Column: Years in the making, the MLK movie ‘King Blvd’ arrives in a serious, lighthearted way

Some years ago I met a young man with a dream. His name was Earl Hardy and his dream was to make a film about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Not about the man, but about the streets that had been named in his honor after he was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 4, 1968.

Hardy, a native of Detroit, said the idea behind the film had come to him more than a decade ago when he was searching for a job after graduating from college. Many of his potential employers were...