Especially if John Goodman starred as Linda Tripp!
My hometown of Buffalo had a serial killer called the “.22-caliber killer” in the early 1980s that grabbed headlines in the early 1980s, but is all but forgotten now. I always thought that’d make a good movie.
For the grisly details:
http://www.francesfarmersrevenge.com/stuff/serialkillers/christopher.htm
Michael Weisser, I think you mean.
I’d like to see a movie about Amadeo Peter “A.P.” Giannini. On 18 April 1906, San Francisco was rocked by an earthquake; in the following days, the world of banking was rocked by A.P.
Born in San Jose in 1870, A.P. was son of a pair of Italian immigrants. When he was seven years old, his father was killed while fighting over a dollar. At 14, he left school to join his step-father in the produce business and was made a partner in five years. He stayed there until he was 31.
The Columbus Savings & Loan Society, a bank in the predominately Italian neighborhood of North Beach, asked A.P. to join their board. A.P. agreed but soon learned that he was little more than a token Italian. This was a time that banks had virtually no interest in helping the working class; businessmen and the wealthy were preferred customers. A.P. tried to change these policies from within but was soundly rebuffed. In 1904, he opened his own bank in a converted saloon across the streed from CS&L. The saloon’s bartender was kept on as an assistant teller.
A.P. went door-to-door and into the street to promote deposits and loans, as well as to edcuate the locals on how a bank works. The rest of the banking community was appaled.
On that infamous April morning, A.P. went to what was left of his bank, secretly loaded $2 million in gold, coins and securities into a cart, put a layer of vegetables on top of that, then headed home. A few days later, while other banks remained shuttered, A.P. set up shop on the docks. He made a desk out of a wooden plank and two barrels then extended credit to small business and individuals in need of money to rebuild their lives.
A.P. also had his hands in Hollywood. A loan from him helped start United Artists and paid for part of Disney’s Snow White.
A.P. retired from banking in 1930, moved to Europe, then returned to run his bank when it changed focus during the Depression. In 1932, he again went door-to-door to drum up support during a proxy fight. Disdaining great wealth, A.P. often worked for little pay. A surprise bonus of $1.5 million ended up being donated to the University of California. A.P. Giannini was 79 and worth less than $500,000 when he died.
And that bank of his? Originally called The Bank of Italy, in 1928 he aquired a New York City property by the name of Bank of America.
I read about Giannini in a book about the 1906 quake. Quite a character he was.
Thanks! I never noticed how I messed that up. Proofread, always proofread.
I think one could make a good movie about Joshua A. Norton, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico.
Joshua Norton was born in England in 1819 and moved to San Francisco in 1849. He was wealthy when he arrived, but blew his fortune when he tried to corner the market on rice. He disappeared from public life until September 17, 1859, when he sent a message to the San Francisco Bulletin declaring himself to be Emperor of the United States. The paper printed it. From that point on, the citizens of San Francisco humored Norton, treating him as if he were actually emperor. Newspapers would print his proclamations, which included the dissolution of Congress and the banning of the Democratic and Republican parties. He would print his own bank notes, which some businesses actually honored. Restaurants would allow him to dine for free. He was once allowed to dine with a visiting king (of Sweden, if I remember right), who was told about Emperor Norton and treated the Emperor as an equal.
With all of his screwy behavior and semi-official mooching, Emperor Norton would do something right once in a while. For example, he once saved a group of Chinese immigrants from a band of anti-Chinese vigilantes by standing between the two groups and reciting the Lord’s Prayer until the vigilantes dispersed. He also had the idea of building a bridge connecting Oakland with San Francisco (some Bay Area residents want to rename the Bay Bridge to be the Emperor Norton Bridge).
It’s unclear whether Norton was really crazy, or just crazy like a fox.
I would be played by Yunjin Kim and Mrs. Six by Linda Park.
1812 would make a wonderful non-fiction novel for tv miniseries.
The life story of Paul Revere. He did so much more than just pass on some information about the route the British were taking.
I nominate the worst maritime disaster in U.S. history. No, there hasn’t been a movie about it (that I know of) – it wasn’t the Titanic, it was the Sultanta, a Mississippi River steamboat that in April 1865, packed to many times its capacity with 2400 passengers, mostly former Union P.O.W.s released from Andersonville, Cahaba, and other Confederate camps, exploded and sank near Memphis, killing approximately 1700.
There’s wonderful material for a lightly fictionalized treatment of the story in Donald Harington’s book Let Us Build Us a City: Eleven Lost Towns (though in some ways it’s almost too close to Titanic, which it predates by a dozen years or so).
It wasn’t the “Sultanta” either, but the “Sultana”; how I can preview twice and still miss that I’ll never know.
•A movie about the Soviet space program and moonshot program, a la The Right Stuff. It might end with the explosion of the N1 booster that severely damaged the Russians’ launch facilities.
•The Zeppelin raids on London in WWI.
•The story of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance of 1856. With graphic onscreen hangings.
•The story of Project X-Ray and the “Bat Bomb.”
•The battle of the Somme. Done in that Private Ryan/Band of Brothers style. (Might have to use a lot of CGI to deal with the HUGE number of casualties.)
•A biopic of Nikola Tesla?
I’d love to see a biopic on the Brititsh WW2-era officer Major General Orde Wingate. An innovator and a tactical genius, he’s most famous for building and leading the Chindits, an elite infantry unit that operated far behind Japanese lines in Indochina. Taking a group of second-rate, barely trained troops, he whipped them into something unique - a long-ranged recon-and-raiding outfit, completely airsupplied, that wrecked merry havoc on enemy supply lines throughout the jungles.
What’s less known about him in the West is that he is also an Israeli national hero. Three or four years before the war, while he was serving as a junior officer in Palestine, Wingate put together a joint British-Jewish infantry force, the “Special Night Squads”, to protect the Iraq-Haifa oil pipeline and defend Jewsih town from Arab raiders. He used this unit to experiment with several theories he had on light infantry warfare, and very suceesfull - during the brief period the small unit was active, it partook in over 30 operations, the vas majority of them successful. Furthermore, the Jewish members of the SNS, who included such future notables as Moshe Dayan and Yigal Alon, went on to form the core of the Palmach, which in tern became the basis of the IDF’s infantry and special forces.
Wingate was a very, very colorful character, or as his British troops liked to say, a “bit round the bend”. He was adored by his men - mainly because of his disregard of British class mores and his tendency to lead from the front - and hated by his peers and superiors for his unorthodox methods and lack of decorum (his standard look was a mismatched, crumpled uniform, a pith helmet and a full beard). He was also a bible literalist, a deeply religious Protestant and an ardent Zionist who saw himself as a modern-day Old Testament warrior/prophet. His personal habits were often downright weird - Dayan would later tell of his tendancy to preside over staff meetings while sitting buck naked and munching on a raw onion. Oddly enough, Dayan also said that stuff like that only made his troops respect him more.
Is there enough known about the Roanoke colony to make a movie? (I’m assuming we’d all like to see fairly accurate films.) Title, of course: Croatoan.
Madame Blavatsky. Quite a character.
Has there been a movie about Archimedes?
Insane royalty is always entertaining. I’d like to see a movie about Charles VI of France, a decent man who was unfortunately mentally ill. Unfortunately known to the English-speaking world mostly from Shakespeare’s charicature in Henry V. A key scene would be the dance in which Charles and several of his courtiers were dressed as “wild men”, covered in hair stuck on with pitch; unfortunately several of them caught on fire and burned to death, although Charles was saved. (I assume this was an inspiration for the scene in Poe’s story “Hop-Toad”.)
Speaking of the 14th century – has there been a movie just about the Great Mortality, the devastating outbreak of Black Death c. 1350? Nightmarish to live through, and it changed European society for a long time afterwards. Might be a little bit depressing.
That reminds me, I’d like to see a Band of Brothers style biopic set in the Pacific Theater.
Well, sure. We’ve got Wendell Wagner. 
One of our dopers is a writer and director. I won’t name him here.
I’ve been fascinated by the story of the Boy in the Box since I first read about it several years ago - maybe if a movie was made about it, the case would get enough publicity to finally be solved.
There is, indeed. I just finished reading Lee Miller’s 2001 book Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony. We actually know quite a bit about the history – much more than they usually tell you. And Miller is able to convincingly fill in the gaps.
It would make an impressive movie. But deressing as Hell. Those poor colonists never had a chance – the effort was rigged against them from the start.Even if you don’t buy Miller’s explanation, the recorded facts suffice to show they wuz screwed.
King Philip’s War (1675-1675) hasn’t had a good screen treatment yet. (Please don’t mention the Gary Oldman-Demi Moore version of The Scarlet Letter!) It killed 600 colonists and 3,000 Indians, which in terms of the proportion of the population at that time makes it the bloodiest American war ever.
Depressing, maybe – but you could tie it in with the present. In North Carolina today there is a self-described nation of “Indians” (not recognized by the BIA) who call themselves the Lumbee or Croatan Indians, who claim to be descended from the Roanoke settlers and the Indians who captured them. They have dark skin and black hair, but often have grey eyes. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumbee.
The voyage of the Kon-Tiki Although I can see the logistical problems already. And there’s no clear-cut protagonist. But I’d like to see it anyway. And the documentary footage may still be available.
Rilchiam wrote:
Not only is the documentary footage available, it’s on video. It was commercially released as a film 55 years ago:
I’ve been meaning to get hold of this for a long time. I read the book as a kid in grammar school.