| Subject: will smith in "roots 25th anniversary special" 18th jan 8pm NBC |
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Tim
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Date Posted: 23:25:29 01/17/02 Thu
The slot machines, card tables and betting halls were virtually deserted throughout Las Vegas. Ann Margret's sold out stage show at the Hilton had to be rescheduled. Only a handful of the ticket holders showed up for the performance. Other acts around town found themselves rearranging show times, or canceling altogether. Movie theaters were empty. Teams of tumbleweed could have stampeded through once crowded restaurants and not hit a single diner. It was "weird," said those who were there, those who remember-even eerie. Las Vegas, the city that never sleeps, had shut down.
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The slot machines, card tables and betting halls were virtually deserted throughout Las Vegas. Ann Margret's sold out stage show at the Hilton had to be rescheduled. Only a handful of the ticket holders showed up for the performance. Other acts around town found themselves rearranging show times, or canceling altogether. Movie theaters were empty. Teams of tumbleweed could have stampeded through once crowded restaurants and not hit a single diner. It was "weird," said those who were there, those who remember-even eerie. Las Vegas, the city that never sleeps, had shut down.
It's around 9 p.m. on a chilly winter Monday, January 23, 1977, an otherwise typical evening. Yet, the throngs of thousands who flew, drove or bused to Nevada's desert play land had succumbed to their hotel rooms-to watch TV. Much of the country had followed suit. "Roots" was on and America was watching.
"Roots: The Saga of and American Family," was the theatrical adaptation of author Alex Haley's best-selling mutigenerational saga. A sweeping twelve-hour, six-million dollar epic mini-series, it chronicled his ancestors' journeys from a West African village in Gambia in 1750 to the torment of the Middle Passage through more than a century enslaved in the American South to the years following the Emancipation Proclamation.
A cultural phenomenon
"It was a great story -- something America had never seen before," said executive producer David Wolper who optioned Haley's literary work for elevision. "Usually when you talk about slavery, you never saw the people in their homes with their mother and father and grandmother and grandfather. It didn't make any difference what color they were, there were just such strong family ties and it was a good story, a true story."
The success of "Roots'" was unprecedented. Its initial airing, over eight consecutive nights, drew in over 130 million viewers-a considerable feat, seeing as over half of the population was gathered around their television sets to watch a single dramatic presentation.
"Roots" established the long form mini-series as a permanent fixture in television and rocketed ABC to No. 1 for the first time ever-and the network subsequently programmed its sequel and a spin-off Christmas movie. It remains the third highest-rated telecast in U.S. history.
"We're talking about a cultural phenomenon," says film historian Donald Bogle, author of "Primetime Blues: African Americans on Primetime Television." "It's interesting because some want to say that 'Roots' succeeded because the weather was so bad that people didn't leave the house so they watched it, and mainly those people who are saying this were White. But they could have watched something else.
"Afterwards," Bogle continues, "people Black and White, were looking into their family histories, people in offices were talking about it around the water coolers, taxi drivers were talking about it. It was really something the whole country got caught up in. It's one of the last shows, I think, that all of America watched together. and I don't know if it'll happen again.
To commemorate the silver anniversary of this monumental television event, NBC will air the documentary, "Roots: Celebrating 25 Years," airing Friday, January 18th at 8 p.m. In the hour-long special, filmmakers Judith Leonard and Kelly Newton examine the importance of the mini-series, its impact on society, as well as its television legacy.
"About a year ago, I suggested to Kelly that we look into this," says Leonard, executive producer. "Some of the legendary filmmakers who were originally involved, and the stars themselves, were not going to be around forever. I thought about how wonderful it would be to get first hand testimony of what the making [of the mini-series] was all about."
"Roots: Celebrating 25 Years," is an expansive look at award-winning series. It won 9 Emmy Awards and received 37 Emmy nominations, which is still the most of any single program in the history of television. The documentary features footage from the original tele-film, including nearly 70 interviews with commentary from cast members and noted celebrities such as actor-rapper Will Smith, filmmaker Bill Duke, screenwriter Tina Andrews and CNN talk show host Larry King.
"The reason we wanted to tell this story as a documentary," says Leonard "was because it's a human story. The subheading on the book was, 'the saga of an American family. This is an American story. This is not an immigrant group, but the only group of people brought to this country against their will. There's a universality of the emotions involved and stories of individuals speak to everybody.
"Our message through this documentary is how widespread the impact of 'Roots' has been, regardless of age or of race," Leonard continues. "It's not just a story about how the people involved with the mini-series were changed, it was the country that changed forever."
"I was in Vegas at the Aladdin Hotel rehearsing for a musical at the time," remembers actress Leslie Uggums, who played the impenetrable slave-girl Kizzy in the series, "and you couldn't get room service when 'Roots' was on. Nobody wanted to do anything until after they'd seen 'Roots.' It was just phenomenal what this television show did."
LeVar's big break
Especially for the career of a then unknown drama graduate from USC named LeVar Burton, whose portrayal of the captured African prince Kunta Kinte has become as legendary as the series itself.
"Roots was my first big break," says Burton, 44, who has since become an icon of the "Star Trek" franchise, a director and producer, "in fact it was my first professional audition. Personally, you must understand that it was totally overwhelming for a 19-year-old kid to be suddenly thrust into the heat and light of public attention. It changed my life irrevocably."
Burton continues: "There was a time early in my career, immediately after 'Roots' where the weight of Kunta was really big and the challenge, as I perceived it at the time, was to grow out of the shadow of this huge character that's become larger than life. He is a cultural icon. Now, I recognize that there is a lot of Kunta in me, the warrior spirit. So I'm at peace with Kunta," says Burton, who hosts the documentary.
"We need to be reminded of our holocaust over and over again," notes filmmaker Bill Duke, Chairman of the School of Communications at Howard University. "We need to be reminded of the significance and the sacrifices that people who came before us made. Roots is still as significant today as it was then. We have become so narcissistic, it's like cultural amnesia, and that's why we repeat a lot of the stuff that has gone on in the past. We have no understanding that it is imperative for us to carry our history with us."
"Roots" was daring in so many ways. It was a massive historical piece with mature content and first-rate performances from a plethora of talented African American actors and actresses, among them, Burton, Uggums, Ben Vereen, John Amos, Maya Angelou, Cicely Tyson, Olivia Cole, Georg Stanford Brown, Moses Gunn, Scatman Crothers, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Richard Roundtree and Lynne Moody.
Many of the performers spent years previously playing meager roles in television and film. Many expected "Roots" to change their fate in Hollywood. Yet, sadly, the program had no lasting effects on television programming for African Americans.
"We thought we would be doing all kinds of stuff after 'Roots'-but nothing. We weren't even being asked to audition," says Uggums, who was recently nominated for a Tony Award for her performance in August Wilson's "King Headly" "It took me two years before I was able to do another project, which was stunning. It said to me that the networks just don't get it. I'd always hear, 'Oh that was a phenomenon. That's not how it always is. People don't want to see that many black people on television.'"
That's exactly what ABC executives initially thought about "Roots."
As early as 1974, Wolper had approached ABC about doing the mini-series even before Haley completed his book. But the network, subscribing to the conventional wisdom of the industry at that time, believed historical dramas would put viewers to sleep and portrayals of non-whites would not appeal to audiences.
"The United States at that time was majority white," says Wolper, "doing a show where the villains were all white and the heroes were all black didn't sound like a very good idea at the time."
But later that year, 42 million people tuned in to CBS to watch Cicely Tyson's in the documentary epic, "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman," based on the novel by Ernest Gaines -- and Wolper got the green light to begin production on his miniseries.
Still, executives feared that "Roots" would be a ratings disaster. In fact one of the reasons it was scheduled on consecutive nights was that if it were to fail miserably, it would be over quickly. And according to Bogle, network president Fred Silverman decided to run the program in January, rather than during the ever-important February sweeps period because, he admitted, "I did not have enough faith in it."
It appears now that history has repeated itself.
ABC passes on project
In May, when Leonard began shopping her documentary, her first stop was a call to ABC, thinking it was the logical home for the project as it was the network that bore the "Roots" franchise. But ABC's senior vice president of alternative series and specials Andrea Wong passed on the project, saying that viewers wouldn't tune in to watch the special, and those that would tune in would skew older than the network's coveted 18-45 demographic.
"I was absolutely speechless, because it never crossed our minds that ABC would turn it down," Leonard said, adding that major corporate sponsorship for the special had already been acquired. "There was no risk to the network."
During the recent Television Critics Press Tour conference in Pasadena, Lloyd Braun, Chairman of the ABC Television Group, defended the network's position, saying: "When that show was pitched to us, we didn't feel creatively what we heard was very strong," he says noting that the network will air a three-part series on "Good Morning America" during the week of January 21st, although Braun had no details on what kind of tribute it would be. Still, ABC has no plans of airing a "Roots" special in primetime, where it would be likely to draw more viewers.
But when asked why ABC didn't think ahead in planning and producing a primetime special in-house, rather than relying on outside production companies to supply the pitch, Susan Lyne, ABC Entertainment's just-appointed president, chimed in to take the blame. "I probably should have thought of that," says Lyne, former head of special events and movies. "The problem, particularly when you are at a network that is fighting [for ratings], you sometimes don't have the luxury to sit back and say, 'My God, the anniversary of 'Roots' is coming up. We should really be devoting primetime programming time to celebrating this.' If anybody should have suggested that to the network, fought for it, it's probably me, and I didn't think to do it."
Such lack of foresight easily explains why ABC is the fourth ranked network.
NBC Entertainment President Jeff Zucker believes the documentary has the potential to draw sizable viewers because of the high-profile celebrities and historical significance of the series. "When we were approached about the documentary, it immediately struck us as both an exciting program and an important program," says Zucker who is airing the special opposite an ABC rerun of "America's Funniest Home Videos." "There's a whole generation of Americans who remember the program, and a whole generation who doesn't and will be fascinated to learn about it."
"It's legacy," adds Wolper, "is that television can influence a generation of people in some way, and I'm proud of that. "It was a very important show, not just to African Americans, it was a very important show to this country."
The Hallmark Channel will re-air the mini-series, January 20-25, 9 p.m.-11 p.m. ET, with an encore marathon, January 26, 12 p.m.-12 a.m. ET).
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