Part 21
Last time I wrote, I told you the story of John Goodman Household and his remarkable glider flight in 1876, against all odds. In this blog, thought I should share how I came to know Household’s story.
A South African film producer asked me if I would write a screenplay on Household becoming arguably the first person to fly. (Of course, this was years before Red Bull offered to give us wings!) I researched and wrote the screenplay. The producer and his associates were very happy with it but failed to find the funding to make the movie.
Time went by, and one day the producer called to say that the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) was very interested in turning the story into a miniseries. So, I rewrote the story into four one-hour episodes. The SABC accepted my first draft with a few minor alterations.
I was then told that the program head had submitted the scripts to an American writer whose claim to fame was that he had written episodes of “Hill Street Blues,” an American big city cops and robbers series. That show bore little relation to a nineteenth century story of a young man’s obsession with flying, but the program head claimed that it was simply for the writer to assess the viability of the scripts for the US market. He assured us that, at worst, the writer may want to change a few words.
In any event, the US writer sent back a complete rewrite. Hardly a word of my scripts remained. I felt vindicated when the SABC rejected his scripts outright. Apart from a poor interpretation of the characters, he added in some racial conflicts which had no relevance to this particular story.
Again, I waited for what I expected would be final corrections to my original scripts. To my amazement, the program head gave the US writer’s scripts to a local documentary writer who had never written a dramatized work before. She never had sight of my scripts and based her effort on correcting the US scripts. The result was mediocre, to put it mildly. The critics panned it as a good story ruined by poor scripts.
Even more unbelievable was the fact that the titles credited me with being the key scriptwriter, when I don’t think a single word of mine remained! I tried in vain to get my name removed from the credits. I could have taken it to court but was advised not to if I ever wanted to work with SABC again.
We later discovered that the program head, who subsequently disappeared to the US, had used his earlier relationship with the US writer to funnel money out of South Africa into America for his own purposes, using the US scripts as a vehicle to achieve this.
Subsequently I wrote three drama series for SABC that were all in the top three audience-rated shows in the history of SABC at that time, but my Household story entitled “Where Angels Tread” still hurt.
However, all is not lost. I am now in the process of revising my original screenplay and preparing to submit it to UK and US producers, now that I am living in the UK. I refuse to give up with what I consider to be a truly wonderful true story and a screenplay that actually works well.
I can therefore fully relate to the serious attempt by vested interests to prevent Peter Warren from launching ExoTech, his remarkable new system that will transform the whole concept of computing forever.
Peter has persevered and so has ExoTech, becoming stronger and more determined than ever. Just as history vindicated Goodman for his ability to fly, and even brought me full circle with my original script that at one time appeared to be my demise, so too has time proven that revolutionary technology can triumph over adversity. Creativity, the desire to benefit one’s fellows, the goal to create an environment where people can flourish and prosper, these are the things that persist. And these are the things for which ExoTech strives.
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.