Top image--the tagline used to promote the documentary film Movie Star: The Secret Lives of Jean Seberg since 2013. Bottom image--the tagline for the new narrative film Seberg.
You are a fan of Jean Seberg, and you've just heard about or watched the new film Seberg. The film was previously titled Against All Enemies. You may be wondering how much of the film is true and how close the film's depiction is to who Jean Seberg really was. This page will break it down for you and point the way to factual accounts of Jean's multifaceted life, including our own documentary film Movie Star: The Secret Lives of Jean Seberg and books by Jean's biographer Garry McGee.
We acknowledge that the producers of Seberg made a fictional film. Seberg is not a documentary. Therefore, they have absolutely no obligation to tell the truth. However, if you're like us, when you see a film based on a true story you are curious about what is truth and what is fiction.
Kristen Stewart, who is set to play Princess Diana in an upcoming movie entitled Spencer, was cast in the lead role of Jean in Seberg.
Here's what the filmmakers said about how they prepared for their respective roles in the Seberg film during a live-streamed "press conference" interview at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2019.
Kristen Stewart, Actor: "It wasn't about doing it perfectly. It was definitely about being able to sort of--do a sort of imaginative rendering of what it might be like to pull back the veneer of her life that was available to us in research. But really there was no way to know her inside of those, of that period.
Because this is a sort of like a boiled down version of this person [Jean Seberg], you like take an image, and something kind of more [on the] surface, and then start deconstructing it, and like watching it become a real thing that like breathes and is fallible, and is vulnerable. So yeah I think like the way, like I was saying earlier, just my way in with seeing her, just later in her life, like it was just like there was no way to get very close to her other than through her work."
The limited resources that were available just were like so completely different, so polarized."
Benedict Andrews, Director: "The aperture of this movie is very specific and doesn't pretend to tell the whole, whole story. We have glimpses of her life. And she described this period as, as a long nightmare, that when she looked back she couldn't tell the truth. So we're trying to find that truth in that. But it's interesting, so much of the biographical material, it's already a kind of fiction. The biographies have differing accounts of this period. And then also her husband Romain Gary he wrote a novel called White Dog about this period. The Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes, who she had a relationship [with], also wrote a book, Diana: The Goddess Who Hunts Alone, also talking about it. So there's already this kind of fictional idea of her, but then Anna [Waterhouse] and Joe [Shrapnel] weave in all these facts in there... I love how this kind of, these truths are weaved [sic] into something that also has a kind of speculative history. But in the end, we're trying to do, to be truthful to that, that experience and invite the audience to get close to that experience."
Joe Shrapnel, Screenwriter: "I had a connection through Deborah [Deborah Kerr, Jean's co-star in Bonjour Tristesse] and her husband Peter Viertel, who is a mentor to me and a screenwriter. So, he'd remembered Jean in a certain way. That was our only sort of first-hand primary connection to her and the rest is intense research, reading... [interrupted by Waterhouse]"
Anna Gregory Waterhouse, Screenwriter: "I met some people when I was living in New York with us writing. And, I've met quite a lot of people who were involved in politics, and the F.B.I. at that time. And, obviously you can't, I mean there are files, they've been heavily redacted. You can't get that much information."
The complete interview is still available on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/qX9sK3tNbJ8
Below is Garry McGee's analysis of Seberg.
NOTE - The following does contain SPOILERS
A few years ago, there was a film called Race, a biography about US Olympian Jesse Owens. It was made with much care and detail thanks to a commitment of the writing team of Joe Shrapnel & Anna Waterhouse, director Stephen Hopkins, and a slew of producers and co-producers. The research and production of the work involved people who knew Owens, including his relatives. The Jesse Owens Foundation was involved as well.
The movie Seberg, a biographical film about actress Jean Seberg, opened in American theaters in December 2019 following appearances in film festivals. Written by the same team that authored Race, and produced by some who were also connected to Race, Seberg did not (according to the writers) include extensive research, nor any discussion or consultation by any member of Jean Seberg’s family, friends, Seberg scholars, or the administrators of the Jean Seberg Archival Collection at the Orpheum Theater Center based in Marshalltown, Iowa--Jean's home town.
Did budget constraints play a role? The lack of research seems to have contributed to this confusing telling of a portion of Jean Seberg's true story, a story which has been manipulated so many times and in so many ways over the decades.
Kristen Stewart as 1968 Jean Seberg ("Seberg").
Jean Seberg (“La Récréation”), photo by Peter Basch 1961.
Jean Seberg (“Birds in Peru”) 1967-68.
FACT VS FICTION:
Movie-goers tend to accept works based on true stories as fact even though many liberties have been taken to bring the story to the screen. Yes, creative license is required, but producers still have a responsibility not to drift from artistry to manipulation. Filmmakers have a responsibility to the audience and their subject as they tell fictional stories based on true events.
These are just a few of a long list of things that are not true in Seberg.
Let’s start with the persona of Jean Seberg. Unfortunately, actress Kristen Stewart is not made-up or costumed as Jean Seberg. Yes, she sports the short hair and dark eyebrows, and the "mod" clothing. But Jean’s hair in this era was blonde—almost white—with no dark roots (unlike a decade previously when Jean was around 20 years old, and which has been used in the media recently to show comparisons between the two actresses. Unfortunately, all of these photos were off by a good ten years).
Jean Seberg wore makeup for personal appearances, film work, and special gatherings. She may have used mascara (at the most) when in private—unlike Stewart’s portrayal which has her made-up 24/7.
Jean primarily wore skirts and dresses with hemlines more conservative than those worn in the movie. Jean Seberg was also seen as “freshly scrubbed."
Additional moments in the film that depart from the truth:
• There was no Boeing 747 jet in 1968 (in the film Jean is seen flying in one with her agent).
• Jean Seberg was never pushed by her agent, Wilt Melnick, into doing a movie, nor did he criticize and suggest how she should perform or act in movies, nor how she should be in 'real life'. Wilt Melnick was classy, not a hustler.
• Jean met Hakim Jamal after production on Paint Your Wagon. She met him while on a plane trip to Los Angeles in October 1968. Hakim Jamal approached her and introduced himself--not the other way around.
• Jean did not stand with activists and give the Black Power sign for photographers.
• Hakim Jamal was not a member of the Black Panther Party (and for that matter, there is no mention in Seberg of Jean's involvement with Raymond Hewitt or Elaine Brown of the Panthers, which led to the FBI campaign against Jean Seberg).
• There was no rushing to Hakim Jamal’s bed soon after meeting him.
• Jean did not appear at the Paint Your Wagon premiere (October 15, 1969). She attended a press party prior to filming where she was photographed extensively with the Paint your Wagon production team.
• There was no record of receipts of donations to the Black Panther Party.
• There was no trashing of dwellings looking for FBI wiretap devices.
• There were no French reporters circling Jean when the LA Times item appeared.
• There was no front page headline reading “Jean Seberg attempts suicide” in any newspaper. Second husband Romain Gary and Jean herself said her pill overdose was accidental.
• There was no press conference where Jean talked about the FBI after her daughter Nina’s death.
• There was no FBI agent who told Jean about her FBI file and presented a copy to her.
As former Black Panther Party leader Elaine Brown said during her on-camera interview for Movie Star: The Secret Lives of Jean Seberg, “She was Jean Seberg. She was doing what she could do, but she was doing it seriously with a commitment--not with some frivolous idea of being some silly white, dumb blonde girl and this big black 'Mandingo' man who’s doing it to her, and she’s paying him money, and this money’s going to funnel into this illegal, strange operation. This is [meant] to appeal to the most racist elements in America. And anyone who believes that, as far as I’m concerned, is a racist—who believes that this woman was so simple minded, that she went for some program because some man was involved in it. She was not some frivolous girl.”
I will add that it’s interesting there are two FBI agents (fictionalized of course) in Seberg that reflect the same as I had in my book Neutralized: The F.B.I. vs Jean Seberg, in that they are contrasting figures from two eras of the Bureau. The two I interviewed were indeed real former FBI agents, but I used pseudonyms. One of them was “Jack” which turns out to be the name of the character in Seberg.
The filmmakers also stated they read “books” on Jean Seberg. I have written three on the subject.
Toward the end of the movie in which Kristen Stewart as Jean meets with the press (another event that never happened), she says “…one day the truth will be revealed.” It isn’t revealed in Seberg.
Perhaps one day a biopic with a focus on Jean's true story will be produced. Those of us who waited for a fair and balanced Hollywood project on Jean Seberg are still waiting.
Footnotes:
Jean's true story is currently available in our documentary film Movie Star: The Secret Lives of Jean Seberg [coming soon] and Jean Seberg--Breathless by Garry McGee and Neutralized: The F.B.I. vs Jean Seberg by Garry McGee and Jean Larson.