Provided/Mark Hill, The baptism scene from "Burden," featuring actors Garrett Hedlund as Mike Burden and Andrea Riseborough as Judy Burden. RELATED VIDEO: Garrett Hedlund Plays Real-Life KKK Member Looking for Redemption in Burden. see what they’d look like in a KKK hood. It is all here. really is, however, is a simple, hateful racist. The second, he gets into a screaming match. I don’t want to be this guy,’ ” he recalls. He’s one of those guys who’s always moving, a bit uncomfortable standing still or making direct eye contact (which adds to the power of the final shot). He fed him. Sonaiya Kelley is a film reporter at the Los Angeles Times. You have permission to edit this article. The only way we can get it is by having those stories of redemption. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. People are threatened. After a stint in the Army, Burden signs up as a Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon. In 1996, the two men opened the Red Neck Shop, a museum and shop in Laurens that celebrated the Klan. Burden confessed to Kennedy that on two occasions, he knew where Kennedy was and had a gun pointed at him with his finger on the trigger, ready to assassinate him. It takes courage and determination to push through the hard, painful moments that change always requires. Griffin took him in when he was a child without direction and taught him Perhaps half of the characters we meet in Burden are tied directly or indirectly to the Ku Klux Klan. “These

Racist shirts adorn the gift shop. THE STORY NOW TURNED INTO A BOOK AND A MOVIE NAMED "BURDEN." ... People need to belong somewhere. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. With Garrett Hedlund, Andrea Riseborough, Forest Whitaker, Tom Wilkinson. “I was done,” he said. Kennedy’s goodness is rooted in his faith. Because muskets and sabres, but hate and fear, gasoline and rope. Credit: “I can sell anybody just about anything, so I sold the Klan,” Burden said. Hope God can forgive me.”. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. He had to honor the people who had helped him, confided in him, opened their lives to him, shared their memories. This is not just about good and evil. He promised his new wife he would get out of the Klan.“I was done,” he said. Kennedy kept his word and helped the family. “It was just a perfect storm of things at Sundance that year that really prevented a sale,” Heckler said. When Rev. David Kennedy and his New Beginning Missionary Baptist Church, with community support, and backing from 101 Studios, established The Echo Project, a nonprofit that is overseeing the renovation of the Echo Theater in Laurens, S.C. 101 Studios has launched the website rehabhate.com, which is linked to the church's Go Fund Me site, charity.gofundme.com/echoproject. Now, Burden says, in Judy and her three children, he has found the family he has searched for. The real men involved in the story, Mike Burden and the Rev. David Kennedy, played by Forest Whitaker.

The man responsible for helping change Burden’s life and hateful perspective is Rev. She conveys a lot of conflict without much melodrama, capturing the difficult decision of a woman who finally finds what she thinks is a decent, supportive man, only to learn he’s a virulent racist. Kennedy who, along with members of his New Beginning Missionary Baptist Church, took Burden and his then-wife in when no one else would. >> LISTEN, THAT IS THE PROBLEM IN AMERICA. And she starts to chip away at his beliefs, challenging Tom’s teachings, until the dam breaks. But here’s the thing: The heart of this movie is deeply and inescapably Christian. “You kind of learn it while you’re in there.”.

Eventually the film found a home with the fledgling 101 Studios, which was launched by former Weinstein Co. executive David Glasser in 2019. NOLAN: HIS HATE BEGAN TO SHIFT. It was the story that I always wanted to tell.”. While there were significant sales out of Sundance that year (including “Assassination Nation,” “Searching” and “Sorry to Bother You”), the festival’s dramatic competition did produce fewer splashy sales titles than usual. And it’s a film that falls victim to a few other tropes as well, including black characters who seem designed merely to help the white protagonist on his journey to discovery and the edge of what’s often called “poverty porn,” in which less well-off people are used in a way that feels exploitative more than genuine. David Kennedy, appeared on the show as well as the author of the book, Courtney Hargrave, and the writer and director of the film, Andrew Heckler. This is the kind of movie we understand how to release.”.

The racial hate we see and hear can feel pervasive. Griffin and his gang of easily manipulated yes-boys are opening a Redneck KKK Museum in an old theater when “Burden” starts, which sends the community into an uproar and turns up the fire under always-simmering racial tensions. “I thought I was going to learn the history of the Klan, the positives,” Burden said. For Mike Burden, self-preservation was what kept him loyal to the Ku Klux Klan, while love is what drove him to walk away. “I didn’t have money to buy what I needed, so we done the best we could, in the back of a truck and motels,” Burden said. God’s name is paired with “d–n” five times, while Jesus’ name is abused thrice. (In the end, he decides not to.) In addition to the uncertain market for independent films, “Burden” also faced the challenge of telling the story of a Klansman’s redemption just a few months after President Trump declared there were “very fine people on both sides” of the tragic events of the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va. “While it won the audience award and people loved it, I think [distributors] wondered, ‘Is this something that people want to see? “The actors wanted to be there.”. When Burden chooses Judy and rejects the Klan, Tom responds harshly and vindictively. everything he knows. When Mike introduces her to Tom and he starts cracking racist jokes, she stalks

When they first met in Laurens S.C., Burden was grand dragon of the local KKK and Kennedy, an African-American pastor who grew up in segregated housing. The Times endorses one incumbent and three newcomers for the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees. Burden and Harbeson were locked out of the apartment they’d been renting from a Klan member and with nowhere to go, Burden, Harbeson and her two children, ended up at the Laurens police department begging for help.

WEBVTT ALL NEW AT 6:00. and gentle. “We had a hell of a good time making a very hard movie.”.

Instead of wearing a gray or CAPTION: Michael Burden, right, renounced the Klan after marrying Judy Harbeson, left, and sold building housing the Redneck Shop to Rev. She’s kind We also hear him tell someone this: “If I call you my enemy, I’ll walk through heaven, and I will punch God just to get you. “I put it in my folder of ideas I wanted to pursue, but before I could get back to it, I read another article about eight months later that said, ‘Klansman sells Redneck Shop and KKK museum to black Baptist church.’ At that point I just couldn’t believe it, so I went down there.”. But he’s not out to fight a war. Klansman and Redneck Shop operator John Howard, on whom the character of Tom Griffin was based, was not as violence-prone as his fictional counterpart and far more obsessed with Lost Cause mythology than with inflicting physical harm on black people. It is so intense that you, as the viewer, can feel the struggle that Mike Burden is going through, and it just captures you and sucks you right in. NOLAN: EVENTUALLY, HE MARRIED, LEFT THE CLAN AND BECAME HOMELESS UNTIL A REFERENCE THAT IN. David Kennedy, the African American pastor of New Beginning Missionary Baptist Church, for help. Mike Burden and Reverend David Kennedy’s 24-year friendship had an unlikely beginning. “When there’s nothing else, it makes you feel better to think you’re better than others,” he said. And it will be shown at the Terrace Charleston Film Festival, 7:15 p.m. Friday, March 6. Kennedy was on his way to help someone at the police station when he saw the Burdens and their children in their truck surrounded by law enforcement officers, Burden said to Kennedy, “I know you don’t trust me, and you don’t care about me, but these people won’t even feed us. President Trump and Joe Biden battled into Wednesday morning with no clear winner, as major contests remained too close. David Kennedy in the movie "Burden," which is based on the true story of Michael Burden's experience in the Ku Klux Klan in Laurens. Who needs another story about a reprehensible racist discovering that racism is something he was taught, and not something that we’re born believing? “Koko-di Koko-da”: Swedish mindbender mixes elements of horror, fantasy and the crushing realism of a shattered family. He knows that someone like Mike doesn’t just flip a switch and love black people all of a sudden. Provided/Mark Hill, The protest scene in front of the Redneck Shop in the movie "Burden," starring Forest Whitaker. So it was brutal for us. We need some food.”Kennedy said, “I didn’t know whether or not he was serious, but I told him when I got done at the police station, I would make sure they had some food. And yet there are elements here, most of them embedded in another great physical performance from Garrett Hedlund, that keep “Burden” from completely sinking into the Carolina mud. Burden said that love overcame hate and changed his life and forged a true friendship with Kennedy. I’M FASCINATED ABOUT SERVING, TO HONOR JESUS CHRIST. Hearst Television participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on purchases made through our links to retailer sites. David Kennedy, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE on newsstands now. Without his convictions, Kennedy would have shut the door on Mike forever. Before meeting Judy, Mike and fellow KKK member Jameson work for Tom’s reposession agency—reclaiming TVs and appliances when tennants’ rent hasn’t been paid.

The Klan retaliated against Burden for rebelling against them. the cinematography, the acting, the dialogue, everything is absolutely spot on! Racism seems pretty inculcated into the community as a whole, by the way. Garrett Hedlund as Mike Burden; Forest Whitaker as Reverend Kennedy; Andrea Riseborough as Judy; Tom Wilkinson as Tom Griffin; Jason Davis as Jameson; Crystal Fox as Janice Kennedy (as Crystal R. Fox); Usher Raymond as Clarence Brooks. “He just read the script and literally called us the next day and said, ‘I’m in.’ He didn’t have any of those misgivings.”, After watching one of his interviews, Heckler approached Usher about playing Mike’s childhood best friend Clarence. "He said that one white police officer said, “Don’t feed him. in every war, there comes a time where every man must choose a side.

She’s a good mom to her son, Franklin—whose best friend is black. It was brutal for me.”. Eventually, Mike’s change in attitude culminates in being baptized and offering a contrite confession. She can do pretty much anything. Kennedy and Usher Raymond as Clarence Brooks, Mike’s childhood friend — found financing and premiered as a sales title at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. More than 20 years later the film is finally in theaters, kicking off its specialty run on five screens in New York and Los Angeles this weekend. mike and judy burden There’s a great film in the minor beats between Mike and Judy and the choices made by the great actors playing them—I just wish I believed more in everything around them.

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