What, No White Heroes?

The absurdity of the following story leaps off the page. Actor/activist Danny Glover has had it in his mind to make an epic film on the life of Haitian hero Toussaint Louverture for quite some time. It looks like shooting will start early next year. Yet according to Glover, it's been a twisted road to get funding for his flick.

In an interview while in Paris, Danny Glover recounts going to producer after producer in the US and abroad to get financing. The actor says some producers thought the project was a great idea, but wanted to know where the white heroes were. That's right. A story about the Haitian revolution had to have white heroes in order to be successful. Glover adds that the first question producers will ask is whether its a black film. If so, conventional thinking goes, it won't be successful in Europe or Japan. 

Of course, producers can put their money anywhere they want. That's their right. It's also their right to think nothing in film has changed since the '50s. Maybe that's why, as Danny Glover points out, others from Sergey Eisenstein to Anthony Quinn to Harry Belafonte have had this idea, but have been unable to get the project off the ground.

Danny Glover raised a good part of the money from a cultural body in Venezuela. Imagine that. Hugo Chavez more enlightened than the liberals in Hollywood!

Best of luck, Mr. Glover.