Word: gerolmo
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...with politics, not theology, as the sticking point. Mississippi Burning is a fiction based on fact; it invents characters and bends the real-life plot; it colors in the silhouette of events with its own fanciful strokes and highlights. In focusing on the agents, Parker and screenwriter Chris Gerolmo italicize the gumshoe heroism of white officials while downplaying the roles of black and white visionaries who risked, and sometimes lost, their lives to help fashion a free America...
That is not so far from screenwriter Gerolmo's original conception, more than four years ago, of Mississippi Burning: a political parable with western overtones, perhaps to star William Hurt and Clint Eastwood. "Hurt would represent the idealistic approach, and Eastwood the violent response," says Gerolmo, 35. "The film would be similar to John Ford's 1962 western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. It's a movie that asks some serious questions about using violence in the name of the law." Initially then, Gerolmo might have meant the FBI's terrorist tactics to be seen critically, or at least...
...Gerolmo took the idea to his friend Frederick Zollo, an off-Broadway producer-director, who sold it to Orion. Several directors were proposed -- Milos Forman, John Schlesinger -- before Orion suggested Alan Parker, 44. His films (Midnight Express, Fame, Birdy) resist classification by content, but in style they are as easy to spot as a fist in your face. Bang on! That is both Parker's strength and limitation, which has the dervish precision of the ace London commercials director he once was. But he had never made a film with such daunting logistics as this...
...says, "that it was a powerful story. What I did was to strengthen the social and political point of view, strengthen the characters, strengthen the overall quality of the film." And once shooting started, Parker took over, as a director will. The Writers Guild strike required that Gerolmo absent himself from the set; Parker apparently concurred in that ruling. Gerolmo's final arbitration: "The screenplay is mine, but the movie is Alan's. That's the way the world works out here...
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