Doug Liman started strong in his directorial career with Swingers, Go and The Bourne Identity. I even somehwat enjoyed Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Unfortunately Jumper was one of the worst films of 2008, but his next film sounds much more promising. The Valerie Plame film, Fair Game stars Naomi Watts and Sean Penn is finished and is looking at a Cannes Film Festival premiere. What’s next for Liman? Jumper 2 has been talked about for awhile, but In Contention is reporting a much more interesting project.
Geoffrey Fletcher, the scribe behind the heavily Oscar-nominated film Precious is writing a script based on the four-day Attica state prison rebellion that took place in 1971. This is quite a personal project for Liman, as his father, Arthur L. Liman, was “the young lawyer who ran the investigation during the uprising.” Liman visited the prison with Fletcher and wrote up a blog entry on it. Check out some excerpts below.
But Attica means something else to me. As a young lawyer, my father ran the investigation into the prison uprising. I grew up hearing the name Attica and seeing a hacksaw, with a note attached to it, always displayed in my father’s office. There was also a picture on our hallway wall of my father sitting in a prison mess hall with hundreds of inmates. It wasn’t until after my father’s death and I read his autobiography that I came to understand the significance of these symbols I grew up with.
After the uprising was put down, the inmates were weary of talking about the events — guards had been killed and no one wanted to add a murder charge to their records. My father’s job was not to prosecute; it was to find out the truth about what had actually transpired. He was fact finding, not prosecution. But this white lawyer from New York City was going to have an uphill battle explaining the difference to the inmates.
On Christmas Eve of that year, my father traveled up to Attica and had dinner with the inmates, in an attempt to win their trust (the picture on our wall). Ultimately he succeeded, and his report is a riveting page-turner. But the people whose job it was to prosecute the crimes wanted my father to reveal who had admitted to what. When my father refused, they threatened to hold him in contempt of court and throw him in jail. The commissioners with whom my father had produced the report gave my father the hacksaw as an act of solidarity.
This sounds like quite an interesting project and something I would love to see Liman do next. I used to work near the Attica prison and drove past it a few times. The structure is astounding and I was actually reminded of “Ward C” in Shutter Island last night. It’s a majestic fortress and I hope Liman can capture that in the film.
What do you think about an Attica prison film directed by Liman?