Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A Black Panther revolutionary and a Hollywood insider walk into a bar … and plan a caper that has the latter helping to smuggle the former out of the country.
It’s the summer of 1974 and Newton is arrested on charges of assaulting a tailor and fatally shooting a teenage prostitute. Is it a frame up? Newton says yes, and tensions with the local police and the FBI suggest this isn’t out of the realm of possibility. Out on bail, Newton needs someone who can move mountains, so he turns to Schneider , with whom he had been developing a biopic. “You’re the hotshot producer,” he says.
From left: André Holland as Huey P. Newton and Alessandro Nivola as Bert Schneider in “The Big Cigar.”