestors to get inspiration to free the slaves. I don't know if that's the answer, John Quincy. And then it like cuts straight. He finishes his speech. He sits down and it cuts straight to the decision to free all of these African people.

Very anti-climactic, very... To me it was just incomprehensible. I was like, he's still talking? What is... And I didn't feel like he was really saying anything. I don't know. I've gotta move on from this. We're gonna move on from the problems. I think this movie is very problematic. I think I've made an okay case for that.

with the help of Cortland Malloy. Thank you Mr. Malloy for your review in 1997. It really like put to words. I'm gonna link that review in the Washington Post in the episode description so that you can read it for yourself, because he talks about him way more than I quoted him on, and I have another quote from him in a bit when we start wrapping things up. But I highly encourage you to go read his review.

and read his perspective on it, because I think that's important. He really put the words, some things that I couldn't really quite find the way to express, and so I really appreciated that, and it really helped me with my breakdown I just went through of why this is so problematic. But let's move on. Let's talk about some things that are

more Spielberg centered more filmmaking centered Spoke some Spielberg distinctives. We I always like to talk about Spielberg distinctives things that you find in his movies one of the things I wrote down was the stars because Going all the way back to close encounters. He had come up with this incredible way to make stars pop I'm assuming he's done something similar here when they're out

Eli (33:53.178)
the armistead ship and you see the star-filled sky it just looks really cool it looks kind of fantastical in a way which is great for most Spielberg movies maybe not for this one but it looks good lots of low-angle medium and close shots Spielberg loves those low-angle shots looking up at his characters he got some good silhouettes here too my favorite is Senkei against the bonfire

whenever he learns that the original decision by Judge Coughlin is not the end. They're going to the Supreme Court. Yeah, great shot. Yeah, mean, there's a lot of good, interesting shots. There's a lot of good images. There's a lot of good sequences that are interesting and, you know, cinematically, like, interesting.

So, know, it's not this movie, movie isn't a total, like I said, it's, it's, it's really just the problems with like the script and the story and the way it's told and the perspective it's told from that are the problems kind of filmmaking wise. It's actually like, I think pretty good. if it had a better story and scripts to go along with it with, like I said, a black director, I think this would have been a really great movie. but we didn't get that. We.

We got what we got. The opening, as I said, is visceral and brutal. In an extreme close up of the eyes, which is interesting. I thought that was interesting and in a cool shot. If you go look at that Malloy review, he was like, he felt like he was making him a monster, like kind of like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park, which is valid. I don't know if that's

Yeah, it's a, it's a valid perspective. but I thought that opening was very, very well done. Molly Haskell in that book I mentioned a minute ago had said that is opening is really a short film unto itself. does it, you know, something else Maloy mentions is does it make you feel like, the black people are going to now.

Eli (36:16.364)
needs them white people to save them because they've just done this brutal acts maybe but it is a very well made opening this is this was interesting I thought there's this part where Martin Van Buren is kind of hiring on Judge Coughlin to take on this case hoping that Coughlin is going to you know send the slaves somewhere keep them in captivity

you know, he's the whole thing with Van Buren is he's up for reelection. He doesn't want to make the Southern States mad with this case and freeing these black people. So he's trying to squash it, or, know, get a decision made that would keep them in captivity so that he can get the Southern vote. Is this all this like, you know, political positioning and stuff that

going on throughout the movie too. Another thing that it's focusing on that maybe we didn't need a whole lot of focus on. But yeah there's this, all that to say, there's this scene where they're kind of coming together to like take a picture of them shaking hands I guess for a newspaper or something. And it shows the lens and they're like upside down in the lens obviously. And I don't know I thought that was interesting kind of artistic way to

visually show us like how upside down literally in the lens but also like figuratively in the way that the process works how upside down things are from the way they should be I don't know I thought that was interesting the other sequence that I really really loved was there's this sequence where Yamba is telling he's been carrying around this Bible that he

of snatched from from white man and he there which i don't know why yamba and sinke are the only people in this church and then you also have the judge that's like in the same church and it's like intercutting between yamba and sinke and the judge i don't really understand why you know geographically why they were there in just them two in that church

Eli (38:37.176)
But that's beside the point, because I think it's a really interesting sequence where Yama takes this Bible, he flips through, there's pictures in it all throughout it, and he kind of goes to the New Testament with Jesus starting with the birth, a picture of like the birth of Christ, the Nativity, and he tells Sinke the story of Christ with these pictures in the Bible, and pretty, you know, pretty accurately, you know, he's really just going off of the pictures.

going off of two probably like a culture of storytelling and understanding how stories work Which is it's really cool. It's a really intriguing thing to think about like how did he figure out so spot-on what this story was and it's you know, you can get into like storytelling and how how storytelling works cross-culturally because of just how humans tend to tell stories and the stories that were attracted to

and that mean things to us. So I thought it was intriguing in that way, but also just like in the way that Yama tells him the story and he gets to the part where Christ ascends, there's this picture of him ascending to heaven, he realizes like, he died, but then he's back with his followers and he's going into the sky and he tells them that when

they kill you here you go into the sky it's not so bad and then you know he's I don't know it's interesting it's like this

Eli (40:12.878)
I don't know, Haskell in the book I've mentioned, Molly Haskell's book on Spielberg, she talks about how this really points to the religious sincerity that Spielberg has in his movies a lot of times. There's this kind of childlike identification with faith in a way that he's always had, even if he for a long time felt distant from his faith.

I wrote down this quote from her because I thought it was interesting. She said, quote, real audacity in the way he honors and even identifies with expressions of faith. Religious feeling seems to have no place in our ironic and secular age. Even the word icon has lost its original mystical power. Yet Spielberg goes where few directors dare, into the realm of faith and mystery, that yearning for home that figure so prominently as a Spielberg theme.

derives its fat power from something akin to religious feeling. In Amistad, that longing is only partially fulfilled on earth. The freed black Africans return to Sierra Leone, but their land is in civil war. Also, their families are slaughtered. But Spielberg wants us to feel hope that the past can affect the future, hope that their accomplishments will be remembered and their sacrifice redeemed. I appreciated that quote from Haskell.

I it runs into all the problems that we've talked about with does this movie is this the is that the movie we need probably not but it is there and I did I did really enjoy that sequence I thought it spoke to the universality of storytelling with with Christ the Christ story I thought it spoke to finding hope in the midst of trial

and you know it even there's this visual thing visual storytelling Spielberg can do it pretty well he he they're walking back after this event after this conversation they're walking back to the courthouse in a line and Yamba looks over and sees a ship coming in and there's three you know masks then they're shaped like cross kind of on the ship and you know you can see he's kind of like it's almost like he's seeing it as like an omen of like you know i think we're

Eli (42:34.958)
we're going to be okay, maybe sort of thing. And then they are, they're acquitted by this judge. They're declared free, which ultimately doesn't hold as they go to the Supreme Court. But I don't know, I just thought it was interesting. Cool sequence in my opinion. The characters are good. I mean, not good. The characters are, there's a lot of characters. I guess that's what I really meant to say.

There's a lot of characters. Sink-A is the most interesting character and I've already talked about it. We really don't get enough of him. He's such a deep character. He has such depths to explore that we just don't get to. Yeah, not in a way that's consistent.

throughout the movie, because it's jumping around. It gives some time to Jotson, who I don't really even know what he's doing there. Debbie Allen said that he was kind of a representative of an African-American ex-slave who is educated, going down the middle road of abolition and not yet militant. OK, but he doesn't do anything in the movie, really. Like, he talks to John Quincy Adams. Like, he's...

I guess there's a time or two where he kind of pushes the plot forward, but he's not a real character.

Eli (44:03.756)
I mean, Tappan is kind of the same. you know, he kind of even less than Jotson, even more than Jotson, I guess, disappears. I mean, and really you have, you're jumping around to like Martin Van Buren stuff, which gives too much time to that. And it's not even true. Like they didn't even campaign back then. So I guess it's interesting for a movie, but they didn't campaign like that back then.

Eli (44:32.494)
I don't know why you need to invent that historically for the movie, especially when like it's only mild, like you could mention it and that's all we would need. We don't need to keep jumping to Van Buren. Baldwin is, Baldwin's an interesting character. You know, he's this ordinary man thrust into an extraordinary circumstance, really thrusts himself into it. Probably looking to take on something that might.

get his name out there. And he's not really sympathetic to the cause. You can tell he's just in it because he wants to be a good lawyer, I guess, wants to get his name out there, thinks he has a good case. And he does grow to be sympathetic to the case. But then, like, he's dropped in the script at some point. Like, it switches to John Quincy Adams. And then Baldwin's, literally just sitting there doing nothing for the climax.

at the Supreme Court, he just sits there. He shakes Senkei's hand afterwards, like, yay, I guess. But yeah, John Quincy Adams is an okay character, I guess. Adams, he was not really a friend of abolition or slavery, either one really, but ultimately found himself on the side of abolition.

to fight for these people. Sympathetic to the cause eventually, I guess. Or maybe all kind of like one of those he was all along, but he's finally doing something about it. One of those things, I guess, you get a lot of that in this historical period. Yeah, the character's fine. I've already talked about some quibbles with the way he's used.

You I don't know. It's, there's a lot of, I just don't want to dive back into the problems. as far as themes go, I don't know. mean, you have, you have like, Debbie Allen, so Debbie Allen said the film is about the power of the human spirit and courage and freedom. That was a direct quote from the making of documentary. And I'm like, great.

Eli (46:58.648)
That's about as vague and meaningless as the speech John Quincy Adams gives at the end. I don't know. So what does that mean? How do we see that in the film really? What do we learn about the human spirit?

Eli (47:18.286)
I really know what we learn about the human spirit. That we fight for freedom? I don't know. Great, I guess. It would have been better, well received, that theme in a different movie, You get the theme of kind of like, know, Baldwin's working with logic and common sense against a corrupt system. You kind of have the mingling of self-serving politics with justice and how it...

You the self-serving politics always seems to take precedence. You know, that's good and great. It's a great thing to have in film and to explore. And it wants to be about that, but it can't just be about that. That's the problem. This movie, because of the subject matter and because of the prominence of the Senkei character, it can't just be about that. That's where the

this movie is so split, wants to be about these grub systems, but also about these slaves and Sinki. And it just, it's, it's got a split focus and it can't do either one well because of that. And Lincoln, think eventually we'll, get to Lincoln eventually. I think kind of is able to focus on that because that's what it's about.

fully is those systems and navigating that and it's a better movie because it has a more singular focus but yeah another thing that I really liked was you have that scene I mentioned you know where you get the silhouette of Senkei against the bonfire he's upset and it's this sequence where Baldwin has come to tell him that hey you know I knew I told y'all

once this finished that would be it and that almost was the case but they're going to the supreme court now and you get this really great reaction from both what i really liked about this scene is in this scene too a4 edge of four a4 edge of four i wish i would have looked up how to pronounce his name even he in this scene kind of turns on baldwin is like no

Eli (49:45.208)
I'm not translating that. This is ridiculous. You know, get Senkei... I love this. says in the movie, he says, what kind of place is this where laws almost work? How can you live like that? I think that is really, really good. That was a well-written little part. We don't get a ton of that, but I thought that was good. I don't really have a whole lot more. I guess just to wrap up.

everything. I'm going to wrap it up with this quote from John Quincy

Eli (50:26.098)
Just to wrap up all of this sometimes yes, I think that's true. I do I think it's a good quote I think it's it's largely true to life and you know, whoever tells the best story wins But sometimes you have to have the wisdom to know which stories are yours to tell I think that's where this movie fails. I think Spielberg did not have the wisdom to

know that this wasn't his story to tell as much as he sympathized with it and as much as he thought it was important. It wasn't his to tell and he had the power to give it to someone whose it was to tell and didn't. And this movie left zero cultural mark despite its importance, despite it because it was in the wrong hands and no cultural mark, no cultural importance. I hadn't really heard of this

movie before I started doing this the series and you know it's yes it's made competently it's made it technically it looks great but it lacks the weight it needs just one more quote from Cortland Malloy from that review he says quote what captured the imagination of many African Americans about the Amasad story was the courage and determination of the leader Sengeh

In the hands of Spielberg, Amistad has become a tribute to the American justice system. I wish black filmmakers Spike Lee, John Singleton, and Carl Franklin had what it takes financially and otherwise to bring the perspective of an African American to such an important topic. Then again, they might come up with something like Sankofa, the powerful movie by Ethiopian born filmmaker Hayao Jerema.

that so few people, black or white, went to see. Maybe all we really want to do is laugh and clap at slavery, in which case, Amistad may just be the movie for you." Sobering. A very sobering quote. I have not seen this movie, Sankofa, but now I really want to. I'm putting it on my list. When I read that quote, I was like, well, I've got to see this movie.

Eli (52:53.91)
I it's true. I've, I have a long way to go. But I do try to make it a point to watch movies made by black filmmakers about their experience. You know, you do, I mean, you have directors like Spike Lee and like Steve McQueen making these movies. Steve McQueen has a great,

It's kind of series of films. It's the Small Axe series. I think this on Amazon, it came out, it might've even released like during the pandemic, I think. But there's four great films about black communities in England, which is, Stephen McQueen I'm pretty sure is black English director.

But yeah, great films. And of course he has 12 Years of Slave, but those are really great as well. And Spike Lee is a great filmmaker. There's a lot of great black filmmakers. I'll try to link. There's this critic who has this humongous list of

films about the black experience by black filmmakers on letterboxd and I'll try to remember to put a link to that in the episode description as well. so that you can take on that task of working on knocking out some of those films yourself. I think it's important to watch films from people with different experiences from you. and I just think, I just think it's unfortunate that, you know, it,

I wouldn't be covering this movie if Spielberg had made the right choice. cause it wouldn't be in this Spielberg series. I really think he should have used his new studio to give this movie to, to someone that he thought had what it takes. And he's generally a pretty good judge of that. over his career, he had done a lot of producing. and you know, I just wish he would have given this budget to a black filmmaker.

Eli (55:18.872)
that could have given it the perspective it needed. I had this movie rated a three star, six out of 10 when I came in. think maybe you get down to like two and a half stars, five out of 10 now that I've talked myself down on it with all the problems. Yeah, I really wish this would have been a better movie. I was hoping it would be.

but I just think it has too many problems with being a film that just, mean, with a bad, ultimately what I think ends up being a bad script, bad screenplay that doesn't know what story it wants to tell. and just with the wrong perspective by the wrong director, it's unfortunate because it looks good.

production values great he's got some great performances I mean just the fact that we got Ja-Man Honsu out of this is just great I just love that he really if the movie is worth watching for anything it's for his performance which I think is just so good but yeah ultimately this is gonna end up you know in a a bottom tier Spielberg for me as far as how much I like it but but yeah that's

That's really all I have. Like I said, next week I'm going to get into little bit of the beginnings of DreamWorks and its history. And I'm going to room view by request of a supporter of the podcast, Joe Wood. He has requested that I review a movie that he loves that I have not seen. Well, I have seen it now, but I hadn't before.

requested. I'm gonna do a little short review of the movie Thirteen Assassins by Takashi Mike. It's a 2010 I think remake of an older movie of the same name. But yeah I'm gonna do a quick review of that and alongside kind of breakdown of Dreamworks just kind of as a little bonus look into Spielberg's career. So that's

Eli (57:43.118)
That's next week. The week after that, we'll be jumping back into Spielberg fully with his film Saving Private Ryan, which came out the next year in 1998. So that's what you have to look forward to. If you have any thoughts or comments on this, I would love to hear from you. You can do that on the website. There's a place to leave a voicemail or send an email. establishingshotpod.com I would love it if you would go do that.

There if you want to be a supporter of the podcast and make me watch a movie and review it on the podcast For everyone to hear you can do that, too You can find out how to do that at establishing shop pod calm as well. I would love for you to support the show There's there's kind of some perks to that that I would love to get into so yeah

Go check that out. It starts at $5 a month. You can be a supporter. So it just helps me be able to pay for the production value alongside buying the discs so that I can watch these and get all the special features and buy the books for the research. There's a lot that goes into it. I had to buy more notebooks, notepads, because I had filled some up. So there's a...

There's a lot that goes into this. So I would love for you to support the show. I, I do it all on my own, you know, scheduling and guests and hosting and research and keeping all the online stuff. So this is completely self-produced. really like to, keep this going. I do need supporters. so I would love for you to support the show if you can. but yeah.

That's really all I have this week. Looking forward to the next couple of episodes, and I hope you are too. But until then, I've been Eli Price, and you've been listening to The Establishing Shot. We will see you next time.