April 28, 2006 Laurence Fishburne and director Doug Atchison visit for a spell By Jeffrey M. Anderson, (insidebayarea.com) ACCORDING TO Fishburne, he went in to meet with Coppola and producer Fred Roos. They asked him how old he was. Fishburne stammered and said 16. When Coppola asked him what year he was in high school, Fishburne stammered "freshman," then corrected himself with "sophomore." Just then, Fishburne says, "A secretary came in and put something on the desk, and as she was walking out, Francis said, 'Hey — do you think this kid could be 18?' And whoever this young woman was turned around, looked at me and said, 'Yeah, I guess so.' And walked out." While he doesn't know who the woman was, Fishburne says he probably owes his entire career to her. Coppola, on the other hand, knew all along just how old Fishburne really was, and not only gave him the part in 1979's "Apocalypse Now," but subsequent parts in "Rumble Fish" (1983) and "The Cotton Club" (1984). Fishburne says a certain generation knows him from "Apocalypse," while another generation knows him from "The Matrix." He hopes an even younger generation will get to know him from his latest film, Akeelah and the Bee, which opens today. A hugely enjoyable, winning family film, Akeelah and the Bee tells the story of 11-year-old Akeelah Anderson (Keke Palmer), who — thanks to her late father — has a gift for spelling. She attends a run-down school in the Los Angeles area and lives with her overworked mom (Angela Bassett) and her brothers and sisters. When it becomes clear that she has an opportunity to win the National Bee, she reluctantly accepts and begins studying with Dr. Joshua Larabee (Laurence Fishburne). But even with study, she'll be representing a school no one cares about, going up against upper-class kids who have been working toward winning the contest for years. Although there seems to be a spelling bee trend in film, with the documentary "Spellbound" from 2003 and last year's film "Bee Season," as well as a hit Broadway play ("The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," which also is onstage in an open-ended run in San Francisco), director Doug Atchison began working on his script more than a decade ago. In 2000, Atchison won the Academy's Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship, which gave the film its proper start. On the committee was film editor Glenn Farr, who had won an Oscar for his work on "The Right Stuff," Farr told Atchison he'd like to edit it. "I didn't know who he was," says Atchison. So he faxes me his resume, and a little picture of an Oscar comes out over my fax machine. Five years later, we're making the movie and he's there." The second-time director (his previous feature film was "The Pornographer" from 1999) gave his veteran editor plenty to do. "I shot an enormous amount of footage," he says. "When I was with the kids and with the crowds, I saved time by letting the camera run. Because with the kids, you'd yell 'cut' and they'd disappear. And they'd come back and their hair would be messed up. So I had a camera on a crane and a camera on tracks and a video camera, and I would direct the audience: 'Stand up, cheer!'; 'Now I'm Akeelah!' We had all this footage, and just putting the national bee together, just getting it in an order that makes sense took him about a month." Atchison describes Akeelah and the Bee as a sports movie, which needed as much careful crafting as "Hoosiers" or "Raging Bull." And so by showing the studio, Lionsgate Films, his footage, he secured more time to finish the film the way he wanted, which included cutting the final championship sequence down from 45 to 19 minutes. Another part of Atchison's job was finding Fishburne to play the part of Larabee. The two men talked on and off about the part a great deal, exchanging ideas, when finally Fishburne called him. "I said, 'I think you have something for me.' And he said, 'What?' And I said, 'Larabee. Can I have him now?'" Fishburne says. "Because he wrote it, and because he'd been living with this man running around in his head and in his spirit since 1994, and it's very difficult sometimes for writers to let go of their characters." Atchison replies, "I had the same conversation with Keke. I said, these characters are like my children, and I'm going to give them to you, and they won't belong to me anymore. And then you're going to give them to the audience and they won't belong to you anymore." Of course, giving the character to Fishburne resulted in new facets that even the director couldn't have imagined. He reveals that Fishburne embodied about 80 percent of how he had imagined Larabee on paper, but now the character — a fairly buttoned-up, stoic type — was subtly more animated. Fishburne impressed his director in more ways than one. At one point during the complicated championship sequence, he asked Atchison to turn on the camera and keep it running. "I'm going to give you some stuff, but you won't get it yet," Fishburne says. "You'll get it later. And sure enough, that happened." Atchison adds, "Glenn saw that, and it was three or four minutes of Laurence just doing reactions. And he goes, 'This shot you sent me of Laurence is like a master acting workshop!' For four minutes he just gives you all this stuff!" The filmmakers were able to select various shots from this reel and use them at different points for different reaction shots. Fishburne says he knew what he was doing from the start. "You can't get it until you can really watch it. You can't see it with the naked eye, what the camera can pick up." Now that the movie is finished, Fishburne and Atchison look forward to hearing more feedback, especially at this week's Tribeca Film Festival showing. "My daughter's going to come to Tribeca in New York," Fishburne says. "She's 14, and the peer pressure thing is happening and the boy thing is happening. And she doesn't know that I've dedicated the performance to her. It's good to hear that 14-year-old girls respond to this, but she's special'cause she's mine. There's an innate part of her that needs to be like, 'f— you dad.' She's that age. So even if she doesn't get it until later... she'll get it when she gets it."	Back to Press Archived Article 1 Archived Article 2 Read Archived Article 3