 Throughout the decades since the 1970 publication of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown’s seminal study of American Indian life in the later half of the 19th century, many producers, directors, and scriptwriters have taken a crack at adapting the richly detailed and exhaustively researched masterwork into a movie or miniseries.
Many tried, many failed.
By the time the project was offered in 2001 to Dick Wolf, the veteran producer of NBC’s Law & Order franchise and a long-time fan of Brown’s much-revered bestseller, many showbiz industry insiders — including Wolf himself — had begun to believe that maybe, just maybe, this was one of those books that simply defied cinematic translation.
“The problem is,” Wolf says, “it’s a nonfiction account without any dramatic structure. It would be more than a miniseries — you could have a series that went on for five years, just telling the stories that are in the book.”
All of which explains why Wolf, director Yves Simoneau, and screenwriter Daniel Giat felt compelled to at once narrow and expand their focus while preparing their movie version of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, which debuts May 27 on HBO.
“The books itself is not adaptable, per se,” says Giat, who earned an Emmy nomination for writing another fact-based HBO production, Path to War.
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