![]() ![]() Despite skipping classes and neglecting homework, she has an incredible ability to spell words. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.Akeelah Anderson (Keke Palmer) has an unusual gift. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. This entry was posted on Friday, April 7th, 2006 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Cadenza. ‘Akeelah and the Bee ’ that is my passion movie.” The subject matter was what it was to get the movie sold. I sold it to cable and everyone made their money back. Doug explained, “That (‘The Pornographer’) was about proving I could make a commercially successful movie. Not bad for a guy who funded his first movie “The Pornographer” on credit cards and borrowed money. We just need to find a way to get them in the theater.” He’s getting a release on 2000 screens when it opens April 28. ![]() ![]() She needs to know the importance of language – and competition.”ĭoug is thrilled about his movie, happy that Lion’s Gate let him direct when others just wanted the script, but nervous about how people will see the previews of the movie. “He looks at Akeelah as a potential leader. Larabee has Akeelah read before teaching her any memorization so he can teach her that words have power. They learn how to break words down,” Doug explained. But the best spellers learn what they mean. This is an issue that “Spellbound,” an otherwise fantastic documentary about the spelling bee, doesn’t address. Joshua Larabee, played by Laurence Fishburne, and he teaches her not only how to spell, but why words are important. In the film, Akeelah gets coaching from Dr. We got a lot of kids who had never acted before. “We saw plenty of precocious kids, but they were too old in how they acted. “Keke would say that it took me so long to get the movie made, because I had to wait for her to be eleven,” Doug said, “We were on this collision course.” He cast many kids who were not actors in the roles because he wanted an authenticity. But she rises above fear and her negative self-image.”Īkeelah is played by rising star Keke Palmer, who lives in the role and embodies the strengths and frustrations of a girl who the community starts to count on once she starts winning. “Akeelah has low expectations for herself. “Do you know what some of the children say about kids who do well in school? They say they are ‘acting white.’ Now what is it about being successful and intelligent that has anything to do with being white?” He wanted to show the fear that causes these children, who already have hurdles, to start doubting themselves. Akeelah, in the film, is called names whenever she gets the answers right in class and Doug says this drew from experiences he had. But working in this center I got a much better sense for how these kids talk,” the director commented. “I went to USC film school which is in south Los Angeles, and I knew people from this neighborhood. to get the kids’ attitudes right in his movie. The thing people keep saying about it is that it’s sincere.” Doug, who was born in Detroit and grew up in Arizona, worked in a youth center in L.A. But every year came around and I watched these kids and there was no movie.”Īt this point, two movies have beaten him to the finish line, but Doug doesn’t seem too worried about that. “I just thought someone else would do it first. However he didn’t start on the actual script until four years later. I knew there was a movie here,” Doug explained. I look up and I’ve been watching it for three and a half hours. You just get sucked in by these kids and you start rooting for them. “I was channel surfing and I came upon these kids spelling. Doug got the idea while flipping channels in 1994, the year ESPN first aired the Scripps National Spelling Bee. She ends up getting pushed into the spelling bee circuit by a principal who wants a little notoriety for a terribly under-funded school. “Akeelah and the Bee,” Doug’s second movie, follows the story of a young girl in South Los Angeles who has a natural talent for spelling but is afraid to assert herself intellectually in front of ridiculing classmates. When I came into the meeting after the first screening I had ten times more notes than they had.” “We didn’t have a lot of money but creatively, they were great. “I’ve been spoiled,” says Doug about his experience with Lion’s Gate, which is the last independently owned major production company. ![]() His movie “Akeelah and the Bee” is getting the same treatment from its production company, Lion’s Gate, that it gave to “Crash” last year. He walks over to where I am sitting ready to go again, still excited to be answering the same questions he must have heard a thousand times today. Doug Atchison has just finished a radio interview in the corner. ![]()
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