BOOKS AND ARTS MAY 7, 2008
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For good or ill, most people today receive their historical knowledge from television rather than the written word, especially as today's news quickly becomes tomorrow's history. In writing the HBO miniseries John Adams, my intent was not to portray the "external facts" of the American Revolution (as Thomas Jefferson phrased it in one of his late-life letters to Adams). Rather, it was to depict an internal history, an epic of thoughts and ideas refracted through the singular prism of one man who helped shape those events. I have always tried to be scrupulous in my approach to the historical record, whether the subject be John Adams or some of my previous subjects, like Judy Garland, Anne Frank or, yes, even the Three Stooges. A dramatist's "truth," however, often involves departing from the letter of that record in order to personify the spirit of the people and the times more fully.
The "truth" I sought to illuminate in the miniseries was emotional and intellectual rather than literal. With every historical project I've done, the next-day bloggers often make the assumption that filmmakers alter "facts" either out of ignorance or negligence. In fact, a good deal of soul-searching goes into every deviation from the record; nothing is arbitrary. Some changes are made deliberately from the outset, with an eye to the overall structure of the piece; others arise as a result of production exigencies. But all aim to further the broader goal of making "history" accessible in dramatic form.
A screenwriter always seeks economy in storytelling. Of course I knew that there were two Boston Massacre trials, not one. But the audience would not have thanked us for devoting the whole of the first episode to an examination of courtroom procedure, with two separate verdicts rendered. The key dramatic points are Adams's decision to defend Captain Preston and his soldiers, and his success at exonerating them on the charge of murder. Both points are "factual." Has there been some manipulation involved in the dramatization? Absolutely. But the outcome of the proceedings has not been altered.
Similarly, while it is "history" that Adams made not one, but two trips to France between 1778 and 1780 (and the second trip, involving a perilous winter crossing of the Pyrenees, is arguably even more dramatic than the first), the miniseries depicts only his initial crossing in 1778 on the frigate Boston. As with the compression of the two Boston Massacre trials, showing both crossings would have unnecessarily elongated the dramatic story, and the crossing on the Boston, with its chase-on-the-high-seas action, stands in for the dangers Adams encountered on both voyages. That first crossing was the only time in which Adams directly participated in the war--firing as a common marine at the pursuing armed British merchantmen--and thus seemed the natural choice.
Other changes are necessitated by structure. John and Abigail are our only conduits through which to witness the principal action, and their story takes precedence over any other. John Quincy and Nabby are left out of the Paris and London scenes in order to emphasize the emotional renewal of the Adams marriage and the burgeoning friendship with Jefferson, the mercurial course of which provides the emotional and thematic underpinning of the latter episodes.
Are mistakes sometimes made? Sure. In Part 5, Adams is shown breaking a Senate tie over ratification of the Jay Treaty. That never happened: The treaty passed with a two-thirds majority, as required by the Constitution. Adams did cast more tie-breaking votes than any other vice-president, and always on the side of the administration. But in retrospect, the scene now seems too much of stretch, the one example of "manufactured drama" in the miniseries; we should have reconsidered its inclusion.
A script must be fluid as it moves off the page and onto the shooting floor. Two weeks before we were due to wrap shooting in Hungary, where daytime temperatures often exceeded 107 degrees, one of the two soundstages on which we had built the interiors for Adams’s house in Peacefield was consumed in a fire. As even a one-hour delay in shooting was out of the question, scenes originally set inside the house were restaged outside. Unexpectedly, without a single change in action or dialogue, the scenes played more autumnal, more elegiac than they would have indoors, greatly adding to the completed episode's mood and tone. (Coincidentally, or perhaps not, the set caught fire on July 2 last year, the same day in 1776 that the Second Continental Congress declared independence from Great Britain, and the day Adams always thought should have been celebrated as our true Independence Day. I like to think of it as the ghost of John Adams encouraging us to strive ever harder for "truth, nature, and fact.")
Experience has taught me to listen to actors' and directors' insights and to be flexible as far as changes are concerned, especially when such precise actors as Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney are involved. Bad actors often clamor for more dialogue; it is the good ones who understand the need for less. In the course of shooting, some 30 percent of the originally scripted "pillow talk" between John and Abigail fell away; at times--as in the reunion scene that opens Part 4--it vanished altogether. The characters' very inarticulateness said more about the awkwardness of their situation than any words possibly could.
I have repeatedly read reviews to the effect that "every word of dialogue is taken directly from the Adams letters." Nothing could be further from the truth. Some of the signature speeches in the show--notably Adams's oration for independence--are largely invented. While the letters provided a guide to thought and vocabulary, nothing could have been drier than a direct recitation. Rather, the effort was to get beneath the text of the letter to their intellectual and emotional core and render those thoughts in the majestic language of the period.
An example: Frustrated by Adams's long silence in Europe, Abigail writes that she fears he "has exchanged hearts with some frozen Laplander" and worries of a cooling of his affections--a wonderful phrase that once had a place in the script itself. That, along with so many other epistolary moments, is absent from the finished film. But that letter underpins the lovely scene in Part 3 where young Nabby finds her mother obsessively scrubbing windows in the middle of the night, resulting in Abigail unburdening herself to her daughter and finding some solace.
Some people--too many, for my taste--have called the film "slow" or "pokey" as a result of its emphasis on such moments. How a miniseries that opens with the Boston Massacre--and goes on in its first two-and-a-half hours to include a brutal tar-and-feathering, the aftermath of Concord, and the writing of the Declaration of Independence--could ever be described as "slow" still eludes me. The miniseries is by no means lacking in incident or spectacle, but it doesn't dwell on those events that pass for action in today's frenetic society. Yes, it demands an audience pay attention--but that's not the same thing as being "slow." We never thought it necessary to condescend or talk down to our audience. The program's deliberate pace reflects that of the period it depicts, a time when people were more contemplative, more attuned to responsibility and the consequences of their actions, and not afraid of patience and perseverance, of eloquence and erudition.
"Facts are stubborn things," noted Adams (quoting Jonathan Swift) in his Boston Massacre summation. But well-told history is also drama. David McCullough, upon whose masterful book the miniseries is based, understands this; it's what has made his books best-sellers--and eminently adaptable. Though they may not have said it outright in our exchange on this site, Steven Waldman and John Patrick Diggins both seem to agree with this assessment of history. The process of screenwriters, academics, and popular historians, I think, is much the same. We make our choices from the historical record to tell the story that best suits our purposes. The line between "history" and "drama" is a fine one, indeed. It is in the intersection between those two different, but not always mutually exclusive, realms that our John Adams miniseries exists. Hopefully, our viewers will utilize it as another tool to construct their own vision of our founding past.
Kirk Ellis is the screenwriter and co-producer of the HBO miniseries John Adams.
By Kirk Ellis
16 comments
I thought the miniseries captured the spirit of McCullough's book quite well.
- commentar
May 8, 2008 at 12:20am
So when is it acceptable to rewrite history? When it’s necessary “to personify the spirit of the people and the times more fully,” to improve dramatic structure, to accommodate “production exigencies,” when the real facts would “unnecessarily elongate[ ] the dramatic story,” when the actors think they know better, when using the Adams’s actual words would have been drier than using the words of screenwriters.” In other words, history may be rewritten whenever writers, producers or actors think it will make a better TV show. Ellis not only rewrites the words of historical figures but of his fellow writers in the TNR exchange on the series, discerning that although they didn’t say it, they agree with him on rewriting history. Here’s where Kirk Ellis goes astray: “The process of screenwriters, academics, and popular historians, I think, is much the same,” he writes. It’s not. Historians mine the historical record. Screenwriters mine their own imagination and their sense of what makes good drama. There’s nothing wrong with that—but it’s not history.
- Louis Barbash
May 8, 2008 at 9:16am
Biopics give only the illusion of knowledge. Television can do nothing but entertain, while suspending all critical awareness. If there is one word that should never have quotation marks around it, it is "truth". For "truth" can only be a lie.
- Paul Perry
May 8, 2008 at 10:25am
Kirk -- I thought the movie was outstanding from start to finish, and your attention to detail both in words and pictures are unrivaled by any period biopic in my opinion. Wonderful work.
- Tim Carmona
May 8, 2008 at 1:36pm
"When is it acceptable to re-write history?" Never. My God, NEVER.
- HellifIknow
May 8, 2008 at 1:50pm
This pitiful rationalization is even lamer than the miniseries.
- Miande
May 8, 2008 at 3:38pm
Disclosure: I work for the Virginia Film Office Having been intimately involved in the production of John Adams here in Virginia, one would expect nothing less than my blind support for it's critical success. Fortunately, my enthusiasm for the project, beginning at my first reading of David McCullough's very fine work, was indeed honestly amplified at every stage of the project. A passionate attention to detail exemplified by every discipline involved in filmmaking was present. This dedication to authenticity was played out with superb success in the outstanding art direction on display in the finished product. The casting and acting were executed as if the entire skins and souls of these historical fiqures were somehow fused onto these contemporary bodies. But the true genius of the John Adams miniseries in my opinion lies in the captivating writing and dialogue laid out by Kirk Ellis. One can research buildings, locations and wardrobe, etc. But to bring historical figures to life with such believeable and accessible dialogue requires a risky intellectual leap of faith; one that he performed with amazing success. I have spoken to both scholars AND NASCAR fans, both demographics equally engrossed in the details of JA. My 11 year old daughter actually became captivated by the show, thankfully foregoing Hannah Montana in favor of Abigail one night. Several of her classmates were also following the series. When this art form is able to reach across demographic lines and actually educate, enlighten and entertain at the same time, it is truly miraculous. When the subject matter and the lessons therein are being conveyed at a time when our country needs to remember them the most, it is indeed Nobel-worthy. Tom Hanks deserves a Medal of Honor. Andy Edmunds Virginia Film Office
- Andy Edmunds
May 8, 2008 at 3:40pm
The most important historical distortions in 'John Adams' were not the ones Ellis discusses above - it was instead the systematic misconstruction of the period around the Boston Massacre, and in particular the role of Samuel Adams, John Adams's second cousin, that is crucial. The HBO series repeated the old conservative myth that Sam Adams was nothing more than a duplicitous rabble-rouser, marginal to the actual revolution. The intent is obvious - to construct the American Revolution as an essentially conservative one, having none of the messy extremism of the english, french or russian revolutions. In fact, the revolution was borne of years of agitation by Sam Adams and others in Boston - by the time that John Adams came along much of the work of rousing a sense that independence was possible, and of uniting the colonies/states, had been done. The series also removed Sam Adams from any appearance at the Philadelphia congresses, even when showing the internal negotiations of the Massachusetts delegation in detail. Given that it was Sam who did much of the politicking to achieve a unity of purpose, and engineered the appointment of Washington as head of the revolutionary army, this amounts to utter falsification of what occurred. In that respect the series functioned as implicit propaganda about the nature of good and bad revolutions
- Tom Paine
May 8, 2008 at 3:56pm
Having been intimately involved in the production of John Adams here in Virginia, one would expect nothing less than my blind support for it's critical success. Fortunately, my enthusiasm for the project, beginning at my first reading of David McCullough's very fine work, was indeed honestly amplified at every stage of the project. A passionate attention to detail exemplified by every discipline involved in filmmaking was present. This dedication to authenticity was played out with superb success in the outstanding art direction on display in the finished product. The casting and acting were executed as if the entire skins and souls of these historical figures were somehow fused onto these contemporary bodies. But the true genius of the John Adams miniseries in my opinion lies in the captivating writing and dialogue laid out by Kirk Ellis. One can research buildings, locations and wardrobe, etc. But to bring historical figures to life with such believable and accessible dialogue requires a risky intellectual leap of faith; one that he performed with amazing success. I have spoken to both scholars and NASCAR fans; both demographics equally engrossed in the details of JA. My 11 year old daughter actually became captivated by the show, thankfully foregoing Hannah Montana in favor of Abigail one night. Several of her classmates were also following the series. When this art form is able to reach across demographic lines and actually educate, enlighten and entertain at the same time, it is truly miraculous. When the subject matter and the lessons therein are being conveyed at a time when our country needs to remember them the most, it is indeed Nobel-worthy. Tom Hanks deserves a Medal of Honor. Andy Edmunds Virginia Film Office
- Andy Edmunds
May 8, 2008 at 4:02pm
The miniseries was wonderful. It's received knocks by those who prefer to slander John Adams because of the few mistakes he made, rather than he be remembered for the remarkable man that he was. I agree with David McCullough's statements in an interview he made just prior to the first episode airing, that we frequently here our founders being excused as "only human" when it comes to their flaws. He prefers the fact that their humanity being pointed out in relationship to their great achievements. We should all strive to be the sort of human beings who despite our flaws and foibles that they were.
- Mary
May 8, 2008 at 4:33pm
Tom Paine writes: "The series also removed Sam Adams from any appearance at the Philadelphia congresses" Get some glasses, Tom--Sam Adams was indeed shown in Philadelphia. I thought the series presented Sam Adams quite fairly. It clearly showed him as the leader of the Sons of Liberty, and a man smart enough to know that the movement needed his cousin John to gain respectability. The series also showed, by the reaction of the French when they were introduced to John, that during the revolution SAM was the more famous Adams.
- David Young
May 10, 2008 at 11:30am
I'm a PhD student in history and I study early America. I've enjoyed the show in some respects. I understand that it's television, and I agree with Mr. Ellis's reasoning on leaving out certain details. My concern is with the bigger picture--the show and the book leave you with the impression that Adams was the central figure in this period. That's simply not true. I respect the hard work that went into this show, but Mr. McCollough and Mr. Ellis are writers, not historians. Now if only professional historians could learn to write as well as these two do...
- CG
May 12, 2008 at 4:32pm
Whether 'accurate' or not, the medium should not be seen as education. I'd like to see some fMRI brain studies of movie/TV watching. My hypothesis is that the ordinary human brain is overwhelmed by the input of stimuli.
- Richard Stearns
May 14, 2008 at 11:50am
My only real problems with the series were places where facts were changed or withheld that I think would have made the story better. The series suggests that Adams re-connected with Jefferson as a result of Abigail's death. As I recall, she was a party to some of the renewed correspondence and that, though she welcomed a return to friendship, she didn't let Jefferson get away with claiming that some of the crap published about her husband by Jefferson's pet journalists was done without his knowledge or approval. She told him this was nonsense, and that if the friendship were to be resumed it would have to be resumed honestly. Since so much was made in the film about her disappointment with Jefferson -- and one gets the impression from the film that she died without resolving these feelings -- this later contact would have furthered the story of their relationship and painted a more accurate portrait of its condition when she died. Second -- surely the key letter in the Adams-Jefferson correspondence was one in which Jefferson essentially told Adams that he (Adams) had been right to be skeptical of the French Revolution. Jefferson essentially apologized and Adams was thrilled to receive this vindication from his former adversary. I can't imagine why this wasn't included in the show since so much of the piece was about the ins and outs of their friendship. It might also have been worth noting Franklin's death, since he was a major figure in so much of the action, and his passing must have excited mixed feelings in Adams. Otherwise, I admired most of the show greatly.
- Jeffrey Sweet
May 14, 2008 at 12:18pm
Andy, as an authority at the VA Film Office, I am sure you or someone from your office read and approved the script. Can you please tell me and other readers why in the final scenes at TJ's death bed we have "SALLY HEMINGS" prominently at his death bed and not others who were actually there, Martha, the Dr., Trist, etc. I recall that Sally's name was uttered by someone. Was this an atempt by someone, other than Mr. McCullough to corrupt the film and if so who approved that change? Herb Barger Jefferson Family Historian Founder, Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society (www.tjheritage.org)
- Herbert Barger
July 2, 2008 at 12:13am
History should be told exactly the way it happened.You can present both sides as Eastwood did with his "Letters From" movie but you must still make sure the overall presentation is factual.You must never present or pass down untruths/lies to the public or else we will have a "World According To" and that is unacceptable.
- Michael LeMay
November 18, 2008 at 3:16am