All the four paths would diverge after that One Night In Miami. Two will be cut shot prematurely. Two will go on making their contributions to the world of sports and entertainment. It is the two who got snuffed out way before their time, their unfinished stories that well up in my throat. Like Sam Cooke’s last song which was released after his untimely death, we are waiting, we are still waiting…
It's
been a long
A long time coming
But I know, a change gonna come
Oh, yes it will
One Night in Miami is what Bob Seger might have been thinking about (well not really, the unromantic in me is taking off on an imaginary scenic route here) when he wrote, “We got tonite, who needs tomorrow. We got tonite baby, why don’t you stay?” Stay they did, the coolest gang of bros who might have ever hung out together in the history of menkind – Malcolm X, Cassius Clay soon to be Muhammad Ali, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown at a Negro hotel in Miami, on the night of 25th Feb 1964.
More than three fourths of the movie happens in a hotel room the four friends get together. It makes sense when it is adapted from a play and the occasion calls for it. The four men briefly spend some time on the hotel rooftop and Ali & Cooke make a short stop at a liquor store, but the rest of the time the conversation between the four men happen entirely in the hotel room. An entire movie centered around the dialog four people are having in one room reminded me a bit of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, but the similarity ends there.
To write meaningful dialog without taking sides and keeping the audience attention unwavering without any change in background scenery is quite a challenge. Shout out to Kemp Powers who wrote the original play and his debut movie screenplay adaptation. It is also the feature debut for the director Regina King. She has absolutely nailed it. Along with Powers’ powerful screenplay, she has received tremendous support from the crew of four amazing actors who play the four historical figures – Kingley Ben-Adir (Malcolm X), Leslie Odom Jr. (Sam Cooke), Aldis Hodge (Jim Brown) and Eli Goree (Ali) whose paths cross one night in a hotel room in Miami.
It is such a personal moment (or a few hours) for these four guys, but this serendipitous meeting is also a watershed moment in history. The morning after the meeting Cassius Clay confirms that he is joining the Nation of Islam and he changes his name to Muhammad Ali a week after. Malcolm X would quit the Nation of Islam a week after this meeting and make a trip to Mecca, Middle East and African countries to understand more about Islam and get international support and exposure to the Civil Rights Movement. Malcolm X would be assassinated and Sam Cooke would be shot dead before the first anniversary of this meeting. Ali would go on to become one of the greatest sportsmen in history and Jim Brown would quit football for Hollywood after being named NFL’s MVP for the third time in 1966.
To read more about what happened after that One Night in Miami, here is a BBC article.
After One Night in Miami, I took a peak into Sam Cooke’s life in Netflix’s documentary – The Two Killings of Sam Cooke. It is less of a crime investigation piece and more of a biography of Cooke through the eyes and words of the people who knew him and his music. Like many black musicians at the time he broke into the popular music scene via gospel music then crossed over to the devil's music - pop music and rock & roll.
In One Night in Miami we see Malcolm X exhorting Sam Cooke to take the activist route, considering he had a platform that people listened to - his songs and music. Although the movie gives the viewer the impression that Sam Cooke was not much of an activist, he was in fact at the time risking his career with his activism and earning wrath of big time record companies like RCA. If he had lived we would have an African-American Elvis, the guy had music, looks, leadership and charisma. In an alternate reality where Malcolm X and Sam Cooke could've lived on, I wonder how the world would've looked like? Those two men had so much unfinished business to take care of.😞
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