Mississippi Burning is a 1988 American crime thriller film directed by Alan Parker and written by Chris Gerolmo that is loosely based on the 1964 investigation into the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in Neshoba County, Mississippi. It stars Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe as two FBI agents investigating the disappearance of three civil rights activists in fictional Jessup County, Mississippi, who are met with hostility by the town's residents, local police, and the Ku Klux Klan.
Gerolmo began writing the script in 1986 after researching the 1964 murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. He and producer Frederick Zollo presented it to Orion Pictures, and the studio hired Parker to direct. The writer and director had disputes over the script, and Orion allowed Parker to make uncredited rewrites. The film was shot in locations in Mississippi and Alabama, with principal photography from March to May 1988.
On release, Mississippi Burning was criticized by activists involved in the civil rights movement and the families of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner for its fictionalization of events. Critical reaction was generally positive, with praise for the cinematography and the performances of Hackman, Dafoe, and Frances McDormand. The film grossed $34.6 million in North America against a production budget of $15 million. It received seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and won for Best Cinematography.
Plot
In 1964, three civil rights workers – two Jewish and one black – went missing while they were in fictional Jessup County, Mississippi (the actual events took place in Neshoba County), organizing a voter registry for African Americans. The FBI sends Alan Ward and Rupert Anderson to investigate. Ward is a Northerner, senior in rank but much younger than Anderson, and approaches the investigation by the book. In contrast, Anderson, a former sheriff in Mississippi, is more nuanced in his approach. The pair experiences difficulty conducting interviews with the local townspeople, as Sheriff Ray Stuckey and his deputies influence the public and are linked to a branch of the Ku Klux Klan. The FBI discovers the trio's torched car in a swamp.
With the help of the son of a local pastor, the FBI is finally able to bring forward a witness who saw Klansmen firebomb a house, and three white men are arrested and tried for felony arson. A local judge, however, gives the men a token suspended sentence while deriding the FBI as "outside agitators" who provoked the men to violence. He then releases the men, who promptly hang the witness's father and attempt to kill the witness. The FBI evacuates the family to the north and realizes they will receive absolutely no help at all from the local authorities.
Meanwhile, Anderson has developed a close relationship with the wife of Deputy Sheriff Clinton Pell, who, in a tearful confirmation, reveals to Anderson that the three missing men have been murdered by her husband and his Klansmen collaborators, who then buried the bodies in an earthen dam. After the bodies are discovered, revealing to the nation that the disappearance of the civil rights workers was murder, Pell brutally beats his wife in retribution for her betrayal.
Ward and Anderson's different approaches eventually erupts into a physical fight, which concludes when Ward pulls his gun on Anderson and admits that his methods have been ineffective; Ward gives Anderson carte blanche to deal with the problem in his way. Anderson devises a strategy to indict the Klan members for civil rights violations instead of murder, because civil rights violations are federal crimes for which conviction is more certain than state-level charges of murder. The FBI arranges the kidnapping of Mayor Tilman, taking him to a remote shack, where he is left with a black man who threatens to castrate him unless he speaks out. Tilman gives him a complete description of the killings, including the names of those implicated, such as Frank Bailey and business executive Clayton Townley. The abductor is revealed to be an FBI operative, Monk, who has been assigned to intimidate Tilman. Although the information is inadmissible in court because it was obtained through coercion, it proves essential to the investigators.
Anderson and Ward concoct a plan to lure the identified Klan members to a bogus meeting. The men soon understand that they have been set up, and they leave the fake meeting without discussing the murders. The FBI focuses on Lester Cowens, a nervous Klansman, who the agents believe might yield a confession. The Feds pick him up and interrogate him. Anderson thrashes Pell at the local barbershop in retaliation for Pell's attacking his wife, Anderson takes off presently. Later, Cowens is at home when a shotgun blast shatters his windows. After seeing a burning cross on his lawn, he attempts to escape in his truck only to be caught by several hooded men intent on hanging him. The FBI team arrives to rescue him, having staged the entire scene, and the hooded men are revealed to be other FBI agents.
Cowens, in need of protection and believing that his redneck brothers have threatened his life for his admissions to the FBI, finally incriminates his accomplices. The Klansmen are charged with civil rights violations. Most of the perpetrators are convicted and sentenced to 3–10 years in prison, while Sheriff Stuckey is acquitted. The FBI later finds Mayor Tilman has hanged himself. When Agent Bird wonders why, Ward says Tilman was guilty by association for witnessing the events. Mrs. Pell returns to find her home completely ransacked by vandals. She resolves to stay and rebuild her life, free of her husband. Before they depart town, Anderson and Ward visit an integrated congregation, gathered at an African American cemetery, where the black civil rights activist's desecrated gravestone reads, "Not Forgotten."
Cast
Historical context
On June 21, 1964, civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were arrested in Philadelphia, Mississippi, by Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price, and taken to a Neshoba County jail. The three men worked on the "Freedom Summer" campaign, attempting to organize a voter registry for African Americans. Price charged Chaney with speeding and held the other two men for questioning. He released the three men on bail seven hours later and followed them out of town. After Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner failed to return to Meridian, Mississippi, on time, workers for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) placed calls to the Neshoba County jail, asking if the police had any information on their whereabouts. Two days later, FBI agent John Proctor and ten other agents began their investigation in Neshoba County. They received a tip about a burning CORE station wagon seen in the woods off Highway 21, about 20 miles northeast of Philadelphia. The investigation was given the code name "MIBURN" (short for "Mississippi Burning"), and top FBI inspectors were sent to help with the case.
On August 4, 1964, the bodies of the three men were found after an informant nicknamed "Mr. X" in FBI reports passed along a tip to federal authorities. They were discovered underneath an earthen dam on a 253-acre farm located a few miles outside Philadelphia, Mississippi. All three men had been shot. Nineteen suspects were the subject of a federal indictment for violating the workers' civil rights. On October 27, 1967, a federal trial conducted in Meridian resulted in only seven of the defendants, including Price, being convicted with sentences ranging from three to ten years. Nine were acquitted, and the jury deadlocked on three others.
Production
Development In 1985, screenwriter Chris Gerolmo discovered an article that excerpted a chapter from the book Inside Hoover's F.B.I., which chronicled the FBI's investigation into the murders of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner. While writing a draft script, Gerolmo brought it to producer Frederick Zollo, who worked with him on Miles from Home (1988). Zollo helped Gerolmo develop the original draft before they sold it to Orion Pictures.
The studio then began its search for a director. Filmmakers Miloš Forman and John Schlesinger were among those considered. In September 1987, Alan Parker was given a copy of Gerolmo's script by Orion's executive vice president and co-founder Mike Medavoy. When Parker traveled to Tokyo, Japan, to act as a juror for the 1987 Tokyo International Film Festival, his colleague Robert F. Colesberry began researching the time period, and compiled books, newspaper articles, live news footage and photographs related to the 1964 murders. Upon returning to the United States, Parker met with Colesberry in New York and spent several months viewing the research. The director also began selecting the creative team; the production reunited Parker with many of his past collaborators, including Colesberry, casting directors Howard Feuer and Juliet Taylor, director of photography Peter Biziou, editor Gerry Hambling, costume designer Aude Bronson-Howard, production designer Geoffrey Kirkland, camera operator Michael Roberts, and music composer Trevor Jones.
Writing Gerolmo described his original draft script as "a big, passionate, violent detective story set against the greatest sea-change in American life in the 20th century, the civil rights movement". For legal reasons, the names of the people and certain details related to the FBI's investigation were changed. On presenting Clinton Pell's wife as an informant, Gerolmo said, "... the fact that no one knew who Mr. X, the informant, was, left that as a dramatic possibility for me, in my Hollywood movie version of the story. That's why Mr. X became the wife of one of the conspirators." The abductor of Mayor Tilman was originally written as a Mafia hitman who forces a confession by putting a pistol in Tilman's mouth. Gerolmo was inspired by Gregory Scarpa, a mob enforcer allegedly recruited by the FBI during their search for Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner.
After Parker was hired to direct the film, Gerolmo had completed two drafts. Parker met with Gerolmo at Orion's offices in Century City, Los Angeles, where they began work on a third draft script. Both the writer and director, however, had repeated disagreements over the focus of the story. To resolve the issue, Orion executives in New York gave Parker one month to make uncredited rewrites before green-lighting the project.
Parker made several changes from Gerolmo's original draft. He omitted the Mafia hitman and created the character Agent Monk, a black FBI specialist who kidnaps Tilman. The scene in which Frank Bailey brutally beats a news cameraman was based on an actual event; Parker and Colesberry were inspired by a news outtake found during their research, in which a CBS News cameraman was assaulted by a suspect in the 1964 murder case. Parker also wrote a sex scene involving Rupert Anderson and Mrs. Pell. The scene was omitted during filming after Gene Hackman, who portrays Anderson, suggested to Parker that the relationship between the two characters be more discreet. By January 4, 1988, Parker had written a complete shooting script, which he submitted to Orion executives. Gerolmo did not visit the production during principal photography, due to the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike.
Casting