FREEZING TIME

The tumultuous life of the Godfather of Cinema,
his collaboration and conflict with the Governor of California,
his trial for the murder of his wife's con-man lover,
and his relentless pursuit of the art of motion pictures

Screenplay by Keith Stern

He was one of the most famous people of the 19th century, but the name of Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) is nearly unknown today.  Still legendary, though, are his high-speed photographs of a trotting horse, which resolved the long-running controversy over whether all four feet ever leave the ground at the same time.

Few people remember that those photos were just a beginning for Muybridge.  Through trials and tragedy he developed the technology to take the extended series of images which became the first movies. Twenty years before Thomas Edison popularized his own projector, Muybridge was filling auditoriums across the U.S. and Europe with audiences eager to see the first motion pictures.  Later, Edison did all he could to obscure the true origins of cinema, to protect his own patents.


"The Horse in Motion"
Eadweard Muybridge, 1878
Muybridge’s story takes place mostly in San Francisco during the opening of the American West.  A near-fatal accident transforms him from an ordinary merchant into a visionary artist who becomes world famous for his landscape photographs.  Muybridge has a stormy relationship with his patron, rail tycoon Governor Leland Stanford.  At the peak of fame Muybridge marries a beautiful woman half his age, who soon betrays him in an affair with a dashing womanizer, Major Harry Larkyns.  Muybridge murders Larkyns in cold blood and a spectacular “trial of the century” ends in his astonishing acquittal.

Flora Muybridge, circa 1872
Gold Medal Picture

After a year in the jungles of Central America, Muybridge returns to the U.S. where he perfects motion capture photography.  In the most ambitious project of its kind, he creates tens of thousands of images which form an unsurpassed record of the movement of hundreds of animals and human subjects.  A worldwide lecture tour attracts record crowds, making him a star but failing to provide the financial support he desperately needs to continue his studies.

Our story opens with Muybridge at the end of the line, in Chicago at the spectacular World’s Fair of 1893.  Here he has established the world’s first purpose-built cinema, but he’s just about 10 years ahead of his time and the theater is empty.  His old injury affects him more than ever as he recalls the dramatic events of his life.  Visits from his nemeses Edison and Stanford reawaken his violent nature and set him off on a mission of revenge.

Links Self-Portrait? Gold Medal Picture

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