Read the full script for Spike Lee's unproduced Jackie Robinson biopic
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It’s likely true that every filmmaker’s got a handful of dusty scripts sitting in a desk drawer somewhere that will never be produced, but it’s rare that fans ever get a chance to read one of those scripts and wonder at what might have been. Fans of Spike Lee are getting that chance this week. The writer/director took to Instagram on Sunday to share the script he wrote for an unproduced Jackie Robinson biopic, based on the iconic ball player’s 1972 autobiography, which is appropriately titled I Never Had It Made.
According to Lee, he wanted Denzel Washington to play the lead character, taking on the mantle of the first African American baseball player to break the color barrier and join Major League Baseball. A few years earlier, Washington had starred in Lee’s Malcolm X, but, per Lee, the actor believed he was “too old” to play Jackie Robinson at the time. He might’ve been right: This draft was finished in 1996, so Washington would have been in his early 40s, whereas Robinson became the first baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers in his late-20s. Interestingly enough, Lee and Washington went on to make another sports movie just a couple years later with He Got Game.
“Don’t worry if you don’t like baseball or sports,” Lee says. “This is a great American story.”
The 155-page script is available through the Dropbox link in Spike Lee’s Instagram page and, at first glance, appears to cover the majority of Robinson’s life, including his college career at UCLA, his time spent in the military, his ascent to the majors, and even his life after baseball. Like many of Lee’s films, we have no doubt it’s an unflinching look at a complex character forced to straddle the racial, cultural, and political lines that exist in 20th century America. If we can’t see it in the theaters, we can at least see it in our heads.
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16 Comments
Oh what I’d give to see this produced. Robinson was baller, so much more than *just* a baseball player. He was a staunch race man, an advocate utterly outspoken. The guy refused to go to the back of an army bus, because as an officer, he outranked the guy who was ordering him back. He was court-martialed and fucking won. He was a hero in every sense of the word.
I don’t know shit about him – I just learned three things from your post. Do you know if he’s covered extensively in Ken Burns’s Baseball series? (I was just about to watch that. My quarantine binge involves as much Burns as I can take in.)
I remember that series covering him a lot.
The burns doc is great, definitely worth a watch. There was also the film about Robinson’s big league debut in ‘47, but I thought that was a bit too reverential for my taste. He’s one of my favorite baseball players, simply because he was the smartest guy out there, and would absolutely fuck with the defense in every way possible. For example, early in his career he got on first with a single, then stole second. He then proceeded to shift back and forth, edging away from the bag toward third, unnerving the pitcher, who then walked the next two batters and sent Robinson to third. He continues this tactic at third, edging out damn near halfway between third and home, but that’s no problem because he was an NCAA long jump champion for UCLA, and he was a able to beat the throw back to third. The third baseman meanwhile was forced to keep him on base by physically standing on the bag, thereby pinning him defensively.The pitcher, thoroughly unnerved, walks another batter, loading the bases and sending Robinson home with a run. But what does he do? He proceeds to *walk* the distance from third to home, touches plate with one foot, and returns to the dugout.
THAT is baseball play at its finest.
If you listen to a bunch of modern day dopes, they would have you believe old time players would have run all the way home and wouldn’t engage in that kind of thing.Which of course is nonsense. If you look through clips on Youtube, you’ll find plenty of examples of old time players flipping bats, admiring their home runs, taking leisurely David Ortiz style trots around the bases, and more.
And even if that were the case, it would just make Jackie’s gesture even more powerful. That dude ran for no one, but himself.
He’s covered pretty well in Baseball, but Ken Burns also made a (very good) separate documentary about his life: https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/jackie-robinson/.
Well holy shit, so he did. Thanks for this
Is he? Ken Burns made his own documentary on Jackie Robinson. Doesn’t disappoint.
Yes. Burns always traces the subject of race through his films. Anyway, you can’t make a documentary about the history of baseball without covering Jackie Robinson. It would be like sidestepping the topic of Babe Ruth.
Jackie stealing home from Yogi Berra in 1955. MAN, Yogi looks pissed.
Berra insisted until the day he died that Robinson was out. He looks safe to me.
Yeah, me too. Ol’ Pointy Toes slid in right underneath it.
How many people let that clip play, anticipating there’d be a reverse camera angle to check?
Let me guess- Spike has people turn to the camera and speechify a lot.
I’m so tired I read Spike Lee as Stan Lee and no offense to Spike Lee but I’m way more interested in whatever the hell the Stan Lee version of a Jackie Robinson biopic looks like.