BAPTISTE
NOTES
This drama has the following elements:
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Inspired by a true story
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High adventure
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Character driven
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Love story
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Visceral
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Revenge
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Rural
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Buddy film
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Strong female/male leads
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PG-13 rating
FINANCE
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Location: low cost virtual production sets at ABQ Castle Studios, Albuquerque, NM. https://www.lacastlestudios.com
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Budget est. $7,000,000 net for a $40M movie.
Copyrighted May 4, 2014 by MICHAEL LANCE RITTER (USA) ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No portion of this work may be performed, published, reproduced, sold or distributed by any means, or quoted or published in any medium, including any web site, without the prior written consent of Michael Lance Ritter. WGA Registry 1718322, U.S. Copyright #PAu3-727-265
LOGLINE
As a fractured man from two cultures, Baptiste, the scholarly son of Sacagawea, recounts to a journalist his time of being hunted, bigotry and rediscovered love in a lawless West while searching for his lost family.
SYNOPSIS
Born to legendary guide Sacagawea on the Lewis and Clark expedition, half-Shoshone BAPTISTE is a man of two worlds, but with a home in neither. Fluent in languages and refined in the arts—a devastating personal tragedy drives him into the dangerous American wilderness.
As a young man in St. Louis he planned a future with his first love, MICHELLE, but is sabotaged by the very society that raised him. He bolts to the Rockies, becoming an elite mountain man during the violent fur trade. He leads expeditions and scouts a war road to California.
Stalked throughout by the assassin RUBLETTE, a vicious brute from his fur trade days, Baptiste navigates the frontier from the Rocky Mountains to the "Devil’s Anvil" of the Mojave Desert, to being a post-Mexican war Alcalde trying to save enslaved Indians.
In San Diego he discovers a second chance to simply have a family. It’s the one he thought he’d lost forever— his first love and her son. Finally he goes with his family to join the lawless chaos of the Forty Niners Gold Rush--and kill Rublette.
It’s a visceral, gritty story of a man on a mission. Think Killers of the Flower Moon combined with the intimate, identity-driven survival of The English.
POST SCRIPT
Jean Baptiste Charbonneau died of tuberculosis in 1866 near Danner, Oregon at age 61. His gravesite is a National Historic Monument, marking a man who belonged to two worlds.
Sacagawea died in 1812. Her and Jean Baptiste's image with him being carried on her back was immortalized on the Sacagawea Golden Dollar in 2000.
Jim Beckwourth died in 1866 as a war chief of the Crow Nation. Beckwourth Pass in the High Sierras bears his name.
Toussaint Charbonneau died in 1838 at age 81 and is buried near Fort Mandan. He guided and translated for famous travelers and artists.
William Clark died in 1838 as the Superintendent of Indian Affairs in St. Louis. He watched over the Charbonneau family his entire life.
Michelle Chouteau died in 1866 at age 61 from pneumonia and is buried near Columbia, CA.
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