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George & Abe’s Excellent Adventure Matt Thomson and Dave Callaham tell us everything we need to know about their Founding Fathers movie, America: The Motion Picture. By Michael Mallory
F
orget what you learned in school. Turn a deaf ear to the yearly telecast of 1776. Ignore even the political donnybrook taking place in both Congress and statehouses throughout the land over how America’s founding should be taught. The record has now been set straight by America: The Motion Picture, which arrives on Netflix just in time for this year’s Independence Day celebrations! It’s a hilariously warped record to be sure, but that’s the point. And unlike a lot of today’s other history revisionists, the filmmakers revel in the fact that they’re joking. “It’s about the founding of America as if the story was being told by an idiot,” says director and executive producer Matt Thompson. “It’s as if the dumbest person in the world said, ‘What if George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are best friends, and they go to Ford’s Theatre where Benedict Arnold turns into a werewolf and bites off Lincoln’s head, and that starts the American Revolution.’” And that’s only the beginning. To avenge his best bud, Washington forms a revolutionary posse comprised of a dimwitted, beer-guzzling Sam Adams; Paul Revere, “the world’s greatest horse racist;” a female, Chinese American, scientific genius named Thomas Edison; the Apache leader Geronimo, who takes up
arms against the British and loses one of his own; and a hip African American blacksmith. Together they battle a diabolical, steampunky British king and his lieutenant, the traitorous lycanthrope Benedict Arnold.
Facts, Schmacts! It’s crazy, wild-ass American History 101.2 created by the filmmakers under the credo “No
Research Allowed” and promoted with the tagline “Facts, schmacts.” Even so, screenwriter Dave Callaham (Wonder Woman 1984), who originally tailored the script as a live-action comedy, says some people still missed the joke. “When I first sent it out amongst friends and colleagues in the entertainment industry, there were a few who came back with totally straight-faced notes like, ‘Hey, there are a cou-
‘It’s as if the dumbest person in the world said, “What if George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are best friends, and they go to Ford’s Theatre where Benedict Arnold turns into a werewolf and bites off Lincoln’s head, and that starts the American Revolution.”’ — Exec producer and director Matt Thompson
www.animationmagazine.net 16 june|july 21
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