Uncategorized 15 Jul 2007 09:47 pm
5 million copies? pfft.
From “Classic Book About America’s Indians Gains a Few Flourishes as a Film” by Edward Wyatt in the New York Times on May 9:
…The fact that [Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee] 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.
*headdesk*
on 15 Jul 2007 at 10:01 pm 1.Savannah said …
Ghastly.
on 15 Jul 2007 at 10:28 pm 2.Cam Sculpin said …
Yeah. I hardly know where to start.
on 16 Jul 2007 at 2:16 pm 3.Lisa said …
There was an article somewhere about how Hollywood first wanted to set the Harry Potter films in a Los Angeles suburban school (like 90210) with an American Harry. They had to fight to keep it British.
on 16 Jul 2007 at 2:50 pm 4.mia said …
I remember reading that here, and then related to the really depressing discussion of how Hollywood was having problems with a movie treatment of Anansi Boys, because “you can’t do fantasy with a black cast” or some such garbage.