A not totally unrelated post to my screenplay

REBUILDING AN ICON, WORD BY WORD

 In June 2009, Let the Great World Spin appeared on bookshelves. With its publication, author Colum McCann returned a national symbol, The World Trade Center, back to its owners: the citizens of the United States.

It was a courageous act of imaginative recovery and repair. Hijackers on 9/11 destroyed a national symbol of capitalism and transformed it into an international icon of American hopelessness and helplessness.

McCann, working word by word, and phrase by phrase, used the mystery of language to rebuild The World Trade Center into a national memorial to hope and redemption. His book won the 2009 National Book Award.

McCann was living in Manhattan in 2001. His father-in-law was working at The World Trade Center on 9/11. He escaped safely. The Dublin born writer aspired to write a novel about 9/11, wanted to examine his adopted city, hoped to meld fact and fiction into a gripping narrative about the unbounded potential of the human spirit. His solution was as ingenious as it was audacious.

The centerpiece of the novel is the real life story of a daring acrobatic performance which riveted New York City on August 7, 1974. In the early morning darkness Philippe Petit and his cronies snuck into the partially finished colossus in south Manhattan and headed for the roof.

Using technology straight out of Greek mythology, they shot an arrow from a hunting bow to get rope to co-conspirators on the other tower roof. They pulled a wire taut between the towers and Petit stepped out onto that wire-thin barrier between life and death. 

He performed a 40 minute show for the growing crowd of New Yorkers over 1,350 feet below. They were mesmerized and with good reason. He leapt, he danced and he astonished those far below. He wore no safety harness. There was no net to catch him. 

McCann’s brilliance shines in using Petit’s dance in the heavens to illuminate the lives of over a dozen fictional characters who witness it. An Irish priest chases redemption by helping prostitutes get through their days of squalor and menace. He sees a divine angel on the wire.

A support group of grieving mothers who lost sons in Vietnam wrestle with Petit, a man who cheapens life by taunting death. A computer whiz-kid on the west coast, hacks into the phone system, wanting to get an eye witness account from a slightly bemused librarian who picks up the ringing pay phone, foreshadowing with subtle humor the Internet to come. 

Story lines interweave and stray off, only to always come back to the artist floating on a wire.  The novel is sprawling and hugely ambitious while covering both only a single day and only a relatively slight 349 pages. A post script takes readers to 2006 and our post 9/11 world. 

The book transformed me, but I cannot explain how McCann wove his magic in me. 

After 9/11, I dreaded seeing photos of the World Trade Center. The image always took me back to that horrific day and I would fall into a well of sadness that had no bottom.  The hijackers defined the symbol for me. 

After finishing Let the Great World Spin, I saw the world in a new way: this is the essential purpose of literature. When I see photos now, I start to fall into that well of sadness but, in my mind’s eye I suddenly see a Frenchman on a wire. The silhouette represents both the acrobat who defied gravity and the immigrant writer who defied the hijackers’ determination to destroy hope. 

I regain my balance and I do not fall into that well of sadness. I am hopeful again. 

Petit and McCann are both immigrants. They see America through the unique lens of adoption. Native born Americans can take this country for granted. Immigrants aren’t blinded by a birthright.

Petit’s physical fearlessness created what has been called the greatest artistic crime of the last century. McCann’s creative fearlessness in this century sculpted a work of hope and redemption out of the twisted wreckage of The World Trade Center.

We thought the hijackers robbed us of  a national symbol. We were wrong. The hijackers  borrowed it for awhile. With publication of Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann gave us back The World Trade Center. He gave us back our hope.

 We all owe this Irish immigrant a debt of gratitude. 

The 150,000 shunned heroes of World War II

Since the 1960’s, historians and social critics with political agendas have highjacked the story about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They told the nation the bombings were unnecessary, and were done merely to satisfy the blood lust of our military.

When others said the bombings were  necessary, these revisionists shouted down their critics as moral monsters. They wanted our nation to be ashamed of the bombings. They have succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.  

These experts claim, without much proof at all, that Japan, by the summer of 1945, was on the verge of surrendering. They also claim, without proof, that United State intelligence officers knew Japan was close to collapse and suppressed these “facts” so the military could justify using their new weapon.

The news media has blindly followed right along, never raising counter arguments. The media feared the moral condemnation of the revisionists.

The claims of the revisionists were totally destroyed in Richard Frank’s superb 1999 book on the fall of Japan titled, Downfall. Yet, with Frank’s work setting the record straight, our nation still embraces a culture of shame towards the bombings. 

Shame is a very powerful and a very corrosive emotion. It destroys self-esteem. It emotionally freezes up the victim. Healing is yearned for, but impossible.    

Healing is impossible because the lifeblood of shame is silence. It is the horror that cannot be discussed. Historians have hoisted this culture of shame upon us, have forced upon us a politically correct silence which has had horrible unintended consequences.

Because of this shame, because of this silence, the amazing stories of the 150,000 domestic soldiers who worked on the Manhattan Project have been thrown onto the trash heap of history. This is wrong. This gross mistake of history must be fixed.

This does not mean we should be proud. I would not want to live in a country where August 6th and 9th. were national holidays There must be a middle way between shame and pride. 

I live in Oak Ridge. A few facts from that story which revisionists are determined to keep hidden from the American public.

In 1942 the government condemned thousands of acres of farmland in east Tennessee. In the blink of an eye, hundreds of family farms disappeared.  In less than two years, 40,000 construction workers built the 5th largest city in Tennessee. At 93 square miles, the town of 75,000 was larger than Baltimore. The secret colony would not appear on any map until years after the war.

The scale of the effort reads like science fiction. Enriching uranium demanded massive amounts of electricity. Huge electric plants were build overnight and TVA supplied even more power. Oak Ridge consumed ten per cent of the nation’s electrical supply during the war. 

K-25, the largest of the enrichment plants, covered 44 acres. For a brief time, it was the largest building in the world, but then the Pentagon was completed.

Fearing a nuclear accident would be catastrophic, workers lived many miles from the plants. The sixth largest bus system in the country was built to ferry workers back and forth in the colony that did not exist.

The average age of the workers was 27. Most of them were women and most were single.  Into the electric atmosphere of speed, scale, great fear and isolation, you can throw in a healthy dose of hormones too. The workers will tell you it was the most exciting time of their lives.

The workers will also tell it was the scariest of times. The loss of American life during the war would equal a 9/11 attack every five days for three and a half years. Every second counted. They did their jobs. They ended the deadliest conflict known to mankind in eight days.

The historians who peddle their propaganda of shame want us to look at only one side of the story: the lives we destroyed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki . If we do as they insist, then these workers are war criminals.  

It will destroy the reputations of the revisionists, but we must look at both the lives which were destroyed and the lives which were saved. This is the middle ground our nation needs. This is called balance.

Conservative estimates by the Department of War projected that these domestic workers saved the lives of 400,000 American soldiers who would have died in an invasion of Japan. This is equal to everyone living in the city limits of Atlanta. They saved the lives of five million Japanese. These Japanese and American lives surpass everyone in the Atlanta metroplex.

Why in the world have we shunned these workers as war criminals? We must undo 40 years of politically correct poppycock. These workers are heroes.

Military bloggers come through in a big way.

The kind folks at War on Terror News posted about my video this morning! This is a perfect example of how this project will get to the silver screen! Keep your fingers crossed, and pass the YouTube video link around. I need your help. I am not shy about it!

Ignored Heroes from World War II

Linked to the end of time

      Have worked with Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Twitter decided Forgivenessonline was two characters too long. So, my Twitter account is at OakRidgeHeroes.
      Still haven't figured out how to leverage all these apps, but I think I can figure it out. There is a ton of advice out there on the Internet. If kids can do it, with struggles, an old geezer like me should be able to twitter to his heart's content.

forgivenessonline

Nervous Investors

        Met for a few minutes yesterday with a potential investor. Very weird. They know nothing about screenplays and Hollywood. I know little to nothing about business. Because of this, there has to be a lot of trust on both sides of the table.
        This will be a long process.  Lots of give and take. The investors want to remove as much risk as they can from the endeavor. If I could remove all risk, I wouldn't need investors.
         I have imposed a deadline on myself to have my marketing plan completed by May 24th. It will be, at most, five pages long. Will need to condense it down to essential components. It must be as close to perfect as I can get it.
        Need to work on strategies to reduce stress. The investors, I think, don't realize I am taking a huge risk here too. Quitting my job is a big risk, but it has a huge upside if I can get this screenplay to a major studio.

Entering New Territory

       A few weeks back, I ran into a "person of interest" concerning my screenplay Forgiveness. I've known this person for years. On a total lark, without much thought at all, I asked the person, who has read my screenplay, if they might be interested in bank rolling me for 18 months so I could quit my day job and focus all my energies on selling Forgiveness. In exchange, they would get a percentage of the proceeds when I sell it. It is assumed that the monies on the back end would be far, far more than on the front end. (Greed, fear and fame are the main drivers in Hollywood, based on what I have seen from a distance.)
    
      They expressed an interest that was stronger than I expected. And although they are successful business people, they talked more about how "cool" it would be to get this unknown, epic American story out to a national audience. A chance to fix a mistake of history.

      But, of course, business being business, they didn't want to take all the risk themselves. They proposed that if I could get 3-4 investors, so the risk could be spread out, that perhaps a deal could be struck.

      When others have been approached, they have all expressed an interest. But, of course, why would a business person dismiss a proposal right out of the gate? It would seem wise to always hedge your bets. So now, I have six folks who are hedging their bets.

      Am working on, at their request, a marketing plan. Marketing plans are not my strength. But, perhaps they are my strength. My speciality is fiction. Marketing plans might just be right up my alley.

      Keep your fingers crossed.