Danny Glover's Haiti film lacked 'white heroes', producers said
"Producers said 'It's a nice project, a great project... where are the white heroes?'" he told the press during a stay in Paris this month for a seminar on film.
"I couldn't get the money here, I couldn't get the money in Britain. I went to everybody. You wouldn't believe the number of producers based in Europe, and in the States, that I went to," he said.
D"The first question you get, is 'Is it a black film?' All of them agree, it's not going to do good in Europe, it's not going to do good in Japan.
"Somebody has to prove that to be a lie!", he said. "Maybe I'll have the chance to prove it."
"Toussaint," Glover's first project as film director, is about Francois Dominique Toussaint Louverture (1743-1803), a former slave and one of the fathers of Haiti's independence from France in 1804, making it the first black nation to throw off imperial rule and become a republic.
The uprising he led was bloodily put down in 1802 by 20,000 soldiers dispatched to the Caribbean by Napoleon Bonaparte, who then re-established slavery after its ban by the leaders of the French Revolution.
Due to be shot in Venezuela early next year, the film will star Don Cheadle, Mos Def, Wesley Snipes and Angela Bassett.
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- goldenways
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There have been so many movies made about the American war for independance whereas this small country stood up to Napolean's Army and won there independance at a time when his army had taken over most of Europe yet not 1 film has ever been made to document this story. One of the reason Haiti is so poor today is because instead of support from the US there was an imbargo put on Haiti to stop all trade so that the country was cut off from European business as well as American. The americans did not see them as a country fighting for independance from Europe but as slaves revolting against their slave masters and were afraid the same thing would happen in the US.
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- ladydignzlz
- 1 year ago
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hmm. i can believe that there was a racial bias in the producers' willingness to fund, unless obviously it would be likely to be a big hit. However I find it seriously hard to believe that they would actually say "Where are the white heroes?"
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I can believe this. The Tom Cruise movie The Last Samurai is a example of how Hollywood took a historical story and put a white character as the lead.
