[Cuba Gooding Jr. Actor:] Sign up, you have shiny boots, a uniform. And that would be the end of 100 years of bigotry. You're colored men in a white man's army. It's a miracle you're flying fighters in Italy and not mopping latrines in Milwaukee.
[Morgan:] That's Cuba Gooding Jr. in "Red Tiles," the extraordinary story of the Tuskegee Airmen heroes in World War II. They were the first ever black U.S military pilots. Joining me now is Cuba Gooding Jr. and his co-star, Terrence Howard. Welcome, gentlemen. I love this story. Because what I love about it are the parallels to actually the making of this movie.
[Gooding Jr:] Right.
[Morgan:] Because here you had George Lucas, a very famous, very white, Hollywood legend.
[Terrence Howard, Actor:] Has a little bit of a tan.
[Morgan:] With a tan, almost playing the role of this very brave colonel, Noel Parish, in the movie, who decides to break the mold, to put black pilots into the military, into the air. George Lucas I think, Terrence, you've said this very eloquently recently about this movie the parallel is similar. He's put a lot of well-known black actors into this movie and Hollywood instinctively was like this isn't going to work. And he's saying, I'm going to back my judgment. I'm going to back my money. I believe this will work. Exactly the same kind of audacious move that Colonel Noel Parish took. When you made the movie, did you feel that, as you were making it, that this was life coming forward? In a different way, but a similar kind of struggle?
[Howard:] One of the things that he said when he first arrived in Prague, he said, remember, I'm not making a civil rights movie right here. I'm making a film about heroes. This is not about victims. This is a film about heroes. That was what he impressed us with.
[Gooding Jr:] It's an action movie with an all black cast, you know. And it is there's an audience for it.
[Morgan:] But that shouldn't matter, should it? Why are we still saying things like that? There's a black president, for God sakes.
[Gooding Jr:] That's right.
[Morgan:] Why would that even come into the equation? But it has. And the battle goes on. The movie's coming out. It's a 58 million dollar movie.
[Gooding Jr:] Oh, it's more than that. Visually, it has 16,000 visual effect shots in it, OK. It's a huge budget.
[Morgan:] Cuba, tell me what you feel about George Lucas in doing this.
[Gooding Jr:] I would kiss him right in the mouth. I'd be one man kissing another man right in his mouth. I'm serious.
[Morgan:] A big thing for this man to do.
[Howard:] What he lent himself to I mean this was a 23-year-old 23-year passion project.
[Gooding Jr:] That's right.
[Howard:] And then after making this film and taking it to the first studio and then they say no, he goes to the other six studios and hears the same thing.
[Morgan:] For people watching this who haven't seen the movie and don't know much about the Tuskegee Airmen, tell me, in a very short way, why they are so important.
[Gooding Jr:] They're so important because they represent African-American's contribution to the war efforts of World War II. They did bomber bomber escort over the skies of Berlin.
[Howard:] And they ultimately had their own bomber squadron.
[Morgan:] But the significance was, until they went up, there had been no black U.S. military pilots.
[Gooding Jr:] At all.
[Howard:] Ultimately this led to the integration of the U.S. military.
[Gooding Jr:] That's right. They kicked off the civil rights movement.
[Howard:] What was so good the Tuskegee Airmen, whereas most white pilots, they would have three months of training before they would be shipped out into the middle of a fight. But the black pilots, they didn't have anyone that would take them. So they had 2.5 years of training.
[Gooding Jr:] Years.
[Howard:] So the moment that they got into the air, they were aces.
[Morgan:] They shot down 100 German planes.
[Gooding Jr:] That's right.
[Howard:] Mind you, they didn't go into the war thinking they didn't go into school thinking, I'm going to become a pilot. They went to school to become doctors or lawyers. They just happened to, for the sake of contributing to the country decided to become pilots and happened to be marvelous
[Morgan:] Let's watch another clip from this remarkable film.
[Unidentified Male:] We count our victories by the bombers we get to their targets, by the husbands we return to their wives, by the fathers we give back to their children. What has not changed, what will never change, from the last plane to the last bullet to the last minute to the last man we fight, we fight.
[Crowd:] Yes, sir.
[Morgan:] That's "Red Tails." I hope everyone goes to watch this, because I think it's important they do. Does it shock you that Hollywood is still so antiquated? I would say even borderline racist in the way that it has treated this movie so far? Is it shocking?
[Howard:] No, it's par it's par for the course. Anytime you're trying to change barriers, break barriers, you know, and break a fiduciary established means of trading money or saying who should receive money
[Morgan:] I guess in the case of this movie, an excuse to not take the risk.
[Gooding Jr:] That's exactly right.
[Morgan:] And the easy excuse is we can't sell a black movie. Let's be honest, that's what they're basically saying.
[Gooding Jr:] Because no matter what color you are, being American is cool. It really is cool. And our history these boys explained how something like a Barack Obama President Barack Obama can happen. A lot of time we were saying this earlier
[Morgan:] Actually, I'll tell you what, hold that very thought. Let's have a quick break and come back and talk about Barack Obama. Because his anointment as president of this country should have been an incredible transformatory move. Was it? That's what I want to know after the break.