SUBMITTED BY Timbo
November 3, 2003 — A stellar cast, exceptional source material (adapted from a book by Phillip Roth) and an initially aggressive distribution strategy were not enough to jumpstart "The Human Stain" in the minds of movie-goers and critics alike, according to the New York Times. A weak $1.1 million opening didn't help matters either.
The main criticism of the film, heard often among Toronto festivalgoers and critics and reprised in its opening-weekend reviews, has been that Mr. Hopkins and Ms. Kidman were miscast. Mr. Benton hired the Welsh Mr. Hopkins to play the erudite "Jewish" classics professor Coleman Silk, who in the story is actually a light-skinned African-American passing as white at a New England college in the late 1990's. And the regally beautiful Nicole Kidman got the role of a young campus janitor who has an affair with the much older Silk after he loses his job over an accusation that he used a racial slur in class.
One of the film's producers, Tom Rosenberg, of Lakeshore Entertainment, said the trick was to translate a complex novel into film terms while deploying a cast that could draw moviegoers. Would audiences accept any white actor as an African-American? Or was a British-bred actor somehow harder to accept in the role? Mr. Rosenberg insists that in research screenings, few moviegoers questioned the casting.
"When I read the book, Anthony Hopkins was who I thought of from the beginning," Mr. Rosenberg said in October. "I needed an actor who was very accomplished and who meant something in the film marketplace. I have a friend in Chicago who could be Anthony's fair-skinned cousin, whose parents were both African-American. I knew casting Anthony was grounded in reality."
To some Hollywood executives, "The Human Stain" reveals how dicey it is to market a socially conscious drama about race. For every "Color Purple" or "To Kill a Mockingbird"that has succeeded with audiences, there is a "Finding Forrester" or "Beloved" that has not. ("Beloved," based on the Toni Morrison novel, also had a rich literary pedigree.) "Movies about race that have succeeded have been largely inspirational," one studio marketing executive said Monday, speaking on the condition of anonymity. This executive found the Philip Roth title "off-putting."
"It's something that you find on sheets," the executive said.
In an interview on Monday, Mr. Benton, the director, said that "pictures like this are incredibly difficult to make and complex to market in a world that demands happy endings."
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