The way Franzoni sees it, scholars like Coleman push his scripts, which initially value emotional relatability just as much as accuracy, toward the subtle truths of the times he explores. “I want to create my drama,” Franzoni says. “I do a lot of research beforehand so it’s never going to be completely wacko, but then if an advisor wants to show me where I’ve gone wrong, that’s great.”
Franzoni’s opinion of the studio system is less favorable. According to Franzoni, studio representatives often attempt to pigeonhole his scripts into pre-established archetypes, going so far as to rewrite them in ways that eliminate any semblance of historiographical relevance. “With ‘Gladiator,’ the studios assumed the genre––what they imagined to be guys in skirts with swords and sandals––was dead,” Franzoni says. “If they weren’t going to make it into a Clint Eastwood revenge movie, which it was not, then what was it?”
NEW FRONTIERS
For the moment, due largely to what Franzoni sees as the anti-intellectualizing forces of Hollywood, he’s focused his efforts on television. The writer is currently working on a mini-series with Steven Spielberg about the 17th-century wars between the Algonquin and Iroquois Native Americans, along with four other projects. “The writer calls the shots, which is why television has not only survived, but is flourishing,” Franzoni says.
One of Franzoni’s film-writing heir apparents, who is a former student of Coleman, Elizabeth C. Adams ’10, also has her finger on the pulse of the small screen. She has penned a screenplay based on the life of Arminius, a Germanic general who defeated a Roman battalion in 4 C.E., and is now looking to television as her preferred platform. “Last year I was 100 percent about film...but right now, television is the place for groundbreaking and intellectual stuff,” Adams says.
It remains to be seen whether television can provide an escape from the corporate forces that undermine scholarship on the big screen. But regardless of what the future holds for television, it is clear to Adams that the delicate balance between cultural accessibility and historical accuracy that underlies historical films will not go away with the rising generation of filmmakers.
“I often struggle with ideas like, ‘Maybe I should change a name to make it more accessible, or take a part out that makes the script too unwieldy,’” Adams says, adding that knowing how contemporary to make her characters’ speech patterns is another source of confusion. It’s no surprise, then, that she has a desire for scholarly guidance, and is still in contact with her mentor, Coleman. While the world of academic film consulting is just as theory-heavy and tangled as the history it attempts to make sense of, those who work in the field believe that it is an indispensable process in the filmmaker’s journey from word to screen.
—Staff writer David J. Kurlander can be reached at david.kurlander@thecrimson.com.