In order to get credit for the screenplay she wrote for “Beloved” seven years ago, Akosua Busia–a real African princess–had to become a warrior. Now she is fighting to gain some respect.
Born the youngest daughter of an Ashanti chief, Busia grew up to become an actress and a novelist (“The Seasons of Beento Blackbird”). Like Oprah Winfrey, with whom she appeared as Nettie in “The Color Purple,” her relationship with Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel began 11 years ago with a phone call and could culminate next spring with an Academy Award.
Unlike Winfrey, who produced and stars in “Beloved,” Busia won’t appear on any magazine covers, at the press junket to be held this weekend in Chicago or on any talk shows.
Instead, the spotlight will shine directly–and deservedly–on Winfrey, her fellow cast members and director Jonathan Demme.
In a move that some observers think borders on professional suicide, Busia has decided to step out of the shadows to blow her own horn. Indeed, although the novice screenwriter has been awarded top credit over Oscar nominees Richard LaGravenese and Adam Brooks, her contribution rates barely a mention in the production notes and she has yet to be invited to a screening of the picture.
What really got her going, though, was an article published last spring in The New York Times, in which Hollywood heavyweight LaGravenese voiced displeasure over the fact that he had to share credit with “the woman who had written the early draft.” It didn’t help matters that her name was misspelled.
Then, two weeks ago, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times reduced the efforts of both Brooks and Busia to “subsequent additions” to LaGravenese’s work, even though her script was delivered to Winfrey’s Harpo Productions in 1991.
“I don’t point fingers at any particular person–I know it’s a huge mill–but I was kind of disappointed, when I was in Ghana, reading that LaGravenese was `surprised’ that people like me go to arbitration,” said Busia last week.
As Busia explains it, her relationship with “Beloved” began more than a decade ago, after Morrison sent a manuscript to her sister–a professor of English at Rutgers University–who couldn’t contain her enthusiasm for the work. As soon as it was published, Busia picked up a copy of the novel, read it in one sitting, and called her friend Winfrey to advise her to do the same thing.
“I said, `Don’t read this between shows. You’ve got to go to bed and read this book,’ ” recalled Busia, over lunch in the dining room of the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. “Soon after that, I came home and Oprah had left a message on my machine about where she was in the story. Then, later, she called about finding Toni through her town’s fire department and buying the rights.
“We were completely excited. At first, I was interested in it as an actor . . . writing wasn’t on my mind.”
Winfrey sent her friend an early treatment of the story.
“I hated it,” said Busia. “I felt they were reducing it to a story about the slave trade. . . . It is about survival and love.”
As if confronted by a ghost from the novel, Busia was awakened two nights later by a dream that immediately inspired her to construct her own 28-page treatment, which she mailed to Harpo.
According to Busia, “Oprah called me, and said, `We have found the writer for `Beloved.’ “
Nothing happened on her treatment for more than a year. Then the decision-makers at Harpo agreed to give her a shot at writing the screenplay for “Beloved.” In 1991, Winfrey paid for Busia to go to a retreat in Jamaica, where she had about five weeks to come up with a script (“I just got up each morning, prayed for about an hour and wrote”) to be presented to Peter Weir, the Australian director who was favored for the project at the time.
“Akosua said, `Paul D. (the lead male character) would be a great role for you,’ ” actor Danny Glover recalled in a phone conversation. “She told me about sending the script to Oprah and meeting with Peter Weir. This was 1992, but I remember her talking about `Beloved’ in 1987, before it came out, because she knew how much I dug Toni Morrison.”
Although “Beloved” always was a top priority for Harpo, it would be five years before Busia would hear anything more about the project.
“In 1996, I got a call from Harpo, saying they wanted to go ahead with `Beloved’ and asking about my availability,” said Busia. “That was wonderful, because I had to write so fast that I never had a chance to read or rewrite my script.”
A meeting was arranged with Harpo executives, then canceled. Instead, Busia soon heard from her lawyer that an announcement would be made in Variety that she had been replaced by LaGravenese.
“I thought, `Oh, fine,’ he’s a wonderful writer,” said Busia, who hasn’t talked with Winfrey in several years. “Naturally, I was very disappointed. . . . But I understood it, from a business point of view.”
Busia had been paid for her work, including the rewrite she wasn’t required to execute, so it wasn’t until production was completed on “Beloved” that she thought much about the film again.
Last January, her business manager received notice from the Writers Guild that Disney (the “Beloved” distributor) did not propose to give her writing credit. She was given a limited amount of time to peruse the final shooting script and initiate arbitration.
She assumed that the screenplay was substantially different from hers, and she decided not to spend time poring over it. Instead, someone at her manager’s office went through the script and encouraged Busia to compare her original work to Brooks’ rewrite of LaGravenese’s script.
“When I started turning pages and saw my screenplay there, I was completely shocked,” she said.
In the arbitration process, Busia learned that LaGravenese had written a script largely different from hers, and it was used to encourage Demme to come on board. Brooks took over the writing duties after LaGravenese left to begin work on his directorial debut, “Living Out Loud.”
Once production begins on any feature film, input comes from just about every direction–producers, stars, directors–and a screenplay can change on a daily basis. During arbitration, however, the guild’s panel decided the final script looked enough like Busia’s 7-year-old offering that it not only added her name to the credits, but gave her the coveted first position.
Now, in most corners of Hollywood, that would have been the end of the story. Writers are constantly involved in arbitration squabbles, and, when victorious, they tend to count themselves among the lucky ones and go on to their next projects.
Busia decided that she wanted more.
By hiring a publicist, she threatened to rock the good ship “Beloved.”
“She’s got credit . . . what’s the problem?,” asked Kate Forte, executive vice president of Harpo Films and producer of “Beloved.” “I don’t believe I’ve read anything about Richard or Adam, so who’s getting attention here? I’d love for you to show me a feature film that doesn’t have more than one writer on it.
“She was given an incredible opportunity to have a crack at this wonderful book. . . . Richard LaGravenese is like the Oprah Winfrey of screenwriting. . . . He is the name.”
Forte was a key player through most of the gestation of “Beloved” and doesn’t quarrel with Busia’s time line. As recently as two years ago, she tried to convince Busia to work on other Harpo projects. She doesn’t see why Busia insists on pleading her case in public.
“This isn’t helpful,” she said. “She should be rejoicing in this gift to the world.”
So why is Busia pursuing publicity on this issue?
“No. 1, I want people to see `Beloved,’ because Toni Morrison’s story is incredibly important,” said Busia recently. “But I also want people to know that I had something to do with it being up there on the screen.”
She conceded that, while she might be naive about insider politics in Hollywood, “I didn’t realize this thing would become quite so volatile” an issue. She insists, however, “Whenever I do anything good, that I’m proud of, I hire a publicist.” (Just like everyone else in the industry, she might have added.)
“Nothing can take away from the fact that, for 10 years, Oprah had the tenacity, power and money to get `Beloved’ made,” Busia added, when asked if she was trying to steal any of Winfrey’s thunder. “I couldn’t have gotten this movie made.”
For his part, LaGravenese isn’t surprised that the guild awarded Busia top writing credit.
“It’s disappointing, but it’s pretty common to favor the first writer in an adaptation,” he explained. “Basically, the guild’s job is to protect the writers. . . . They have a guideline which states that, if someone writes an original screenplay and gets replaced, they tend to favor the original writer because, of course, that person created the characters and situations.”
Everyone acknowledges that Morrison’s original vision was the bible. Much of the writers’ work came in trying to determine what scenes could be left out of the movie.
“I made a conscious decision to concentrate on the women, and how Paul D. relates to them,” said Busia. “You could do a whole other movie of `Beloved,’ dealing just with Sweet Home, Mr. Garner and his wife, and Paul D. on the run . . . those 18 missing years. There were some wonderful stories in there, but, to me, `Beloved’ was about a woman, the loss of her children and the strength to survive.”
In comparing various drafts of any adaptation, LaGravenese argues, an arbitration panel will see similar scenes and assume they’re from the first script, not the source material:
“They actually say in the guidelines, `Even if you tell us you haven’t read the script, we have to assume that you did, or that a producer communicated parts of the script to you’ . . . So, in a way, the second writer automatically is viewed a liar by the guild.
“I understand Akosua, who only knew that something had happened to her script. . . . I worked very hard on my adaptation, and, from that adaptation, the movie got made.”
Busia doesn’t challenge LaGravenese’s argument, but she remains curious how certain of her scenes–which weren’t taken from Morrison’s pages–found their way into a final shooting script no one admits to having seen in seven years.
“If I had only read Richard’s first screenplay, I would in no way have asked for credit,” she said. “It’s still Toni Morrison’s `Beloved,’ and it still contains her dialogue–as mine does–but it’s a different eye that’s seeing it. He includes parts about the slave owners that I didn’t.
“By the time it gets to the finished screenplay, it has reverted back to my original screenplay.”
Busia, who is separated from filmmaker John Singleton and has a 17-month-old daughter, is working on her second novel, while editing a documentary on the Ashanti people of Ghana.
One of the reasons Morrison’s novel resonates so strongly with Busia is because “the strongest trait that we find in African people is the strong sense of family and community. This very thing, which was the fabric of their creation, was torn apart when they were brought to the Americas.
“To me, `Beloved’ is about people fighting to put back together what was our greatest strength.”
And, despite Busia’s personal concerns, she says, “The most important thing, to me, is that `Beloved’ made it to the screen.”
