
          Cameras on the Prize: Hollywood Finds the Movement
          By HRWHRW
          Vol. 10, No. 4, 1988, p. 20
          
          Maybe Philadelphia, Miss., wasn't quite ready to host a movie
fictionalizing its painful history, but elsewhere in the South,
cameras have been rolling recently as the civil_rights movement begins
to join the peace movement and the Vietnam war on the silver
screen.
          The little town of LaFayett, Ala., rolled out the red dirt this
summer for the filming of "Mississippi Burning," in which Gene Hackman
and Willem Dafoe portray FBI agents investigating the murders of three
unnamed civil_rights activists, obviously based on the 1964
Philadelphia murders of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew
Goodman.
          LaFayette allowed its streets to be covered with dirt and its
storefronts, some of which had not changed anyway, to be returned to a
1960s look.  Many of its citizens, black and white, lined up for roles
as extras in the film.  If they were uncomfortable with the subject
matter, it was usually not obvious.
          "Heart of Dixie," based on a novel by Anne Rivers Siddon, is about
conflicts over integration of Southern colleges and is being filmed at
the University of Mississippi, where federal troops had to be called
in to quell riots in 1962.  "Everybody's All-American" is being
produced in Louisiana and depicts the adventures of a black_man who
becomes a civil_rights activist in the 1950s, battles through the
'60s, and by 1980 has entered mainstream politics.  Still another
film, "Mississippi Summer," directly depicts Schwerner, Chaney and
Goodman, though if focuses on the friendship between Schwerner and
Chaney whereas "Mississippi Burning" tells the story through the eyes
of the FBI agents.  And Jessica Lange is set to portray-in "The Stick
Wife," based on a play by Darrah Cloud-the wife of a KKK member who
took part in the 1963 bombing of Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist
Church. 
          All of these Hollywood productions follow the success of the
extraordinary documentary, "Eyes on the Prize," which has been seen by
millions on public television and on videocassettes.  Producers say
enough time has passed that people now want to re-examine the events
of the 1950s and 1960s.  Others say they sense a revival of the spirit
of protest and rebellion.
        
