Seale Has Own Plans Cooking

Bobby Seale is one ex-Panther who hasn’t seen Van Peebles’ film, nor does he intend to.

A native Texan who wrote a cookbook in 1988, Seale currently sells barbecue at several locations in Philadelphia, where he lives with his second wife, Leslie, and their three children. Speaking by phone from his home, the 58-year-old former radical says, “Melvin Van Peebles contacted me early in 1993 asking me to be a consultant on a film about the ‘60s called ‘Blowin’ in the Wind.’ He told me it was to be a fictional story of a Black Panther- type character who teams up with a white radical SDS character, and together they create havoc in the ‘60s protest movement.

“I told him I was already negotiating my rights in regards to the Panthers, and that his better be a fictional Panther character because he couldn’t use my name,” says Seale, one of the legendary Chicago 7 arrested for disrupting the 1968 Democratic Convention. (Seale spent 21 months in jail as a result of the charges brought against him.) “He said, ‘No, this has nothing to do with you or any Panther project you have in the works.’ But I got a whiff of what was really going on in September of 1993, when I heard he and his son were in Oakland working on a film on the Panthers.

“I haven’t seen the film because if I had, it could be construed as a breach of contract in relation to the Warner Bros. production--I don’t want to see the damn thing anyhow, because it’s a bootleg fiction that has nothing to do with the real events,” continues Seale, who also works as a community liaison in the recruitment of minorities for the Ph.D. program in African American Studies at Temple University, and is currently developing a community program that will employ teen-agers to renovate abandoned houses and cars.

“Van Peebles uses my name, likeness and character, and puts words in my mouth I never said,” adds Seale. He says he never gave legal clearance and is considering his legal options, including whether to seek injunctive relief, and says he’s encouraging Eldridge Cleaver to do the same.

Melvin Van Peebles responds that “part of what Bobby says is true and part of it is false,” while Mario Van Peebles says, “Bobby’s version of events that transpired in the last two years aren’t entirely accurate.”

Gramercy Pictures, however, has a lot more to say in response to Seale’s allegations. “The story of the genesis of the Black Panther Party transcends the involvement of any one party member, and it continues to be of relevance today, as it bears on the racial conflicts that continue to plague our society,” says a company spokesman. “In order to tell this story, the film fictionalizes certain characters--such as Judge, who narrates the events--but the depiction of the three leading members of the Black Panther Party portrayed in the film--Huey Newton, Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver--is substantially grounded in important historical fact.

“In light of this, and the protections which the First Amendment to the United States Constitution give to motion pictures such as ‘Panther’--which is intended to stimulate thought, as well as to entertain--we cannot imagine anyone less entitled to claim exclusive rights to this story than Bobby Seale, since the political movement which he helped create changed and continues to have a profound impact on American society.”