A new Jack Johnson film. Your ideas.

That would be cool too, but now i'm thinking about it, I don't think Jeffries would be in my film all that much. I think i'd open with the Jeffries-Munro fight and then the swirling rumours that Jeffries has retired. You could rightly depict that fight as brutal and Jeffries as utterly dominant and at his very best. You could sit with Johnson as he watched that fight and, what I would do is, I would shoot it so you could see Johnson see Jeffries makes his moves just before he makes them, see him read Jeffries right, see how competitive their fight would have been without their actually seeing it.

Then you immediatly land upon Johnson's race to the title, and Jeffries vanishes onto the back-bioler (pardon the pun) until Jack London starts his trumpeting.

Incidently, Corbett is going to come off horrificaly in this film. There is no way to portray him but a bitter, racist, jealous man.

I disagree upon depicting Johnson as the underdog for Jeffries. I'd depict him as an absolutely inevitable winner, with he and his friends betting lavishly upon him to win by KO. This is the "golden Johnson" that will vanish (mostly) in the second part of the film.

 

That has to be in it, but I would tend to do it via flashbacks rather than tell the story in a linear style. What I like about that is that we put Johnson together piece by piece but once we've come to know him - so for example, the night before a supremely confident Johnson takes apart Jeffries we can have a flashback to racial mis-treatment of a very young Johnson; imagine the impact of coming straight form that to Johnson handling the white Jeffries in brutal style whilst ruining a furious Corbett in the verbals at exactly the same time - you could even have Corbett use exactly the same racial phrase as the unidentified random abuser from Johnson's past in the flashback. That would be impact, that would be a man risen.

I wouldn't have him in it much; maybe just some backslapping in a saloon with an ill judged remark from a friend or aquantance regarding Johnson's great standing, and how it used to be Corbett himself. Then Corbett's vitriol at ringside. Johnson needs to be seen to own the white establishment on all fronts in Reno, I think that would be important.

 

Yeah, a film about the things he actually did, that would be crazy. Next they'll be making a film about Tyson or Jake LaMotta, the dogs.

 

Burns would be a representitive for American's coming capitalism, he's smart, he's courageous, very very focused, but this is a Jack Johnson film. In a Jack Johnson film there's no way for Burns to be portrayed aside from an unjust champion i'm afraid, a paper champion who's about to get what's coming to him. Having said that, i'd hope there would be a nod to his courage in matching Johnson, he should be portrayed as fearless as well as smart. I think that would be only fair.

But Burns and Jeffries, what needs to be stressed is the distance by which Johnson outclassed them.

 

I could see that, if there was a recorded meeting between the two, which there's bound to be. You could toss out such a scene in only 60 seconds and I reckon that would be Tommy's due.


How would you end the movie? Can't end it in Cuba.

 

Cheers chum. A cocky Louis is definitely an idea.

I like this idea best I think.

I thought of that writ large on the screen just before the credits.

Like I said, my pick would be his one man show. Johnson apparently used to sit stock still as the audience, which had paid less than top dollar, filed in, and then he would turn to them and begin telling stories of his travells and fights. I think that would be a wonderful ending, you could protract it for maybe a minute, the people filing in, Johnson not moving, and then maybe have him turn to the camera and tell the story of the solitary black man he saw in Reno, perched upon the wall, silently watching.

Fin.