From Beyond Hollywood – Steven Spielberg’s long simmering feature adaptation of Pulitzer Prize winning author Dorris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, is finally set to begin filming in Fall 2011, making it Spielberg’s next directing project (by putting Lincoln before Robopocalypse). This adaptation has been on Spielberg’s radar for years, with Liam Neeson attached to play the Presidental role for many of them, but when Neeson finally had to bow out of the project, Spielberg snapped up none other than Daniel Day-Lewis to fill the famous shoes.
With a script from Tony Kushner, a Pulitzer prize winner in his own right, and two time Oscar winner Day-Lewis in the role, not to mention Spielberg’s multiple Oscars, this project is already pinging on the awards season radar for 2012. Definitely keep an eye out for this one.
Book Jacket:
Acclaimed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin illuminates Lincoln’s political genius in this highly original work, as the one-term congressman and prairie lawyer rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation to become president.
On May 18, 1860, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, and Abraham Lincoln waited in their hometowns for the results from the Republican National Convention in Chicago. When Lincoln emerged as the victor, his rivals were dismayed and angry.
Throughout the turbulent 1850s, each had energetically sought the presidency as the conflict over slavery was leading inexorably to secession and civil war. That Lincoln succeeded, Goodwin demonstrates, was the result of a character that had been forged by experiences that raised him above his more privileged and accomplished rivals. He won because he possessed an extraordinary ability to put himself in the place of other men, to experience what they were feeling, to understand their motives and desires.
It was this capacity that enabled Lincoln as president to bring his disgruntled opponents together, create the most unusual cabinet in history, and marshal their talents to the task of preserving the Union and winning the war.
We view the long, horrifying struggle from the vantage of the White House as Lincoln copes with incompetent generals, hostile congressmen, and his raucous cabinet. He overcomes these obstacles by winning the respect of his former competitors, and in the case of Seward, finds a loyal and crucial friend to see him through.
This brilliant multiple biography is centered on Lincoln’s mastery of men and how it shaped the most significant presidency in the nation’s history.
Leave a Reply