plutherus

So, after I finished Thoughtless, my next planned project was going to be a screenplay about John Brown, my favorite terrorist, who I feel is way under-represented in historical action movies.

Then, in doing a bit of additional research, I came across this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-Tm63y-S4s

Well... damn.
I should have started this ten years ago when I first thought of it.
It's not just that someone is doing a John Brown story - it's that they seem to be doing it exactly the way I was planning to.
Their interpretation of John Brown seems to be very close to where I was going.

So, while I look forward to watching it, I think I'm shelving my barely-begun screenplay and going back to SF for my next project. Probably the sequel to Thoughtless, which I've already started.

So does that mean I've wasted all the research I've already done and all the notes I've already made?

Not entirely. Watching it and reviewing each episode will give me a lot of good material for my blog, so there's that at least.

Plus, to reinterpret a phrase, research is its own reward.

John Brown was a fascinating figure in history, and he was personally involved with pretty much every famous person of the time, including Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Col. Robert E. Lee, Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, and Henry David Thoreau.

I hope to see all of them show up in the Showtime series, which will hopefully also cover the Pottawatomie Massacre and Bleeding Kansas, including the burning of The Liberator (an abolitionist newspaper) and pro-slavery mob attacks on William Lloyd Garrison.

And if they don't, of course, that just leaves more territory open for me when I write mine.