‘Marshall’ depicts a fight for truth, justice and the American way
Chadwick Boseman stars as Thurgood Marshall in “Marshall.” (TNS)
By Lewis Beale | LA Times
Forget Luke Cage, Black Panther and Nick Fury. The real black superhero carries a briefcase filled with law books and a copy of the U.S. Constitution in his jacket pocket.
His name is Thurgood Marshall.
The strong-willed civil rights activist and Supreme Court justice is nothing if not heroic in the October release “Marshall.” With Chadwick Boseman in the title role, director Reginald Hudlin’s movie is the true story of an early case in Marshall’s career when, as the founder and only lawyer working for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, he defended a black chauffeur (played by Sterling K. Brown) accused of raping his white employer (Kate Hudson).
Josh Gad from left, Chadwick Boseman and Sterling K. Brown in a scene from “Marshall.” (Barry Wetcher / Open Road Films via AP)
Marshall “was fighting insurmountable odds” at the time, says Boseman, “dealing with limitations of space and time” as he bounced around the country taking on racially charged cases that were dangerous and seemed unwinnable. “The idea he could walk into those spaces in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, go up against crowds of people who don’t want him to be there and try cases — and walk in with audacity — you could say that’s super.”
Adds Wil Haygood, author of “Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination that Changed History”: “He never took on cases that were easy. He took on cases that others said, ‘There is no way this is winnable,’ and he took on cases in enemy territory.”
Connecticut in 1941, where the legal action in “Marshall” takes place, was not the Deep South, but racism was still pervasive. The judge in the case (James Cromwell) refused to let Marshall speak in court, so he had to seek out white counsel to do his talking. The only person who would help him, reluctantly, was a young Jewish insurance defense lawyer named Sam Friedman (played by Josh Gad), who had no background in criminal law. This meant Marshall had to school him in the intricacies of trial procedure, and it also means that the film not only shows how Marshall trained lawyers to follow in his footsteps, but highlights the often close relationship between blacks and Jews in the early days of the civil rights struggle.
“The modern civil rights movement began not as a movement of large groups of people, but one man traveling around bringing lawsuits,” says Michael Koskoff, a Connecticut attorney who wrote the “Marshall” screenplay with his son Jacob. “Marshall believed they needed an army of lawyers, and if lawyers were not trained, the black community would not get their rights. Before there was a movement of civil disobedience, there was a movement harnessing the power of the law.”
Chadwick Boseman in a scene from “Marshall.” (Barry Wetcher / Open Road Films via AP)
Boseman notes that when it comes to the black-Jewish relationship, “there is a kinship in terms of oppression. The Jews know what it’s like to not be a part of the larger society. Even in this film there’s an inner circle in Bridgeport that Josh Gad’s character cannot get into, and that’s part of the story. Also in this film, it’s 1941, prior to the U.S. entering World War II, and that war was a clear case where white supremacy was a part of the war, and Josh Gad has to decide what he is going to do in terms of white supremacy at home.”
At the end of the film, Marshall is called away from Connecticut and sent to Mississippi to litigate yet another troubling case. He’s like a legal Superman, fighting for “truth, justice and the American way” — yet it’s not the America that is, but the one he wants it to be.
Or as Boseman puts it: “He made America live up to its dream, that all men are created equal. How do you do that? You challenge the laws. You are not accepting them; you are making them.”
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By SOURCE STAFF
Words by Megan Ambers
“Black-ish” star and comedian Anthony Anderson has been announced as the host of the 49thNAACP Image Awards.
This will be Anderson’s third time hosting the prestigous award show after hosting both this year and in 2016. The show is scheduled to air live January 15, 2018 on TV One. The voting polls for the NAACP “Entertainer of the Year” is open to the public and the winner will be reveled during the two-hour telecast. The six nominees of the awards are: Chadwick Boseman, Bruno Mars, Issa Rae, Chance the Rapper, Ava DuVernay and Jay-Z. Voting closes on Friday, November 17.
The 49th NAACP Production team will be returning including Tony McCuin as Director, Bryon Phillips as Producer and Reginald Hudlin and Phil Gurin as the Executive Producers.
Following are the key dates for the 49th NAACP Image Awards:
- November 9 – Nominating Committee voting closes for the 49th NAACP Image Awards
- Week of November 13– Nominees Announced for the 49th NAACP Image Awards; Final Voting opens for the 49th NAACP Image Awards
- November 17– Voting closes for the 49th NAACP Image Awards – NAACP “Entertainer of the Year”
- Week of December 11– Final Voting closes for the 49th NAACP Image Awards
- Monday, January 15, 2018– 49th NAACP Red Carpet and Image Awards Airs Live on TV One
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by Dino-Ray Ramos
Mandatory Credit: Photo by Michael Buckner/Deadline/REX/Shutterstock (9188866x)
Reginald Hudlin, Diane Warren, Chadwick Boseman and Paula Wagner
Deadline Hollywood Presents THE CONTENDERS 2017, Portrait Studio, Los Angeles, USA – 04 Nov 2017
Marshall star Chadwick Boseman and director Reginald Hudlin were joined on The Contenders stage by producer Paula Wagner and songwriter Diane Warren to discuss the biopic about the civil rights revolutionary Thurgood Marshall.
“I didn’t feel like I needed to know who Marshall was to enjoy the film we created,” said Boseman. “For me, I saw that I had a freedom to explore him in this time period and the audacity he had. He walked into these spaces with confidence and swagger.”
For Hudlin, the film also is about the importance of stitching a tapestry of black America during that era. “You see characters risking their lives and their backs against the wall and how we can stand up for injustice for whenever we see it.”
Wagner read the script and couldn’t put it down. She points out that the film takes place before World War II broke out, when it was assumed that the Northeast was free of racism and anti-Semitism. “It was a gateway for issues that are relevant to now,” she says.
Mandatory Credit: Photo by Rob Latour/Deadline/REX/Shutterstock (9188811n)
Chadwick Boseman
Open Road ‘Marshall’ panel, THE CONTENDERS 2017, Los Angeles, USA – 04 Nov 2017
The film’s relevancy spills over into the now in more way than one as Hudlin points out that Trayvon Martin’s parents make a cameo at the end of the film. He says its a very powerful scene that shows the “miscarriage of justice” and puts the struggles of the 1940s and today side by side.
Warren, who wrote the film’s centerpiece song “Stand Up for Something,” sung by Andra Day and Common, said it weaves in with the film’s narrative and speaks to the timeliness of standing up during these times of social unrest when “something is taken away from us.”
Before he became the country’s first African-American Supreme Court Justice in 1967, Marshall was a lawyer famous for winning the landmark Brown v Board of Education case that outlawed segregated schools. Marshall goes back even further, to when he was a rabble-rousing young attorney for the NAACP, and follows the story of his greatest challenge in those early days: the case of black chauffeur Joseph Spell (Sterling K. Brown), accused of sexual assault and attempted murder by his white employer, Eleanor Strubing (Kate Hudson). Marshall fought the case alongside Sam Friedman (Josh Gad), a young attorney with no experience in criminal law.
Hudlin directed a script by Jacob Koskoff and Michael Koskoff. Wagner, Jonathan Sanger and Hudlin produced the pic, with Peter Luo and Belton Lee as exec producers. Open Road Films released the film on October 13, just after the 5oth anniversary of Marshall being sworn into SCOTUS.
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