What’s a good “warts and all” subject matter for a movie?

Cafe Society
101

Huey Newton had lots of warts:

He was accused of murdering a woman named Kathleen Smith because she called him “Baby,” a childhood nickname he hated. He was acquitted, though he privately admitted to friends that she was his “first nonpolitical murder.” Before the acquittal, three Black Panthers tried to kill a witness against him, but they attacked the wrong house, and the occupant shot back, killing one of the assailants.

He was also alleged to have pistol-whipped his tailor in an argument over the price of a suit. He was acquitted after the alleged victim changed his testimony. Newton was convicted of illegal firearms possession, for which he served nine months in prison.

According to Elaine Brown, who was head of the Black Panthers while Huey Newton was in exile in Cuba, Newton authorized the beating of school administrator Regina Davis for scolding a male coworker. Brown left the Panthers as a result.

In 2007, Black Panther Party member Erica Huggins said that Newton had raped her repeatedly.

102

Great movie. It laid him out in all his ignominy. In this case it wasn’t “warts and all,” it was “All warts and more warts. Warts, warts, nothing but warts.”

103

His influence and name is inescapable around here. There’s a chain of Henry Ford hospitals. There’s the Henry Ford Museum, a top-notch museum of history and industry in Dearborn, along with Greenfield Village, which has Edison’s original Menlo Park lab and the Wright Brothers’ bicycle shop (the original structures shipped to Dearborn in pieces and rebuilt, not recreations). The Museum and Village were closely designed and overseen by Ford himself, Walt Disney-style. There’s Ford Field, where the Lions (owned by the Ford family) play. And you can’t throw a rock without hitting a Ford dealership or a Ford F-150 truck.

His legacy, warts and all, is both fascinating and horrifying.

104

I disagree… as irredeemable some believe him to be. I find him more nuanced than an outright evil human being. I’d almost argue, but won’t, that he failed upwards. For arguments sake lets just say I’d want a Rasputin biopic that represents him as 85% evil rather than the 100%.

Additional context: I disregard the interpretation given to him in the film Anastasia. Which I find insulting to factual history of the whole event. I find the Russian Revolution majorly flawed, but I get it.. the people hated him and their leaders and history is thus written by the victors.
Lastly the books I read for reference were, Rasputin: The Untold Story by Joseph T. Fuhrmann and Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs by Douglas Smith

105

You could do a treatment of the women’s suffrage movement which explores the racism used in their advocacy.

In the fascinating bucket is a defamation case that he filed against the Chicago Tribune in 1919. They had called him disloyal and an anarchist for opposing entry into World War I.

What’s interesting about the case is that Ford testified, and was shown to be highly ignorant of basic facts of American history.

I have to wonder if Ford was putting on an act, in order to endear himself to the “Everyman” who he was trying to sell cars to. I think it’d be a great story to explore.

106

Billy Preston would make a great subject for a warts and all biopic. Touring with Little Richard’s band at age 16. First meeting the Beatles in Hamburg in 1962. Topping the charts as a solo artist. Drugs, lots of drugs. Closeted sexuality. Childhood trauma. Jamming with JImi Hendrix. Recording and touring with everyone from James Brown to the Rolling Stones. Genre didn’t matter, Preston could play it: gospel, rock, blues, jazz, funk and everything else.

His personal life was a chaotic mess, though. One scene would have him coming home to find his fiance in bed with Sly Stone. Ouch.

107

People I researched for my various books and plays. I’m not just blowing my own horn here – having gotten intimately familiar with then in digging into their lives and trying to learn what made them tick, I can see that some of the most fascinating characters also have plenty of warts.

Frederic C. Thompson – The Man who Built Wonderland Amusement Park in Revere, Massachusetts. He’d already failed at trying to make the world’s largest amusement park by buying up George Tilyou’s Steeplechase Park and enlarging it, but his company failed to keep up the payments and they went bankrupt. It also destroyed his marriage. A reasonablre person would have gone back to a less flashy but more stable business, but Thompson doubled down, took up with J. J. Higgins in Boston, and showed the world what he could do by building Wonderland into a stateof the art modern amusement park. And it was a whopping success. But at the same time he started secretly building another park five miles up the beach. It was too much for the boards of both amusement parks when he spilled the beans (in an advertisement in Billboard that had his name in bigger letters than the park’s). still, he might have pulled it off, but for the panic of 1907.

Again, that would’ve been enough for most men. But he immediately took on another amusement venue in Washington State. Then he built another “Wonderland” in California. His life became a cycle of booms and busts. It took a toll on him, and he died of a heart attack in his mi-50s. In many ways, he resembles Cornelius Vanderbilt Wood, the virtually forgotten builder of Disneyland (and Freedomland, and several other parks) some fifty years later.

William Martin Keevey and Francis J. Chrestensen – the first people to purchase a US Navy Submarine in 1931. Keevey was the successful politician and the well-loved shipbuilder. Chrestensen was his good political buddy, who never won an election for himself, but was very good at finding legal loopholes and finagling. They bought the S-49 and towed it to Boston, where they fixed it up and put it on exhibition. A year and a half later they arranged to have her towed to Chicago for the 1933 World;s Fair. These weren’t wealthy guys – they did all this on the cheap and sly. After the Fair Keevey distanced himself, but Chrestensen – falling in love with the idea of being a submarine captain – found loophole that allowed them to keep the S-49 rather than scuttle her in 1936 (as the London Naval Treaty required), and even put new diesel engines in her (definitely against the spirit of the Treaty). He then displayed her up and down the East Coast, getting involved in a series of legal battles – one of them an international one and another that went all the way to the Supreme Court. Keevey was well-loved and, when he died, the city went into mourning. hrestensen died virtually alone and forgotten. But he had commanded a submarine longer than anyone else ever had before, or since. Even if he never took her underwater.

Weequehela – A sachem of the Lenni-Lenape people of New Jersey. He broke the expected rules of the early 18th century, being wealthy, with multiple sawmills, silverware, and calico curtains. He dined with the New Jersey governor and was sought after for treaties. But he got involved in an altercation over land ownership and found himself on trial for murder. By the laws of the Lenape he was justified, but by the laws of the English he was guilty. And as a leader he was expected to take the best course for the good of his people.

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“Talleyrand polarizes opinion. Some regard him as one of the most versatile, skilled, and influential diplomats in European history, with a clear-eyed and realistic view of the French national interest. Others, on the other hand, see him as a serial turncoat seeking only his own advantage, betraying the ancien régime, the French Revolution, and Napoleon in turn for his own gain.”

109

I’m not sure that being charming should count on the positive side of anyone’s ledger. Ted Bundy was reportedly quite charming, which helped him acquire victims to rape and murder. Vlad Putin is another guy called ‘charming’ by many. (Certainly he charmed George W. Bush.)

‘Charming’ seems a nicer way of saying ‘good at manipulating people’—which is not all that admirable a trait.

Maybe the best way of depicting the most monstrous of human beings is the way Taika Waititi did in 2019’s JoJo Rabbit: by showing how they are interpreted by others. (In the case of that movie: Hitler as understood by a ten-year-old.)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2584384/

110

Bush looked into his eyes and “saw his soul.” Which is remarkable, since he has none.

I guess it was a magic moment for both of therm.

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On Bush’s part at least, it was a tribute to the immense power of self-delusion.

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I remember the look on Putin’s face when he heard Bush say this. It was “GOTCHA!”

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Leon Panetta said (in response), "When I look into his eyes, I see “KGB, KGB, KGB.”

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Or of idiocy.

115

I said nothing about being admirable. But I think it’s interesting to show real people as the fully fleshed people they are.

Meaning, do a Capone movie that depicts him as a ruthless killer and chauvinistic womanizer, but also show him being smart and witty, and doing things that might soften the criticisms. In his case, you’re depicting a monster, but give him reasons for the audience to like him.

For the other situations, take something heroic and mythologized and depict the real events that make the audience question their devotion to the story.

I think it makes for a more compelling narrative. It’s also useful, insofar as it can show the audience that ideas and events can be great, but the people involved are fundamentally imperfect.

Another contribution: A story of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery Expedition. Obviously they were brave explorers. They were also joined by York, an enslaved man (who had sex with all sorts of women along the way, since the natives found him so exotic), they had a man die, killed people, and generally had a more brutal experience than we usually consider. I’d love an authentic retelling (actually, I can imagine it would make for a hell of a video game)

End the movie with Merriwether Lewis’ suicide, in 1809. (But not the video game. That’d be weird).

116

I think it was murder.

Oddly the only member who died- burst appendix. Not bears or Indians, etc.

Ken Burns did a great documentary in 1997.

117

Agreed. I think there are broadly four types of “warts and all” treatment:

  1. This idolised and idealised person was in fact a human with human flaws, some quite serious,…which in many ways makes their achievements more impressive. (E.g. MLK)
  2. This idolised and idealised person was in fact a human with human flaws, some quite serious…actually really serious, in fact whatever they may have achieved is cast into shadow by their moral failings (E.g. Thomas Jefferson)
  3. This reviled person in fact had surprisingly good qualities and is not the cartoon villain you’ve been led to believe. (Maybe Rasputin? Or Charles I?)
  4. The life of this complex person is fascinating and defies easy categorisation.
118

In that latter category I’m going to suggest the magnificently monickered John Law

Born in Scotland to a middlingly wealthy family of goldsmiths, he left Edinburgh for London where he took to gambling his income from his share in the family business - successfully. Took his mother to court to maintain access to funds, she having cut him off.

Killed a man in a duel over a lady’s honour. Sentenced to death,.escaped jail, fled to the Netherlands. Probably with the connivance of the King.

Wrote treaties on fiat money and financialisation of state debt. Gambled and speculated successfully in the Dutch and Genoese markets. Gradually moved in more and more respectable circles until he came to the notice of Phillipe Duc D’Orleans, Prince-Regent of France.

Moved to Paris, correctly observed that the French economy was run on lines that were both inefficient and lunatic. Came up with rationalising system that in some ways anticipated reforms that wouldn’t otherwise be seen till the Revolution, in some ways copied from and in turn inspired the financial revolution in England/Britain which would go on to make that country a world power.

Gave the French economy a rocket boost, diverted capital from buying state sinecures into actually productive industry, took over France’s few and anemic trading concessions. Which trade included slaves. Nationalised state debt. Founded the Missisippi Company to colonise the mouth of the Mississippi, including a city named after his patron, the Duc D’Orleans. Became the richest man in France. Gets mixed up with the Jacobites in ways that do neither him nor them any good.

The controversial bit: depending on who you believe, the next bit happened either because Law was a get rich quick schemer who screwed over a whole nation and wriggled away; or a visionary whose ideas were sound brought low by nothing worse than bad luck - with a few more months all would have come good.

The Mississippi Company draws enormous amounts of speculation, shares inflate well past any possible valuation, then ineveitably slide. Despite various (cynical? half-hearted?) efforts, there is a crash similar to but even more devastating that the South Sea Bubble. The cause of French financial reform is irretrievable tarnished, and its basket case ways continue until, and largely cause, the French Revolution. Laws escapes to Venice, apparently penniless but pursued by rumours that he has secreted vast funds away somewhere. Ends his days gambling and being spied on by at least five different factions.

The ship carrying his bequests to his family runs aground, all cargo lost. No one ever finds out exactly what and how much he left them.

119

If it were possible to make it complete and in a way that everyone would agree that it’s accurate (it isn’t)… A movie about Jesus.

120

^^Well, if they do, I hope they include his encounter with the fig tree.. “Oh, no food for a hungry traveler??? We’ll see about that!”