As he walks into the room, you could be forgiven for thinking
Norman Jewison’s the real hurricane. His greying beard
belies his youthful intensity, and before he’s even sat down
and taken off his baseball cap, he’s talking - rapidly and
passionately.
"I was listening to a radio show in America, and this
newspaper man from Newark, New Jersey, was saying ‘Awww,
what are they talking about - makin’ a movie like this?
Everybody knows Rubin Carter killed those people.’ And
nobody said anything like - well, how about the United States
Supreme Court!"
"People don’t want to accept the truth"
"People don’t want to accept the truth, you know.
They get so ingrained about whatever it is. You’ve got no
idea how passionate they feel about things in America. Look at
South Carolina - they’re flying the bloody [Confederate]
flag from the State house and they say ‘Well, why are people
upset?’"
The flame of social justice still burns strong in Jewison; but
now he’s putting it more into his own perspective.
"I’m old, you know," he says with a little
self-deprecation. "I went through a whole civil rights
revolution in the ‘60s and I never thought I’d see a
black man running for President of the United States, or as Chief
of the General Staff. But these things do take time."
The Hurricane tells the story of Rubin Carter, the potential
world championship contender who was wrongly convicted of murder
and imprisoned for 20 years. The story takes place primarily
during the 1960s and 1970s. But, Jewison says, it still has
relevance for today’s audience.
"I don’t think a lot of young African-Americans
could conceive of the type of overt racism [shown in the film]
because things have changed. But when I listen to this guy on the
radio, I know things haven’t changed that much."
Jewison naturally worked closely with Rubin Carter when
preparing to make the film. He
related an important conversation at their first meeting.
"He came up to my farm near Toronto and we talked for 4
or 5 hours. At one stage, I said to him that, you know, if
I’d spent 20 years in jail, I’d be angry. And he said
to me ‘Anger only consumes the vessel which contains
it’. He has gone way beyond that."
"He’s totally
charismatic"
And of the man himself, Jewison says "He’s totally
charismatic. He’s become a very philosophical and very kind
of Eastern person; full of mysticism and spirituality."
But his work involved many others as well. "I became so
involved with Lezra; this young kid who couldn’t read or
write. And I said to him ‘It’s like a miracle;
it’s like a fairytale. Why did you pick that book? There
were thousands of books, why did you pick that one?’ He said
he’d seen a picture of a black face [on the cover] and
picked it up and saw these photos of the boxing and the fight
scenes, and that’s what he identified with.
"And the Canadians! I only showed the three who went down
to New Jersey, but there were actually eight of them living in
Toronto. They were by no means communists or anything like that -
they were very entrepreneurial. I mean, we wouldn’t believe
it nowadays. Why? Why would you go help someone in prison in
another country? I asked them that question and they said it was
because of Lezra and the book - The Sixteenth Round, which Rubin
wrote as a cry for help.
"he
was literally like a hurricane"
"Then I started thinking, well how do we tell the story;
because most people today don’t even know who Rubin Carter
is, they don’t know anything about the real story. So I
decided initially to show something about Rubin before,
‘cause he was one tough mother, you know. When he boxed he
was literally like a hurricane. He came out of the corner and he
was fast and he had this tremendous left hook."
For Jewison, another logical reference point was Bob
Dylan’s protest song The Hurricane.
"Sure, I’d heard the song, and how Rubin was in
prison ‘for something that he never done.' But the song ends
with him ‘sitting like Buddha in a 10 foot cell’. So
you kind of thought, well that’s it; they railroaded him,
but that’s it. But then I found this whole other story about
Lezra Martin and the Canadians - and it was so rich. I was
very excited."
The Hurricane uses a number of visual references to
Dylan’s song; but Dylan himself is not shown in an entirely
positive light by the film.
"they all lost interest"
"Well, it’s not just Dylan. There’s a lot of
people who moved on from Rubin’s case. I mean, they had the
protests and "the night of the Hurricane" in Madison
Square Garden with Mohammed Ali and all these celebrities - but
they all lost interest. Nothing really happened until the
Canadians became involved.
"The lawyers - and they were good lawyers - got a
retrial, but the witnesses lied again and they lost. But the
Canadians did some amazing things. They tracked down a taxi
driver who was listening in on the police radio and heard the
people had been killed at the bar at, I think it was 1.38 [a.m.],
while Rubin was still at the party."
The film has been criticised in some quarters as not being
historically accurate; or at least of not telling the full story.
He’s not particularly concerned by those charges.
"You’ve got to remember, I’ve got to entertain
too! You can say this isn’t in it or that isn’t in it;
but I’ve got to make a movie people will want to see."
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