Our original intention was to write
about the adventure of a group of Mexican soldiers assigned to the rescue of
Santa Anna the president of Mexico after his capture at the Alamo. According to
the stories we were told by people we met in our missions, this was when he
sold the western half of the United States to the USA. We figured this would be
a powerful motivation for a seemingly suicide mission rescue. However, when we
began to do the research for our story we realized that the stories we were
told were baseless; the only property bartered upon his capture was a small
portion of Texas.
We
studied various articles and Santa Anna’s Wikipedia page, hoping to find something
that we both believed would be a good story. At this point we both discovered
an interesting part of his life; Santa Anna being exiled to Cuba, (which on one
hand doesn’t sound like that bad of a deal) while there he communicated with
the USA to get assistance in reclaiming power in Mexico. This reminded us of the
film ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’, when Napoleon also in exile tricks a young
man into carrying a letter to his supporters in France. Fittingly so, Santa
Anna was commonly referred to as the Napoleon of the west.
Now
that we had a new premise, we still needed a story. Who would be the courier?
Would he be a willing participant? What would motivate him? What trials would
he face? As we began to throw ideas around, and we worried a lot about being
factual and accurate, we thought about what we had talked about in class, in
regards to “Be Kind Rewind” and “My Grandmother Ironed the King’s Shirts”. It
doesn’t have to be factual; it’s history how we understand it, or how it came
to us. There is no wrong or right.
So
we shot the screenplay back and forth each ironing out the others errors,
makings sure the others voice was heard and his ideas included until we
finished our story. There is no guarantee that this story is historically
accurate, but it is an honest representation of our ideas, and plausible answer
for how Santa Anna managed to get a letter past his prison guards and to the
USA during his exile in Cuba in 1846. The best part about this project for us
was learning about the power of collaborating, the story came together a lot
faster, and we feel a lot better quality then either of us could have done
individually.
1. Santa Anna: The Napolean of the West. Frank C. Hanighen, 1934
2. From the Life of Santa Anna. Clarence Wharton, 1926
3. http://mainlynorfolk.info/lloyd/songs/santyanna.html - song information for "Santianna"
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