This week we’re going to be talking about BlacKkKlansman by Spike Lee, Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz and Kevin Willmott.
When I first went out to see BlacKkKlansman, my hope was that I was going to be able to do a podcast about how to write a movie for a political change— to talk about the confluence of race and politics and storytelling and history.
But, my experience of BlacKkKlansman led me to an even more important topic: the role of the truth in adapting a true life story, and how running towards (or away from) that truth can impact the overall experience of your screenplay.
Like always, in his script for BlacKkKlansman, Spike Lee has a lot of very interesting things to say about race and politics, particularly about how the white supremacy movement has taken off the hood and the robe, put on the suit, and made themselves frighteningly presentable to the American public.
I think he has a scary message there that’s well told, and I think there are some really transcendent and wonderful moments in this film.
But for all the power of its message, and the appeal of its true-life premise, the actual execution of BlacKkKlansman feels shockingly uneven, bouncing between moments of political insight and compelling storytelling that we expect from Spike Lee, and others that feel predictable, anticlimatic, heavyhanded, or downright false.
What’s causing this unevenness in BlacKkKlansman is a simple problem that many writers fall into when adapting a true life story into a screenplay.
So in this podcast, I’m going to be talking about how-- whether you're writing a political film or a non-political film-- you can avoid falling into some of the traps that get in the way of a really tremendous premise.
So let’s talk about BlacKkKlansman.
The premise of a black undercover police officer infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan is just about as good of a premise as you can get. And the fact that this actually happened in the 1970’s is even cooler.
The problem with BlacKkKlansman isn't in any way its premise.
The problem with BlacKkKlansman is that the writers make the most common mistake when adapting a true life story.
Rather than running towards the truth, they instead end up running toward the same old Hollywood elements we’ve seen in a million films in this genre.
They think this is going to create drama, but instead they end up creating cliché.
If you’ve seen BlacKkKlansman, think about the moments that really stood out to you, the moments that really mattered, the moments that seemed too wild to believe but totally compelling… well, the truth is a lot of those moments were true.
And if you think about the moments that felt a little cliché, a little “seen it before,” a little familiar… well, you probably won’t be too surprised to find out that a lot of those moments weren’t true.
But there’s an even bigger consequence here.
By running towards the Hollywood story, rather than running towards the truth, BlacKkKlansman misses out on the full potential of its premise, not only structurally, but also politically.
And I’m not saying that BlacKkKlansman doesn’t have a powerful political premise at its center. I’m just saying that there’s an even more powerful way to deliver it.
So, let’s start with the biggest most “Hollywood” moment in BlacKkKlansman.
For those of you who haven’t seen the movie— Ron Stallworth is a black police officer in the 1970’s. His only dream is to become an undercover police officer. He’s the first black man to become a member of this police department, and of course he’s dealing with a lot of racism, and he’s dealing with the pressure of infiltrating both the Black Power movement and the Ku Klux Klan at the same time.
So, there’s a lot of very interesting stuff happening here, and what makes it most interesting is that this stuff is actually true.
There really was a guy named Ron Stallworth, he really was a black policeman in the 1970’s, he really did infiltrate the Black Power movement, and he really did infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan.
So, as soon as you find out that a black police officer is infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan, the first thing you're going to think is, “how the hell did he pull that off?”
And in fact that’s exactly what draws you into BlacKkKlansman— that’s why you go see it. “Hold on, there’s a true story about a black cop who actually infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan? I want to see that movie. I want to know how he did it.”
And as soon as you hear the premise, you start telling yourself a story. Maybe it’s an unlikely story about a guy who is wearing a hood all the time so nobody knows— but you’re trying to figure out how this happened.
Unfortunately, this presents a challenge in the movie, because the way it happens, at least at first glance, isn't all that dramatic.
What actually happened in the true story was Ron Stallworth sent a postcard to the Ku Klux Klan and they called him back at an unlisted number.
And it’s true that he developed a phone relationship with David Duke, and it’s true that the Klan wanted him to join and wanted to meet him…
So how is he going to pull this off?
In the movie, what happens a “white” cop, Flip, played by Adam Driver, poses as Ron Stallworth and goes and interacts with the Klan for him.
So the in-person conversations happen with Flip, and the on-the-phone conversations happen with Ron Stallworth— which raises the question of believability.
If he can pass for a Klansman, why doesn’t Flip just have these phone conversations and make it all a lot easier?
Many critics (who have not done their research) have pointed out this question as one of the biggest problems in the script. It just doesn’t seem credible.
But in fact it’s entirely true.
So, the first problem is, the “way things really happened” doesn’t seem credible, even though it is.
The second problem is that even if “the way things really happened” did seem credible, on first glance it isn't that exciting.
The moment we hear the premise of BlacKkKlansman, we start imagining something really exciting: a black cop having to interact with the Ku Klux Klan.
Instead, we’re getting a white cop interacting with the Ku Klux Klan and a black cop on the phone. Which, true or not, feels like a bait and switch based on what we imagined we were going to see when we bought our tickets.
When writing a true life story, this is a danger that all writers face: sometimes the truth doesn’t seem inherently dramatic.
And this leads to a panicked desire to forget about the truth and start making things up.
That’s usually the wrong decision.
Now don’t get me wrong. The writers of BlacKkKlansman are not bad writers.
A really bad writer would make an even more problematic decision than these writers made.
A really bad writer would send the black cop in to meet the Ku Klux Klan, get rid of the white cop entirely, and run towards the drama…
But pretty soon that really bad writer would find themselves with a much bigger problem than the inconvenient truth of who actually met with the Ku Klux Klan.
They’d soon start to realize, having built everything on fiction, that each following choice they make is going to open a Pandora’s box of new credibility issues— because eventually both the writer and the audience are going to realize the same thing the real Ron Stallworth had to realize: there’s no way this guy could pull this off! That the premise just doesn’t work
If you run away from the truth when adapting a true life story, you will find your script is floating completely in a fictional world and not in the real world at all.
And you’re going to lose your audience and you’re going to lose your character and you’re going to lose your instincts that guide you through the writing process.
What a great writer would do is ask themselves a different question:
“How do I make the fact that Ron Stallworth isn't meeting the Klan the coolest thing in the movie? How do I make the fact that what the audience expected isn't what the audience is going to get the coolest thing in the film?”
And the way you find that answer is by running towards the truth, rather than away from it.
Unfortunately, that’s not what these writers do either.
What these writers try to do is to run a middle road--
“Let’s make the white cop Jewish, let’s create a lie detector test, let’s create a lot of suspicion among his new white supremacist “friends” that maybe he isn't really an aspiring Ku Klux Klan member, let’s try to build some danger.”
But none of this is true, or at least none of this is confirmed.
The identity of the actual white cop is unknown, it is still classified, so no one knows if he’s Jewish or not.
But Ron Stallworth has been clear in interviews that no, none of these Ku Klux Klan members were especially smart and none of these Ku Klux Klan members had any suspicion whatsoever that this undercover white cop was anything but a wholehearted Ku Klux Klan member.
Rather than running towards what’s really cool and what’s really true about this story, the writers have immediately gone to the easiest solution, the one you’d most expect. “Well since there’s no way a black cop could physically infiltrate the Klan, what if it were a Jewish cop… yeah, that’s a lot easier… and what if there was a member that was onto him… yeah, that would create some drama”
Unfortunately, what’s easier for you as a writer is rarely better for the story.
I think we can all agree, the premise of a Jewish cop who might get recognized as Jewish is fine… but it’s a lot less exciting than the premise we paid to see-- of a black guy doing the same thing.
What we’re served is a lesser version of the same story.
More importantly, we’re served it in a way that belies credibility; we don’t actually understand why this is necessary. And this breaks our suspension of disbelief,
