Dear Joss Whedon,
Since I can apparently influence Hollywood with my mind, I submit to you the following: we have had quite a few years without a Titanic/Braveheart-style action-romance. I’m not sure why. No, Pearl Harbor was not good, but you can hardly fault the genre. This is a formula that kills — at the box office and awards season — and allows for huge narrative indulgences, so while it is hardly easy movie-making (is any?) it has a larger margin of error than, say, Schindler’s List, which is the movie I refer to when I want any conversation to end.
Anyhoo.
One idea:
- The true story of Ellen and William Craft:
Ellen was born in Clinton, Georgia, to a biracial slave woman and her master and was so light-skinned that she was often mistaken for a member of her father’s white family. This infuriated her mistress and, as a result, at age 11 Ellen was given as a wedding gift to a daughter who lived in Macon. There Ellen met William, whom she married in 1846. Two years later, the Crafts began to devise their escape plan, which involved Ellen posing as a white slaveholder traveling with “his” slave William.
This plan required several levels of deception. Because a white woman would not travel alone with a male slave, Ellen had to pretend to be not only white but a white man. She cut her hair, changed her walk, and wrapped her jaw in bandages to disguise her lack of a beard. To hide her illiteracy, she wrapped her right arm in a sling to have a ready excuse for being unable to sign papers; and she explained all of the bandages by claiming to be an invalid traveling north to receive medical care. In this manner, the Crafts traveled from Georgia to Pennsylvania by train, steamer, and ferry without being discovered. They arrived in Philadelphia on Christmas Day in 1848. Link
Come on. IT WRITES ITSELF.
Oh – and I’m working on a script about a team of semi-superhero government assassins who find out their own agency is trying to kill them. I’m seeing Dwayne Johnson, Niecy Nash, Parminder Nagra and a Matt-Damon-type unknown for the Billy Budd character. I’ll get back to you on that.
What we need is a director equally agile with comedy, action and heart-wrenching doomed romance. Is there someone you can think of? Hm?
No presh. Just go for a jog while listening to James Horner’s “To Love a Princess.” See what happens.
Much love,
Tory
