‘The Big Cigar’ Is About Black Panthers Founder Huey P. Newton. But Its Real Message Is: ‘Hollywood, Fuck Yeah!’

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The Black Panther Party founder gets short shrift in Apple TV's miniseries, focused on a movie-biz caper orchestrated to get him out of trouble.

Party founder Huey P. Newton attends a party and recalls the time he and film producer Bert Schneider tried to write a movie about his life, which would have starred comedian Richard Pryor . The key, Schneider explains: “If it’s gonna be a biopic, you have to choose a moment in Huey’s life that means something. Don’t just make it womb to tomb.”features flashbacks to Newton creating and leading the Black Panthers, it mostly focuses on a brief period in 1974.

To return to Schneider’s thesis from the party, this is definitely the story of a moment in Newton’s life rather than the “womb-to-tomb” approach that sinks so many film and TV biographies. But what, exactly, does this particular moment mean?has turned the vibrant, complicated, and at times deeply ugly story of the life of Huey Newton into yet another Hollywood tale about how awesome Hollywood is..

In an early episode, we see Holland in a recreation of the iconic photo of a seated Newton holding a rifle in one hand and a spear in the other. This fictionalized Huey isn’t comfortable with the image, nor with how it shaped the world’s perception of him. Narrating, he cites a line from the French philosopher Michel Foucault, suggesting that when an image becomes iconic, it becomes impossible to see anything else.

The first two episodes of The Big Cigar begin streaming May 17th on Apple TV+, with additional installments releasing weekly. I’ve seen all six.

Source: Entertainment Trends (entertainmenttrends.net)

 

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