Movie based on REBEL PRIVATE..FRONT & REAR

[militiaman1835]

Found this on CAS website: New movie based on REBEL PRIVATE..FRONT & REAR. One of my favorite memoirs by a member of 5th Texas. Check out website for info on reenactor extra info. www.rebelprivate.com
Jim Hensley

[tater_cuffie]

Re: Movie based on REBEL PRIVATE..FRONT & REAR

Checked out the site. Looks pretty cool, and I believe Sinead O'Conor was singin the songs! she has such a good voice! anyways, is it commin out in theaters?

[Mcguire]

Re: Movie based on REBEL PRIVATE..FRONT & REAR

I just finished this book last autumn. After looking at the web site this proves to be something worth waiting for. The directors credentials look very strong and the script looks realistic with a wry sense of humor! Looking forward to seeing how this effort pans out. My neighbors brother has been out in Hollywood for over a decade and is still waiting tables despite being involved in several projects, so I know that for every 1000 ideas or premises there are one success stories.

[TheRegularsDrummerCo.H]

Re: Movie based on REBEL PRIVATE..FRONT & REAR

That was a very good book. Like David said the credentials look pretty good. We'll have to see

[DougCooper]

Re: Movie based on REBEL PRIVATE..FRONT & REAR

You folks are kidding right? Read the "Project Overview." Only lost causers need apply. Talk about an agenda.

"The under thirteen million dollar budget will offer creative freedom, yet studio quality and scale, with unique distribution potential, through the independent film management process."

He can't do below what he says he wants to do with the budget above...so, guess what? GAG reenactor policy anyone? I would love to find out who is footing the bill for this historical rewrite.

"The writer-director, Chuck Untersee, is a Texan and twenty year veteran of the Hollywood film industry. Through burning zeal to illustrate aesthetic purity of the time by a visually driven romantic story and intimate combat intensity of the D-Day invasion in, Saving Private Ryan, to the poignant relationships of, Cold Mountain, he will create a visceral and riveting film. Rebel Private will be a deeply Southern, highly aesthetic, historically accurate, non "commercial" portrayal of the period. It is our intent to make the audience laugh, cry and most importantly...to think."

Translation: we will prove that the War of Northern Aggression was a great travesty against the freedom loving (but slave holding) greatly misunderstood real Southern Folk.

And lastly...they couldn't resist:

"Though Levi Miller was a Confederate soldier, he is fictional to the Rebel Private story, although he was in fact in the Texas Brigade. From free men of color in Louisiana to countless others such as Levi Miller, the politically incorrect story of valor and devotion to cause of black men under arms for the Confederacy has been suppressed. Rebel Private weaves the Levi Miller story into the camaraderie which was experienced by William Fletcher and his boyhood friends, to each, The War of Southern Independence. "

Somehow I think they still won't get much of a following from people of color...

Sheesh.

Still, the nice little rebel with the fiddle is charming...

Just say no...wait for Spielberg

[Ian McWherter]

Re: Movie based on REBEL PRIVATE..FRONT & REAR

Not impressed.

Lame intro, why all the bag pipes and Celtic crap...It just never ends, was there one soldier of solid American stock who fought in either army?

[TheRegularsDrummerCo.H]

Re: Movie based on REBEL PRIVATE..FRONT & REAR

Doug,

Ya you are obviously right. I should maybe pay attention more when I read.

[Phil McBride]

Re: Movie based on REBEL PRIVATE..FRONT & REAR

Fletcher's book is a great read. He must have been some character. In regards to Levi Miller, the black Confederate, I wrote a piece that the Camp Chase Gazette printed several years ago when Nicky Hughes was editor. The title was "Uncle JJ, Levi Miller, and Me." Levi Miller was the body servant (personal slave) of my great Uncle John J McBride, who was Captain of Co. C of the 5th Texas Infantry of Hood's Brigade.
Levi Miller was owned by my gg-grandmother and her son JJ (who had emigrated to Texas in the 1840's) stopped by the family farm in Lexington, Virginia and was given Levi for the duration of the war. Sounds horrible, doesn't it? The interesting and inexplicable part of the story is that Levi Miller really did get caught in a trench with the remnants of Co C at Spotsylvania and fought with rifle and bayonet along side of the Reb soldiers. He even applied for and received a Texas state funded Confederate soldier pension for many years after the war. The letter of commendation and description of the fight written by the company captain (not my uncle who had been seriously wounded at the Wilderness a few days before the fight at Spotsylvania) was likely pivotal in Levi Miller receiving a CSA soldiers pension. Levi Miller's story is a perplexing one, but is also one that is so well documented that it is repeatedly referenced when some make the pitch for black Confederate soldiers. Ignore that stuff. Levi Miller fought in one engagement, in dire circumstances, for reasons only he knows. Otherwise, he was a slave whose job was to wash and cook and mend clothes. In regards to the movie that may or may not ever be made, the director wrote me that Levi's story has been changed somewhat to personify the genre of black Confederates. Hmmm.
Ironically, our Texas reenacting group's alter-ego is the 165 NY Zouaves, whose uniform is virtually identical to the 5th NY Zouaves, who were routed by the 5th Texas at 2nd Manassas. It would be fun for our group to portray them in the movie, other issues notwithstanding.

Phil McBride
The Alamo Rifles

[LibertyHallVols]

Re: Movie based on REBEL PRIVATE..FRONT & REAR

This speaks VOLUMES!


"Dejected at the loss of the war and the stain on his Southern manhood, our hero doffs his rebel jacket, replacing it with black leather, mounted his trust hog and headed to Sturgis"

[Justin Morris]

Re: Movie based on REBEL PRIVATE..FRONT & REAR

I am now regretting taking the lead roll! I thought all of you would be so proud of me, but alas.

This did make me a little sick at my stomach, well really sick at my stomach.

Doug, the War of Northern Aggression was a great travesty against the freedom loving people of the South. Or at least the42 ancestors of my wife and I that fought for Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi thought so! I did have a good laugh over your post :wink_smil Hope all is well and try not to get swept up in the excitement of this movie Doug.

Justin

[BrandonEnglish]

Re: Movie based on REBEL PRIVATE..FRONT & REAR

What was the deal with the "Chariots of Fire" type scene? If this director has been in Hollywood for 20 years why isn't he even on IMDB, heck even I am on there for a student film I was in...I agree with the above posts.

[Gary of CA]

Re: Movie based on REBEL PRIVATE..FRONT & REAR

Hurrah! Rebel Private is one of the books I cite in my own research. I hope Heartland does a good job of it.

[csuniforms]

Red Badge of Courage and REBEL PRIVATE..FRONT & REAR

Hello, Just watched again for the upteenth time, Director John Huston's the Red Badge of Courage with Audie Murphy. While the uniforms, accoutrements and some of the firearms used were, "Hollywood Props" at best, the content and how they followed the book, was excellent. If you can get over all the mistakes in the movie, drill, uniforms again, US canteens etc. this is a good one to watch and listen to the dialog and how the soldiers talk. Lots of Southern accents, but that is what you heard in the ranks of all those Missouri, Southern Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio Regiments!
It will have to be a Steven Spielberg or someone like him to give us something approaching what actually happened on a Battlefield during the Civil War. Those who read and research all those letters and diaries, it is hard to put into words and pictures all the action and carnage of a particular moment during a Battle. The visual image I come closest to seeing is from a member of the 16th Wisconsin at Shiloh. His Company was out in front as skirmishers and the first to see the Confederates that day. He described them as advancing down either side of the Corinth road in four ranks as far as he could see. The Confederate advance he described as in a V shape due to the ground they had to cover and back ranks scurrying to keep up. They opened fire with their Dresden-Suhl rifes, and he watched as the shots would knock down two to four men at a time as the ball passed through the front rank and into the next. Of course they retreated almost immediately when the Johnnies opened up on them.--
As to the War of Northern Aggression-- Lincoln did not call out the Militia until after the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter. Lincoln stated that he would not fire the first shot in this War. The Secesh' did. "They fired on the Flag" was all you read in the old newspapers. South Carolina seceded in December of 1860, almost four months prior to Fort Sumter! Qucikly followed by little Florida, and the rest in January, not April of 1861! Lincoln and the Federal Government let them be, tried for peace, or a solution to the crisis-- The hot head Seceshers' let the lead and iron fly. If you light the fuse dont ask why the explosion?

CSuniforms
Tom Arliskas

[Pat.Lewis]

Re: Movie based on REBEL PRIVATE..FRONT & REAR

I lolled at the hat on the cracker on the main page and Santa Claus the cavalryman on the "characters" page. Please.

I would also like to thank those who diagnosed and dismissed the lost cause agenda here before I could.

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: Movie based on REBEL PRIVATE..FRONT & REAR

Hallo!

Moderator hat on...

As they NUG do, a modern movie has led to Modern Politics.

Curt