Stories by @sofly

American Crime Story: The People of Skidmore Missouri vs. Ken Rex McElroy

Is a murder ever justified? On July 10, 1981 in Skidmore, Missouri local town resident Ken Rex McElroy was shot to death in his car in front of a crowd of over 30 people. Not one of them has come forward to testify who shot him and the case remains unsolved. Why? McElroy was a local town bully who in his lifetime commited over a dozen crimes ranging from assault, child molestation, statutory rape, arson, hog and cattle rustling, and burglary. He was never convicted of any of these crimes because people would be too scared to testify against them and he knew it. His crimes became more and more brazen until one day he went to far and shot 70 year old town resident Ernest "Bo" Bowenkamp in the neck over a dispute involving McElroy's daughter shoplifting from Bowenkamp's store. Bowenkamp was the town grocer and Methodist minister and was well beloved by the town. Bowenkamp amazing survived and McElroy was charged with attempted murder later bumped down to assault with a deadly weapon. McElroy was for the first time in his life convicted of a crime but was soon released on bail and spent all his time in the town's tavern with his shotgun making graphic threats about what he wanted to do with Bowenkamp. On July 10, 1981 the town had a meeting to decide what to do about McElroy but could not come to a conclusion. According to those in attendance everyone there felt hopeless. They soon got word that McElroy was drinking at the local tavern and so they decided to confront him. A crowd of up to 46 people walked to the bar and saw McElroy who had just finished drinking and was getting into his truck along with his wife Trena McCloud (she became pregnant with McElroy's child when she was 14 and when she tried to escape to her parents house McElroy burned down their house and shot their dog). McElroy saw the crowd approaching and according to witness dared them to do something. He got into the truck and before he could even start his engine shots rang out. McElroy was hit in the head with two bullets and died instantly. No one called an ambulance and no one testified to the identity of the shooter despite the large crowd that saw it happen. The case remains unsolved to this day.

M*A*S*H

The 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital is stuck in the middle of the Korean War. With little help from the circumstances, in which they find themselves, they are forced to make their own fun. Fond of practical jokes and revenge, the doctors, nurses, administrators , and soldiers often find ways of making wartime life bearable. Nevertheless, the war goes on.

Father of the Bride

George Banks is an ordinary, middle-class man whose 21 year-old daughter Annie has decided to marry a man from an upper-class family, but George can't think of what life would be like without his daughter. He becomes slightly insane, but his wife tries to make him happy for Annie, but when the wedding takes place at their home and a foreign wedding planner takes over the ceremony, George must try to handle the fact that people grow up.

Singin' in the Rain

When the transition is being made from silent films to `talkies', everyone has trouble adapting. Don and Lina have been cast repeatedly as a romantic couple, but when their latest film is remade into a musical, only Don has the voice for the new singing part. After a lot of practice with a diction coach, Lina still sounds terrible, and Kathy, a bright young aspiring actress, is hired to record over her voice.

Bye Bye Birdie Live!

When the draft selects rock star Conrad Birdie, his fans are devastated, but none more than struggling songwriter Albert Peterson, whose song Birdie was just about to record. Albert's longtime girlfriend, Rosie Alvarez, pushes Albert to write a new tune that Birdie will perform on television to a fan selected in a contest. The scheme works, with young Ohio teenager Kim McAfee declared the winner, but not everything will go according to plan.

Bjork

Björk Guðmundsdóttir born 21 November 1965 is an Icelandic singer, songwriter, composer, actress, record producer, and DJ. Over her four-decade career, she has developed an eclectic musical style that draws on a range of influences and genres spanning electronic, pop, experimental, classical, trip hop, IDM, and avant-garde music. This film follows Bjork from her childhood in Iceland to her time as lead singer of the band The Sugarcubes, to their eventual breakup and to her embarking on her successful solo career and all the obstacles she faced.

Let it Be

Movie about the childhood of Beatles member Paul McCartney detailing his early life spent in council housing with his parents and brother and how his mother's struggle and eventual loss to breast cancer when Paul was 14, inspired the Beatles song Let it Be.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Book Version)

As adaptation more faithful to the original Ken Kesey novel than the 1975 movie. I have nothing against the 1975 movie but there's a lot of changes they made from the original story. Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electric shock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy – the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute half-Indian patient who understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them imprisoned.

As Good as It Gets

Melvin Udall is an obsessive-compulsive writer of romantic fiction who's rude to everyone he meets, including his gay neighbor Simon, but when he has to look after Simon's dog, he begins to soften and, if still not completely over his problems, finds he can conduct a relationship with the only waitress at the local diner who'll serve him.

So Many Roads: The Jerry Garcia / Grateful Dead Story

A psychedelic and mind bending movie about the popular American Rock Band The Grateful Dead, their association with Ken Kesey and his Merry Prankster, and especially the group's iconic lead singer Jerry Garcia

Survival

A movie about the incredible survival of Ludger Sylbaris. Ludger Sylbaris was a common laborer in the capital city of Saint-Pierre on the island Martinique. On the night of May 7, 1902 he was involved in either a bar fight or a street brawl and was arrested. The police ordered him to be put in solitary confinement and he was locked in a single windowless cell built partially underground which was only ventilated through a narrow grating in the door. This imprisonment turned out to be a blessing in disguise when the next morning May 8, 1902 at 7:52 AM, Mount Pelee the volcano overlooking Saint-Pierre erupted sending a massive pyroclastic flow towards the city of Saint-Pierre. The entiere city was destroyed and almost the entire population, somewhere between 30,000 to 40,000 people were killed. Ludger Sylbaris in his reinforced prison cell was on of only three survivors of the eruption. He was pulled out of the rubble four days later badly burned but alive. He would later become the first black man to star in Barnum and Bailey's circus where he told the story of his incredible survival.

The Wedding Banquet

Wai-Tung and his boyfriend live happily as a gay couple in New York City. Wai-Tung has not been open about his sexuality with his Taiwanese parents, and decides to acquiesce to their wish for a traditional Chinese union by marrying Wei-Wei, a struggling artist desperate for a green card. But the simple arrangement turns into a lavish debacle when Wai-Tung's parents plan an extravagant wedding banquet.

Fiddler on the Roof

The second film adaptation of the hit 1964 Broadway musical. In prerevolutionary Russia, a Jewish peasant contends with marrying off three of his daughters while growing anti-Semitic sentiment threatens his village.

Frasier

Dr. Frasier Crane moves back to his hometown of Seattle, where he lives with his father, and works as a radio psychiatrist.

I Enjoy Being a Girl: The Christine Jorgensen Story

Christine Jorgensen (born May 30, 1926, New York, New York, U.S.—died May 3, 1989, San Clemente, California), captured international headlines in the early 1950s as the first person in the United States to undergo a successful gender-reassignment operation. From an early age, Jorgensen was tormented by feelings of being a woman trapped inside a man’s body. Jorgensen served in the U.S. Army (1945–46), moved to Denmark, and worked at various jobs. After being treated with extensive psychotherapy and a series of hormone injections, Jorgensen underwent several surgical operations and, with the announcement of her transformation in 1952, became an instant celebrity. She lived comfortably on the proceeds of her lecture and nightclub circuit and from royalties from her book Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography (1967), which was adapted into the film The Christine Jorgensen Story (1970). Jorgensen, who never married, battled bladder and lung cancer in her final years.

Miss Marple

Miss Marple is a fictional character in Agatha Christie's crime novels and short stories. An elderly spinster living in the village of St. Mary Mead, Marple helps her friends and relatives solve mysterious murders.

Beloved

Based on the Toni Morrison novel of the same name. Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Her new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

Fallout 3

A movie or t.v. series based on the game of the same name. In the far future where Earth has become a devastated wasteland following a Nuclear Apocalypse, one known as the Lone Wanderer is the child of a noted scientist in the underground Vault 101 in the Washington DC area. Upon reaching adulthood, the Lone Wanderer's father has mysteriously disappeared into the outside for some unknown purpose. Soon, the Lone Wanderer is forced to flee outside to escape the murderous tyranny of the Vault Overseer who will not tolerate such dissent. Now, they will begin the search for their father as the Lone Wanderer's adventures begin that will either bring hope to that dismal world or destroy it..

Migrant Mother

Dorothea Lange was an American Photographer and Photojournalist best known for her photos of Depression Era Farmers and World War II interred Japanese American. With her husband Economics Professor Paul Schuster Taylor (who collected data while she took photos) her work captured the desperation and pain of the California Great Depression and its consequences. In 1936 she was working under the Farm Security Administration, taking photos of poor California farmers. At the same time Florence Owens waited in a pea pickers camp for her husband to return. She was a mother of seven children who had lost everything in the Dust Bowl. She traveled to California hoping for a better life but as an Okie faced repeated discrimination. She and her husband were traveling north to Watsonville to pick peas until their car broke down. While her husband went in to town Florence and her children waited at the pea pickers camp. Neither Lange nor Owens knew it but their paths would cross resulting in one of the most famous photos in American History.

Mrs. Doubtfire

After a bitter divorce, an actor disguises himself as a female housekeeper to spend time with his children held in custody by his former wife.