Revisiting, remaking, reliving the Dream

Television

LOS ANGELES -- "Oh, man, I'm really wired."

Those are the first words out of the mouth of actor-director Clark Johnson, and he just keeps rolling down the stream-of-consciousness highway.

"I mean, I just had a couple of these Parisian licorice things, and they make you like humma, humma. And I shouldn't have done that, because I had a couple of them yesterday, and it was like I was on crack or something. They must be something like pure caffeine, you know? Whew."

There's a pause as he takes a colorful little tin of tiny black pellets out of his pocket, opens it and pops another caffeine mini-bomb in his mouth.

"Hey, man, you want one?" he says, holding out the tin with one hand, while wiping his brow with the other.

If this were a "Homicide: Life on the Street" script, at this point Detective Stanley Bolander (Ned Beatty) would look at his partner, Detective Meldrick Lewis (Johnson), with incredulity mixed with exasperation and sarcastically say, "Oh yeah, I can't wait to take one, too, Lewis, so I can get to that same special, jangled place you are just this side of a heart attack."

But this is not a scene from the late, great, gritty, NBC cop drama set on the streets of Baltimore. It's an interview in the lobby of the plush Ritz-Carlton Hotel in sunny Pasadena set up in connection with a new HBO movie scheduled to air Feb. 24 that has television critics buzzing over its brilliant stylistic intensity.

"Boycott" is the story of the 381-day Montgomery bus boycott that began in 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man, and ended with the 26-year-old Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. emerging as a national figure of moral authority. It's one of the most compelling made-for-TV movies you're going to see this year, and Johnson directed it.

Stunning debut

"Boycott" is the first television movie that Johnson has directed, but it won't be his last. It's a stunning movie debut that might well win an Emmy for the 45-year-old Johnson. But don't take my word for it.

Henry Louis Gates, chair of Afro-American Studies at Harvard, said: "This film augurs in a new era in the re-creation of African-American history. It's such a subtle combination of historical accuracy and the re-creation of drama. I've been a consultant for a lot of docudramas, but this is the best one. It's very, very compelling."

Yolanda King, daughter of the slain civil rights leader, said that her family initially was reluctant to participate in the project.

"Needless to say, once we are involved, it becomes definitive for a lot of people," she said. "But, after screening it, we felt that this piece needs to be seen. It is an interpretation; no movie can tell the entire story. But it certainly is compelling. It pulls you in, and it will inspire people to want to know more."

There are terrific performances from Jeffrey Wright as the young and very human King, Terrence Howard as the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, and Erik Todd Dellums as journalist Bayard Rustin. But what makes the film jump off the screen is the combination of visual styles from feature films, black-and-white documentaries, TV news and home movies. Audience members feel that they're inside the early days of the civil rights movement, not just looking back at history.

Such visual shifts can be dangerous -- just ask anyone who's seen an episode of "Homicide" that didn't work. But, when the gears mesh -- as they do in, say, Oliver Stone's "JFK" -- the result is one of the most intense viewing experiences possible. And as the director of "Boycott," Johnson was responsible for making the visual styles mesh seamlessly.

Once the humma-humma moment passes and Johnson settles into a huge wingback chair outside the hotel ballroom where he and the cast will meet with the press later at the end of a very long day, he makes it clear that technical finesse is no accident. Johnson has been honing his talents as a director for almost 10 years on such network dramas as "Homicide"; "NYPD Blue" and "The West Wing." Before he shot a frame of "Boycott," he thought out his approach long and hard.

"Initially, I didn't want to do this movie," he said. "I didn't want my first movie to be one of those Black History Month stories that's just sort of, 'Oh, oh, pity me.' It's easy to have your work marginalized by that one month. But the script evolved."

As part of that evolution, Johnson and former "Homicide" producer Eric Overmyer rewrote parts of the script -- uncredited. (The script is credited to Herman Daniel Farrell III and Timothy J. Sexton.)

Unattributed rewriting isn't unusual on feature films, but it is for television; networks seldom spend the extra money or time to make a script better. HBO was willing to pay the price to get it right.

Johnson said that once he knew the script was going to be OK, he started thinking about telling the story visually. "I wanted to take a feature film look, hang the movie on that, and then get inside of it with the documentary style," he said.