Sophia Michaels
Many of us are a good way into our quarantine as COVID-19 continues its American siege. We’re anxious, we’re angry, we’re sad, and we’re also probably more than a little bored. We need stuff to imbibe. Luckily many entertainers have stepped up to the plate: Musicians have recorded videos of them playing songs, actors have recorded videos of them reciting Shakespeare. And now Spike Lee has given you not something to watch but something to read.
As caught by Deadline, the legendary filmmaker — almost certainly antsy about not being able to shoot a new project while quarantining — decided to head over to Instagram and make available an old script that never made it to production. It’s called Jackie Robinson, and it’s a biopic about the trail-blazing baseball deity. And now you can head over to Dropbox, download it and imagine it being real.
In a video posted alongside the text, Lee said it was a “dream project” that he’d planned to make with Denzel Washington not long after their 1993’s Malcolm X. Alas, it was too slow to get going, and eventually, as per Lee, “Denzel said he was too old.”
The script, which Lee wrote by himself and adapted from Robinson’s autobiography I Never Had It Made (as told to Alfred Duckett), runs 159 pages and chronicles his career as a barrier-breaking all-star player for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Lee noted that his many fans shouldn’t “worry about it if you don’t like baseball or sports,” adding, “This is a great American story.”
So crack one open and imagine what a Spike Lee movie starring Denzel as Jackie Robinson would be like, asking yourself where he’d drop one of his famed “people mover” shots. There’s few better ways to flatten that curve.
(Via Deadline)
Written by: Uproxx
