It’s a putdown, of course, if someone describes your film as History Channel-like. It means cut-rate history programmers made by second-tier contributors. Which slightly undercuts enthusiasm, no offense, for the History Channel’s just-announced plans to remake Roots, the famed ’70s TV miniseries based on Alex Haley’s book and produced by from David L. Wolper. Are you going to sit there and tell me the idea to do this didn’t come out of 12 Years A Slave, or more particularly a belief that at the end of the day the Academy will succumb to pressure to give Steve McQueen‘s film the Best Picture Oscar?
