While the FBI may have been recently up in arms over the controversial eco-thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline, their involvement and concern over Hollywood cinema is nothing new, as seen with Jules Dassin’s Uptight, a 1968 film about black militancy that the Federal Bureau of Investigation went so far as to plant informants on set for.
While not as remembered or celebrated as some of Jules Dassin’s other classics, its production history certainly qualifies it as among the most interesting, especially given that Uptight (sometimes stylized with a provocative exclamation point at the end) was not originally supposed to be as pointed of a statement as it would later become.
So, what exactly was it about the film that had the FBI so concerned from day one?…
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