14-10-2008, 01:00 AM
There almost was a movie made on the Butler affair -- one that would have been based on only the second book-length investigation of the plot exposed by Butler. A book that almost was published.
From the New York Post in 2000:
Writers William Corson and Joseph Trento have pulled a literary reverse. A year ago, they sold film rights to a nonfiction project called "The Last President"- about a real-life plot to overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 - to producer Arnold Copelson. Copelson has since gotten Oliver Stone and 20th Century Fox interested in the project.
Now, with Stone said to be well along in writing the script, the authors have turned around and sold the book proposal to Simon & Schuster's Free Press imprint for an estimated $200,000.
According to Free Press editor Chad Conway, the book will detail how some of the nation's leading capitalists - alarmed by the election of FDR and his plans to introduce radical reforms during the Great Depression - tried to engineer a military coup to overthrow the government. The plotters first talked to General Douglas MacArthur and then to General Smedley Darlington Butler, Conway says. "Butler eventually exposed the plot," he says.
FDR started public hearings but then quashed them. "He thought the nation was going through enough turmoil," Conway says. But, he adds, FDR used the information to keep the plotters in line for the rest of the New Deal. "FDR comes off looking even more Machiavellian and heroic than we thought," Conway says.
Corson is a writer and former FBI agent, and Trento works for the Public Education Center.
"Corson's father was one of the guys involved with investigating the original plot," Conway says.
The Free Press is planning a 100,000 print run for the book for fall 2002.
Too close to home, I'm afraid.
There is much to discern about the sponsorship level -- the highest level -- of the JFK hit from a close study of the Butler affair.
From the New York Post in 2000:
Writers William Corson and Joseph Trento have pulled a literary reverse. A year ago, they sold film rights to a nonfiction project called "The Last President"- about a real-life plot to overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 - to producer Arnold Copelson. Copelson has since gotten Oliver Stone and 20th Century Fox interested in the project.
Now, with Stone said to be well along in writing the script, the authors have turned around and sold the book proposal to Simon & Schuster's Free Press imprint for an estimated $200,000.
According to Free Press editor Chad Conway, the book will detail how some of the nation's leading capitalists - alarmed by the election of FDR and his plans to introduce radical reforms during the Great Depression - tried to engineer a military coup to overthrow the government. The plotters first talked to General Douglas MacArthur and then to General Smedley Darlington Butler, Conway says. "Butler eventually exposed the plot," he says.
FDR started public hearings but then quashed them. "He thought the nation was going through enough turmoil," Conway says. But, he adds, FDR used the information to keep the plotters in line for the rest of the New Deal. "FDR comes off looking even more Machiavellian and heroic than we thought," Conway says.
Corson is a writer and former FBI agent, and Trento works for the Public Education Center.
"Corson's father was one of the guys involved with investigating the original plot," Conway says.
The Free Press is planning a 100,000 print run for the book for fall 2002.
Too close to home, I'm afraid.
There is much to discern about the sponsorship level -- the highest level -- of the JFK hit from a close study of the Butler affair.
Charles Drago
Co-Founder, Deep Politics Forum
If an individual, through either his own volition or events over which he had no control, found himself taking up residence in a country undefined by flags or physical borders, he could be assured of one immediate and abiding consequence: He was on his own, and solitude and loneliness would probably be his companions unto the grave.
-- James Lee Burke, Rain Gods
You can't blame the innocent, they are always guiltless. All you can do is control them or eliminate them. Innocence is a kind of insanity.
-- Graham Greene
Co-Founder, Deep Politics Forum
If an individual, through either his own volition or events over which he had no control, found himself taking up residence in a country undefined by flags or physical borders, he could be assured of one immediate and abiding consequence: He was on his own, and solitude and loneliness would probably be his companions unto the grave.
-- James Lee Burke, Rain Gods
You can't blame the innocent, they are always guiltless. All you can do is control them or eliminate them. Innocence is a kind of insanity.
-- Graham Greene