Story Frame 14 – Thomas Jefferson & Nick Nolte Take Me to Disney World

In the mid-1990s, there were three different films about Thomas Jefferson in the works. One was Martin’s documentary, A View from the Mountain – an examination of the issues of race and slavery based upon Jefferson’s perspective of the new world from his travels and his home in Charlottesville, Virginia during the years 1770 to 1826. The title of the documentary came from the name Jefferson gave his plantation: Monticello – Italian for “little mountain.”

The second film in production was a PBS documentary by Ken Burns. Still in its early stages, it was to be a portrait of Jefferson as a renaissance man: writer, inventor and architect and titled simply, Jefferson.

One day at the documentary workshop, not long after we had finished Martin’s Jefferson film, I received a call about a third one. On the phone was a contact of mine at the Library of Congress, an archivist who’d been very helpful when I was trying to find some obscure visuals for the film.

“You’ll never guess who was in here yesterday,” he said, barely able to contain himself.

“Who?” I asked.

“Nick Nolte,” he said.

“The actor?” I asked, wondering why he was calling to tell me this. “People Magazine’s ‘Sexiest Man Alive’?”

“That’s the one!” he chirped happily.

“What on earth was he doing at the Library of Congress?” I asked.

“You won’t believe this,” the archivist said gleefully. I could practically feel him hopping up and down on the other end of the line in his eagerness to tell me.

“He’s playing the role of ….”  and here he paused for dramatic effect, “Thomas Jefferson in a new film by Merchant Ivory!”

I was speechless. Each word in that statement came as a small shock to me. Having helped me with research for our own film on Jefferson, the archivist knew there was a good chance I’d be surprised to hear this. And I was.

At the time, Merchant Ivory Productions was well known and respected for their beautiful and iconic films, often based upon novels, and filmed in India or England. Their 1983 film, Heat and Dust, starring Julie Christie – the British actress who was born on a tea plantation run by her father in northeast India – was an art-house hit in Europe in 1983. Two years later, A Room with a View brought them mainstream visibility. By the early 90s, they were a big enough deal that Disney’s Buena Vista signed a distribution deal with them.

And now they were working on a feature film about Jefferson’s years as the US Ambassador to France during the 1780s with Nick Nolte playing the role of Thomas Jefferson.

[Monticello (little mountain) + Buena Vista (good view) + A Room with a View – the way the names and titles all lined up thematically – like a payline on a slot machine – appealed to me.]

A semi-fictional account, the working title for the Merchant Ivory film was Jefferson in Paris. The screenplay, written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, dealt with Jefferson, not long after his wife died, and his alleged relationships with British artist, Maria Cosway and Sally Hemmings, the slave who accompanied Jefferson’s teenage daughter, Patsy (played by newcomer actress Gwyneth Paltrow) to Paris.

According to my friend at the Library of Congress, Nick Nolte had apparently been researching his new role at the Library of Congress. Rumor had it he’d bought a copy of every book ever written about Thomas Jefferson – and read them all. The archivist and I shared a few laughs over the surprising improbability of this and I made a mental note to see the film when it came out.

A few months later, I got another surprising call. This time, it was Buena Vista Pictures on the line, Disney’s marketing arm.

Although it hadn’t aired yet on PBS, someone at Buena Vista had apparently gotten wind of Martin’s documentary on Thomas Jefferson and wondered if they could get an advance copy of it. I sensed a bargaining opportunity.

“Sure,” I said, after checking with Martin, “we can send you one. And in return, what can you do for me?”

The Buena Vista representative thought for a moment, then offered me two passes to a private screening of Jefferson in Paris in New York City. I accepted them as a starter offer, but held out for more.

“Do you have any kids?” he asked, offering me a copy of a new animated film called Toy Story, which Buena Vista was also distributing.

“Yes, and they’ve already seen it,” I said.

“Make me an offer,” he said, running out of ideas and, perhaps, patience.

“How about tickets to Disney World?” I asked, never dreaming I’d actually get them.

There was a pause. And then he said, “OK, but just the passes – I can’t do the airfare.”

“Deal!” I said happily, looking forward to telling Leif, who was just seven at the time. My mother had recently taken Zoë (and me) on a special trip to Denmark, and I had been looking for an opportunity to balance things out.

A few weeks later, the passes arrived. Martin and I took the train up to New York City for the screening, relaxing in a pair of cushy lounge chairs in a darkened theater at the Todd-AO Studios with members of the press, watching Jefferson in Paris.

Named for Mike Todd, best known for his 1956, Academy Award-winning film, Around the World in 80 Days – and also for being the third of Elizabeth Taylor’s seven husbands – Todd’s studios were the driving force behind the development of the widescreen 70-mm film format.

Merchant Ivory’s take on Thomas Jefferson, quite different from Martin’s historical, fact-based documentary, was ultimately a box office flop, a strangely bizarre aberration in their otherwise illustrious 44-film career.

“After a literate and entertaining roll (A Room with a View, Howards End, The Remains of the Day)” wrote Peter Travers in Rolling Stone magazine, “the team of producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory and writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala drops the ball with this droopy, snail-paced, prigs-in-wigs movie. It doesn’t help that Nick Nolte is such a lox as Thomas Jefferson … [He] seems to think that playing an introspective man means impersonating a wax dummy.”

Ouch.

Martin’s View from the Mountain aired on PBS in 1995, the same year Jefferson in Paris was in the movie theaters. Jefferson by Ken Burns aired on PBS two years later. Happily, our press reviews were a lot kinder than those for Jefferson in Paris as well as the Burns special:

“Burns' failure to get to the heart of the Jeffersonian enigma is all the more noteworthy in light of Thomas Jefferson: A View from the Mountain, the landmark exploration of Jefferson and slavery made by Journey Films of Alexandria,” wrote film critic Ken Ringle in the Washington Post. “Made with a fraction of the resources Burns appears to draw on at will these days, (Martin’s) modest but penetrating effort managed to deal both more intelligently and more entertainingly with the central question of Jefferson's life – and do so in much less time.”

While working on the Jefferson film didn’t get me to Paris, that experience would in time get me to a special mountain – in Italy.

Coming Next: Bill Clinton’s Handshake