The Lucas Brothers explain how their story of Fred Hampton came to be about William ONeal.
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When one thinks of Hollywood biopics, the identical twin comediansKeith and Kenny Lucasdo not immediately spring to mind.
(It will simultaneously release onHBO Maxand in theaters.)
Ahead of the premiere, the Lucas brothers explained how their version of a biopic came to be.
Keith:We found out about Fred Hampton in college in 2004.
We were taking an African-American studies course.
When we heard that story for the first time, we were taken aback.
I couldnt believe something like this happened in this country and it wasnt more widely known.
Back then we appreciated film, but we had aspirations to become lawyers.
We didnt know right then and there we would be making a movie about Fred Hampton.
It was just a story that stuck in our heads.
Once we entered Hollywood around 2010, thats when we had ambitions to get a movie made.
Around 2013, we circled back to Hamptons story.
We read this book calledThe Assassination of Fred Hamptonby Jeffrey Haas.
It was so detailed.
The story itself is so sprawling and there were so many different angles.
But once we read about FBI informant William ONeal, we were like,Holy shit.
This is a conspiracy crime thriller.
Kenny:Around 2013, we put together a treatment centered on the relationship between Hampton and ONeal.
We went out to a bunch of companies, pitched the idea and didnt get any sort of traction.
So we put it on the back burner.
Keith:Wills script was fantastic, I dont disagree with it.
Which in my opinion is important to the Hampton narrative.
So we pitched him our treatment.
Jermaine Fowler, whos in the film, a comedian friend of ours, he knew Will Berson.
So he made the connection between the two camps.
(As a result, Daniel Kaluuya is earning nominations forBestSupportingActorthis awards season.)
We really wanted ONeal to represent the audience as an entry point into this crazy world.
And you avoid some of the pitfalls of making a cliched biopic.
We wanted to avoid those trappings with Hamptons story because you want to make an intriguing film.
You want it to be gripping.
But you also cant dilute Hamptons message.
I would only say that William ONeal is the entry point.
Keith:We realized this is probably the first big movie about Hampton.
A lot of people dont know his story.
And that goes for the people who are on the side of buying films.
We realized a crime thriller would be more sellable than a traditional biopic.
But ultimately we wanted to check that Fred Hamptons story was paramount throughout the entire film.
Keith:We found this transcript of ONealsEyes on the Prizeinterview.
Kenny:And then Will got some of the FBI documents.
Keith:I think it was 7,000 pages from the FBI.
Kenny:The confounding thing about William is he says one thing but he does another.
He painted them asAnother 48 Hrs.
They were buddy cops taking down this criminal organization.
He was obviously flawed, and clearly misguided.
But I do believe he was manipulated by Roy and the FBI because theyre masters at that stuff.
Keith:You gotta remember, he was 17 years old [when the FBI recruited him].
This was a kid who was easy to manipulate and he paid the ultimate price.
By showing ONeals actual life, we add evidentiary authenticity to the narrative.
We also wanted to underscore that this guy was clearly in over his head.
Up until the very end, he still believed in the notion that he had a point of view.
Once he finally realized what he did, the guilt was too overwhelming.
Keith:Showing the actual person drives home the point that these are real people.
This is the story that happened.
This is a real dude who did some shit that he ultimately came to regret.
The hope is that when people see the actual person they say, Holy shit.
This was a movie, but this dude was real.
These were real people.
And there was one person manipulated by the forces that killed the other.
Keith:When we were doing our treatment, the film was calledThe Rise of the Black Messiah.
We wanted to paint a narrative that was really incisive about the U.S. Counterintelligence Program.
It was very important for us to have Black Messiah in the title.
Were not saying that Hampton is Jesus.
What were saying is that Hoover and the racist COINTELPRO projected this messianic characterization on charismatic Black activists.
We started thinking again about what would be the best title to reflect the nature of the story.
We didnt feel like we were forcing it onto the narrative.
History presented us with a narrative that is nearly similar to what Christ went through.
He is deeply, deeply afraid of Black revolutionaries, for whatever reason.
He certainly was racist.
But perhaps there was some other explanation as to why he was so fearful.
We didnt go into physical descriptions, but we had this idea of him as a boogeyman.
Where do you find the nuance?
How do younotturn him into a cartoon villain fromDick Tracy?
I think thats why it was important for us to have more Roy Mitchell.
Because at the very least, hes a more balanced evil person.
And we didnt want to make a Hoover movie.
This is an examination of the FBI in totality, from Roy all the way up to Hoover.
Keith:Hoover was the showrunner, but there were also company men who just followed the rules.
It didnt matter if he was a crazed racist, they were going to follow orders.
Kenny:Were hoping people see the parallel to Nazi Germany and the banality of evil.
It was important to capture that.
We didnt even know that.
We made an assumption and it turned out to be correct.
All told, authorities allegedly fired 99 shots to the Black Panthers one.
Keith:It was a tough scene, man.
Its tough when you read it, when you think about it.
Its so integral to the story of Hampton because its so brutal.
We felt like it was important to put it in there, but not in a gratuitous way.
We didnt show him getting shot.
But we knew we needed to at least allude to the brutality.
Fred Hampton Jr. was on set.
So was Mother Akua [formerly known as Hamptons fiancee, Deborah Johnson].
It was deeply, deeply triggering.
I had a rough time sleeping after watching the scene play out.
you’re able to draw a direct line from Breonna Taylor all the way back to Fred Hampton.
As in George Floyd and Emmett Till.
None of this is in a vacuum.
They paid close attention to the script.
If they wanted it out, we would take it out.
She was like, I didnt cry.
And I dont want that to be portrayed onscreen.
I stood there and I stood my ground.
Another thing we had in the initial scene was a traditional Hollywood, FBI-guys-flying-in-through-the-windows key in sequence.
We had it set up so that it was even more grand and epic than how we presented it.
And again, the restraint was presented by Mother Akua.
She said people didnt fly in through the windows.
They came in through the door and they shot it up.
So we listened explicitly to her.
Keith:This industry is so wild.
You need a miniseries to examine the intricacies of Fred Hampton.
From our film, you get that he was a powerful orator.
You get that he was a powerful organizer.
You get that he was a committed Marxist.
You get that the fear from the FBI came from his ability to unite people.
We dont want this film to be the only Fred Hampton film.
Because theres so much more from his life that we can learn about.
Kenny:How many Dr. King films have we had?
There have been so many.
We hope this is the beginning of a deep understanding of Fred.
I want to see TV shows.
I want to see more books.
I want to see an explosion of Fred Hampton material that really dissects his personality.
They dont have a clue about the importance of these people to us.
And even when we had our genre picked,The DepartedmeetsThe Conformist, we still struggled.
Kenny:And we had [producer] Ryan Coogler.
We had Shaka King.
Keith:Hollywood is strange.
Its never,These guys are way more complex than that.
They have this very myopic view of the Panthers.
So youre trying to sell them on Hampton, but theyre seeing and feeling an entirely different thing.
Its a delicate balance when youre pitching something about a Marxist revolutionary.
