Posted on 02/24/2008 11:48:31 AM PST by dickmc
When Hollywood's movie-makers and docu-dramatists get their hands on American history, accuracy, reality and truth often are tortured beyond recognition. But starting at 8 p.m. Sunday, March 16, HBO Films will be delivering the seven-part, nine-hour mini-series "John Adams." ... it is by all accounts a high-quality, historically accurate and meticulously faithful adaptation of super-historian David McCullough's blockbuster 2001 book of the same name. I talked to McCullough about the making of the HBO series Tuesday by phone from his home in West Tisbury, Mass.
(Excerpt) Read more at pittsburghlive.com ...
McCullough’s “John Adams” and “1776” are two of the best books on the American Revolution that I have ever read.
However, I cringe at the thought of what HBO will do with this.
wow!
http://www.discovery.com/area/history/feuding/feuding2.html
Part II: The Pursuit of Crankiness
John Adams... was a bundle of insecurities, a notorious carper, a man who, in the words of historian Jack D. Warren, qualified as “America’s crankiest Founding Father.”
For starters, he hated being the nation’s first vice president, presiding over the Senate like an impatient schoolmaster and complaining to his wife, Abigail, that “my country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”
While he initially admired George Washington — personally pushing through the Continental Congress his nomination for commander in chief — Adams bitterly seethed once he was in Washington’s shadow. He portrayed Washington as a man who was all style, utterly lacking in substance. He once sarcastically listed Washington’s talents, all of them involving his appearance, form and pedigree. “Here,” he sneered, “you see I have made out 10 talents without saying a word about reading, thinking, or writing.”
He also thought Washington was a poseur, pretending to prefer the simple life with the hope of hiding his unbounded ambition. Washington “ought to pass” as a genuinely disinterested hero, Adams noted, if only because he played the part so well. Even more than a decade after the death of the “Father of Our Country,” Adams still fumed about the degree of Washington-worship in the land.
“The rushing and dashing and roaring of the word Washington, Washington, Washington, like the waters at Passaic or the tremendous cataract of Niagara, deafens, stuns, astonishes and bedizzards all who are within hearing,” ranted Adams in 1812. “Both parties are equally bewildered in this folly.”
CHARLOTTESVILLE, July 4, 1826.
SIR -- I give you a mere line to say, that Mr. JEFFERSON expired to-day at 10 minutes before 1 o'clock. It is an event which has been hourly expected for three or four days past.
Your friend,
John S. Skinner, esq. Baltimore.
A DWEM that was in the thick of the evil American Revolution????
Seriously, I don’t really think they’ll trash Adams, if it’s honestly based on the McCullogh book, but you never know what kind of snide spin they might sneak in there.
Well, MuCullogh was involved with the production of this, so I believe it should have reasonable integrity. It’s hard to make John Adams a leftie...can’t say the same for his cousin Sam, though.
the death of Pres’s Adams and Jefferson on the same, rather unique date, is quite interesting as far as highly improbable events go.
It’ll be used as a soapbox against conservatives, the Pubbies, the Bush administration...
No, a dead white European [Mediterranean] male who is alleged to have risen from the dead after only three days.
what kind of snide spin they might sneak in there
Oh, I'm pretty sure that I know what kind of snide spin they'll be putting in there:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unitarians,_Universalists,_and_Unitarian_Universalists
My guess is that if anything they will use it as a vehicle to disparage Benjamin Franklin (who Adams had a very low opinion of and McCullough doesn’t seem to like much better) and Thomas Jefferson.
TJ had already died earlier the same day, but Adams said with his last breath: “Thomas Jefferson still survives...”
The spirit of William Daniels’ portrayal of Adams in “1776” is apparently not far from the truth.
“Hint: What’s even more evil than a dead white European [or Mediterranean] male?”
That’s easy: God from the Bible that you and I read.
You should read http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2008/02/22/liberalism-101/print/
Because there are a hell of a lot of living white 'European' males who will watch it?
Plus, it they stay true to McCullough's book, it will be a sure winner even for people who don't know history. Just the story of the Adams' (John AND Abagael) is spell binding. Probably the best biography that I have ever read. Heroic people in a heroic age.
How does this guy McCullough treat the Universalist/Unitarian movement, and the question of the divinity [or non-divinity] of You-Know-Whom?
Because there are a hell of a lot of living white 'European' males who will watch it?
Plus, it they stay true to McCullough's book, it will be a sure winner even for people who don't know history. Just the story of the Adams' (John AND Abagael) is spell binding. Probably the best biography that I have ever read. Heroic people in a heroic age.
Huh? What are you talking about?
In early 19th-century Massachusetts [and late 18th-century, for that matter], renouncing the divinity of Christ was all the rage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_UniversalismI would be shocked if the HBO series didn't dwell on that almost to the exclusion of any other topic [well, except maybe for pointing out that Washington, Jefferson, and Madison owned slaves but that Adams did not].http://www.adherents.com/people/pa/John_Adams.html
Adams was raised a Congregationalist, but ultimately rejected many fundamental doctrines of conventional Christianity, such as the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus, becoming a Unitarian.
:
The series spans 50 years, beginning with the Boston Massacre in 1770 to Adams' death on July 4th, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Laura Linney plays Abigail, his wife and closest advisor, in that very Linney sort of way, in which she's about to cry at any second.The series, like "Rome," seems very true to the times - not like a glossy BBC version where everyone is done up to the nines all the time. I mean, we got guys here with wigs askew, plain clothes and dirty shirts, and some ugly brutality that made me turn away in horror.
Like? Take the Boston Tea Party. It was no party, my friend. They show it here beginning with ship owner John Hancock, who gets into it with the British tax man as he stands on the deck of his ship. He begins yelling to the angry crowd assembling below, "Tar him! Tar him!" And they do.
What you will see is not pretty. In fact, it's one of the most brutal scenes I've ever seen on TV. The mob pours hot, scalding tar onto the man's head and then covers him in feathers and carries him out on a rail. John Hancock? Our John Hancock? How can that be?
They will be getting into the fact that many of the founding fathers were slave owners and not the kind of people you'd necessarily want to hang around with. Not exactly "Deadwood" but not "Pride and Prejudice," either.
Well since you have it all figured out, there is no need for you to watch. But if they follow McCullough's book, (which he says they did) there will be little or no mention of any particular religion and little mention of slavery other than Adams thought it both morally wrong and economically inefficient as well as spiritually degrading to both the master and the slave. In that regard, both Washington and to a somewhat lesser degree, Jefferson agreed with Adams. All three opposed slavery in principle, but none of them pretended they knew how to end it.
Don't trouble yourself with the actual history (which McCullough's is the best written I have ever read. You have already made up your mind that Adams was some sort of bad guy who can serve as a foil for the Hollywood left.
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