George Lucas's Next Project to Focus on Tuskegee Airmen

BuzzSugar — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 06:30:52 PDT

The black airmen trained at the Tuskegee Army Air Field during WWII were the first to prove that black men could pilot aircrafts in the U.S. military, and now these Tuskegee Airmen - some of whom are still alive today - will be the focus of George Lucas's next film, Red Tails.

The surviving airmen say they're glad to have Lucas tell their stories - about both the war they fought against Adolf Hitler and the racial wars waging here in the U.S. Here's some backstory:

At first called the "Tuskegee Experiment," the first aviation cadet class began with 13 students at the Tuskegee Army Air Field, about 40 miles east of Montgomery, in July 1941. Black people weren't allowed to fly in the military at the time and the "experiment" was to see whether they could pilot airplanes and handle heavy machinery. Over the next four years, the airmen went on more than 15,000 combat trips throughout Europe, the Mediterranean and North Africa.

And yet, despite the respect they earned, the men returned to an America in which "German prisoners of war [were] being treated better and afforded rights that were withheld from black American citizens."

For more about Red Tails,

The Tuskegee Airmen have been the subjects of several film and TV projects, most notably in a 1995 HBO movie starring Laurence Fishburne, which one ranger at the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site says was "about 50 percent Hollywood, but it gave a good overview and got the word out. People all over the world saw it and it whetted their appetite to want to know more."

And Lucas is one of those hungry people. He wants the story in Red Tails to be drawn from the airmen's personal accounts and has begun collecting oral histories from some of them at his Skywalker Ranch. Personally, I can't wait to see what comes out of this.

Source and source

Tom Has Katie and a Career's Worth of Costars Showing Support as He Picks Up Humanitarian Honor

Allie Merriam — Fri, 06 May 2011 06:55:38 PDT

Katie Holmes and Connor Cruise were by Tom Cruise's side last night as the actor picked up an award from the Wiesenthal Center at the Four Seasons Hotel in LA. Tom earned the Jewish human rights organization's humanitarian honor, and the distinction was earned due to his longtime support of their Museum of Tolerance in addition to work bringing Nazi atrocities to light. He was especially able to reveal WWII abuses in the film Valkyrie, playing a German soldier who attempted to assassinate Hitler. Tom had friends and business partners from movie projects of the past, present, and future on hand to wish him well. His old Jerry Maguire buddy, Cuba Gooding, Jr., turned out, along with his Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol friends like Jeremy Renner, who's actually taking over the MI franchise, and Paula Patton. J.J. Abrams, who wrote the script for the latest installment of the action series, was on hand to emcee the proceedings. Even Malin Akerman, who nabbed the lead in Tom's new film Rock of Ages, came out to show love for the superstar. Malin and Tom's other costar, Russell Brand, was off jet-skiing in Miami, though, and couldn't make it. Tom was touched about the prize and made a short speech from the stage. Tom Cruise said of his humanitarian award, "It's a tremendous honor. For me and my family this is really a very special evening and I look at what Simon Wiesenthal accomplished with his life, what this museum represents . . . Our challenge, ladies and gentlemen, is to make sure that we do all in our power to see to it that there will be no more Auschwitz Birkenaus, no more Rwandas, no more Darfurs on our planet. That our children and their children may be free to live in a world where men and women are judged by their accomplishments and deeds rather than by their race or religion."