UPDATE: Paul Bruno (aka the History Czar) provided a nice response to this post about his movie effort. Please check it out.
Some of you might remember the video I posted back in 2009 of the recreated, original BRC (if you haven’t, check it out here). It seems that the Bantam and its owner, Duncan Rolls, have been touring a bit, landing in an interview with the History Czar in August of 2010 (both the History Czar, seated, and Duncan are pictured below from Nov 2010).
In December of 2010, the Czar blogs about “his and his wife’s 11 year odyssey, along with Max Freedman these past 5 years, to have a feature film made about the creation of the first Jeep, the Bantam Reconnaissance Car (BRC), in Butler, PA USA during the summer of 1940.” So, the Czar seems to have a real passion for the Jeep story.
You can go here to check out their facebook page and follow their journey to make a movie: http://www.facebook.com/pages/manage/?act=39829251#!/pages/The-Jeep-An-American-Triumph/110738008090
Read more about the premise and synopsis here.
I read through the premise and synopsis. Personally, I’d take a little different tack with the story. I would place the true story of the original jeep as the background for telling another, fictional story about some type of relationship (love story like the Titanic, father/son, coming of age, etc).
I’ve thought a lot about this because I too have wondered about developing a jeep themed movie, though it would be about the heyday of jeeping/trail riding/clubs/racing of the 70s.
A good example of how such a story, like the Bantam story, doesn’t work as a stand-alone story line can be seen in the Tucker movie. While I enjoyed the movie, because it was a story about the struggle to make a cool car, most people weren’t all that compelled to go see it, because of the same reason — it was only about the struggle to make this cool car.
That’s just my 2 cents, which might not even be worth that much.