Writings

I should post a resume for my creative works.

SCREENPLAYS

Vinegar Joe

This dramatizes one of the great adventure stories of World War II. In 1942, U.S. Army General Joseph W. Stilwell was sent to China to "increase the combat efficiency of the Chinese Army." The mission turned sour, failing to turn the tide of the Japanese onslaught in Burma. Stilwell's headquarters command was forced to escape through the worst malarial district in the world into British India. Stilwell was the only person to lead a group out with no fatalities. On other trails, 30,000 people perished.

The Peanut and I

A sequel to Vinegar Joe, taking the story through the Cairo Conference of December 1943. General Stilwell, the fightingest General in the United States Army, was placed in a very sensitive political mission. This script dramatizes all the obstacles to the great General's fulfillment of his mission.

* I plan at least two more scripts dramatizing the Stilwell saga.

Lyon of Missouri

This tells the story of Nathaniel Lyon, a General who saved Missouri for the Union in the early months of the war. Lyon was the first Union hero of the war. Had he survived the Battle of Wilson Creek, he might have been lifted up to command the Army of the Potomac rather than McClellan. This might have shortened the war by two years. The designers of the Civil War game rate Lyon on a par with Stonewall Jackson, in terms of the significance of their deaths.

Lyon was an extraordinary character. The first five pages of this script will make the best actors drool for the part.

Cycling to Paradise

This romantic comedy tells the story of a group of rank amateurs in Denver trying to produce a movie. It is set around my job as a school bus driver.

Rumsfeld's Folly

For this script, I simply imposed a linear structure on Kurt Vonnegut's, The Sirens of Titan, and substituted luminaries of the Bush Administration: i.e. Noel Constant = Bush, Sr.; Malachi Constant = Bush, Jr.; Salo, the cloven-hoofed Tralfamadorian = Cheney; etc.

You can get an idea by scrolling down to the entry "Rumfoord's Pocket History..."

At Summer Solstice with the Ancient Ones

The plot line for A Midsummer Night's Dream set in Mesa Verde during the 12th Century. Sounds pretty dreamy, don't you think?

I have made it through the last scene, but this script is far from finished. The names for the immortals must be changed. Anything indicating ancient Greece must be squeezed out of the script. Almost anything too intrusive upon the religion of the Puebloan peoples must be squeezed out. Etc. A lot of work still to do.

The Love Bubble Man

This is a fictional story worked around a peculiar tangent of the JFK assassination. Two reporters, Bill Hunter and Jim Koethe, spent time in Jack Ruby's apartment on the evening of November 22, 1963 (hours after the shooting in Dealey Plaza, and before Ruby shot Oswald in the Dallas police station).

At present, this is a confused script, but, if thinned down, it might work well as a Cold Case episode

The Graven Images of Nationalism

Incomplete, about half finished. A fictional story set around the catastrophe in Iraq. I'm just too angry to contain long soliloquies condemning the war.

STAGE PLAYS

Czar Reed and the Punk

I call this a dialogue between the 19th and 20th Centuries. It is a two man play, minimal set. The historical personage is Thomas B. Reed, a United States Speaker of the House, 51st and 55th Congresses. Speaker Reed was a wonderful character. A simple quote from one of his contemporary opponents across the aisle (Champ Clark, a Democract from Missouri), should suffice. "Speaker Reed ruled the House by the brutality of his intellect. Sometimes he rubbed the skin off. Sometimes he cut to the bone. And sometimes, he crushed in a skull as though it were an eggshell."

Reckoning with Marlowe

This play was conceived as a companion piece to Shakespeare in Love. It is structured around the production of a play. In this case, the play within the play is Tamburlaine, the first play employing blank verse. It made a sensation in Elizabethan London.

This play makes a perfect evening of theater. Despite the serious theme and the depth of the tragedy, there is an amazing amount of humor (thanks, in large part, to Thomas Nashe).

Worcester v. The State of Georgia

Two cases reached the Supreme Court challenging the Indian Removal Act of 1829, the legislative crime which enabled the Trail of Tears. The second case, Worcester v. the State of Georgia, proved a victory for the Cherokees. Unfortunately, a genocidal maniac, Andrew Jackson, occupied the White House at the time. President Jackson refused to implement the Court order. The Trail of Tears followed.

This play dramatizes both Supreme Court cases.

The Humblest Individual

In Charleston, South Carolina, in 1823, a remarkable civil rights case reached the Federal Circuit Court. 131 years prior to Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, William Johnson, a State's Rights Supreme Court justice, citing the commerce clause to the Constitution, decided a case in favor of the plaintiff, a person of color.

This case swirls around the Denmark Vesey slave revolt of 1822. The play is quite a window into the times. Unfortunately, the swift pace of the story is completely broken by the actual court proceedings. This defect might not be so noticeable in a screenplay.

TELEPLAYS

The Gold Conspiracy

Beginning in 1949, the gifted Dutch diplomat and Sinologist, Robert H. van Gulik, began writing the Judge Dee mysteries. Taking a hero of Chinese folklore, Judge Dee, a Tang Dynasty official legendary for his rectitude and sleuthing, van Gulik created a series of very entertaining books celebrated by scholars and mystery fans alike.

Van Gulik made creative use of a key feature of ancient Chinese administrative practice, the rule of avoidance. Mandarin officials seldom stayed more than three years in any post, especially if they were doing a great job. They did not want anyone to build up an independent power base. So van Gulik sets his stories in several different places, following the career of Judge Dee.

The Gold Conspiracy dramatizes van Gulik's book, The Chinese Gold Murders. Judge Dee travels from Beijing to his first post at Penglai, in Shandong Province, where he exposes a plot of one of his classmates to manipulate the gold market.

Three Penglai Puzzlers

This script dramatizes three of van Gulik's short stories.

The Willow Pattern

A dramatization of another van Gulik story, the last set in Judge Dee's first post, in Shandong Province.

Obviously, the Judge Dee series would make a wonderful addition to the Mystery series on PBS. There probably would be another 12-15 scripts taking Judge Dee through his entire career.

Aussie Aviators

Afer the Armistice in 1918, the Australian government sponsored an air race from London to Fanny Bay, Darwin, despite the fact that the infrasructure supporting flight did not exist east of Calcutta. All of the aviators involved experienced a unique adventure. However, the team of Parer and McIntosh, flying a dilapidated, war surplus DeHavilland DH9 endured, perhaps, the greatest adventure of the 20th Century. Eight of the twelve episodes envisioned have been written.

"The Armistice and a Peacetime Folly"

In November 1918, John McIntosh began pilot training. After just a few days in the course, the war was over and training ceased. Raymond Parer, on the other hand, was the finest test pilot of the day. This episode dramatizes their meeting and the announcement of the Race.

"Inquest, Sabotage, Espionage, and Death"

Episode two tells the story of the failed teams. The Alliance team crashed into a Surbiton orchard and died 8 minutes after take-off. There was an inquest. The Blackburn Kangaroo team crashed at the gate of an insane asylum in Crete. An oil return hose suspiciously failed, causing the crash. The Sopwith Wallaby team, taking a more northerly route than the other teams, landed in the middle of a revolution in Serbia. They barely escaped execution as spies. The team of Howell and Fraser crashed off the coast of Corfu and drowned in 8 feet of water.

"Dodging Redcaps"

In episode three, our heroes, Parer and McIntosh, depart London in early January 1920, one month after the Smith Brothers, in their state of the art Vickers Vimy, had arrived in Darwin, winning the Prize. Parer and McIntosh did not have clear permission to fly. Technically, they were away without leave and subject to capture by the British military police, the Redcaps.

"Aflame over Forti di Marmi"

Episode Four. After two weeks in Paris repairing the plane, Parer and McIntosh continued on toward Rome. Above Forti di Marmi, a little town in northern Italy, a wing caught fire. Only a rapid descent of 5000 feet averted doom.

"Vented by Vesuvius"

Episode Five. The leg from Rome to Cairo was highlighted by a near crash into Vesuvius when a vent of gas out of the crater created a draft sucking the plane down thousands of feet in a few seconds.

"A Mills Bomb in the Assyrian Desert."

Episode Six. The leg from Cairo to Baghdad was punctuated by a daybreak raid of marauding Arabs on the shores of a lake somewhere near Ramadie.

"Friendly Cannibals"

Episode Nine. The leg from Calcutta to Rangoon included an emergency landing on an island in the middle of a tributary of the Irrawaddy River. The flight would have ended there without the help of a tribe of primitive people.

"Upside Down in the Land Down Under"

In episode twelve, Parer and McIntosh take a victory lap south and east from Darwin, destination Melbourne. The flight ends not far from Melbourne when a gust of wind flips the plane over. Parer saves McIntosh from a firy death, getting him out of his harness and gasoline spills all over the Great Scot.