The other thing you should know about us is that we love history and we believe that fiction is OK but we know that there a million fantastic true stories that haven't been filmed properly yet - and those stories always seem more compelling somehow. The other thing we've noticed is that it seems the same handful of historical figures get movies made of them all the time and it's just getting boring - how many Jack the Ripper or Ceasar focused films can we take? It's kind of like the people who think they've lived a past life but they always decide they were Cleopatra or Napolean - Boring !
Here's our part 1 of list:
- The Life of Simon Bolivar - The Liberator; this man liberated half of South America from the Spanish and formed what was essentially the United States of South America (La Gran Colombia) but lived to watch it all fall apart. There was a love, revolution, political struggle - this story has got it all and in some of the world's most beautiful locations to boot.
Now, this guy knew how to dress!
- Learning to Fly - The Wright Brothers: Can anyone deny that this is perhaps the most amazing story never told. C'mon, these guys invented the science of aeronautics in their spare time (in their store) and went from being Bicycle shop owners to world dignitaries. They proved that anyone can change the world - and they were real. Every time we go to Carillon park (in Dayton) and visit the reproduction of their workshop it simply blows our minds.
They're geeks, going bald and from our hometown, Dayton - They've got it all!
- Cochise - Just imagine a handful of Apache warriors fighting off an entire nation for more than 20 years. It happened in southern Arizona at the end of the 19th century and no one has yet told this story right. The locations where it happened are beyond spectacular.
Quite possibly the best fighters ever produced on American soil...
- The Diary Elisha Hunt Rhodes - You may recognize the name from the remarkable civil war documentary made by Ken Burns in the 1990's for PBS. His story is what made that film so interesting. Elisha Hunt Rhodes lived through nearly every major battle of the Civil War rising in rank from private to Col. by the end of the war. If someone had made this up no one would believe it.
Some people have all the luck, literally...
- Oklahoma City, the 1990's - Two events happened within three years in Oklahoma City in the 1990's, the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing and the massive assault by tornadoes at the end of the decade. We knew people who lived there and lived through both - it makes for quite a story. A possible alternative is the story of Xenia, Ohio and its tornado encounter in 1973 which destroyed more than half the city...
Real Life Twisters are far scarier than anything Hollywood has made up...
We will finish this list in our next post...
Copyright 2010, Raving Reviews
