Pirates! A Primer

Join Chris as he walks the plank and dives headfirst into the myth-filled world of pirates, from their state-sanctioned origins to their silver screen renditions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Winterbauer?

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• 1:15Lizzie Bassett?

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• 1:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it is nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a return to a dead genre that yields treasure beyond a studio's wildest dreams. In advance of our coverage of 2003's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, we've put together a brief primer on pirates, their state-sanctioned origins, Hollywood lineage, and our continued romantic infatuation with those who live beyond the law. We hope you enjoy this brief history, and we look forward to chatting all things Pirates of the Caribbean on Monday. Without further ado, we give you Pirates.

• 2:34Chris Winterbauer?

  As a millennial, the piracy of my youth occurred far from the stunning blue waters of the Caribbean, where my mother had come of age. It took place in my father's den, by way of a dial-up modem and a bevy of applications surely pumping malware deep into my family's computer. Namely Napster, LimeWire, Kazaa, Pick Your Poison. No Spoon album was safe, no audio rip of Celebrity Jeopardy was off limits, nor, for some young men and women, though I'd know nothing about this, were the crude digitizations of salaciously sexual material. We wanted something, we lacked the means to procure it legally, so we did it illegally. Despite, I might add, ad campaigns designed to seemingly scare us straight.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  You wouldn't steal a car. You wouldn't steal a handbag. You wouldn't steal a DVD. Downloading pirated films is stealing.

• 3:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay, so it was piracy, but that ad campaign wasn't stopping us. By February of 2001, it's estimated that Napster had over 26 million monthly users. We were the scourge of music labels and movie studios, and we operated without remorse. Because we didn't feel like pirates. Certainly not the contemporary examples. Aquatic piracy, as I'll call it, though statistically at a bit of an nadir, had seen an uptick in the 80s and 90s, in particular following the collapse of Somalia, the sudden availability of cheap, Cold War-produced weaponry, and a boom in slow-moving targets, namely tankers and bulk carriers. There seems to be no love lost between the American or Western public

• 4:12Chris Winterbauer?

  and the pirates that operate off of the eastern coast of Africa.

• 4:16Speaker 03

  Look at me, short. Look at me, short. I'm the captain now.

• 4:20Chris Winterbauer?

  So why, as Roger Luckhurst asked in his 2017 article, "The Timeless Allure of Pirates", do we abhor the modern incarnations while celebrating the brutality of their predecessors? Quote, "The ruthless acts of violence and theft from pirates like Blackbeard, Calico Jack Rackham, and Black Bart Roberts in the 1720s." How did the pirate shed its associations with murder, rape, and pillaging, and dawn of an air of charming, roguish respectability? And is there a place for him or her in our modern media landscape?

• 4:56Chris Winterbauer?

  The pirates we have come to love on screen in the 20th century are modeled after what we know, or what we think we know, about pirates in and around the Caribbean during the late 17th and early 18th century. This was known as the "Golden Age of Piracy," to which ChatGPT says, "Hold my beer." During this time, the pirates of the Caribbean were largely French, English, and Dutch colonists who attacked Spanish ships and settlements. And many would tell you that they were simply doing their jobs, and that job was called "a privateer." Privateers were effectively state-sanctioned pirates. They had an official letter of marque which gave them permission to rob enemy ships, so long as they gave a portion of the loot to their government.

• 5:40Chris Winterbauer?

  The legal commission turned what would otherwise be piracy into a form of authorized naval warfare. But when peace treaties were signed or alliances shifted, privateers found themselves with two options: walk the straight and narrow, or keep doing what they did best. During this Golden Age, pamphlets and broadsides about real-life pirates and the crimes that they committed popularized these characters amidst their "landlubbin' countrymen." There were also a few key books that blurred the line between fact and fiction, dramatizing the lives of real-life pirates and buccaneers. Especially popular was "The American Pirates" by Alexandre Excomelant, published in 1678,

• 6:25Chris Winterbauer?

  which featured allegedly eyewitness accounts of the lives and experiences of French and English buccaneers. It's believed that Excomelant was a French surgeon who joined a crew of buccaneers. "1724" featured a general history of the robberies and murders of the most notorious pirates by Captain Charles Johnson. This collection of pirate biographies, which featured Blackbeard and Black Bart, included two female pirates, Anne Bonny and Mary Reed. In 1720, Daniel Defoe's "The Life, Adventures, and Pirates of the Famous Captain Singleton" hit the press. It's a novel based on a supposedly factual pamphlet that Defoe had

• 7:05Chris Winterbauer?

  written about real-life Captain Avery. Fun fact: Defoe, an English merchant, journalist, and novelist, is considered the father of the English novel. In fact, his Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, is considered by some to be "the first English novel," though that's no more hard fact than the tales of the book itself, which are supposedly based on the life and experiences of a real-life Scottish sailor, Alexander Selkirk. Now Crusoe created a new genre, or inspired a glut of imitations, about castaways on deserted islands, called Robinson Aids. But by the end of the 18th century, pirate fiction seemed to be fizzling out. But as any good pirate knows, no treasure stays buried forever.

• 7:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Lord Byron's epic poem, "The Corsair," which was the French term for privateer, breathed new life into the pirate story in 1814. And in 1822, Sir Walter Scott took the entire enterprise back to its roots with, you guessed it, "The Pirate." Scott, a Scottish novelist credited by some as the creator of historical fiction, had himself a hit. "The Pirate" was adapted into three different stage plays and triggered a new slew of copycat work. But pirates were changing. Most importantly, they weren't scallywags anymore. They were romantic. Well, at least they were part of the Romantic Movement. As Edward "Lucy" Smith wrote, "The Pirate" novel 'loosened its roots in

• 8:31Chris Winterbauer?

  reality and set out instead to create archetypes which fulfilled the demands of uninstructed popular fantasy.'" Historical roots often remained, but the floral flourishes were ever the more fictionalized. Pirates had become mythical, folkloric heroes, and they were especially popular amongst the youths.

• 8:53Chris Winterbauer?

  Stateside, Edgar Allan Poe's stories about pirate treasure, like "The Gold Bug", were becoming especially popular, even as privateering roughly midway through the 19th century was abolished, the practice viewed as anarchic. But there's perhaps no title more evocative of the pirate genre than Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island". Published in 1883, the Scottish writer had first serialized the story in a magazine under the title "The Sea Cook: A Story for Boys", under the pen name Captain George North. Now Stevenson had been strongly influenced by a general history of the robberies and murders of the most notorious pirates, which was rumored to be written by Daniel Defoe under a pseudonym.

• 9:36Chris Winterbauer?

  But Stevenson gave the genre the embellishments that people would begin to remember. The one-legged seaman, black-sailed ships, X marks the spot, and parrots yelling, "Pieces of eight!" It's difficult to quantify how influential Treasure Island has been to the pirate genre. Actually, it's not. As of 2015, it holds the Guinness Book of World Records' record for being the most oft-adapted work of literature for film and television. It has been done 41 times! Take that, A Star is Born! And I think Hollywood's got a few more in them. What about you? The first screen adaptation of Treasure Island wouldn't come until 1917, nearly a decade after 1908's short film, "The Pirate's Gold".

• 10:21Chris Winterbauer?

  "The Pirate's Gold" is important for a few reasons: not only is it one of the first instances of pirates on screen, it was directed by D.W. Griffith, who would go on to direct Birth of a Nation and, for better and worse, be one of the most influential figures in the development of narrative film. The heroes of "The Pirate's Gold" are not the pirates, but rather, the pirates' gold, which ends up hidden behind the fireplace bricks of a widowed mother, only to be discovered years later by her bankrupt and suicidal son, therefore saving the family from ruin.

• 10:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Treasure Island hit the silver screen in 1917 with an unusual twist. Most of the actors are kids or teens, and Long John Silver is played by a roughly 12- or 13-year-old girl dressed as a man. By the early 1920s, the formula of the pirate story had ossified into a set of rules as rigid as the pulp western, and no one had a handle on the genre quite like Rafael Sabatini. The English-Italian scribe of buccaneer romances was popular, both publicly and in Hollywood. He smartly saved the cat and gave his heroes sympathetic beginnings. His pirates were usually born gentlemen swayed into piracy not by temptation but necessity, often burdened with a painful secret of past hardship,

• 11:36Chris Winterbauer?

  and whose resilience, wit, and ingenuity are matched only by the humble inadequacy they feel in the presence of a good woman. Adaptations of Sabatini’s work began with The Seahawk, published in 1915, adapted in 1924, for the first time, and Captain Blood, published in 1922 and adapted in 1924, again, for the first time. The genre had even attracted Hollywood’s biggest buckler of swash, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., known for The Three Musketeers, Robin Hood, and The Son of Zorro. Fairbanks’s The Black Pirate was a milestone of early two-tone technicolor, but the genre would be pirated away by another leading man: Errol Flynn.

• 12:21Chris Winterbauer?

  The Australian thespian stumbled into pirate movies by accident when Robert Donnet dropped out of Captain Blood. Warner Brothers needed a body, and they took a chance on Flynn’s, which was great, at 6’2” and 180 pounds. Released in 1935, Captain Blood was a modest commercial success, but it was nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture, and it helped establish the 26-year-old Flynn as the natural successor to Fairbanks and a “symbol of an unvanquished man.” I should also note that Flynn’s co-star, the then relatively unknown 19-year-old Olivia de Havilland, was catapulted into stardom,

• 13:03Chris Winterbauer?

  and the film has been said to have helped Warner Brothers transition into more prestige fare. More important to our story, though, Captain Blood heralded the Golden Age of Pirates in Hollywood.

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• 14:25Chris Winterbauer?

  A year before Captain Blood, MGM released 1934's Treasure Island, a children's movie with a crucial contribution to the genre: the pirate accent, as invented by actor Robert Newton.

• 14:42Chris Winterbauer?

  Errol Flynn may have been synonymous with pirates, and he would continue to make good on the promise of Captain Blood with 1940's remake of Seahawk and 1952's Against All Flags. But he was far from the only buccaneer seeking a pile of gold from a major studio. Burt Lancaster, Basil Rathbone, Cornell Wild, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. were all familiar faces across the high seas. And it wasn't just the stars that were benefiting. One newspaper clipping from the time made mention of World War I veterans who had lost limbs in action, finding work as actors and extras in pirate films. Now, the real pirates of the era were, of course, the studio heads, warring and pillaging in boardrooms and on backlots.

• 15:26Chris Winterbauer?

  And the on-screen pirates were a far cry from the 17th-century privateers that had inspired them. And this was, in large part, because pirates existed as a branch of a much larger genre: the swashbuckler. Though the term originally referred to a ruffian bully more bravado and swagger than courage or skill, it had evolved across the 19th and early 20th centuries to come to describe a daring, athletic, honor-bound hero of swords-and-capes adventures. The swashbuckler is a charming rogue. As Geoffrey Richards, in his book Swordsman of the Screen, put it: "He maintains a decent standard of behaviour, fights for king and country, believes in

• 16:07Chris Winterbauer?

  truth and justice, defends the honour of the lady, even if he is an outlaw." Richards goes on to posit that the swashbuckling genre itself is: "an exhilarating excursion into pure style, a heady blend of male beauty and agility, the grace and colour of historical costume, the opulence and splendor of period sets, and the spellbinding leisure domain of horseback chases, chandelier swinging, and dazzling swordplay." The pirate film put the action on the ocean, even though it rarely showed actual acts of piracy. Pirates had become self-sufficient outcasts. They were frontiersmen. They represented unbridled freedom and living outside the law.

• 16:52Chris Winterbauer?

  But they could be recruited or conscripted into the defence of strict codes of honour and, at times, even the monarchy. They were, in effect, the inverse of the privateers that had inspired them.

• 17:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Cold War naval superiority nearly eliminated what was left of the pirate of the high seas. And by the 1980s, pirates had been scrubbed from Hollywood too. They were expensive, they were out of style, and they were increasingly risky. The genre inverted on itself, turning to parody and cosmetic twists in a stab at relevance. Pirate musicals, funny pirates, pirates in space. Those that played it even somewhat straight, like Roman Polanski's Pirates, released in 1986, suffered massive losses at the box office. Pirates grossed just under $7 million against a $40 million budget.

• 17:53Chris Winterbauer?

  The trend trickled into the 1990s with straight-to-video fare TV movies and children's entertainment like Hook and Muppet Treasure Island. At the same time, the swashbuckling genre had run aground and become increasingly landbound. The Princess Bride, Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, The Three Musketeers, arguably even Braveheart, and leading men were being drawn towards the burgeoning action movie genre, with the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mel Gibson, Bruce Willis, Val Kilmer, and many, many more. In 1995, production company Carolco attempted to revive the pirate genre with Cutthroat Island. But they merely hammered another nail in its coffin, or was it Davy Jones's locker?

• 18:39Chris Winterbauer?

  Directed by Rennie Harland, starring his then-wife Gina Davis, Matthew Modine, and Frank Langella, the tale of a daring female pirate and her reluctant rogue ally failed to find an audience. It lost, adjusting for inflation, nearly $150 million. Carolco went bankrupt, Gina Davis and Rennie Harland got a divorce. The truth is, Carolco had been taking on water for years, and the film failed for a whole host of reasons we'll certainly get to when we cover it. But for now, know that Gina Davis and Rennie Harland suffered arguably irreparable harm to their careers, and Hollywood chalked it up to another example of why you shouldn't go swimming in pirate-infested waters.

• 19:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Heading into the 21st century, the battle at the live-action box office was, "if you squint hard enough," not unlike the French, Spanish, English, and Dutch duking it out in the Caribbean hundreds of years earlier. Studios warred, raided, and pillaged, stole talent, ideas, and stars, and Disney found itself with neither the treasure nor the munitions to compete. IP, as it always had been, was Hollywood's gold, and Warner Brothers, in particular, hoarded the likes of Harry Potter, The Matrix, and The Lord of the Rings. Sony, for their part, had Spider-Man and Men in Black. 20th Century Fox had Star Wars and X-Men.

• 20:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Disney had a slew of films based on theme park rides that had flopped, one after another in quick succession: Tower of Terror, Mission to Mars, and The Country Bears. The Mouse House needed muscle. It needed privateers. It needed pirates. I'm sure the irony of the squeakiest-clean studio wary of a PG-13 rating being responsible for the revival of a dastardly archetype wasn't lost on Disney CEO Michael Eisner. Maybe he was simply out of options. Or maybe he took a cue from Byron: "He knew himself a villain, but he deemed the rest no better than the thing he seemed."

• 20:49Chris Winterbauer?

  As we'll discuss Monday, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl wouldn't just write a listing ship. It would remind us why we love Outlaw Waters: So Long As We're Not the Ones Being Robbed.

• 21:10Speaker 06

  What Went Wrong is a Sad Boom Podcast. This episode was presented by Chris Winterbauer, with post-production and music by David Bowman.

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