Books2Movies Club discussion

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Both the book, The Butler: A Witness to History, and the movie, The Butler (2013), were initially inspired by Wil Haygood's article published in Washington Post November 7, 2008, "A Butler Well Served by This Election". (view spoiler)[ That would be subtle hint to read at least an article if you cannot find the book. ;) (hide spoiler)]

For those interested in the subject, there is also 1979 mini-series, Backstairs at the White House, that was based on an autobiographical novel, My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House, by Lillian Rogers Parks.

It is always interesting to hear life stories of the people who, although basically invisible themselves, have witnessed life-changing things we can only imagine. This is I believe one of those.

I was disappointed in this book because I thought that it was actually going to be the butler's story. To me, it seemed to be more about the movie and all the facts & research that went into it, etc.

Huh, I assumed too that The Butler is the story about Eugene Allen. That's sort of misleading... Thank you for telling us!

I was disapointed as well. I thought it would be more of Eugene Allen's story as opposed to a history of the times and Civil Rights and such. He seems like he would have an interesting story to tell, so it was a let down not to get to read about it.

I saw the movie last night, and while it wasn't bad, it wasn't quite what I hoped it would be. It wanted to be daring and instructive, about big social turbulences in America in 20th century, but they got probably only a fragment of the subject matter. Likewise the presidents were tackled only fragmentary and puzzling for a relative newcomer ((view spoiler)[For example, I didn't understand why Nixon was so against the apartheid bill, I had to google the story about it. (hide spoiler)]), so I felt underwhelmed. This movie wanted to be everywhere but wasn't anywhere in only two hours of screentime. Also, on reading the article, I discovered Cecil's story has nothing to do with Allen's real life, so one must have that in mind while watching the movie. Allen's real life was interesting on its own, but I guess directors wanted to show whole picture of the period, but didn't quite succeed because of going in too many directions.