The Nate Parker whispers started at Sundance — before 'The Birth of a Nation' premiere

LOS ANGELES -- I no longer recall who told me at the Sundance Film Festival back in January to look into Nate Parker's past -- but it was definitely before the world premiere of The Birth of a Nation, which went on to win the audience award, the jury prize, a record $17.5 million bid from Fox Searchlight and subsequent Oscar buzz.

But I do remember, in the broadest terms, what that person said: "This is going to be a problem for him."

What they were referring to -- allegations of rape from an incident in 1999, when Parker was a wrestler at Penn State -- wasn't hard to find. It's right there on his Wikipedia page. It's been covered in the media before. And I'm sure I wasn't the only journalist to start digging for court documents, which detailed a late-night encounter with an 18-year-old freshman student on Aug. 21, 1999.

The woman testified that she was drunk to the point of being unconscious when Parker, whom she had only recently met, brought her to his place and started having sex with her before inviting his roommate to do the same. That man was Jean Celestin, who would later become the co-writer of Birth of a Nation, which Parker directs and stars in.

Both men claimed that the woman was awake for the encounter, and that it was clearly consensual. Parker had sex with her before, and again the next morning.

The jury ultimately decided that she was not unconscious, and Parker was acquitted. Celestin was convicted but later granted a new trial on grounds that his defense was incompetent; when the woman declined to testify again, his conviction was vacated.

Fast-forward 17 years, to the afternoon of Monday, Jan. 25, at the Eccles Theatre in Park City, Utah.

And along came fame

The Birth of a Nation, Parker's passion project seven years in the making, had just unspooled for the first time -- and the audience was on its feet in thunderous applause. With everything going on in the world and another #OscarsSoWhite looming, the cinematic telling of Nat Turner's Rebellion was the hottest thing in Hollywood.

Nate Parker at the "The Birth Of A Nation" premiere on January 25, 2016. Credit: George Pimentel/Getty Images for Sundance Film Festival

The next morning, according to my Gmail timestamp, those court documents arrived while I was riding a festival shuttle. My stop came and went; I stayed onboard to finish reading the transcripts and talk with my editors. For reasons I will not dive into deeply here, we decided not to include the allegations in our reporting about Parker -- but that if I had a chance to speak with him, that I would steel myself to ask him about it.

Parker, suddenly the most in-demand person in Park City, declined an interview with Mashable. Those outlets that were granted time with him either chose not to ask, or didn't know about the allegations.

And so it went for seven months, until Friday, when the Hollywood trade blog Deadline published a highly detailed account of the case, complete with a sit-down interview with Parker, who addressed the allegations thusly:

I was cleared of everything, of all charges. I’ve done a lot of living, and raised a lot of children. I’ve got five daughters and a lovely wife. My mom lives here with me; I brought her here. I’ve got four younger sisters ... Women have been such an important part of my life. I try, every day, to be a better father to my daughters, and a better husband.

The post, by former New York Times reporter and recent Deadline addition Michael Cieply, is more than 4,000 words -- most of it Parker speaking about The Birth of a Nation and why he set about making it. It does not disclose whether Fox Searchlight executives knew about the allegations before spending a record amount to acquire the film at Sundance.

Though Searchlight did not respond to Mashable's request for comment Monday, Variety reported that Searchlight executives were not aware -- and only learned about the trial when reports "started to trickle out on smaller blogs," a revelation that had them "scrambling to deal with the aftermath."

(That may mean walking back ambitious plans for a 1,500-screen opening weekend that was to include a roadshow at churches and colleges including Parker. It could also mean another edit of the film, which was already cut down from its Sundance version, to remove a suggested rape scene that is not part of the historically accepted Nat Turner story.)

That media "scramble" included a two-hour interview with Variety conducted two days before the Deadline piece was published Friday. Variety hustled its version up later that day, but for whatever reason, the sister publications -- both are housed in the same building in west Los Angeles -- did not work in concert.

Did Searchlight know what it was getting into? Would a quick Google scan have brought The Birth of a Nation's asking price back down to earth? Someone at the 12 Years a Slave distributor would certainly like us to think so. But obviously the story was on the wind at Sundance, and it was easy enough to substantiate.

So what took we, the media, so long to bring this to the light?

Without a clear incentive or news peg, and considering that Parker was acquitted outright and Celestin was cleared of old allegations that were sitting there in plain sight for two decades -- not to mention the early celebration of Nation, its critical reception and the motivation behind it -- maybe it's not so hard to imagine why no one wanted to be the first to blink.

And, as we knew we eventually would be, here we are.

Parker has spoken his piece, but now every story about his film, no matter how laudatory, will include a mention of the allegations, and through a modern prism. The seal has been broken.

Disclosure: I met Parker at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival more than four years ago, when I moderated a panel for the film Arbitrage, in which he had a supporting part. We spoke before and after the panel and again during the festival, and later interacted on Twitter. Parker was polite and professional, and I was rooting for The Birth of a Nation in the run-up to Sundance. I do not believe that weighed on Mashable's decision not to cover these allegations before today.