Why Leonardo DiCaprio Should base his film on what happened to Roosevelt Out West

Teddy Roosevelt is a hard character to handle much less make a movie about. Leo DiCaprio has been trying for some time to get a movie made about Teddy. The problem with Roosevelt is the same as all historical figures. What part of your life do you pick? Most people go with the charge up San Juan Hill and call it a day. Some will take on Roosevelt the trust buster and the man who took on JP Morgan. Others go with Roosevelt the outdoors man or the pugnacious politician who sunk the Republican party in 1912 by splitting the ticket and letting Woodrow Wilson win.

But if you are to make a film about Roosevelt I would say there is only one part of his life that lends itself to the redemption story that Hollywood loves. It is no surprise DiCaprio and Scorsese have been having trouble getting TR onto the big screen. Movies can only handle a slice of a persons life that has to be emblematic of the whole. Take Lincoln and the struggle to get the amendment freeing the slaves passed. It was a small part of a an amazing life but it told us so much about Lincoln.

The real story with Teddy Roosevelt is overcoming what happened to him in 1883. On the same day his wife and mother died and left him with a baby girl. Roosevelt who had been a sickly asthmatic his whole life then left for the Badlands and was gone for three years. It was in the hell of the \Badlands he transmuted his grief into something bigger than himself and emerged as the barrel chested Roosevelt we know today. He would remarry and then ten years later become President.  The amazing story of course is what happened to him out West. It would have killed anyone else.

Now all I have to do is a get a book to Leo.


Forging A President How the Wild West Created Teddy Roosevelt

Roosevelt and Churchill in the Heroic Age

I have been reading Hero of the Empire by Candace Millard and it hit me that the similarities between Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt are many. Both men came of age in the Heroic Age of Shackleton and Scott the two polar explorers who set the bar for suffering and death with their exploration of the South Pole. The Heroic Age can be defined as men of a certain patrician class feeling it is their destiny to explore, fight, or rule. The heroic man knows not fear and usually puts himself in grave danger.

Take Winston Churchill in the Boar war where he is attacked on a troop train and by all rights should have died there. This is when he was a war corespondent who really should not have even been fighting but he wanted to find war and test himself and he ended up being captured. Once captured Churchill makes a daring escape and goes on the run. The fact he could be shot and killed at any moment is negated by the heroic mans feeling that he is special and Gods Will shall keep him safe. In Churchill's case this seems to be true.

Much the same for Teddy Roosevelt who goes west after his wife and mother die on the same day in 1883 and ends up in the Badlands ;a place Custer called hell with the fires out and then puts himself through every test a young dude from the East could find with the possibility of death or great injury. Fighting Indians, badmen, blizzards, heat, stampeding cattle, swollen rivers, wild horses, Roosevelt cheats death at every turn...yet he comes out unscathed. He has the sense he will not be harmed and three years later he returns to the East to eventually become President as  Churchill returns to become England's greatest prime minister.

The Heroic Age ended as modernism moved in. Men were no longer heroic, they were mortal. Such a pity.

Forging A President How the Wild West Created Teddy Roosevelt

How Teddy Roosevelt Cheated Death in the Badlands

I believe in destiny. I didn't before I wrote Forging A President. The fact is Teddy Roosevelt should have been killed many times over in his time out West. Anybody else would have not cheated death in the many ways the dude from the East escaped harm. Take the time the Indians rode up on him when he was alone. There had been atrocities and Geronimo was still loose . Roosevelt gets down off his horse and holds off the Indians until he is able to escape. Why the Indians didn't overwhelm the small man in the buckskin coat with glasses is amazing.

Or when he was confronted by an armed man in a saloon who demanded he buy drinks for the house. Roosevelt is sitting behind a stove and ignores the man but he persists with his six shooters drawn. Roosevelt stands up and knock his out with a right and a left. Again this is unbelievable for a man  who came from a patrician family in the East. The man easily could have shot him and we would not be discussing Teddy Roosevelt. Or the time he was a on roundup and went over a cliff with his horse and fell into the Missouri river. The horse flipped over and missed him by a foot. Roosevelt just got back on and continued riding.

Or when he chased armed men down a frozen river who stole his boat. Anyone else would have let the boat go but Roosevelt chases the men three days, captures them, then takes them on a journey of seven days to reach the nearest sheriff.  Or when a Grizzly confronted him and Roosevelt squeezes off a perfect shot between the eyes. Or the time he falls off the edge of a mountain and crashes through a pine tree then gets up without a scratch.

One time around a campfire a cowboy told him one day he would not be running cattle and he would become President. Roosevelt just laughed, but that cowboy saw something even Teddy didn't understand....destiny.

Forging A President

The Day Your Book Comes Out: Forging A President

My book is out today. Forging A President How the Wild West Created Teddy Roosevelt is finally for sale. A release day is a funny thing. There has been a lot of anticipation, suspense, heartache, highs and lows, and then, then, the book comes out. And it does have a bit of anticlimax. There should be bells and shouting from the rooftops and of course that is why you do media. But in reality your book coming out is the end of a very long journey that began years before when you had the idea to put pen to paper or fingers to screen.

In the case of Forging A President I was intrigued by a biography of Teddy Roosevelt when I learned his mother and wife died on the same day and he went West for three years to the Dakota Territory or the Badlands. It is an amazing thing to think that this vigorous President had such tragedy at such a young age (26) and then went to the West to essentially become someone else. Add to this that he was a sickly asthmatic who literally had to fight for every breath prompting his father to once observe, "you have the mind but not the body Teddy, and without the body the mind cannot go far."

And from that moment I wanted to find out what happened to Teddy Roosevelt out West and how did it create this barrel chested persona who comes down to us through history. I do believe in destiny, anyone else would have been killed by the falling horses, the arrows from Indians, the six shooters pointed his way by bad men. And so you write the book, push the book, and then finally it comes out.  And like a child that grows up, the best you can do is give your book a good push... and let it go.

Forging A President How the Wild West Created Teddy Roosevelt