`This film is a big risk,” Denzel Washington is saying. ”I mean,
(producer) Freddie Fields goes to the money people and says, `Look, I want to make a movie about black soldiers in the Civil War and this white guy who leads them, and I`ll need 20 million dollars.` ”
Sitting in a New York hotel suite one chilly Saturday afternoon, Washington is talking about ”Glory,” the story of a 25-year-old Boston Brahmin, Robert Gould Shaw, who commanded the 54th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first black fighting unit to be raised in the North during the War Between the States.
Directed by Edward Zwick and scripted by Kevin Jarre, it is based on two books, Lincoln Kirstein`s ”Lay This Laurel” and Peter Burchard`s ”One Gallant Rush,” as well as the letters of Col. Shaw. The film, which opens in Chicago Friday, stars Matthew Broderick as Shaw, Washington as a runaway slave who joins up, Morgan Freeman as a gravedigger who rises to the rank of sergeant major and Cary Elwes as Shaw`s friend and fellow officer.
Records show that 180,000 men served in black regiments during the war, making up nearly 10 percent of the Union Army, and fought in 449 battles. They were recruited from eight Northern states, and, covertly, from seven states in the Confederacy. More than 37,000 lost their lives, and countless others were wounded. In the opinion of Abraham Lincoln, the black troops played a key role in the conflict`s outcome.
Assembled by abolitionists in February, 1863-one month after the Emancipation Proclamation became law-the Massachusetts 54th was subjected to periodic humiliations (one white officer in the film calls them ”little monkey children,” and the troops later protest being paid $10 a month compared with their white counterparts` $13). But five months later, the regiment, whose ranks included two sons of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, gained its place in history-a place largely unheralded until the release of this movie-when its soldiers led an almost suicidal attack on the
Confederacy`s Ft. Wagner, which guarded the approach to Charleston Harbor. By the end of the night, the 600-man unit had suffered 44 percent casualties.
”The 54th was not the first black regiment in the Civil War, nor even the first under fire,” says Shelby Foote, author of the three-volume ”The Civil War: A Narrative,” who served as historical consultant. ”And while their assault in South Carolina (the actual military name was Battery Wagner) was, tactically, an exercise in futility, it had great ideological value in dispelling the fear that black troops couldn`t stand up under fire.”
”I went to school on this film,” says director Edward Zwick, whose main claim to fame has been for co-creating the ABC Yuppie series
”thirtysomething.” ”I looked at a lot of battle footage of other movies: The Russian `War and Peace,` `Apocalypse Now,` John Ford stuff. Then you get out there, and it`s all different than anything you might have imagined, and you throw it all out and try to reinvent the wheel.
”I felt I really had a mandate to be accurate. I thought that the image we had of the Civil War-certainly the image that had been presented on television-was very pictorial and prettified. But it wasn`t like that at all. It was a time in which technology suddenly outstripped tactics. They still used tactics that taught soldiers to fight at 100 yards apart, whereas the firepower now had ranges of up to 500 yards. What I was trying to paint was an unbelievably horrific portrait of the devastation.”
To help insure accuracy, Zwick used 1,500 authentically garbed Civil War re-enactors. ”I don`t mean to take a slam at those guys,” he says, ”but there were moments when we`d be in the middle of a scene, and they`d say,
`Excuse me, but there`s a guy in the third row from the back who`s not holding his rifle at the proper angle at shoulder arms.` But without them, I couldn`t have made the movie. I do love them, although I think they`re half-mad.”
Zwick also had the benefit of the written record, including 2,000 letters of Shaw that he perused. ”This was an epistolary time, and everything about the war is documented. Every town had its archives, and there were many oral histories.”
”Glory” follows a handful of serious American motion pictures to have been made of that period in U.S. history, a list that includes ”The Birth of a Nation,” ”The General,” ”Gone with the Wind” and ”The Red Badge of Courage.” Like sports movies, Civil War movies traditionally have been regarded as box-office poison.
”The resistance in financial circles was normal for a picture that wasn`t in the mainstream,” says producer Fields. ”The kinds of films like
`Glory` are normally made in countries where you can get the army as extras, and have a uniform made for $9.”
The film itself has received solid reviews, and one of the stars who has been attracting special notices has been Washington for his performance as Trip, the embittered, cocky escaped slave. The New York Times` Vincent Canby, for one, called him ”an actor clearly on his way to a major screen career,” and in the recent New York Film Critics Circle balloting, he finished a close second behind Alan Alda (”Crimes and Misdemeanors”) for best supporting actor.
”Denzel`s a considered, thoughtful actor,” says Zwick. ”I think what he was afraid of, and rightly so, was that he`d seem to be a stereotype. And I think he took the role far beyond that.”
Best known for playing martyred South African activist Steven Biko in
”Cry Freedom”-which brought him a best-supporting actor Oscar nomination-Washington at the moment is explaining how he was afraid to take on what he perceived to be another motion picture heavily weighted toward the major white character.
”When I did `Cry Freedom,` I knew that, because of the reality of economics of a $22-million film, it would be mostly the story of the journalist, Donald Woods (played by Kevin Kline). But I just thought, `Well, I`ll do my part and hope for the best.` I didn`t go in and fight for more scenes. I mean, working for Richard Attenborough was such an overwhelming experience, I was just glad to be there. I listened, kept my mouth shut and hit my marks.
”With `Glory,` when I sat down with Ed Zwick and Freddie Fields, I said, `I`ve already done ”Cry Freedom.” ` I was just hoping they wouldn`t fall into the same trap. Because the original script was much more heavily balanced toward Shaw than the black soldiers. I knew it was very important for me to have a lot of input into my character if I were going to take it, and they were very flexible in that regard. Collectively, we were able to flesh out the character, expand the role. Of course, I have more leverage now as an actor than I did when we started `Cry Freedom.` ”
Before he was approached about ”Glory,” he wasn`t aware of that particular segment of history. ”That`s really what made me decide to do the picture. I`d taken quite a few history courses in elementary school, high school and college, and the fact that black men fought in the Civil War was never mentioned. The fact that almost 200,000 of them fought in the Civil War definitely wasn`t mentioned.
”You can go as far as to say, `Had they not fought, the North may not have won.` Some historians may argue about that, but the fact of the matter is, they did fight, and I think it`s good that this is known to all Americans, but especially black Americans-kids who don`t necessarily feel they`re a part of this country. The fact is, we fought as hard for this country as anyone else, so it`s helped to make me, in a sense, feel more like an American. It`s made me more patriotic, as corny as that sounds.”
Throughout his relatively brief career, Washington has become known as a diligent researcher. For his role as an upwardly mobile liquor salesman in the critically lambasted 1988 Broadway play, ”Checkmates,” he made the rounds selling liquor. (”Yeah, I hung out with those guys. They`re like car salesmen. Anything to make a deal.”) For ”Glory,” he read all kinds of history books and, particularly, slave narratives.
”I see Trip as a survivor, a scavenger. All he cares about is trying to find some shoes, things like that. With the war, he`s finally in a situation where he could complain and speak up. Before, he was dead in the world, but now they were in this microcosm, and suddenly he had more freedom than he ever had before. And just as much anger, obviously.
”Where my anger came from was from reading those slave narratives, when I found out the things that were done to black people in this country. I read a story about a slave who died fighting another slave, and the owner was so angry, he tied the dead guy to the other guy`s back and made him carry him around and work with him on his back-this guy was rotting-until he died. In the scene in the movie after Trip is flogged, they show his back for a split second. But there`s a picture I came across in a history book of one defiant slave who was beaten for, like, 26 hours, and had salt poured periodically into his wounds, and even right before he died, he still wouldn`t say that the slave owner was his `master.` ”
Washington says during the filming in Georgia, there were no racial incidents. ”I was surprised, really. Oh, there was one time I overheard a certain conversation, but that`s about it. On the other hand, there were some Southern re-enactors who weren`t about to put on that blue uniform. It was like, `Look, we know you`re makin` a movie, but no suh. I got relatives. They wouldn`t understand.` ”
One aspect of the filming he himself didn`t enjoy was the battle scenes.
”They were a pain. They took forever. Because there were so many people, it took five, six hours to set up one shot.”
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Recently turned 35, Denzel (prounounced Den-ZEL) Washington was born and reared in Mt. Vernon, N.Y., where his father was a Pentecostal minister who kept close tabs on his children`s movie-going choices. (”I remember wanting to see horror-type stuff, but the kind of things we were allowed to see were more like `King of Kings,` `The 10 Commandments` and `101 Dalmatians.` ”)
During his childhood and adolescence, he ”didn`t have a clue” that he was going to become an actor. In fact, when he enrolled at Fordham University, it was as a pre-med student. That lasted about one semester, and he finished up as a journalism major. More significantly, during his junior year he took an acting workshop, became hooked, and after graduation studied for a year at San Francisco`s American Conservatory Theatre.
His first major film role was in ”Carbon Copy” (1981), a silly satire in which he was the illegitimate son of George Segal. He then returned to New York to sign on with Joseph Papp`s Shakespeare in the Park, as well as such off-Broadway productions as ”Ceremonies in Dark Old Men” and ”When Chickens Come Home to Roost,” in which he played Malcolm X. For his performance as a hot-blooded private in the Negro Ensemble Company`s ”A Soldier`s Play,” he won an Obie Award, then reprised the role in Norman Jewison`s film version,
”A Soldier`s Story.”
Meanwhile, he was continuing his role as Dr. Phillip Chandler on the NBC series ”St. Elsewhere” (1982-1988). ”It was an intelligent show that dealt with a lot of things that nobody else was doing on TV,” he says. ”But when it first went on, I thought it would last 13 weeks and be gone. We knew we were great, but the ratings weren`t, and on the last day of each season, I`d go in and see the producer and ask, `Shall I keep renting or should I buy?`
He`d answer, `Better keep renting,` and I`d say, `I hear ya.` ”
Washington`s credits also include ”The George McKenna Story,” the made- for-TV movie in which he starred as the real-life principal of an embattled South Los Angeles high school, and a trio of theatrical features: ”Power”
(as an insidious media consultant), ”The Mighty Quinn” (as a Jamaican police chief) and ”For Queen and Country” (as a veteran of Northern Ireland and the Falklands War trying to adjust to civilian life in London).
Just a few hours before the interview, he had finished up work on Spike Lee`s untitled new film, in which he plays a jazz musician obsessed with the trumpet, and ”Heart Condition” is scheduled for a February release. (”It`s a comedy, I think. I play this guy who was killed-I`m a ghost-and Bob Hoskins plays a cop who has a heart attack. They put my heart in his body, and the only one who can see me is him, and he helps me find the bad guys.”)
Various directors and critics have been lining up to label Denzel Washington as the next Sidney Poitier. ”It`s flattering,” he muses, ”but I don`t think we`re really the same type of actor.”
Like many performers, black and white, he laments the lack of solid scripts. ”When I talk to colleagues who are quite successful, they all say they suffer from the same problem: Most of the material just ain`t that good. What I`m really having to deal with now-which is a new thing for me-is turning things down. In the last month, I`ve gotten maybe eight or nine offers, and not a single one is any good. But it`s like, they go, `Oooh, look at the money.` I go, `Well, let me read it again.` Believe me, sometimes it`s not easy to walk away.”
