Jackie Robinson Biopic
So earlier this year, you may recall, “42” was released (our review here), a film written and directed by Brian Helgeland and detailing the life and achievements of legendary baseball player Jackie Robinson. In fact the film marked the end of more than 15 years of gestation, a process enabled, but also occasionally hampered by Robinson’s widow, Rachel, who was the driving force behind the project, but also had, understandably, specific ideas on how she wanted it handled that saw some drafts not meet with her approval. During that period, however, one of the developing projects that came closest was that championed and developed by Spike Lee. Lee worked closely with Rachel Robinson (indeed he expressed his happiness that she’d have the satisfaction of seeing a version of her husband’s life on screen even if it wasn’t his version), and apparently was nearly ready to roll, but financing fell through about five years ago. Now we understand that studios are notoriously gun-shy about financing films about black protagonists, but this also has to be an example of Lee’s bad timing and/or ‘difficult’ reputation because we can’t imagine that he was asking for a great deal more than the $40m stumped up by Legendary for “42,” and that picture got greenlit for a neophyte director with an unknown lead.
But Lee had become philosophical about it all already by 2008, saying “I’ve been at peace for a long time, in fact, it’s not just Jackie Robinson. I have a trilogy of films I’ve tried to make back after “Malcolm X” but nothing got made because of financing. Jackie Robinson was first; Joe Louis was second, and most recently was James Brown.” But this was in response to the news that Robert Redford’s rival Jackie Robinson project backed by ESPN was going ahead. About “42,” which has little to do with either his or Redford’s version (though Redford was working with Helgeland on his more Branch Rickey-centric take, prior to Legendary Pictures coming aboard), Lee hasn’t managed to sound quite so magnanimous. Earlier this year he told EW that while his version “was dead a long time ago” he couldn’t bring himself to go see “42” yet, as it would be “too painful. Here’s the thing, though: I’m happy for Rachel Robinson. But for me, I can’t see it yet. I will, but I can’t yet.”
“Selling Time”
As part of the post- “Inside Man” 2006 scramble to make hay while the sun shone and pile projects onto his plate like a starving orphan at a banquet, Lee was also attached to “Selling Time,” a high-concept sci-fi action film (also described as a supernatural thriller), intially to rewrite but also potentially as a directorial vehicle. The original script, by ex DreamWorks TV president Dan McDermott, was bought by Fox all the way back in 2001, and details the downbeat “Groundhog Day”-style premise of a man who “sells” off chunks of his life in order to be able to relive his worst day over and over, presumably to get it right, or to make something right. In fact, Lee’s directorial connection to this project was only ever tenuous—it had prior to his involvement been linked to Forest Whitaker as a directing possibility. And while reportedly Lee met with Tom Cruise as a potential star in a version he’d direct, both men seem to have cooled on the project fairly rapidly. Indeed, after Lee exited, his draft of the script was rewritten by Derek and Steven Martini before being put on a shelf somewhere to gather dust for a few years. Recently, however, it coughed back to life in October of this year when Will Smith was reportedly very close to a deal to star in it, and the script, in the hilarious way of Hollywood, has made its way all the way back to original writer Dan McDermott for another pass. But aside from Lee not really ever having shown much interest in the genre (barring “Time Traveler,” see above) we’ve never really heard anything at all from the helmer about this one, so we’re going to have to assume, IMDB In Development listings be damned, that he’s forgotten all about it by now.
“Untitled Marion Barry Project”
Any trawl through Lee’s catalogue of unmade films will find you constantly bumping into familiar names in terms of collaborators, but perhaps no title boasts more than the biopic of notorious Washington Mayor Marion Barry, to which Lee was attached back in late 2011. The film was to be scripted by John “12 Years a Slave” Ridley (who worked on the original incarnation of Lee’s abortive “LA Riots”), was set up at HBO, which had backed Lee’s Katrina documentaries and was home to the Mike Tyson-inspired, Lee co-created boxing drama show “Da Brick” until it wasn’t, and most excitingly was to feature Eddie Murphy in the lead role. Murphy, you’ll recall from several thousand words ago, was at one time the frontrunner to play James Brown in Lee’s biopic before nasty old Tate Taylor stole the march on that one.
Frankly put, Marion Barry’s life story is cray, a rise and fall and rise and fall and rise and (you get the message) narrative that encompasses his civil rights activism and four terms as D.C. mayor, but also his imprisonment, and the infamous incident, recently echoed by Toronto’s favorite son Rob Ford, in which a videotape of him smoking crack cocaine was leaked to media. Certainly Lee had all the elements in place to do justice to this larger-than-life figure, and with Harry Jaffe and Tom Sherwood (authors of the book “Dream City: Race, Power, and the Decline of Washington, D.C.“) and Dana Flor and Toby Oppenheimer (documentarians behind “The Nine Lives Of Marion Barry“) all on board as consultants, it can be assumed that the slant would have been maybe less scabrous, but no less controversial, than that espoused by the Chris Rock-scripted, Jamie Foxx-starring 2002 version that never got going. Barry himself has so far refused to comment on the Lee film.
Still, we’ve not heard a peep about it since, and if this list has taught us anything, it’s to be wary when word on a Spike Lee project goes quiet. But really, it feels like this could be a great vehicle for the maverick-but-maybe-mellowing filmmaker to team up at last with the maverick-but-maybe-mellowing movie star.
“Porgy and Bess”
In something of a coup, if we do say so ourselves, in August 2012, when we sat down with Lee during press rounds for “Red Hook Summer,” we’d already put together the long-murmured rumors of his interest in adapting “Porgy and Bess” into a movie musical with a recent tweet that indicated he’d just been to see the Tony-winning Broadway revival of the Gershwin show. When we asked him about it, Lee confirmed that he was at that point trying to get his film version to happen, but, hold our horses, he had been engaged in that process for more than ten years. The main issue this time out wasn’t even budget (looks like he never quite got that far), but a complicated rights tangle involving the estates of George Gershwin and of DuBose Heyward, on whose libretto (and 1925 novel) the famous folk opera was originally based. Part of their hesitance was apparently due to historic disappointment over the now difficult-to-find 1959 version, which, despite a wonderful cast including Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, Sammy Davis Jr. and Pearl Bailey, featured poorly dubbed singing voices in addition to other production problems like an acrimonious change of director mid-shoot.
“I want to make it, but I’m in long discussions with both estates,” Lee told us back then adding that it had long been an ambition of his to direct a musical. “Porgy and Bess” the opera details the attempts of a disabled beggar living in Charleston (Porgy) to save the woman he loves, Bess, from the clutches of her violent lover Crown, and from the drug dealer Sportin’ Life, and features some absolutely knockout tunes in the form of “Summertime,” “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” “Bess You Is My Woman” and the goosebump-inducing “I Loves You Porgy,” so it would be fascinating to see what Lee would do with a screen version. However, Lee’s name went deafeningly unmentioned when, in April of this year, Variety reported that producers Mike Medavoy and Bobby Geisler were developing a “reenvisioned and updated” version of the opera, and that they had secured the cooperation of both estates. In fact, Marc George Gershwin (nephew of George and Ira) said, “We get approached a lot with ideas that aren’t very good but Mike [Medavoy] has a great track record. We’re confident that he’s going to able to find the right director and writer. And we already have the music.” Which seems to imply that to their knowledge, Lee who had been petitioning them for those very rights for a decade or more, has no involvement with this new take. Which, if it’s true, well, ouch.
These are hardly the only rumored projects of Lee’s that haven’t come to pass—he also had a couple of projects that were to star Justin Timberlake, one being his big-screen version of “Rent,” which was, of course, was taken on in 2005 instead by the chalk to Lee’s cheese, Chris Columbus. However the second was still alive as of last month, anyway, and is “Spinning Gold,” a biopic of Neil Bogart, the producer behind acts as diverse as Curtis Mayfield and the Village People. In 2012, meantime, Lee suggested that he might in future tackle a Stevie Wonder documentary, which we would see a little more hope for than for some others on this list being as Lee has a relationship with Wonder, and a track record of getting documentary projects off the ground with comparative ease. But the one we can be kinda sure about now, since Lee’s successful if controversial Kickstarter campaign is the awesomely titled “Da Blood of Jesus” or occasionally “Da Sweet Blood of Jesus,” which featuring Zaraah Abrahams, Steven Tyrone Williams and the great Michael K. Williams, is already in the can as of October. Asked to describe it, Lee as ever kept plot details schtum, but said “It’s scary. Humorous. Bloody. Sexy. [Blood is a] metaphor. As we all know, human beings have many addictions. Drugs, sex, alcohol, power, money, Air Jordans. In this one they’re addicted to blood. We shot in New York, Martha’s Vineyard, and we’re editing now.” So we’ll be hoping for more news soon on a potential festival premiere next year, with a newfound appreciation of how apparently unlikely and tortuous it is for any Spike Lee film ever ever to make it to our screens.
