I recently read American Colonies, by Alan Taylor, in which I learned some interesting new facts about the old pirates of the Caribbean:
In the 17th Century, the line between pirates and privateers was often blurry. In fact, the line between pirates and the Royal Navy was sometimes blurry. See the career of Captain Morgan, who was knighted and at one point was the acting governor of Jamaica.
There was a class-war aspect to piracy. In a day when both military and merchant sea captains had the power to treat their crew like slaves, pirates were rebels against the system. When they captured a ship, they sometimes put the captain on trial, and killed or spared him based on whether his crew testified their treatment under his command had been curel or kind. On the pirates’ own ships, the captain usually was elected.
And there was an anarchistic aspect. In a rigidly stratified society of masters-and-men, pirates took the chance to break out and prosper on their own terms. Of course, they could do that only by preying on others, and no matter how you romaticize it, piracy is nothing but armed robbery on the high seas.
Based on this, I would like to see a realistic Pirates-of-the-Caribbean movie.
I would also like to see a Vietnam War movie with only Vietnamese characters, or at least main characters. No doubt they make such in Vietnam if there is any film industry at all there, I don’t know if there is, but I mean a Hollywood treatment. Every Vietnam War movie I’ve ever seen is about the Americans; Vietnamese, if they appear as defined characters at all, are only supporting cast. I’d like to see a movie (in English or in Vietnamese-with-subtitles, doesn’t matter) in which some of the lead characters are Viet Cong; and some are North Vietnamese regular army; and some are ARVN troops and officers; and maybe some Americans as background characters. It’s the Vietnamese’ civil war, after all; let’s see what it’s all about to them.
Oh, and a Korean War movie with similar treatment.
Here’s another: The Haitian Revolution. Not a simple case of revolt-against-tyranny, but a complex multi-sided affair, involving slaves, free black gens de coleur, white French creoles, and the Revolutionary, later the Napoleonic, government back in France, all making shifting alliances with each other in their own perceived interests. And all sides acting sometimes with astonishing brutality.
I’d also like to see a biopic of Oliver Cromwell. I don’t think there’s ever been one. In fact, the only film I’ve ever seen set during the English Civil War/Commonwealth is the Vincent Price film The Witchfinder General, aka The Conqueror Worm. No doubt there are others I don’t know of; still, such an exciting and pivotal period in history should get a lot more Hollywood attention than it has gotten. Come on, we’ve had more than enough American Civil War movies!
There was one - a 1970 film by the name of Cromwell, starring Richard Harris as the title character and Alec Guinness as Charles I. I’ve never seen it, but I understand it wasn’t very good.
Perhaps this may be too unPC to ever get made, but I’ve long thought that an interesting documentary might be made about the “bad guys” of the civil rights movement - sort of an anti-Eyes On The Prize. I don’t mean the truly evil ones, like James Earl Ray or the men who murdered Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner, but the members of White Citizen’s Councils and the protesters at Central High. It would be interesting to find out why they were so afraid, and so angry, and to learn how they have accomodated the changes of the past 60 years, and if what they so feared has come to pass.
A fictional movie flirted with the idea, many years ago - Betrayed, with Debra Winger and Tom Berenger. Berenger was a leader of a violent white supremacist group, and Winger was the FBI agent who went undercover to investigate him (and fell in love, natch). I was impressed that although the white supremacists were clearly the villains, the movie took the time to show that their hatred was born of poverty, fear and lack of control over their lives. You understood why they fell into the mistaken belief that the cause of all their problems were the blacks and the Jews. I think the filmmaker must have read Howard Cash’s The Mind of the South, which is still one of the best explorations and explanations of Southern attitudes to race that’s ever been written.
There was a 1970 biopic called (unsurprisingly) Cromwell starring Richard Harris in the title role and Alec Guinness as Charles I. It played pretty fast and loose with the facts though. Also, there’s 2003’s To Kill a Kingwith Tim Roth as Cromwell but I don’t think that was released in the US.
I’m probably only suggesting this because it’s of regional interest but I think an interesting movie could be made about the events leading up to the Whitman Massacre and resulting Cayuse War.
Charlemagne. One of the most famous men in western history and I know little more about him than his name and his part in Christianity in Europe. The little I know is fascinating. I’m sure it would be a very interesting movie.
Related to Cromwell, I’d like to see a well done movie about the Irish sent to the New World as slaves.
A miniseries ala Band of Brothers or (the far lesser imo) The Pacific set during The Civil War.
A miniseries remake of Gone With the Wind that follows the book more closely and includes the many great characters omitted from the movie.
A good movie about the Mormon settlement of Utah that’s done as objectively as possible (i.e. no hagiographic treatment of Brigham Young or Joseph Smith such as in the *The Work & The Glory *movies or over-the-top Mormon bashing as in September Dawn).
I think a Roots type miniseries would be great that traces one family over many generations and events. It would be particularly interesting to make it a multiracial family. My treatment would be that since many American Indians were matrilineal the original heroine should be an Indian woman in Virginia at the time of Jamestown who has a child with a colonist and whose descendants include a black slave, a white planter class woman, and a native. (It would be necessary of course to skip many years ahead- possibly whole generations at time- a baby at the end of one episode may have aged to an old woman at the beginning of the next- but could still be epic.)
In his Cartoon History of the Modern World I, Larry Gonick suggest a great film could be made about the wild, weird, lawless Peruvian silver-mining town of Potosi in the 16th Century. “It’s Gangs of New York in the Wild West at high altitude on cocaine with mercury poisoning . . .”
I once saw a RW screed about LW bias in Hollywood, titled, Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant. But, actually, Hitler is Hollywood’s favorite tyrant, in terms of films featuring him. I can’t recall a single Hollywood production about the Cuban Revolution. (And, no, The Godfather, Part II doesn’t count; neither does 13 Days.) Might be interesting, if it’s done from the POV of the Cubans, and Cubans on both sides.
The explorer Richard Burton could fuel a great miniseries- or, in the wrong hands, a suicidally boring one. In addition to Mecca and the Nile he met everyone- sheikhs, religious leaders, heads of state, writers, etc…
The life of Charles Dickens is also good fodder, particularly if told as a parody of A Christmas Carol in which the spirits visit him ca. 1860 (as he’s snugging into bed with his teenaged mistress) and show him his childhood, his salad days, happy days with his wife, rise, not so happy days, and future.
Let’s have some Commie stuff! I don’t think there’s ever been a Hollywood movie about the Paris Commune, short-lived as it was; nor any about the Spanish Civil War that wasn’t based on Hemingway. And the only American films about the Russian Revolution I’ve seen are Reds, which is told from the POV of Americans only marginally involved, and Doctor Zhivago, mostly from the POV of Russians unwillingly involved. I’ve never seen Kerensky or Lenin or Trotsky developed as a Hollywood character.
And, of course, Mao’s Long March is epic material!
Not a miniseries, but there has already been Mountains of the Moon. (But, for some reason, Elizabeth Taylor does not appear even as a minor character.)
Has there ever been a movie (or at least a good one) about the Gunpowder Plot? That would make a great movie.
Another one would be the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the ensuing destruction of Pompeii. There is an hour-long BBC docudrama about it that was really good but a full theatrical film would be great.
This one may exist already and I don’t know it, but I would also be interested in seeing one made about John Wilkes Booth and his final days. Like starting with the assassination and following him and his co-conspirators up to his death.
There have been several film adaptations of The Last Days of Pompeii, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1834). But I just read the more recent Pompeii, by Robert Harris, and it’s a fast-moving story with great film potential, and features Pliny the Elder as a main character.