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Emile Griffith biopic...

Emilegriffith

Lenny Abrahamson is planning a film about the bisexual boxer...who pummeled his opponent into unconciousness...he died 10 days later.

Deadline reported Abrahamson as commenting, ‘It is so rich that it’s hard to know where to start. As a character study, Griffith is incredibly compelling. There was a gentleness and innocence about him, and he never seemed conflicted about his sexuality; indeed he found joy in it. He inhabited two worlds — the underground gay scene in New York in the ’60s and the macho world of boxing. The societal stigma at that time was dreadful and created a crushing pressure on him.

‘You look at how closely his two worlds intersected. Just how different are they, when the sport is such a celebration of the male body and the beauty of its athleticism. Go one step further, and inject the tiniest sense of sexuality, and people are up in arms. Griffith himself once said a quote that just floored me. ‘They forgave me for killing a man, but they couldn’t forgive me for loving a man.’ That to me was so powerful and such a crazy contradiction. And it is still relevant today.’

The film will be based on the Donald McRae book A Man’s World: The Double Life of Emile Griffith.

Hopefully, it will be more a more accurate retelling of his story than the 2005 documentary:

Ring of Fire - The Emile Griffith Story