Jim Brown is used to being in control.

With a football or lacrosse stick in his hands he found glory. During his recent four-month stint in jail, he fought for it.

But there are two things in his life that Brown hasn’t been in control of — his anger and Spike Lee.

Lee, the creator of the new documentary film based on Brown’s life was given full freedom in creating “Jim Brown: All American.”

The documentary, shown in the Goldstein Auditorium of the Schine Student Center on Sunday night, portrayed Brown as an American hero with a pair of tragic flaws — violence and a propensity to ignore his family.

“I had nothing to do with this film,” Brown repeated three times in the course of the evening which began with a press conference and concluded with an audience question-and-answer session. “I had nothing to do with it. He called my children on his own to do the interviews.”

Brown’s colossus-like legend builds from the exterior. Prior to Super Bowl XXXV in Tampa Bay, Brown stalks into an empty stadium. His body remains cloaked in darkness. As he moves forward his silhouette nearly engulfs the entrance.

His presence and exploits on similar football fields for Syracuse and the NFL’s Cleveland Browns are the primary focus of the movie. In Lee’s highlight montage, Brown appears a man-child, running through linebackers and shoving defensive linemen to the ground. In the NFL, he broke the career-rushing yardage records in nine seasons, making the pro bowl each year and winning a championship.

While at Syracuse, however, Brown began the battle against racism that would define his life. In a school with what Brown estimated to be 20 total black students, he struggled to find his way onto the football field.

Because he was black, Brown wasn’t given a scholarship. Ed Walsh, Brown’s high school coach, said Syracuse’s head coach at the time, Ben Schwartzwalder, stipulated that Brown would have to follow 10 rules to earn a scholarship. One rule mandated Brown refrain from dating white girls.

“That was the one that really stood out to me,” Walsh said in the movie. “I don’t remember the others.”

“I didn’t even know that before I saw the movie,” Brown said. “I’m learning things as I watch it.”

Walsh said Brown would not follow the rules and instead friends from Brown’s hometown Manhasset collected the tuition for his first season. Once he got to campus, things were no easier.

Although Brown showed potential in limited playing time, Schwartzwalder refused to start him for two years.

Brown’s racial battle continued after he leapt to the NFL. He united a group of black athletes to support Muhammad Ali after the boxer’s famous decision to refuse to fight in Vietnam. Brown later became a prominent actor, the first black sex symbol, and performed the first interracial love scene (with Raquel Welch.)

“White men would stand up, scream at the screen and storm out,” Welch said in the documentary.

Brown’s performance in “The Dirty Dozen” and subsequent action movies gave black youths someone to idolize.

He currently counsels gang members in jail through his Amer-I-can program. But, during his youth, Brown could have been one of them.

His divorced parents lived diagonally across from each other and bickered incessantly, driving him to roam the streets.

Walsh offered him a home. So did a former girlfriend.

“He was getting tough to handle in practice, “ Walsh said. “He was walking the street all night.”

Brown chose the girlfriend. However, while he lived with her parents, he began to date a number of women.

The movie faces the negatives that Lee could have ignored, but tends to gloss over them.

Hints of a sordid sex life pepper the movie. Stella Stevens, Brown’s co-star in “Slaughter,” said rumors spread that Brown slept with every co-star. A former roommate, writer Jack Tobeck, speaks of a train of women coming and leaving the house.

Brown was later arrested for allegedly choking a golf partner. He was accused of shoving former girlfriend Eva Bohn-Chin over the side of a patio. And he has been charged with abusing women five times in the last four decades, although four of the five women took back their stories. In his most recent brush with the law, Brown was arrested after battering his wife’s car with a shovel three years ago.

According to the movie, Brown, before the most recent incident, had grown sullen and quiet after the death of a close friend. His wife Monique, accused him of cheating and she badgered him until he demolished the car in a fit of frustration.

After being asked what his greatest obstacle had been, Brown had a simple answer.

“Myself,” he replied before discussing his battles with racism.

His run-in with Monique’s automobile led to a sentence of 400 hours of community service, revocation of his license, three years probation, and a year of counseling. Brown, however, refused to be put on probation or to go to counseling and was sent to jail.

“The punishment was politically motivated,” Brown said. “There are a number of elements that don’t like me. They’ll get the vote of the police, the National Organization (sic) of Women.”

Lee devotes little time of the movie to the arrests, save a taped 911 message from his wife Monique. Most of the interviewees tend to be Brown apologists as well.

While in jail, Brown was kept isolated from other prisoners. He was alone for 23 of 24 hours. He spent his time reading about the history of England, the Iroquois and Ronald Reagan.

“It’s the next thing to the hole,” Brown said. “They wanted to see if they could break me.”

In response, Brown fasted until he passed out, losing more than 20 pounds in the process.

“I wanted to keep them off-balance,” Brown said. “It was interesting to see them come by every day and look at me.”

Lee spends much of the movie studying Brown’s family life. Brown’s son, Kevin, could only recall receiving one hug from his father.

“I heard them say things I never heard,” Brown said. “It educated me. It allowed me to reflect on things I could have done before.”

The 130-minute piece premiered in New York City in March and will air on HBO in December. Most HBO documentaries last 90 minutes, but Lee insists this version will be shown to viewers.

Lee’s documentary gives a comprehensive look at a complicated man. Brown aims to bring the world love, but he has at times failed to bring it to his family. He fights violence in the streets but has a history of it in his love life. Lee examines many aspects of Brown’s life, from the heroic to the tragic, and Brown emerges a hero. A tragic hero perhaps, but a hero nonetheless, both to Lee and the audience.

“If Jim felt this was going to be a suck-up piece he wouldn’t have done it,” Lee said. “A film is never going to be a 100-percent representation, but you try to get the essence of the person.”

Published on October 6, 2002 at 12:00 pm