Shmueli, the movie?

We found this posting referring to our series on Shmuel Shmueli rather amusing and have copied it in full:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/not-honyaku/m16piOCOSIQ

Steve,

Before yesterday, I had never heard of the unusual name “Shmuel Shmueli”.

At the local library, I picked up a copy of the free local weekly ArtVoice

(dated December 3-9, 2015) and read an article titled “Conman Extraordinaire Shmuel Shmueli Comes to Niagara Falls”, written by one Frank Parlato.

The name Frank Parlato is vaguely known to me as a real estate developer here in Western New York, somewhat in the same category as Carl Paladino, who unsuccessfully ran for governor against Andrew Cuomo in 2010.

While reading this article, I wondered whether the facts could be made into an attention-holding movie scenario, and I remembered your praise of Aaron Sorkin for his ability, through judicious repetition, to make a successful movie script out of a dull topic like sabremetrics.

I thought:  No, to make an interesting movie, the raw facts of this case need to be embellished with a few car chases and explosions, and maybe a narrow escape from being swept over Niagara Falls.  I also thought of a previous conman from 1820 who proposed developing Grand Island (in the Niagara River between the U.S. and Canada) as a homeland for the world’s Jews.  See the section “Ararat city”in  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_a_Jewish_state

(“Some have speculated whether [Mordechai M.] Noah’s utopian ideas may have influenced Joseph Smith, who founded the Latter Day Saint movement in Upstate New York a few years later.”)

Looking online for a copy of this article to bring to your attention, I found http://artvoice.com/issues/v14n46/shmueli which is an episode previous to the Dec. 3-9, 2015 article; this latter article is more interesting (involving a Hong Kong investor and a giant hole in the ground in downtown Niagara Falls) and ends with “Stay tuned as we report further on one of the great rascals of our area, the amazing conman, Shmuel Shmueli.”

Anyway, feel free to pass on this obscure report to any highly paid scriptwriter of your acquaintance, or to develop the script and become a highly paid scriptwriter yourself.

— Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY)

P.S.  This seems to be Part 1, so maybe you should start reading here (if at all):  http://artvoice.com/issues/v14n45/cover_story

From a comment:  “Unrelated aside, when I saw the photo accompanying

this story, I thought that was Hank Williams Jr.  He has found his doppelganger!”

(Hey, this could be HWJr’s first movie role.)

Frank Parlato