I have finally finished and released my book The American Game after 18 years of working on it. I first began this journey back in 1996 pitching the concept to a production company that made TV movies. At first I only wanted to pitch the concept and move on to other things, but I slowly got sucked into it until I found myself the writer and producer of it championing it in draft after draft after draft; bouncing between studios and production companies. There were hundreds of actors, (many of them well-known actors,) who saw it, many of whom said they wanted to be part of it. But I couldn't get it funded. It was at one point even listed as one of the best movies never made, a list in Hollywood of scripts that are really good, but can't find their funding.
A few years ago, I finally gave up when the production company who made Crash basically scammed me into spending a bunch of money and time to put together a proposal that they didn't intend to consider. I was so devastated from that blow that I dropped out of the game, and finally decided to do it as a movie.
It was odd the way this story affected people in Hollywood. It was very much like the ring in Lord of the Rings. They got obsessed with it and their evil sides came out. I, too, am not proud of everything I did when trying to get this movie made. Yet, despite everyone's efforts, it never got made.
The story is about a series of base ball games that take place between enemy soldiers during the American Civil War. I often pitched this story along with several others, and everyone always picked this one, even if it didn't fit what they did, or were capable of doing. They always told me it was perfect as it was, then had me rewrite the script to their desires over and over and over. Most of the time these changes were based on egos and power trips, making alterations that didn't improve it, but worked out some issue they were dealing with. In the end, I wrote 119 drafts.
In the book, I shed everything everyone else said and wrote the story I wanted to write. What has emerged is what I hope is a powerful and moving story, but that will be for the readers to judge. It is, at times, a bit hard to get through, I'll admit, as I did not want to hold back on some of the realities of the time.
In particular, racism and slavery is approached in a very blunt fashion, as is the culture of the South. I'm concerned that people may interpret the narrative as being harsh, or even racist, when, in fact, it's meant to just not gloss over what existed at the time. I make an attempt to be clear, particularly in the end, that slavery and the racism it was a part of, (and still is,) are some of the greatest evils of this nation's history; but I didn't want to do it from a 21st century politically correct point of view. I wanted the culture to be played realistically for its time, and that might read very tough in today's world.
On the flip side of that coin, I hope people don't see this as a reprimand on the South either. My own personal view is that, while there is very clearly a culture gap between the north and south even to this day, (and I feel the country should split,) the way they rebelled at the time was, in my view, a mistake. But I try to show this through the eyes of the soldiers who were there and believed in the cause, not of slavery, as they don't own any,but of having their own country. However, because the story takes place near the end of the war, when the South was clearly beaten, I have a tendency of portraying it as a truly lost cause, so desperate they'll send their troops out at gunpoint. This did happen, actually, but it doesn't represent the whole war, as many southerners fought fiercely and willingly for what they believed in.
I almost wrote essays at the end of the book explaining these two points at the end of the book, but I was afraid it might look too apologetic. It may look that way here, but there aren't many people reading these blogs, so I guess it's okay. In short, I hope people understand the intention of the book, which is not intended to be either racist nor a slam on the South, but a realistic portrayal of an ugly time that was brightened a bit by base ball. (And yes, I'm saying it correctly. Back then, baseball was separated into two words.)
http://www.amazon.com/American-Game-Jeff-McArthur-ebook/dp/B00LJII7GG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404688416&sr=8-1&keywords=The+American+Game+Jeff+McArthur
