If you had Hollywood blockbuster money, what obscure historical figure/event would you make a big-budget movie about?

Fun topic, and something I have thought about. Except I can remember any of my brilliant ideas at the moment. I'll be back.

The destruction of a mar -a-lago esque hotel and its fat bully owner.

Probably Bacon's Rebellion

R2, Ohh please . That you can do it in a Sharkandoo 6 also.

I am talking about big Hollywood blockbuster money

When Harry Met Meghan.

There is no single version of the story, and I think it’s been sanitized.

Joseph Smith and exodus of Mormons from Nauvoo to Salt Lake City.

A gay man / something a gay man done played by a gay man.

The Life of Carlo Gesualdo, aristocratic homicidal composer of madrigals.

Robert Smalls

That's good R9. Looks like a good bet for another Oscar for Julia Roberts.

Nero! Nobody's ever made a good movie about Emperor Nero!

Eleanor of Aquataine, the inventor of romantic love, who ditched the king of France for the king of England. And who tried to depose that king of England and put her son on the throne.

King Henry VI of England and his bitch wife Margaret of Anjou, he lost his mind and the War of the Roses filled the ensuing power vacuum.

Mr Terwilliger, my 11th grade World History teacher. Nobody knows his story.

[italic]The Strange Case of Delilah-Judith

Obviously The Making of Valley of the Dolls

Boston's Great Molasses Flood, done in the style of Irwin Allen.

Poseidon Adventure Irwin Allen, not When Time Ran Out Irwin Allen.

Dina Merrill

would try another Jacqueline Susann biopic (neither of the two extant ones are right)

a Rodgers & Hammerstein miniseries, with musical numbers

Keely Smith and Louis Prima - from her discovery to their peak through the divorce, her dating Sinatra, and end it with him playing bowling alleys and ending up in a coma 3 years

Eons ago, when Lisa Marie and Michael Jackson were in a "legitimate romantic relationship."

Janet Jackson flashing her nipple at the Superbowl.

The Armenian Genocide.

Erdogan and the Turks would be SO pissed off, fuck em. Story needs to be told

The story of the Panama Canal (US aids Colombian rebels who want to break away and form Panama, Panamanians then give US rights to build the canal).

The Taiping Rebellion (Chinese loser thinks he's Jesus' brother, forms a cult that snowballs and ends up killing +30 million).

A good movie about an obscure historical event is Silmido (South Korea recruits condemned prisoners to invade North Korea and then at the last minute calls off the operation. Disappointed, the recruits take a bus hostage and then die in a shootout with the South Korean police).

That depends. Am I trying to make money or lose money?

A romantic epic about an English officer (Sam Reid) who falls in love with a sepoy (Fawad Khan) on the eve of the 1857 rebellion.

Dyatlov's been done so I guess I'd go with the Cleveland Street Scandal.

The War of Jenkin's Ear: a English sea captain's ear was sliced off by a Spanish sailor in 1731; 7 years later the incident was used as part of a campaign to declare war against Spain.

Gypsy Rose Lee and her mother, Rose.

Another filmed retelling of the life of Alexander the Great, focusing on his relationship with Hephastian. That mess with Colin Farrell stunk. But who to play the lovebirds? What young actors could do it justice - they'd have to be fairly young cause Alexander died at 26.

Vikings actor Alex Hogh Anderson for Hephastian.

whatever it would end up being, it would need to include a lot of swashbuckling.

The love story of Hadrian and Antinous, of course!

Gay emperor falls in love with a teenaged boy, the boy dies young, and the emperor declares him Divine. The worship of Antinous spreads through the Roman Empire, a.k.a. the Civilized World, and for a the cult of the sacrifice of Antinous is more popular than the cult of the sacrifice of Jesus. What a movie it could be!

A biopic of Christy Mathewson, major league baseball pitcher who was one the first, if not THE first, sports idols. Reading contemporary descriptions, he was movie star handsome but was very down to Earth and disarming not to mention his phenomenal pitching records. His life story has all of the details which Hollywood itself loves - grew up on a farm and leaned to pitch in the barn, worked his way up through the minor leagues, set backs when sent to majors until he began to show success, marriage and parenthood with some tragedy, service in World War One and an early death at 45.

Theodora. Possible prostitute when young, certainly "circus performer." Marries the oafish Emperor's handsome and somewhat polished nephew, despite the Empress's very loud objections. Then becomes a powerful and interesting Empress in her own right. This bitch could have been invented by Hollywood, but nobody has ever really told her story. Sad.

Achilles and Patroklas.

and also the Stuarts. With the Favorite, somebody actually dealt with a Stuart, but how about Charles I, got his head chopped off and everything. Why no love Hollywood? You've only done about a thousand Marie Antoinettes? How about OG head chopped off king, Charles I?

Or maybe James? totally gay. no head chopping though, sorry.

Melania Trump.

No, really!

REALLY!!!

Some day, when the Trump presidency is but a horrific memory and the divorce is long past, I want someone to film the true story of an Eastern European nude model and prostitute who marries one of her clients, and is gobsmacked to find herself First Lady of the USA! She's got to have the most interesting and cinematic backstory of ANY First Lady, and hoo boy would "Melania" be more fun to watch than "Jackie"!

Cleopatra's 12 year old sister who overthrew her.

The Upstairs Lounge Fire

Or any Byzantine Emperor, just cause nobody has EVER done a Byzantine emperor. My favorite? Basil. Handsome young man, comes to court, stable boy, then Chamberlain (sleeps in the Emperor's room usually a Eunuch but not this time), then Caesar (co-emperor), then murders the Emperor and takes the throne himself.

Hmmm. Bitter Queen (sorry, bitter Emperor), who by definition has an interesting back story.

Blackhawk

How about a Heaven's Gate film? I'm talking about the cult, not a remake of the Kris Kristofferson turd. Marshall Applewhite was quite the fascinating kook.

The other Queen of Egypt.

R15 Beat me to it and embellished it wonderfully. Is Celine to far gone to pull one more Oscar worth song out of for the film. It will take a chunk of the budget, but worth every cent.

Jelly Roll Morton. What a life and such unappreciated talent

That peanut dude George Washington Carver.

[quote] Nero! Nobody's ever made a good movie about Emperor Nero!

There['s at least an extremely fun bad one with Charles Laughton in the title role: The Sign of the Cross, dir. Cecil B. DeMille.

I would second a film about Justinian and Theodora. That would be really showing ancient Byzantium at the height of its beauty.

The Cleveland Street Scandal

Biggus Dicuss, Rome's most popular gladiator whore.

I third the suggestion of Justinian & Theodora. Utilize the Nika Riot as a bloody but ominously triumphant climax.

R19. With songs by CHER .

A really good script about the William Desmond Taylor murder.

One of my favorite facts about him is that he had a wife and child and a completely different name while living in NYC, and then one day, ditched them and left town starting a whole newly-created life. He worked off jobs in multiple careers until he landed in Los Angeles under the much fancier name "William Desmond Taylor"! He also had no background which would have led him to being a film director, but there you have it!

Gustavus Adolphus

The 1,200 Jews who fled Nazi Germany/Austria and sailed for the Philippines between 1938-1941, only to have to endure the Japanese invasion and the burning and bombing of Manila.

Alam Wernick….

Frieda Belinfante, a Jewish cross-dressing lesbian who was part of the Dutch Resistance during WWII.

The Dred Scott Decision and its aftermath.

I'd like a good film on the still unsolved murder of the Canadian gold mine millionaire Sir Harry Oakes in the Bahamas in 1943. he was close friends with the governor-general of the Bahamas then, the Duke of Windsor, and his wife the Duchess. there have been several good books about the ultraviolent murder (with a pickaxe), but the only film, the fictionalized Eureka (dir. Nicholas Roeg), isn't very good.

I would also love to see a good film about the murder-suicide of Ned Doheny, the son of oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny (the inspiration for the Daniel Plainview character in There Will Be Blood) and his male secretary in Greystone mansion in Los Angeles in 1929. The secretary was reported to have killed Ned and then shot himself in front of Ned's wife and children, but his family buried Ned outside of the family crypt, suggesting he had committed suicide (since they were Roman Catholic, and suicides could not be buried in consecrated Catholic grounds), and the story has buzzed for years that Ned and his secretary were lovers which led to the deaths.

I would do ROOTS great historical, meaningful, and informative movie

[quote] With the Favorite, somebody actually dealt with a Stuart, but how about Charles I, got his head chopped off and everything. Why no love Hollywood? You've only done about a thousand Marie Antoinettes? How about OG head chopped off king, Charles I?

There was a big-budget 1970 movie about Charles I and his execution: "Cromwell," starring Richard Harris in the title role and Alec Guinness as King Charles I.

Sir Roger Casement. Irish patriot and humanitarian. He exposed the mass enslavement of blacks in the Belgian Congo and of natives in South America on rubber plantations. They were systematically enslaved beaten mutilated and murdered and for exposing these atrocities he was knighted.

Casement was gay and kept a diary.He became involved in the cards for Irish independence and try to import guns into Ireland but was caught and arrested. At his trial for treason they could not hang because he was part of the establishment and had done stellar work. To change the tide of public opinion they released to the gutter press excerpts from his diaries and this resulted in him being hanged up Pentenville prison.

Daniel Day Lewis for the lead role.

There's also a 2003 British film about Charles I's execution called To Kill a King, starring Tim Roth, Dougray Scott, and Rupert Everett as Charles I.

Alla Nazimova's life story would make a great film

The Wrigleyville Cum Dump.

The development of the Chicago School of architecture - Sullivan, Burnham, Wright, Griffin, etc.

An amazing story of the first true American art form and a cast of characters out of an opera.

Constance McCashin's departure from Knots Landing.

Dawson’s 50,000 Load Weekend

Tie between a Nell Shipman biopic ("First Lady of Canadian Cinema") & Willi Unsoeld's expedition up Nanda Devi with his daughter named for the mountain.

Nelly Blythe

I would make a film about Richard III from a Ricardian perspective. Probably a film adaptation of the novel "Daughter of Time," which is about a British detective laid up in the hospital who spends his time puzzling out the Princes in the Tower mystery. I'd cut between modern day at the hospital and "flashbacks" to the 1480s.

And yes I HAVE given this a lot of thought; I first had this notion back in the 90s and would have cast Gary Oldman as R3 and Kenneth Branagh as the detective.

LOL. I meant Gary Oldman as Richard III above, not as poster #3!

Would do a movie about River Phoenix. But with a all star cast.

Torn between the Diet of Worms, the Colloquy of Poissy and the Defenestration of Prague.

Alexander Hamilton.

What's that? Really? That'll never run.

The Connie Francis Story, complete with graphic rape scenes.

Prince Felix Yusupov. Flamer from boyhood. Fabulous teen crossdresser with exquisite jewels, furs and palaces. Some say richer than the tzar. Educated at Oxford. Summer in Crimea. Savior of Russia? Or obsessed with Rasputin's enormous cock? Either way, he amputated it, and kept it in a velvet box in exile in Paris.

Gad Beck author of An Underground Life, a very, very brave gay boy in Berlin during WWII

Herschel Grynspan, the stateless 17 year-old Polish-Jewish lad who went into the German Embassy in Paris and shot his Nazi boyfriend Ernst Von Rath.

Timothee Chalamet as Herschel; Meryl Streep as Granny Grynspan; Connor Jessup as Ernst.

The Vere Street coterie

The robber baron Jay Gould. Growing up, he was my hero. He had a very interesting life.

I would like to see a movie with big special effects of the Johnstown flood. The horror of the wall of water as it traveled down the valley and scraped the earth to the bedrock would be a sight to see. Plus the 3 day fire at the bridge as survivors burned alive, trapped in the debris and wire.

I would like to see a movie about Frank Lloyd Wright leaving his first wife, Catherine, and their seven children in 1909 to run away withone of his clients' wives, the translator Mamah Cheney, for whom he built Taliesin--it was an international scandal. And then the upshot when their Barbadian cook at Taliesin slaughtered Mamah Cheney Wright and her two children and four other people at the house, and then set fire to the place in 1914, for reasons no one has ever discovered.

They made a decent opera out of that story ("Shining Brow" by Daron Hagen), and it's been featured in two fairly recent books about FLW ("Loving Frank" and T. C. Boyle's "The Women"), but it would also make a great movie.

R76 I’m up for Connor Jessup as a Nazi in any movie whatsoever.

Jesus is condemned to death but on the day of his execution his disciples show up with machine guns and slaughter his executioners. It's called Good Friday.

Hi, Quentin Tarantino!

I thought you were straight!

The life of Gore Vidal. So many ways to tell it. So many lies one could tell. So many scandalous incidents of disputed truth.

The New England Hurricane of 1938.

R19, Kirk Kerkorian financed [italic]the Promise[/italic] which was about the genocide. It starred Oscar Isaac as an Armenian medical student and Christian Bale as a reporter. It bombed at the box office. However, I thought it was pretty good.

Harriet Tubman

Alfred Lee Loomis - American lawyer, scientist, inventor. He was a blue blood related to Harry Stimson, who worked in several presidential administrations, including FDR's. Loomis made his fortune in utility bond issues, IIRC. He set up a laboratory in his home in Tuxedo Park, where he would invite scientists and engineers for house parties where they would work on scientific projects. As WWII approached, he was in position to advance technological research that was invaluable to winning the coming war. He was an intermediary into getting big projects up and running. He was involved in radio, radar, and nuclear developments. There was also some scandalous behavior to make a movie interesting: he had an affair with the wife of one of the scientists he was working with. And he tried to have his first wife committed to get her out of the way of his big romance. I'd never heard of him until I read [italic]the Wizard of Tuxedo Park[/italic].

Princess Diana Dead Scream

Jackie Kennedy, with a full exploration of the events that led her to end up on assistance.

R74, I was reading a Noel Coward biog the other night and turns out he knew Yusupov. So there's another string to your screen bow.

The rise and fall of starlet Barbara Payton, who looked like she was headed for A-list stardom but ended up as a $5-a-trick hooker in an SRO off Hollywood Boulevard.

She fucked Howard Hughes; had a brazen affair with Bob Hope that made the studios cut her loose; and inspired a fight between Franchot Tone and Tom Neal that required Tone to have reconstructive surgery. After that she went downhill quickly and was arrested for sleeping on a Hollywood bus bench in nothing but a bathing suit and fur coat.

Barbara died of acute liver poisoning before she was 40. Imagine recreating mid-century Hollywood on a blockbuster budget with a story like hers.

Edward IV and the War of the Roses.

Digby.

[quote] To the extent the book is ever read today, it is by (Gerard Manley) Hopkins scholars looking to shed some light on that poet's own frustratingly elusive inner life. For Hopkins and Dolben knew each other, wrote letters to each other, and read each other's poetry: though they met on only one occasion, in Oxford, at (Robert) Bridges's instigation. The suggestion made by many biographers that Hopkins was in love or at least infatuated with Dolben is eminently credible, though not undisputed. After he heard the news of Dolben's death Hopkins wrote to Bridges that "there can very seldom have happened the loss of so much beauty (in body and mind and life) and of the promise of still more as there has been in his case"—and wondered whether Dolben's family had thought of publishing his poems.

Nicolai Tesla -- tortured genius ahead of his time, the greatest inventor of his time that Edison stole from, eventually died penniless. I know they made a recent movie about Edison and Tesla but I am more interested in his entire life. Never married, never know to have any romantic interests. Strange man who fell in love with a pigeon at the end of his life. Isaac Newton as the same way. I wonder if they were both repressed gay men.

The Battle of San Juan Hill

Mark Ruffalo as Teddy Roosevelt and would cover the build up to the Spanish-American War to when Teddy returns home to his family and the admiration of the nation. It would show William Randolph Hearst using his newspaper empire, and his competition with Pulitzer, to enrage the American public to sell newspapers. Of course blowing up the USS Maine would be spectacular. The highlight of the film would be Teddy and his followers arriving in Cuba and his do-or-die rampage up the San Juan hill with bullets whizzing by. Drama, personalities, explosions, battles, and a hero's welcome. What more would you want in a movie? (Oh, I forgot about adding a little sexual intrigue. Perhaps showing Hearst in bed with one of his mistresses, then just as they both climax his valet runs in with the news the USS Maine has blown up.)

Frances Kelsey - she worked at the FDA and refused to approve Thalidomide distribution in the US because she thought it caused birth defects

Charles Richter. Endlessly interesting man, created the Richter Scale.

Is that something I could use?

Caracalla. Murders his brother Geta in the arms of their mother to become sole emperor. Kills several thousand Alexandrian young men because the Alexandrian Dataloungers mocked him. Builds fabulous bath house. Murdered by his bodyguard while taking a shit at the roadside. Succeeded by Elegabalus, murderous twink with gender identity issues. And he looked like the cockgobbler with a scowl (short, muscular, nasty).

In fact, there should a whole HBO/Netflix series on the Severan dynasty!

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Deadliest**

Al Bowlly biopic. The sets, costumes and soundtrack would be amazing.

R95, well he hated fat people, so he was probably a DLer.

Grandma Dearest -- the story of Doris Day as told through the eyes of her only grandson.

Renee Zellweger would play her in her later years (and do her own singing). The grandson would be played by Ryan Gosling.

The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, it was depicted in episode 1 of Watchmen but I’d like to see a film or limited series on this event.

Dancing plague of 1518! Hundreds of toothless Alsatian fraus dancing themselves to death in the streets of Strasbourg. This project already has the best art direction and best costume design Oscar (for Colleen Atwood) in the bag.

A movie about the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 would make a great blockbuster. Massive natural disaster with amazing survival stories.

The Fatty Arbuckle rape trials. Hollywood loves stories about itself.

The Lord Beauchamp scandal. It would be like a darker Downton Abbey

R110, hardly obscure, though.

I want another telling of Lord Lucan’s story

The story of Cortez and Montezuma. Reportedly, this was the subject of what was regarded as a brilliant screenplay, passed around for years, though never produced.

R112 That's relative. I'm sure it's "obscure" to anyone under 40 years old.

R112 Most likely obscure to anyone outside of Hollywood Babylon aficionados, that’s the only way I know about it.

I'd like to see a film about Charlemagne. Obscure, I know. But I'd watch it.

There are a few good books on Thomas Wilson Dorr of Rhode Island history. His story would make a fun movie. He's the one who agitated and changed the way we elect representatives and senators in that state. He's commemorated by Dorrance St. in Providence. But what he did, it took cojones to do.

The Spendid Splinters: Gen. George Washington's Laudanu-Fueled Escapades At Valley Forge.

The Spendid Splinters: Gen. George Washington's Laudanum-Fueled Escapades At Valley Forge.

[quote] The Fatty Arbuckle rape trials.

The Wild Party in 1975 was supposed to be about this.

The history of nude high school swimming.

Elizabeth Van Lew and Mary Bowser.

Slavery, High Society, Garden Parties, Politics, War, Lesbians in Love as a Mixed Race Couple, Espionage, Abolitionists, Gorgeous Costumes, Set Design, and a possible score from Philip Glass AND Kanye?

Let’s go!

GIRL POWER!

👇🏼👇🏿

A movie about the importance of free speech would be really great about now. How about Frederick Douglass' free speech battles in the 1850s or the Fireworks Supreme Court case?

Raymond Rohauer of the Coronet Theatre obtained a copy of the film [Fireworks] which Anger attempted to recover. After screening Fireworks on October 11, 1957, Rohauer was arrested on obscenity charges. William C. Doran served as prosecutor, with much of his case focusing on the Coronet and its homosexual patrons rather than the content of the film. Doran zeroed in on the sailor with a firecracker and, despite the lack of nudity in Fireworks, persistently referred to it as "the penis scene". Rohauer was found guilty in February 1958 and received a sentence of three years probation with a $250 fine.

Civil rights attorney Stanley Fleishman appealed the decision to the California Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of Rohauer. The court ruled that homosexuality was a valid subject of artistic expression and that overt reference to it could not be considered obscenity. This ruling became a landmark decision for freedom of speech in the United States. Fleishman successfully defended one of Anger's later films, Scorpio Rising, in a similar obscenity trial.

Was Tesla ethnically Serb, Croat, Austrian? He was a handsome young man and lots of young leading men would fight for that role. He's a pic we've seen less than the other hottie shots.

Some great suggestions here. Let’s hear it for our well read, well educated, well informed Data-loungers, yes!?!?!

here's oops

Ooops? Dutch or German? Never heard of him.

R125, Tesla was an ethnic Serb, born in Smiljan in modern-day Croatia.

The sodomy rape trial of Richard Cornish, captain of the Ambrose. He was found guilty and hanged in Virginia Colony.

I think my idea wins for representing history, historical figures we know little of, insinuated or possible or perhaps genuine, lesbian relationship between a black slave girl and her owner, a young lady of high society, who was a covert abolitionist, & of a family, whom, had very close ties to the POTUS: Jefferson Davis & finally, the endless possibilities of plot twists and rich story telling, regarding one of the MOST well organized and effective espionage rings of all time, without which, the Civil War May have droned on (doubtfully- but still, great drama and suspense, since Mary Bowser was such a bad ass spy).

This story has EVERYTHING. Admit it. There’s even a role for Glenn Close, as Elizabeth Van Lew’s mother! (Google pics, of Elizabeth, and you’ll agree.)

Boy toy who became a god.

Hedy Lamarr. Her inventions led to today's wireless, GPS, Bluetooth, etc. She was a genius. PLUS she was a beautiful actress; I don't care if you're a total misogynist - her depiction of a woman's orgasm in the film Ecstasy will have you pulling your pud.

That's a good one, R132.

Antinous The Gay God

Tallulah Bankhead

[quote]The sodomy rape trial of Richard Cornish, captain of the Ambrose. He was found guilty and hanged in Virginia Colony.

I had NEEDS!

r131, I would LOVE to see that movie!

"I don't care if you're a total misogynist - her depiction of a woman's orgasm in the film Ecstasy will have you pulling your pud."

Um, no

R114 this is indeed an incredible story. I am dying to see a well-made CGI rendering of Tenochtitlan. But it is probably politically sensitive to be ever produced for the big screen. The same is true for my suggestion Elegabalus although he was huge in the 19th century (see Alma Tadema).

Along with R29's love story between Hadrian and Antinous I'd like to suggest a movie about Harmodius and Aristogeiton.

[quote]Harmodius and Aristogeiton (both died 514 BC) were two lovers from ancient Athens. They became known as the Tyrannicides, the preeminent symbol of democracy to ancient Athenians, after they committed an act of political assassination at the 514 BC Panathenaic Festival. They assassinated Hipparchus, thought to be the last Peisistratid tyrant, though according to Thucydides Hipparchus was not a tyrant but a minister. They also planned to kill the real tyrant of Athens, Hippias, but were unsuccessful.

That's some nice 2,000 year old booty pop, R140.

Martha Bulloch Roosevelt (Teddy's mother, Eleanor's grandmother). Fascinating life (Gone with the Wind partly based on her), dramatic death dying within hours of Teddy's wife. The early chapters of the David McCullough Roosevelt biography Mornings on Horseback that center on his family are just riveting. He was quite a character yet he was probably dullest of the bunch.

The true nature of life for actresses in the 'Golden Age'. Probably a bit too close to the bone for a major studio to touch, but they were effectively prostituted. Even the name stars were preyed on and worked near to death. No wonder so many either became monsters or religious, in later life. And often childless due to the many abortions they had undergone.

Bombing in the middle of DC.

A movie or mini-series about Lord Byron. He was a fascinating character, born rich, brilliant and rebellious and known for his beauty.. He was involved in multiple scandals, including incest with his half-sister. He seduced women and men, he was an adventurer and a poet. He met an early death fighting for Greece where he fell madly in love with a Greek boy.

There have already been Byron movies

Mata Hari

I remember hearing on some program about a woman during the Civil War who couldn't get word about her husband who was in the army. So she dressed like a man in order to join his regiment and find him. If I remember correctly they discovered that she wasn't the only woman to have done that.

Unfortunately I don't remember if it was a PBS program on History Channel program.

R145 Titled: Mad,Bad and Dangerous to Know.

The awful NYC fire where all the women died in the garment factory and new regulations were put in place forever. Jane Fonda showed interest in it in the 70s but nothing happened.

The true story of Mary Reed and Anne Bonney, female pirates and shipmates. Bonney was the "wife" of Pirate Captain Jack Rackham, and Reed had lived much of her life as a man, including much of her piratical career. The two women were the fiercest fighters in the pirate crew, and were the only ones go stay on the deck and fight when the British Navy finally put a stop to their crew. The women were at least friends, possibly lovers.

I wish I could post a link, but I'm on my phone.

Mata Hari is obscure, R147? Besides the fact there's been dozens of movies done on her.

[R150]: There was a TV movie about the Triangle fire: “The Triangle Factory Fire Scandal” (1979), starring Tovah Feldshuh and David Dukes.

[quote] There have already been Byron movies

There haven't been that many and if there were, they were hardly seen like the series with Jonny Lee Miller and a very bad one with Gabriel Byrne. All totally miscast. They need to star a man who was as beautiful and dynamic as Byron.

Fred Douglass.

Period.

A Louise Brooks biopic.

The comfort women.

thanks, r153, i need to track that down.

Found it on youtube, thanks, compelling but not how I imagine a big screen treatment would do it. Imagine an Altman ensemble where we got to know the women and then disaster struck.

I'd propose this as a film but nothing could top the raw footage for sheer horror. Just awful. Poor people.

Doc footage being shot before fire broke out. You really see the poor victims here, all those up by the stage who had no prayer. Not knowing it was all about to go bad.

American composer, Charles Tomlnson Griffes, might make an interesting biopic. This is from the personal section at Wikipedia.

[quote] Griffes died of influenza in New York City during the worldwide pandemic at the age of 35 and is buried in Bloomfield Cemetery in Bloomfield, New Jersey.[5] His papers passed to his younger sister Marguerite, who chose to destroy many that explicitly related to his life as a homosexual.[6] Donna Anderson (see below) is his current literary executor.

[quote] Griffes kept meticulous diaries, some in German, which chronicled his musical accomplishments from 1907 to 1919, and also dealt honestly with his homosexuality, including his regular patronage of the Lafayette Place Baths and the Produce Exchange Baths. [7]

[quote] Charles Tomlinson Griffes was drawn into the gay world by the baths not just because he had sex there, but because he met men there who helped him find apartments and otherwise make his way through the city, who appreciated his music, who gave him new insights into his character, and who became his good friends. The gay world became a central part of his everyday world, even though he kept it hidden from his nongay associates. — George Chauncey, Gay New York 1995

[quote] During his time as a student in Berlin he was devoted to his "special friend" Emil Joèl (aka "Konrad Wölcke"). In later life, he had a long term relationship with John Meyer (biographer Edward Maisel used the pseudonym Dan C. Martin), a married New York policeman.[6]

The adventures of Jeremy and Andy.

R143 Half of them were gay/bi

R154 Jason Patric as Lord Byron in Frankenstein Unbound (1990)

Among Lord Byron's conquests was Lady Caroline Lamb, wife of future Preme Minister and confidante of Queen Victoria, Lord Melville. I find it interesting that even though the whole world knew Byron had fucked his wife, it didn't hamper Melville's political career. But I don't think that anyone is making a film about Byron in the era of political correctness, although if they do, I hope Douglas Booth is still young enough to p kn ay the title role.

r154, someone who was "beautiful" by 19th century standards would probably be considered average today. Miller and Byrne were probably more attractive than the real Byron was

r165, "political correctness" hasn't stopped people from making movies about people more controversial than Byron so stop it with the Republican whining

Plus, real Byron was just over 5'8 and at some point weighed 14 stone (200 lbs.).

R165 Douglas Booth tanked his own career agreeing to play Nikki Sixx on Netflix. Pass.

r167, correct. People were shorter back then, yet you always see these strapping six foot actors playing guys in the, like, 17th century who were probably 5'5" max......

From Wikipedia

[quote] The Siwa Oasis was of special interest to anthropologists and sociologists because of its historical acceptance of male homosexuality. The practice probably arose because from ancient times unmarried men and adolescent boys were required to live and work together outside the town of Shali, secluded for several years from any access to available women. In 1900, the German egyptologist George Steindorff reported that, "the feast of marrying a boy was celebrated with great pomp, and the money paid for a boy sometimes amounted to fifteen pound, while the money paid for a woman was a little over one pound." The archaeologist Count Byron de Prorok reported in 1937 that "an enthusiasm could not have been approached even in Sodom... Homosexuality was not merely rampant, it was raging...Every dancer had his boyfriend...[and] chiefs had harems of boys.

[quote] "all normal Siwan men and boys practice sodomy...the natives are not ashamed of this; they talk about it as openly as they talk about love of women, and many if not most of their fights arise from homosexual competition....Prominent men lend their sons to each other. All Siwans know the matings which have taken place among their sheiks and their sheiks' sons....Most of the boys used in sodomy are between twelve and eighteen years of age." In the late 1940s, a Siwan merchant told the visiting British novelist Robin Maugham that the Siwan men "will kill each other for boy. Never for a woman".

R154 I do recall one funny scene in the BBC TV movie about Byron with Jonny Lee Miller where they showed how Byron would tie his bangs with paper strips to give him those distinctive curls in front.

I spend it on a Roswell UFO crash film & it's many brave witnesses perspectives =

They made a movie about Mary Shelley in 2017. Douglas Booth was in it but he played Percy Shelley, not Lord Byron which was played by Tom Sturridge.

Pueblo Revolt of 1680

R172 Back in the 90s, Showtime made a movie about the Roswell incident. But, it was and the critics panned it.

The 1977 Oklahoma Girl Scout murders.

"The War at the End of the World" based on the awesome novel by Mario Vargas LLlosa. The true story of Antônio Conselheiro, Christian Socialist, whose rebellion was brutally crushed by the progressive Brazilian government. They were so embarrassed about what happened that they covered the site with a reservoir.

They should make a series on the Skinwalker Ranch in Utah. It was owned by a simple family who only wanted to raise cattle. The weird things that happened drove them out. Cattle mutilations, UFOs, alien abduction, monsters, huge wolfs that can't be killed, and a portal? It was later bought by billionaire Robert Bigelow for scientific research into UFOs. The research found it hard to obtain data because it was never repeated again as if "they" were watching and anticipated their next move. They only ended up with eyewitness accounts. For example, a couple of scientists saw a black humanoid figure come out of a small hole in the air

The Inca empire!

I read a 2 page famous women biography in a 1940's DC comics Justice Society story in the past year..

It was a famous French woman around 1890-1910 who was a painter but had to dress up in drag to become successful. I was just thinking after I had read her story what a great film could've been made from it. I believe she was already dead before the 1940's DC comic came out (if that helps anyone with her identity).

I don't think she ever married (lesbian) & I wish I could find her name or the 2 page bio but I've given up on it. She loved painting animals but I'm drawing a blank with all of the other details.

I'm not 100% sure but I believe this is the woman that I was trying to think of at R180.

Rosa Bonheur =

The Land Between The Lakes Massacre (family murdered by a dogman) =

If any of you screenwriter bitches who populate CL, and I know you are here, make a script out of these suggestions I want royalties!!!

The Bricca family murders

Baron von Steuben

Haetchepsut, the only female Phoaroh of Ancient Egypt. She essentially stole the throne from her son, and kept it from him as long as she lived. Her reign was a time of peace and plenty, her son started all sorts of wars as soon as she was gone, and was called Thutmoses the Great for his victories.

He ordered all her monuments and inscriptions to be torn down and buried, thereby preserving them for future archeologists.

Not quite obscure but Boudicca. If she had been a man there would've been blockbusters already.

Grass roots activist Jane Jacobs (author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities) vs. New York City’s “master builder” Robert Moses, who tried to destroy low density Greenwich Village with an expressway and high rise condos.

Charley Darkey Parkhurst, born Charlotte Darkey Parkhurst (1812–1879),[1] also known as One Eyed Charley or Six-Horse Charley, was an American stagecoach driver, farmer and rancher in California. Raised as a girl in New England, mostly in an orphanage, Parkhurst ran away as a youth, taking the name Charley and living as a man. He started work as a stable hand and learned to handle horses, including to drive coaches drawn by multiple horses. He worked in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, traveling to Georgia for associated work.

After Parkhurst died in 1879, neighbors came to the cabin to lay out the body for burial and discovered that his body appeared to be female to them. Rheumatism and cancer of the tongue were listed as causes of death. In addition, the examining doctor established that Parkhurst had given birth at some time. A trunk in the house contained a baby's dress.[3] The LA Times reported, "The discovery of her true sex became a local sensation,"[2] and was soon carried by national newspapers.

It was a shame that the Grammys didn't do any sort of tribute to the victims of the Station fire that year. Without the fans, there would be no music industry.

Check out Richard Chamberlain as a florid Byron in the turgid biopic, “Lady Caroline Lamb” (1972), a big budget bomb that didn’t last long. There’s a sequence at a masqued ball attended by Byron, accompanied by Lady Caroline, played by Sarah Miles, painted as a blackamoor, fanning him with ostrich feathers.

Screenwriter Robert Bolt wrote and directed this for his then wife Miles. It didn’t get anyone very far, and disappeared soon after release. Best thing in it is the music score by Richard Rodney Bennett.

[quote]The Inca empire!

How about the INCEL empire?

J.R. Ackerley's life sounds CRAZY good for film treatment. He even had a father (known as "The Banana King of London") who had a secret, second family, an Aunt Bunny, a mentally unstable sister, a gay Maharaja, and a big Alsatian dog named "Queenie" in his life.

A 2011 article in The New Yorker on him says, "Ackerley was remarkably handsome. At school, the other boys begged to get into his bed. He says he fought them all off, with a few exceptions—for example, a certain Jude, who undid the seams of his pants pockets and invited the occupants of neighboring seats to feel him up during class."

There'd be plenty of opportunity for drop ins by other literary types (Forster, Auden Isherwoord) and actors he knew, as well as foreign location shoots (the internment camp in Switzerland he was kept at during WW1, his job in India, his trip to Japan, where it's said he was taken by the beauty of Japanese men.

From wiki:

[quote] While never finding the "Ideal Friend" he wrote of so often (at least in human form), he had a number of long-term relationships. Ackerley was a "twank," a term used by sailors and guardsmen to describe a man who paid for their sexual services.[25] He described the ritual of picking up and entertaining a young guardsman, sailor or labourer. Forster warned him, "Joe, you must give up looking for gold in coal mines."[26]

When is Devil in the White City coming out?

"It was a shame that the Grammys didn't do any sort of tribute to the victims of the Station fire that year. Without the fans, there would be no music industry."

And they died so tragically. A night out with a cool band and then horror. Talk about innocent victims. Still gets to me. Watch the memorial to them on youtube. Heartbreaking.

I've looked up the RI incident on YT before R196.

What's the title of the video that you're referring to?

"Professor John Buettner-Janusch, chair of the NYU Anthropology Department, was convicted of manufacturing LSD and Quaaludes in his campus laboratory. He claimed the drugs were for an animal behavior experiment, but a jury found otherwise. B-J, as he was known, served three years in prison before being paroled, emerging to find his life and career in shambles. Four years later, he sought revenge by trying to kill the sentencing judge with poisoned Valentine’s Day chocolates. After pleading guilty to attempted murder, he was sentenced to twenty years in prison, where he died on a hunger strike."

He also led a double life, had numerous gay affairs, and probably died from the AIDS in prison.

This would make a great movie!

For you, R197. Be warned, it's sad to watch. Truly innocent victims if ever there were any (and so many of them).

R199 Thank you for posting that. It's sad indeed.

I felt sorry for the ones with the dreaded red eyes in the photos.

Couldn't someone have volunteered their services to make them look their best in a tribute?

This =

Former Judge Tracie Hunter being dragged out of the courtroom would make a great scene in a film LOL.

Hollywood are you listening?

Scary Judge Mary =

damn, I love so many of these, but I kinda worry it's so easy to take a cool era or life and make it suck, like r192 mentions with lady Caroline Lamb.

I would kind of like to see a Madame Blavatsky biopic, a magnificent fraud who really launched the whole new age bullshit movement in the late 1800s. Bonus if you can get that wonderful fraudulent artiste Gwynneth Paltrow to play her.

R204 Even with Oscar potential Goop has to much vanity to go full Blavatsky. Too bad this didn’t come up when Kathy Bates was in her prime, she would have been perfect. Maybe Melissa MCCarthy could do it justice like that biopic about the forger.

heh, yes, melissa mccarthy, I could totally see doing this. Totally loved Can You Ever Forgive Me. Same deal, sort of.

I'd like to see a film on LGBT rights crusader Donahue (based on his life not just the rise of his show). Maybe even a 2 parter =

so a lot of these I love because I love the people involved, but honestly, would you watch a movie based on a fairly successful life if there was no particular drama, even if you like the particular person involved?

I honestly don't think I'd watch a movie on my own life. There has to be SOMETHING kind of big and dramatic to make it work.

Amanda Todd =

Ex con Wes Watson 's life might be a successful film. He's made some comments about LGBT tolerance in his videos.

Some of these 70s gay subjects could be expanded into film ideas.

I read a book about this fire, and it has haunted me ever since. I once found a survivors message board, and they mentioned a student by name who they believed set the fire. They believed he was protected by school officials at the time. The kid went on to be quite the arsonist, if the posters were telling the truth.

One thing mentioned in the book that really upset me was the fact that some surviving children were told, at school and by their parents, that only the good ones were taken by God. If you survived, He didn’t want you. Some kids were not allowed to ever talk about the fire again, at home or at school, so unlike today, when counseling would be available. Several of the survivors talked about leaving the Church when they were old enough.

I guess I should try and find the forum again, and see if anyone is still around. Anyway, it would make a great movie or miniseries.

Pro LGBT rights actress Kathryn Joosten's life (Desperate Housewives, The West Wing, etc.) would make an interesting film.

I wonder which stars would play themselves in the feature film...

so we are down to people with about 15 minutes of movie. guess Andy Warhol was right.

I haven't seen a single submission that would be a 15 minute film.

R215 is Trump.

don't be bitter.

I'd try to make something like Uncle Tom's Cabin, but in relation to animal exploitation, in the hope of changing viewers' minds about using animals for food, entertainment, clothes, experimentation, military training, etc.

Like Earthlings but fictional and in story form.

The film archive team from UWisconsin that tracked down the last screen test footage of Greta Garbo.

Interesting, the Radium Girls would totally have been a perfect contender for this list and boom, here it is! I do like Joey King, but there’s something a little to television about this trailer, which makes me a bit wary.

"Worthy of a Hollywood movie".

I agree =

Well since the media didn't cover it much when it happened...

504 Sit In protests- I could also see this as limited series type thing.

This story about three teenage girls who became part of the Dutch resistance during World War 2 sounds ripe for film treatment. The book came out last year and is called "Seducing and Killing Nazis: Hannie, Truus and Freddie: Dutch Resistance Heroines of WWII.

The book synopsis at Amazon states the following:

[quote] This is the astonishing true story of three teenage Dutch girls, Hannie Schaft and sisters Truus and Freddie Oversteegen, that has inspired many throughout the world.When Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands in World War II, these girls took up arms against the enemy by seducing high-ranking Nazi officers, luring them into the woods and killing them. They provided Jewish children with safe houses and gathered vital intelligence for the resistance. They did what they did "because it had to be done." Above all, they tried to remain human in inhuman circumstances. Hannie Schaft was executed by the Nazis three weeks before the end of the war and became the icon of female Dutch resistance. Truus and Freddie Oversteegen survived the war, but were forever haunted by the demons of their past.

Hannie is said to have been on Hitler's hit list. Even after capture and torture, she was apparently defiant to the end, and "when the two soldiers tasked with killing her shot her, she fell, but both had missed their mark for a killing shot. Her last words were reported to be mocking the soldiers, allegedly stating after the first volley, 'Idiots! I shoot better!'"

The article at the link summarizes their story.

R224 I could see that more as a mini-series on cable or streaming services.

Maybe R224, but I would tweak it. Make it teenage guys instead of teenage girls.

Another fire story......so sad.....with French fashions....

r227, there was a French miniseries inspired by that event last year called The Bonfire of Destiny -- it uses the fire as a starting point for various soapy tales of fictional women involved. The first episode, featuring the fire, is fantastic, but the stories grow increasingly absurd. Anyway, it's available on Netflix if you're interested.

I'd like to see a film on the life of Linda Moulton Howe =

The gay elements of the Army-McCarthy hearings in the 50s.

r230, do you mean the Lavender Square?

OT, but interesting that the OP originated from a troll farm in India (he/she is greyed our as well). Why would people in troll farms in India want to post in DL? I get the political stuff, but this post is pretty benign.

I'd make a movie about Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman. You could get a good miniseries out of that woman's life. And most of the main characters are dead, so no defamation issues.

The late Alexander Onassis. Not sure how big budget it would be though. I would want it to be glamorous but with an indie vibe.

I read this book as a teen and always thought it would make a very different type of Vietnam war movie.

How about the story of Errol Flynn’s photographer son who disappeared in Vietnam? Jolie could play his heartbroken French mother, searching and mourning in flashbacks.