[00:00:10] Speaker A: On this week's prequel episode, we follow up on our Warm Bodies listener polls and preview Malcolm X.
Hello and welcome back to this Film Is lit, the podcast where we talk about movies that are based on books. It's another prequel week, plenty to talk about.
Let's jump right in to our patron shoutouts. I put up with you because your father and mother were our finest patrons. That's why. One new kind of patron this week, a free patron, which you can do. You can join at the free tier. You don't get a whole lot from it, but you can do it.
And that free patron is J. Just another patron. So there you go. Thank you. Just another patron. Appreciate you following us over there. And as always, we have our Academy Award winning patrons and they are Amanda Nicole Goble, Harpo Rat, Nathan, Vic Blofeld, Matilde Cottonwood, Steve Ben Wilcox, Teresa Schwartz, Ian from Wine Country, Kelly Napier, Gratch.
Just Gratch. Shelby will return in Avengers, Doomsday and that Darn Skag. Thank you all for continuing to support this film is Lit. Katie, let's see what people had to say about Warm Bodies.
[00:01:28] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know, that's just like your opinion man on Patreon. We had one vote for the book and two for the movie.
Kelly Napier said, I feel like I usually agree with Katie and I was thinking about voting for the book over the movie, but I just couldn't.
The book felt too much like the result of a creative writing class where the prompt was to envision a modern take on Romeo and Juliet.
A lot of the things in the book felt forced into the concept, including R's wife, who was obviously a stand in for Rosalind, the girl Romeo was supposed to marry. In Romeo and Juliet, the author thrusts her in, making us assume she'll be the love interest, only to immediately move on when something better comes along.
I also couldn't get over the plot point in the book where Julie and Nora introduce R to Julie's dad as Archie who is visiting from another human enclave. So you're telling me that it's so dangerous outside of your bubble that you have to have weapons training and deploy an entire platoon of people in order to travel and we're expected to believe that her military trained dad would just believe this guy just wandered over from his dome to theirs for a visit?
Ridiculous.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: I didn't read the book so I can't comment on that. I will say just hearing it described doesn't sound ridiculous to me. Of like I could imagine in this universe it's very dangerous to go out in the world because of zombies and stuff.
[00:02:53] Speaker B: Right.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: But that they still do. Humans do occasionally venture from one compound to another. You know what I mean? Like, I could believe that, but I didn't read the book, so I'm not.
[00:03:02] Speaker B: So I, I totally agree with Kelly's first point. I do think that the book tried a little too hard to like wedge itself into the Romeo and Juliet concept.
[00:03:13] Speaker A: I think that I could totally.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: That there were elements that could have been dropped and it still would have been fine and it still would have read as a Romeo and Juliet inspired story.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: Yeah. But it felt like the author was trying to make like everything work.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: Yeah, it kind of felt like the author was trying to do as close to like a one to one as he could get and that was really just not necessary.
The, the plot point with our meeting Julie's dad, I didn't really have a problem with, but I also.
And maybe this was just like my interpretation of it. Maybe there's no actual textual evidence for this. I read him as being suspicious, but like not saying anything initially.
[00:03:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: And I, again, maybe I'm wrong.
Kelly went on to say, I liked the changes the movie made with the exclusion of the wife and kids being the change they made. Although I could have done without the whitewashing of Nora's character in that age range. I think Kiki Palmer or Tessa Thompson would have killed that role. Yeah, there were plenty of. They had plenty of options for that.
I thought it was fine that we spent less time with those people in the city who didn't really matter in the end. Considering the catalyst for change rests squarely with R and Julie. I voted for the movie because it was just a fun 90 minute movie where the book felt like a class assignment. I would have graded a C minus if I were the teacher.
[00:04:39] Speaker A: Dang harsh.
[00:04:44] Speaker B: C minus. That's not that bad. C is average.
Our next comment was from Shelby, who said, I was culturally aware of warm bodies as a smarter, punchier Twilight, but this was my first time reading or watching. I appreciate Katie. Katie choosing something lighter.
I appreciated that for myself too.
I thought the movie made a lot of smart cuts. I didn't care for much of the book's world. Building on top of that, the movie's just more fun.
I'm pretty sure that when Julie and R kiss in the book, it's implied they both become something new because their eyes turn gold.
I'm sure fans who've read the sequel know what that's about.
I'm honestly surprised they didn't Adapt those. Did this movie not do well?
[00:05:33] Speaker A: So I think we talked in the prequel. I think it did fairly well.
[00:05:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:36] Speaker A: Like, relatively speaking. I don't know why they. There was not interest in doing a sequel, or at least I didn't hear. I didn't even remember. I don't recall seeing anything on, like, the.
[00:05:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't recall seeing it. So here's my theory. I think the sequels to the book came out, like, years on down the line. Like, if I'm remembering right, I think the sequels came out in the, like, 2017, 2018.
[00:06:02] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: Range. I. I think.
And I don't think, like, even, like, even though this movie did well in the sense that it, like, made a profit, it didn't leave any, like, cultural impact.
[00:06:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: In my opinion, I would agree with that.
[00:06:21] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:06:22] Speaker B: So I'm. Yeah, I can understand why they wouldn't be like, oh, we're gonna do sequels to this five years later.
[00:06:30] Speaker A: Yeah. So just on a couple of notes. One, it made plenty of money. It was a 30 million, $35 million budget. It made 117 million, which is not, like, insane, but for that budget. That's a pretty. It made money, like, definitely. Even if you double the budget.
Sometimes what you. I think, is, is what you're supposed to do when you take into, like, marketing and stuff. If you're trying to, like, gauge if it made money or not. The budget doesn't necessarily include marketing, I don't think. So if you double it or whatever and say it was 70 million even, it still made, like, $40 million, so it was still a success.
But to your point, the sequel came out in 2017.
[00:07:10] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I thought.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: And it wasn't even announced till 2012. And then a prequel came out, an ebook prequel came out in 2013.
So, yeah, the prequel came out the same year the movie did, but the sequel didn't come out till four years later. So at that point, any momentum it had, which, even then, it made money. But again, like you said, I don't think it had any sort of real cultural staying power. Although I say that. Who knows? I felt that way about Avatar, but it still makes a billion dollars. And that's.
[00:07:44] Speaker B: Avatar seems to be the exception to the rule for some reason.
Also, I've obviously never read the sequel. Maybe it's weird and bad.
It could be. It could be weird and bad.
[00:07:55] Speaker A: Yeah. But, yeah, I think what you're saying makes the most sense is that it just the time between when the sequel came out and when the movie Came out. Yeah, you're kind of out of the window and especially you're very much on the back end of the fantasy romance. Yeah, teen adaptation, young adult, like monster romance stuff was very much waning. Like it was all a punchline.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: It was definitely on its way out.
[00:08:19] Speaker A: By the time the sequel was published, so.
[00:08:21] Speaker B: All right, our next comment was from Nathan who said I missed the poll. That's all right. I counted your vote anyway because I've been behind on reading and watching. But I definitely have to go with the book. I thought it was really trying to do and say something much more interesting than the movie. I think the book fails a lot and honestly feels like it could have used an editor. I felt that's exactly how I felt about the book. It failed a lot. It wasn't amazing, but it was trying to do something that I found super interesting.
Mistakes like General Grigio just. General Grigio's just blind acceptance of Archie are with.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: Without any.
[00:09:03] Speaker B: Without any proof of who he was or are wandering away from the front gate as if they wouldn't notice or have some way of holding him while they dealt with the zombies.
It also has R and Julie leave the city just to immediately come back. And there has to be a more plot efficient way to handle that.
All that being said, I think the message of conservatism as a world ending plague is quite interesting.
I like to think some reactionary right wing talk show host was patient zero.
They were just consumed by their fear and hatred.
The movie is fine and I think it does a decent job of cutting out some unnecessary parts of the book and streamlining things, but the outcome is just kind of okay and not anything interesting.
I definitely got the sense that EM was similar in human age to R. So I was surprised to see Rob Cordray playing him.
[00:09:53] Speaker A: I also was surprised to see Rob Cordray playing that character. It just seemed like a strange choice to me. Just kind of like this.
[00:10:01] Speaker B: I don't have any opinions on that actor, so it didn't seem all that strange to me.
[00:10:05] Speaker A: He's not in a ton of stuff. Like the thing he was most known for, at least to me, is that he was a correspondent on the Daily show forever.
And he also did act like he was in. He's been in stuff, but he was mostly in like comedy. Like which. This is a comedy. Yeah, but I don't know, it's not like he's a big name pole or anything like that. And it just seemed like a particularly strange choice because. Especially because he's playing Mercutio, who is in the story, is like the same age as Romeo. Right.
Like, they're like, they're similarly aged friends, correct?
[00:10:37] Speaker B: I think so, yeah.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: And so I agree. I felt it was a little strange for him to be like this middle aged man, but I thought it worked fine in the story, like in the movie. I thought his character was fine in the movie. It just was a little surprising to me that I was like, why, Robin?
[00:10:52] Speaker B: I didn't read him as similar to age in R.
Because in the book. No. And I.
So the book is purposefully very vague about R's age. And like, it says several times throughout the book that he has one of those faces that, like, he could be in his late teens or he could be in his mid-20s or he could even be in like his early 30s, even.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: But then I'm pretty sure that M is described as balding.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: I think I could be misremembering that.
[00:11:23] Speaker A: But if so, that might be why they picked Rob Cordray. Yeah, they needed a balding actor because I'm pretty sure he's balding in the movie.
But yeah, I did think it was just an interesting. It's just a.
Just not a choice I would expect for that role in this movie. I don't know why I'm trying to think of, like. I was trying to think, like, what the heck he had done that. They were like, we need Rob Cordry for this. And I don't know what.
I don't know what that would have been. Yeah, I have no idea, other than, like some of his bits on the Daily Show. I'm trying to think, like, what else he was in.
[00:11:49] Speaker B: Maybe he did a zombie bit that you don't remember.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: It's very possible.
It's very possible. Again, it's not that he hasn't been in other stuff. Like, maybe it was just because. So was this right off the heels of. The only thing I could think is that he was pretty.
This might have been off the heels of Hot Tub Time Machine.
It is that I could see because that. Because, like, he. Oh, he was also in Megamind. He had a. He was a voice in Megamind. Metro City Citizen. It's an uncredited cameo, so.
But he was. He's one of the main characters in Hot Tub Time Machine, which came out in 2010 and was a pretty big success.
So I could imagine that being.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: He got signed on this based on.
[00:12:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, he was also. He's like. He was in Old School. He was in Failure to Launch. I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry Blades of Glory. Semi pro. He's in movies. It's just again, he's not like a. He's usually like a supporting actor in those movies. And again, he's a supporting actor I guess. But I don't know, it just felt like a strange choice pairing with him with Nicholas Hoult, who's significantly younger than him. I think so anyways.
[00:12:58] Speaker B: All right, over on Facebook we had one vote for the book and one for the movie.
Austin said Nicholas Hoult being awkward and adorable makes the movie the winner for me. Fair and Cat said. At the risk of missing my window again, I'll comment now and return later if I make it in time. I have not reread or rewatched the movie, but from memory alone I'll say the book. I remember the movie being a lot of fun, but thoroughly appreciating the book's focus on what makes us human and what it means to live.
[00:13:32] Speaker A: That pretty much what you said.
[00:13:35] Speaker B: We didn't have any comments on Instagram, but we had three votes for the book, one for the movie, and one listener who couldn't decide on Threads. We had zero votes for the book and one for the movie. And Gumbyok234 said I didn't read the book yet. It's on top of my TBR pile. But the week caught up with me too fast.
I still think the movie was Romeo and Juliet with zombies.
You're correct on that.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: That's what it is.
[00:14:07] Speaker B: That's also what it is.
[00:14:08] Speaker A: Also what the book is. Yes, that's the book is doing.
[00:14:11] Speaker B: I agree that the m character development both as a zombie to human and as a whole was too uneven. Rob Cordry feels like the same character no matter what he is cast in.
[00:14:21] Speaker A: I will say that he does feel which I guess I can understand that is that for the put upon kind of pathetic middle aged guy who's just going through the motions. Rob Cordry was that guy in movies this at this time period. It's like I think that's the premise of like Hot Tub Time Machine is like you know it's a bunch of like middle aged guys like yeah.
Ruing the fact that their lives didn't turn out the way they wanted or something like that. I don't. I've never actually seen it but he very much plays the like put upon kind of loser who like whose life isn't working out the way he wants and then so I, I guess I can understand it from that regard of why they would Think, like, yeah, he would be good at this because that's kind of what M is doing in the movies.
[00:15:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
All right. Over on Goodreads, we had one vote for the book, zero for the movie, and Mikko said both the book and the movie were fine, but I hoped for something that. That would use the premise a bit more cleverly. The clearer distinction in the book that we are talking about fantasy curse zombies and not science fiction. Virus zombies helped. And I wish there would have been even a throwaway line about it in the movie.
[00:15:35] Speaker A: I think, to be fair, I think in the movie we're supposed to assume it's more of virus infection.
[00:15:40] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: I think they're. I think they were scared of going too far away from traditional zombie lore, as as evidenced by. In the last preque, I talked about how even with what they did in this movie, the director had that blurb.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: About, like, that we thought was kind of strange.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: Yes. Where he was like, hey, we think that people who like zombie stuff will be into this if they, like, come in with an open mind and, like, you know, we. We make some changes to traditional zombie lore. But, you know, it's still, like, very much like, couching and like, trying to, like, appeal. Because again, you remember this. This is coming out kind of at the height of zombie, like, with the Walking Dead being right.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:16:17] Speaker A: Which I assume is another reason this movie got made was the Walking Dead was kind of at the peak of its popularity around this time, I think. Pretty sure. Trying to remember when did we watched.
[00:16:28] Speaker B: The Walking Dead up until like, 2015 or 2016.
[00:16:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:32] Speaker B: And then we just. One day we turned an episode off and we never turned it back on.
[00:16:38] Speaker A: Yeah, it was. Yeah. So this was like Walking Dead started in 2010. The TV. The TV show.
[00:16:43] Speaker B: So this is like two years, like.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: We'Re right in the height of when the Walking Dead is the most popular.
[00:16:48] Speaker B: Show on television came out.
[00:16:49] Speaker A: Zombieland came out probably like 2010, 2011, 2012, if I had to guess. So we were like, in the peak of that kind of like mid-22 thousands zombie resurgent resurgence, 2009 for zombie. So, yeah.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. It's interesting, that quote from the director because, like, having read the book, I feel like I understand why he said that, because the book does deviate a lot from traditional zombie lore, but I didn't really feel like the movie.
[00:17:19] Speaker A: I think the big thing in the movie really is one is obviously the. Like, that they can be cured would be a thing.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:26] Speaker A: But the other thing is I think that's kind of strange that you. That is like, people will be like, what's going on here is like the whole bonies thing. Like, that there's this extra, like, layer of zombie that is. Again. But I agree, because apart from that, it feels like a pretty traditional zombie thing of, like, they eat brains. They're.
You kill them by destroying their brain and that's about it. And then they shuffle around and it seems to be like some sort of like, virus infection thing or whatever. Yeah.
[00:17:57] Speaker B: Mika went on to say, I agree that the zombies became too way too human way too quickly. I had the same problem with both the book and the movie, but I think the movie feels worse with the added visual element that isn't really utilized to its full potential.
So much of the spoken zombie dialogue could have been replaced with a grunt and a gesture.
[00:18:19] Speaker A: I could not agree more. That was one of my. And I'm glad you vocalized it that way because that was, I think, my biggest issue with the early parts of the movie. It felt like so much of what Nicholas Hoult, specifically in their early part of their relationship should have been doing was gesturing and grunting and stuff, as opposed to saying, like, two completely normal English words. Like, that was where it felt like. Okay, well, I was talking about the episode where it felt like he went from like a 1 to a 5 out of 10. Immediately it felt like there was that. Yeah, there could have been that period where he's more of gesturing and physically using the environment or doing the thing with the record player and stuff that you were talking about to communicate as opposed to just immediately being able to say, no, don't you know what I mean?
[00:19:06] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I would have even liked to go through a point where we see him really trying to squeeze words out.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:19:15] Speaker B: Miko ended his comment with the book is better.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:19:20] Speaker B: So our winner this week was actually the book by a Hare with six votes to the movie's five, plus our one listener who couldn't decide.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: All right, sweet. Thank you all for all of your feedback. We really appreciate it.
Don't learn anything in the segment this week because both of our book and movie facts are pretty pretty extensive this week. So we're going to get into it and learn a little bit about the autobiography of Malcolm X. Do you know where you came from?
What's your name? Malcolm Little. No, that's the name of the slave masters who own your family.
You don't even know who you are. Who are you?
Say Roseland. Roseland.
He was a pusher a hustler, a thief. You ready to tackle the streets? Yeah, I'm ready. Let him come.
[00:20:22] Speaker B: The Autobiography of Malcolm X is an autobiography written by black American activist Malcolm X in collaboration with American journalist Alex Haley.
And Haley co authored the book based on a series of in depth interviews that he conducted with Malcolm X between 1963, 1965.
The book was released posthumously on October 29, 1965, nine months after Malcolm X was assassinated.
[00:20:56] Speaker A: Yeah, right after. Yeah, I'd be interested to hear. I'm sure there's this information is out there, but I'd be interested to see, like, how the writing of this worked. Because when you hear, oh, the autobiography, Malcolm X, you're like, well, he just wrote it himself.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: Right?
[00:21:12] Speaker A: That's what you would assume. But then finding out like, oh. Because when I was doing my research, saw that a journalist worked on it with him, and I was like, I wonder, like, what is Malcolm X writing? What is the journalist writing? You know what I mean?
[00:21:24] Speaker B: Yeah. It sounded to me as I was perusing and reading about sounds to me like Alex Haley did most of the actual writing, like kind of in a ghostwriter capacity based on the interviews that he conducted with Malcolm X. But then there were also like, obviously some like back and forth and like giving of notes and that type of thing.
[00:21:49] Speaker A: And probably I would imagine also that there's quite a fair amount of. It was probably also excerpts of Malcolm X's writing, I assume would be maybe in the. I don't know, like, but like potentially. Because obviously Malcolm X wrote a bunch of stuff.
[00:22:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:04] Speaker A: And so that stuff would make it into the. I don't know, I guess that's a different, different thing. But anyways, yeah, I was just curious because that's a. Yeah, that's an interesting.
I don't know, I've never heard of an autobiography written by another person. You know what I mean?
[00:22:14] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
So the autobiography is a spiritual conversion narrative that outlines Malcolm X's philosophies of black pride, black nationalism and Pan Africanism.
So boiled down to basics, what this means is that the narrative follows like a general outline of how his beliefs evolved over the years.
[00:22:38] Speaker A: That is what the movie follows. Yeah, for my memory.
[00:22:42] Speaker B: Well, that makes sense. Yeah.
So there has been some scholarly debate since the book's publication over how to interpret Alex Haley's role in its creation. So like I said, he was a journalist and a writer.
You might recognize another of his well known works, roots the Saga of an American Family.
[00:23:06] Speaker A: It's funny, I didn't realize that was him. But when I googled Alex Haley and looked at him, I was like, I've seen this guy. I recognize this man.
[00:23:14] Speaker B: So while Malcolm X himself and scholars who were contemporary to the autobiography's publication regarded Halley as its ghost writer, modern scholars tend to regard him more as, like, a collaborator.
So Halley did do work to minimize his own authorial voice within the text, but he also was influential on the stylistic choices.
So, for example, Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam during the period when he was working on the book with Halley.
And so rather than rewriting the earlier chapters to reflect this change, which apparently was something he initially wanted to do, Malcolm X, Halley instead persuaded him to make it kind of like a suspense and drama thing.
Additionally, according to biographer Manning Marable.
I hope I'm pronouncing his last name right, quote. Haley was particularly worried about what he viewed as Malcolm X's anti Semitism and rewrote material to eliminate it.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: Yeah, there's obvious, because that's a whole thing, especially with Nation of Islam, from understanding like there's a whole other thing there.
[00:24:36] Speaker B: So, yeah.
So Marable's belief is that the resulting text was stylistically and ideologically distinct from what he thinks Malcolm X would have written without Haley's influence.
[00:24:51] Speaker A: That seems likely.
[00:24:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
And also that it differs from what may have actually been said in the interviews between Haley and Malcolm X. Yeah.
[00:25:01] Speaker A: Because I assume there. There weren't, like, recordings of these interviews.
[00:25:04] Speaker B: He was like, I don't believe so.
[00:25:06] Speaker A: You know, he was writing notes or whatever, or.
[00:25:09] Speaker B: I didn't see. I didn't see anything about there being recordings.
Interestingly, though, in 1992, attorney Gregory Reed bought the original manuscripts of the autobiography at the sale of the Haley estate.
And those manuscripts included three missing chapters which were omitted from the original text.
And I did not see anything about those chapters being included in later editions. So I'm not sure if they're available anywhere to read or not.
One of them was acquired by the Schomburg center for Research in Black culture in 2018, but it sounds like the others must still be privately owned.
[00:25:56] Speaker A: Huh? Yeah, I hadn't heard about that. I didn't know that.
[00:25:58] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I didn't know that either. I thought that was interesting.
When the autobiography was published, the New York Times reviewer Elliot Fremont Smith described it as a, quote, brilliant, painful, important book.
In 1967, historian John William Ward wrote that it would become a classic American autobiography.
And the autobiography of Malcolm X has influenced generations of readers. In 1990, Charles Solomon wrote in The Los Angeles times.
Unlike many 60s icons, the autobiography of Malcolm X, with its double message of anger and love, remains an inspiring document.
Cultural historian Howard Bruce Franklin describes it as one of the most influential books in late 20th century American culture.
And in 1998, Times named the Autobiography of Malcolm X as one of 10 required reading nonfiction books.
Obviously, the Autobiography was also incredibly influential within the black arts movement.
Writers and thinkers associated with the black arts movement found in the Autobiography an aesthetic embodiment of of his profoundly influential qualities, namely, quote, the vibrancy of his public voice, the clarity of his analyses of oppression's hidden history and inner logic, the fearlessness of his oppression to white supremacy opposition, the fearlessness of his opposition to white supremacy, and the unconstrained ardor of his advocacy for revolution by any means necessary.
[00:27:35] Speaker A: Interesting. I was interested to hear, and I would be interested. Did you come across any.
Anything that you saw of criticisms of the book for its representation of Malcolm X or his life? I mean, obviously there's the part we talked about a second ago of, like, people question, how much was Hayley, how much was Malcolm X? And that sort of thing, but because the big thing with the movie that we'll get into here in a second is there. There are some pretty strong criticisms of the film of sort of sanitizing Malcolm X's, like, kind of life story and all of that in order to make it very palatable to, like, you know, upper class white audiences and stuff like that or whatever. And so I was interested if there was. If any of that was also criticisms that were levied at the books that you. Or, sorry, the book that you saw or if in the translation adaptation is where that was introduced.
[00:28:33] Speaker B: I don't recall seeing any criticism about. About that specifically. Are there other criticisms of it? Most, I mean, mostly, I think, going back to the, like, authorial intent.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: Like, how much. How much. How accurate is it to say, like. Yeah, like. Yeah, yeah, I guess it's kind of a similar idea. We'll get into it when we get into my notes here in a second. But yeah, okay.
[00:28:56] Speaker B: So. The Autobiography of Malcolm X has sold well since its 1965 publication.
According to the New York Times, the paperback edition sold 400,000 copies in 1967 and 800,000 copies the following year.
The book experienced increased readership and returned to the bestseller list in the 1990s. Obviously, helped by the movie, between 1989 and 1992, sales of the book increased by 300%.
[00:29:27] Speaker A: Yeah, I was gonna say, because I actually. And I don't know if I included in my notes. But I had heard that part of the thing that helped the movie get made ultimately was there was a spike in sales.
Maybe just from the announce, we'll get into it. I might have a note about it later. But I think that spike in sales was not necessarily because of the movie, but that spike in sales helped the movie actually get made.
[00:29:55] Speaker B: Aside from the 1992 film that we will be watching, Laurence Fishbourne narrated the book in what was Audible's first ever unabridged audiobook recording in 2020, which explains why I couldn't find an audiobook version of the text because Audible has it.
[00:30:12] Speaker A: Oh, okay. I was like, why couldn't you?
[00:30:14] Speaker B: Thank you, Audible.
[00:30:15] Speaker A: Gotcha. It's crazy that there wasn't one prior to that.
[00:30:19] Speaker B: I know.
[00:30:19] Speaker A: Seems interesting. All right, let's go ahead now learn a little bit about Malcolm X, the film. He was a follower who became a leader. You're not an American.
We didn't land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock landed on us.
He brought honor to disobedience. I suggest you look outside that window.
You've been laying down and bowing down for 400 years. I think it's time to stand up. All right, break it up. You got what you wanted. No, I'm not satisfied.
That's too much power for one man to.
And a voice to a people who long to be heard.
So I always just copy my notes from Wikipedia and just kind of read them to you guys, because for these prequel episodes, we don't do as minimum amount of work. And I think it just creates fun conversation, allows us to kind of learn a little bit about the.
But usually I try to find other stuff. This time, a lot of this, I'm really going to read directly from Wikipedia because there's a lot of nuance in this that I don't want to try to, like, summarize.
So there's a lot to talk about here. So this is even more so a direct.
You're about to catch the Wikipedia article for this movie.
So Malcolm X is a 1992 film written and directed by Spike Lee, known for do the Right Thing, She's Got to have it, School Days, Mo Better Blues, Jungle Fever, Crooklyn, Inside man, and BlacKkKlansman, among others. I included Black Kansman there because obviously we have done Black Klansman on the show.
And it was also written by Arnold Pearl, who's known for writing the film adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof, and he was the creator of the TV show nypd. Now we'll get into it. He was. He's on the credits here, but it's right.
[00:32:05] Speaker B: I know there was some.
[00:32:06] Speaker A: It's way more complicated than that.
In fact, one of the people not on the credits is a very well known person that I have a feeling was very. A lot more instrumental in the writing of this film, which we'll get to.
So the film stars Denzel Washington, Angela Bassett, Albert hall, Al Freeman Jr. Delro, Delroy Lindo, Spike Lee, Theresa Randall, Kate Vernon, Ernest Lee Thompson, Christopher Plummer, and Giancarlo Esposito, among quite a few others, has an 89% on Rotten Tomatoes, a 73% on Metacritic, and a 7.7 out of 10 on IMDb. It was nominated for two Oscars, Best Actor in a Leading Role for Denzel and Best Costume Design for Ruth E. Carter, who was the woman who did the costumes. It also won four Image Awards, which are the annual entertainment awards that the NAACP puts on. It won for Outstanding Actor in Motion Picture for Denzel, Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture For Al Freeman Jr. Outstanding Supporting Actress for Angela Bassett, and Outstanding Motion Picture. And was nominated for one other that I can't recall at the moment, which I actually. So I included that because I was curious to see, because this is one of those. And I read some other stuff. I was interested to see what, like, the cultural black reaction to this film was at the time.
[00:33:21] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:33:22] Speaker A: You know what I mean? Like, I was curious to see if it was something that like, black culture was into, not into at the time that it came out.
Obviously, I was four years old, I have no. And a little white kid. So I had no idea. But like I said, I included that specifically because I was kind of interested to see, like, was this a well regarded film, broader black community.
And again, I'm very much shorthanding that by. By using the NAACP Awards here. But it was kind of a something I could use to kind of gauge that a little bit.
The film was produced by Marvin Worth, and he acquired the rights to the autobiography of Malkina X in 1967. So before they even came out or the year it came out, I guess basically you say it came out in 67 or 69 or.
[00:34:06] Speaker B: I thought I said 65.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: 65.
[00:34:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: Yes. So right after it came out, Worth had actually met Malcolm X, then going by the name Detroit Red, when he was a teenager selling drugs in New York City. According to Marvin worth, Worth was 15 at the time and was spending time at jazz clubs in New York. And Worth remembers saying, or remembers of that time Quote, he was selling grass. He was 16 or 17, but looked older. He was very witty, a funny guy. And he had, he had this extraordinary charisma. A great dancer and a great dresser. He was very good looking, very, very tall. Girls always noticed him. He was quite a special guy. End quote. This, that was funny that this random movie producer is like, yeah, I knew Malcolm X, but he, he, this dude went on a, this, this Alfred Marvin Wirth was on a crusade to get this movie made for decades.
Obviously it came out in 92 and he started working on it in the 60s. So in 1968, Worth commissioned a screenplay and he picked a good person for the screenplay from novelist James Baldwin, who was joined by Arnold Pearl, a screenwriter who had been actually, who had been a victim of MacArthur airy blacklisting. So part of the reason he was involved in this is, yeah, McCarthy wasn't a fan of. So he had some, you know, left leaning bona fides, a little bit of street cred. A little bit of street cred for getting blacklisted by McCarthy. That screenplay took a lot longer than expected and Pearl ended up dying in 1971 before the film could ever be made.
Baldwin would go on to develop his work on the screenplay into the book One Day When I Was Lost, a scenario based on Alex Haley's the Autobiography of Malcolm X.
He would go on in 1976 to write of his experience, quote, I think what I would rather. I think that I would rather be horsewhipped or incarcerated in the forthright bedlam of Bellevue than repeat that adventure of writing the screenplay was not into it or. It was a very tough experience. Apparently every time I read anything, and I already knew that James Baldwin was obviously brilliant. We talked about him on the podcast and stuff before, but every time you read anything he ever wrote, you're like, holy fucking shit, this dude.
[00:36:17] Speaker B: That's so evocative.
[00:36:18] Speaker A: Well, and like, not even that. I just. There's other stuff I didn't include in here that I was reading from him, like talking about this movie and stuff. And it's just everything he writes, you're like, this man is the most brilliant. It's crazy. It's like crazy.
It's all like incredibly like evocative. And his prose is brilliant, but also just. He so brilliantly like assesses and dissects the problems with society, like over and over and over again and did so in like the 60s, like in a way that is still as relevant as it's. It's wild. So several other authors would go on to attempt drafts for the film, including David Mamet, David Bradley, Charles Fuller and Calder Willingham.
None of those ended up going anywhere. Eventually, Spike Lee took on the role as director and he would rewrite the Baldwin Pearl script from the 60s. Due to those revisions, the Baldwin estate asked that the producers take Baldwin's name off the credits. Fair.
Yes. Like I said, I would not be surprised if Baldwin still has a pretty big stamp on what this movie was. But there was enough changes made that his family and estate were like, that's not his work. Yeah. Which we'll get into. There are some criticisms of the film that we'll get into that I could understand maybe why his estate wasn't as big on it.
So I thought this was interesting. The production was controversial long before filming ever began. Obviously one of those. The kind of crux of that controversy was that Malcolm X had denounced White's kind of broadly before he undertook his hajj. So there was a lot of. There was a lot of friction in getting this film made because Malcolm X was not.
The not was not viewed in the same light in this time period as somebody like Martin Luther King Jr.
[00:38:02] Speaker B: Right.
[00:38:02] Speaker A: His image was very much one of. Well, he's.
[00:38:06] Speaker B: He was controversial.
[00:38:07] Speaker A: And it really. This movie actually did a lot to kind of re. Like not. Maybe not rehabilitate is the right word, but to change perspective or perception of Malcolm X as a figure among white audiences, at least I don't think it did a lot. I think black audiences kind of knew what Malcolm X's deal was broadly. But I think for white audiences, this was definitely a movie that kind of changed perceptions of who Malcolm X was. But we'll get into whether or not how it changed it was necessarily a good thing.
So Warner Brothers agreed to the project.
They initially wanted Oscar nominated Canadian film director Norman Jewison to direct the film.
Jewison had directed the civil rights film in the Heat of the Night, which I've never actually seen, but a very famous civil rights movie called in the Heat of the night from 1967.
And because they signed him on, this is when Denzel agreed to join the project and play Malcolm X.
Jewison and Washington had previously worked together in a film called A Soldier Story.
I thought this was interesting. Jewison also offered Eddie Murphy the role of Alex Haley in this version of the film. So Alex Haley appears in the movie as a character. I don't remember who's actually ultimately played for or by.
But all of this goes down and then a protest kind of bust out erupted over the fact that they were just decided to have a white director make a film about Malcolm X.
And Spike Lee was one of the main voices of that criticism.
Since college, he had considered a film adaptation of the Autobiography of Malcolm X to be a dream project.
Lee and others felt that it would be more appropriate or only appropriate for a black person to direct the film.
Lee later would apparently deny saying this. I don't know. This is just what Wikipedia says. I am quoting it directly. I feel like he wouldn't have denied saying that, but I don't know, whatever. I think maybe he would have said. Well, he denied saying that only a black person should direct it, but he was very clearly, vocally, you know, critical of the decision to have this guy direct the film. So after public outcry against Jewison Wirth, the producer concluded, quote, quote, it needed a black director. At this point, it was insurmountable the other way. There's a grave responsibility here. End quote. So he did at least, you know, realize eventually.
So soon thereafter, Spike Lee was named the director and he subsequently edited the script saying, quote, I'm directing the movie and I rewrote the script and I'm an artist and there's just no two ways about 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, end quote. So shortly after Spike Lee was announced as a director and before the film was released, Malcolm X. The film received criticism by black nationalists and members of the United Front to Preserve the Legacy of Malcolm X, headed by poet and playwright Amira Baraka, who were worried about Lee's portrayal of Malcolm X. There was a protest in Harlem that drew a couple hundred people kind of protesting the film. Some of these people, again, I am reading directly from Wikipedia here, trying to summarize this as best as possible. Some base their opinion on dislike of Lee's previous films. Others were concerned that he would focus on Malcolm Lee, Malcolm X's life before he converted to Islam.
Baraka bluntly accused Amiri Baraka, that's the poet and playwright familiar, bluntly accused Spike Lee of being, quote, a buppy, which for people don't, don't know, that's essentially a black yuppie saying, quote, we will not let Malcolm X's life be trashed to make middle class Negroes sleep easier, end quote. Compelling others to write the director and warn him, quote, not to mess up Malcolm's life, end quote. Some people, including Spike Lee himself, noted the irony that many of the arguments made against him were similar to arguments that were made against Jewison directing the film. And we'll get into some more criticisms of it here eventually. But a lot of the. The criticism that I think comes towards this film is from a place of, like, class consciousness and whether or not Spike Lee had the right perspective to direct this movie because he. Again, calling him a puppy. He was a kind of a. Well, from my understanding, was a fairly well to do.
[00:42:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:16] Speaker A: Person who kind of existed in, you know, I don't know. So anyway, there was. There was a lot of controversy, even with Spike Lee making this movie, that it would not necessarily be an accurate telling of Malcolm X's life.
There were also a ton of budget issues because Warner Brothers didn't want to give Lee the budget that he asked for. Ultimately, the budget got up to $33 million. Lee contributed 2/3 of his $3 million salary to the film. Denzel supposedly donated his entire salary to the film in order to try to keep production going.
But eventually the film got shut down in post production due to these budget conflicts.
But the film was saved by the financial intervention of prominent black Americans, some of whom appear in the film. Here's a list of people that helped financially support this movie so that it actually could get across the finish line and get made. Bill Cosby, unfortunate. First one there. Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Janet Jackson, Prince, Tracy Chapman, and Peggy Cooper Caffertz, who is the founder of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts.
So their contributions, they made them as donations and as Lee noted, said, quote, unquote, this is not a loan. They are not investing in the film. They 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, end quote.
So a month before the film was released, Spike Lee asked that media outlets send specifically black journalists to interview him about the film. And this request was also controversial.
It was common, apparently, for celebrities to pick the interviewers who were known to be sympathetic to them, like, and ask for specific interviewers. But this was the first time in many years, according to Wikipedia here, in which race had been used as a qualification. And Lee clarified that he was not barring white interviews from white interviewers from interviewing him, but that he said, given the subject Matter of the film that black writers have, quote, more insight about Malcolm than white writers, end quote. The request was turned down by the LA Times, but several others, including Premier Magazine, Vogue, Interview and Rolling Stone. But several others agreed, including Premiere Magazine, Vogue, Interview and Rolling Stone. And I thought, this one's interesting. Premier Magazine said that it actually made them reevaluate their staffing and they ended up hiring a black writer and editor because of this request. They were like, yeah, why do we not have any black people working in our magazine? And they're like, oh, shit. So yeah, Malcolm X's widow, Dr. Betty Shabazz, served as a consultant on the film. So she was at least involved in the process.
I looked up how to pronounce her last name. And I watched a video of a history video about the history of Dr. Betty Shabazz. And there was two hosts in it and they both pronounced it different. One of them said Shabazz and the other one said Shabazz. And then I looked on like five different videos. In every single video they would. It was different Shabazz or Shabazz. So I went with Shabazz because that sounded closer to me. But anyways, so I didn't. I actually didn't realize this. Denzel had already had experience playing Malcolm X when this film was being made because he had starred in the play when the Chickens Come Home to Roost, which is a film or sorry, which is a play that dealt with the relationship between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, who is the leader of the Nation of Islam and which is the person potentially accused of having him assassinated or being involved in the assassination.
Malcolm X is the first non documentary and the first American film to be given permission to film in Mecca.
They had to use a second unit film crew in order to film in Mecca because non Muslims, including Spike Lee himself, were not allowed, are not allowed inside the city. So they had to hire an all Muslim second unit crew to film, but they were allowed to film in Mecca.
There are some cameos in the movie, including Nelson Mandela, Christopher Plummer, Peter Boyle, William Kunstler, who is the attorney who defended the Chicago 7, Al Sharpton and Bobby Seale, who is a co founder of the Black Panther Party.
You'll see. You see Al Sharpton and Bobby Seale towards the beginning. There's a point where there's these like three.
I don't remember exactly. They're like activists or whatever, like on the street, like talking like, you know, like preaching or whatever. And it's Al Sharpton, Bobby Seale and I think one Other guy, but.
So director Spike Lee removed all mention of Louis Farrakhan from the film because he received very specific death threats or director threats from Louis Farrakhan, who is.
You can go look up Louis Farrakhan. He's. Yeah.
Not the greatest guy in the world from everything I have read. I thought this was kind of interesting and random. The film features three generations of Washingtons.
Denzel obviously is in the film, but so is his son, John David, as well as his mother, Linus or Linnase. Linus, probably.
And John David, I'm like, 99% sure. John David Washington was a running back for the St. Louis Rams briefly when I used to watch them before they moved to la. He was in the NFL. And I'm pretty sure that was. I know one of his sons was. I think it was John David.
Cause the other one's an actor. One of them's an actor. Oh, no, John David's the actor.
Sorry. It's the. It's one of his other sons. That's. I'm pretty sure.
No, it was John David Washington. John David Washington was a football player, and he signed and played for the Rams in 2006, and then he went on to become an actor. Good for you. And was an actor as a kid. Obviously, he was in this movie. But I knew, Okay. I was like. I knew one of his sons was a.
[00:47:51] Speaker B: You're vindicated. Yeah.
[00:47:53] Speaker A: I was like. I remember being like, oh, that's interesting that one year in, like, the Rams had a running back that was Denzel Washington's son. I thought this is just kind of random. Interesting. The names of the three assassins that were charged with Malcolm X's assassination are listed in the end credits for the film.
[00:48:09] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:48:09] Speaker A: Yeah. And then getting to just a couple reviews, and I kept it minimal because I. Minimal because I thought this was interesting, but obviously had to include Roger Ebert. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times ranked the film number one on his top ten list for 1992, describing it as, quote, one of the great, great screen biographies celebrating the sweep of an American life that bottomed out in prison before its hero reinvented himself, end quote.
In 1999.
So seven years after the film came out, Ebert and Martin Scorsese. Scorsese was sitting in for Gene Siskel on his show, his TV show or whatever. They both ranked Malcolm X among the top 10 best films of the 90s.
In comparison, Bell Hooks was much less favorable. In her essay, Spike Lee doing Malcolm X Denying Black Pain, Hooks argues that Lee's film, quote, does not compel viewers to confront, challenge and change. It embraces and rewards passive response in action. It encourages us to weep but not to fight. End quote. Which I thought was interesting.
So this is what I was talking about. There are like contemporary reviews of the film by black critics and stuff who were like this, were not fans of what the film was saying or doing necessarily. Also, at a similar time, African American experimental filmmaker Robert Banks produced a mixed media film essay called the Baby Cinema, which was a 4 1/2 minute, 16 millimeter short film that chronicled the commercial appropriation of the image of Malcolm X, which I think is another kind of criticism of the film is that just the commercialization of Malcolm X as a figure.
And apparently Spike Lee was not a big fan of this, had some negative words to say about that short film. So I just thought that was interesting. But. So, yeah, but broadly speaking, this film is very well reviewed, contemporarily was very well reviewed, broadly, but there were some less favorable views. And I take Bell Hook's opinion very highly.
So, yeah, I saw that. I was like, oh, interesting. I was unaware of that, having watched this once again in high school.
So, as always, you can do us a favor by heading over to Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Goodreads, any of those places. We'd love to hear what you have to say about the movies we watch, including Malcolm X next week.
You can also help us out by heading over to Apple, Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you listen to our show.
Obviously subscribe, but write us a nice little review that helps us get out to more people and you can Support
[email protected] ThisFilmIsLit if you support us at 15 bucks a month, you get access to priority recommendation or priority requests, which this one was.
[00:50:56] Speaker B: Yes, this was a request from Harpo Rat.
[00:50:59] Speaker A: There you go. Thank you, Harpo Rat. Katie, where can people watch Malcolm X?
[00:51:04] Speaker B: Well, as always, you can check with your local library or if you still have a local video rental store, you can check with them.
Otherwise, you can stream this with a subscription to HBO Max, YouTube or MGM, or you can rent it for between four and six dollars from Fandango at Home, Apple TV Prime Video or YouTube.
[00:51:30] Speaker A: There you go.
Yeah, no, I'm very excited to revisit this. We talked about in the last episode or at the end of the last episode that we've both seen this. Yes. You have not read it.
[00:51:38] Speaker B: I mean, you're reading it. No, I'm reading it currently. I had not read it. No, but I did. Yes, I watched this in high school, in my world history class.
[00:51:47] Speaker A: Yeah. I also, as we talked about, either watched it in my history class or the film class taught by the same history teacher, one of the two.
And as we both joked, the wokest teacher at our high school for both of us.
[00:52:00] Speaker B: Shout out Mr. Webber.
[00:52:01] Speaker A: Mr. Weiss, I believe was the name of. I'm pretty sure. Yeah, I think it was Mr. Weiss.
Yeah.
This hippie white dude.
[00:52:12] Speaker B: Interestingly mine was also a white man, ex marine.
[00:52:17] Speaker A: Oh, really?
[00:52:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:52:18] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:52:19] Speaker B: He was really, he was a cool guy. I liked him a lot.
[00:52:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Mr. Weiss was a. He just kind of seemed like a generic like hippie, not hippie, but like. Cause he was pretty young, but that kind of. I honestly clearly went to a liberal arts school.
[00:52:32] Speaker B: I still think sometimes about how much world history Mr. Webber managed to cram into that one year because it was a lot.
He did a really good job.
[00:52:43] Speaker A: Well, I also, I think that a couple of those high school teachers I had around that time were very pivotal in making sure I've always been progressive and you know, left leaning and all of that. But I was definitely at a very pivotal time in my life and a very formative time in my life that the people that I thought were the smartest and the, and who were, I think, but who, you know, at that time I thought were the most that I was looking up to intellectually were people like, who were showing stuff like this, like that, you know. Yeah. And we're like, hey, we should watch Malcolm X and blah, blah, and you know, issues with the movies aside, which we'll, we'll discuss in whatever capacity we can says to young white people. But yeah, I, I, yeah, I, I do give a lot of credit to the, to I think to my, or my, my ongoing political development. But like the fact that I am the, the obnoxious leftist that I am now. A lot of it has to do with teachers like this showing us movies like this when I was in high school. So. Yeah, no, again, like I said, very excited to revisit it. See if my opinions have changed. I don't remember much of anything about it because again, we watched it one time in high school. Yeah, I thought, wow, that's, that was a really good movie. That was like really powerful. I remember feeling very affected by it, but I don't remember anything about it.
[00:54:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I remember like a couple things here and there, but not really. I remember like the discussions we had about the film more than I remember like the actual, actual film.
[00:54:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:54:18] Speaker B: Which I guess is good.
[00:54:19] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, next week we're talking about Malcolm X. Until that time, guys, gals, not binary pals. And everybody else, keep reading books, keep.
[00:54:29] Speaker B: Watching movies and keep being awesome.
[00:54:42] Speaker A: Sam.
