In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, entrepreneur and filmmaker Nick Loeb spoke about his new movie Roe v. Wade, which premiered last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando. The film, which will be available on demand starting April 2, dramatizes the events leading up to the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision on abortion.
Loeb (pictured) — who co-directed, produced, wrote, and acted in the movie — told Breitbart News’ Jerome Hudson at CPAC that the movie provides an “inside view” of the case and the people behind it, including Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren E. Burger (Oscar winner Jon Voight) and Justice William J. Brennan (Robert Davi).
“I think it’s really interesting for the general public to get an inside view of how the justices made their decisions and how they argued and how they debated — especially when picking Supreme Court justices has become so visceral in the last several decades,” he said.
Loeb, 45, said he was pro-choice growing up but changed his views as an adult.
“I grew up in a very liberal environment in New York,” he said. “I was taught when a woman gets pregnant it’s just a clump of cells, and there’s no real baby there, and the baby doesn’t come in until five, six, seven months when it kicks. I didn’t really know. And so I was pro-choice.”
“But I was involved in abortions myself in my 20s and it really had haunted me and throughout my life,” he added. “I went through a conversion in my 30s and became pro-life.”
Loeb said he was drawn to playing the movie’s protagonist, Dr. Bernard Nathanson — an abortionist who became one of the country’s leading pro-life activists — because they both experienced personal conversions.
“It was really a reflection of my life. I wasn’t an abortionist and I’m not a doctor. But I went through a very similar journey that Bernard had,” he said.
Loeb said he initially did not intend to direct the movie but decided to share the helm with co-writer Cathy Allyn after they conducted extensive research on the case.
“We ended up realizing no one was going to be able to truly portray every scene, and decorate every set, and costume every actor, and really direct each actor in a way where we understood them,” he said.
One of the movie’s main characters is Dr. Mildred Jefferson (Stacey Dash), the first African-American woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School.
“What I find interesting is that most black historical figures that have broken milestones have been revered and famous in history. But no one’s ever heard of Dr. Mildred Jefferson. Why? Because she was pro-life,” he said. “Her whole mission was to make abortion illegal because she felt it was going to destroy the black population in America.”
“The black vote has been disenfranchised in this country by abortion,” he added.
Roe v. Wade is set to debut on demand April 2 on iTunes, Amazon, and other platforms. Special and virtual screenings for church groups and other organizations are also available.
Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at dng@breitbart.com
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