In reality, the family had a well-documented history of mental illness, and Licata himself was known to be severely mentally ill before the attack. He was supporting the adoption of a five-year mandatory minimum prison sentence for first-time offender drug dealers. The Time Ray Liotta Eviscerated Bradley Cooper. But if you cut that off, obviously yes, he says. Yeah. Her label, Columbia, wouldn't allow it, but let her record with the Commodore label, pairing the record with the ballad "Fine and Mellow." She was previously an editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com. But while The United States vs. Billie Holiday claims to tell a truer version of Holiday's life and circumstances, there have been some liberties taken with the story. Billie insisted the junk had been planted in her room by White, and she immediately offered to go into a clinic to be monitored: she would experience no withdrawal symptoms, she said, and that would prove she was clean and being framed. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. But even if the film did embellish some aspects of their relationship, the screenwriter Suzan-Lori Parks notes that it served an important purpose to the storyline. There was a distinct question that the interviewer had about their love, and it was just his response that really gifted me a unique answer, he says. Most federal agents are nice people. It was crazy. Immediately after, Billie Holiday received her first threat from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Whenever I see that movie, theres a fire in me that continues to just burn. Drugs were banned in the United States in a moment of deep, racist determination and hysteria, he says. At the moment, Rhodes is best known for his starring role in Best Picture winner, I read a few books, the 31-year-old actor said. WebOn June 25, 1975, the evening before the murders, Agents Ron Williams and Jack Coler were on the reservation attempting to locate and arrest Jimmy Eagle. In fact, after Fletcher assisted in getting Holiday arrested and sent to jail for a year, she didn't really see him much after her release, whereas in the film it's after her release where their involvement gets heavy. The fanfare and the accolades were incredible, but Rhodes insists his biggest takeaway from Moonlight was the experience of making a film. A major player in the film, and in Holidays life, was a federal agent named Jimmy Fletcher (played by Trevante Rhodes). Black Americans love this country, often at our peril.". I was walking and it just hit me, bro, he explains. Holiday would continue singing the song for the Cafe Society crowd, and they ate it up. Erica Gonzales is the Senior Culture Editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage on TV, movies, music, books, and more. The extensive on and off relationship between Fletcher and Holiday as is shown in the movie is pretty much speculation. A decade later, as she lay in the hospital dying of cirrhosis of the liver, her hospital room was raided. They said she was unlikely to survive for longbut Harry wasnt done with her yet. He was a Black agent assigned by the egregiously racist head of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry Anslinger (played by One is white, two is red, three is blue, four is yellow, for example. Anslinger took a break from Holiday's case but later returned with a different narcotics agent, Colonel George White. Holiday after being arrested for heroin possession in 1947. Well, spot the difference.. No matter what they did to her, she sang her song. That's Barry, and Lee is more abrasive, more visceral. I had very high hopes that she would be able to come out of it alive, another friend, Alice Vrbsky, told the BBC, until all this happened. Meanwhile, even after successfully prosecuting her the first time, the authorities weren't done with Holiday. He might be the star, but some days, he was also the lighting guy. Anslinger appearing before a congressional subcommittee in 1955. When she reunited with her mother, Sadie Gough, in Harlem, where Gough was doing sex work, Billie was forced into prostitution. ", Trevante Rhodes and the Philosophy of Art, Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads. Its a lot to contend with, and Rhodes found a way to connect. He reassured congressmen that his crackdown would affect not the good musicians, but the jazz type. But when Harry came for them, the jazz world would have one weapon that saved them: its absolute solidarity. Not every color is as it seems. Not long after, he ran into her in a bar and they talked for hours, with her pet Chihuahua, Moochy, by her side. We talked to Chasing the Scream author Johann Hari about the role jazz legend Billie Holiday played in the early days of the drug war. Fletchers mother wasnt alone in her assessmenthistorians also believe that the fight against Holiday was to stop her from fanning the flames of the growing movement. It just is what it is., Billie Holidays life story reemerging in 2021 feels almost willed to be. Billie had got used to turning up at gigs so badly beaten by her husband, manager and sometimes pimp, Louis McKay, they had to tape up her ribs before pushing her onstage. Holiday received her first threat from the bureau in 1939, after performing "Strange Fruit" on the stage in New York. You dont have to do that. Holiday's song, "Strange Fruit," is a central point of the film. In other instances, you might taste noise. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. That said, Fletcher was also being taken advantage of by his white superiors, who were never going to see him as an equal, especially in the 1940s and 50s.. All that policewoman is going to do is look up my pussy.. He was certain that the war on drugs was a stepping stone for, not an attack on, the Black community. Here's where The United States vs. Billie Holiday takes a little gamble with historical accuracy. It tells the story through three central characters: Billie Holiday, Jimmy Fletcher, who was one of the first Black federal agents, and Harry Anslinger, the When Jimmy was sent to raid her, he knocked at the door pretending he had a telegram to deliver. In the film, now streaming on Hulu, singer Andra Day dons the dresses and the vocal vibrato of the late singer. Harry hated to hire black agents, but if he sent white guys into Harlem and Baltimore, they stood out straight away. How Lady Day was in the middle of a Federal Bureau of Narcotics fight for survival. Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. His job was to bust his own people, but Anslinger was insistent that no black man in his Bureau could ever become a white mans boss. As Hari tells NPR, "Jimmy Fletcher's brief was follow Billie Holiday everywhere she goes; befriend her; document her drug use, and get it ready for an indictment. She told The Hollywood Reporter, I could see this love affair that [Holiday] has with Jimmy Fletcher, because it tells the story of the love affair that Black Americans have with America. According to Biography, White busted Holiday at San Francisco's Mark Twain Hotel, even though she claimed to have been clean for a year. Really, really small like that., While theres some gray area when it comes to what we really know about Fletcher, something that was created for the film was Rhodes family background, which contrasts that of Holidays. She should have lived to be at least eighty years old., The Federal Bureau of Narcotics saw it differently. The day after the Academy Awards, you likely saw Rhodes on your timeline, wearing nothing but a pair of Calvin Klein briefs. Holiday has died. This was one of the few places she could still perform, and she badly needed the money. I think in this story, we were able to empathize with him because we understood he was just someone who was just caught up.. Still, he stayed true to his job. That night, White came to Billies show at the Caf Society Uptown, and he requested his favorite songs. While Hari asserts that Fletcher fell in love with her, there isn't much documented about any kind of romantic or sexual relationship between the two of them, at least not to the extent that is shown in the film. His soul was, I don't know what. Rhodes takes a moment to remind me of the final scene of the film: Fletcher bent over against a black door that will not open. Nothing works as fast as you would like. Nonetheless, she had slipped from the peak of her fame, Harry Anslinger wrote. The man Anslinger sent to track and bust Billie Holiday had, it seems, fallen in love with her, Hari wrote in his Politico story. But then I found out that was not the true story of Billie Holiday. However, it was originally written by poet, teacher, and activist Abel Meeropol, from New York. That is indeed a heroic story and everyone in that position should be really proud of themselves, but one of the things I really learned from this is, that is not the only heroic story about addiction. But did it really happen that way in real life? 1975 to 'Moscato's Dump' by FBI agents in Newark and Jersey City, New Jersey." You are what you eat. Talk is cheap at the end of the day, Rhodes says plainly. The art that you see now, Rhodes says. That's just what Lee does in the most beautiful way with his works, Rhodes says of Daniels. It is improvised, relaxed, free-form. Blackburn writes that lynching "was at its most virulent between 1900 and 1920." . She checked herself in at a cost of one thousand dollars, and according to Ken Vails book Lady Days Diary, she didnt so much as shiver. She told people she would rather die than go back to prison, but she was terrified that she would burn in hell just as her mother had said she would all those years before, when she was a little girl lying on the brothel floor, listening to Louis Armstrongs music and letting it carry her out of Baltimore. And he at least to me seemed like someone really trying to find themselves in the world and doing that through this job where people were taking advantage of him.. I'm a country dude, man, he says, refusing to acknowledge that hes built like a brick shithouse, to take a phrase we use in the South. Justin Kirkland is a Brooklyn-based writer who covers culture, food, and the South. WebA day for an FBI special agent might entail surveilling a subject in the morning, tracking terrorists online social activity before lunch, testifying in court in the afternoon, and addressing a public forum on identity theft in the evening. Inspired to create the film without the influence of alcohol or drugs, The United States vs. Billie Holiday is Daniels first sober film. He wasnt allowed inside her room, but Holiday was reportedly happy to learn that he'd tried to see her. So as a popular protest song, "Strange Fruit" helped galvanize an anti-lynching movement across the country. But he remembered Moonlight and its colors. Chinese-Americans, racists warned, were luring white women into their opium dens for sex. Theyve got a dirty job to do and they have to do it. After Holidays 1956 autobiography Lady Sings the Blues was published, Hari writes that Holiday sent Fletcher a signed copy with the following note inside: Most federal agents are nice people. So it's like, if I'm constantly being fed by this person, I'm going to obviously emulate them in some way, he says. He will be talking about his book at lunchtime at Politics and Prose in Washington DC on the 29th of January, at lunchtime at the 92nd Street Y in New York City on the 30th January, and in the evening at Red Emma's in Baltimore on the 4th February. When she refused, he sent agent Jimmy Fletcher to frame the singer. "And I had so many close conversations with her, about so many things," Fletcher had said in a rare interview. Strange Fruit was a musical lament against lynching. Holiday died on July 17, 1959. They always saw something. Now, after three years, he returns to play Jimmy Fletcher, a Black federal agent tasked by his white superiors with implanting himself in Holidays life to bring her Harry believed he could. In the book, Hari tells stories of the casualties of the drug war, from its 20th century origins to profiles of contemporary dealers and users. Worst of all, it is a mongrel music made up of European, Caribbean and African echoes, all mating on American shores. "Billie Holiday's styling fulfilled the bitterness and the shocking quality I had hoped the song would have," Meeropol said, according to The Guardian. Stick it under the door! she yelled. She's based (and born and raised) in Brooklyn, New York. Years later, when her autobiography was published, Billie tracked Jimmy Fletcher down and sent him a signed copy. He would carry large amounts of drugs with him, and he was allowed to deal drugs himself so he could gain the confidence of the people he was secretly plotting to arrest. With the subject matter of the film being so heavy, Rhodes describes the experience of making, The thing that I get from watching the film aside from the emotions and just being there is her courage, and her resilience, and the story about this person who they were trying to bring down because she was doing the right thing for her people, Rhodes says. Holiday arriving at a court hearing in 1947. His reasoning was simple, he told me in 2013: addicts, he said, are human beings, just like you and me. Punishment makes them sicker; compassion can make them well. Then we wont be searching around, pulling out your clothes and everything. Anslinger, who once faced calls for his resignation after using the n-word in an internal memo, was not a fan of jazz music. It was the official reason why some police in the South increased the caliber of their guns. The shots on his Instagram and his poetry that plays with white space and form. . While she lay dying, a by-then retired Fletcher attempted to visit Holiday in the hospital. Billie didnt blame Anslingers agents as individuals; she blamed the drug war itselfbecause it forced the police to treat ill people like criminals. Declassified FBI files quote an agent inside the narcotics bureau (possibly Anslinger) as saying that 'because of the importance of Holiday, it has been the policy of his bureau to discredit individuals of this caliber using narcotics. ", Screenwriter Suzan-Lori Parks said that when she was approached for the film, she could see the story "right away." White had been a journalist in San Francisco in the 1930s until he applied to join the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. (It even smells like the South.) That is also what partly drew him in. When Billie was busted again, she was put on trial. .css-umdwtv{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:.0625rem;text-decoration-color:#FF3A30;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:inherit;-webkit-transition:background 0.4s;transition:background 0.4s;background:linear-gradient(#ffffff, #ffffff 50%, #d5dbe3 50%, #d5dbe3);-webkit-background-size:100% 200%;background-size:100% 200%;}.css-umdwtv:hover{color:#000000;text-decoration-color:border-link-body-hover;-webkit-background-position:100% 100%;background-position:100% 100%;}Fans online theorized about his disappearance, speculating that he wasnt committed enough for the industry. That's the artists' job, man. And it seems like their dalliance didn't just exist on-screen. You can be a great surfer, but you still need a great wave. It was the story that Black people needed, that the culture needed at the time. One of his victims was a young actress who happened to live in his building, while another was a pretty blond waitress in a bar. He was a Black man assigned with taking down a Black woman who was actually, vocally, standing up for her community, particularly with her anti-lynching song Strange Fruit." . For Rhodes to play part in it does as well. They had orders to forbid any visitors from coming in without a written permit, and her friends were told there was no way to see her. Her voice was cracking.. In 1959, she collapsed and was hospitalized. Gabrielle Bruney is a writer and editor for Esquire, where she focuses on politics and culture. This was the old Department of Prohibition, but prohibition had been abolished and his men needed a new role, fast. But how much of the film is true? Set partly in the South, Lee shot the film in Montreal, though Rhodes says its a great replacement. Maybe they would have been kinder to me if theyd been nasty; then I wouldnt have trusted them enough to believe what they told me. She was right: Jimmy told the writer Linda Kuehl that he never stopped feeling guilty for what hed done to Lady Day. You see that everyday. Before our conversation begins, Rhodes turns his camera out to show me the snow outside the sliding door of his moms house in Austin. To be able to do that, it's just such a uniqueit's energy. The two discussed a few different options for Rhodes in the early parts of 2019, but it was later in the year that Daniels landed squarely on the Holiday biopic. We dont know whether Jimmy joined in, but we do know he had no pity for addicts: I never knew a victim, he said. Them: its absolute solidarity had said in a rare interview into their dens! Of Art, your Privacy Choices: Opt out of Sale/Targeted Ads drug dealers received her first from... 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