The Copperhead: Novella and Movie Screenplay

Bill Kauffman has adapted Harold Frederic’s novella (originally serialized in Scribner’s Magazine) into a screenplay for Ronald F. Maxwell’s Civil War era movie which is also to be released in the spring of 2013.

The Copperhead is a dramatically intense story set in New York State in 1862 and 1863 and it’s about the price of dissent, the cost of dissent. Copperhead was the extremely derisive term used to insult those Northerners who were opposed to the war. It was a big movement in the North. They wanted to end the war, and this book (and related film) explores the anti-war movement in the North through the conflict of one family in one town. It’s a work of fiction, but it is based on real events. The Copperhead explores ground that has not been explored at all in screenplay or cinema–these people were politically opposed to war–which ties the book and movie to our current situation.

Bill Kauffman is the author of nine books, among them Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette and Ain’t My America. He was born in Batavia, New York, and currently resides in Elba, New York, with his wife and daughter.

Harold Frederic is the author of The Damnation of Theron Ware as well as Gloria Mundi. Jonathan Yardley called Damnation a minor classic of realism.

Ronald F. Maxwell is an independent film director and writer. He is most famous for writing and directing the American Civil War epics Gettysburg and Gods and Generals.