A LITTLE HISTORY OF BOOKER WRIGHT

I thought I’d write a summary of Booker’s story to state, in a dramatic fashion, what I see as the spine of our movie.

Booker’s story is that of an illiterate black man born into a life of poverty in the sharecropping world of 1920's Mississippi who managed to pull himself out of that life despite his limitations. He built himself a life “in the city” as a business person, fulfilling his dream of owning his own business--a restaurant called "Booker's Place" in the black part of town. He managed to do this by working nights as a waiter at the legendary "Lusco's Steak House"--a Mississippi landmark in the white part of town (it was segregated, of course). By walking on two sides of the street, as it were--serving the white master in order to be his own master amongst the black citizens--he was able to function in an uncommonly independent way. You could say that, despite the killing workload, he truly had it made.

But people can only remain restrained from revolt for so long; too many years of verbal and physical oppression and deprivation of human rights inevitably results in revolution. When this happened in Greenwood, Booker Wright watched safely from the sidelines but felt something boling up inside him, something that he couldn’t contain. Though nobody remembers him as being vocally supportive of the movement for black freedom, his turn came when NBC News came to Greenwood to see how whites and blacks got along. My father's documentary unit was there to cover the volatile events of the mid-sixties and somebody told them that a black restaurant owner/worker named Booker Wright would be interested in speaking to the camera's. For reasons that are buried with him, Booker chose to unleash a lifetime of pent up frustration and contempt for the white people who he’d spent his life serving—first as the ward of a sharecropping family (where he was deprived of his natural mother due to the machinations of the plantation owner), next as a servant to the planter class and Greenwood white citizenry at the local restaurant where he worked.

By telling the truth of his feelings to a nationwide audience, Booker earned the enmity of the white world in which he’d long served. He had broken free of the last of his “enslavement” but at a price: he was beaten by a white policeman to the point of needing hospitalization, fired from his job and ostracized by his former “friends” in the white community.

Here is a clip of Booker's appearence on my fathers NBC news documentary "Mississippi: A Self-Portrait". His astonishing monologue would have wide-reaching impact on the citizens and politicians of Mississippi. And a few years later it would have a tragic impact on Booker's life.

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A LITTLE HISTORY OF BOOKER WRIGHT

I thought I’d write a summary of Booker’s story to state, in a dramatic fashion, what I see as the spine of our movie.

Booker’s story is that of an illiterate black man born into a difficult personal life of poverty in the sharecropping world of the 1920[s and 30’s south who pulled himself out of that life and, despite his limitations, built himself a life “in the city” as a business person. He worked as a waiter (the best job available to him) in order to support his very “all-American” dream of being his own boss and running his own place. He most certainly would have been happy with that arrangement for the rest of his life had not history interfered. Once progress came to the south and once blacks were given the right to protest the conditions under which they lived within white society, Booker Wright—like many others around him—was forced to grow. Initially, though, he watched from the sidelines, wanting no trouble, wanting only to maintain the life he’d carefully built for himself on the two sides of town in two very different communities.

But people can only remain restrained from revolt for so long; too many years of verbal and physical oppression and deprivation of human rights inevitably results in revolution. When this happened in Greenwood, Booker Wright continued to watch from the sidelines but felt something boling up inside him, something that he couldn’t contain. Though nobody remembers him as being vocally supportive of the movement for black freedom, his turn came when NBC news came to Greenwood to see how whites and blacks got along. For reasons that are buried with him, Booker chose to unleash a lifetime of pent up frustration and contempt for the white people who he’d spent his life serving—first as the ward of a sharecropping family (where he was deprived of his natural mother due to the machinations of the plantation owner), next as a servant to the planter class and Greenwood white citizenry at the local restaurant where he worked.

By telling the truth of his feelings to a nationwide audience, Booker earned the enmity of the white world in which he’d long served. He had broken free of the last of his “enslavement” but at a price: he was beaten, fired from his job and ostracized by his former “friends” in the white community.

Here is a clip of Booker's appearence on my fathers NBC news documentary "Mississippi: A Self-Portrait". His astonishing monologue would have wide-reaching impact on the citizens and politicians of Mississippi. And a few years later it would have a tragic impact on Booker's life. More on that in a minute...

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"BOOKER'S PLACE"--THE MAKING OF A DOCUMENTARY

I am currently working on two documentary films in addition to my feature projects. For the past two years I've been shooting interviews of great performers who came out of cabaret and nightclub backgrounds for a documentary on the history of cabaret. The film--titled "Intimate Nights; The Golden Age of Cabaret"--is based on James Gavin's excellent book of the same title and is just about ready to go out to find a buyer in the form of a sizzle reel showing highlights of the interviews. (I've held off editing any footage until we have a buyer as the rights clearances are bound to be expensive).

But a few months ago I began work on another doc as well. The emergence of this project is directly attributable to the posting on this blog of my fathers documentary "Mississippi: A Self-Portrait". My producing partner, David Zellerford, was so taken with the film--and specifically with an amazing piece of footage involving a black restaurant owner/worker named Booker Wright--that he pursued (and urged me to do so as well) Booker's story. Others on the internet also found the piece riveting and soon we were in touch with Yvette Johnson, Booker's granddaughter, who happened to be similarly fascinated in unearthing her late grandfather's controversial story.

So we went to Greenwood Mississippi--the location where my father's film took place--and began digging around for stories and clues involving Booker. We shot a hell of a lot of footage in the seven days we were there. And although we've begun assembling the footage, we're going back in a week to shoot more. And I've decided to blog the making of the film--much as I did with my film "City Island"--taking you through the week-by-week account of theshooting, editing, finishing and marketing of this particular doc.

Working on documentaries is immensely satisfying in a number of ways. For one thing it's a form that can be accomplished without spending millions of dollars. To be fair there is now much work that can be done in narrative features on the same catch-as-catch-can, digital basis. With the advent of high quality camera's and the Final Cut revolution, anybody can make a film for what amounts to pocket change now. But the shooting of a doc is different for a very specific reason: the interviews.

I am continually amazed at the amazing people I encounter in the making of a doc. Simply put, you often find yourself sitting across the table from some extraordinary people who you probably would otherwise have never met. When we shot my first doc, "Tis Autumn: The Search For Jackie Paris", we met some of jazz's true giants, people I'd admired all my life. Billy Taylor, Anita O'Day, James Moody, Mark Murphy, George Wein, Howard Rumsey, Ruth Price--these are just a smattering of those who welcomed us into their homes and appeared on camera. The cabaret doc is a similar case of "I can't believe I'm sitting here talking to...": Phyllis Diller, Jonathan Winters, Orson Bean, Polly Bergan, Carol Burnett and Joan Rivers are just a few of the entertainment worlds giants who have generously made themselves available to us.

This doc, titled "Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story", is a different animal. Most of the people we're interviewing aren't famous. Certainly none are celebrities. What they are are real folks who live in Greenwood Mississippi and who are searching their memories to give us a portrait of the volatile southern town in which they've made their lives. They are certainly no less extraordinary for not being famous and in some ways I find their willingness to open up and be photographed telling their stories even more moving for the fact that they don't make their living appearing on camera. This is a stretch for them as it is a stretch for us to get to know and understand Greenwood and its environs. Greenwood is the place where Emmett Till was lynched in 1955. It was also the center of much of the heated civil rights movement of the 1960's. Booker Wright's story intersects with the rise of black civil rights in the south and he played a part--small but potent--in that history as well.

So join me for the next few months as I devote this blog to documenting the making of a documentary. Yvette is also is keeping a fascinating account of her journey on this cinemaventure on-line. Go here to read the Booker Wright Project. And stay tuned here for more.

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