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We'd Better Get a Voiceover from Quint: WB Filming Story of USS Indianapolis

By Steven Lloyd Wilson | Posted Under Trade News | Comments (14)

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WB has reportedly bought the rights to the life story of one Hunter Scott, who other than having a perfect name for being a roguish scion on a soap opera, also was the 11-year-old boy who made it a personal mission to redeem the court-martialed captain of the USS Indianapolis 30 years after his suicide.

The USS Indianapolis of course is the famed American cruiser that sunk in the last weeks of World War II after a Japanese submarine attack. Because it was on a top secret mission (delivering parts of the atomic bomb to its assembly area), no one noticed when it never showed up at its next station. And because sometimes the universe really sucks, three different American stations received the ship’s distress calls, but ignored them for one reason or another. Once the men hit the water, the sharks arrived, and for four days they feasted on the hundreds of helpless sailors. I’ll let Quint pick up the story at this point:


In any case, after the war, Captain McVay was court-martialed despite the opinion of the survivors that there was nothing he could have done differently. The Japanese submarine commander even testified that the charges were absurd, that he had the ship dead-to-rights and none of the suggestions of action proposed by the prosecution would have mattered a damn. McVay was the only American commander court-martialed for losing his ship in World War II, and it was clearly in response to the horrific aftermath of the sinking. McVay killed himself in 1968, and was not exonerated until 2001 and the efforts of Hunter Scott.

So that makes a fantastic hook into the story, but it also makes me wonder. Hunter Scott was eleven in 1996 and so around 26 today. Has he really given up on doing anything meaningful with his life such that he’s already sold his life story? Talk about peaking young. Selling your life story at age 26 seems a bit like selling your soul.









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Comments

Why not? It'd be fun.

Posted by: Fredo at August 18, 2011 10:37 AM

And by "fun", I mean "horrifying"

Posted by: Fredo at August 18, 2011 10:37 AM

You're forgetting that by the time the movie is made, it will bear no resemblance to his life story and he will be able to cash his cheque, separate himself from it and get on with his life.

Posted by: Mrs. Julien at August 18, 2011 10:40 AM

So strange, I was just thinking about Quint this morning. I love Jaws and I'd watch.

Posted by: Cindy at August 18, 2011 10:55 AM

I did not know about the captain being court-martialed. Those were hard times tho. I think I might see this.

Posted by: logan at August 18, 2011 12:15 PM

Doug Stanton's book on this: In Harm's Way is extremely good. It's a horrific story, and the firsthand accounts are almost unbelievable. I'll be interested to see what they do with the story--I hope it focuses more on the brave servicemen who survived than on some kid who managed to profit from their suffering.

Posted by: Siege at August 18, 2011 12:26 PM

I used to live in downtown Indianapolis, and at my old grocery store, you'd always see one or two old vets from the USS Indianapolis sitting at a card table, selling t-shirts and a book about the sinking. They were always trying to raise money so the survivors (many of whom are in ill health and old age) can afford to come to Indy on the anniversary of the sinking. I hope those guys get some money out of the film of their story.

Posted by: StoatCat at August 18, 2011 12:55 PM

A few years ago, I attended a lecture given by one of the survivors. He had never planned on telling his family what had happened to him during the war. He eventually had to after one of his kids saw Jaws and thought that Quint's story sounded like BS. I would have loved to have been in the room during that discussion.

Posted by: Rob at August 18, 2011 1:02 PM

Memorable, tragic story. Interesting about Hunter Scott - I had heard about him before but forgotten that postscript to the story. I think people are lucky if they do just one thing in their lives that is deemed worthy of a feature film option, so he's probably safe selling at 26.

I have high hopes for the film, although it will be a major challenge for it to touch the greatness of that four-minute monologue from Jaws.

Posted by: DarthCorleone at August 18, 2011 5:06 PM

StoatCat - I have one of those t-shirts. I grew up in Indy and my mom bought it for me.

Posted by: Chrissimas at August 18, 2011 5:23 PM

Stanton's book really is amazing. Lot of images that should lend themselves to the big screen: looking down and seeing the cloud of hundreds of sharks below, waiting for sunset when feeding begins again; Captain McVay alone in four lifeboats lashed together while hundreds float unseen nearby; so much shredded, burned flesh hanging from a burned sailor's upper body that it reminds the priest taking care of him of angel's wings.

Damn this will be depressing as hell.

Posted by: Uncle Mikey at August 18, 2011 5:36 PM

i had to do a report on the atomic bomb and even went into what happened to the ship that carried the bomb parts i will watch this

Posted by: Utah Dynamo at August 18, 2011 7:27 PM

I've only ever been able to understand about three words Quint says, and one of them is "bowm."

Posted by: , at August 19, 2011 1:38 AM

The Navy's failure to notice that the USS Indianapolis had not made port was actually not a result of any top secret classification. I always thought that, too. Turns out, once the bomb parts were delivered, she was just another ship on a standard schedule to return to port. Her failure to do so was known immediately to the duty officer who failed to report it. Declassified records confirm that her distress signal was received by three different stations - all of them failed to follow it up. Secrecy didn't doom the sailors of the Indianapolis, gross negligence did. And not Capt. McVay's negligence, either.

Sorry, I'm a maritime history nerd, too.

Posted by: Young_Grandma_Ben at August 19, 2011 11:33 PM