Pivoting

A documentary film-maker recently observed to me that "the way you get out of a film is not always the way that got you in". I think I knew what he meant. Back in 1996 I had wanted to write a dramatisation of the whole life of T.G.H. Strehlow. It was not until some years later that I wrote something that I could complete (Journey to Horseshoe Bend) which was based on only ten days in Strehlow's early life.

Apparently, this kind of re-focussing has a term - 'pivoting'. You start off intending to do one thing (and I think by definition not getting anywhere) and end up refining your intention which then produces a successful outcome.


I've been thinking about this in relation to Abraham Lincoln. It took him nearly three years of warfare to refine the purpose of the US Civil War in the Gettysburg Address as "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal". Until then the war had been about preserving the union - not exactly a galvanising invitation.

I also wonder whether 'pivoting' took place in the creation of the Spielberg film, Lincoln. Back in 2009 I read that Lincoln was to be based on Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals. It's a wonderful book - a four-or five way biography describing how Lincoln chose his cabinet from among his nomination rivals (Seward, Chase, Stanton, Blair); an influence on President Obama - but (I wondered) how dramatic?

Lo and behold, the film is actually about Lincoln's effort to try to ensure the congressional vote for the 13th amendment (making slavery unconstitutional) before the war is won and people such as the pro-slavery Unionists decide there is no longer any urgency to do anything. How smart is this from a screenwriting point of view? - suddenly there's a race on, the pressure's up. I noticed in a recent edition of The New Republic that the screenwriter Tony Kushner acknowledges Michael Vorenberg's book about the passage of the 13th amendment Final Freedom as one of "20 or 30 books that were significant to me" though he denies that it was his principal source (Doris Kearns Goodwin still gets the screen credit for 'parts of' Team of Rivals). But, I wonder, at what point did Kushner and Spielberg decided to focus on the 13th amendment fight? How did this come about, and was it an example of 'pivoting'? I could look into this and find out I suppose, but for the moment I'm content to speculate.

And this is something else I'll speculate and pivot on. I reckon the next Lincoln film could be based on Nora Titone's My Thoughts Be Bloody. (The title is a quote from Hamlet.) Titone's book covers the rivalry among the Booths, the greatest theatrical family of the 19th century. Edwin was the greatest actor of his generation, inheritor of his father Junius's mantle. Younger brother, John Wilkes couldn't hold a candle to him.

Edwin Booth as Hamlet, c.1870. Photograph J. Gurney and Sons, New York

John Wilkes, Edwin and Junius Booth Jr in Julius Caesar, 1864

Yet, John Wilkes worked out how to upstage his brother once and for all - the Confederate sympathiser shot President Lincoln on Good Friday, 14 April 1865. It was a dramatic last act, as Booth jumped from the presidential box to the stage at Washington's Ford's Theater and spun around to the audience with the phrase "Sic semper tyrannus" [Thus to all tyrants], forever fusing the Booth name with villainy.


Can you imagine this as a film, since so much of Titone's book is also about acting as it was practised in those days?