By now, you’ve likely heard all about LEE DANIELS’ THE BUTLER, the story of an African-American man who served on the White House staff through eight administrations. In the film Forest Whitaker stars as Cecil Gaines, who is loosely based off actual White House butler Eugene Allen. Of course, don’t be fooled by the marketing – reading the Washington Post article the film was initially based on, shows that the film is fictionalized to a great degree. Because of that, in some ways The Butler is like a real-life version of Forest Gump, though by no means do I mean to compare the obviously completely different protagonists (to be like Forest Gump, Cecil would have had to do something like stop the Cuban Missile Crisis by misplacing JFK’s silverware).
