“I was dubious”: The movie Gene Hackman called an “extremely intense experience”
While some actors, like Jared Leto or Sean Penn, can inadvertently become figures of fun for broadcasting how seriously they take their craft, nobody would ever say that about Gene Hackman. Despite being just as dedicated and committed, Hackman always maintained a level of humility and professionalism that set him apart.
He didn’t quite embrace method to the same extent as many of his contemporaries, but he nonetheless ensured he was meticulously prepared for every part that he played, and those efforts were up there on the screen for everyone to see after he set about curating one of the most accomplished careers in cinema history.
With two Academy Awards, two Baftas, and four Golden Globes to his name alongside a string of knockout performances in an array of classic films spanning decades, Hackman is unquestionably one of the silver screen’s all-time greats. Despite his status, he did feel an air of trepidation on occasion, with 1988’s crime thriller Mississippi Burning being one of those moments.
Loosely based on a real murder investigation that followed in the wake of three civil rights activists being abducted and killed in 1964, Hackman and Willem Dafoe play a pair of FBI agents investigating a very similar incident in the fictional Jessup County area, where they’re forced to contend with the opposition being presented by the locals, the authorities, and the local branch of the Ku Klux Klan.
While the creative team defended its right to fictionalise events that really happened, there was backlash over the subject matter regardless, with Martin Luther King Jr’s widow, Coretta Scott King, calling for a boycott of the film, while the families of the victims were equally scathing in their criticism.
For his part, Hackman admitted to Film Comment that he had concerns, but his doubts were assuaged by the material. “I suppose I see myself as a serious artist, and it felt right to do something of historical import. It was an extremely intense experience, both the content of the film and the making of it in Mississippi,” he said.
Adding: “I was dubious about shooting it there, but Alan thought it would be a cop-out not to, and he kept an edge on the project that was very valuable. As it turned out, we didn’t have much trouble, but there is, of course, still sensitivity.”
The actor did concede that he “had some initial reservations” over the project that left him “fearing an exploitation of the incident,” but he was won over by how Mississippi Burning – from his perspective, at least – was “really the story of how two guys from totally different backgrounds work out their relationship in the process of solving a problem, in this instance a violation of civil rights and murder.”
In the end, Hackman snagged a ‘Best Actor’ nomination at the Oscars for his efforts, to go along with several additional nods including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’, with the intense experience yielding one of the year’s best movies.
