Oh yeah. It was a fascinating time but I wouldn't have wanted to live in it for anything. During his years as VP, Adams lost several of his teeth due to gum disease, causing critics to call him bald and toothless.
John Adams on HBO
- Thread starter Krisno
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I was biking to work on Capitol Hill one morning and right by the West Wing of the National Gallery of Art a car pulled up at the red light next to me. In the passenger seat was David McCulloch. I motioned for him to roll the window down, which he did, and I told him that I was really glad to see some of the other founders get some publicity. He didn't expect that comment and was very cheery in response.
I've always been a Madison fan and really need to know more about him.
Ben Franklin really jumps off the page when you read about him and sucks the air out of every scene he's depicted in in this series, so I'm told. Like Theodore [NEVER 'Teddy'] Roosevelt he's the "baby at every christening, the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral."
I continue to marvel - and I'm a United Statesian first generation from an English family - on all the dramatic portrayals and theatrical/dramatic discection and depiction of members of England's royal family get. Now, that's not a dig against the royals, but rather, against US's culture of not giving a damn about its history and the folks that made it happen. Where's the multi-part series about Mark Twain? Or Franklin? They were this country's first, true rock stars. The various Roosevelts have all gotten some dramatic treatment, but inadequately so. Theodore made the presidency seem fun and carbonated people's interest in the presidency and politics. Franklin and Eleanor were the country's first multi-media stars - radio, film, magazines, newspapers. There was no escaping them. Eleanor got more letters her first year in the White House than Herbert Hoover got in four.
I look forward to seeing Adams on DVD.
I've always been a Madison fan and really need to know more about him.
Ben Franklin really jumps off the page when you read about him and sucks the air out of every scene he's depicted in in this series, so I'm told. Like Theodore [NEVER 'Teddy'] Roosevelt he's the "baby at every christening, the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral."
I continue to marvel - and I'm a United Statesian first generation from an English family - on all the dramatic portrayals and theatrical/dramatic discection and depiction of members of England's royal family get. Now, that's not a dig against the royals, but rather, against US's culture of not giving a damn about its history and the folks that made it happen. Where's the multi-part series about Mark Twain? Or Franklin? They were this country's first, true rock stars. The various Roosevelts have all gotten some dramatic treatment, but inadequately so. Theodore made the presidency seem fun and carbonated people's interest in the presidency and politics. Franklin and Eleanor were the country's first multi-media stars - radio, film, magazines, newspapers. There was no escaping them. Eleanor got more letters her first year in the White House than Herbert Hoover got in four.
I look forward to seeing Adams on DVD.
Would love to see one on Theodore Roosevelt.
MeanJoePhaser
Admiral
Ron Perlman is THEODORE ROOSEVELT
with Jeff Daniels as "McKinley" and John Goodman as "Taft"
And of course, the actual battle of San Juan Hill is not really shown due to budget constraints.
with Jeff Daniels as "McKinley" and John Goodman as "Taft"
And of course, the actual battle of San Juan Hill is not really shown due to budget constraints.
He's really our Churchill. Scholarly, smart and batshit crazy.
A Canadian blogger suggests a few more potential HBO miniseries about American presidents.
American politicians get all kinds of media coverage, and I say that as a Canadian who despairs often about the lack of interest paid to my country's own early figures, although our history often just isn't as dramatic; no "shot heard around the world" and such.
I really hope Spielberg gets around to making that Lincoln biopic that's been in the works for a while.
FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt have a lot of stuff to film, too, although one of the big areas in FDR's life that really hasn't been explored on film all that much is all the other women in his life, in particular his relationship with his mistress (you could do a really interesting movie about their initial affair, and their reconnecting during World War II after his emotional crutch of a secretary suffered a crippling health breakdown).
American politicians get all kinds of media coverage, and I say that as a Canadian who despairs often about the lack of interest paid to my country's own early figures, although our history often just isn't as dramatic; no "shot heard around the world" and such.
I really hope Spielberg gets around to making that Lincoln biopic that's been in the works for a while.
FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt have a lot of stuff to film, too, although one of the big areas in FDR's life that really hasn't been explored on film all that much is all the other women in his life, in particular his relationship with his mistress (you could do a really interesting movie about their initial affair, and their reconnecting during World War II after his emotional crutch of a secretary suffered a crippling health breakdown).
A detailed movie about Yorktown would be nice.
American history tends to have more stuff in it that lends towards dramatization, although that in itself may just be do to the fact that people pay more attention to trying to. You could make a great movie or miniseries out of Berton's The Invasion of Canada, for example, but no one has.
It's probably more an envy of investment capital.
It's probably more an envy of investment capital.
What, you mean Mel didn't win the whole thing?
What about a miniseries about Mackenzie King? He was a wartime PM who not only was the longest-serving Prime Minister in British Commonwealth history but also was into seances and the occult--bigtime. He also never married, which led to rumours he either saw prostitutes regularly or was homosexual. Sounds like the makings of a juicy miniseries to me!
I thought it was excellent tonight.
Stephan Dillane really shined here tonight as Jefferson. He stole the episode away from everyone else although the rest of the actors were fine. The introduction of Hamiliton and his feud with Jefferson was a welcome addition here as well. I appreciate seeing the focus on periods of history that aren't exactly dramatized that much. I am glad they started with Adams ridiciolous idea for what to call the president. I do recall reading that didn't endear him very much to Washington.
We got some good focus elsewhere, like with John Quincy although I the actor who plays him looked like he's about to burst into tears every time he's on screen. Poor Charles. Adams was a good husband but not exactly father of the year.
Really looking forward to next week's episode.
Stephan Dillane really shined here tonight as Jefferson. He stole the episode away from everyone else although the rest of the actors were fine. The introduction of Hamiliton and his feud with Jefferson was a welcome addition here as well. I appreciate seeing the focus on periods of history that aren't exactly dramatized that much. I am glad they started with Adams ridiciolous idea for what to call the president. I do recall reading that didn't endear him very much to Washington.
We got some good focus elsewhere, like with John Quincy although I the actor who plays him looked like he's about to burst into tears every time he's on screen. Poor Charles. Adams was a good husband but not exactly father of the year.
Really looking forward to next week's episode.
Don't you think those photographs of Churchill, Roosevelt, and Mac King look like characters from Wizard of Oz or Alice in Wonderland?
I'd like to see something about Eleanor R's long-term relationship with her boy toy. That went on right through the bulk of the White House years and FDR tried to set him up with Mercer/rutheford! Now that's interesting! Nevertheless FDR and ER were two of the biggest folks to ever live under the White House roof. There is so much to explore.
Yeah, what's it doin' on HBO without any of that gamey stuff?
I was at the Tak park Farmer's market today. Kind of weird to see meat there. I still can't get past that.
King was Canada's greatest PM, and there'd certainly be some interesting material in his personal life because of the occultism (as for prostitutes, he generally tried to reform them, rather than use their services, as I understand it; he was far too repressed to do something like that), although I honestly get a bit sick of every mention of him centering around that (like during that Greatest Canadian countdown where he was on the list and they set his entry to "Fortune-Teller"). It's as overplayed as Sir John A.'s drinking.
One of the films I've always wanted to make in the fantasy world where I have the money to make movies would be a film about Sir Arthur Currie, Canada's greatest general: Currie was a not-especially-successful salesman who was a reservist before the war, and so desperate that he embezzled money from his regiment to cover his debts; when war broke out, friendship with Garnet Hughes, the son of the Minister of the Militia Sam Hughes (who frankly was a bit deranged), led to his rapid promotion, at which point he demonstrated superb skill as a general (arguably the best on the Western Front in any army), fell out with the Hughes' over patronage, leading to a bitter interpersonal war that continued long after the war was over, and a fight to clear his name that gave him something of a pyhrric victory, because it cost him his health, and he died soon after from a cold he caught wandering through the streets in winter looking for his dog.
My father once related to me that the first time he saw a photo of FDR and King together "I thought one of them looked urbane and sophisticated, and I thought that guy just has to be the president, and the other one I thought looked like a complete hayseed, so I thought he must be the PM"; turns out he had them reversed. Though I don't see that at all, because nobody looks less like a hayseed than FDR.
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Well, we did see that guy's weiner in the first episode.
Wasn't Eleanor a closet lesbian?
Some have theorized that, based on letters between her and one of her two longtime female friends (the three of them used to spend vacations, etc. together at Val-Kill, while FDR and his secretary/"platonic wife" Missy held court in a separate house).
However, there's a lot to indicate that she was in a long-term relationship with an NYPD officer assigned to the governor's residence named Earl Miller; her son James, for one, has said he always believed it, although he could never be sure.
Well, we did see that guy's weiner in the first episode.
Wasn't Eleanor a closet lesbian?
Few women had better reasons for giving girls a go. Seven pregnancies in ten years then finding out your husband is flagrantly fooling around. Eleanor got involved with Lorena Hickock after FDR got the nomination in '32 and he made it clear that Eleanor's boyfriend wasn't going to Washington with them. She had written friends at the Dem convention in Chicago that from watching her aunt Edith she knew what being first lady was all about and wanted NO part of it and that she'd divorce FDR after he was elected and run off with Earl Miller. She came to her senses, obviously, but fell for Hickock. But in a surviving letter from ER to Hickock, ER makes it clear that girls aren't her game. What the hell, she'd try anything once so long as it didn't draw blood or leave marks. Nevertheless the Roosevelts never gave up on each other. It's kind of sad they never had a chance to get away from their handlers and groupies for a few days to catch up.
Churchill tried gay sex at one point in his life and told Harold MacMillan about it. But Winnie lost ALL interest in sex and by the 1930s, Clementine, who was significantly younger than he, had to go out and find her own fun. She had a wild and wooly one on a bird-watching cruise with a famous London art gallery owner. She thought about going on the cruise a second year and Winston decided that wasn't such a good idea.
He was the state trooper that FDR assigned to be ER's bodyguard. He'd not only been the previous NY governor's bodyguard, but had been assigned to guard FDR back in 1918 when he was Assist. Sec. of the Navy and was touring Europe. Miller had just won the navy's middle weight boxing championship.
Miller and ER hit it off immediately because both had been orphaned at about the same age. ER farmed out to relatives and Miller ran off and joined the circus as an alternative to being in an orphanage. I don't think he even went to jr. high, but the USN quickly figured out he was a really smart guy and he did well in his stint there. To the day he died he wouldn't talk, but did boast in correspondence about how he completely evaded the issue in his conversations with Joe Lash for Eleanor and Franklin.
ER's friends and even her kids thought he was one of the best things that ever happened to her. To his credit, FDR was a good sport about it. The person who really hated Miller was, of course, FDR's mother. Beats me why!
Given how their marriage changed post-Lucy, he wasn't really in any position to begrudge her anything (not that that would have stopped many); they both basically ran parallel households.
Constant reminder of their sham marriage (well, it was actually quite a partnership, so not a sham, per se, just not what it appeared on the surface), which I doubt appealed to her morals.
It really makes you wonder, though, what would have happened if, as they had originally agreed, FDR and ER had parted ways in 1918; FDR would have married Lucy and doubtless lived a happy life, but his political career would have been toast; no New Deal, etc.; and none of Eleanor's political activism.
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