Paul Todd is the British screenwriter who wrote the original version of Selma. This is from a BBC interview with Todd:
Eventually Ava DuVernay became attached as director. She has been blunt in the States in saying she rewrote much of the screenplay. How do you react to that?
Those claims are highly exaggerated. Ava is someone I spent some time with and I like and admire her: she's a very talented woman.
She has told the story very well though it's not quite the story she was given. There has been a controversy in the States regarding the depiction of President Johnson so I'll restrict my comments to that issue alone, as it's an issue we can be relatively objective about.
Is the LBJ we see in the finished movie very different from the one you originally wrote about?
Very. I feel Ava reduced Johnson in her depiction to a racist. And dramatically he's a bit of a punch-bag. The relationship that occurred between those two men was much, much more dynamic than that.
The problem is with turning Johnson into someone who was against voting rights and against the Selma campaign. Certainly Johnson found the Selma campaign very difficult to handle - it made life uncomfortable for him and he wanted to deal with voting rights the following year (1966).
He had a lot of social reforms on his desk which he wanted to get moving first and which were less contentious.
Now Dr King wasn't in a position to oblige him: he was obligated to his own constituency. So these guys who'd been partners the year before on the 1964 Civil Rights act, which ended segregation, then came into conflict over Selma.
But that is not to say Johnson was against the very idea of civil rights. He was passionate about voting rights.
If you look at the movie now there is scene where Johnson is conspiring with J Edgar Hoover (Director of the FBI). As we all know, and as Johnson knew only too well, Hoover is a monster.
What LBJ was trying to do in my script - and in reality - was put the leash on Hoover. Johnson was quite happy to keep tabs on people - he was a control freak who wanted to know what everybody was going to do next.
But he wanted Hoover to use his power and organization to protect Martin Luther King. By reducing Johnson that way in the film, you diminish Dr King at the same time and I think that's a great pity.
Ava DuVernay has said she didn't want to make a film where white people are the the guardian angels of black Americans. She wanted a film where black people take hold of their own fate. Can you sympathise with that?
No, because that isn't what happened. I know Ava has said she didn't want a white savior movie but it never was a white saviour movie.
It was about the courage and genius and leadership of Martin Luther King driving the most powerful man in the world into a corner.
And Johnson just had to say, okay you win. It was Johnson's finest moment and King had driven him to that height.
The movie kind of throws that away now. Despite all the tensions, do you remain proud of Selma as a film?
Yes because the idea, the story, the structure and the principal characters remain fundamentally mine.
And the film is out there: it's finally been made. I'm very happy about that.
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