[NYTr] HBO whitens "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 21:59:53 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit [Full article from the NY Times follows Andy's comments. -NYTr] sent by Andy Pollack HBO whitens "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" Some choice quotes with commentary: When the historian Dee Brown published _Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee_ in 1971, it became an instant sensation. In an age of rebellion, this nonfiction book told the epic tale of the displacement and decline of the American Indian not from the perspective of the winners, but from that of the Indians. But the fact that Mr. Brown_s work has been translated into 17 languages and has sold five million copies around the world was not enough to convince HBO that a film version would draw a sizable mainstream audience. When the channel broadcasts its two-hour adaptation of the book, beginning Memorial Day weekend, at its center will be a new character: a man who was part Sioux, was educated at an Ivy League college and married a white woman. _Everyone felt very strongly that we needed a white character or a part-white, part-Indian character to carry a contemporary white audience through this project,_ Daniel Giat, the writer who adapted the book for HBO Films, told a group of television writers earlier this year. [!!!!!!!] _This was not an attempt to do the Ken Burns version of the Indian experience,_ Mr. Wolf said in an interview. _It is a dramatization, and we needed a protagonist._ [I guess Indians fighting bravely against genocide make for boring protagonists.] For decades the book eluded attempts to turn it into a film, partly because of Mr. Brown_s distrust of Hollywood. [Duh, I wonder why?] HBO executives said they saw no problem with the inconsistencies. _When we look at historical accuracy, we look at history as it plays in the service of a narrative,_ said Sam Martin, a vice president at HBO Films in charge of production on the project. [Got that? History serves narrative, not the other way around.] To its credit, HBO_s version of _Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee_ does not glamorize Sitting Bull, but rather portrays him as he was: an egotistical, often brutal leader whose pride endangered members of his tribe as they suffered through famine, drought and disease. [To its credit? How about portraying him as he deserves: a heroic fighter against colonial maniacs who deserved every defeat they suffered? This paragraph REALLY demands an outraged response and/or pickets.] Some people who have seen advance screenings of the HBO version have praised it. _This is the first time I_ve seen a film so accurately portray the impact of federal policy on our people,_ said Jacqueline Johnson, the executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, which is cooperating with HBO on educational projects featuring the film. [Cooperating obviously means getting paid.] Mr. Proctor said his grandfather wouldn_t necessarily be surprised by HBO_s tinkering. _I don_t think he ever thought anything historically accurate would come out of any film version,_ he said. Still, before this, _nobody had ever before gone and gutted it and turned it into a love story._ *** Full article: The New York Times - May 9, 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/arts/television/09knee.html Classic Book About Americabs Indians Gains a Few Flourishes as a Film By EDWARD WYATT LOS ANGELES, May 8 b When the historian Dee Brown published bBury My Heart at Wounded Kneeb in 1971, it became an instant sensation. In an age of rebellion, this nonfiction book told the epic tale of the displacement and decline of the American Indian not from the perspective of the winners, but from that of the Indians. But the fact that Mr. Brownbs work has been translated into 17 languages and has sold five million copies around the world was not enough to convince HBO that a film version would draw a sizable mainstream audience. When the channel broadcasts its two-hour adaptation of the book, beginning Memorial Day weekend, at its center will be a new character: a man who was part Sioux, was educated at an Ivy League college and married a white woman. bEveryone felt very strongly that we needed a white character or a part-white, part-Indian character to carry a contemporary white audience through this project,b Daniel Giat, the writer who adapted the book for HBO Films, told a group of television writers earlier this year. The added character is based on a real person: Charles Eastman, part Sioux and descended from a long line of Santee chiefs but who was sent away by his father to boarding school and then held up as a model of the potential assimilation of 19th-century Native Americans. But the film fictionalizes significant portions of his life. In the HBO version he dodges bullets at the Battle of Little Bighorn. In reality he was far away, in grade school in Nebraska. Fictionalizing history has long been standard in Hollywood. But rarely do filmmakers directly hitch their historically inaccurate projects to revered works of nonfiction. Dick Wolf, an executive producer of the film who is best known for the bLaw & Orderb television franchise, defended the fabrications. bThis was not an attempt to do the Ken Burns version of the Indian experience,b Mr. Wolf said in an interview. bIt is a dramatization, and we needed a protagonist.b (The chief executive of HBO, Chris Albrecht, announced yesterday that he was taking a leave of absence after being charged with assaulting a girlfriend in a Las Vegas parking lot early on Sunday.) At the time it was published, Mr. Brownbs epic, subtitled bAn Indian History of the American West,b struck a chord in a country embroiled in a divisive war in Vietnam and still shuddering from the American militarybs massacre in the village of My Lai. Segregation was dying hard in the South, and the American Indian Movement was ascending. The story is a relentless tragedy, tracing the history of American Indian nations from 1860, shortly after the first new states extended into the bpermanent Indian frontier,b through 1890 and the massacre at Wounded Knee, in what is now South Dakota. It became a blockbuster best seller and helped shape the way the history of the American Indians has been interpreted ever since. For decades the book eluded attempts to turn it into a film, partly because of Mr. Brownbs distrust of Hollywood. At least two attempts by potential moviemakers to adapt the book failed. When the current producers optioned the book five years ago, Mr. Brown was in the last years of his life and, according to his grandson, did not believe anything would come of the project. (Mr. Brown died in 2002 at 94.) Tom Thayer, the executive producer who originated the project, said the HBO team wrestled for months with how to boil down a book that spans 30 years and dozens of tribes into a 130-minute film. bThe book is basically an editorialized textbook,b Mr. Thayer said. bIt doesnbt have a single narrative; itbs anthropological and episodic.b Therefore, he added, bwe felt that to tell a story of that size, the Eastman character would be a great hand-holder for the audience.b Many literary critics, and millions of readers, however, had little trouble following Mr. Brownbs story. Writing in The New York Times Book Review in March 1971, N. Scott Momaday, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, emphasized that the book was a story, ba whole narrative of singular integrity and precise continuity; that is what makes the book so hard to put aside, even when one has come to the end.b The film largely restricts itself to the late 1880s, the time of the Ghost Dance, a messianic movement that swept through the Plains Indian tribes. Within that period it weaves together three strands: the story of Sitting Bull, the legendary chief of the Sioux, who fought against Custerbs forces at Little Bighorn in 1876; that of Henry L. Dawes, the Massachusetts senator who pushed into law a plan to allocate portions of Indian land to individual tribe members; and Eastman, who was taken from his tribe by his father and attended Dartmouth and then Boston University School of Medicine. It is in the last two stories that the film begins to bend history. bEastman was the most well-known, well-educated Indian at the beginning of the 20th century,b said Raymond Wilson, a professor of history at Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kan., who wrote what is considered to be the definitive biography of Eastman. bWhen I heard they were doing the film,b he said, bI joked with a couple of people that I hoped they didnbt have Charles Eastman shaking hands with Sitting Bull at Pine Ridge.b Not quite, but almost. The filmbs climactic scene has Eastman watching as Sitting Bull addresses a group of Sioux in Pine Ridge at a meeting of which Dawes is the chairman. Sitting Bull tells them not to accept the government land allotments. In fact, the chief lived 200 miles away at the Standing Rock agency, and the meeting never happened. As for placing Eastman at the Battle of Little Bighorn, Mr. Giat, the screenwriter, defends that choice by noting that some members of Eastmanbs tribe were there. The film also shows Eastman courting Elaine Goodale, a Massachusetts poet and teacher who oversaw schools for Indians in the Dakota territory, over a period of years, beginning while he was in college. In fact, Eastman met her when he arrived at Pine Ridge less than two months before the Wounded Knee massacre. Nor was Goodale anywhere near the reservation in 1883 when Sitting Bull arrived, as shown in the film; she was in Virginia. HBO executives said they saw no problem with the inconsistencies. bWhen we look at historical accuracy, we look at history as it plays in the service of a narrative,b said Sam Martin, a vice president at HBO Films in charge of production on the project. HBO has at times gone the opposite route; last year it publicized the pains it took to ensure the factual accuracy of its Emmy-winning miniseries bElizabeth I.b To its credit, HBObs version of bBury My Heart at Wounded Kneeb does not glamorize Sitting Bull, but rather portrays him as he was: an egotistical, often brutal leader whose pride endangered members of his tribe as they suffered through famine, drought and disease. Some people who have seen advance screenings of the HBO version have praised it. bThis is the first time Ibve seen a film so accurately portray the impact of federal policy on our people,b said Jacqueline Johnson, the executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, which is cooperating with HBO on educational projects featuring the film. bYou see the beginning of issues and policies whose effects we are still dealing with today.b But others are dismayed. Nicolas Proctor, Mr. Brownbs grandson and one of three people who oversees his estate, as well as an associate professor of history at Simpson College in Iowa, said that as a historian he was balways kind of shocked that history is not moving enough, is not evocative enough and rich enough to keep people from having to get in there and start monkeying around with it.b He said that the estate had no control over the filmbs content. Mr. Proctor said his grandfather wouldnbt necessarily be surprised by HBObs tinkering. bI donbt think he ever thought anything historically accurate would come out of any film version,b he said. Still, before this, bnobody had ever before gone and gutted it and turned it into a love story.b Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company * ================================================================ .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . 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