Giving Credit Where It’s Due in ‘Amistad’

In his review of “Amistad,” Times film critic Kenneth Turan suggested that while the screenplay is credited to me, Steven Zaillian rewrote parts of it and that in the closing speeches of John Quincy Adams, “Zaillian’s welcome touch is felt” (“Spielberg’s Passage,” Calendar, Dec. 10).

I would like to take advantage of this space to clarify the process a bit and to give credit where credit is really due. I very much want to acknowledge my real co-creator of “Amistad,” and although without exception every individual involved excelled--Steve Spielberg’s clear passion guiding us all--without producer Debbie Allen, I could never have written this script.

When I wrote the mutiny on board Amistad, it was Debbie who led me to the vision of a violence so brutal and genuine that the act embodied with a single roar the timeless black American rage. When Debbie and I deliberated the middle passage scene, she reached down into the freezing Atlantic and from the muck and centuries resurrected for me the thousands and thousands of African souls who had perhaps until this film been lying unheralded and even unknown in anonymous graves.

Then it came time to write John Quincy Adams’ speech before the U.S. Supreme Court--Adams, a man who to this day is essentially reviled in American history.

At age 7, he, with his father John Adams, watched the birth of America. Educated in Paris, London and at Harvard, he was fluent in six languages including Latin and Greek. As president, he promoted recognition of the new South American republics, scientific exploration (later creating the Smithsonian Institution and sponsored unpopular ideals that got him reviled), limiting American expansion, honoring Native American rights and abolishing slavery. The gag rule in the House of Representatives was designed almost specifically to silence Adams’ long anti-slavery speeches.

His yearning to continue his father’s invention of America, and to make the philosophy of the Rights of Man (Rousseau’s “man was born free, but he is everywhere in chains”) alive on Earth, led to his political destruction. Like George Washington, he was terrified to see the rapid unraveling of the American Revolution. By winning the Amistad case before the Supreme Court, Adams helped set America on a course to emancipation from which black Americans would birth the civil rights movement and start on the long road to “man is born free and everywhere he is breaking his chains.” I wanted to give Adams his due.

I needed a speech for our Supreme Court scene that would embody every bit of my passion for Adams and I determined to hit the major points of his actual speech, yet make it accessible, something Gore Vidal suggested we might be unlikely to do. I needed to discuss the case on at least two legal levels, touch on the philosophies of Hobbes and Locke (Adams vs. the Keen Mind of the South) and get in his swipes at Van Buren. Debbie explained how the Mende summon their ancestors in times of danger, and I knew I had my key.

Before the highest court in the land, I have Adams follow Cinque’s example and call down the ancestors of the American Revolution.

Last week Debbie and I proudly accepted the Anti-Defamation League award for “Amistad.” As proudly, on Dec. 4, we screened the film for the president of the United States, to an overwhelming emotional outpouring from that audience. Here and in Washington the moment everyone talked about--including Bill Clinton--was John Quincy Adams calling down our “ancestors.”

I am proud to be the author of Steven Spielberg’s “Amistad” and to celebrate the commitment of cast and crew to retell this magnificent story for all Americans.