All movies need a good villain. There's no Star Wars without Vader, no Clockwork Orange without the brainwashing government, no 300 without the complete disregard for pacing, craft, history or human decency, etc. Story demands conflict, people.

But in Ernie Davis' case, the leukemia that felled the first black Heisman winner before he made it to the pros just wasn't ... evil enough for the makers of Davis' life story, The Express. I mean, it's leukemia. You may fight it, but you can't blame cancer for being what it is. That's how tragedies go in real life: the goodness of the human spirit doesn't always triumph. It's just a tragedy.

If you were to add, say, a few racist mountain folk, on the other hand, then you got yourself a fair fight. Even if, you know, the real mountain folk Ernie Davis encountered didn't actually do anything racist at all -- or, during 1959, the year the film is set, even have any opportunity to:

A movie about the first African-American to win college football's Heisman Trophy includes a dramatic scene from Morgantown (West Virginia), where fans hurl garbage and racial epithets at [Davis] and his Syracuse teammates.

However, the ugly incident did not happen, according to players on both sides.
[...]
... West Virginia and Syracuse did not play in Morgantown in 1959. Davis and the Orangemen visited Mountaineer Field only once, on Oct. 22, 1960.

Dick Easterly, 69, of Tampa, Fla. was the Syracuse quarterback that day, when Davis rushed 14 times for 125 yards before a sparse crowd of 20,000.
[...]
"I apologize to the people [of] West Virginia because that did not happen," Easterly said. "I don't blame people in West Virginia for being disturbed. The scene is completely fictitious."

Now in his 62nd year of writing about WVU football, Mickey Furfari was in the press box, covering the game for the Morgantown Dominion-News.

"It's stupid," Furfari said of the scene. "It's pure fiction. The moviemakers should be absolutely ashamed.

"I am a strong believer in the First Amendment and of course it gives people the right to express themselves in truly idiotic and embarrassing ways. This is certainly an example."

Now wait a second here. You know the people of West Virginia were thinking racist thoughts about Ernie Davis, don't you? If there's anything Hollywood knows about West Virginians in the early sixties, it's that they loved nothing better than hurling garbage at black people in public.

What these yokels don't realize is that sometimes art is more "true" than reality. Violence and degradation was part of the Black Experience in 1959 and 1960, even if it wasn't part of Ernie Davis' specific experience in West Virginia, which is what we're making a movie about here. These things happened to people, even if they didn't happen to Ernie Davis, who happens to be the historical protagonist of this story. And if we started thinking about people as unique, autonomous individuals leading distinct lives rather than as metaphorical representations onto which we can pin whatever accurate-seeming memory fits our social and narrative purposes, where would the film industry be? If we can't chisel anachronistic corporate logos into his shoes for posterity, how will people ever forget a time when that logo didn't exist?

What do you think this is -- history?

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Photo of the real Ernie Davis via US Presswire.