Doing double duty in ‘Great Debaters’

Denzel Washington says
the mix of storylines gives the film broad appeal.

By BETSY PICKLE

KNOXVILLE NEWS SENTINEL

In most respects, Denzel Washington is a power player. The two-time Academy Award winner is one of the best-paid actors in Hollywood. His films — including “American Gangster,” “Inside Man” and “Training Day” — often combine box-office success with critical acclaim.

But on Christmas Day, Washington may feel like David going up against Goliath as his latest feature, “The Great Debaters,” competes with the big guns of the holiday movie season. Does a film about a Depression-era debate team from a tiny black college in Texas have a chance against sci-fi epics, popcorn comedies and Oscar bait?

Well, maybe if moviegoers buy into Washington’s notion that his film is “a sports movie.”

Debating “was a big spectator sport in its time,” says Washington, who directed the film in addition to starring in it.

“The Great Debaters” was inspired by the exploits of the debate team from Wiley College in Marshall, Texas. Led by poet and activist Melvin B. Tolson, the team had a phenomenal record during the 1920s and ’30s and even defeated the (white) national champions. The movie focuses on debaters Henry (Nate Parker), Samantha (Jurnee Smollett) and James (Denzel Whitaker) and weaves in parallel stories of Tolson (Washington) and Dr. James Farmer Sr. (Forest Whitaker).

Washington, recruited by Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films to direct, worked hard to avoid making “The Great Debaters” a dusty history lesson.

“I rewrote the entire opening because I wanted to make you have to sit up,” he says. “I didn’t want ... a laid-back story about academics right off the bat.”

For dramatic effect, the movie compresses several years of Wiley College history into one and mixes historical figures with fictional ones. Washington says that’s just part of the magic of movies.

“When two kids walk down the street, there’s no 87-piece orchestra playing behind them,” he says. “They [the team] didn’t win in two hours and six minutes. It is manipulation. And it is inspired by true events. USC were the national champions; they [Wiley] beat the national champions. Harvard is considered the gold standard, so that’s why we used the name Harvard. Harvard didn’t complain ’cause they beat Harvard, too.

“In certain situations, like for example the film ‘Hurricane,’ people were killed, and the family of the people who were killed, that’s a very sensitive issue. Whether it was USC or Harvard, I don’t think that’s quite the same thing. The bottom line was, in 1935, Wiley College wasn’t even allowed into the debating society. Records weren’t kept because blacks weren’t allowed in the debate society. That’s a fact.”

Debating obviously is a big part of the film.

“But I think the movie is about so much more than that,” says Washington, who turns 53 on Friday. “Debates, in a sense, are like they are now. [They’re] about the issues of the day.”

For Henry, Samantha and James, that meant the Jim Crow laws that denied African Americans access to the same educational and social rights as whites. Yet the debaters don’t spend all their time contemplating injustice. James struggles to prove himself to his father and to Samantha, on whom he has a crush. Meanwhile, Samantha gets close to Henry, who is wary of relationships.

The mix of storylines gives the film broad appeal, Washington says in a phone interview.

“We had a screening the other night, and a young kid stood up,” he recalls. “Everybody was asking questions about the history ..., and he was like, ‘For me, I just liked that kid Denzel [Whitaker] up there. I never get the girl. ... I’m just happy to see somebody up there that reminds me of me.’

“It was the best thing because that, to me, is what it’s about as well — this young 14-, 15-year-old becoming a man. Most teenage boys can relate to not getting the girl. ... The way that Nate Parker’s character, Henry Lowe, deals with his demons is through the bottle. So those themes are universal.”