Biloxi audience cheers Jamie Foxx & Tommy Lee Jones in new Amazon movie ‘The Burial’

Premiere Lux cinema in Biloxi was filled Tuesday with people who knew Jeremiah “Jerry” O’Keefe and some who had a front row seat to his lawsuit against a funeral home conglomerate, as portrayed in the new movie “The Burial.”

The movie stars Oscar Award winners Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones and will be streaming starting Friday on Amazon Prime Video.

The audience at the special screening munched popcorn, laughed at every bit of humor in the sometimes intense drama and enthusiastically applauded as the credits rolled.

Seeing a movie when you knew the main character is somewhat unnerving, especially seeing Jerry O’Keefe without his distinguishing shock of white hair.

How would O’Keefe, who died in 2016, feel about Jones portraying him on the big screen?

“He would be flattered,” said Coast resident Bill Holmes after watching the movie.

His son Jeffrey O’Keefe said, “My father really wasn’t all that jazzed up about the Hollywood thing.”

He signed over the rights to the story a year after the 1995 trial to Bobby Shriver, nephew of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy and brother of Maria Shriver.

Oscar contender?

“Never settle,” was the premise of the movie inspired by the lawsuit filed by O’Keefe, the South Mississippi funeral home owner and two-term mayor of Biloxi against a Canadian company that was the largest funeral home and burial insurance provider in North America. O’Keefe was facing financial troubles and trying to save his family business when he agreed to sell three of his funeral homes to Loewen, the deal never closed and O’Keefe sued, originally for $6 million.

The lawsuit was filed in Hinds County and the trial was held in Jackson with an African-American judge and a largely Black jury.

O’Keefe hired “charismatic, smooth-talking” Willie E. Gary, a Black attorney from Florida who had never represented a white man before. The opposing attorney also was Black and a determined woman.

Gary flies in on his private airplane “Wings of Justice” to save O’Keefe’s family business. The trial proves to be more challenging than he expected, and the performance by Foxx is so passionate, the jury and the movie audience are pulling for him to win for O’Keefe, the World War II ace, the small business owner, the former mayor who denied a permit by the Klu Klux Klan to parade in Biloxi, the father of 13.

“I think Amazon is very hopeful this could be an Oscar Award winner,” O’Keefe said. and the early reviews are promising.

Race or more

At one point in the movie the attorney is asked if the lawsuit is about race.

It is. It’s also about the relationship that develops between O’Keefe and Gary, big business vs. family business, O’Keefe’s honor and principals vs. an unscrupulous operator concerned only with profits.

“I thought it was great,” said former Biloxi Councilman Bill Stallworth, now director of the Hope Community Development Agency in Biloxi. What is portrayed in the movie is what happened in his community for a long time, he said. He remembers as a child, people would knock on the door selling burial insurance. No matter how much families bought, he said, it was never enough.

“For me it was just a part of life in the Black community,” he said and Stallworth said he was glad to see the big business owner got his comeuppance in the end.

What happened?

One word — “No” — delivered with contempt, changed the course of the trial and the film.

The amount the jury awarded O’Keefe was shocking, and even on appeal, left O’Keefe and his attorneys with a fortune.

The O’Keefe Foundation was created and the windfall was used to provide Meals on Wheels, for Catholic Charities, children with disabilities and to address African American issues, Jeff O’Keefe said. When Jerry O’Keefe’s wife Annette died, his father made a major donation to the George Ohr organization, leading to the group ultimately renaming its planned museum, the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, in her honor.

The family continues the Bradford-O’Keefe Funeral Homes O’Keefe fought to pass down to them.

To find out what happened to the Canadian firm, you’ll have to watch the movie.

Look for Ocean Springs actor Summer Selby, who portrays Gary’s mother in the film, and a cameo appearance by attorney Willie Gary at the end of the film. He remained friends with O’Keefe until O’Keefe died.

Fact vs. fiction

The movie is inspired by the actual event but “lots of liberties were taken” to make it more entertaining by director Maggie Betts, who co-wrote the screenplay with Doug Wright.

“She wanted to jazz it up,” O’Keefe said. He told the audience before the movie began, “Just know this is not a documentary.”

Here are some of the things to know about the actual events vs. the movie version of O’Keefe’s story:

▪ The movie was filmed in New Orleans but the lawsuit action took place on the Coast and in Jackson.

▪ Biloxi attorney Michael Cavanaugh, not Mike Allred, was O’Keefe’s personal and corporate attorney for 30 years. Cavanaugh wasn’t portrayed in the movie. “I lived it,” he said at Tuesday’s screening.

▪ The O’Keefe family’s personal finances were never under duress, and ending cable service as a cost-cutting measure was something added to the movie plot.

▪ O’Keefe did not take an additional mortgage on the family home to pay his attorneys, as depicted in the movie.

▪ The size of the verdict in O’Keefe vs. Loewen came as a surprise to all sides, according to the website, and the Loewen Group was cited for antitrust violations in other states before and after the O’Keefe trial.

▪ Ray Loewen never met face-to-face with O’Keefe to discuss settlement and O’Keefe never rejected an offer of $75 million, nor did he seek to put the Loewen Group out of business.

The scene at the end of the movie that shows Gary and O’Keefe sitting on the courthouse steps was created for the movie and didn’t happen after the actual trial. O’Keefe was jubilant after the trial, not glum, as depicted in the movie, the webiste that provides facts vs. fiction says. But the fictional version makes for a dramatic end to the movie.