‘The Burial’ stars Jamie Foxx as Stuart, Florida lawyer Willie Gary in Amazon Studios film

STUART − When Willie E. Gary in 1995 agreed to represent a Mississippi funeral business owner featured in the new movie “The Burial,” the famed Stuart attorney was grossing about $100 million a year suing major corporations as a self-described “Giant Killer,” media reports show.

“The Burial,” an Amazon Studios film released to limited theaters Oct. 6 and debuting on Prime Video Oct 13, tells the story of how Gary, then 48, helped Biloxi resident Jeremiah O'Keefe, 72, win a $500 million jury verdict after his funeral business was targeted by a Canadian funeral home corporation that was expanding into the United States.

The judgment, media outlets reported, was then one of the largest jury verdicts in U.S. history.

A decorated World War II Marine pilot and politician whose family had owned funeral homes since the early 1900s, O’Keefe hired Gary to represent him in a contract dispute that accused the Canadian Loewen Group Inc. and owner Ray Loewen of trying to run him out of business.

Jamie Foxx portrays Gary and Tommy Lee Jones appears as O’Keefe, in a “rousing David and Goliath” courtroom drama with a cast that includes Jurnee Smollett, Alan Ruck and Bill Camp as Loewen.

Directed by Maggie Betts, “The Burial” had its world premiere Sept. 11 at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Gary, who praised “The Burial” and Foxx’s performance, said he appears briefly in the film that runs 126 minutes.

“I thought I was on the moon,” recalled Gary, 76, about his cameo role while filming in New Orleans, Louisiana. “It was really amazing just to be with Jamie, the crowd and bright lights and all the surroundings.”

Gloria Gary, his wife since college, told him, “don’t let this go to the head,” he said.

“You’re a decent lawyer,” she told him, “but you’re not a Jamie Foxx.”

Foxx, he said, “nailed it big time” in taking on Gary’s “larger than life” persona in and out of the courtroom.

“Jamie Foxx is without a doubt, one of the best in the business,” Gary said.

Tommy Lee Jones “gave a star performance” and easily captured O’Keefe’s spirit, Gary added.

“He was Jerry O’Keefe all over again,” he said, “easy going, intelligent, put his foot down.”

‘Didn’t give up’ on movie dream

Based on a 1999 article in The New Yorker magazine, media reports show “The Burial” has been a film project in the works for nearly 30 years.

Shortly after CBS' "60 Minutes" produced a segment on Gary’s migrant-worker-to-wealthy-lawyer life story, the Stuart News in April 2001 reported that “The Burial” was attached to Warner Bros. to produce.

In the years in between, Gary said he doubted the project would ever happen.

“In the movie industry … you have so many people that you just have to have their stamp on it. And they're hard to please,” he said. “At one time, I just gave up on it, but they didn't give up on me. They didn't give up on “The Burial.” And now, I think you’re really going to like it.”

Gary, too, nearly turned down the career-defining case after O’Keefe traveled to Stuart in a pitch to hire him.

“I’ll never forget it,” he said. “I had made up my mind, he (O’Keefe) was a good guy, but the type of case wasn't … right, you know, a Willie Gary-type case.”

At this point in his career, Gary and his law firm were on the way to racking up multi-million-dollar jury awards against nationally recognized companies, including Disney, Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola, R.J. Reynolds, and Motorola, to name a few.

Often pictured in $3,000 Brioni suits, a diamond-studded ring and a $50,000 platinum Rolex, Gary during trials famously wore a $15 Mickey Mouse watch, gifted to him by a Lakeland church member after he spoke to the congregation.

O’Keefe first met Gary at his Stuart waterfront office − the once-historic Pelican Hotel where he’d worked as a dishwasher in his youth.

It was during dinner at his lavish home in Sewall’s Point that Gary agreed to take O’Keefe’s case, largely, he said, thanks to his wife.

“She said, ‘come in the house, I want you to meet your new client … Mr. O’Keefe is here.’ And I said, ‘but I turned that down,’’’ Gary recalled. “She said ‘well, you’re going to turn it around because you’re representing Mr. O’Keefe.’”

Gary then learned how O’Keefe had fought to improve race relations in Biloxi while serving as mayor from 1973 to 1981, which included once refusing the Ku Klux Klan a permit to march.

Taking on the Klan, Gary said, meant O’Keefe was “putting his family’s life on the line.”

“We were still going through some tough times in America with race relations,” Gary said. “My mom was worried about me taking that case … because it was right in the heart of Mississippi. Tough times everywhere, for sure with race relations.”

Gary, who became “like father and son” with the elder O’Keefe, said he came to “love the ground that Jerry walked on.”

“He was honest, he was fair, and he was a good man,” Gary said of O’Keefe, a father of 13 children who died in 2016.

“When he saw wrong, he tried to make it right. The color of your skin didn’t matter.”

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‘Long way from the cotton fields’

Representing O’Keefe was a huge win and “a chance to make a real difference,” Gary said.

“That you could bring Black people and white people closer together,” he said. “It's not all about the money; it's about justice.”

Gary too, hopes “The Burial” inspires young people to believe “you can be whatever you want to be.”

“If anybody had told me I'd be sitting here … getting ready to watch this on the big tube,” he said, “it’s a long, long way from the cotton fields of Georgia.”

He’d always hoped “The Burial” would be released while his mother Mary Gary was alive, he said. She died in 2009 at age 88.

“Her and my dad both worked sunup to sundown,” he said, “to give me a chance to go to school, go to college and ultimately helped me to get a law degree.”

One of 11 children, Gary was born in Eastman, Georgia and was raised in migrant farming communities in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. His family came to Indiantown from Pahokee in 1960 and they all worked cutting sugar cane and picking crops.

A football standout, Gary landed at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he attended on an athletic scholarship. He earned a law degree in 1974 from North Carolina Central University in Durham, North Carolina.

Gary returned to Florida with Gloria Gary, who helped him establish a law firm handling personal injury, wrongful death, medical malpractice, and class action cases.

Notable Willie Gary events

1992: The Garys purchased a 25,000-square-foot riverfront home in Sewall’s Point, which they sold for $5.2 million in May 2022, according to Martin County Property Appraiser records.

1995: The Gary mansion and collection of Rolls Royces and limousines were profiled on “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous with Robin Leach.”

1997: Gary began hosting lavish Christmas parties that regularly featured celebrity guests such as boxer Evander Holyfield, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and promoter Don King.

1999: President Bill Clinton on March 16 visited the Gary home during a $5,000-a-plate fundraiser for the Democratic National Convention.

2001: "Wings of Justice II," Gary’s Boeing 737 decorated with his initials on the tail fin, made its first landing at Witham Field, in Stuart.

2003: Pop superstar Michael Jackson and actor Chris Tucker on April 4 visited Gary's law office.  A Gary spokesperson told the Stuart News that Tucker was “a friend of Gary's and he brought Jackson along for the visit.”

Troublesome attention

Gary also has garnered publicity, sometimes notoriously so, related to his personal and professional conduct.

To his detractors, Gary said life is about weathering tough times and “trusting in God.”

“I've been told the tough times don't last, but tough people do,” he said.

2004: A circuit judge dismissed ethics complaints against Gary and a law partner brought by the Florida Bar for behavior during a 2001 trial pitting the late Roger Maris’ family against Anheuser-Busch. The complaints in part alleged they misrepresented evidence and staged a news conference to influence potential jurors.

2005: Gary was ordered to pay $28,000 a month in child support, to Diana Gowins, an Atlanta woman with whom he had a relationship and fathered her twin children.

2010: Three years after Gary had an intimate encounter with his former secretary Jillian Nedd, they agreed to drop a sexual battery lawsuit she filed against him following allegations in 2007 that he raped her at a Stuart hotel room. Gary was never charged with a crime.

The settlement came after a judge ruled that other women who had accused Gary of sexual misconduct could be deposed by Nedd’s lawyers. Gary had previously sued Nedd, her husband and another man with claims they were trying to extort $20 million to drop allegations of rape.

2013: In April, the Martin County Sheriff's Office seized $3.2 million worth of property from Gary’s home to satisfy a bank judgment. The property was returned the same day after Gary settled with the bank over unpaid loans.

Melissa E. Holsman is the legal affairs reporter for TCPalm and Treasure Coast Newspapers and is writer and co-host of "Uncertain Terms," a true-crime podcast. Reach her at  melissa.holsman@tcpalm.com. If you are a subscriber, thank you. If not, become a subscriber to get the latest local news on the Treasure Coast.

This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Jamie Foxx is Stuart, Florida attorney Willie Gary in new Amazon film