Making Of ‘Amistad’ Debbie Allen Teams Up With Steven Spielberg To Bring To Film A True Story Of African Slaves

There were quite a few moments during the making of “Amistad” when actor Djimon Honsou felt like crying.

There were the days spent in heavy iron shackles, nights spent thinking about the true story of the 53 slaves who rebelled on board the slave ship La Amistad in 1839, killing all but two of their captors in the name of freedom.

It was especially difficult to keep his composure while filming the harrowing scenes where the slaves were stripped naked, beaten and, many times, brutally murdered while being transported from Africa to the United States, a country deeply divided over the issue of slavery.

“I tried not to cry,” Honsou says quietly. “But you would see others crying, and then the tears would come. That this was a true story, the story of my people, made it all the more difficult.”

For director Steven Spielberg, “Amistad” isn’t simply a story about Africans or Americans. It’s a story about all peoples, a story that still reverberates powerfully today. It’s also an extraordinary piece of history that nobody seems to know about, much like Spielberg’s last factual effort, “Schindler’s List.”

“I felt robbed and cheated that I had never been taught about this in school,” says producer Debbie Allen, who initiated the project 13 years ago after coming across two volumes of essays about the Amistad incident.

Allen realized the importance of the story after learning the details about how the slaves were captured by an American naval ship, imprisoned in New Haven, Conn., for their mutiny and then put on trial in a case that had great political implications for a nation about to explode in civil war.

The fate of the captives eventually was decided by the Supreme Court of the United States, with former President John Quincy Adams arguing for the Africans’ freedom.

Clearly, Allen thought, the story had all the elements necessary for a great movie - conflict, resonance, heroism. And best of all, it was true. So why did it take 13 years to put it in theaters? Allen doesn’t pretend to have the answer to that one. She shopped the project to studios for years, all the while continuing to research and develop the story. Nobody, though, wanted to make the film.

It was after seeing “Schindler’s List” that Allen came to think of Spielberg. She thought the Oscar-winning film gave her a peek into the director’s soul and that if she could just meet with him, she could persuade Spielberg to make her movie.

After talking to DreamWorks SKG executives Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald, Allen got her wish. She was given 25 minutes to win over Spielberg. An hour and a half later, Allen says, they had to drag Spielberg away from the meeting.

“She had me after 10 minutes, really,” Spielberg says. “She impressed upon me the importance of the African culture. And this film industry does not make movies about African subjects, and Debbie was passionate, ‘Why can’t Hollywood change?”’

Changing the way Hollywood does business was the ostensible reason Spielberg began DreamWorks with David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg, so it was only appropriate that “Amistad” would be his first directing project for the company.

Assembling a first-rate cast proved easy, no surprise given that it’s a Spielberg film. Matthew McConaughey came aboard as the attorney who initially argues the captives’ case, and Anthony Hopkins was cast as Adams. Morgan Freeman plays an African-American abolitionist, a fictional composite of several historic figures.

But “Amistad” almost didn’t sail because Spielberg couldn’t find the right actor to play Cinque, the 25-year-old rice farmer from the Mende tribe who led the rebellion.

It wasn’t as if he wanted for choices. Will Smith and Cuba Gooding Jr. lobbied for the role, and unknowns and nonactors - including pop singer Seal - tried to win the part. The producers held open-call auditions in London, Paris and Sierre Leone in West Africa, and Allen even had people comb expatriate Mende tribesman communities here in the States, looking for someone who might know someone who could portray Cinque.

Nine weeks before filming was to begin, the role still hadn’t been filled and Allen was becoming a little antsy. Spielberg was working on a tight schedule and was committed to segueing directly from “Amistad” to his next film, an epic war movie, “Saving Private Ryan.”

“If I didn’t find the right Cinque, I was going to wait a year or two,” Spielberg says. “We were very fortunate to come across Djimon Honsou. We were looking for a miracle, and then we found one.”

Honsou, 33, a shy West African whose only previous acting experience came in bit parts and music videos, was an unlikely source for a miracle. He had auditioned during one of the casting cattle calls, figuring, if nothing else, he could land a small role. When he heard that Spielberg wanted to meet with him, Honsou says he had to wake himself from what seemed like a daydream.

“I talked with him, and Steven told me how excited he was to meet me, and he asked me if I could speak another language because Cinque speaks Mendi,” Honsou, 33, says. “Deep inside I wanted to say, ‘Yes, I will speak any language you want.’ But I told him the truth. I said, ‘Anything is possible. I will give it a try.’ Later when I heard of the other actors who wanted the part, I thought, ‘They really should double-check before they start the movie with me.”’

No need. Even though Honsou had no real acting experience, Spielberg and Allen knew they had found their man.

“He was Cinque,” Spielberg says. “He was courageous, he was sympathetic, he was angry, he had dignity … so many things combined. Djimon has an inner peace and an outer strength that made him perfect for the role.”

Much of that can be attributed to Honsou going through some hard times of his own. A native of Benin, West Africa, Honsou was sent to France at age 13 to live with his brother and continue his education. A year shy of graduating, Honsou, then 20, dropped out of school, packed his gym bag with a few clothing items and headed for Paris. There he couldn’t find a job because he didn’t have the proper immigration papers, so he slept on park benches and scoured trash cans for food. He was too shy to ask for help.

Nothing close, though, to what the slaves on board La Amistad experienced.

“I would not be honoring their legacy to think that anything that I went through in Paris could begin to compare with what they suffered,” Honsou says. “I would be limiting myself as an actor if I used my own experiences. It’s like Einstein once said: Imagination is better than knowledge.”

Honsou realizes his film debut will be hard, if not impossible, to top. But he says he’ll be quite content if Amistad is his acting legacy.

“As a black man, I see this film’s importance, but as a human being, I see its importance as well,” Honsou says. “When stories like this come out, maybe America will stop hiding and feeling guilty about its past. We can learn from it and become better from it.”