Some successful Hollywooden professionalducers spend their money on yachts, sports activities groups, and European castles. Norman Lear’s greatest purchase, or not less than his most well-known one, was a duplicate of the Declaration of Independence. He didn’t, in fact, purchase the form of reproduction any vacationer can choose up on the present store of a serious American historic website, however a “Dunlap broadfacet,” considered one of 200 or so run off by Philadelphia printer John Dunlap on the very evening of July 4th, 1776. After handing over $8.1 million in trade for the document in 2001, Lear put it on tour, and it thereafter made years of public seemances throughout the counstrive, including on the 2002 Olympics, Tremendous Bowl XXXVI, and the Reside 8 concert within the metropolis the place it was made.
Lear’s purchase additionally impressed a movie, as it’d nicely do for any man together with his connections. Co-produced by Lear and the late Rob Reiner, another Hollywooden enthusiast of American politics, the 2001 short at the top of the post captures a dramatic learning of the Declaration of Independence by a lineup of massive stars of the day, including the likes of Michael Douglas, Winona Ryder, Edward Norton, Renée Zellweger, and Benicio del Toro.
Their performances have been all shot together at Independence Corridor in Philadelphia by Conrad Corridor, the famed cinematographer of Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Solardance Child, Marathon Man, and American Beauty, on July 4, 2001.
These 25 years later, the movie stays an invigorating refresher on what the Declaration of Independence actually says. Don’t consider it as the following neatest thing to learning that hallowed document: as Morgan Freeman tells us in his introduction, Thomas Jefferson “intended for the declaration to be pershaped, and never simply learn. Its phrases and rhythms have been written to be spoken, in proud and defiant tones in grand public locations.” His fellow thespians deliver them with the aplomb of a counstrive that beneathstood itself as supreme on this planet, although one does now really feel a certain irony of their converseing within the mid-summer of 2001, simply months earlier than that confidence can be terribly shaken. American history, it turned out, had not but finished; even now, on the 250th anniversary of the United States’ independence, it could have simply nakedly begun.
Related content:
Bertrand Russell’s 10 Commandments for Living in a Healthy Democracy
John Wayne Recites the Pledge of Allegiance
Based mostly in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. He’s the writer of the newsletter Books on Cities in addition to the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Summarizing Korea) and Korean Newtro. Follow him on the social internetwork formerly often known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
