A Raisin in the Sun Producer Craig Zadan on the Movie's Gay Subtext

Let's be honest: most people will probably tune into ABC's drama A Raisin in the Sun tonight to see if Sean "P-Diddy" Combs can act. He can. In fact, the entire cast is achingly brilliant. See the excellent New York Times review here.

And with the 40th anniversaries of the assassinations of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy coming up - and the new "I have a dream" candidate Barack Obama trying to turn a political campaign into a movement for social change, many might think that the dream deferred -- the "raisin" of the title from black gay poet Langston Hughes' poem "Harlem" ("What happens to a dream deferred?/Does it dry up/like a raisin in the sun?") -- is outdated.

It's not. Racism is still rampant, the film's gay co-producer Craig Zadan points out. So is homophobia and the closet -- one of the subtexts of the original play written by African American lesbian Lorraine Hansberry.

Lorraine Hansbery "is one of the most famous lesbian playwrights who nobody knew was a lesbian," Zadan told me by phone as he drove to a press conference with Combs at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

Of course, Hansberry is now famous among African American LGBT people. But in her time -- especially in 1959 when Raisin in the Sun became the first play written by a black woman to be produced on Broadway -- Hansberry qualified as the kind of woman artist Virginia Woolf talked about in her famous 1928 Cambridge lecture, "Shakespeare's sister."

All these elements -- racism, sexism, and homophobia -- occurred to Zadan and his producing partner Neil Meron (also openly gay) at Storyline Entertainment when they saw the revival of A Raisin in the Sun on Broadway with the same cast that's in the ABC movie. The producing partners have a long history of consciously using diversity in theme and casting.

Zadan explained the process by which they brought the play to television and Hansberry's gay subtext.

Neil and I have been drawn to movies that fall into three distinct groups: One is musicals, which we took upon ourselves to try to bring back when nobody was doing musicals; the second is bio-pics. When no one was doing bio-pics, we on TV, we did Judy Garland, the Beach Boys, the Reagans -- a whole lot of biographical things; and the third -- social and political films like Serving in Silence, What Makes a Family, and Wedding Wars, which are gay and lesbian stories. We're always developing more, looking for more social/political stories.

We went to see the revival when it opened a couple of years ago and we were just blown away by it. We realized that Sean Combs made it feel contemporary. The audience was compromised of the youngest people we've ever seen at a play. The place was packed with Caucasians and African Americans -- but kids and families. We'd never seen an audience like that ever on Broadway for a straight dramatic play. And they went nuts. They went to see it -- maybe -- because of Diddy -- but they came away having had that experience of this piece with that cast. And we were determined at that point that we wanted to turn it into a movie.

Luckily our deal is at Sony and luckily Sony [Columbia Pictures} made the original Raisin in the Sun with Sidney Poitier. So we lucked out. We went to them and everybody embraced it. And then we went to Steve McPherson [president of ABC Entertainment] and we didn't even get the words out of our mouth and he jumped up and said, 'Go make it now.' He immediately understood how important the story was and with that cast. He said, 'You get that cast -- go make the picture.

Unfortunately it took us two years because those actors -- Audra McDonald, Phylicia Rashad, Sanaa Lathan, Sean Combs -- are so busy with plays and movies and concert tours. It took us two years to coordinate schedules.

Finally, last year they all said to us, 'OK, we have between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve -- so we'll give you that.' We were freaking out because we were still shooting Hairspray, we were about to start shooting The Bucket List -- so we said, 'You know what -- it's really hard to pull this off right now. But we're not even going to think about it. We're just going to pull it off.

So we immediately set up production -- in many cases working seven days a week -- because we had to finish in that tiny, tiny window.

We made it happen in Toronto because we were finishing Hairspray In Toronto and we couldn't leave the city.

We finished the movie and then Neil and I edited it very quickly. But ABC said, 'You know what -- this is too important. We can't throw this on the air. Work with us -- be patient and let's give it a coveted time slot.'

And everybody was like, 'We want to put it on now.' They said, 'No -- trust us.' We said, 'OK.' They basically said, 'We think we should hold it until next year and put it on the night after the Oscars so we can promote it during the Academy Awards,' which is of course the largest audience watching ABC all year. So we used last night as a platform and we're on tonight.

But Neil and I -- when we saw it we said, 'This is very, very important. The truth of the matter is -- when we look at things -- every movie we do -- no matter what the subject matter is -- we go to the universal theme of family. We always go to that because if the movie is about family, then any audience can relate to it. We feel that this one -- more than just about any of them -- is about what happens to a family falling apart and disintegrating and pulling itself back together again.

We felt it was a very important African American story, a very important story about racism. Some people said, 'Oh -- this is 1959.' And we said, "Yes -- but what about Michael Richards [profusely using the "n-word" during a stand up routine at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles} and Don Imus [who got briefly kicked off the air for calling the Rutgers Women's Basketball Team "napped headed hos"] and what about Jena -- that town where they hung nooses? So everything going on around us was all about blatant racism.

And then on top of all that -- out of the blue -- came Barack Obama, which we didn't anticipate. So we felt there was this amazing story that needed to be told today because racism is rampant in America and needs to be dealt with -- and dealt with not standing on a soapbox preaching but by moving people to tears and breaking their hearts - that's how you reach people.

But that jumps off to another point: whenever you deal with an issue of minorities, you also deal with gays and lesbians -- and especially here with a play by an African American lesbian playwright -- it became very, very important to us to tell this story.

We think there are some subliminal things going on that if you watch the movie. You get into these people's lives and you are as moved as we were by their story and by the actors. We think people will get it since it deals with minorities, it deals with race, it deals with prejudice, it deals with everything in the world today.

What I found particularly interesting was that beyond racism are other prejudices. You have everybody trying to hush up about the fact that [Hansberry] was a lesbian playwright. I think part of it comes from the fact that she had a heterosexual marriage. I'm sure it was a loving relationship and I'm sure they cared about each other a great deal. But the point is -- when that marriage came to an end, we found out where her heart was.

{Hansberry] wrote a lot of lesbian political stories in different publications and at that time signed it "LH." So she was willing to write constantly about the gay and lesbian cause but at the same time, she was never willing to sign her real name to it. Talk about the closet - I think that's amazing.

It is very, very important that people understand that you can tell different kinds of stories and they do related to gay and lesbian issues -- especially when you know the people behind them.

Lorraine Hansberry was clearly writing from the gay experience. The character that Senaa Lathem plays is the Lorraine Hansberry character. She represents Lorraine. If you look at the ideas and you look at what she had to say and how outspoken she is and how she's breaking traditions and breaking rules and being rebellious and experimenting -- you can look at that very clearly as her exploring her lesbianism, from a political point of view. Even though she's talking about other things, beneath the surface you can see what she's really talking about. So I think if you watch the movie and you know that Senaa Lathem is playing Lorraine Hansberry's character, expressing Lorraine's point of view -- you then start to see the ramifications of the gay and lesbian experience screaming to come to out.

She was so prescient that she was telling us about the Women's Liberation Movement, the gay and lesbian movement and the civil rights movement -- before these movements happened. She was a young girl. How could somebody 27 years old have the insight to understand -- it's one thing if she wrote a trilogy or if she wrote 10 plays -- but in one play to express all of those issues and values? It's astonishing.

And we're so use to writing where every so often there is a great line. Not in this - almost every line counts. And if you understand the subtext of what she's really saying, you realize how political and powerful her message is. So any gay or lesbian viewer would get so much out of it and understand how deeply and how powerful and how emotional and how ahead of her time she was; it took a lesbian to tell the world that the world was changing.

A Raisin in the Sun airs tonight on ABC from 8:00pm to 11:00pm Eastern.

Comments

[Wintergreen4President]

I saw the original play on Broadway and can still remember the power those actors brought to it. Poitier was remarkable and Claudia McNeil was a force of nature. So I was pleasantly surprised to find this version still so moving and relelvant.

However, one tiny quibble: (And I don't mean Combs being the only cast member with a ghetto accent). Why did he so ungraciously steal Lena's final dramatic and triumphant moment? In the original script, Lena is the last family member to leave the apartment. She closes the door. Pause. The door re-opens and she comes back in to get the plant. She exits. Curtain. Perhaps I'm a purist, but that moment had an emotional punch to it that was completely dissipated by having Combs give her the plant and taking the final exit.

[JoDeeVa]

I cut short my Japanese class to rush home and watch this..forgot to set it up for recording!
I loved the original version with Sydney Poitier. I was mesmerized by this version. It did feel more contemporary, but not just because of Sean Combs. Even as actors who can play any one in any time, it just seemed that they brought to their roles a different perspective of being black in America from their/our own more contemporary lives. It was like they were bringing to life this history through the eyes and filter of their/our experiences today. They were all simply stunning in their roles. It had a sensitivity and feeling of a live play..so visceral in it's effect. Sean Combs and Felicia Rashaad were just amazing together.

Being such a fan of the first movie and having read the play back in high school, thanks to Mr. Townsend, who fought to get it!..thank-you, thank-you!..I have to say I was as enthralled with this production, as I was first reading the play, seeing it on stage and watching the original movie. I had reservations when I heard about it, but those reservations were for naught.
Lorraine Hansberry was brilliant then for writing it and brilliant now for having had the insight of these themes and writing about them in such a way that families today relate to them. I'm not sure what that says about our culture, because as far as we have come, we haven't come far enough in our perceptions today to dispel the realities of 1959 that are still impacting lives, making it so relevant today! Thankfully, when history repeats itself or hasn't even moved forward enough to do that, there are jewels, such as "A Raisin in the Sun" here to remind, chastise and inspire us to remember Langston Hughes' words,
"What happens to a dream deferred? "
Thanks, Karen for a great post!

[SCMagnolia]

I know it's surprising but, quite a few Blacks knew of the presence of talented lesbians and gay men in our midst. This is not "something new" about which Mr. Zadan is educating us. As a matter of fact, James Baldwin immediately comes to mind. And though he was a gay man, he understood the significance of "Raisin" to Blacks and America as a whole.

In his book, "The Price of a Ticket," he said, "It is possible, that her plays attempt to say too much; but it is also exceedingly probable that they make so loud and uncomfortable a sound because of the surrounding silence; not many plays, presently, risk being accused of attempting to say too much!... they have the unmistakable power of turning the viewer's judgment in on himself. Is it true or not true? The play rudely demands; and, unforgivably, leaves us squirming before this question. One cannot quite answer this question negatively, one risks being caught in a lie. But an affirmative answer imposes a new level of responsibility, both of one's conduct and for the fortunes of the American state..."

The producers subtext nothwithstanding, make no mistake about her literary motivation for this play.

Mr. Zadan's statement, "It is very, very important that people understand that you can tell different kinds of stories and they do related to gay and lesbian issues -- especially when you know the people behind them." is paternalistic and implies a knowledge of Ms. Hansberry that he could not possibly, wholly possess - unless he lived his life, in those times - in Black skin.

This is a conversation I've had with many of my gay friends in the Keys. While the Gay and Black Experience is similar, it is not the same. Most Blacks have hardly had the luxury to walk through this American existence on the same path as my white-identified LGBT brothers and sisters. Our very noticeable skin color saw to that. Blacks who could and chose to "pass" shared a much more parallel path, particularly as they stayed closeted in fear of "being found out" yet continued to progress and become successful in the extremely racist and homophobic America of that time.

"Lorraine Hansberry was clearly writing from the gay experience...She was a young girl. How could somebody 27 years old have the insight to understand..." - What! Take the time to talk to any Black woman who grew up during the days of Jim Crow and James Crow Esq. and you'd find insight to spare on a lot of issues.

These statements show how, no matter the rise of Sen. Obama, other races still don't get what it has meant to be Black in America. As wonderful as it is that Mr. Zadan has taken on the task of reintroducing this wonderful work to the small screen, let's not dilute its significance to Blacks for the sake of making a personal point.

[YellerDawg]

I just wish more people would take a look at the original film version. Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeil, Ruby Dee, Diana Sands, Louis Gossett, Jr. You don't get any better than that. The editing sucks, but it's worth it just to see what the actors who worked with Lorraine did with the roles. Unforgettable.