I too would love to see an accurate Hollywood treatment of Boone's story. Although there have been some noble efforts in the past such as "Daniel Boone, Trail Blazer" (Republic, 1956), the four episode Daniel Boone "Disneyland" series (Disney, 1960-1961), and the animated cartoon starring Richard Crenna (Hanna Barbera, 1981), Hollywood seems to go out of its way to take dramatic license with history.
If you are frustrated with Hollywood's disregard for historical accuracy, you might enjoy watching "The Making of Daniel Boone" (2003) a direct-to-video movie written and directed by Randall Wilkins and starring Clancy Brown as a scholar and Boone biographer struggling with a Hollywood production company to make an accurate Boone movie. Despite his best efforts to provide them with accurate information, the producers ignore his advice and go out of their way to distort Boone's story and create their own version of the facts:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0351293/
Wilkins, who has worked in Hollywood as a set designer for many big budget period pieces, knows first hand how Hollywood distorts history; this is his commentary on it. He is also a big fan of Boone and the facts he uses in the movie reveal his knowledge and interest. The facts that the scholar presents are accurate to the actual history and even the names of the characters are tips of the hat to people involved in Boone history and lore (Benjamin Logan, Timothy Flint, George Rogers Clark, even the name of the scholar, Allan Kenton is a reference to the frontier writer Allan W. Eckert and Boone's fellow frontiersman Simon Kenton).
For more information about Daniel Boone movies, you should look at "American Frontiersmen on Film and Television: Boone, Crockett, Bowie, Houston, Bridger and Carson" by Ed Andreychuk (McFarland, 2005)
reply
share