>> that was eugene allen. white house butler, great man who i wrote a story about him in 2008 that appeared on the cover of the washington post, really one of the most unique figures in my life as a writer who have met i met him and his wife in 2008 before the election. it was amazing how i met him. i was the national writer with the national post and i was on the campaign trail within senator obama. i was in north carolina, theres is a rally after the rally i walked outside and there were three young ladies and they were crying. i told them who i was, will haygood haygood washington post and if there's anything i could do and they were crying because their fathers had kicked them out of their home because they supported an african-american candidate on stage.ite. now the young ladies were college students and they were white. it was a powerful moment because i said wow, even though hillary clinton was still in the race in 2008 at that time obama had started this epic movement and some of it was manifested in

how true to what you learned from eugene allen and mrs. allen was the movie? >> well, i learned a lot about the moviemaking business being on this set. being associate producer of the movie, that was fun but there was a great screenwriter danny strong who wrote a beautiful script and lee daniels had the movie in a meeting, he said what i want to do with your story, will, is open it up. i want to cover the whole arc of civil rights movement which had really never been done on the big screen in this country. hollywood had sort of been very reticent to tell epic stories of this nature so lee daniels the director wanted to do that. he had this family and so the story was going to be anchored to this family. and you know, in all these historic ups and downs of the civilrights movement . there were some changes from the actual story to movie but the theme of the whole movie i feel if i stay true to the story, there was one big difference. charles, the sum of the butler did go to vietnam but he survived. in the movie, he dies and in real life there was only one son i

eugene allen, white house butler. a great man who i wrote a story about him in 2008 that appeared on the cover of "the washington post."ha really one of the most unique figures in my life as a writer who i've met. i met him and his wife in 2008 before the election. and it was amazing how i met mem him. i was a national writer with "the washington post," and i was on the campaign trail with then-senator obama.th and i was in north carolina. there was a rally. and after the rally, i walked outside, and there were three young ladies, and they were crying. and i told him who i was, wil haygood, washington post, and if there was anything i could do, and they said they were crying because their fathers had kicked them out of their homes because they supported the african-american candidate on stage.e. now, the three young ladies, they were college students, and they were white. it was a powerful moment because i said, wow. even though hillary clinton was till in the race in 2008 -- still in the race in 2008 at that time, ob