Director Thomas Carter has created numerous stories over the years about the struggle to achieve one’s best. His emotionally moving feature film debut, Swing Kids (1993), about German youths who choose to resist the rise of National Socialism, was the subject of one of my first movie reviews. Carter’s Coach Carter (no relation) was one of 2005’s best pictures—a standout sports movie with a great lead performance by Samuel L. Jackson—and, whether portraying an intelligent athlete in CBS’ high school series, The White Shadow, or directing a dance-themed interracial romance (Save the Last Dance), he thrives on tackling material that emphasizes man’s virtues. His new television movie for cable’s TNT, a medical drama sponsored by Johnson & Johnson, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story, starring Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Kimberly Elise, is no exception. Thomas Carter tells me about his latest work in this exclusive new interview.
