Todd Scherr's First Olympics Cast Card

Thanks for Todd Scherr for letting me post this cast card from NBC's The First Olympics:Athens 1896 miniseries that we made in 1983. Good stuff, look at the cast!

Angels and Demons

Great final scene: Worth the wait, really, as the film seems unsure how much of the Theosophical/Science debate to feature. The macguffin is the “genie” in the bottle, which shows its destructive power with a flourish, at the end. Nice seeing Roma, certainly. It’s a good thriller, with the internal Vatican espionage plots providing plenty of storytelling. While certainly not as absorbing as DaVinci Code, this film is interesting nonetheless for the bits of art history as well as a tour of the Vatican archives. Readers of Holy Blood, Holy Grail and/or anyone who spent time in England during the mid 1980’s will find the story Illuminating. (Remember Roberto Calvi, found hanging off Blackfriars Bridge, presumed killed for his role in the Vatican banking scandal.) The untimely death of a popular new pope echoes the conspiracy talk that surrounded Pope John Paul I. Story resonated with me in the same way now as it did then in the mid-80’s. I was re-motivated to take another look at my only original screenplay Dimensions, written in 1987 and inspired by similar events to craft a “religious thriller.”