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Hi, I'm Dana Stevens, Slate's movie critic, here with a Slate spoiler special on Lee Daniels, the Butler. And joining me in Slate's New York studio is Aisha Harris. Hi, Aisha. Hi, Dana. You are,

what do we call you, a contributor to Slate's browbeat blog, a writer for browbeat, our culture

blog. Correct. And we wanted to spoil us together in part because you did some research and

you did some writing on this film as well and on its veracity. And maybe you can start off with sort of summarizing the Butler and the True Life story it's based on.

But first of all, I always like to start off with just a basic reaction.

We didn't see this together.

So I'm not sure what you felt about it overall.

Would you say good movie, bad movie, send people to it?

I think people will enjoy it. And I'd say it's a mixed bag. That was my initial reaction.

Yeah, I agree. I agree. But still, I think I would in general send people to this movie if they're interested in it in the first place. I would not try to bar the door from this movie. And based on how I felt about Lee Daniel's previous film,

Precious, or actually his second to last movie, Precious, I thought that I was going to have a more

negative reaction to The Butler. Same. I went in with very low expectations and was pleasantly

surprised. So should we get into the story a little bit? And since you have done a little bit of

research on Eugene Allen and the man that this movie is very loosely based on.

Maybe you can set that up for us a bit.

Right.

So in 2008, right around the time of the election of Barack Obama, the Washington Post journalist Will Haygood, sought out a service worker, someone in the White House.

He was looking for someone, a black person, who would have been around in the White House. He was looking for someone, a black person who would have been around in the White House during like the 50s, 60s, someone who was around during segregation in very rough racial times. And someone pointed him in the direction of Eugene Allen, who happened to still be

...