San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Wild tale of Hollywood and a Black Panther
When he was released from prison in August 1970 after a manslaughter conviction for killing an Oakland police officer was overturned, Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton famously emerged from the Alameda County Courthouse to a crowd of jubilant supporters screaming his name. They carried “Free Huey” signs and chanted “The sky’s the limit” as Newton climbed on top of a car, stripped off his shirt and proclaimed his release a “victory for the people.”
It’s an iconic moment in Bay Area and civil rights history that’s recreated in the first episode of the new Apple TV+ series “The Big Cigar,” but with a twist.
We see Newton’s triumphant release through the eyes of Hollywood megaproducer Bert Schneider (played by Alessandro Nivola), who is captivated by television news footage of Newton (André Holland) walking free. Schneider has no doubt that political activist Newton has the X-factor of a major talent.
Schneider, a hitmaker in the late 1960s and early ’70s, helped usher in an era of adventurous filmmaking by producing the classic films “Easy Rider,” “Five Easy Pieces” and “The Last Picture Show.” He was also a leftleaning idealist who wanted to be more active in radical politics. When he glimpses the liberated Newton surrounded by legions of fans, Schneider says to his producing partner, Steve Blauner (P.J. Byrne), “That guy’s a f—ing star.”
“The Big Cigar,” which is based on a 2012 Playboy magazine article of the same name by Joshuah Bearman (who also wrote the Wired magazine story that was adapted into the Oscar winner “Argo”), tells the true story of the unlikely friendship that developed between Schneider and Newton in the early 1970s. Schneider helped bankroll the Panthers’ community outreach in Oakland, and in 1974 he used his Hollywood clout to help Newton escape FBI arrest on a subsequent murder charge.
In the six-part series, Schneider and Blauner concoct “the perfect cover”: a fake movie production, down to budgeting for sets, transportation and costumes, in order to smuggle Newton safely to Cuba. Newton, who died in 1989, would end up living there with his first wife, Gwen Fontaine (Tiffany Boone), for three years.
“For me, the idea of these two men, Huey and Bert, who were so flawed in their personal lives in so many ways, but who were so unwaveringly dedicated to a cause at the same time, was just fascinating,” Nivola told the Chronicle on a recent video call from Los Angeles. “They were both basically (cocaine) addicts, but they were also visionaries.”
He laughed describing their unlikely friendship as a kind of platonic, drug-fueled bromance. Nivola said he drew inspiration from a photograph of the two men with their arms around each other.
“It was so full of joy and love,” he said. “That was the jumping-off point for me. My whole performance was built around Bert’s almost cultish obsession and fascination with the idolatry of Huey.”
Holland (“Moonlight,” “Passing”), has experience playing real-life characters, including sportswriter Wendell Smith in the 2013 Jackie Robinson film “42” and civil rights leader Andrew Young in “Selma” (2014). But portraying Newton “felt almost too overwhelming at first to even think about,” he said on a separate video call. “I had huge trepidation about doing it right. In the past, when I’ve played public figures, they’re not necessarily ones people feel a deep attachment to, but in the case of Huey, people feel incredibly possessive over the images and even the idea of him.”
Holland said he wanted to better understand the full range of Newton’s complexity as a man who was both a courageous revolutionary and, in the years covered in “The Big Cigar,” an increasingly paranoid addict, aware that the FBI’s counterintelligence program COINTELPRO was surveilling his every move. To do so, Holland spent time in Oakland “walking the streets Huey wrote about” and visiting with Newton’s widow, Fredrika Newton, co-founder of the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation. He called the foundation, which opened its Black Panther Party Museum in downtown Oakland in January, “hugely helpful. It’s a beautiful resource.”
As to the central relationship in “The Big Cigar,” Holland said that “at first, I didn’t really understand why these two men became such good friends.” He felt Newton
would have been understandably skeptical of a white Hollywood power player wanting to “finance the revolution,” and wary of what Schneider might then expect in return.
“But one thing that became clear to me,” Holland continued, “is that they both understood the revolutionary potential of Hollywood.”
“We couldn’t work on this and avoid thinking, I wish we could have made movies back in the ’70s,” added Byrne (“The Wolf of Wall Street”), seated next to Nivola. “It was a golden age.”
“But at least this was a way to kind of live vicariously in that world for a few months,” agreed Nivola.
By drawing a connection between social tumult and cultural change, the series deftly explores the nature of public image-making, including the Panthers’ own militant radical chic. Episode 2, directed by Don Cheadle (also an executive producer), re-creates the famous 1967 Oakland photo shoot with Newton wearing a beret and holding a gun and a spear. In voiceover, Newton bristles that he doesn’t want to be “that guy in the wicker chair anymore.” He later quips, “Celebrity is its own kind of prison.”
“There’s no question that Bert understood the power in the publicity of an emblazoned, iconic image,” said Nivola, “but I think Huey was trying to advocate for a more nuanced understanding of what he wanted to accomplish with the movement.”
“The Big Cigar” reminds viewers that while Hollywood has the tendency to reduce multidimensional people and ideas to a single sexy image, movies can also inspire audiences, sometimes even better than politicians or activists can, to question the status quo. It’s an idea that Holland, Nivola and Byrne say feels as resonant as ever.
“I don’t think Huey ever let go of the idea that Hollywood has the potential to be an agent of change,” said Holland.