What Other Revolutionary Battle/Campaign should be made into a film?
I would like to see the Campaign for Bunker Hill and The Valley Forge Winter.
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I would like to see Saratoga or Yorktown...I think Valley Forge might be a pretty slow moving movie for most people.
shareValley Forge would be great..no battles, but it would a good story about struggle and endurance. Not all war films need to be about fighting. Of course there would have to be a rise and fall in the storyline. So, single out one particular soldier in the movie, preferablly Joseph Plumb Martin. Of course, you'd probably want to intersperse it with scenes with Washington, his officers, most importantly General Von Stueben. Or you could, make Valley Forge revolve around General Von Sueben, it would be like a mini biography. The only tough thing, you'd have to show that there was an overall pay-off for the Valley Forge Winter, which was the American troops' tough performance at the Battle of Monmouth. So granted, it would be a long movie indeed, probably a two-part epic like Gettysburg, Lawrence of Arabia, and the Alamo (1962}.
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Valley Forge with a pay off at Monmouth would be great! I'd think it would 'revolve' around the deteriorating situation of America at the time, the problem with paying the troops, the problems with militia heading home, figuring they'd 'done their bit', the problems with whether they were doing the right thing or not, rebelling against 'mother England'.
And then there would be the problems with all these European 'wannabees' - opportunists and charletans some - Charles Lee of course is at the top of that list, but in the case of Lafayette and Von Steuben, the real deal!
You could contrast that with the arguments in England over the colonies' rebellion, the reluctance of the Howe's to crush the rebellion of their 'fellow Englishmen' with the harshness it deserved, the glamourous parties of the British such as the Mischanzia, the fact that the war was a confused affair of shifting loyalties and not always as clean cut as we think of it.
Finally at Monmouth the British regulars face the troops drilled by Von Steuben and after a lackluster performance by Charles Lee, we get to hear the Father of our Country's masterpiece of vulgarity - and watch him turn a near disaster into victory, defeating some of the greatest names in the British Army, including the vaunted Black Watch.
Lexington/Bunker Hill would also be one that's long overdue!
Or maybe, with all the 'Pirates of the Carribbean' fever going around, one about our very own Scots-American 'pirate' John Paul Jones. Been a fanboy ever since I read 'Night On Fire'. There's great drama right there and you can't beat the catchphrase...
Pearson: Do you strike your colours sir?
Jones: No sir, we have not struck our colours... we have NOT YET BEGUN TO FIGHT!
Tom516
There was a 1950s movie about Jones done with Robert Stack in the lead....Stack wasa fine actor, but the movie hardly did justice to Jone's story. Jones was an interesting character, bit of a rogue.
Battle of King's Mountain was a pretty thrilling guerilla battle.
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That's probably the one I was thinking of. Someone really should put 'Night on Fire' on celluloid!
Best wishes,
Tom516
In addition to the Battle of King's Mountain (which I believe was the Revolutionary battle that had the largest number of Tory combatants), I think the Battle of Guilford Courthouse would be a worthy topic.
Hollywood has paid little attention to the Southern campaign, with the exception of the recent "The Patriot" (with the climactic battle based loosely on the Battle of Cowpens) and Leslie Nielsen in Disney's "Swamp Fox".
I think Guilford is worthy because it was the final battle of the Southern campaign, and while most consider the battle to have ended a tactical "Draw", I'd term it as a strategic defeat for the British. After months of fruitlessly chasing the hit-and-run Southern army thru South Carolina and North Carolina, Lord Cornwallis got a rare opportunity: The main British southern army would face the main body of its counterpart in a set battle on a field. The fact that not only could the British not take advantage of the situation, but had to resort to a desperate tactic (using cannon fire to break up the American advance, but killing their own infantry as well) to hold the balance, resulted in Cornwallis' abandoning further offensive actions and march to Yorktown.
Most schoolchildren know the Revolutionary story from there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Guilford_Courthouse
A Nathaniel Greene biopic perhaps ;) After all he masterminded the fabian strategy that kept the war alive in the South and confounded the British. Guildford Courthouse would be a good battle pic in that it shows off both sides in a positive light - both sides behaved with skill and courage but it's also punctuated by Cornwallis' ruthless order that would be reminiscent of Edward Longshanks in Braveheart, to fire on the engaged troops of both sides.
"We fight, Get beat, get up and fight again" - Nathaniel Greene
Looking forward to it!
Tom516
I would very much like to see an accurate or as closely as possible of the ENTIRE Southern Campaine. And yes, Vally Forge, in the winter, would be highly entertaining... Not to say Battle of King's Mountain wouldn't be either. Being that it was the only battle fought entirely by "Americans," a documentry would be interesting but giving the choice if I couldn't watch the Southern Campaine, I would steer towards Vally Forge.
MMMmmm... Kind to think of it, lol, since the Battle of "Bunker" Hill is one of my favorites, I'd like to see a docu of that too. Jeez there is so many topics, it's really hard to choose just one!
Oh! I got one! A nice docu of the British Foots would be extreamly entertaining, especially the 29th Foot whom arrived in Boston; 1768.
Remember the past; the past often repeats itself -Me
An interesting chapter of the Revolution might be a movie about the Boston "Massacre" and the trial that followed afterwards, when John Adams, of all people, advocated for the British soldiers who fired on the Bostonians.
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Valley Forge to Monmouth could make for a really good dramatization - and without all the "trouble" of having to make characters into "composites" that some other movies have had to face. I would find involving Monmouth to be a little problematic, though. I attempted to do some research on Monmouth a few years ago and found the site's resident historian at the time to exhibit a pompousness far beyond that of other historians or even highly respected professors. Most are at least willing to discuss and explain events and ideas and offer sources to help further someone's research or education. Some even enjoy doing so or are under the impression that this is what they are being paid to do. It seems logical that one would want to be as educated about the battle as possible before beginning to peruse their wealth of primary documents, yet he was unwilling to suggest even one authoritative secondary sorce about the battle to someone who wished to learn more than that which is often detailed in a few pages at best in most books on the Revolution. He was difficult to deal with, to say the least, and was quite clear in his disdain for even remotely fictionalized retellings of history. It therefore seems likely that he would consider involvement with a movie far too beneath him to bother with, though one would expect anyone truly dedicated to the preservation of (and education in) history to strive to help make such things as accurate as possible, given that they are often the things that reach beyond the circles of academics and history buffs and into the general public.
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