Bob Zellner in the Movies
Mr. Zellner first became involved with film when Harry Belefonte asked him in 1964 for permission to make a movie about a young white southerner involved in the civil rights movement. The film would be based on Bob's experiences and Belefonte asked if Marlon Brando who, like Harry, played an active role in the southern struggle, could play the part of the Zellner character. Bob said ok but Mr. Brando was soon too big to play the role.
In 1966 the authors of Hurry Sundown, Catcha and Bert Gilden, were disappointed in the movie made from their book. Directed by Elia Kazan, the film became a bodice ripper focusing on the Mandigo - white woman affair rather than the alliance between white and black southern sharecroppers intended by the very progressive Gilden team.
Consequently they asked Bob Zellner to co-produce a screen play they had written, Rab and Reeb, telling the true story of white-black cooperation in post civil war southern America.
Typical of film work, neither of these projects ever got made.
Zellner also worked with Belefonte Enterprises Movie.

Freedom Song, starring Danny Glover. Written and directed by Phil Robinson, creator of Field of Dreams. Used the first chapter of Zellner's book, Rebel: White Southerner in the Freedom Movement. Bob Zellner is a character in the film.

Mississippi Burning, starring Gene Hackman. Zellner went to Klan Killer Kuntry, Nashoba County, Mississippi with Rita Schwerner, wife of one of the murdered civil rights workers, to investigate. The story is told in "Burning. "

Current film work:
A documentary with Filmmaker Karola Ritter on the Shinnecock Indians of the Hamptons, NY.

URL: www.bobzellner.com
Last modified: February, 2007
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