How to Steal the Declaration of Independence

Sitting down with Joanne Freeman and screenwriters of National Treasure

A little over six years ago, I typed two of the most consequential sentences of my life:

This set off a chain of events leading to the Substack post you’re reading right now. See, historians LOVE National Treasure. But we didn’t really know exactly how much until six years ago today and the very first Historians At The Movies watch party. The rest, as they say, is history.

Six years. I can still remember the days leading up to the party. We had (and still have) not clue about what we were doing. But perhaps I can explain.

When I was doing my Master’s work at Wichita State University I used to have these conversations with my friends in the anthropology department about depictions in movies. Archaeologists had it made. They have Indiana Jones. Harrison Ford. Historians on the other hand get Benjamin Franklin Gates. We get Nic Cage. But that’s alright because everyone loves National Treasure. It’s a fun movie that plays with history and doesn’t take itself too seriously. This conversation always kinda stuck in the back in my head.

Flash forward to a few years later and I’m living in the middle of nowhere Florida. I noticed National Treasure was on Netflix and put it out there. I didn’t have a followind then, but knew a few scholars.¹ Anyway, I put it out there. We didn’t even know what a watch party was or how to do this. I’d never used a hashtag before. At some point we landed on Historians At The Movies— #HATM— thinking it was short enough for people to add to their posts. The plan, as I recall, was to just watch this one movie one time. Turn our brains off on a random Sunday night. That’s it.

We had no idea what we were in for.

I remember at some point talking to Joanne Freeman and talking her into getting a Netflix account just for the occasion. Joanne, if you’ve never met her, is as delightful and wonderful in person as you could ever hope. One of my favorite people, period.

I can’t remember how many people tweeted along that night, but it was a lot. Felt like the whole academic world joined in and suddenly we were sitting at the cool kids’ table. Of course, the most fun was had by the audience watching Joanne respond to the idea of adding acid to the back of America’s most sacred document.

But it wasn’t only historians who were in attendance that night. People who were just history fans or like the movie were there. Two of those people were Cormac and Marianne Wibberley, perhaps best known as the screenwriters of National Treasure themselves.

Cormac and Marianne have been HATM friends for a long time, and as I began to think about what to do for our sixth birthday, I had a thought: ASK THEM.

So I did. And they so kindly agreed. Maybe it’s because they are genuinely wonderful folks but maybe it’s also because I asked Joanne Frickin’ Freeman to be on the pod too. And she said yes.

So a few weeks ago we all sat down to talk about the process of writing this film, Cormac and Marianne’s interests in history, and of course, Joanne’s responses to THAT SCENE.

I’ve kept this pod quiet up until now. Only a handful of folks have known about it. But my gift to you for making this thing such a piece of my life is this conversation. I really want to thank all of you for keeping HATM going even when I didn’t want to anymore or didn’t know what else to do with it. You have become my family. And I love you all.

We’ve got more stuff coming and soon. We are going to take this thing—our community—and make it the center of pop culture and history.

YOU made this happen. So keep sharing. Keep telling people about our thing.

But for now, happy birthday friends. I hope you are as proud of this community as I am. And I hope you enjoy the podcast.

Jason

1. If you’re like me, you can probably recount with glee the times “celebrity” historians like Kevin Kruse or Annette Gordon-Reed replied to or followed you. Turns out, these are just people.