Brolin Hoping To Bring Great Speeches To The Big Screen

The W star admits he has always been fascinated with the speeches of great Americans, from presidents to civil rights leaders, like Martin Luther King, Jr. - and now he's hoping to turn the star-studded readings into a motion picture event.

The People Speak is based on an idea from activists Anthony Arnove and Howard Zinn.

He explains, "Anthony and Howard created live performances of some of the speeches that have been taken out of people's history in the United States; some anonymous and some are famous from John Brown, which is the speech I perform, to Martin Luther King.

"We created something at the Majestic Theater in Boston and had Viggo Mortensen, Danny Glover, David Strathairn, Marisa Tomei and had 19 cameras film that. We did another one at the Malibu Performing Arts Center. I got Sean (Penn) to do that, Eddie Vedder, Taj Mahal, Pink, Benjamin Bratt, and Don Cheadle.

"I'm very proud of this. We have 96 hours of film that we're cutting together and I met with nine cable networks in New York and everybody is very excited about it."