Thanks for tickling those brain cells, Paul; I have "The Long Trains Roll," and should have remembered it.

That TV series of mine was meant to run over several seasons, and it would have started in 1940, on the eve of WW II, and was intended to run into the post-war era, ending on something of a downbeat as the diesels come.

My TV road was to be patterned after the C&O with all that impressive steam power (part of the educational aspect, so many people must think we went from Sierra 3 to the Super Chief with nothing in between), and would have included the Nazi plot.

I've read somewhere that one of the interesting things about that plot was the list of targets. There were Alcoa aluminum plants, railroad junctions in general, bridges in general, and so on--and two railroads mentioned specifically by name, the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Chesapeake & Ohio. The PRR was important for all that traffic that flowed east of Pittsburgh to eastern ports, and the C&O was important for port traffic as well, along with all that coal. Specific targets on the PRR and the C&O were Horseshoe Curve and/or the tunnels at the summit, and the Great Bend tunnels on the C&O.

Let's see, what additional "Perils" can we work in? What about FDR on the "Ferdinand Magellan?" Alternately, is that something we would really need? And as much as so many of us would like to see a straining Decapod or a muscular Allegheny with 100 plain bearing hoppers, how many members of the audience would know or care, much less the the studio heads with their eyes always on the checkbook?

Anyone remember the ill-fated, “Night Ride Down” which was about the Pullman strike but was supposed to have postwar superpower being used? That Harrison Ford movie never got made, but I wonder what we’d have thought if it had been. When you think of the new roundhouse in Ohio being built, I’m sure if a movie production needs such a background in the future, they might consider going there.
I’ve been doing some peripheral work on a big-budget WW2 movie and now realize all the nonsense that goes into a movie. The film I’ve been doing research for might not ever get made, but you can’t imagine how much money has gone into it already.
When some student filmmakers were looking for such a project a couple of years back, someone steered them to me. I was doing research on WW2 RR operating units in France and Germany, and they wanted a screenplay. I wrote a treatment on an idea about two boomers who worked for the ET&WNC in the '30s, getting drafted and joining a RR unit in WW2. The hated each other's guts, but hated Herman the German even more. It wasn't quite the "win one for the Gipper" claptrap you'd expect, as one eventually allows the other to get waxed by an attacking airplane.
They were quite enthused about the project, until they realized that if they wanted trains in it, there's NOTHING in the US they could use (and afford) that would be right. My script was mostly stateside stuff, and the war was mostly dealt with trackside and in engine houses and such. More fighting than trains. Here in the Pac NW, it could easily pass for Germany, and I have access to lots of WW2 vehicles (including my own 1944 Willys MB Jeep), and equipment and re-enactors to flesh out the scenes.
It never went anywhere of course. I'll probably never finish the script now. I still think a small studio could have made a decent movie out of it. With the recent trend to WW2 movies, imagine a "Band of Brothers" style series on a RR battalion in WW2!

Kevin Gilliam's and P51's comments about studio execs (and my own commentary on CSX in the 734 flap) highlight what I consider to be a major problem in the United States today, and it is a problem that is not restricted to railroading.

As I see it, for some reason all sorts of large enterprises are being run by incompetent fools who know money and nothing but money. Their ignorance of the product they sell, and their relationships in the community (or the lack thereof) are, I believe, a large part of the problems we face today, including the economic ones (think of jobs lost to outsourcing). This has been building for a very long time (I still wonder how an executive from a firm that built refrigerators became the head of an auto company in the 1950s), and has become intensified as financial whizzes, bankers, and lawyers--essentially let's-make-a-deal types, bean counters, and, well, lawyers--have come to dominate so many top spots in corporate American today. Those guys would never have contemplated a go-for-it effort like a Duesenberg automobile in the old days, although if truth be told, one can make the argument (as Jay Leno has) that the Duesenberg brothers were better engineers than businessmen. Kevin has pointed out how, instead of diagnosing the failure of a pirate movie as being due to a bad script, a whole slew of executives condemned the pirate genre instead, and P51 mentioned a pile of nonsense on the project he was working on.

This brings us back to the most basic question--assuming we have a decent script or series of scripts available, how do we get something like this made? Specifically, where do we get the money to make it, how do we find a distributor or distributing mechanism(which is another important element for this), and how do we make money?

P.S.: P51, would you care to share some of the "nonsense" you saw? It might be helpful to let us know what to expect, and it might be entertaining, too!

I can’t be too specific because the movie is still in “development” and not even in pre-production yet (in fact there are even few rumors of it out there) and I don’t want to kill what might be a very good deal for me. So, I’ll be vague on some details. It’s gone back and forth on funding (apparently nobody is funding large-budget movies right now and you’re not likely to see another “Avatar” like budget film for years. I was told, “expect to see more romantic comedies and buddy cop films for a while,” as they’re cheaper to make), and there was a scouting for locations. The last word I’d heard was filming in Eastern Europe (on the heels of the George Lucas film, “Red Tails” that is in a post-production limbo). It’s gone round and round on scripts, funding keeps going back and forth between a few outfits who fund movies, lots of cash have been spent on research (none has gone to me and I recently put my foot down that if they plan on getting anything else from me, I now expect to be paid) but it’s like a ship where everyone is working really hard, but nobody’s at the wheel and the crew has no clue where the ship is even headed. I guess that puts me between decks, wondering if I’ll get paid for a job that keeps popping up then going into limbo again, off and on. It’s been long periods between any contacts I’ve had and out of the blue, talk about getting moving on the film, then silence again. That’s happened several times now.
One thing’s for sure, they’re not getting anything concrete from me until they commit to actually paying for my services. They agreed over the phone to my fee (once the movie gets finally moving, of course) and they know once the money starts, so do I. Part of my negotiation was that I want to be on-set for the scenes they needed my help on and that I get to be an extra as well (and keeping whatever wardrobe I use on set). I’m not holding my breath on this, though. It’s a pretty ambitious project.

Thanks for the reply, even if you did have to keep so much under wraps.

I do have to say from your description that the serious ego problems one often hears about in the film business are at least not as prominent (yet?) in your case ("everyone is working really hard"), but the money people seem unsure of the project, even though apparently a fair bit has been already spent, and they are looking at "safe" projects (romantic comedies).

The money people jitters again strongly suggest to me that a project along the lines of what we would like to see will have to be financed outside the normal channels. Part of the problem we would face with almost anybody in the film business is that we are talking about a somewhat specialized genre with which they are unfamiliar, along with about everybody else. Sci-fi, westerns, romantic comedies, sword and sorcery, raunch comedies (ugh), thrillers, shocker-slashers, cop movie-buddy movie, Civil War epics, even firehouse flicks--all have been made over the years, and the film industry is familiar with them. What can you do with trains, except run them back and forth, and occasionally rob or derail them? We know better, of course, but I'm not sure that would work for the typical movie exec.

Oh well, back to looking at other material to adapt. . .wonder how the new boiler code would be on film. . . :-)

Man everybody has all these good ideas...somehow a good railroad film can come out of this. Perhaps we can take a clue from,at least to me,the best airline movie ever made.."Airport" How many people knew what a 707 was before that movie? Or Boeing? Or jumbo jets? It told a pretty good story, and it seemed to get the technical stuff right, which we eed to do as well..

This is an interesting topic, with many good ideas presented. However, you must look at who the audience is likely to be. Unfortunately, the general public is pretty much deaf to trains and railroading. I don't think you can count on railfans, historians or preservationists to give you the box office numbers that will make a railroad film a commercial success. Efforts like 'Emperor' and 'The Train' were made years ago, when railroads were much more in the public's eye.

Just as an analogy, I spent 24 years serving in an Army National Guard band. We had an amazing cross section of talent, in many areas besides music. Some of us old farts, over pizza and beer, were discussing making a TV show; we seriously felt we had the makings of another M*A*S*H. We had the stories, screwballs and screwups. We had, among ourselves, the creative talent to do sets, write scripts, produce, direct, and of course do the music. We thought we had a great idea....

Then we got to talking about our potential audience. EVERYONE has seen a doctor, and most have been in a hospital. But in the general population, who has interacted and identified with musicians, either civilian or military? Very few- It seems that the success of M*A*S*H was due to the fact that audience members could more easilly relate to the characters, the doctors and nurses.

To get back to railroads, it has been apparent for many years that the railfans are not the ones that fill the seats at a Strasburg or EBT, but rather the families. Grandpa taking his grandson for his first train ride, the family on a day trip, and we can't forget DOWT.

It would be nice to see some new rail related movies from Hollywood, but I'm afraid the time may be past.

EDM

(recovering from a marching polka band gig; and I can hear you laughing, Howard-)

Maybe "Unstoppable" will actually be good, and be the first to find an audience for us, at least let's hope so. . .

Brain cells being tickled again, and coming up with material that has or can be adapted. . .in this case, two novels, both by William Wister Haines, who worked as an electric company lineman, and put that experience into two books. One is "Slim," and the second was a sequel, "High Tension." The first had a final chapter with the narrator working on a railroad electrification project; the second is entirely on an electrification project in Maryland, undoubtedly on the PRR, reinforced not only by the location and the illustrations that include a GG1, but Haines' description of the electric locomotive used in the initial test as looking like a "beetle," in reference to the GG1's streamlined shape.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wister_Haines

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slim_(film)

I also recommend as a read, "I Travel by Train," by Rollo Walter Brown, describing his observations as he travels around the country in the mid-1930s.

http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=29

http://manybooks.net/titles/brownrother ... rain.html#

"High Tension", "The Long Trains Roll".... some really good writing in those. Haven't heard those titles in decades. "Fiddle Hill" was another one; a mountain railroad as I recall.

How about a tourist railroad or railroad museum-based sitcom? I'm sure any number of us could come up with 13 "episodes" at least...and some thinly-veiled characters known to all.

Oh, and EDM, I certainly don't dis polka music. Not in Central Connecticut, fer sure, ya know. Heck, we've done trackwork to the sounds of Jimmy Sturr !!!

Howard P.
Squeezebox, CT