All in blog

Little did I know the guy from Freestyle Love Supreme, Lin-Manuel Miranda, had beat me to it, single-handedly producing the winningest musical of all time—2015’s Hamilton—the now-iconic archetype of a rap-centric historical biopic.

I’m a glutton for “wanting to retell historical stories in the form of biopics and miniseries” but, since I don’t have access to a production studio and Scrooge McDuck’s doubloon vault, just wait for the inevitable podcast series on the topic. Anyway, here are some of those.

I’m just out here trying to bring Robert Moses, Stephen Glass, a Bosnian couple, Jerry Springer’s bodyguards, the 1975 MobileLand Conference, two Dnepropetrovsk maniacs, the Harvey’s Resort Hotel bombing, King Arthur, a Czech Olympian runner, a string of Borscht Belt comedians, fake competition shows, real drug dealers, quality parodies of horror movies, and the hot, vengeful breath of Neanderthal zombies to the big or small screen.

The Great Lakes area (1970-1995) features a record store with the classics of disco, punk, R&B, soul, pop, new wave, heavy metal, grunge, alt rock, etcetera—and there’s an adjoining laundromat where the glass faces of the washing machines are all playing music videos from different eras and genres, with parabolic loudspeakers overhead to sync the songs to their particular acoustic areas.

Phoenicians, Egyptians, Priests, Gutenberg, colonial pamphlets, newspapers, newsboys, Woodward & Bernstein, the 24-hour news cycle, dissemination and tribalism on the internet, the eternal battle of truth against lies, etcetera.

A walkthrough attraction exploring Aztec ruins, full of treasure, traps, thrills, and displays of architecture and history. For instance, step on pressure plates in a hallway and they trigger “poison darts” (puffs of pressurized air to blast you, as if you’re being shot at). The story unfolds at your walking pace.