Morgan Freeman is Duke Ellington
Filed under: Drama, Thrillers, Casting, Deals, New Line, Newsstand
A few years ago, a film student named Jeremy Donner stumbled upon information
about a US government-sponsored tour that Duke Ellington took to the Middle East - including Iraq - in 1963. What made
an already interesting story even more fascinating, however, was the recently-unearthed revelation that the CIA
apparently had spies in the band while it toured, thus using Ellington's popularity to gain access to parts of the
world not usually open to Americans. Donner tracked down a State Department official who was with the Ellington band on
that tour, and put together a pitch centered on whether or not Ellington knew about the spooks. (A pitch that New Line,
not being fools, recently bought.)The studio plans to turn the pitch into a movie called The Jazz Ambassadors, which will have a screenplay by Donner himself. Antoine Fuqua (who, in the lingering aftermath of King Arthur, really could use a hit) is in talks to direct, and Morgan Freeman will both produce and play Ellington in the film.
The story sounds great, as does the presence of Freeman - it'll be interesting to see, though, how the state of the world affects our reactions to this movie when it finally comes out. Three years from now, say, it's impossible to know how we'll view Iraq, American spies, or even the Middle East in general.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-30-2006 @ 6:19PM
John F. Morton said...
These allegations are very nuanced. What did Ellington know and when did he know it? They parallel inferences that can be drawn from reading "Satchmo Blows Up the World." In that book, it is erroneously maintained that Ellington was a Republican. Ellington would not have allowed himself to be used for this purpose. Spies in the band? Not bloody likely. More likely an exercise just what it was: showing the flag where the U.S. government deemed it had a strategic interest, using a jazz band instead of a battleship. However, perhaps there is another story about the band "Police" whose drummer was a CIA brat. In the early 1980s, the band toured India, at the time a pro-Soviet country, singing lyrics like "bombs away in old Bombay." It might be another useful exercise to see how much presence the CIA had in that tour, and whether Copeland's CIA dad had something to do with it.
JFM
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