Hello all, I’m a fan of well made historically based films, especially biographies. I’ve often been somewhat disappointed with Hollywood (arent we all) with the subjects of these biopics, and often thought of who I’d love to see a well made, accurate movie based on. I was interested in other Doper’s opinions/picks, and here are a few of my own.
George Armstrong Custer/Sitting Bull. If I were to write the screenplay, I’d make it a sort of dual life story. One depicts Custer, last in his class at West Point, daring cavalry officer, later in life driven by madness and an obsessive love of his wife. Showing his disregard for his own safety, his flamboyant fashion sense, etc. Mirror that with the life of Sitting Bull. Show how he earned his name (great story in itself), show life inside the Lakota warrior society, show normal Lakota life at the time with settlers and other tribes encroaching on them, etc. Then depict Sitting Bull’s vision about the outcome of the Battle of Little Bighorn.
Make it as cold and real as possible, not favoring either side of the conflict. Great battle scenes contrasting Native American battle strategy and US Army cavalry strategy could be had. Movie would span from perhaps the beginning of their lives to the fateful day they meet.
A great first scene in the movie could be the victory parade celebrating the end of the Civil War in which President Lincoln was stunned at seeing Custer ride his horse way ahead of the pack and back through the columns of soldiers again in his altered cavalry officer’s uniform and his long curly blond hair flying back in the wind. Contrast that with a young Sitting Bull calmly sitting in the middle of a battle, smoking his pipe with bullets and arrows flying all around him - showing each man’s fearlessness in a way that also shows their very different personalities.
Other subjects I’d love to see covered:
-Nikolai Tesla
-William Sidis (boy genius who burned out very young, died at 46)
I’ve been thinking about a biopic of Linus Pauling for awhile now. I’d start it just before he won his Nobel in Chemistry and end it shortly after he won the Nobel Peace Prize. I’d ignore the Vitamin C stuff, or make that a separate movie.
Sir Richard Burton – Mountains of the Moon is good, but there’s a huge amount more to his life than the explorations of East Africa – there’s his pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, his time in India, his trip to Salt Lake City, his ambassadorship, and his founding of the Kama Shastra Society at the height of the Victorian era. The Emporer Julian – you could base it on Gore Vidal’s Julian, though you don’t have to. Lots of material there. Benjamin Franklin – there was a TV mini-series at the time of the Bicentenniel that seems to have dropped oiut of sight, but I don’t think even that covered enough.
Franklin was a weird guy with far-ranging interests and immense influence. He wrote a book on swimming, in his youth. His publications were so successful that he was able to retire young. His work on electricity alone guaranteed him a place in history, even if he had died before the Revolution (he also invented the Glass Harmonica, the Franklin Stove, and Bifocals). His son was the Royal Governor of New Jersey (why do we never hear anything about Franklin’s common-law wife Deborah Read, effectively married to him for over 45 years? Heck, even I had to look her name up just now). His public works included founding a Fire Company and a Library, long before being involved in the Revolution.
And there’s that whole kite-in-a-thunderstorm thing that’s not usually properly understood.
Jimi Hendrix has a story that could be a great movie, but no idea how you’d film the actor playing guitar. It’s not even like Tom Hulce mimicking Mozart in Amadeus.
The Stones have enough drama to fill a Tennesee Williams play - and how about Fleetwood Mac - but you’d have to decide which one: the original formed by Clapton-replacement, blues genius and acid-casualty Peter Green, which saw 3 guitarists go 'round the bend, the interim FM with Bob Welch, or the blockbuster version with much bed-hopping, divorce and cocaine?
I’m going in a slightly different direction here but let me nominate 15th United States President James Buchanan.
An enormously successful lawyer and politician who functioned at the highest levels of politics for two decades. He campaigned for the presidential nomination in 1844, 1848, 1852 and finally got it in 1956.
But he wasn’t able to rise to the times in which he found himself as President. His presidency featured Dred Scott and Bloody Kansas in a background of growing rage in both north and south. And he was perceived by no one as providing the leadership to smooth things over. In his final address to Congress, following Lincoln’s election, he maintained that states did not have the right to secede but also that the federal government did not have the right to stop him.
It would be a pic that allows for a real examination of the times immediately preceding what is likely the most overexamined piece of American history. It could also show how Lincoln was mostly a nobody on the national scene in contrast to Buchanan, Breckenridge and the other higher-level players of the day.
Has there been a straightforward Hitler biopic yet? Plenty of movies have dealt with specific events in his life, but he’s not usually the central character in them. A lot of people feel that depiction equals endorsement at some level, but he’s kind of the most pivotal character of the last century and this is a glaring omission.
There’s a (young) Teddy Roosevelt biopic supposedly coming out this year - with DiCaprio as Teddy, which makes me a little :dubious: though I thought he was okay as Howard Hughes.
well, he was certainly the central character in Hitler: The Last Ten Days, with Alec Guiness (!) playing Der Fuehrer. But that was a pretty limited period.
Once, long time ago when I was active member of TriggerStreet.com, I read a screenplay named Cortes after famous Spanish conquistador and remember feeling really good about it. It did contain lot of gory details about the man and events and I’ve been waiting for the movie ever since. Still nothing… but at least Neil Young has it all down in a 5 minute song.
Yes, I’ve read about that as well… I hope that Scorsese finishes the Hughes story in covering his final, weirdest years. Throughout The Aviator, the film keeps alluding to this period with those odd flash forward sequences, and Hughes’ comment about liking the desert because it’s “hot, but it’s clean”. During this period he bought several of the casinos from the Mafia, bought the largest TV station, etc… Plus the film could show just how doped up his handlers had him towards the end of his life.
Great responses everyone, thanks for responding to a rookie’s question and keep 'em coming.
and keep 'em coming.