“Time Traveler”
In June 2008, the switchboards lit up briefly with the announcement, via press release, that Spike Lee’s production company, 40 Acres and a Mule, had optioned the book “Time Traveler: A Scientist’s Personal Mission To Make Time Travel A Reality,” which Lee was slated to adapt into a screenplay and to direct. Lee’s involvement might on the surface seem a strange fit for a director not known for his sci-fi leanings, but in fact the book is part memoir, and was written by and about Dr. Ronald Mallet, one of the first ever African-Americans to gain a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. It documents his own life story, from a deprived and poverty-stricken childhood, through the death of his father (an event to which Mallett traces his desire to be able to go back in time) and on to his career as a scientist culminating in what according to the press release, New Scientist’s editor called “an actual blueprint for a time machine.” Which well, okay, wow. But still, Lee’s comment that the project was a “fantastic story on many levels (and) also a father and son saga of loss and love” suggests that his focus would be more human interest than theremin-soundtracked science fiction. Which is kind of a shame if true, because we’d love to see what Lee would do in such an atypical genre.
Anyway, since that announcement word’s gone deathly quiet on this one. Mallett himself referred to the film as “in development” in a 2011 interview, and our sister blog Shadow and Act, in its pre-Indiewire days, ran a comprehensive piece on the book’s potential for adaption along with some speculative casting. But from Lee himself, there’s been nada, and the garrulous Lee can usually be relied upon for a nugget or two if things are even remotely a going concern. And while the time travel angle does pique our interest, the danger that this might become a standard triumph-over-adversity biopic with but a light dusting of physics, does loom rather large judging by what we’ve heard so far. Still perhaps all this will become moot when Mallett’s time machine gets up and running and he can go back and make sure the film is already made by now. Or maybe it does work and he already went back in time to suppress the film version, thus creating our current reality and, more importantly, this blog post? MIND BLOWN.
“Save Us, Joe Louis”
The second of a trifecta of biopics about seminal figures from black history, none of which Lee, to his frustration, has ever been able to get off the ground (James Brown and Jackie Robinson being the other two—see above for the story of the James Brown picture, while this year’s “42” suggests his Jackie Robinson project is now totally defunct), Spike Lee’s mooted Joe Louis movie was maybe the one we were most interested in, on paper anyway. Slated to focus specifically on the rivalry between Louis and Max Schmeling (and we always appreciate biopics that take the approach of highlighting one aspect or period of the subject’s life rather than trying to cram in every Potentially Meaningful moment from the cradle to the grave), it was all the way back in 2000 that Lee was first linked to the project. Indeed, it was suggested that his disappointment at losing the Muhammad Ali biopic to Michael Mann prompted him to go in search of another tale of a black boxing hero, though we’re sure it wasn’t quite as simplistic as that.
He was joined in the endeavor by boxing historian Bert Sugar and Budd Schulberg, the legendary screenwriter of both “On the Waterfront” and boxing pic “The Harder They Fall,” himself no slouch when it comes to knitting social and cultural context deep into the fabric of a screenplay. The slant Lee and Schulberg were taking was reportedly overtly political, as the two boxers became symbols of opposing ideologies (Louis was a hero for African-Americans during the immediate prewar period when Hitler himself had championed the German-born Schmeling) prior to becoming friends despite it all in their later retirement. As Lee told ESPN: “The hook is the relationship—as adversaries, as political tools, as opponents in the ring, and as friends—between Max Schmeling and Joe Louis, and the arc of their lives. They engaged in perhaps the greatest two minutes of sports and warfare of the entire 20th century, symbolically speaking.”
It was the film Lee was actively trying to mount when 9/11 happened, in fact he had had a meeting with Arnold Schwarzenegger for the role of Schmeling the day before, he remembered in 2011. Obviously it didn’t come together at that point (but you can read a script review of this draft here), but neither did it go away with Variety reporting in 2005 that script work had been ongoing by both Lee and a then 93-year-old Schulberg, and Lee saying that historical figures like FDR, Hitler Mussolini and Sugar Ray Robinson would feature and calling it a “David Lean caliber film.” In 2006, Schulberg mentioned that Lee had spoken to Terrence Howard about the lead role (Vin Diesel, had been rumored at one point too, oddly), and that Disney was reportedly interested to the tune of $35m, roughly half of what the production was estimated to need. Schulberg also explained the title: “That is based on the story of a young black kid that’s being executed. When they strapped him down, attaching all the things to him, he actually cried out, ‘Save me Joe Louis!’ In fact we have that scene in the film. Joe Louis was like a god really.”
But it looks like, story of his life, and of this list, Lee couldn’t get anyone to pony up the other half of the budget and the film lost whatever momentum it had once built up. That said, of the three biopics mentioned, it’s the only subject that hasn’t had a big-screen adaptation greenlit elsewhere, so perhaps we can keep the home fires burning for this one a little longer. Lee himself has certainly never removed it entirely from the realm of possibility.
“L.A. Riots”
Of the many projects we discuss here, the one that’s kind of unthinkable that anyone else might direct is “LA Riots,” a recreation of the events leading up to and away from the infamous week of racially charged civil unrest in Los Angeles in 1992 following the acquittal by an all-white jury of four police officers charged in connection with the vicious videotaped beating of Rodney King the previous year. It’s sort of the film that Lee seems born to make, and yet, and yet…
So it was back in 2006, a year of frenetic activity for Lee following his biggest-ever box office hit “Inside Man” that saw a slew of projects suddenly come (back) to life now that they were sprinkled with the magic dust of a recent (modest) hitmaker, that it was first announced that Lee was to helm a film based on those controversial, incendiary events. Regular collaborator Brian Grazer of Imagine Entertainment was set to produce, and the film was to be scripted by John Ridley, who wrote both “Red Tails” and this year’s “12 Years a Slave.” A couple of years later and Grazer was again enthused about moving the film onto the front burner, though with a new screenwriter involved: Terry George, who Lee and Grazer would also tap for the second go-round at the “Inside Man 2” script. Grazer told the LA Times in July 2008: “John Ridley wrote a great script, but it needed a little more focus, so we put Terry George on it to do a rewrite. The script is due in two weeks, and, having worked with Terry before, we’re expecting that it should be something that’s ready to shoot.” So with him insisting that Lee was going to deliver a more egalitarian and multi-perspective look at the riots than detractors might have feared (and seriously, what?), there was a brief flare of hope that Lee would be behind cameras on this one before the year was out.
But already in February of the following year, those hopes had been dashed. Lee told MTV in not-at-all-veiled disgust that the budget for what had to be, in his eyes, a film of a certain breadth and scope, could not be found. “How can you scale back the LA riots?! That’s not the movie I want to make. The studio said, ‘Scale it back.’ What’s the point?” At that same time, however, Lee was refusing to let go of it altogether saying “It’s not dead. But it’s…it’s on the shelf. Let’s use that term. It still should be made—I want to make it.” Usually, that’s where the trail on Lee’s stalled projects goes cold, but this one has an odd postscript. In 2012, following Rodney King’s death, and with the Trayvon Martin murder trial still ongoing, the project came back to life, but this time as a rumored directorial vehicle for “Fast Five” and “Fast & Furious 6” director Justin Lin. It was a strange move, regarded as possibly there as a prestige pic that might keep golden goose Lin from straying from the Universal fold, but with Lin more recently lined up for the next installment in the ‘Bourne’ franchise, and about a million other projects following the blockbuster success of his last ‘Fast/Furious’ go-round, “LA Riots” seems to have, yet again, gone cool. Either way, it seems that Lee is not going to be the one to throw a trashcan through this particular window any time soon.