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Tchok13

Tchok13

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Wowsa that was good. I'd almost consider that mandatory viewing.
 
Agreed. Giamatti and Linney's performances are outstanding. David Morse as Washington could be considered the real deal.

As a fan of the American Revolution, watching this wants me to go back in time and witness the real thing.

One thing I learned and did not know was that Adams defended the British soldiers tried for the slayings at the Boston Massacre. Learn something new everyday.
 
Outstanding production. I try & read at least one book a year about the Revolutionary War.... Isn't Giamatti the son of the former Baseball commish? I might be wrong about that.
 
Yeah I think our history books tends to favor Sam's role in the debacle. I liked how they showed that outside Boston, EVERYTHING was farmland. The trees had been clearcut for farming and shipbuilding. It looks nothing like it did.

The juxtaposition of the tar and feathering due to forced taxation and the image of confused slaves in shackles looking on was classic.

The images of smallpox reminded me how much I love science.

Question though: Abigail was picking peaches at the end of the show. Can peach trees grow in NE?
 
Yes, peaches can be grown in MA. In fact, we used to steal them from the orchard near my house growing up. Many farms still grow peaches.
 
unfortunately I don't get HBO or any of those channels...so I'll have to wait for the DVD should it be released.....:sulk:
 
There is a farm in Achusnet that grows peaches and makes this absolutely fantastic peach pie. They also have a Apple-Peach Fesitval in September that offers all sort of homemade baked goods and farm products.
 
Ras said:
Agreed. Giamatti and Linney's performances are outstanding. David Morse as Washington could be considered the real deal.

As a fan of the American Revolution, watching this wants me to go back in time and witness the real thing.

One thing I learned and did not know was that Adams defended the British soldiers tried for the slayings at the Boston Massacre. Learn something new everyday.
Click to expand...

John Adams was one of the top lawyers in the country. He actually did too good of a job defending the soldiers in the account that I read in college. I can not wait to see this. I hope for a quick release to DVD but I doubt it will be. :banghead: The book was great...:coffee:
 
I am very happy with the production so far from the music to the incredible acting and the sets etc..

I love the casting! Wilkinson as Franklin..perfect. But was Washington that old in 1775? I seem to remember that he should be younger but I could be wrong. It's a minor detail but it did nag at me a bit and what is with the actors strange accent?
 
I find myself strangely disappointed by it and I really don't know why exactly.

I think part of it may be that the special effects seem so obvious - I find it really distracting. It reminds of HBO's "Rome" in that way, in a bad way.
 
Outstanding.

I think people who don't know the period well will be surprised the DOI was argued and written after the armed resistance had been going on at least a full year and not so simple as here's the DOI lets go to war.

Anyone see the making of Adam following the show. That was very good too and the amount of detail they went through for the period. Building Boston sets from scratch yet making it look diriter than Philly which was newer.

I think they said it best when the participants weren't gods as we often think of the forefathers but also human but..to have all those individuals at once was rare and lucky for the United States.
 
Here's an article in Monday's Globe about the set and location:

Starring as Boston: Virginia

By Joanna Weiss
Globe Staff / March 16, 2008

Many times in HBO's new miniseries "John Adams," the nation's second-president-to-be and his wife, Abigail - played by Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney - walk through and around their modest Braintree farmhouse. The site still exists, now enshrined in a national park on Boston's South Shore.

But the interiors were painstakingly re-created and shot on a soundstage near Richmond, built on the site of an old bowling pin factory. The exteriors, and some of the first-floor rooms, were rebuilt on a Virginia prison farm. And a scene where Adams meets General George Washington in Harvard Yard? Filmed on a hospital grounds in Colonial Williamsburg.

In fact, while Boston and its environs figure heavily in the seven-part saga, debuting tonight, none of the $100 million production was filmed in Boston - a decision owing to money, politics and, ironically, authenticity.

"Even if we'd been in Boston," said Tom Hooper, the series' director, "the Boston we'd created doesn't exist. So we'd have had to build a huge set."

Such are the challenges of a period piece, especially one produced with the attention to detail that marks HBO's series, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography by David McCullough. Hooper and screenwriter/co-executive producer Kirk Ellis said they took pains to re-create the formal language of the time, the British-tinged accents, even the unkempt wigs - which, as Hooper points out, were worn like hats in their day. (Men shaved their heads, he said, because they didn't wash their hair.)

McCullough recalled that when his son served as an extra in the Boston Massacre trial scene, even his shoes - unseen on camera - were authentic. And he said the Virginia setting meant no offense to Boston: The state was also stand-in for Colonial Philadelphia, and the scenes set in 18-century Paris were actually filmed in Hungary.

"There's almost too much to contend with," he says, of the prospect of filming on location in Boston. "Wires and lampposts and streetlights and cars and noise interference, jets flying over, all that."

Still, early on, the series' location scouts considered Boston as a site to film exteriors and house a back lot. "It was particularly difficult to lose that one," said Robin Dawson, then the head of the Massachusetts Film Office, who recalls walking producers through historic sites and trying to broker a last-minute deal that would have allowed Boston University to help build, and then own, a historically accurate set. (At the time, Dawson's was one of two dueling film offices, each claiming to be legitimate. The trade magazine Variety wrote about the dispute under the headline "Mass Pix Confusion.")

Using authentic locations is possible, said Dawson, who said producers lined the streets of Deerfield with dirt to approximate the past when making 1994's "Little Women." In the case of "John Adams," she said, the producers' decision came down to money. At the time, Massachusetts had no filmmakers' tax-incentive law to compete with other states. Virginia, by contrast, offered the production $500,000 in cash to counter other states' tax incentive programs, and offered the use of Colonial Williamsburg for free.

"It's a matter of financing," agreed Ellis, the series' screenwriter and executive producer. "It's a matter of incentives. It's a matter of who's got the strongest and most aggressive film commission."

Since the miniseries was filmed, Massachusetts law has changed: Last summer, Governor Deval Patrick signed a law that offers a 25-percent tax credit for film production done in-state. That law has made a difference - as has a weakened US dollar that makes Canada, once a filmmaking mecca, less attractive to US producers, said Nick Paleologos, executive director of the now-official Massachusetts Film Office. Seven productions are slated to be filmed here between now and July 4, he said, though none are period pieces. Dawson, who is producing an upcoming film about Paul Revere, said she hopes it will be filmed on location here.

But if the Massachusetts law came too late for "John Adams," the city still played a role in the filming process. Designers took measurements of the various Adams houses so they could re-create interiors with accuracy, said Gemma Jackson, the production designer, whose credits include the 2004 film "Finding Neverland."

To build a three-dimensional version of early Boston on a 16-acre Virginia back lot, Jackson said, designers lined streets with real cobblestones, real dirt, and real horse manure. ("I said, 'That's the only stuff that's going to look right,' " she said.) When they re-created Peacefield, Adams's Braintree estate, in Hungary, designers shipped in flowers and plants grown specially in the Netherlands, to match species that grew in New England during the proper time and season.

And though Jackson said she was originally "very keen to do [the filming] in Boston," she concluded that it was far easier to re-create a world than to negotiate cameras in real historic buildings, or close off real streets for long periods of time.

"We didn't shoot nearly as much in Colonial Williamsburg as we originally thought that we were going to," she said. "You have to close everything down, which is such a pain to the rest of the world."

As the sets were being built, Hooper, the director, came to Boston as part of a whirlwind tour of cities featured in the series. The British native walked the Freedom Trail, visited the Old State House, and realized how much of the landscape has been filled: In Adams's day, the building was adjacent to the water.

"The whole city was oriented on this one straight path from square to sea," Hooper said. That landscape, he said, underscored the importance of the sea trade in Colonial times. "You have more feeling about why Boston was the first to hurt and the first to complain about the taxes being levied by the British."

Eager to capture that feeling on film, Hooper said he told production designers that he had "bad news." He wanted to break off a portion of their set so that the buildings could look closer to the water.

On other points of accuracy, he took a few liberties. The distance from the Adams homestead to Penn's Hill - the high point from where Abigail and John Quincy Adams could see the Battle of Bunker Hill - was shrunk, Hooper said, "so it wouldn't take characters forever to run up a hill."

And in some cases, technology was used to re-create the past. In one early scene, a view of Boston in the snow is actually an elaborate painting, he said. And when scenes set on Boston's Long Wharf were filmed in the rural Virginia hills, computer effects were used to create a seascape.

Still, Hooper said he's glad he toured the local sites, which also lent insight into Adams's personality and his legacy. When he visited the Adams homestead, he said, he was surprised to find that it was well-preserved, but "sandwiched between a Dunkin' Donuts and a car park and a couple of low-rise office buildings."

That's a far cry from the site of Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's Virginia plantation, which remains on a long, winding drive surrounded by pristine land, Hooper said. Adams, with his history of vanity and depression, would have taken issue with that.

"I felt that if Adams were there with me . . . he'd rant about the Dunkin' Donuts," Hooper said. "He'd say, 'Jefferson doesn't have a Dunkin' Donuts.' "
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Just an unbelievable first 2 episodes. You would never think history could be this interesting or exciting. Maybe the fact that it happened in our own backyard is part of it, but this show is so well done.

fyi...the original Abigail Adams house is located in North Weymouth, and I think is still open daily as a museum. She was quite the force.
 
What really shows in this series is how much Massachusetts (and NH, RI, and CT) really pushed hard for the DOI. I remember reading that states such as NY, PA, and SC had no interest in pushing the envelope. I do think, though, this series is making Dickinson look like a pu$$y when in reality he was more on the side of Ben Franklin but was worried about the political fallout from his state if he signed on.

I really hope this miniseries shows the atrocities that General Howe and the British laid out on the Americans, especially on the prison boats in NY Harbor. The scenes in NY with Nathan Hale, etc, should be outstanding if they are as good as these previous episodes.

One thing Im not sure is historically accurate, but Franklin left for France immediately after the DOI signing in real life. He should have been on his way to see King Louis by now.
 
I had a couple of history-buff friends over to watch the first 2 episodes. I'm recording the series on DVR, and we plan on getting together every couple of weeks to watch them.

Overall, I thought it was outstanding. As always, there were a few examples of literary license taken with the local geography. The cannons that Knox brought from Ticonderoga were dragged across Massachuetts by land. They came through Framingham, Wayland, Waltham, Watertown, and Cambridge. What the heck were they doing marching them past the Adams' home in Braintree (now Quincy)?

Maybe Knox had a thing for Abigail and convinced the guys to take a "short detour" so he could show off his huge cannon to her?!?!

Still, Hooper said he's glad he toured the local sites, which also lent insight into Adams's personality and his legacy. When he visited the Adams homestead, he said, he was surprised to find that it was well-preserved, but "sandwiched between a Dunkin' Donuts and a car park and a couple of low-rise office buildings."

That's a far cry from the site of Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's Virginia plantation, which remains on a long, winding drive surrounded by pristine land, Hooper said. Adams, with his history of vanity and depression, would have taken issue with that.

"I felt that if Adams were there with me . . . he'd rant about the Dunkin' Donuts," Hooper said. "He'd say, 'Jefferson doesn't have a Dunkin' Donuts.' "
Click to expand...

I think Adams would probably be more pi$$ed to find the nanny state trying to take away his freedom to enjoy a trans-fat laden jelly donut; as well as his freedom to partake of a smoke with his morning "large-regular-2-sugars".

Anyway, the Adams site is not exactly "sandwiched between a Dunkin' Donuts and a car park". Here's a map showing the Adams site (star) with the nearest Dunkin Donuts:
 
One of the Ticonderoga cannons stands in front of the Barnstable County Courthouse on Cape Cod and I made sure when I was up there to go over and see it. As a history buff, it was amazing to see it. My wife, of course, was like "its a cannon, big deal".
 
dropKickMurphy said:
Overall, I thought it was outstanding. As always, there were a few examples of literary license taken with the local geography. The cannons that Knox brought from Ticonderoga were dragged across Massachuetts by land. They came through Framingham, Wayland, Waltham, Watertown, and Cambridge. What the heck were they doing marching them past the Adams' home in Braintree (now Quincy)?

Maybe Knox had a thing for Abigail and convinced the guys to take a "short detour" so he could show off his huge cannon to her?!?!
Click to expand...

While yes there was some liscense there: Didn't the guns end up in Dorchester heights?
 
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