Still Eyeing the Prize

It was as if a bolt of lightning had silently shot through the room when James Bevel began to speak of the moment he knew he was not afraid to die for what he believed.

Bevel, a bearded activist who was one of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s key soldiers during the civil rights struggle of the 1960s, suddenly sat upright, his voice anchored by a gravelly, unwavering tone. For a moment, he was there--transported by memory back to his nonviolent fight for equality and the right to vote.

“We all agreed that we would die for this,” said Bevel, who had come to Los Angeles to tell his story to author and historian Taylor Branch, now at work on a miniseries for ABC based on his Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the civil rights era, “Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63,” and its sequel, “Pillar of Fire,” published last year as the second volume in a planned trilogy about the movement

“Once you decide that, [those against you] know they are not in a position to negotiate. That’s how you gain sovereignty,” Bevel said during his recent visit. “You feel that, and you feel that power.”

Bevel mesmerized the small group gathered in a Westside production office to interview him about his experiences. Though Branch was intimately familiar with Bevel and his story of determination, he still watched the activist as if he were hearing the story for the first time. Others in the room, including producer-director Jon Avnet, were equally struck by the intensity of Bevel’s recollections.

After a few moments, Branch reached for his legal pad and jotted down notes on a scene he did not want to forget.

After 10 years unsuccessfully toiling in Hollywood trying to launch a feature film based on this chapter in American history, Branch is finally seeing his dream start to come true. The author, along with veteran filmmaker Avnet and entertainer / civil rights activist Harry Belafonte, are teaming up with a passion to produce an eight-hour miniseries that ABC and project partner Columbia TriStar Television are positioning as the first major TV event of the 21st century.

The four-part project, which is expected to cost between $24 million and $30 million, is scheduled for broadcast in January 2000.

“This is the great freedom story of the 20th century, and certainly the most important story that people don’t seem to know about,” said Susan Lyne, executive vice president of movies and miniseries for ABC Entertainment. “This is the ideal time to do something like this as we enter the 21st century--to see where we’ve been and where we’ve come and find out where we are going.”

Helen Verno, executive vice president of movies and miniseries for Columbia TriStar Television, echoed Lyne’s sentiments: “There are only a few American stories that have changed everything for all of us, and this is one of them. To do it now, with the added punctuation of the landmark date of the millennium, just gives it that much greater significance.”

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Branch and Avnet, along with screenwriters Carol Schreder, Alice Randall and Robert O’Hara, have for the past several months buried themselves in “Parting the Waters.” Much of the early trench work involved supplementing details from Branch’s books with insights from recent interviews with several key survivors of the movement such as Bevel, who organized mass marches of young people, and civil rights leader Robert Moses, who attempted to register black voters.

Those figures, as well as other lesser-known activists, will provide much of the focus for “Parting the Waters.” While King will be a pivotal figure, the impact of others such as Bevel and Moses, for example, will be central to the story. The point, according to Branch, is that this has never been just one man’s journey, that there are many remarkable stories and compelling personalities that have been overlooked or virtually forgotten.

“One of the main things we want to do is bring honor to those people who are less familiar to the public,” said Avnet. Belafonte, who stood by King as one of the principal entertainers embroiled in the fight for equal rights, is contributing his own recollections. For him, the miniseries represents the conclusion of a frustrating fight to make a dramatic presentation of what he believes is the most woefully neglected era of American history.

“So many black people--and white people--know so little about the period,” said Belafonte. “There is disinterest, distraction and a lot of inattention about that time.”

Painful decisions to eliminate certain sections of Branch’s books have already had to be made. Branch would like to dramatize important incidents and figures such as President Lyndon B. Johnson or black leaders such as Malcolm X, but is unsure whether time and story limitations will be able to accommodate them: “We would really like to show the real Malcolm X. That hasn’t been done before. But I don’t know if we’ll be able to do that.”

In addition to the daunting challenge of condensing and adapting the two massive Branch works into eight hours, the producers acknowledge the risk the historical miniseries presents, particularly when other racially charged films, such as “Amistad” and “Beloved,” had trouble finding audiences.

Industry insiders say the project already may have a disadvantage because miniseries based on history and true characters tend to be less popular with viewers. NBC, for instance, hopes to overcome that next month with its miniseries “The ‘60s” with a fictional family interacting with real-life events.

With the exception of the occasional television movie during Black History Month, and feature films that lace the historical events with fictional characters and often questionable facts, the civil rights movement has mostly been presented in stark black-and-white news images that have tended to provoke visceral reactions of pain and bitterness among blacks and shame among whites.

Branch acknowledged the hurdles: “I’m not above saying we need all the help we can get. It’s an inherently dramatic and important subject, but we will need good marketing and some star power.”

But in the long run, the producers have faith that “Parting the Waters,” with its numerous revelations of heroic deeds, and of ordinary people who overcame staggering odds, will be able to get beyond the cloud of misgivings and hurtful memories. They also hope it will energize as well as enlighten viewers, much like ABC’s 1977 miniseries, “Roots,” the landmark 12-hour adaptation of Alex Haley’s book on his search for his African ancestors, which drew a record number of viewers. And the timing couldn’t be more perfect, said Winifred White Neisser, Columbia TriStar Television’s senior vice president of movies and miniseries.

“We have a perspective now on what really happened,” said Neisser. “Something like this project brings us to our true feelings. We have done some terrible things, and to look at it honestly and with integrity, and to learn from it, is the most important thing that television can offer. We should take the risk if only for that reason.”

She added, “The emotion that I hope people will be left with is a sense of pride, that people from all levels of society, of all colors, came together to do something important.”

Branch is equally optimistic that the miniseries can be successful.

“My expectations have always been high that this would be a great movie. Now that it’s happening, I feel like we’ve been shot out of a cannon.”

But his memory of the near-sinking of the movie version of “Parting the Waters” is never far away.

With the presence of larger-than-life figures such as King, Medgar Evers and President John F. Kennedy, and the personal stories behind dramatic and emotionally charged events such as Rosa Parks’ refusal to ride in the back of a bus, the March on Washington and the “I Have a Dream” speech, Branch had no doubt that a film based on his 1988 chronicle would be a natural when he first began talking with movie studio executives here nearly a decade ago.

Reviewers had instantly hailed “Parting the Waters” as an exhaustively detailed and researched history. The book is structured as a narrative, with vividly drawn characters largely unconscious of the influence they would have.

In “Parting the Waters,” King is portrayed as a strong yet uncertain young man who often battles his own self-doubts on his way to becoming one of the most influential black Americans in contemporary times. Branch once said that he saw King’s life “as the best and most important metaphor for American history in the watershed postwar years.”

Hollywood almost instantly came knocking on Branch’s door. But despite initial interest, he, along with Belafonte, ultimately found resistance at studios from executives, afraid or uncertain about the commercial value of the subject matter.

“They told me, ‘Race films don’t sell, particularly overseas,’ ” said Branch during a recent visit to Avnet’s office. “A lot of people were enamored with the idea of making the movie, but when it got down to the nitty-gritty, it all came down to numbers and controversy.”

Recalling the Hollywood struggle, Belafonte’s hands began punching the air, and his raspy voice took on a tone of urgent frustration and anger.

“It’s like we have to beat the system all over again,” he said. “I’ve been in Hollywood since the early 1950s, and still African Americans have to fight and scrap and do their tap dance just to get on the table in any meaningful way. It just doesn’t make sense that we have to fight the way we have to get this story told.”

Avnet was more terse in analyzing why “Parting the Waters” and other stories about the civil rights movement have not been hot properties: “It’s because of racism, cowardice and lack of imagination.”

Feature and television movies have rarely tackled in-depth examinations of the civil rights movement. In 1978 NBC aired “King,” a six-hour miniseries that explored King’s career from his beginnings as a Baptist preacher in the South until his 1968 assassination. The miniseries starred Paul Winfield as King and Cicely Tyson as his wife, Coretta Scott King.

From 1991-1993, NBC also aired the critically acclaimed but low-rated “I’ll Fly Away,” a drama about the dawn of the civil rights movement.

The most well-known broadcast treatment of the era is still “Eyes on the Prize,” the acclaimed 1987 PBS documentary that was composed almost entirely of newsreel footage and interviews with some of the participants.

Largely because of the inattention, Belafonte maintained that blacks “have become estranged from our history.”

And Avnet said, “I’ve got an 18-year-old daughter going to an Ivy League school. I’ve got a 15-year-old son who’s a very good student. They know that there’s a song called ‘Rosa Parks’ by OutKast, and not much else.”

After years of rejection, the idea for a “Parting the Waters” movie wound up at TriStar Studios, where it languished until last year when it came to the attention of Columbia TriStar Television executives.

“Folks at TriStar felt that the book was so huge that it would be much better suited to a miniseries than a feature film,” said Columbia TriStar TV’s Verno. “There was this long history of feature film people trying to contain the material, and we knew it would take eight hours minimum to tell.”

A call went out to ABC, and Lyne, who came to the network in March 1998, jumped at the project. Lyne, the first editor of the film magazine Premiere and former executive vice president of Walt Disney Pictures and Television, was already a fan of Branch’s book.

“I loved ‘Parting the Waters’ and thought it was one of the great untold stories,” said Lyne. She also knew others, including HBO, were starting to express interest.

“We had to convince everyone that going with eight hours on ABC, this would be seen by far more people and have a greater impact than if it was on HBO,” Lyne said. “There was also a great deal of enthusiasm from everyone at the network.”

The project also fit into Lyne’s goal of bringing some weightier fare to the TV movie and miniseries spectrum.

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In the presence of Belafonte and Branch, the pressure of pulling together the massive miniseries does not seem to be getting to Avnet, a longtime friend of Belafonte who was asked by the entertainer to come on board. “When Harry calls, you just go,” he said.

The three executive producers joke easily as they sit in Avnet’s office, bound together with great affection by the passion they are bringing to the project.

But in a moment away from his colleagues, Avnet acknowledged the enormity of their mission.

“This is extremely challenging,” said Avnet. “The history is so important, and we really want to get it right. We want to be as responsible and accurate as possible. We’re dealing with real words and real people. Right now we’re not planning on using any composite characters.”

Avnet is grateful that there now seems to be a buzz surrounding the project. Casting will not be announced for weeks, but there are many major actors and actresses who have already expressed interest in participating, he said. Also up in the air is who will direct.Avnet is considering directing one of the installments himself.

Carol Schreder, who is writing two of the installments, joked that she has been chained to her computer for several months, trying to shape the episodes out of Branch’s books and recent interviews.

“Taylor’s books are so marvelous with incredible detail, it’s just an abundance of riches,” she said. “Taylor and I went through the book and identified key characters and events. Now I’m pulling that into a narrative form that will give these characters a dramatic arc within the context of the unfolding events.”

Belafonte quickly becomes passionate talking about his hopes for “Parting the Waters”: “If we can get this right, and if we’re careful, we can really make a mark.”

He began recalling his first meeting with King in 1956, when he was a young actor wary of what the Baptist preacher was trying to accomplish. Belafonte was even reluctant to meet with King. “Who was this pipsqueak?” he remembered thinking.

With his eyes misting up slightly, Belafonte spoke of how deeply King impressed him with his humility and humbleness. As Branch and Avnet listened to Belafonte’s memories unfold, the room seemed to fill up with emotion.

“It was just incredible,” Belafonte said. “He told me what he was doing and what he needed. He asked me if I would walk the journey with him.

“There was no question,” said Belafonte quietly, “that I would.”