Biography at the Movies

I’ll soon be taking a bite of the Big Apple. The occasion is the annual conference of Biographers International Organization, a group that came into being to serve the needs of both active biographers and those interested in the field of biography. Since 2010 there have been (in addition to regular newsletters and Zoom events) annual BIO conferences, mostly in New York City but sometimes in outposts like Boston, DC, Richmond, and even Los Angeles. Some attendees merely want advice on telling family stories; others are experienced writers and even recipients of major awards. My BIO pal Amanda Vaill just won this year’s Pulitzer for Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution.

 I don’t know if there’s any hope of Angelica and Elizabeth Schuyler showing up at the movies anytime soon. (The fact that they’re both major figures in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton might surely get producer-types interested.) But I do know there’s a long tradition of concocting films about famous historical figures. Decades ago, it was considered acceptable to wrestle the biographical facts about a celebrity —whether a composer, a scientist, or a politician—to conform to Hollywood’s idea of an inspiring life story. Now I’d like to think we’re trying harder to be true to actual reality. But in any case, actors love portraying great figures of the past. If you look at lists of Oscar-winning performances, you’ll note there’s a lot of Academy love for stars able to get under the skin of the real people who helped create our world. See, in this century alone, Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill (Darkest Hour), Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking (The Theory of Everything), Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln), Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote (Capote), and Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles (Ray).

 This enthusiasm for biographical films has paid major dividends for members of BIO. And several  I know personally have been thrilled by the care with which the motion picture industry has transmitted their work to the screen. BIO stalwart Kai Bird is probably still basking in the glow of Oppenheimer, the 2023 Oscar winner based on his and Martin J. Sherwin’s deeply researched American Prometheus. Jack El-Hai was pleased with last year’s Nuremberg, which developed out of his gripping historical study, The Nazi and the Psychiatrist. When a BIO honoree, Candace Millard, published a 2011 historical work called Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, I  doubt she thought Hollywood would come calling. But someone at Netflix got involved, resulting in last year’s fascinating four-part miniseries, Death by Lightning, in which we follow the tragic trajectory of a nineteenth-century U.S. president, James A. Garfield, and his soon-to-be assassin, Charles J. Guiteau. This four-part series is too new to have come up for Emmy consideration, but many other awards-giving bodies have recognized the show’s excellence, with particular attention paid to lead actors Michael Shannon (as the appealingly idealistic Garfield) and Matthew Macfadyen (as the maddening and probably mad Guiteau).

 There is one honor that Death by Lightning has already won. Each spring, since 1988, the scholars behind the USC Scripter Awards have chosen the year’s best film adaptation of a work in print. Uniquely, at an awards ceremony held not long before Oscar night, both the screenwriter and the author of the original published work gain recognition  In 2016, USC added an award for episodic television series, and so Millard was in the winner’s circle when the TV Scripter went to her as well as to screenwriter Mike Makowsky. Bravo to them both.   

 

From Page to Screen: Launching ‘Oppenheimer”

Lucky me! Just a few months after Oppenheimer picked up seven Oscars—including Best Picture—at the Academy Awards ceremony, I heard Kai Bird explain in depth how it all came to be. Bird, who donned a tux to attend the flashy ceremony at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre, is the co-author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. This massive 2005 biography of the theoretical physicist who during World Wart II led the Manhattan Project, resulting in the world’s first atomic weapons, became the source material for Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film. (The research leading to the completed book was begun by Bird’s friend and co-author Martin J. Sherwin, an historian who passed away in 2021.)

 Though Bird and Sherwin won the Pulitzer Prize and other major honors for their 721-page opus, the motion picture industry didn’t immediately get on board.  Like most Hollywood stories, this one took its time in moving from page to screen. That was one big takeaway from this year’s 14^th annual Biographers International Organization, a New York gathering of old pros and biography newbies all of whom love the idea of accurately and compellingly putting a life into words. The session at which Bird appeared was titled “From Book to Film: Selling Options, Scripting, Producing.” The speakers, in addition to Bird, were biographers A’lelia Bundles and Jack El-Hai, both of whom had their own Hollywood stories to tell.

 Needless to say, cynicism abounded at this gathering. Someone called up an old Hemingway story about how, when you sell your work to Hollywood, you stand at the California state line and toss in a bag containing your magnum opus. In exchange, the Hollywood moguls toss back to you a sack full of money. Today the writer/producer dynamic is much more complicated, though, and the money is generally less. Happily, sometimes things work out.

 Longtime journalist Jack El-Hai has had two biographical works optioned by Hollywood. The Lobotomist, his in-depth story of the doctor who invented the questionable procedure, has never quite made it to the screen. But The Nazi and the Psychiatrist –after several false starts—was recently filmed in Europe with a cast headed by Russell Crowe and Rami Malek. Having watched the filming in progress, Jack is thrilled that the project, now titled Nuremberg, will be out by the end of this year. Meanwhile, A’Lelia Bundles’ award-winning work on the life of her own great-great-grandmother, Black cosmetics and hair care entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker, was transformed into Self-Made, a Netflix miniseries starring Octavia Spencer. Bundles has high praise for Spencer, but not for the execs who garbled the true story of her ancestor, adding cat fights and other material she deemed offensive but was powerless to reject. (Her contract gave her script review, not script approval, a very big difference.)

 As for Oppenheimer, the material was originally optioned by Sam Mendes. He was coming off his Oscar wins for American Beauty, but couldn’t land the financing he needed. Several additional options followed: one produced a script filled with 108 different historical inaccuracies, like Oppy maliciously poisoning rival physicist Edward Teller at a cocktail party, leading to a dramatic (but wholly bogus) death scene. At long last, a billionaire with a physics background came aboard, then approached Nolan, who cranked out a brilliant 200 -page script retaining virtually all the complexity of Bird’s and Sherwin’s scholarly study. When Bird pointed out a few small issues involving historical accuracy, his words were respected and corrections made. That’s why Bird calls himself today “the luckiest biographer in the history of the planet.”