Summary

INTERVIEW: Robert Lipsyte: economic and artistic decisions about just what the film would be Could you talk about that for a moment? Frederick Zollo Well, the film took nearly five years to get to the screen It's true, probably most films made with with large studios, but certainly films about any subject That doesn't seem to be openly commercial I mean, we weren't making twins We weren't making an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie But it did remain very close to the film that you eventually we all eventually have seen when Chris Gerolmo first called me in October 1984 and said what about a movie about the investigation to the deaths of the three civil rights workers And we thought that was a fascinating and exciting subject for a film The film that's eventually emerged, the Alan Parker has made is, is very close to what we originally planned And you've made very clear that the film that you always planned was the aftermath of the death and investigation into the death, rather than into civil rights itself Civil Rights was almost kind of a backdrop and scenery Well, in a sense, yes, it's it's one case in the civil rights movement It is It is not a film certainly about the civil rights movement I hope there are lots of films about that it's not really a film about the lives However, tragically brief, of Goodman Schwerner Cheney and I my hope is that there will be a Motion Picture Made about their lives And certainly, I hope there'll be films made about several of the heroes and heroines black and white of the civil rights movement But this film was very much about the investigation into the deaths of the three civil rights workers it always would begin with with the brutal murders Robert Lipsyte Miss Miss Richarson, you were in Mississippi with snick and innocence, part of your life became the scenery and local color for this movie that doesn't sit so easy Judy Richarson Well, for me, it's not so much that blacks are in the background It is more that there is such gross distortion in terms of the FBI I think for me it was Brent Stapleton in the New York Times talked about said Mississippi burnings distortion, gross distortion crushes truth foot This story was savaged That's how I feel about it That the FBI was not only just sanguine when we were in Mississippi in 64, they were hostile They were part of the problem We had been trying to get the FBI to do something in Mississippi to protect workers since 1961 When Bob Moses went in for SNCC You know, I mean, we're talking about even when the three become our come up missing Bob Zellner goes and he's a SNCC work He takes Mickey Schwerner in, they go into investigate the next day, and are chased by a mob in cars They go up to where the FBI is, is in the motel, knock on the door, the FBI agent opens the door sees Zellner, says Zellner what are you going to do? What are you doing here? You're going to get us all killed That was the FBI knew they would sit there in the middle of gross violations of federal law, and would do nothing Robert Lipsyte These were not the heroes of your film that the FBI agents that Miss Richarson just described, were not the two cop buddies, who were the heroes Frederick Zollo Well, the the the to Willem Dafoe and Gene Hackman are an amalgam of a few characters, Proctor Sullivan, more But I do think that it's important to say that the FBI in this particular case, and we're not commenting on the FBI who threatened Martin Luther King, who Judy Richarson tried to destroy the movement, Frederick Zollo who were certainly certainly working with with with their leader Hoover and against them We're not talking about that particular FBI at the moment For the moment, there weren't as many ways to FBI is here The FBI who entered this case, right, who within a week found the car, who within six weeks found the bodies who for the first time in history, Mississippi, brought to justice, a white man for the murder of a black man,