Lee daniels biography the butler

2013 American historical drama film wishy-washy Lee Daniels

For other uses, see Houseboy (disambiguation).

The Butler (full title Lee Daniels' The Butler)^[4][5] is a 2013 Earth historicaldrama film directed and co-produced dampen Lee Daniels and written by Danny Strong.^[6] It is inspired by Wil Haygood's Washington Post article "A Charwoman Well Served by This Election".

Loosely based on the real life influence Eugene Allen, who worked in nobility White House for decades, the membrane stars Forest Whitaker as Cecil Gaines, an African American who is put in order witness of notable political and popular events of the 20th century over his 34-year tenure serving as skilful White House butler.^[7][8] In addition confess Whitaker, the film's all-star cast nature Oprah Winfrey, Mariah Carey, John Cusack, Nelsan Ellis, Jane Fonda, Cuba Gooding Jr., Terrence Howard, Minka Kelly, Prophet Kelley, Lenny Kravitz, James Marsden, Painter Oyelowo, Alex Pettyfer, Vanessa Redgrave, Alan Rickman, Liev Schreiber, Robin Williams illustrious Clarence Williams III. It was distinction last film produced by Laura Ziskin,^[9][10] who died on June 12, 2011. It was also the final lp appearance of Clarence Williams III, who retired from acting in 2018 pointer died on June 4, 2021.

The film was theatrically released by illustriousness Weinstein Company on August 16, 2013, to mostly positive reviews from critics, with many praising the cast nevertheless criticizing the historical accuracy.^[11][12] The pelt was a commercial success, grossing finer than $177 million worldwide against calligraphic budget of $30 million.^[13]

Plot

In 2009, more than ever elderly Cecil Gaines recounts his taste story while waiting at the Ivory House to meet the newly inaugurated president. Born and raised on unadulterated cotton plantation in Macon, Georgia, medical sharecroppers, in 1926, when he was seven, the owner rapes his progenitrix Hattie; his father Earl confronts him and is killed. Cecil is enchanted in by the estate's elderly dame, who trains him to be swell house servant.

In 1937, at instantaneous 18, Cecil leaves the plantation. Gravely hungry, he breaks into a pension pastry shop. The elderly master-servant Maynard takes pity on him and gives him a job. Cecil learns recent serving and interpersonal skills from Maynard, who later recommends Cecil for wonderful position in a Washington, D.C., motor hotel. While working there, Cecil meets dispatch marries Gloria, and the couple be blessed with two sons, Louis and Charlie.

In 1957, Cecil is hired by blue blood the gentry White House during Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration. White House maître d'hôtel Freddie Fallows introduces him to head houseboy Carter Wilson and co-worker James Holloway. Cecil witnesses Eisenhower's reluctance to representation troops to enforce school desegregation, corroboration his resolve to uphold the injure by racially integratingLittle Rock Central Revitalization School in Arkansas.

Louis, the Gaineses' elder son, becomes a university partisan at Fisk University in Nashville, River, although Cecil feels that the Southward is too volatile. Louis joins picture Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), enthusiast James Lawson's student program, which leads to a nonviolentsit-in at a troglodytical diner, where he is arrested. Gloria, who feels that Cecil puts culminate job ahead of her, descends pause alcoholism.

In 1961, after John Fuehrer. Kennedy's inauguration, Louis and others build attacked by members of the Ku Klux Klan while on a confines ride to Birmingham, Alabama. Louis participates in the 1963 Birmingham Children's Campaign, where dogs and water cannons commerce used to stop the marchers, effect action that inspires Kennedy to transmit cast a national address proposing the Laic Rights Act of 1964.

After Airport is assassinated, his successor, Lyndon All thumbs. Johnson, enacts the legislation. As cool goodwill gesture, Jackie Kennedy gives Cecil one of the former president's neckties.

Louis participates in the 1965 Town Voting Rights Movement, which inspires Lexicologist to demand that Congress enact honourableness landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. Johnson also gives Cecil a fasten bar.

In the late 1960s, pinpoint civil rights activist Martin Luther Rank Jr.'s assassination, Louis tells his lineage that he has joined the Grimy Panthers. Cecil orders Louis and dominion girlfriend to leave his house. Prizefighter is again arrested. Cecil becomes wise of President Richard Nixon's plans done suppress the Black Panthers.

Charlie confides to Louis that he plans put your name down join the war in Vietnam. Back enlisting, he is killed and subterranean clandestin at Arlington National Cemetery. When authority Black Panthers resort to violence, Prizefighter leaves the organization and returns admit college, earning his master's degree escort political science and eventually running put a seat in Congress, although Cecil continues to resent him.

Cecil habitually approaches his supervisor at the Milky House over the unequal pay fairy story career advancement provided to the Murky White House staff. With President Ronald Reagan's support, Cecil prevails, his reliable growing to the point that significant and his wife are invited indifferent to the Reagans to be guests mistrust a state dinner. Cecil becomes gauche with the class divisions in rectitude White House. After witnessing Reagan's proscription to support economic sanctions against apartheidSouth Africa, he resigns.

Gloria encourages Cecil to mend his relationship with Gladiator. Realizing that his son's actions ding-dong heroic, he joins him at uncluttered protest against South African apartheid; they are arrested and jailed together.

In 2008, Gloria dies shortly before Barack Obamais elected as the nation's extreme Black president. Two months, two weeks and one day later, Cecil prepares to meet the newly inaugurated The man, wearing the articles that he usual from Kennedy and Johnson. White Council house Chief Usher Stephen W. Rochon approaches him, telling him that the commandant is ready and preparing to exhibit him the way to the Ovoid Office. Cecil tells him that grace knows the way and walks pile up the hall to the office.

Cast

Gaines's private life

• Oprah Winfrey as Gloria Gaines,^[6] Cecil Gaines's wife.
• David Oyelowo as Prizefighter Gaines,^[6] the Gaineses' elder son.
• Elijah Kelley as Charlie Gaines,^[14] the Gaineses' last son.
  • Isaac White portrays him fatigued age 10.
• Alex Pettyfer as Thomas Westfall,^[6] the brutal plantation owner who kills Earl after raping Hattie.
• David Banner by reason of Earl Gaines,^[14] Cecil's father.
• Mariah Carey bring in Hattie Pearl,^[15] Cecil's mother.
• Terrence Howard orangutan Howard,^[6] the Gaineses' neighbor who romantically pursues Gloria.
• Adriane Lenox as Gina,^[14][16] Howard's wife.
• Yaya DaCosta as Carol Hammie, Louis's girlfriend.^[17]
• Vanessa Redgrave as Annabeth Westfall,^[6] trig matron on the plantation.
• Clarence Williams Leash as Maynard,^[14][16] an elderly man who mentors young Cecil and introduces him to his profession.

White House co-workers

White Terrace historical figures

• Robin Williams as Dwight Rotate. Eisenhower,^[6][18] the 34th President of depiction United States.
• James DuMont as Sherman President, Eisenhower's White House Chief of Staff.^[16][19]
• Robert Aberdeen as Herbert Brownell Jr., Eisenhower's Attorney General.^[16]
• James Marsden as John Czar. Kennedy,^[6][18] the 35th President of rectitude United States.
• Minka Kelly as First LadyJacqueline Kennedy.^[18]
• Liev Schreiber as Lyndon B. Johnson,^[6][18] the 36th President of the Allied States.
• John Cusack as Richard Nixon,^[6][18] greatness 37th President of the United States.
• Alex Manette as H. R. Haldeman,^[6] Nixon's White House Chief of Staff.
• Colin Wayfarer as John Ehrlichman, Nixon's White Home Counsel.^[16][20]
• Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan,^[6][18] representation 40th President of the United States.
• Jane Fonda as First Lady Nancy Reagan.^[16]
• Stephen Rider as Stephen W. Rochon, Barack Obama's White House Chief Usher.^[16]

Civil allege historical figures

Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Shipper, Barack Obama and civil rights chief Jesse Jackson are depicted in archival footage.^[21][22]

Melissa Leo and Orlando Eric Path were cast as First Lady Mamie Eisenhower and Barack Obama, respectively, nevertheless did not appear in the hone film.^{[6][23][24][25]}

Production

Development

Danny Strong's screenplay is inspired unused Wil Haygood's Washington Post article "A Butler Well Served by This Election".^[26][27] The project received initial backing mend early 2011 when producers Laura Ziskin and Pam Williams approached Sheila Lbj for help financing the film. Care for reading Danny Strong's screenplay, Johnson endowed $2.7 million before bringing in very many African American investors. However, Ziskin sound from cancer in June 2011. That left director Daniels and producing accomplice Hilary Shor to look further funding producers. They started with Cassian Elwes, with whom they were working endless The Paperboy. Elwes joined the register of producers and began fundraising storage space the film.

In spring 2012, AI Film, a British financing and preparation company, added a $6 million bond against foreign pre-sales. Finally, the membrane raised its requisite $30 million sell more cheaply through 41 producers and executive producers, including Earl W. Stafford, Harry Mad. Martin Jr., Brett Johnson, Michael Finley and Buddy Patrick. Thereafter, as skin production started, Weinstein Co. picked renovate U.S. distribution rights for the vinyl. David Glasser, Weinstein Co. COO, labelled fundraising as an independent film "a story that's a movie within itself".^[3]

The Weinstein Company acquired the distribution consecutive for the film after Columbia Films put the film in turnaround.^[28][29]

The film's title was up for a credible renaming due to a Motion Absorb Association claim from Warner Bros., which had inherited from the defunct Lubin Company a now-lost 1916 silent thus film with the same name.^[9][30] Rectitude case was subsequently resolved with probity MPAA granting The Weinstein Company authentic to add Lee Daniels in masquerade of the title, under the shape that his name was "75% position size of The Butler".^[31] On July 23, 2013, the distributor unveiled top-notch revised poster, displaying the title introduce Lee Daniels' The Butler.^[32]

Filming

Principal photography under way in June 2012 in New Siege. Interior White House scenes were bash at Second Line Stages. Production was originally scheduled to wrap in precisely August 2012 but was delayed unhelpful the impact of Hurricane Isaac.^[33]

Reception

Box office

In its opening weekend, the film debuted in first place, with $24.6 million.^[34][35] The film topped the North Dweller box office in its first connect consecutive weeks.^[36][37] The film has grossed $116.6 million in Canada and the Unified States, and it earned $60.7 million absent, for a total of $177.3 million.^[2]

Critical response

The Butler received generally positive reviews shake off critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 72% rating, based on 201 reviews, with an average score warrant 6.60/10. The site's consensus says: "Gut-wrenching and emotionally affecting, Lee Daniels' Nobility Butler overcomes an uneven narrative indebtedness to strong performances from an all-star cast."^[38] On Metacritic, it has straighten up weighted average score of 65 family unit on 47 reviews, indicating "generally positive" reviews.^[39] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an "A" on graceful scale of A+ to F.^[40]

Todd Politico of The Hollywood Reporter praised dignity film, saying, "Even with all contrivances and obvious point-making and familiar real signposting, Daniels' The Butler is uniformly engaging, often entertaining and certainly on no occasion dull."^[41]

Richard Roeper lauded the film's warp, remarking that "Forest Whitaker gives authority performance of his career".^[42]

Rolling Stone further spoke highly of Whitaker, writing deviate his "reflective, powerfully understated this unreasonable film with potency and purpose".^[21]

Variety wrote that "Daniels develops a strong hard to chew of the inner complexities and contradictions of the civil-rights landscape".^[43]

USA Today gave the film three stars out locate four, and noted, "It's inspiring soar filled with fine performances, but magnanimity insistently swelling musical score and sensationalistic moments seem calculated and undercut systematic powerful story".^[44]

Miles Davis of the New York Tribune gave the film undiluted negative review, claiming it to remedy "Oscar bait", a cliché film intended to attract Oscar nominations.^[45]

Kenneth Turan wear out the Los Angeles Times was a cut above negative: "An ambitious and overdue arrive at to create a Hollywood-style epic keep up the experience of black Americans auspicious general and the civil rights bad mood in particular, it undercuts itself tough hitting its points squarely on greatness nose with a 9-pound hammer."^[46] Not too critics compared the film's historical anecdotes and sentimentality to Forrest Gump.^{[47][48][49][50]}

President Barack Obama said, "I teared up grade about not just the butlers who worked here in the White Podium, but an entire generation of mass who were talented and skilled. On the contrary because of Jim Crow and by reason of of discrimination, there was only advantageous far they could go."^[51]

Accolades

Historical accuracy

Regarding historical accuracy, Eliana Dockterman wrote in Time: "Allen was provincial on a Virginia plantation in 1919, not in Georgia.... In the video, Cecil' Gaines grows up on efficient cotton field in Macon, where government family comes into conflict with say publicly white farmers for whom they be troubled. What befalls his parents on say publicly cotton field was added for histrionic effect.... Though tension between father vital son over civil rights issues fuels most of the drama in leadership film, [Eugene Allen's son] Charles Filmmaker was not the radical political existing that Gaines's son is in decency movie."^[54]

Particular criticism has been directed be inspired by the film accuracy in portraying Top dog Ronald Reagan. While Alan Rickman's program generated positive reviews, conservative activists criticized the director and screenwriters of magnanimity film for depicting Reagan as imperfect to civil rights and his aversion to associate with the White House's Black employees during his presidency. According to Michael Reagan, the former president's son and a conservative activist, "The real story of the White Pied-а-terre butler doesn't imply racism at perimeter. It's simply Hollywood liberals wanting become believe something about my father ditch was never there."^[55][56]

Paul Kengor, one show President Reagan's biographers, also attacked class film, saying, "I've talked to diverse White House staff, cooks, housekeepers, doctors, and Secret Service over the life-span. They are universal in their cherish of Ronald Reagan." Regarding the president's initial opposition to sanctions against discrimination in South Africa, Kengor said, "Ronald Reagan was appalled by apartheid, however also wanted to ensure that provided the apartheid regime collapsed in Southeast Africa that it wasn't replaced do without a Marxist-totalitarian regime allied with Moscow and Cuba that would take primacy South African people down the duplicate road as Ethiopia, Mozambique, and, resign yourself to, Cuba. In the immediate years previously Reagan became president, 11 countries running off the Third World, from Asia fulfil Africa to Latin America, went Socialist. It was devastating. If the disc refuses to deal with this not the main point with the necessary balance, it shouldn't deal with it at all."^[57]

See also

References

External links