History & the Movies: An Historian Writes a Screenplay

The process of compressing history into drama often generates sharp tensions between the historian and the dramatist. As James Reston Jr. will testify, the historian usually feels a sinking disappointment as the dramatist explains what it will take to capture and hold the attention of an audience. When Reston was asked to write a screenplay based on his own 2005 book, "Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors," he leapt at the chance to resolve and to control the hi...