Here’s the 1968 TV movie KU’s Oscar-winning filmmaker Kevin Willmott wants you to watch
Oscar-winning filmmaker Kevin Willmott was in the fourth grade in 1968 when he watched a movie on TV that haunts him to this day, especially these days.
“I didn’t see the beginning of the movie, so I never knew the name,” the University of Kansas professor emeritus told The Star this week. “But it was about a fascist takeover of the United States.
“That movie stayed with me my entire life. And I didn’t find out the name of the movie until this year.”
The 1968 movie was ”Shadow on the Land,” the first made-for-TV movie broadcast by ABC.
It was adapted from American author Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 cautionary political novel, “It Can’t Happen Here,” once dubbed his most important work by The New Yorker.
The movie tells of a demagogue who is elected President of the United States by fomenting fear and promising to return the country to “traditional” values and patriotism — and the underground freedom fighters who resist.
Gene Hackman was in it, one of his first film roles. The two-time Oscar winner and his wife were found dead on Wednesday in their Santa Fe, New Mexico home.
“Shadow on the Land” can only be seen now on YouTube.
“One of the scariest things about it, that speaks to us today, is that in that movie it’s no longer the USA. It’s been taken over by fascists,” said Willmott, who won an Oscar in 2019 for best adapted screenplay for director Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman.”
“But everything’s normal. There’s no Nazis marching down the streets. And that’s the thing, even as a kid, that really stayed with me. Don’t think (the country) is going to look different than it is. Just because bad guys take over doesn’t mean you’ll be able to see the difference.”
Movies are never far from Willmott’s mind. This weekend he’ll be watching the 97th annual Academy Awards with host Conan O’Brien, airing at 6 p.m. Sunday on ABC.
The show will also stream on several services including DirecTV, Hulu + Live TV, Verizon and Sling. Disney will also, for the first time this year, stream the Oscars live on Hulu.
As a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Willmott cast a secret ballot for his picks.
(He wouldn’t divulge his choices. We had to ask.)
He stepped away last year from daily duties as a film studies professor at KU and into the role of professor emeritus to devote more attention to his movie work.
Willmott first found indie film success directing and writing movies he shot in Lawrence: “C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America” (which Lee executive-produced), “Jayhawkers” and “The Only Good Indian.”
Reconnecting in 2015, he and Lee wrote “Chi-Raq,” applying the ancient Greek play “Lysistrata” to gang violence in modern Chicago.
“BlacKkKlansman” was based on the true memoir of Ron Stallworth, who in the 1970s was the first African-American police officer in Colorado Springs.
In an undercover operation, he became a card-carrying member of the Ku Klux Klan by impersonating a white man over the phone, eventually sending his white, Jewish partner to represent him in person.
More recently, Willmott made the 90-minute documentary, “The Heroic True-Life Adventures of Alvin Brooks,” about the Kansas City political and civil rights icon. It premiered on June 19, Juneteenth, last year.
“KU’s always been great working around my schedule, but it has just become increasingly super demanding in the last couple of years,” said Willmott.
He’s got five or six writing projects in the works, including the pilot for “Hip Hop Cop,” a TV series for Hulu and 20th Television adapted from Stallworth’s newest memoir, “The Gangs of Zion.”
The project has Willmott working with rapper/actor 50 Cent, who is executive producer.
The series is about Stallworth’s work with a gang unit in Salt Lake City, Utah during the 1980s.
And yes, Willmott understands how that sounds.
Gangs? In Salt Lake City?
“It’s kind of the cultural weirdness of that,” he said. “This is the 80s and you know, Salt Lake City, especially then, is very white. So the gangs are kind of different in the sense that they’re kind of Mormon white gangs ... as a whole, it’s not like the Bloods and the Crips. So it’s a whole different kind of world.
“And a big part of that period, if you remember now, hip hop was just kind of coming out. So people were kind of threatened by music they thought was totally connected to the gangs. So Ron, because he’s black, he has to be their interpreter of this music and what it all means. ‘You’re our guide to get us through this world of hip hop.’ It’s pretty culturally funny.
“A whole part of the series is how he’s navigating the ignorance of his fellow cops and how these white kids are kinda wanting to be gangsters and thug life and all this stuff, and of course a lot of them grew up Mormon and kind of fell out of their faith or their home training.”
Willmott hasn’t done much TV work. So who knows? Maybe an Emmy someday to go with that Oscar?
He keeps his golden statuette in an unpretentious spot in his home screening room, normal compared to where other winners have been known to stash theirs:
In the kitchen by the movie-night snacks. (Jared Leto)
The bathroom. (Kate Winslet and Jodie Foster)
At mom’s house. (Emma Stone)
At the University of Texas. (Robert De Niro)
In the piano room. (Julia Roberts)
On the piano. (Jennifer Hudson)
Next to her boots at the back of the closet (Anna Paquin)
Where she can always see it. (Octavia Spencer)
“People always want me to bring it” to appearances, Willmott said. “I had a speaking thing in Topeka a while back and they asked me to bring him.
“And I do. It’s always a little weird, to be honest with you. I understand why they want me to, but it’s always a little embarrassing that you’re carrying this thing around. Makes you feel like you’re showing off.”
He won a BAFTA award — known as the “British Oscar” — for “BlacKkKlansman” the week before he won the Oscar and that prize came with a bonus he’ll never forget. He went to London for the awards ceremony.
“When I got nominated for the BAFTA I didn’t even really kinda realize I was nominated until I was there,” he said. “It was kind of amazing.
He had no idea he would be attending a reception at Kensington Palace until “they were driving me up to Kensington Palace and I said, ‘What the hell?’
“And when you win it’s pretty amazing because they wait until everyone leaves the stage and you go up and get to meet William and Kate.
“And I always tell people, not bad for a poor boy from Junction City. I never thought I’d ever be hobnobbing with the future King and Queen.”
This story was originally published March 1, 2025 at 6:30 AM.
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