Jon T. Coleman's "Here Lies Hugh Glass"

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Jon T. Coleman is an associate professor of United States history at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Vicious: Wolves and Men in America, which won the W. Turrentine Jackson Prize and the John H. Dunning Prize.

Here he shares some ideas for director and star of a big screen adaptation of his new book, Here Lies Hugh Glass: A Mountain Man, a Bear, and the Rise of the American Nation:

For an obscure fur trapper famous for nearly being eaten by a grizzly bear in 1823, Hugh Glass has a surprisingly high Hollywood profile. Richard Harris (Camelot, A Man Called Horse) played a character based on Glass in Man in the Wilderness (1971). Rumor has it that Christian Bale was all set to play Glass in a recent adaptation of the legend when the production was canceled. Both Harris and Bale lend British acting gravitas to this grueling role, but I think their casting misses the historical point: Hugh Glass wasn’t a leading man. He was a bit player who became a model American by surviving an epic workplace accident. Instead of an action hero’s grimace, he met adversity with a grin and twinkle in his eye. A sidekick and a trickster, he stumbled onto the main stage of American culture and tweaked his audience and those in authority with his wild tales.

Instead of giving Glass to an action director or a man vs. nature essentialist like Werner Herzog, I would ship him off to Joel and Ethan Coen. The Coen brothers have a knack for westerns, off-beat Americana, and extreme violence, the perfect combination for a Hugh Glass biopic. To star, I would cast John Hawkes, the sheriff’s sidekick in HBO’s Deadwood who burned a hole in Winter's Bone as Teardrop, the vengeful meth-snorting uncle.

Around Hawkes, the Coens could gather their usual cast of misfits: Jeff Bridges as Herman Melville; Steve Buscemi as James Hall, the lawyer who first wrote down the legend; John Goodman as William Ashley, Glass’s fur trade boss; William H. Macy as James Clyman, a trapper colleague who kept a journal; and Don Cheadle as James Beckwourth, the story-spinning mountain man.

Learn more about Here Lies Hugh Glass at the Hill and Wang website.

The Page 99 Test: Here Lies Hugh Glass.

--Marshal Zeringue