Kim MacQuarrie's "Life and Death in the Andes"

Kim MacQuarrie is a writer and is perhaps the only American to have been chased up a tree by a female grizzly bear, to have lived with a recently-contacted Amazonian tribe, and to have won four national Emmys for his documentary films. He is the author of The Last Days of the Incas, a non-fiction work that is currently being made by FX into a 13-part dramatic series and, most recently, of Life and Death in the Andes: On the Trail of Bandits, Heroes, and Revolutionaries.

Here MacQuarrie dreamcasts an adaptation of Life and Death in the Andes:

For Life and Death in the Andes, which is about a 4,300-mile journey along the Andes, looking into characters such as Pablo Escobar, Che Guevara, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, I would expand one of the chapters into a film. One of the lesser-known stories I looked into is a young Charles Darwin in Patagonia on the square-rigger ship, the H.M.S. Beagle. Darwin was only 25, yet was gathering the evidence that would lead to both his theory of evolution and make him question his religion. The ship’s captain, Robert Fitzroy, was extremely religious. He’d been conducting an experiment of “civilizing” three naked Patagonian natives (whom he’d captured on an earlier voyage and had taken to London, where they met the King and Queen, learned English, and were now being returned to Patagonia). Darwin and Fitzroy would later clash, with dire consequences for one of them; the “civilization experiment” would also have unintended consequences. So, a quick casting for a story that takes place at the southern, tempestuous end of the world:

Charles Darwin: Paul Bettany (has played him well before)

Captain Robert Fitzroy: Christian Bale

Jemmy Button: (native Patagonian): Rick Mora

Fuegia Basket (native Patagonian): Kristin Kreuk (from Smallville)

York Minster (native Patagonian): David Mythunder

Visit Kim MacQuarrie's website.

The Page 99 Test: Life and Death in the Andes.

--Marshal Zeringue

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