Jeb Stuart is the writer, director and producer of Blood Done Sign My Name, based on the novel by Tim Tyson. The book and movie are an examination of a racially motivated murder. During the 1970’s Henry “Dickie” Morrow, a military veteran was savagely beaten and shot by a white store owner and his sons, in front the neighborhood store he owned. They racists mistakenly believed that Morrow had approached the owner’s wife and the mother of his two sons. They beat him mercilessly before shooting him with a shot gun. Blood Done Sign My Name is due to hit big screens on Feb. 19. –christian johnson
Why did you decide to make this movie?
My history in Hollywood is mainly writing hero roles, so I know a whole lot about creating hero’s. The heroes in this movie are the everyday people, and that’s a story that is huge. I love that part.
How did you go about picking the cast for the movie?
I was very fortunate because the cast sort of picked me. When I finished the script there was only one person that I absolutely had to have and that was Nate Parker, he optimized the young Benjamin Chavis [the black national who was Morrow’s cousin]. I submitted a list to the managers, for the people I wanted for the rest of the cast.
What type of impact has this story had on you?
Tim Tyson’s father was a minister at the United Methodist Church in Oxford, North Carolina and that resonated with me because my father was a Presbyterian in North Carolina at the time of the murder as well. So there are a lot of similarities in that story. Being a white man coming from the south, I felt it was a story that needed to be told and it was an impacting story.
