Ginsburg film success inspires look at Lewis

NEW YORK — Indirectly, the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg inspired CNN Films’ new documentary on the life of civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis.

The unexpected commercial success of the “RBG” film in theaters two years ago had CNN looking for another contemporary leader whose life could be seen in historical terms.

“We knew there was something about the fact that people thought they knew RBG, but our film revealed there was a lot more to know,” said Amy Entelis, head of CNN Films. “We wanted to figure out if there was anyone else like that, and we landed on John Lewis.”

The film, which had a limited release this summer and was part of the Tribeca Film Festival, premieres on television Sunday at 3 p.m. HST on CNN.

As Erika Alexander, a producer of “John Lewis: Good Trouble,” put it, he was “more than just someone who crossed a bridge and got hit in the head.”

The footage that made Lewis a part of history, from the 1965 march in Alabama, is of course a big part of the film. Knocked to the ground and beaten with a nightstick by a police officer for crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma as part of a civil rights march, Lewis thought he was going to die that day.

Invited into the movement after writing a letter to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. who dubbed him the “boy from Troy” (Alabama), Lewis participated in Freedom Rides. He was leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and spoke from the stage during the historic March on Washington, after elders edited the young firebrand’s speech to tone it down.

That was all before a 33year career in Congress that ended with his death in July at age 80.