St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • G20

20 GO! MAGAZINE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH 10.02.20-10.08.20 stltoday.com/go BY BRUCE R. MILLER SIOUX CITY JOURNAL he people who make a real di erence those with boldface names or high les, actor Ethan Hawke of the people who are really making di erences are he says. the mothers and the teach- ers and the people who go unnoticed, who are kind for no reason. (They) up on a While abolitionist John Brown gets atten- tion as the man who led the 1859 raid on the U.S.

Armory at Harpers Ferry, others joined him and agreed to shed their blood without notoriety. Those are part of Good Lord a seven-part limited series about Brown and the folks he attracted. Airing on Showtime, Good Lord is based on James National Book Award winner. It tracks Brown played by Hawke as he plots his assault on slavery just before the Civil War. Told from the view of a young boy who joined ragtag band of soldiers, the story includes plenty of Twain-esque characters who er comic per- spective on a deadly serious mission.

is the African American perspective on the white savior that comes to save says McBride, who also served as executive producer. why so funny. a story of When Hawke expressed interest in pro- ducing the book as a lm, McBride asked him to join him at church. Ethan rode his bike over there because he lives a few blocks McBride says. Hawke asked one of the parishoners if he could leave his bike in the church while they had lunch.

she said, you the guy who came here to the air McBride recalls. he said, And he laughed. And I said to myself, this guy can handle that, he can certainly handle this funny story about John Had it been adapted for the big screen, Hawke says, of the book would have been discarded. By putting it on television, have to distill it to of book. just such a canvas with so much Told in seven episodes, Good Lord shows a di erent Brown one who depicted in history books.

you really study this char- acter, he asks a lot of you Hawke says. challenges why so many of us accept the Says McBride: Brown is a real hero to me and to many Black people who are no longer alive. John Brown gave his life and two of his lives to the cause of freedom for Black people, and he started the Civil War. They buried this story for a long time because nobody could gure out how to tell it without los- ing money or losing their career or getting themselves deep- sixed some kind of way. We managed to do What the 49-year- old Hawke liked about book is its ability to teach with- out being overt.

kind of like what I love about he says. sit there and teach you about what a Jedi is. By the end of it, you just know. And book teach you about the Civil War. It teach you about pain and su ering, but it just tells you an unbelievable Hawke was also taken with the nar- rator, Onion, a 14-year-old boy who grows into manhood during the course of the story.

a great yarn spinner, McBride says. you can make an audience laugh, if you can make a reader laugh, stick with the Although some characters are racist, human Hawke says. not real, then the whole not real. We need to have love and respect for the dignity of all the people that all kind of a victim of this larger river that runs through our In view, story of diversity is a shared story. We should celebrate the shared story we have to tell.

When there is judgment, there is no WHAT Good Lord WHEN 8 p.m. Sundays, starting Oct. 4 WHERE Showtime MORE INFO sho.com/the-good-lord-bird Lord recognizes unnamed Ethan Hawks stars in Showtime series tracking John Brown as he plots assault on slavery just before Civil War Ethan Hawke (left) and Joshua Caleb Johnson in Good Lord.