[QUOTE=Chaila;4846428]
Is this the Black Gold movie?
Doesn’t jibe at all with my memories of the MH book. But it’s called Black Gold (Which I think refers to oil)
but there’s a race horse!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039191/
Weird.[/QUOTE]
That’s it. That’s the reason they were reluctant to talk to Henry when she was researching her book (and why, besides that she wrote her book, I think hers is something of a whitewash). This was obviously HIGHLY out of left field (Chinese orphan?) but again, I think the idea that the horse was running “in good faith” (and not just because he was sterile and they had to make money off him somehow) is a bit ludicrous.
And why do you think Black Gold was named Black Gold? Cherokee oil money paid for him!
To be honest, unless the horse won at the Olympics or some competition that could be hugely played up, or did something unusually heroic (a police horse saves someone’s life in dramatic fashion) I doubt than an OTTB story would make for a good drama film. Much for the same reason Sir Barton wouldn’t be a great story–no one wants to get invested in a horse’s story and then he’s just average or worse. (You’d have to end a film about Sir Barton before the match race, or he’d have to have done something amazing after it, beyond being a middling sire who got sold off to the cavalry breeders. You can’t end with your hero’s last race as a blowout victory for the other guy. I’m sure I"m not the only one who watched the old newsreel, where it was painfully obvious Sir Barton couldn’t keep up with Man o’ War.) If a horse retired and then went on to win the Olympics or some huge world championship, especially if the connections had some kind of hard-luck angle, it might sell.
Otherwise you’d need an independent filmmaker to do a documentary. (The studios are usually pretty leery of any docu that’s not obvious Oscar bait as they don’t make money.) Then you might be able to follow a few different horses–maybe a show jumper, one who’s become a track pony, one who was found in a kill pen, etc. The tricky part would be finding someone who is not going to come in with an agenda of racing being EVIL and throwing horses away. That’s going to end up hurting groups like CANTER and FLTAP who work with trainers.
Yeah, I know I sound like I’m saying a film should be pro-racing propaganda. But really, if they’re going to make movies about racing, I’d much rather it be that. I would rather see the sport gain popularity than trumpet the down sides and make people even LESS likely to go to the track.
Heck, even a funny movie that takes racing and the people who work it more or less seriously would be nice. (Sort of “Let It Ride” only instead of the hardcore betting junkies, the backside version.) Speaking of, that movie actually did a fairly good job of filming races–since the jockeys weren’t characters the focus was on the horses in the running scenes.
Lady Suffolk is also very good story- 16 seasons of racing- at a time when trotters were America’s chosen sport.