Producer: Jean Mudge

In pre-production

MR. EMERSON’S REVOLUTION is a two-hour documentary with dramatic episodes about Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), the poet-philosopher and essayist who rebelled against the establishment of his day. Born in Boston, which was a major center of change, Emerson founded American Transcendentalism.

By the 1850s, his widespread promotion of nature’s moral law, self-renewal, critical thinking, and experimentation—all basic elements in our national character today–had made him the country’s first public intellectual. Already in the mid-1840s, he had begun applying his ideas to practical reform, addressing the two major issues of pre-Civil War society: abolition and women’s rights. His work helped achieve emancipation and eventually led to the 13th Amendment, outlawing slavery in the U.S., and to the 19th Amendment, giving women the vote. Underlying Emerson’s shift in emphasis from philosophy to reform was a private life full of passion and trial.

Emerson’s ideas and practices still define us; his aphorisms continue to resound. Sam and James Waterston, who resemble each other and Emerson, are ideal to play the mature and young Emerson. Other roles include Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.

This film is Emerson’s first in-depth television portrait. Almost all shooting for the project will be done in the Boston area.