André Holland is the best reason to watch “The Big Cigar,” a messy, realistic miniseries premiering Friday on Apple TV+ that is mostly, but only partly, about the relationship of Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton, played by Holland and Hollywood producer Bert Schneider (Alessandro Nivola).
It is based on a 2012 Playboy magazine article by Joshuah Bearman, whose previous reporting was the basis for Ben Affleck's “Argo,” in which the CIA stages a fake film to smuggle embassy workers out of Iran. . “The Big Cigar” also – although nominally – involves a fake film, created as a cover to get Newton, fleeing the authorities, out of the country to Cuba. Hollywood loves the opportunity to replicate a hit, and “Cigar” was originally, and quickly, optioned as a movie, with a script by Jim Hecht (co-creator of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty”). As sometimes happens with undisclosed films these days, it emerged a dozen years later as a miniseries, with Hecht still attached, Janine Sherman Barrois (“The Napa Kings”) as showrunner and Don Cheadle directing its first two episodes.
The series begins with a double disclaimer. A title card announces that “some aspects and timelines have been fictionalized for dramatization purposes,” adding that no resemblance of the fictional parts to anything non-fictional is intended. And as the episode proper begins, Newton, as narrator, declares: “The story I am about to tell you is true. At least it's mostly true. At least as I remember it. But it comes through the lens of Hollywood, so let's see how much of my story they're really willing to show.” Of course, someone in Hollywood wrote that line and the rest.
But when they tell you that not everything you're about to see is true, all becomes unreliable. Barring prior knowledge, you're forced to guess what's fact and what's fiction, constantly Google, or, the most productive option from the viewer's point of view, not care. Some scenes recreate documented events, such as when Newton, welcomed by a large crowd after three years of imprisonment for involuntary manslaughter, jumps on the hood of a car to give a speech and tears off his shirt; or when he and his Panther rival Eldridge Cleaver (Brenton Allen) have a contentious phone call on a morning television show.
The series recreates the iconic photo of Huey P. Newton holding a rifle and spear.
(Apple TV+)
Without a doubt, the script is full of historical events and people. But I'm 99.99% sure that Canter's Deli was never the scene of a shootout between Panthers and mobsters. And I'm even more sure that Newton wasn't accompanied to a party in Hollywood by the ghost of Panthers treasurer Bobby Hutton, shot by police at age 17, who was excited to thank Marlon Brando “for what he said.” at my event.” (It is not specified that the actor delivered the eulogy for him).
The “present day” of the film is 1974, although it frequently returns to earlier times to illustrate a point or provide backstory: the creation of the Black Panthers by Newton and Bobby Seale (Jordane Christie), their achievements and ideological fracture, legal misadventures and abandonment of violent rhetoric as a useful tool. “I don't want to be that guy in the wicker chair anymore,” he says, referring to the famous photograph in which he appears sitting with a rifle and a spear.
“According to the philosopher Foucault, when an image becomes iconic, it is impossible to see the subject as anything else,” says narrator Newton, who feels trapped by “the celebrity, the surveillance, and the prison of my own mind.”
Schneider, whose father, Abe Schneider (John Doman), ran Columbia Pictures, was Hollywood's counterculture: alternative, independent and, most importantly, successful. With Bob Rafelson (not seen or mentioned here), he produced “The Monkees,” “Easy Rider” (here we have a caricature of Dennis Hopper, played by Chris Brochu), and “Five Easy Pieces.” With the addition of his childhood friend Steve Blauner (PJ Byrne), the three formed BBS Productions, which made “The Last Picture Show,” “The King of Marvin Gardens” and Peter Davis's Oscar-winning Vietnam documentary, “Hearts and Minds,” whose completion is at stake here. In a time of movements, he was a supporter of the movements and, seeing a shirtless Newton on the news, he is delighted.
“Bert was tired of cultural revolutionaries,” Newton says, “and when he saw me, he saw cinéma vérité.”
Schneider, who confesses, “I always measure my actions against my convictions and fall short,” woos Newton, offering the Panthers money, support and the megaphone of Hollywood. Newton is suspicious, but they find common ground, and when Panther finally goes on the run, claiming he's being framed for the attempted murder of a teenage sex worker, it's Schneider's door that he knocks on.
In “The Big Cigar,” PJ Byrne plays Steve Blauner, left, and Alessandro Nivola is Bert Schneider, both Hollywood producers.
(Apple TV+)
“You're the star producer,” says Newton, who hopes to leave the country. “Do you want to produce something? Produce this.”
And so, after some spitting and blue skies, they decide to pretend to make a movie to cover their escape. Bearman's article may explain how this worked, or how it was supposed to work (I hesitated to spend $99 on a Playboy “membership” to read it and decided the money could be better used elsewhere), but we get little more than words. In any case, Newton's escape has nothing to do with any film, whether fake or not. I'm sorry to disappoint you, if that's what you came for.
Despite a premise that suggests it might be, “The Big Cigar” is neither a comedy nor a satire. The only overtly comic character is an increasingly frustrated undercover FBI agent, Sydney (Marc Menchaca), dressed in hippie clothes, a temperamental cross between Inspector Javert of “Les Miserables” and Chief Inspector Dreyfus of the “The Miserables” films. Pink Panther”. Although the series treats Blauner as a restless idiot in the early episodes (almost the moment we meet him, we hear about his hemorrhoids), he is later allowed to be a man of action.
The series is not stupid; In any case, he has too many things on his mind. But in trying to tell so many stories about so many people, and with its incessant progression through time, it loses focus and strength. It's a tonal hodgepodge: a historical exposé, a bromance, a love story (Tiffany Boone makes a strong impression as Newton's girlfriend, Gwen Fontaine), a caper movie with retro split-screen effects and narrow escapes. It is intellectual, philosophical, sentimental and even trivial. (“I want to transform society, Dad,” Newton tells his father, played by Glynn Turman. “I imagine a world beyond conflict and violence.” His dad reminds him that pride is a mortal sin.)
But Holland shifts gears smoothly through these twists and turns. For all of Newton's intermittent volatility and drug-enhanced paranoia (although, as the saying goes, it's not paranoia if they're really out to get you), he makes him someone you want to learn more about, the best a guy can have. actor playing a real person can do. (And there is no lack of resources, if he so wishes).
Underscoring its initial warnings, “The Big Cigar” protects itself again when Newton finally observes: “You can tell a story in a thousand ways” and reflects on facts, legends and films in which actors speak dialogue written by screenwriters adapting books. So make of this what you will.
