PLANK JANUARY 11, 2013
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Tony Kushner acknowledged, in a phone conversation earlier today, a debt to Michael Vorenberg's Final Freedom, which I previously identified as the likely principal source for Kushner's Oscar-nominated Lincoln script. Vorenberg's book, Kushner told me, contains "a very detailed and as far as I know the only finely detailed account of the congressional battle" to pass the 13th amendment, including Secretary of State William Seward's role in hiring some colorful characters to grease the skids. "It's the definitive account of that," Kushner said. "I admire [Vorenberg] enormously as an historian... His book is fantastic."
But Kushner disputed my speculation that Final Freedom was the principal source (if any there be) for Lincoln. Of Final Freedom's importance to writing his script, Kushner would say only that he has "a short list of 20 or 30 books that were significant to me, and Michael Vorenberg's book is certainly one of them." (He read many more books, of course, in the course of his research.)
"I would never take someone's work, make a play or movie about it, and just hope that nobody noticed," Kushner told me. Let me emphasize that I never accused Kushner of doing that. I don't believe that Kushner's use of Final Freedom in crafting his very fine Lincoln screenplay violated any ethical (or legal) principle. Nobody owns history, and nobody should. But I did think it was bad manners for Kushner not to recognize Vorenberg's unique and vital contribution to what we know about how the 13th amendment got passed. Now he has.
The principal source for the Lincoln screenplay, Kushner insisted to me, was Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals. "No book that I read was as significant" in influencing his script. "Doris's book is a magnificent account of Lincoln as a master politician," Kushner said. "That is the Lincoln that I really wanted to write about." Team of Rivals is, Kushner said, "the book to which I am most indebted," and it was where he first encountered the story of the 13th amendment's passage, though "not in any great detail." Since the 13th amendment story forms the spine of Kushner's narrative, I don't see how he can conclude that Goodwin's book, and not Vorenberg's, was his most important source, even if Goodwin gave him the story in truncated form and his broader theme of Lincoln as a brilliant and inspiring political tactician. At the same time, my more worldly self doesn't see how Kushner can say Goodwin's book wasn't his most important source, given her centrality to the film's marketing strategy and the potential for creating insult. So put me down as respectfully skeptical on that point.
Vorenberg, I should emphasize, does not sign on to this. Here is what Vorenberg said in an e-mail yesterday, after my piece and a similar piece in Slate were posted:
I’m not sure it’s such a stretch to say that the film was adapted from Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals. Certainly there is much of Goodwin’s book that made it into the film—not simply certain facts from history but the texture of the period and the character of Lincoln and others, especially cabinet members. I do want to make clear that, in my opinion, if Kusher’s screenplay is “adapted,” it wasn’t adapted from my book. I don’t deserve that credit. Bits of my book may have ended up in the screenplay, but so did bits of many other books. I think that Kushner’s screenplay, aside from being a great piece of writing, is a nice synthesis of much historical work, and he deserves credit for getting a very good handle on the vast Lincoln literature. I’m sure that much of that credit also goes to the historical advisors you mention, all of whom I admire and regard as top-notch: Harold Holzer, James M. McPherson, and of course Doris Kearns Goodwin.
There's a lot of genuflecting going on in that paragraph. I interpret that as reflecting Vorenberg's desire not to stir up trouble. But Vorenberg never claimed his book was Kushner's principal source. That claim was mine, and I still think it's true, at least to the extent that any book can be called Lincoln's principal source.
"One of the great joys of working on this," Kushner said, "is I've gotten to read a number of really, really brilliant books, including [Vorenberg's]." After we spoke, Kushner sent me a partial list of the books he read, "entirely or in part," while working six years on the screenplay. "I know I'm leaving off people whose work really helped me, which is why, without the proper time, I am hesitant about doing this," Kushner wrote. "But I heartily recommend everything on this list."
I'll give Kushner's list the final word:
Lincoln: Speeches and Writings, 1859-1865--Library of America
Lincoln Day By Day--Earl Miers
The Metaphysical Club--Louis Menand
Herndon's Informants and Herndon's Lincoln--Edited by Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis
Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln--Edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President--Allen C. Guelzo
Lincoln's Virtues and President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman--William Lee Miller
Lincoln--David Herbert Donald
Abraham Lincoln--Carl Sandburg
Battle Cry of Freedom--James M. McPherson
Race and Reunion--David W. Blight
Lincoln's Constitution--Daniel Farber
Abraham Lincoln: A Life--Michael Burlingame
A People's Contest and The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln--Philip Shaw Paludan
Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power--Richard Carwardine
Lincoln's Melancholy--Joshua Wolf Schenk
Mrs. Lincoln--Catherine Clinton
Mary Todd Lincoln--Jean Baker
Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment--Michael Vorenberg
Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream--Gabor Borrit
This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War--Drew Gilpin Faust
Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President--Harold Holzer
Lincoln at Gettysburg--Garry Wills
Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World--David Brion Davis
Reconstruction--Eric Foner
Big Enough To Be Inconsistent--George Fredrickson
Political Liberalism and The Law of Peoples--John Rawls
Lincoln In The Times--David Donald and Harold Holzer
Lincoln and Freedom: Slavery, Emancipation and the Thirteenth Amendment--Edited by Harold Holzer et al.
America's Constitution--Akhil Amar
Encyclopedia of the American Civil War--Edited by David and Jeanne Heidler
Mea culpa, 5:30 p.m.: Rushing off to a meeting earlier today I hit the wrong button and inadvertently published an incomplete version of this article. Substantively it wasn't really different, so there's nothing I need to retract. But neither was it complete. I didn't notice my error until late this afternoon, when I sat down to finish. I apologize for any confusion my clumsy fingers may have caused readers. We don't normally like the patient to leave the operating room before we've had a chance to sew him up.
15 comments
Apparently Kushner's original screenplay was over 500 pages, which Spielberg narrowed to the part dealing with the 13th Amendment. For the longer, original screenplay, Goodwin's book was surely the principal source. In the shorter shooting script, however, Vorenberg's book necessarily looms much larger as source material.
- Joebill
January 11, 2013 at 2:24pm
Sounds to me as if everyone is mostly right (views differeing in detail can all be mostly right) and have all acted responsibly-- and done themselves credit. Now should the Oscar voting-members do likewise.
- drofnats1
January 11, 2013 at 2:29pm
I believe Noah indicated before that Kushner bought the movie rights to Goodwin's book before she finished the thing. Maybe, after reading the book, Kushner realized his mistake, and now doesn't wish to acknowledge the mistake - if he did, wouldn't he be the easy mark for every author who is writing a book on a subject that Kushner would like to make a film? Not to mention the embarrassment factor with his friends - you bought a book you hadn't read, from an author with a "past"! There's lots of irony here, even though Noah won't mention it - if everybody has equal rights to "history", how can it be plagiarized?
- rayward
January 11, 2013 at 3:01pm
Good, good work, Timothy Noah: "Tony Kushner acknowledged, in a phone conversation earlier today, a debt to Michael Vorenberg's Final Freedom, which I previously identified as the likely principal source for Kushner's Oscar-nominated Lincoln script. Vorenberg's book, Kushner told me, contains "a very detailed and as far as I know the only finely detailed account of the congressional battle" to pass the 13th amendment, including Secretary of State William Seward's role in hiring some colorful characters to grease the skids. "It's the definitive account of that," Kushner said. "I admire [Vorenberg] enormously as an historian... His book is fantastic."" Getting him to admit this much is no mean feat. Stay with it till he fesses up. I am reading Vorenberg's book now and unless KUshner claims that he did his own research I don't know from where else he woulds have gotten all that information.
- arnon1
January 11, 2013 at 11:00pm
It's great to see more attention brought to Final Freedom. That said, I think the disconnect that is happening here is due to the different perspectives of historians and screenwriters. Vorenberg hits the nail on the head when he talks about the script relying on "not simply certain facts from history but the texture of the period and the character of Lincoln and others". I think that it is clear that Final Freedom is the primary source for the historical narrative, but that is just one part of the script. Lincoln succeeds in creating a believable depiction of the time period and breathing life into the characters on many levels. I can certainly see how Team of Rivals influenced those aspects of the script. In many ways I can see how those are more difficult tasks for a screenwriter, and if Kushner places more importance on help with that aspect, so be it. A lot of the problem also lies with the academy's definition of "adapted", but I'm not going to complain about Lincoln being nominated for any awards (or Final Freedom and Team of Rivals being nominated for any awards either).
- Attrill
January 11, 2013 at 11:56pm
I think the author of this article should hound Mr. Kushner until he provides a list of all the books, articles, essays, dissertations, monographs, brochures, placards, albumen photographs, paintings, etc., and in the order of their importance, that he used in scripting of this movie.
- jangrabrig
January 12, 2013 at 7:14pm
I think Kushner's script is fabulous. I also think his failure to credit Vorenberg, at the same time that he explicitly credited Goodwin, is tantamount to plagiarism. Keep in mind that plagiarism is not a crime (although it should be), and it's true that historical facts cannot be plagiarised. Nevertheless, Kushner bolstered the verity of his script by publicly crediting an historian, and by crediting an historian whose contribution to his film was less significant, he was throwing his audience of the scent of the historian whose contribution was more significant. Conscious or unconscious on Kushner's part, this is a typical trick of a plagiarist, and should be repulsive to anyone who has ever done creative work.
- nr112221
January 12, 2013 at 7:51pm
It's been a few weeks since I saw the film, but if I remember -- and I think this is somewhere in Tim's posts -- there is a list in the credits of historians and experts whose advice was called on by the filmmakers. I think it's a great pity that Vorenberg's name isn't there and while I don't see the issue as plagiarism it does seem discourteous if not just dismissive not to credit a significant source/author. But at the same time there has been an argument -- now somewhat resolved -- about the original ending of Ben Affleck's 'Argo' which was almost contemptuous toward the Canadian ambassador in Teheran Ken Taylor, implying he was a bit player who collected accolades he didn't deserve. As the record does in fact show that the major contributon to the whole rescue operation was Canadian, with the CIA coming in with a more complex escape plan at a late stage, that ending was changed. I don't regard that as Affleck's fault as it was almost certainly the studio demanding a more USA! USA!-type ending (along with the stupid jeep-plane chase), and the whole deal with sources in 'Lincoln' may not necessarily be Kushner's fault either.
- ironyroad
January 12, 2013 at 11:24pm
Sorry -- the ending as such wasn't changed, but the language in the credits was.
- ironyroad
January 12, 2013 at 11:27pm
The Canadian ambassador was a guest on Charlie Rose this week. I admired his great dignity and humility, and the way he gently reproved the movie makers for misrepresenting the Canadians' main role in the rescue. He did repeat a few times that it was impossible to act in any other way and that the USA would have done the same for Canadians in distress.
- Noga
January 13, 2013 at 8:51am
I just finished Michael Vorenberg's book "Final Freedom" and to say that I like it would be understatement. I don't know the history of the period as well as I should so I can't say if the book offers a new interpretation of history or not. To me, though, much of what he wrote was a revelation: that the 13th amendment was originally introduced by Democrats; that many abolitionists were against slavery but not for equality; that many other antislavery were against the amendment because they felt that the Constitution was already implicitly anti-slavery and some other revelation that I don't have time to enumerate. Vorenberg showed that thousands of women lobbied for the amendment and risked their lives to get signatures from citizens in border States for a petition to bring the amendment up for a vote. That Black people played a role in pushing the amendment forward. Now, it's possible that Kushner got some of his material from the book, however since the book is much more subtle than the film on the question of individual Congressman's motivation fro voting for or against the amendment, my guess is that if Kushner read it and he probably did his script reads like an impoverished version of the book. I understand that a film can't show as much subtlety of motivation that a book can, but why could he not include a scene showing women working for the amendment. And why didn't he include a meeting that Lincoln held with Frederick Douglass in the White house? The book then was much more exciting (and entertaining) to me than the film, but I liked the Lincoln movie as a movie and don't think we can compare the two distinct mediums of presentation.
- arnon1
January 13, 2013 at 4:05pm
Kushner tends to simplify and flatten historical events when transcribes them to the cinema. He did it with Lincoln just as he had done it with the film Munich. His movies should come with and introduction: "film watcher beware what you are seeing may not be real history."
- arnon1
January 13, 2013 at 4:08pm
I saw the CR interview as well and I was impressed by the former ambassador. It must be slightly galling too that the film portrays an older man than he was at the time (he was 47 but the actor is more like late fifties).
- ironyroad
January 13, 2013 at 11:05pm
I stand behind no one in my admiration for Mike Vorenberg's book, but what holds "Team of Rivals" holds as well for "Final Freedom." Goodwin devotes only a few pages to the thirteenth amendment, making it an unlikely source for "Lincoln." But "Final Freedom" contains only about five pages on all the lobbying efforts of December-January, 1864-65, and only two paragraphs on the "Seward Lobby." This is not in the least a criticism of "Final Freedom," which is indeed the standard account of the abolition amendment. But if I had to guess where Kusher got most of his information, I'd say it was the same source Vorenberg cites--the classic account of "The Seward Lobby" reconstructed by LaWanda and John Cox, in their book "Politics, Principle, and Prejudice." It's the source all us historians rely on. On a related matter, I would also hazard a guess that Kushner was relying on another unmentioned source, Fawn Brodie's 1959 biography of Thaddeus Stevens. He certainly didn't get the material on Stevens out of "Team of Rivals." I have two reasons for suspecting Brodie was the source. First, the "composite" speech Kushner gives Stevens during the floor debate--in which he refers to his opponent as "slime... more reptile than human" can be found in the remarks Brodie quotes from Stevens during his days as a zealous Anti-Mason,back in the 1830s. Second, Brodie's book reflected the views among historians at the time, that although Stevens was noble and radical in his crusade against slavery, his vindictive side came out during Reconstruction. Kushner has made similar remarks about Reconstruction as brutal and vindictive, a view few historians now share. I suspect Kushner got that stuff from Brodie. Jim Oakes
- joakes
January 15, 2013 at 9:24am
Tim, That's the most tedious, self-absorbed commentary I've ever had the displeasure of reading. Get a life!
- EmpiricalWarrior
January 15, 2013 at 1:32pm