WebA day for an FBI special agent might entail surveilling a subject in the morning, tracking terrorists online social activity before lunch, testifying in court in the afternoon, and addressing a public forum on identity theft in the evening. I had been wanting to work with Lee because his sister Leah, Leah and Kim Coleman and Lindsay Graham, three casting directors who always brought me in since I moved to L.A., Rhodes explains. She died addicted. As Hari tells NPR, "Jimmy Fletcher's brief was follow Billie Holiday everywhere she goes; befriend her; document her drug use, and get it ready for an indictment. Protesters sent the song to Congress in hopes of passing an anti-lynching bill, per the BBC. And also, she was resisting white supremacy. There was a lot about her life that we weren't allowed to know, and it is so necessary right now for people to truly understand her and to understand their history.". [It's about a] Black American woman living in America who's been in love with her country her whole life. In the course of a year, he appeared as a muscly sergeant in 12 Strong, a former Marine in The Predator, and a soldier-like survivor named Tom in the Netflix apocalyptic thriller, Bird Box. .css-gk9meg{display:block;font-family:Lausanne,Arial,sans-serif;font-weight:normal;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;padding-top:0.25rem;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}@media (any-hover: hover){.css-gk9meg:hover{color:link-hover;}}@media(max-width: 48rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.15;margin-bottom:0.25rem;}}@media(min-width: 40.625rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.2;margin-bottom:0.625rem;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.2;}}@media(min-width: 73.75rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.2;}}The 40 Best Sci-Fi Scenes, Movie Sequels That Are Better Than the Original, 40 Photos That Prove Sly Stallone Was a Style Icon, 32 Photos of Michael B. Jordans Style Evolution, Tom Cruise Cried During Val Kilmer's Top Gun Scene, How to Watch 'Everything Everywhere All At Once'. Hed take notes on the parts he felt mainstream history had missed. Colonel George Whitea vastly obese white slab of a manhad his hands tightened around his throat, and he was not letting go. They sided with Billie against Anslinger and White, and found her not guilty. Her closest friends are on her payroll, That part of the story is fictionalized, but the agent did speak of her notable affection. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Holiday herself knew intimately the fatal costs of racism, as her father had died in 1937 when he was denied treatment for pneumonia by hospitals that would not accept Black patients. It imagined black bodies hanging from trees as a dark fruit native to the South. The agents were acting on a tip provided by Tony Zerilli, 85, a former mobster, who was released from prison in 2008. His soul was, I don't know what. Rhodes takes a moment to remind me of the final scene of the film: Fletcher bent over against a black door that will not open. Follow him @johannhari101. Imagine if the government chased sick people with diabetes, put a tax on insulin and drove it into the black market, told doctors they couldnt treat them, she wrote in her memoir, then sent them to jail. You victimize yourself by becoming a junkie.. Laugh? The FBI on Wednesday named the man who shot five agents, killing two, as they tried to execute a search warrant in South Florida. Onlookers gather at the site where FBI agents search a field for the alleged remains of Jimmy Hoffa on June 17, 2013 in Oakland Township, Michigan. I'm out in the outskirts, not really paying attention, so it didn't really affect me that much.. ", Daniels' film is based on a chapter called "Black Hands" in British writer Johann Hari's non-fiction book Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs. For Rhodes to play part in it does as well. The prosecution of Billie went ahead. In the book, Hari tells stories of the casualties of the drug war, from its 20th century origins to profiles of contemporary dealers and users. We do know that George White had a long history of planting drugs on women. But if youve ever taken a painting and held it close to your faceso close that your nose touches the canvasyou can see that theres a chaotic rhythm in the brushstrokes. It was called The United States of America versus Billie Holiday, she wrote in her memoir, and thats just the way it felt. She refused to weep on the stand. Here was a black woman, before a mixed audience, grieving for the racist murders in the United States. According to Hari, after Fletcher first raided her apartment for drugs, he took Holiday aside and offered to talk to Ansliger for her in an attempt to lighten her punishment, saying, I dont want you to lose your job. Soon after, they ran into each other at a bar and talked for hours, Hari said. To Anslinger, this was musical anarchy and evidence of a recurrence of the primitive impulses that lurk in black people, waiting to emerge. You might read numbers as colors. You are what you eat. The United States vs. Billie Holiday depicts the FBI chasing Holiday for her drug use and locking her away on narcotics charges as a roundabout way to suppress her musical activism. The United States vs. Billie Holiday portrays the two as having a romance, but not all is as it seems. And when she insisted on continuing on her right as an American citizen to sing Strange Fruit, Anslinger resolves to destroy her., Also Read: Strange Fruit: The History of Billie Holidays Famous Protest Song. The audience cannot see his face. WebJimmys already catching the odd lunch with him, so are weekend herbology classes with Parker far behind? Practically, he had to continue working for them, Rhodes says. I think in this story, we were able to empathize with him because we understood he was just someone who was just caught up.. Another painting. But when the details were looked at later, there seemed to be something odd: a wastepaper basket seems an improbable place to keep a stash, and the kit for shooting heroin was never entered into evidence by the copsthey said they left it at the scene. When he discovered that a Washington society hostess he knewa beautiful, gracious lady, he notedhad an illegal drug addiction, he explained he couldnt possibly arrest her because it would destroy the unblemished reputation of one of the nations most honored families. He helped her to wean herself off her addiction slowly, without the law becoming involved. She let him in. In his eulogy for her, the Reverend Eugene Callender told me he had said: We should not be here. Jazz was the opposite of everything Harry Anslinger believed in. She was sentenced to a year at a West Virginia prison. The Time Ray Liotta Eviscerated Bradley Cooper. Harrys wave came in the form of a race panic. His reasoning was simple, he told me in 2013: addicts, he said, are human beings, just like you and me. Punishment makes them sicker; compassion can make them well. . Billies greatest talent, after singing, was swearingif she called you a motherfucker, it was a great compliment. . The man was arrestedbut Holiday was sent to a reformatory. They took a mug shot of her on her hospital bed. Strange Fruit was a musical lament against lynching. We dont know whether Jimmy joined in, but we do know he had no pity for addicts: I never knew a victim, he said. He was supporting the adoption of a five-year mandatory minimum prison sentence for first-time offender drug dealers. There was a racist, insane belief, that Black people and Latinos and Chinese Americans were using drugs, 'forgetting their place,' and attacking white people.. That's just what Lee does in the most beautiful way with his works, Rhodes says of Daniels. By subscribing to this BDG newsletter, you agree to our. Then, one night, at Club Ebony, they ended up dancing togetherBillie Holiday and Anslingers agent, swaying together to the music. It was just stuff like that makes the character to me. Billie Holiday never stopped being addicted. When I ask Rhodes about that, the tone of our conversation shifts, landing somewhere between exhaustion and frustration. As The Guardian writes, "Maybe he had [fallen in love with her]. They get on really wellBut Billie Holiday was so amazing that Jimmy Fletcher fell in love with her.". That said, its just as easy to view Fletcher as a traitor. This is heartbreaking. They summoned a grand jury to indict her, telling her that unless she disclosed her dealer, they would take her straight to prison. White was Harry Anslingers favorite agent, and when he looked over Holidays files, he declared her to be a very attractive customer, because the Bureau was at a loose end and could do with the opportunity to kick her over.. So now, on top of the cirrhosis of the liver, Billie went into heroin withdrawal, alone. Its just that all the questions about it have him questioning himself. A six-inch deep blanket of white is out there, causing all kinds of problems for a state unprepared for the weather. His job was to He was a Black agent assigned by the egregiously racist head of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry Anslinger (played by Of them, he landed a recurring gig on the Tyler Perry series If Loving You is Wrong. Some of the nicer ones have feelings enough to hate themselves sometime for what they have to do . She had written inside it: Most federal agents are nice people. Blackburn writes that lynching "was at its most virulent between 1900 and 1920." She was given it for ten days and began to recover: she put on weight and looked better. [2] [3] Law enforcement career [ edit] That's something that [director] Lee [Daniels] wanted to embellish a little bit to show that aspect of a rich Black family during that era, because we don't see too many depictions of that, Rhodes explains. You dont have to do that. Theyve got a dirty job to do and they have to do it. Whites men declared they had found opium stashed in a wastepaper basket next to a side room and the kit for shooting heroin in the room, and they charged her with possession. She flaunted her way of living, with her fancy coats and fancy automobiles and her jewelry and her gowns, he complained. Rhodes sees Fletcher as someone who got in deeper and deeper to this gunk of a situation and even ended up falling in love. We may earn a commission from these links. The most recent one was introduced in 2019 by now Vice President Kamala Harris. As he looked over his new staffjust a few years before his pursuit of Billie Holiday beganhe saw a sunken army who had spent fourteen years waging war on alcohol only to see alcohol win, and win big. That's our life. She just wanted to be sent to a hospital so she could kick the drugs and get well. The Time Ray Liotta Eviscerated Bradley Cooper. And on another occasion, they ended up dancing together at a spot called Club Ebony. Then we wont be searching around, pulling out your clothes and everything. As the film notes, an anti-lynching bill was introduced to Congress in the 30s. Its also true, as the end of the film states, that Fletcher always felt guilty for gaining Holidays trust and getting her arrested, which resulted in a year-long jail sentence and the loss of her cabaret card after she got out, preventing her from singing in any jazz club that served alcohol in the country. But Anslinger was going to be given a break on Billie, one he got nowhere else in the jazz world. Well, spot the difference.. Holiday died on July 17, 1959. She stripped and stood there, and then she pissed in front of them, defying them to watch. "And I had so many close conversations with her, about so many things," Fletcher had said in a rare interview. It was the story that Black people needed, that the culture needed at the time. But while The United States vs. Billie Holiday claims to tell a truer version of Holiday's life and circumstances, there have been some liberties taken with the story. Trevante Rhodes, who played Fletcher opposite Andra Days amazing portrayal of Holiday in The United States vs. Billie Holiday, said that in his research for the character, he came across an interview with Fletcher in which his lack of explanation for his relationship with Holiday spoke volumes. You can be a great surfer, but you still need a great wave. He became a sensation as the first and only white man ever to infiltrate a Chinese drug gang, and he even learned to speak in Mandarin so he could chant their oaths with them. When Sawyer approaches Torres about the concerns he has with a deep cover assignment hes taken, Torrres is pulled into the op, which he initially refused to do for the FBI. The real Holiday did record the song in 1939. Her best friend, Maely Dufty, insisted to anyone who would listen that Billie had been effectively murdered by a conspiracy to break her, orchestrated by the narcotics policebut what could she do? Im going to do her up so goddam bad she going to remember as long as she live. He travelled to D.C. to see Harry, and he agreed to set her up. So it's like, if I'm constantly being fed by this person, I'm going to obviously emulate them in some way, he says. 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