The Butler (full title Lee Daniels' The Butler) is a 2013 American historical drama film directed and produced by Lee Daniels and written by Danny Strong. Loosely based on the real life of Eugene Allen, the film stars Forest Whitaker as Cecil Gaines, an African-American who eyewitnesses notable events of the 20th century during his 34-year tenure serving as a White House butler. It was the last film produced by Laura Ziskin, who died in 2011. The film was theatrically released by The Weinstein Company on August 16, 2013, to mostly positive reviews and grossing over $176 million worldwide against a budget of $30 million.
Movie Details:
Directed by: Lee Daniels
Produced by: Pamela Oas Williams, Laura Ziskin, Lee Daniels, Buddy Patrick, Cassian Elwes
Written by: Danny Strong
Based on:"A Butler Well Served by This Election" by Wil Haygood
Starring: Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey
Music by: Rodrigo Leão
Cinematography: Andrew Dunn
Edited by:Joe Klotz
Productioncompany: Laura Ziskin Productions, Windy Hill Pictures, Follow Through Productions, Salamander Pictures, Pam Williams Productions
Distributed by: The Weinstein Company
Release date(s): August 16, 2013
Running time: 132 minutes
Country: United States
Language: English
Budget: $30 million
Box office: $176.6 million
Source: Wikipedia n IMDB
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Plot:
The film begins in 2009, as an elderly Cecil Gaines recounts his life story, while waiting at the White House to meet the newly inaugurated President. Gaines was raised on a cotton plantation in 1926 Macon, Georgia, by his sharecropping parents. One day, the farm's owner, Thomas Westfall, rapes Cecil's mother, Hattie Pearl. Cecil's father confronts Westfall, and is shot dead. Cecil is taken in by Annabeth Westfall, the estate's caretaker, and trains Cecil as a house servant. In his teens, he leaves the plantation and his mother, who has been mute since the incident. One night, Cecil breaks into a hotel pastry shop and is, unexpectedly, hired. He learns advanced skills from the master servant, Maynard, who, after several years, recommends Cecil for a position in a Washington D.C. hotel. While working at the D.C. hotel, Cecil meets and marries Gloria, and the couple have two children: Louis and Charlie. In 1957, Cecil is hired by the White House during Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration. White House maître d' Freddie Fallows shows Cecil around, introducing him to head butler Carter Wilson and co-worker James Holloway. At the White House, Cecil witnesses Eisenhower's reluctance to use troops to enforce school desegregation in the South, then the President's resolve to uphold the law by racially integrating Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas. The Gaines family celebrates Cecil's new occupation with their closest friends and neighbors, Howard and Gina. Louis, the elder son, becomes a first generation university student at Fisk University in Tennessee, although Cecil feels that the South is too volatile; he wanted Louis to enroll at Howard University instead. Louis joins a student program led by Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) activist James Lawson, which leads to a nonviolent sit-in at a segregated diner, where he is arrested. Furious, Cecil confronts Louis for disobeying him. Gloria, suffering from her husband's long working hours, descends into alcoholism and comes close to having an affair with the Gaines's neighbor, Howard. In 1961, after John F. Kennedy's election, Louis and a dozen others are attacked by the Ku Klux Klan while traveling on a bus in Alabama. Louis is shown participating in the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade, where dogs and water cannons were used to stop the marchers, one of the movement's actions which inspired Kennedy to deliver a national address proposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Several months after the speech, Kennedy is assassinated. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, enacts the transformative legislation into law. As a goodwill gesture, Jackie Kennedy gives Cecil one of the former president's neckties before she leaves the White House. Louis is later shown participating in the 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement, which inspired President Johnson to demand that Congress enact the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. In the late 1960s, after civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, Louis visits and tells his family that he has joined the radical organization called the Black Panthers. Upset at his son's actions, Cecil orders Louis and his girlfriend, Carol, to leave his house. Louis is soon arrested and is bailed out by Carter Wilson. Cecil becomes aware of Richard Nixon's plans to suppress the movement. The Gaines' other son, Charlie, confides to Louis that he plans to join the Army in the war in Vietnam. Louis announces that he won't attend Charlie's funeral if he is killed there because while Louis sees Americans as multiple races, Charlie sees the country as one race. A few months later, Charlie is killed and buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Louis does not attend, and his father is furious. However, when the Black Panthers resort to violence in response to racial confrontations, Louis leaves the organization and returns to college, earning his master's degree in political science and eventually running for a seat in Congress while Gaines argues with his neighbor in a White House restroom of what is more important. Meanwhile, Cecil confronts his supervisor at the White House over the unequal pay and career advancement provided the black White House staff. With Ronald Reagan's support he prevails, and his professional reputation grows to the point that he and his wife are invited by President and Nancy Reagan to be guests at a state dinner. Yet at the dinner and afterwards, Cecil becomes increasingly uncomfortable with the class divisions in the White House. Finally, after witnessing Reagan's refusal to support economic sanctions against South Africa, he resigns. Cecil has a flashback of his life and later he and Gloria visit the plantation where he was raised which by then had long been abandoned. Gloria, wanting Cecil to mend his estranged relationship with Louis, reveals to him that Louis has told her that he loves and respects them both. Realizing his son's actions are heroic, Cecil joins Louis at a Free South Africa Movement protest against South African apartheid, and they are arrested and jailed together. The film then advances to Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. The elderly Gloria dies shortly before Obama is elected as the nation's first African-American president, a milestone which leaves Cecil and Louis in awe. The film ends with Cecil preparing to meet the newly inaugurated President at the White House.