about Haley's honesty (or lack thereof) when writing Roots.
I enjoyed the original series. Hopefully this one is just as good.
I hope the original author gets the money this time, not that plagiarist Haley.
This is one of those miniseries that I hope will be good and normally would look forward to seeing, but I just know they are going to completely ruin it with a bunch of P.C. / Black Lives Matter BS. So I’ll watch about 10 minutes of it and then probably shut it off.
Could be good. I’ve been reading the Benjamin January Series. Hard to read but interesting. Also, see Spirited Away a Japanese anime from Studio Ghibli. The names of the two main characters are taken away by the evil witch and regaining it breaks the spell. I had forgotten the issue of remembering the name.
Not only fiction but posterized in large part from another author. Haley got sued and had to pay big bucks in fines.
I swear there is not a spark of creativity in TV anymore.
Haley called it “faction”. But it was sold as non fiction. Anyone with any sense would know most of it was made up.
Supposedly he found his original tribe and they told him the story of the warrior Kunta Kinta. Later it came out that the villagers were told before hand that he was coming and they made up the story.
I expect to see a Kanye West musical number by the 3rd episode.
Play it backwards etc. etc.
Roots remake? What the heck was wrong with the original one?
Because Hollywood is incapable of coming up with new material.
Hopefully they show other Africans capturing them before selling them to the white slavers rather than just butchering them as they would have before.
My ancestors were pathetic slaves.
On a good day, you could trade six of us to the Mongols for a three-legged cat with one ear and half a tail.
I wish they would remake Weekend At Bernies II.
The first one too for that matter.
Obama will love it and start Reparations Immediately.
Oh good grief, judging by the trailer, it ought to get the black hatred towards whites stirred up with the BLM crowd. Roots, what a joke, especially when almost 80% don’t even make an attempt to create an intact family. The only thing Roots did was set off some kind of competition for the most bizarre and outlandish baby names imaginable.
From Wikipedia:
Courlander wrote seven novels, his most famous being The African, published in 1967. The novel was the story of a slave's capture in Africa, his experiences aboard a slave ship, and his struggle to retain his native culture in a hostile new world. In 1978, Courlander filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, charging that Alex Haley, the author of Roots, had copied 81 passages from his novel.[3] Courlander's pre-trial memorandum in the copyright infringement lawsuit claimed: "Defendant Haley had access to and substantially copied from The African. Without The African, Roots would have been a very different and less successful novel, and indeed it is doubtful that Mr. Haley could have written Roots without The African.... Mr. Haley copied language, thoughts, attitudes, incidents, situations, plot and character."[4]
In his Expert Witness Report submitted to federal court, Professor of English Michael Wood of Columbia University stated: "The evidence of copying from The African in both the novel and the television dramatization of Roots is clear and irrefutable. The copying is significant and extensive. ... Roots... plainly uses The African as a model: as something to be copied at some times, and at other times to be modified, but always it seems, to be consulted. ... Roots takes from The African phrases, situations, ideas, aspects of style and plot. Roots finds in The African essential elements for its depiction of such things as a slave's thoughts of escape, the psychology of an old slave, the habits of mind of the hero, and the whole sense of life on an infamous slave ship. Such things are the life of a novel; and when they appear in Roots, they are the life of someone else's novel."[5]
After a five-week trial in federal district court, Courlander and Haley settled the case with a financial settlement and a statement that "Alex Haley acknowledges and regrets that various materials from The African by Harold Courlander found their way into his book, Roots."[6]
During the trial, presiding U.S. District Court Judge Robert J. Ward stated, "Copying there is, period."[7]
During the trial, Alex Haley had maintained that he had not read The African before writing Roots. Shortly after the trial, however, a minority studies teacher at Skidmore College, Joseph Bruchac, came forward and swore in an affidavit that he had discussed The African with Haley in 1970 or 1971 and had given his own personal copy of The African to Haley, events that took place a good number of years prior to the publication of Roots.[8]
The original Roots cast included a pantheon of old and budding stars:
Ben Vereen, Louis Gossett, Jr., LeVar Burton, Chuck Conners, John Amos, Vic Morrow, Lorne Greene, Scatman Crothers, George Hamilton, Lloyd Bridges,Doug McClure, O.J. Simpson (ha!), Burl Ives, and James Earl Jones.
The remake fails in cast comparison.