Let’s hope the eulogizing doesn’t last the whole day…
From the moment he was arrested in 1966, Carter maintained his innocence. His arrest and conviction, he insisted, were all evidence of systemic racism.
“Hurricane” soon attracted celebrity devotees, some of whom happened to be blessed with a handy talent for propaganda:
Bob Dylan penned a hard-driving hit song about the imprisoned boxer. Norman Jewison later directed a well-received 1999 Oscar-bait biopic, The Hurricane, starring Denzel Washington.
Because Jewison is Canadian, that film turns a familiar Hollywood convention upside down:
In most American movies — from those set during the Normandy invasion to 2011′s Argo — Canadians’ contributions to real life events are downplayed; The Hurricane, on the other hand, exaggerates them to an embarrassing degree.
However, the role played by a teenaged Canadian, his hippie parents and their fellow commune dwellers in Carter’s eventual release was just one aspect of the story that the movie deliberately got wrong, in order to portray “Hurricane” in the most sympathetic possible light.
