Mountain Meadows movie being filmed

The massacre has been written about countless times by a variety of authors with a wide spectrum of viewpoints — many of them critical of church leaders — and has been the subject of renewed interest by scholars in the past decade. Several major works addressing it have been published recently, including one by local author Will Bagley, another by investigative reporter Sally Denton and a novel by Judith Freeman.

Repeated references to the massacre are also part of Jonathan Krakauer's recent best-selling book, "Under the Banner of Heaven."

Three LDS Church historians have been at work for at least three years on a book they say will access source material previously unavailable to other researchers. Richard Turley, managing director of the Family and Church History department, has teamed with Glen Leonard, director of the Museum of Church History and Art, and Ronald Walker, a professor of history at the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for LDS History at Brigham Young University, to produce "Tragedy at Mountain Meadows." Publication by Oxford University Press is anticipated in 2006, but no firm date has been set.

Brian Patrick, a professor of film studies at the University of Utah, said he just found out about the "September Dawn" project a couple of weeks ago. His own 2003 documentary film on the aftermath of the massacre, "Burying the Past: Legacy of the Mountain Meadows Massacre," has won 11 awards and been featured in some 20 different independent film festivals. He's sold 1,300 copies of it on his Web site, www.buryingthepast.com.

Patrick said he sent a copy of his film to actor Dean Cain — son of "September Dawn" writer and director Christopher Cain — about a year ago, then followed up with a letter, but he never heard anything back. A friend in Los Angeles called recently to tell Patrick about the feature film now in production.

He's not surprised that Hollywood has finally taken notice. "A lot of people have talked over the years about why this film hasn't been made in Hollywood. There has been a lot of speculation about that. But I found it's very difficult to make a film that is perceived by people to attack their religion, particularly a mainstream religion."

Yet Patrick doesn't believe the film will be an attack on the LDS Church but rather "an incredible story of intolerance and sort of twisted fate. It's just emotions run amok and religion run amok, and we see that today" when some use their religious faith as the basis for violence.

"Because it happened on Sept. 11, it even draws more attention to the story and there's more of a connection because of that."