![]() The appeal of the 229-page book, which is now widely available and taught in some Southern high schools, was obvious. I said, ‘This is the movie I want to make.’” It’s a firsthand account, just like ‘The Diary of Anne Frank,’ but 100 years earlier. “But as soon as I put it in my hands, I couldn’t put it down. “It was very difficult to get the book,” McQueen said. However, it went out of print for decades and was little-known until an academic from Louisiana, Sue Eakin, brought attention to it in the 1960s. Though hardly as influential as the bestselling “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” the memoir helped shape the anti-slavery debate. The source of such a tale proved elusive, though, until McQueen became acquainted with Solomon Northup’s memoir, which was published just months after abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” “The notion of someone who had his freedom taken away was always more compelling to him,” Gardner said. McQueen was interested in following a character’s journey from freedom into slavery rather than telling a more conventional liberation tale. Gardner replied to McQueen: “We don’t know. “He said, ‘Why have there been 57 movies about the Holocaust, but there’s hardly been a movie about this?’” Pitt recalled. McQueen was about to make his sexual addiction drama “Shame,” also starring Fassbender, but was eager to follow that with a film about slavery. Pitt and his partners Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner asked the filmmaker, then not even 40, what he wanted to do next. INTERACTIVE: From Toronto to the Oscars? Well. “We banged on his door, and we banged on his door again,” Pitt said. Pitt’s production company, Plan B, became eager to work with McQueen after the 2008 release of “Hunger,” a grim account of the 1980s hunger strike by IRA prisoner Bobby Sands (played by Fassbender). “We’re artists - our nationalities don’t matter,” added McQueen, who is of Grenadian descent. “It’s international, really, as was slavery,” said Ejiofor, whose parents are Nigerian. John Ridley, an African American screenwriter, adapted Northup’s book, and Brad Pitt’s production company was instrumental in bringing the project to life. Though “12 Years a Slave” may seem like a quintessentially American story, McQueen and Ejiofor say the international pedigree of the cast and production (Fassbender is Irish-born, and Nyong’o was born in Mexico and raised in Kenya) is unremarkable. And last month, James McBride published “The Good Lord Bird,” an acclaimed novel about the abolitionist John Brown. Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” cast Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz last year as a freed slave and a bounty hunter exacting vengeance throughout the South. “12 Years a Slave” arrives as a new wave of filmmakers and authors is wrestling with and reexamining that painful chapter in U.S. But even obtaining those instruments, as the opening minutes of the film make clear, was nearly impossible. ![]() Soon, he was shipped by boat to New Orleans, given a new name - Platt - sold for $1,000 and enslaved by a series of owners, culminating with Epps.Īll that separated Solomon from freedom was pen and paper: If he were able to write and send a letter to the North, his hopeful thinking went, his family would quickly send for him, and he would be released. Instead, he was drugged, and when he awoke, held prisoner. “And the juxtaposition of what happens there.”Įjiofor’s gripping performance is rooted in the reality of Northup’s nightmarish tale, originally told in his 1853 memoir.īorn in Minerva, N.Y., he was an educated musician and married father of two young children when he met a pair of promoters who said they intended to advance his violin playing in Washington, D.C. In memory of Edwin Cole Epps, please visit our floral store.“It is about beauty - those plantations are beautiful,” said McQueen, whose first two features, “Hunger” and “Shame,” were stark, haunting looks at difficult, dark subjects. “Jesus replied, “I promise that today you will be with me in paradise.”” (Luke 23:43 CEV) In lieu of flowers, donations in memory of Cole may be made to Harmony Baptist Church. ![]() and his paternal grandparents, Cole Blease and Nannie Rose Epps.Ī memorial service will be held in Cole’s honor at 1:00 pm Saturday, August 22nd, 2020 at Harmony Baptist Church. and Bo Godfrey his brother, Billy Epps of Rock Hill his sisters Audrey Epps (Ricky Hammond) of Fort Mill his niece, Amber Epps and his nephew, Matthew Hammond.Ĭole was proceeded in death by his father, William K. Cole loved to play golf, fish, and spending quality time with family.Ĭole is survived by his daughter, Hailee Epps his mother and stepfather, Jeanette E. Rock Hill - Edwin “Cole” Epps passed away at home unexpectedly on August 16th, 2020 at the age of 49.Ĭole was of the Baptist faith and he worked as a carpenter.
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